#the situation with Optimus where they can't forget their past— the good and the bad

[transingthoseformers]

I have been consumed with pre-war Orion/Megatronus

[aggressively-crying]

Tfa Optimus prime propaganda before soundwave overtakes him:

This man is so burned out you can see smoke rising from his engine at any given time.

This particular incarnation isn't the leader of the Autobots. He's a maintenance bot that dropped out of the elite guard academy and got stationed in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. He was built long after the war ended, so he'd never even seen real action against a decepticon...

Until he ended up with the most powerful artifact in cybertronian history, the very thing that gave their species life, and was immediately hunted by the battle hardened leader of the Decepticon army for it.

Animated Optimus is literally Just Some Guy that got caught right at the resurgence of the most brutal war his kind had ever known, and was immediately forced to keep it from breaking out full-scale all over again. It's like if a college dropout working at a dinky tech repair shop had to stop world war three.

On top of preventing a fucking war, since he crashed on earth he's taken it up on himself to play first responder, too. He gets zero chance to rest ever between taking emergency calls and rebuilding any damages to the city from the fights with the decepticons. Thaaaat's right, he's working two fucking jobs on top of the autobot gig.

That alone would be bad enough, but it only goes downhill from here.

The crew Optimus has to work with, the guardians of both Earth's and Cybertron's futures, the only people between the entire Decepticon armada and the strongest source of power, are the most dysfunctional losers in existence. Half of which nearly cause more problems than they solve (cough cough, bumblebee). He wants to be a good, chill boss sooooo badly, he wants them to be able to just TALK to him but nobody on this damn team knows how to communicate or even think before they act, EXCEPT Optimus, who is consistently stuck getting the raw end of the deal whenever this inevitably goes horribly wrong. Definitely doesn't help that they don't actually follow orders either.

And unlike Soundwave, Optimus can't just conveniently carry these nerds around in cassette form in his chest, tucked away where they can't cause endless chaos, he has to live with them 24/7. Also, ya know, Soundwave's kids actually follow his orders without question. Team Prime? Fuck no.

Let's not forget the other bastard Optimus is tormented by, either.

For the uninitiated, this is Sentinel Prime. He exists to be just the fucking worst. He's arrogant, he's classist, he's xenophobic, and he's a huge smug piece of slag. Nobody likes him in-universe, few like him in the fandom.

He used to be OP's best friend. Now he calls him a grease monkey and a lowly maintenance bot every time they're forced to interact. Everyone who has to put up with him wants to punch him in his bitch face, Optimus especially. Every time he shows up to earth he fucks up the whole operation and blames anyone who isn't him for what went wrong, then takes credit if something goes right. Keeps dragging old friendship drama into work too.

Whiiiiich brings me to:

Optimus's Unresolved Trauma

As if this poor bastard didn't have enough going on, he's also being tormented by his past: specifically, the incident where he thought his (possibly?) girlfriend died to a bunch of giant fucking spiders and an explosion on an unsanctioned mission sentinel led, which he still entirely blames himself for. Except turns out said girlfriend lived, ended up a mutant that hates herself, and now blames Optimus for abandoning her, which is just cranking up the guilt to 11.

Oh and on top of all of this he's raising a kid. It's not even like a g1/prime/seemingly every tf anime situation where said kid just shows up sometimes to hang out because they're friends. No, her fucking dad went missing and she had nowhere else to go but with the robots, so he's a proper fuckin dad now too.

Tl;dr: Soundwave may be carrying the decepticons, but Optimus is carrying two worlds, three jobs, a kid, four autobots with horrible communication skills, a metric fuckton of total disrespect from some of the worst people alive, the most powerful artifact in existence, and enough guilt to drown a man. I'm astounded his spine is still intact. In conclusion, vote Optimus prime for overworked transformer blorbo.

Preliminary Poll 35: Transformers