Overlord is old, old as Megatron, old as Megazarak, old as well before the war, when Megazarak was just staring to gather malcontents together and Megatron was stuck as his second, writing his speeches for him.
Overlord is something of a showman, always has been- he’s flashy, passionate, driven, constantly seeking validation and entertainment in equal parts. On top of that, he’s cruel. Deeply and intensely cruel, with a desperate need to control and overpower others.
Add in the fact that he’s big, even by Decepticon standards, easily on par with Strika for size, and you have one of the most terrifying threats the Decepticons could have asked for during the war.
Overlord made a name for himself most prominently as a sort of one-mech strike force. His specialty was to go into an autobot battleship, or a base, or a small colony, or…say…a fortress, and when he came out everybody would be dead and everything inside would be destroyed. Unless he was sent in to grab a specific bot or an item, in which case he’d come out with a very traumatized bot or a slightly dinged-up item!
Mind you, he was also considered to be a master interrogator, torturer, occasional leader (although he had a habit of treating those working with him as disposeable, or forgetting them alltogether, or sometimes kiling them himself) and notorious partier. Seriousy, there ain’t no party like an Overlord party because an Overlord party don’t stop until at least 30% of the population is eradicated and people are sobbing.
As for the abrupt, startling end to his career during the war…nobody is really sure exactly why he disappeared. Some say that he simply grew tired, or was injured, some believed he’d died, others think he simply found a better fight to indulge in. After all, he was somwhat addicted to battle- and each time he tended to try to up the stakes, to do more, to accomplish greater things, to create more mayhem and fire and revel in it!
Which may explain exactly why he stopped, after all, how could he ever top Fortress Maximus?
Nothing else compares, not after you’ve gone into the heart of the largest living being known to be created, the first and only of his kind, and torn apart his power couplings? Mutilating a sapient fortress, big enough to be considered an unstoppable game-changer? Nothing else is going to compare. No torture is going to meet slaughtering the crew residing inside a sapient being in full view of security cameras, or making every speaker system in a building-sized victim scream static simultaniously.
Maybe just…he realized he’d reached a top, there.
Especially when the Autobots shelved the Maximus program for the Supreme program, downsizing in favor of efficiency.
Or perhaps something else, I don’t really know! Maybe that’s when Megatron took over from Megazarak. Or he came up again the wreckers (who I have a whole OTHER TFA headcanon for where they were a group throughout the first half of the war, largely forgotten by the general population now as anything but propaganda and war stories to thrill protoforms and young cadets), or…well, who knows what!
But by the time he sniffs out the Lost Light for Primus knows what reasons, he’s hungry for something, anything to sink his teeth into. Both proverbial and literally.
There’s a few ideas, I don’t really know which, as to why exactly he picks up on the Lost Light. Maybe he’s working for Tyrest, trying to steer them closer so Tyrest can get his favorite Mini-Con back. Or maybe he simply picks up on a signal, far from any other Cybertronian source, and goes to investigate.
ok art’s, like, not a thing on tfa cybertron (nobody knew what it was in headmaster) but they also have these giant stained glass windows??
does this not count as art or…
You know what, Transformers Animated has so many plot holes for their culture I’ve genuinely spend time thinking about them. For example Blitzwing in episode 11 ‘Lost and Found’ tells Lugnut:
[Lugnut stomps on a lunar rover by mistake] Blitzwing: [Hothead] Careful, you copper-clad klutz! You stepped in something! Blitzwing: [switches to Random] But with a few dancing lessons, you’ll be light on your stabilizing servos like me! Cha-cha-cha!
So Decepticons have dance, but not music because Megatron calls Sari’s music ‘odd sound patterns’
BUT Rosanna is an Autobot singer: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Rosanna_(Animated) so they have singing as a concept on Cybertron. Does that mean dancing is done to singing back on cybertron? Or is it by some other means?
Also, regarding art, in the official Transformers animated comic, The Arrival, set during the pilot of TFA; Blitzwing is is a public speaker at Megatron’s funeral, and he built a statue to commemorate Megatron, does that not count as art?
I have put too much thought into this cartoon.
same tho,,
ok ok maybe it’s that only younger autobots don’t know what art is. maybe it used to be a thing waaay back when, even before ratchet was around, but then they stopped doing it for some reason. maybe decepticons have a healthy art community.
and—wait, isn’t rosanna a decepticon double agent or something? it’s implied that she’s flip sides, isn’t it? so actually decepticons… should know what music is, right? or was that just not important enough for megatron to teach himself about? maybe cybertronian music is different from earth music or something?
This could be like a Cybertronian bread bowl – you drink the Energon in the cup and then snack on the nice crunchy crystals that were grown in that shape.
For all you tea addicts out there who also love Transformers of any verse:
let me introduce you to ‘Butterfly pea tea’. Butterfly-pea
flower tea is a caffeine-free herbal tea made from an infusion of
leaves of the plant and dried Lemon grass which naturally produces this:
Energon tea. None alcoholic energon, which is actually pretty good for you. I’ll let you do the googling but i’ve heard it tastes a lot like greentea. You can order it on ebay or amazon if you have none in store relatively cheaply.
Former specialized doctors that lie about their jobs pre-war because they know they’d be forced to be field medics and be expected to treat severe injuries that they never got the training to deal with and while they might know the basics there’s still a big difference between “I used to diagnose issues with optics and suggest treatment” and “this bot in front of me got their leg blasted off and everyone’s expecting me to be able to somehow keep them from bleeding out”
I really like the idea of the outer planets, regardless of what continuity, have really diverse and strange cultures too. We know the Autobot Commonwealth exists in some fashion in most universes as a fact (Unicron Tril, TFA, TFP) and like, just the ideas of what they bring to the table when the planets come together. Velocitronians loving physical prowess as a show of both strength and intelligence, coming from a desert planet and getting used to living in wetter and lusher worlds, being surprised at how separated the city states of Cybertron are because they are used to one planet wide ruler. Animatron natives coming from their largely organic world and separate tribes and learning about the intellectual sides of the power balance, being rough and rowdy on a whole and having a predisposition for big parties. Gigantion mechs towering over everyone else, a huge inventor culture with a somewhat anarchistic form of community learning to integrate with the smaller and more wild bots from the other worlds, wondering why they update their old buildings instead of simply building up, creating massive structures in mere days. GIVE ME MORE.
YES THIS.
I headcanon cultural diversity in the outer colonies SO HARD.
Just had a sad thought. What if some Cybertronians find mates by singing in hopes of hearing the right response. One who was really popular and a famous singer got into an accident and his voice was permanently damaged. He’s mute and it’s sad. One day though, he overhears the most beautiful singing.
So he has to figure out how to woo the other mech without a voice and starts to replay old videos of himself singing. Nothing really works because his songs never heard the right feelings or emotions. So then he spends hours and hours splicing the different audio together to make a completely new song. The intended mech swoons instantly.
faceplates aren’t “battle masks” but have some kind of medical function
only higher caste mechs can have mouths
wearing a faceplate means “I don’t feel comfortable here”/”I don’t want to interact”
mechs being in a relationship install identical facemasks/modify their existing ones to show their involvement with each other (and to signal they’re speaking “with one voice” and want to be treated as one unit)
some mechs have unmoving faces even though they don’t wear a faceplate (or maybe because they’ve lost one or their programming malfunctions)
using a faceplate isn’t something deliberate but instinctive (a mech uses his/hers when he/she feels they’re in danger/uncomfortable/insecure)
a “battle mask” retracts only when a mech recharges; the fact someone knows another mech’s “real face” is a sign of intimacy/trust
Cybertronian Database 