Ah yes, the brief time when it was The Matrix of Readership.
Thread of Thoughts, Questions (and Maybe Even Answers) That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread
- Thread starter LBD "Nytetrayn"
- Start date
And ugh, that's only of my least favorite things to come from the Almanac/AVP. But I've gone into a whole thing about that elsewhere already so no need to clutter the thread with it again.
Prime Nova to Nova Prime is indeed one of those elegantly simple things, but I always liked the original syntax for being more, uh, (prime) novel. Aside from showing that not everything was parsed as Something Prime, it has a non-English flair to it.
Prime Nova to Nova Prime is indeed one of those elegantly simple things, but I always liked the original syntax for being more, uh, (prime) novel. Aside from showing that not everything was parsed as Something Prime, it has a non-English flair to it.
I think just wiggled a wrench or something around near Orion's body until the Aerialbots had left the room, then just shoved the Matrix in there and let it do the work for him, whistling while he waited.
This has me thinking, "What if the Transformer Scourge was made from had been compatible, and the Unicron transformation mucked that up?"
Let's see, who became Scourge...?
Thundercracker?
Oh yeah, this is my headcanon now: "Thundercracker was worthy to carry the Matrix until Unicron messed him up."
This is 100% fan-fiction, but upon more thinking about it, I would like to see a story showing the origins of Ultra Magnus.
Like, maybe he's Alpha Trion's first attempt at creating the next Prime. He found a wounded soldier, one who seemed to have the right combination of personality traits to lead the Autobots to victory over the Decepticons. He rebuilt him into a more powerful form complete with a slot for the Matrix in his chest (the white Optimus-looking inner robot), but, for whatever reason, the Matrix wouldn't bond to Magnus, so A3's search for a new Prime continued.
In the meantime, Alpha Trion continued to tinker with Magnus and added additional upgrades to turn him into the armored up form of Ultra Magnus, someone that would help him safeguard the Matrix while the search continued.
Eventually, A3 came upon Orion Pax and rebuilt him to the same design that he originally had for Magnus, but this time the Matrix took, and Optimus Prime was born.
Not knowing any of this, Optimus attempts to pass the Matrix on to Ultra Magnus as he's dying. Ultra Magnus briefly tries to talk Optimus out of it. He's been here before, and he knows the Matrix doesn't want him. But Optimus wants to give it to him anyway, and there's no time to debate, so Magnus takes the Matrix and stores it in the chest of his armor for safekeeping until he can find the right 'bot to pass it on to.
It adds a bit more backstory to Ultra Magnus's frustration when he's trying to open the Matrix on Junk. He's known he the Matrix doesn't consider him worthy for the past 4 million years, despite all his efforts to be.
Like, maybe he's Alpha Trion's first attempt at creating the next Prime. He found a wounded soldier, one who seemed to have the right combination of personality traits to lead the Autobots to victory over the Decepticons. He rebuilt him into a more powerful form complete with a slot for the Matrix in his chest (the white Optimus-looking inner robot), but, for whatever reason, the Matrix wouldn't bond to Magnus, so A3's search for a new Prime continued.
In the meantime, Alpha Trion continued to tinker with Magnus and added additional upgrades to turn him into the armored up form of Ultra Magnus, someone that would help him safeguard the Matrix while the search continued.
Eventually, A3 came upon Orion Pax and rebuilt him to the same design that he originally had for Magnus, but this time the Matrix took, and Optimus Prime was born.
Not knowing any of this, Optimus attempts to pass the Matrix on to Ultra Magnus as he's dying. Ultra Magnus briefly tries to talk Optimus out of it. He's been here before, and he knows the Matrix doesn't want him. But Optimus wants to give it to him anyway, and there's no time to debate, so Magnus takes the Matrix and stores it in the chest of his armor for safekeeping until he can find the right 'bot to pass it on to.
It adds a bit more backstory to Ultra Magnus's frustration when he's trying to open the Matrix on Junk. He's known he the Matrix doesn't consider him worthy for the past 4 million years, despite all his efforts to be.
I've always liked the poetry that Orion, Ariel, and Dion all got upgrades, and I've expanded it to fit subsequent material.
My idea is that the "Magnus Armour" was the Mark-II Apex Armour, created by Solus Prime (the first version being Quintesson-made, and the third version being [the first] GodBomber). Once worn, the armour permanently fuses with its host and takes over their life functions (it was designed to "keep the wearer alive," which inadvertently translated to "put the wearer on life-support").
There have been other "------ Magnae" in the ancient past, each inheriting the suit after the previous wearer is killed. Many of them have been bodyguards (or nemeses) to the Matrix-Bearer. Before the war, the suit was recovered and taken into the depths of Cybertron --one of the many artifacts that Alpha Trion was keeping hidden away.
Orion (rebuilt into) Optronix (matrix upgrade to) Optimus Prime
Ariel (rebuilt into) Elita (promoted to "Leader-1" rank and dubbed) Elita-One
Dion (rebuilt into) Ultran (fuses with the prototype Apex Armour to become) Ultra Magnus
My idea is that the "Magnus Armour" was the Mark-II Apex Armour, created by Solus Prime (the first version being Quintesson-made, and the third version being [the first] GodBomber). Once worn, the armour permanently fuses with its host and takes over their life functions (it was designed to "keep the wearer alive," which inadvertently translated to "put the wearer on life-support").
There have been other "------ Magnae" in the ancient past, each inheriting the suit after the previous wearer is killed. Many of them have been bodyguards (or nemeses) to the Matrix-Bearer. Before the war, the suit was recovered and taken into the depths of Cybertron --one of the many artifacts that Alpha Trion was keeping hidden away.
Orion (rebuilt into) Optronix (matrix upgrade to) Optimus Prime
Ariel (rebuilt into) Elita (promoted to "Leader-1" rank and dubbed) Elita-One
Dion (rebuilt into) Ultran (fuses with the prototype Apex Armour to become) Ultra Magnus
I like how "Prime Nova" could work and show the evolving nature of Cyberyronian society. Like how the Roman Emperors were at various points called "Caesar," "Augustus," "Imperator," and "Emperor." It makes sense that over Cybertron's long history the exact title of the Matrix holder would change and that maybe "[BLANK] Prime" is a relatively modern way of saying it?
At the same time... I rather like how Nova Prime sounds too, and Nova Prime has had a couple appearances across a few continuities and has had some fairly significant lore to him (he even got a turn being the Thirteenth in Earth Wars) whereas "Prime Nova" is just a namedrop they never did anything with.
My headcanon is that he was called "Prime
Nova" during his era but everyone calls him
"Nova Prime" presently, like how we call Augustus the first Emperor of Rome even though he never had that exact title.
I seem to remember around the late 2000s or early 2010s, when Hasbro was doing Q&As with the big fan sites, they gave a definitive answer to Dion, saying he died and never got rebuilt into anyone.
Then they told FunPub to go with that with their Dion comic, but FunPub didn't think they'd sell as many Dion toys if he just unambiguously died, so they left it vague enough that he could be seen as becoming Ultra Magnus, all against Hasbro's wishes.
ANYHOW
My headcanon is that Delta Pax, Ultra Pax, and Orion Pax were triplets born from the same spark hotspot.
Ultra and Delta joined the Autobot military and both achieved the rank of "Magnus," compete with the upgrades that entails.
Orion was seen as the slacker of the brothers, seemingly content with a rather low level job. Of course the War starts, Sentinel gets yeet'd, and the Matrix chooses Orion, who becomes Optimus Prime.
That's because they were speaking from a Binder/Aligned mindset, as the question itself was asking if Dion had been rebuilt into Jazz since Jazz was presented as Orion Pax's best friend in the Exodus novel.
As an aside, I know that Ultra Magnus has always had the red bumper, but it always strikes me as wrong.
I'm not entirely convinced that Dion was ever meant to be anyone. Ariel only got saved because someone else noticed her similarity to Elita-1 and it was easy to change the ending to War Dawn to include a bit about her getting rebuilt too.
But the original intent was that both Ariel and Dion died. Only Ariel got saved.
ofc personal canons are fun and not restrained by authorial intent and the brand team can change their minds on Dion at any time anyway. The current team seems like the sorts who just might, as opposed to Archer and Alvarez, who probably had to be told who Dion was.
Philistines. She's a Canadian treasure.
Seems as good a time as any to remind the fandom that thanks to (a) Sideways' hijacking of the AVP column, TFWiki is obliged to have the following disambiguation page.
We hope you feel less ambiguated.
Sorry if I missed it, but besides the Wings Universe's choose-your-own-Magnus-origin, did anyone mention the IDW one?