I was surprised to learn that the Deluxe Unicron toy from the Cybertron line actually appeared in fiction, and that (like the toy) he was tiny. (Well, tiny in comparison to his usual planet devouring scale...)

But even though he was the relative size of a "standard" Transformer, was he portrayed as any less powerful?

I would think that given his nature as a multiversal singularity, his power would remain constant across his various incarnations reguardless of the form he takes...

Also, how do you guys feel about the idea of Unicron as less than planet-sized?

For me, the idea of Unicron taking a form that's the same size (or perhaps only slightly larger) than most Transformers opens up a great deal of story potential.

I mean, you have to admit that it would be hard (if not impossible) to portray a character that's the size of a planet (or large moon at minimal) interacting with characters that are relatively "human sized".

If they attempted to use Unicron in the movie-verse for example (and no, I don't consider that comic appearance to be canon), I'm certain that using a character that's around Devastator's size (or only slightly larger at most) would be MUCH easier than trying to have a character as big as a planet.

Could you accept a Unicron that's more "Star Destroyer" than "Death Star"?

 

I'd always kind of thought that his inability to interact with other TFs was kind of the point. He's an irresistible force, he just goes around doing whatever he wants and woe to anything that gets in his way. If something more subtle is required he creates slaves/heralds like Galvatron to go out and do his bidding.

Shrinking him down, even if he retains all of his power, just lessens his godlike status.

 

Well, personally I agree and actually would prefer a more "lovecraftian" portrayal of his character myself. Less melodramatic, saturday-morning-cartoon villan and more incomprihensible force of nature.

I'd like to see, just once, Unicron treated as a vast unknowable cosmic horror who consumes not only planets, but the very fabric of space and time. An entity that doesn't make grand speaches and bestow rediculous, self-indulgent titles upon himself, but rather is a silent mysterious destroyer who literally speads chaos and madness in his wake.

A being whose mere presence causes strange, reality altering effects and inexplicable mutations to Cybertronian exostructures.

A creature that isn't bound by our pathetic, limited notions of "good" and "evil", but rather just IS.

Literally, a planet-sized "Quantum Event" that cannot be defined or classified and infact, barely even percieved in it's entirety by our tiny three dimensional brains.

In my opinion, they hit closer to the mark with the "Hytherion" creature from the Alternity's fiction...

But that's not going to happen.

They're never going to use Unicron as anything but a giant robo-Satan who's "bad" seemingly just for the sake of being "bad".

And since that's all they're ever going to do with him, they should make things easier on themselves and everyone else and downsize him, so that the overwhelming difference in scale is no longer an issue for storytelling purposes.


NOTE: Sorry about any spelling errors, my spellcheck has suddenly decided to crap out and I'm horrible at putting the correct letters in the correct order...

 

That same Unicron ran away from a planet sized Primus. Though if we go by Kiss Players fiction Primus is a Rodimus repaint that can transform into a disco ball.

 

I'm not exactly sure I catch your point...

 

Unicron is causing chaos on one of Cybertron's moons where the Minicons are having a civil war.

He had a Oh Slag moment when Primus transformed. Not saying Unicron is a coward but cowards do survive.

Before the Cybertron Primus toy, Primus was represented in toy form by Lucky Draw Primus, a Rodimus Prime repaint. In the Kiss Player fiction incorporated this in it. Also by transforming into a disco ball I mean this where he is also Vector Sigma.

 

In short, yes, he is seemingly portrayed as being less powerful, in that he legs it when Primus transforms to robot mode rather than hanging around to fight. One would presume it's because he hasn't got himself back up to full strength yet after getting over that whole "being destroyed and collapsing into a black hole" thing.

 

But has Unicron ever actually challenged Primus to a one-on-one confrontation?

The only time(s) he's attempted to consume Cybertron is when Primus has been dormant, and thus incapable of fighting back.

I'd wager that even in his fully empowered, planet scaled state Unicron is actually weaker than Primus.

Heck, even a mere fraction of Primus's power/lifeforce (the Matrix) is consistantly portrayed as enough to destroy Unicron's physical forms and force him to flee that particular universe.

Just because he turned tail and ran when Primus woke up doesn't nessisarily mean that he was any weaker than usual...

 

Which TF fiction did he apprear in?

 

i totally lovethe whole idea of unicron being portrayed in a lovecraftian manner
especially if he has to go on a long quest over time to recover the other parsts of him that exists throughout time and space and alternate dimensions basicxly his having to find each portino of his former power as bein a case of sealed evil in a can but with punicron having to search out and recover all of these fragements of his greater power that exist throughout the multiverse

 

The "Transformers: Cybertron" comics.

Soundwave used the "Dead Matrix" (a Unicronian version of the Matrix of Leadership) to free his spark from the Unicron Singularity (the "Grand Black Hole") and it proceeded to inhabit a nearby planet(oid).

Within like, days the entire planet decended into chaos and war, and the inhabitants destroyed themselves. (They don't call Unicron the "Chaos Bringer" for nothing.)

Unicron's spark forged a new body from the planet's remains (represented by the Deluxe toy) but instead of being planet-sized like his usual incarnations, it was reletively the same size as a standard Transformer.

Then, when Primus woke up and transformed out of Cybertron he fled into deep space and was never seen again. (At least in that particular continuity...) A universe hopping Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus (from the RID continuity) went chasing after him, but they never say what happens to them.

I was just wondering if being the size of a standard Transformer, rather than planet-scaled, had any effect on his power(s).

I'd rather Unicron be a "dead" god, with a group of insane cultists seeking to resurrect him and bring about the end of all things.

Him searching out his own peices/power would just take away from his character. It would make him too relateable.

A true Lovecraftian deity should be incomprihensable and vast.

An alien intelligence that cannot be understood by mere mortal minds.

Ressurecting Unicron should be a suicidal task that only a deseased, unstable mind would attempt.

In my opinion, Unicron should never have "chats with the bacteria". He should never communicate directly with the characters, but instead (as has been said) be a grand and horrible force of nature.

You don't ask questions of a tornado. You don't make deals with a hurricane. Tsunami's don't appoint "heralds" to announce their arrival. Etc...

The very idea is absurd.

So if there is going to be a quest to regenerate Unicron from his scattered remains, it should be undertaken by foolish worshipers who don't understand the true folly of what they're attempting.

 

See, I would hate for Unicron to be an incomprehensible force. That makes the logic of him being defeated even more ridiculous. One thing I've always hated about cartoons is that the good guys win because they are good guys. At least when it's against something of their own realm, it seems feasible. I can even accept Unicron being defeated by the Matrix. When you escalate him to "beyond God" status, it takes the underdog aspect of beating him totally out of the picture and tosses it into the realm of silliness.

I'd prefer more of a Ra's Al Ghul/Darkseid/Galactus type of Unicron. A being who is god like through his vast knowledge, strength and manipulative abilities. Someone whom it seems impossible to beat, not because he is invulnerable, but because he's better then you. He's the ultimate chess player. In the end, power means little if you don't have the knowledge and common sense to take advantage of it. I can defeat an 1000 pound man who is two times stronger than me if he doesn't understand how to protect his weak points and I understand how to manipulate them.

Of course, this requires good story telling, bad guys who win or draw more than they lose, and a story/series not hampered by being uplifting just for the sake of it. These are things we may never see in a Transformers series in the near future... if ever.

 

Oh, I thought this thread was about Quake, but now I see there isn't anywhere the word "byte" in the thread title and I noticed I must be not awake enough to read properly *gg*

 

Well... sorta reminds me of a toned up Animated MEgatron.

 

Considering the Transformers are creations of Primus, and therefore have the potential for godhood (like Alternity and the upcoming Greek godlike origin story for the 13, hell even G1 Primes with the Matrix and Megatron with his black hole-powered fusion cannon) he would be wary of seemingly innocuous robots.

Thing about evil is that it may seem all powerful. It may seem invincible. But in the end it's pathetic and cowers before the purity of goodness and order. Sounds cliched, but because it's true.

 

I was actually thinking about a subject like this the other day (though I didn't have his Cybertron toy in mind). As a being who exists between multiverses, I would think his size and body don't really matter at all. Him and Primus have fought on the astral plane before taking their planetoid form, which suggests that their 'spirit' is where their power actually lies.

Now, take that idea, and compound it with the Transformers movie, where Unicron's size was inconsistent. In real life, this was simply due to animators not bothering to keep in scale, but let's look at it from an in-fiction perspective. Unicron's planet mode is shown to be large enough to consume Lithone, and when he transforms within range of Cybertron, he still looks massive. But during the battle on Cybertron, he's seen standing on the surface of the planet (see this for reference). Looking at this from an in-fiction perspective, it would seem Unicron, much like Soundwave or Megatron, can mass shift.

But unlike with those 2, Unicron's mass-shifting seems more indicative of what he really is. Those 2 mass shift for the purpose of selling the toys; you want to portray the idea of them as household objects, despite being giant robots. But Unicron is a giant planet, and his purpose is to be large and intimidating, yet he shrinks when facing the soldies of his nemesis? It seems purposeless, but to me, it suggests that his physical body is just some elaborate illusion. Which would also 'explain' how the Matrix can destroy it so easily; because it doesn't exist in the first place.

His body is all just a big MacGuffin designed to further his goals in a given dimension. You could even think of the rivalry between him and Primus as a grandiose game of cat and mouse. Primus and Unicron represent the balance of good and evil, life and death. Because they exist in a balance (and exist across all multiverses), they can never be truly destroyed, but their rivalry does affect any individual multiverse in which they meet...

According to the Transtech continuity, they have discovered over 75 million universal streams, and have catalogued over 15 million of those (Bugbite claims the number of total universes is 15 quadrillion). Of the 15 mil they've catalogued, over 22% have been destroyed by Unicron, in his goal to devour the whole universe and create a void. But, we've also seen multiple fictions in which Unicron was soundly defeated, and in fact that was the crux of the said fiction. Unicron's goal of creating a total void can never happen, because the balance of nature will maintain itself, but he -can- wipe out an individual universe. Just as well, Primus' children can remove Unicron from an individual universe, but they can never eliminate him from the entire universe.

So, basically, it's all a game being played by 2 forces that exist outside of the physical universes. Which universe can be saved, which can be destroyed? Unicron places a physical body in each universe to begin the game, and the activation of the Matrix in his vicinity eliminates a body. Failure to activate it loses the game for that universe. Even in the universes his body is destroyed in, his 'essence' is still spread (in the G1 cartoon, the energy from his head brought life to the Technobots. In BW2 and BWN, the Angolmois energy caused Unicron's resurrection in Galvatron's body. In the Botcon fiction, Shokaract became godlike after putting Unicron's essence into the Anti-Matrix), thus enabling him a chance to respawn in that universe. It's all part of the 'rules' to the 'game.' The only reason the Matrix destroys him is because it's a pivotal rule. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 = do not ignore the Matrix's energy, do not continue eating planets.

And, in the real world, this can be used to justify things like "why is his toy smaller than Fort Max?" Well, if the size of his body is inconsistent and unreal, then it can be assumed that he can make his body smaller for the purposes of better interacting with his enemies (or his heralds). This, 16 inch toy, while still dwarfing most Transformers, is still small enough to actually inhabit their world and threaten them personally. While Unicron plays the act of "only caring about consuming, having no other motives," the fact is that this is just part of the illusion he concocts for the game. His -real- motivation is to play the game, to derive pleasure from fooling his opponents, and having a body that can change size works with that.

 

I like this. This is how I've thought of Unicron for while now.

It's sort of how Galactus is portrayed. He himself is niether good nor evil, but how he is viewed depends on the point of view of the beings he interacts with. I mean, if he was trying to eat your planet you'd certainly view him as evil.

I like to think of Unicron as a force of destruction versus Primus' force of creation. Unicron = entropy, Primus = big bang.

I have no problem with him empowering corporeal beings to do his work, or prepare the way for him. It just depends on who he chooses, who would welcome that kind of power. It usually ends up being the "evil" characters, because they want power above all else.

The only problem I have with the Lovecraftian analogy is that his evil gods tend to be of the "blind idiot" variety. Meaning that they need someone to guide and control them otherwise they'll either just destroy eveything ramdomly, or just sit there and do nothing.

I'd like the same rules to apply to Primus as well. Sure he created the TFs, but that doesn't mean he's all flowers and puppies.
Remember the end of the Marvel US TF run? The Primus posessed Xaaron wasn't a nice guy. In fact the TFs came to realise that he really didn't care about them almost at all beyond using them to defeat Unicron!

Remember that an act of creation can be just as violent and devastating as an act of destruction.

 

But see, a big part of the "Lovecraftian deity" angle is that pitiful little beings such as ourselves (or Cybertronians in this case) are so insignificant compared to his vastness, that anything we/they do is meaningless.

If you should decide to wipe out that pesky ant hill in your backyard, you don't send an ant ahead of you to tell all the other ants that you're coming to kill them, you just go out there, turn on the hose and aim.

"Force of Nature" Unicron doesn't need heralds, or messengers, or minions. He just comes out of deep space, eats planets, and then moves on. The microscopic inhabitants of said worlds mean less to him than nothing.

Likewise, the Transformers that inhabit "Cybertron" mean less to Primus than the bacteria that lives in your gut does to you.

There are no "evil" gods in Lovecraft's works. That was the whole point. His deities aren't bound by our limited notions of morality. Their actions and motivations are beyond our understanding.

And the only one that was described as a "blind idiot" was Azathoth.

By the way, where are you getting this whole "they need someone to control them" stuff? That's like the complete opposite of the spirit of his stories.

His whole worldview was basically:

The universe, and the things that inhabit it, are so vast and beyond our pathetic little selves that any attempt to understand them, let alone interact with them will only result in madness and/or death. The underlying theme with all his stories is: We mean nothing to anyone but ourselves, and are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that we could all be wiped out tomorrow and it would have no impact on anything whatsoever. That there are beings who could annihilate our entire race with a swipe of their hand (or whatever kind of appendage they happen to possess, if they have appendages at all) and think no more of it than we would about stepping on a bug.

Lovecraft's "gods" aren't even gods really. They're just beings so vast and transcendent that they might as well be.

 

in my own personal mind I never seen the Deluxe toy as the whole of Unicron. Rather it was just a puppet that he would use to manipulate others should he even want to... I mean when your a god why not have a few body's rather then one per continuity?

 

I interpret the deluxe Unicron as a sort of "larval stage", where he's lost his original body, so he has to build up mass to get back to that size. Remember, he's still got the planet-mode's "mouth" on his chest. I like to think of him shoving stuff(anything: dismembered robots, people, trees, rocks, kittens, etc) into his chest maw and it giving him that much more mass, growing a little bit at a time.