The comics went with they are the creations of Primus, Unicron's ancient enemy, while the cartoon went with creations of the Quintessons and they rebelled against their creators while Unicron was the creation of Primacron.... (which didn't explain why he was vulnerable to the Matrix)

Is there a way you can possibly connect both origins together? I know some have tried.

 

No.

The fact is, nobody likes Primacon and "Call of the Primatives" basically gets straight up ignored for this reason.

 

A friend of mine actually came with an explanation that Unicron was repaired by Primacron, but because the friggin' fishmonkey is so senile, he takes credit for his creation.  

 

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I like the Primacron origins, because as Grimlock remarks, he laughs at how a being so small could cause so much trouble!

Furthermore, Unicron is to Primacron as Cybertronians are to the Quintessons, and I prefer the Quintesson origins to Primus.

That said, I don't find them contradictory under the right execution. It could be that the Quintessons were the ones who built the physical bodies of the Transformers to make a race of mechanical slaves, but that Primus made them living beings. In the cartoon, the Vector Sigma origins are revealed before the Quintesson origins. The former is what gave the Transformers their programming, and the latter are who built the Autobots and Decepticons. Perhaps Primus' "divinity" can be just extremely advanced technology that's indistinguishable from magic and the supernatural...and consequently not that different from Vector Sigma in some regards.

My only thing about Primacron is logistics. He must have had a lot of workers in the past in addition to the Oracle to build a planet-sized Transformer.

 

I have tried to made this in my fanfiction. They can't connect in my hand. So my answer is no.

I like Primacron idea btw when I saw him in TFG1.

 

It's possible, but every attempt I've seen to combine the two has made the whole thing a convoluted mess. You're probably just better off picking one origin or the other.

 

It's more of my headcanon than something that could plausibly work in-canon, but I consider the Primus origin to be more of a Cybertronian myth as opposed to a factual origin. I consider the Quintesson/alien creator origin the "true" origin, and the Primus origin something that Transformers mistakenly believe. Or maybe they just tell other species that because being built by aliens in a factory isn't terribly flattering. I just find this a more interesting way of interpreting the lore.

And to be fair, I've never read the G1 comics, so I don't know if this would work there. It works beautifully in something like Prime, because the only times we ever hear about Primus are in stories told by the Transformers (and flashbacks narrated by them, which could be unreliable). We never actually see Primus in the present. But even if he is present in the comics, you might be able to find some workaround. I'd be interested to read the comics and try.

 

In Japan, they tie it up pretty well. Primacron's assistant, in the JG1 continuity, is Primus, who, after Unicron rebelled against Primacron, turned into Vector Sigma, named himself Primus, and eventually found his way to Cybertron, where the Quintessons used him to create the Transformers. The explanation for what happens in "Call of the Primitives" is that Primus went back in time and also sent the Primitives back in time.

 

I very much prefer Primus origins, but I could totally see this being a good compromise.

It's like saying Humans are animals, yes. We are really just a cousin-species of chimpanzees... but that thing that many take to separate us from animals (the soul) was granted by a cosmic/supernatural being. Whatever the ephemera that makes us "special," it is sourced in something that is equally (if not mordso) ephemral and special.

It's a slight twist from the various fanon I've heard before, and I like it. If I am forced to abide having Quintessons around (and I am), especially as a part of their origin story, then this really does make it better.

Thank you


Add-on: this also caused me to liken the "Primacron built Unicron" thing to the story of what happened to the Martians in Invader Zim:
'Your race wiped itself out trying to turn your planet into a giant (transforming robot devil)? Why would you do that?'
'Because it's cool...'

 

I can see it being similar to a Cybertronian version of Aule and his Dwarves from Tolkien's lore, where Aule, who was a Valar and a smith, was the one who built the bodies of the Dwarves to have his own followers. They were lifeless, because the Creator Iluvatar had not given them life. When Iluvatar asked Aule about why he was making his own creatures, Iluvatar ended up granting Aule's creations life anyway. So even though Aule built their bodies, he couldn't give them their life force.

Granted, the Quintessons definitely have less noble motives than Aule did, and Aule admitted his mistakes to Iluvatar despite his more noble intentions. So it's not a perfect analogy, but the point is you had one being or group of beings making the physical bodies (Quintessons/Aule) and a more powerful one giving them life (Primus in Transformers/Iluvatar in Tolkien's mythology).

 

Here's how I think the origin of the tf race went in the cartoon:
Primus created the Cybertronian race. He then instilled his essence into the Matrix and Vector Sigma. Eventually the Quintessons invaded and turned them into servants and war machines, as we saw in the G1 cartoon. Because of the Quintesson occupation, the Cybertronians' true origins were lost, and the Quints figured they would maintain more control over their "product" if they claimed to be the Cybertronians' creators. But really all they did was enslave an existing species.

Unicron 's origin is basically as in the comics, regardless of universe. Call of the Primitives never happened - it was just a self-aggrandizing dream Grimlock had one night. The story makes no friggin' sense, so what else could it be but a dream?

In the comics, there's no conflict at all. While the UK comics show the Quints do exist, they're just another hostile race.

 

Officially, no. The closest I think we're going to get is potentially in the Legends manga but that's its own bubble continuity.

 

It never EXPLICITLY stated that they created Vector Sigma.

JPG1 retcons basically said that Primacron is responsible for ALL mechanical life, Quintessons were squids that got upgraded parts, and Primacrons assistant died and became the Oracle/Vector Sigma, and the Quitnessons simply appropriated its power for their product lines.

So ignoring Primacron, and conflating Vector Sigma/Primus/The Matrix into one "entity" with different "vessels", I can see a future story going with the Quintesson origins, explaining why the Transformers have cockpits and stuff even on Cybertron, but they didn't create the 'sparks'. PrimusMatrixSigma, originating who knows where (BEFORE CYBERTRON WAS, I WAS), is discovered and appropriated by the Quitnessons, who are eventually cast off world by their slaves since the spark-of-life would only tolerate subjugation for so long.

Unicron can fit in as Primus' opposite, a Quintesson spite weapon, or perhaps both. Quints are bitter, Unicron offers them a "deal" in order to gain a physical body, vengeance for all involved, etc.

My 2 cents.

 

Of course you could retcon all of these conflicting backstories together in your own head cannon or fan art if you really wanted to but I think there is something about this being an unresolved mystery that has enhanced the enduring appeal of this franchise.

For a time Idw comics harnessed this aspect of the transformers backstory in its comics and introduced elements in its own stories where the transformers memories was not completely reliable as they could be sinisterly altered with memo-surgery (they referred to this in the story as shadowplay) or their memories deteriorated over millions of years and played tricks on them (they called this concept information creep) so the true backstory and origins of the transformers race was not completely established or proven so every different character had their own theory or belief about what their true origins could have been.

They eventually did establish a more proven origin story in idw comics, or did they? Could rungs memory be reliable? Or could he have been driven mad over time into becoming an ego driven liar who has reimagined himself as primus all because he has an early unrecognised outlier ability? Could all five of the transformers who believed themselves to be the guiding hand have been outliers who, centuries ago in the institute, had false memories implanted in them of being the guiding hand for reasons that are too sinister and mysterious to explain here.

 

My theory is something along these lines: Primus and Unicron become enemies in the astral plane(I think?) and after battling wind up trapped inside planets. many (probably millions of) years later the Quintessons randomly decide to create a planet scale robot production facility on what would eventually become Cybertron(They probably have dozens or hundreds of planets for mass manufacturing). The planet is cyberformed to the point were it and Primus are almost entirely mechanical and Primus discovers he can bleed tiny fragments of his lifeforce into the automaton like robots since they are basically a part of him giving them free will conciousness and a desire for freedom which ultimately leads to the uprising that drives the quintessons from Cybertron. Over the many millions of years the 13 primes come into existence(I'm not going into how the matrix came to be because that's a discussion in and of itself) ruled for a peroid and eventually passed into legend either dying in wars leaving to explore space or maybe even dying of old age if such a thing is even possible for transformers(again discussion for another thread) with only Aplha Trion being left who eventually appoints/recreates Orion Pax into Optimus Prime shortly after Megatron's creation and quest for power begins the rest we all know.

Unicron similarly finds himself trapped inside a body of rock imobile and impotent, all he can do is roar internally in rage. At some point Primacron happens upon Unicrons planet prison and discovers an immense power source hidden inside the planets core and realises it has the potential to be used as a powerful superweapon. The planet is stripped down and rebuilt. At some point during the process Unicron makes contact with Primacron either directly or by taking over or corrupting the A.I systems that would've been needed to control this thing and influenced Primacron to design Unicron's body more to his liking (I figure Primacrons vision was more of a war world type thing huge metal planet that can move by itself powered by massive rockets and about a trillion billion guns and rockets of various sizes). in fact I'm honestly kind of wondering if Primacron deliberately gave Unicron a robot mode in the first place or if Unicron somehow snuck it into the designs without him noticing or realising. Main reason I say this is designing a planet sized warship or doomsday weapon capable of devouring planets seems more for lack of a better term reasonable than designing a robot that could literally stomp up and down on your planet like a beach ball until it's crushed to pieces. The former could be piloted like a traditional starship but the latter would need vast A.I systems which if we ignore Unicron's external influence for a moment were no doubt over designed and able to take on a life and sentience of their own. I figure that because Unicron uses allot of power to maneuver his planet form around he needs additional fuel so hence the whole planet munching thing.

And as we know the matrix is poisonous to Unicron because its part of Primus similar to how dark energon being a part Unicron is corrosive to Primus and his spark. Ok I'm done for now.

 

I had a headcanon once that Primus had created the Quintessons a million years before he created the Transformers. They got infected by Unicron's evil so Primus evicted them from Cybertron and started over with the Transformers. After Primus shut himself down (to prevent Unicron from infecting the Transformers too) the Quintessons invaded and enslaved the Transformers for a million years. Most of the original Transformers from before the invasion were killed off, and the majority of the ones we know were Quintesson creations. Alpha Trion was one of the few of Primus's originals to survive. I used that to explain why Alpha Trion appears to age over time, he's technically a different species.

 

I like both the Primus and Quintesson origins so I generally go with a mix of those two for the origins of the Transformers.

Unicron as a creation of Primacron is something that has been rightfully left by the wayside.

 

I remember a fan theory-that was part of an unused script and mentioned in I think the first Marvel MTMTE profile books-that the Quintessons were Heralds of Unicron that hunted down those who escaped his wrath. And that they were sent by him to enslave the Transformers and prevent them from stopping him.

Personally, I vastly prefer keeping the Primus/Quintesson origins separate nowadays.

 

I tried this in a fanfic years ago.

After primus and unicron battled in the astral plane, unicron's spirit found primacron and seduced him into building a body for him. The spirit of primus found out about this and 'guided' the assistant to build a self destruct device for the body (in this version, neither got stuck in an asteroid after the astral plane fight), and embued it with part of his own essence to destroy Unicron's spirit when it was triggered. Neither primacron or the assistant were aware of primus and Unicron's influence. The self destruct trigger would eventually become the matrix of leadership.

Primus set up Cybertron with himself as vector sigma and created transformers. The quints arrived early on and annexed the planet, learning how to make more transformers and started their production lines, claiming themselves as the creators.

When unicron destroyed primacron's lab, the matrix was lost in space, gradually drawn towards cybertron because of the shared primus connection. Once it arrived, it was found by autobots before the quint rebellion. And it's that essence of primus that gives it the mystical properties.