#nano answer

gladly! i haven't drawn the tfa style in a while, at least not full bodies. but! I did my best

closeup

Why do you hate optimus????

eugh this is complicated(and I might start ranting so I apologize in advance.

short answer: he always gets away with making mistakes

long answer:

The more transformers media you watch/read, the more you realize how imperfect he is. Moreover you realize that the narrative will always hold him on a pedestal, that every mistake he makes somehow always turns out to have been a 'good call' even though people get hurt(it sounds a lot like they're trying to justify his actions and force the victims of his power abuse to accept what happened to them because the plot was already laid out for him to be right all along). And while the Japanese may try to point out his flaws, the English dub version of the media always removes them. Or, to be fair, the English TV media in particular does that, and takes out any depth he has in the English comics as well, mangling him in any way possible to make him look like a saint to the audience. Even something as simple as making Optimus a civilian in the G1 cartoon although he was part of the military in the G1 comic, just to make the Decepticons look worse by attacking so-called civilians instead of trained people is rather icky.

More recently, IDW, War for Cybertron(the series) and Tf One have become more transparent with his wrongdoings by allowing the characters to have realistic reactions to his immature actions. But that doesn't stop the fandom from glazing over it because they tend to apply what they learned from other verses to every verse, and every version of him. Who gets the backlash for his actions? Never him in the fandom's eyes. It's the writers' fault. Or in IDW it's Prowl's fault, as if that mech didn't answer to Optimus. Or in WFC it's Elita.. wait no in WFC it appears that Elita is in the wrong for questioning him basically killing the planet. Every character who dares to criticize him is made out to be a monster because the fanon OP dad is the only version that exists to people. And they think that anything else is SG OP. When there are so many verses when he lost himself to anger for barely any reason. Or in which he admitted to enjoying violence himself(cough G2 cough Armada cough IDW).

As for TF One... D-16 was supposedly his friend. Optimus saw that he was hurt by the news and instead of trying to be understanding, he invalidated all his feelings, which only pushed him away. Also let's face it, he had no actual reason to exile the High Guard. They might have been 'a little intense' like Elita pointed it out, but they only had beef with Sentinel. They posed no threat to anyone else.

But the biggest offence is that people get hurt and unless they are human, he doesn't care. Humans are his little pet project which are apparently too innocent to die(or rather too weak to fight back). Cybertronians on the other hand? He would die for them but he wouldn't change his mind even at the cost of peace. Which gets bots killed by the way. Cuz that's what wars are. People dying for no reason because their leaders refuse to yield out of pride. Too ashamed to admit that war isn't a good idea. If he really cared about his people being alive he wouldn't have started or continued a war.

Since there haven't been many wars around for a while, or none affecting whichever country we may live in in particular, we have forgotten how painful wars really are. And we forget that, although this is fiction, stories also have a didactic function which is worth taking seriously. We are supposed to learn from mistakes instead of ignoring them or justifying them. Optimus' existence should make you question everything you think you know about conflict but it usually doesn't.

Oh and he's a hypocrite. Fighting for peace is the biggest US military propaganda bs I've heard and people buy it to this day. It's embarrassing really.

Note: The first media that got me hating him was Cybertron. Why? Cuz he literally acted like he knew better and disrespected other bots' cultures because he couldn't be bothered. Because when his soldiers tried to respect those cultures at the expense of disobeying orders he got mad at them and treated them poorly. Because once he realized that was the right approach, which always took him several episodes by the way, he never apologized for the way he acted.

This is IDW Star Saber. In his verse brainmasters are rather.. well anybot that is to control another body, like titanmaster and headmaster they are thought to be wiped out. If he had been one, chance is he'd have been killed. But we know some have survived so who is to say.

For my AU however, I'd rather see him as a load bearer like Minimus (i.e. wearing an armour) because it fits with Tyrest's brand. Nonetheless, he won't be taking it down any time soon (around other bots I mean) because he knows Overlord would do something unsavoury with that piece of information.

BUT

this would be him underneath

Bonus:

tiny nightmares

:v eyy. I remember you. The Superion lover. Here you go

Ginrai is presumably DEAD........ Not particularly fond of bots who share OP's face except Primal. And the human is also DEAD! Because he's human and that's what humans are best at.

Deathsaurus however...