The strangest things can cause a stray thought in my head to become something. Not surprising, waking up and listening to a podcast is one of the potential causes of such things.
Yesterday (as this goes live) I was listening to Literature Devil‘s Morning Nonsense podcast that YouTube makes him archive behind a paywall because the algorithm is a joke. In yesterday’s episode, recurring co-host Stuart “Stu” Jones of The Loading Crew (autoplaying introductory video alert if you click on that), a tabletop RPG commentator and author, and Lit Dev were discussing love in Japan (long story). Stu mentioned that the Japanese language didn’t have a word for love until fairly recently because in ancient Japan loving your spouse was considered a weakness. My guess is this is because your enemies could target her to force you to bend to their will or to get revenge through her if she wasn’t a spy looking for a foothold to get to his master or a personal grudge against him directly, but he didn’t elaborate and it’s not really important to the conversation at hand.
He did say the following, and I’m paraphrasing from memory, so feel free to correct me: Stu noted that it was considered more important to be loyal to your emperor or shogun or lord or something around those lines. This would include if your master was on the evil jerk side, but then he makes the comment along the lines of “so when is it okay to turn on your master?” “when you can win”.
My response in the chat: “That suddenly explains Starscream.”
Much like I’m betting you are right now, both hosts were rather confused by that statement, and I don’t know if they saw my response since I had to leave and can’t afford to send a superchat. So I’m going to explain that statement to them…and to you. Note that as I worked on this article I ended up moving away from a direct connection to Stu’s history lesson, because sometimes a small thought just gets the ball rolling, and this is one steep hill. Decided to keep the article title because that’s how this got started. Pretty sure somewhere in there I explain my statement, though. Happy to clarify anything if I didn’t.
click for full size 1980s nostalgia in another tab
Above is Starscream’s original G1 tech spec, via Botch The Crab’s archive. Later tech specs would just list his weapons or be more in line with the more familiar cartoon depiction. While all note his desire to replace Megatron, the tech spec notes that Starscream prefers to focus on guile and speed. Except Starscream isn’t shown to be any faster than the other Seeker model jets and more often than not is shown to be lacking in the “guile” department, despite being of high intelligence according to the tech spec. 7 is above average by tech spec calculations but still more than he’s usually shown to have in media compared to various multiversal and timeline namesakes. His Pretender/Legends profiles (Legends was a K-Mart exclusive minus the Pretender shell) bump it up to 9 along with courage…while Starscream in the cartoon was a coward when cornered. The Action Master profile drops the courage to 7 but keeps intelligence at 9. I always wanted to see THIS Starscream and in my mental TFU he actually is, but so far I haven’t locked in anything past the origin of Cybertron.
What is mostly universal to the Starscreams, with his Beast Wars II namesake and two-thirds of the “Unicron Trilogy” (the third being produced by another Japanese animation studio who didn’t know Cybertron/Galaxy Force was supposed to continue from the previous two shows) being the exceptions, is that Starscream wants to be the boss. His loyalty to Megatron is more self-preservation. When your boss has a huge cannon on his arm that dimensionally links to a black hole, is arguably more ruthless than you, and turns into a gun that packs that firepower into a tight blast of destruction so long as the guy firing him is loyal, you better be sure you’re ready to challenge him. Then again, Megatron so much as sneezes (or the Transformer equivalent) and Starscream is all ready to assume command. The Transformers Prime version of Starscream goes all in on the sycophant angle, switching to rage in Robots In Disguise because Megatron decides to retire after dying, having his corpse possessed by Unicron (essentially Cybertronian Satan), and eventually being freed by Autobot actions.
Sometimes you realize how weird this franchise is.
Starscream isn’t a great recruiter.
Most of the time? Starscream wants Megatron’s job, and Megatron knows it. While we usually question why it took Galvatron to finally destroy Starscream (which didn’t work out as planned), it’s Starscream’s motivations I find more interesting. Usually written off as the usual “Decepticons crave power” angle, my mental TFU runs a bit different. Maybe I’ll tell you that story someday, but for now let’s stick with the Starscream we know. There’s an odd moment in one of the comics–I want to say early IDW 1.0 but it’s been a while, where Megatron has been given a thorough thrashing by the Autobots. He’s heavily damaged and Starscream takes the opportunity to…save his leader. Even Optimus Prime asks him why? This should be the moment where Starscream finishes off Megatron like he always wanted (sometimes justified in versions where Megatron constantly berates Starscream every time there’s a puddle on the floor we all know is Ravage’s fault), but instead he claims his commander’s damaged form, vowing to get him all fixed up. Starscream responds that he wouldn’t have earned it. It’s one of my favorite Starscream moments because even the guy who thinks Skeletor is fine as his cartoonishly evil self has limits, and that take on Starscream is fascinating. He’s smart enough to know that if he wants the respect and resolve of his fellow Decepticons in the same way Megatron has, kicking him when he’s so down even Prime Starscream couldn’t do it, though Animated Starscream probably could (and G1 Starscream is the guy who let Megatron go into space and assume everything was fine for his takeover), will wait to challenge him properly and earn command of the Decepticons.
“Fabulous secret powers were reveal…no wait, wrong 80s toyline.”
This may explain why, even beyond the “interdimensional black hole arm cannon”, Starscream hasn’t gone all Assassin’s Creed and poisoned Megatron’s Energon supply or just steps on him in gun mode after null raying him or something. However, the point of this article started with “a samurai might betray his master if he could win”. That’s of course assuming the samurai wasn’t loyal, either because of a conscience or lacking one. Again, that was brought up after “master is an evil SOB and my conscience has limits”. Sure, Starscream seems to always think he can win, but outside of two times in the pilot, Starscream hasn’t really made a ton of efforts outside of that coup attempt in season two with the Combaticons and The Movie, and being suckered by the Triple Changers. Meanwhile, Animated Starscream slapped a bomb on his boss without his knowing and was perfectly happy with being that underhanded. He might be the Starscream that cared the least how he won. G1 Starscream challenged Megatron openly twice in the “More Than Meets The Eye” pilot miniseries. The first time was out of anger when Megatron berated him and might have shot him in the back if Soundwave hadn’t warned him. The second was an actual attempt, but when Mirage showed up to ruin their latest plan, Starscream’s first response was to blast the Autobot and Megatron’s was to shoot the “traitor”, namely Starscream.
I’m not going to go over the full list, but I can bring this back around to the samurai. If the shogun was evil or if the samurai wanted to take over his stuff and be just as or more evil, he would only do so if he thought he could win. Otherwise he was the loyal soldier until he saw a chance to take over, if I understand Stu’s comments correctly and haven’t extended the concept past the original throwaway history lesson. Starscream was a bit more open in his desire to take over, the Transformers Universe entry on him saying Megatron kept him around because he is “very good at his job”, which also goes against the typical depiction, including in the Marvel comics after Simon Furman took over. One version seemed to have Megatron training Starscream to take over or at least be a better lieutenant. (Might be the same one where Screamer said he had to earn the rank of leader.) I like the idea of his Beast Wars namesake that “treachery keeps the wits sharp” and if Megatron can’t keep Starscream under control he’ll have a harder time dealing with Optimus Prime. We all know the real reason Megatron keeps him around is either nostalgia for the readers or to push the next Starscream figure Hasbro is popping out.
This all started because of a comment that a samurai was loyal unless he thought he could win no matter how much he hated his master. Sometimes the smallest comment can send my brain rolling. Especially when I’m trying to wake up.
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