You know it makes a lot of sense that Starscream has an attention seeking complex when you consider that firstly he came off an assembly line of who knows how many other identical bots, then he fell in with Thundercracker and Skywarp who both have outlier abilities while he doesn’t, and then he ended up in Decepticon High Command where almost everybody else is either an outlier, a Point One Percenter, a triple-changer, or just way bigger and stronger than him.
It’s been implied through a lot of continuities he compensated for this by adding armor and better engines and such. Then getting by on a combination of his wits and new bodies. For as underhanded as he is though he’s usually damn skilled. He’s Megatron’s #2 and is dreaded by many an Autobot even though he has no abilities. Hard not to see why as he’s running around the Nemesis in vehicle mode at high speeds through its corridors Prime or in IDW where he trounced a trained warrior like Chromia because after four million years of war he was just better at combat. Maybe not stronger, but definitely better. And for all that any number of those outliers and such could still outclass him for all his efforts.
Ohhhhh I love all this. This is painful. You develop the skills and you’re good, but you’re still outclassed by others “born” with special abilities. That would burn. Hard.
(I have a headcanon that Starscream does have somewhat of a special ability: the ability to execute an OODA Loop faster than almost anyone else (save maybe Prowl). But his own ego, poorly controlled emotions, and self-sabotaging behaviors undermine him every time).
It makes sense that Starscream is known for lying, scheming and manipulation seeing as those are skills he could hone for which nobody seems to have an unnatural, outlier-level advantage to forever outclass him. Mairghread Scott pointed out at one point that he favours manipulation as a tactic because he usually couldn’t match his opponents in terms of things like physical strength.
I think that Starscream is fixated on being lauded as remarkable because all throughout his life, starting from being one identical bot of many, he has felt unexceptional and expendable, and has had to put a lot effort into standing out. This seems particularly likely given the fact that, in the same issue in which Starscream is revealed to be from a mass produced batch, Vigilem used a lot of insults attacking his uniqueness in an effort to break him down in his mind:
What is this, soul-crushing hour on the Transformers tumblr?
…I didn’t say to stop.
Cade. 27. He/they. Transformers and mecha exclusive blog. Currently focusing on IDW and my Armada AU featuring Unicron. I post gender AUs and I post romance, but not as often as I used to.