I got to thinking about this again because of the concurrent Transformers thread.
Keeping in mind that I was born in 1956, and therefore was probably not in the target demographic for the Transformers, nevertheless I am so woefully ignorant about them that for many years I believed that there were two cartoon shows about robots who spent part of their time as transportation: one being Transformers, and the other being Autobots.
It wasn’t until 2008 when I saw the Shia LeBoeuf/Megan Fox film that I learned that Autobots are only one kind of Transformer, the other kind, of course being Decepticons (and it’s entirely possible that I thought there were three TV shows, about three distinct sets of extraterrestrial visitors, but let’s not pursue that further).
Given that the Decepticons had a fluent command of the English language, why in the name of all that is holy didn’t it occur to them to call themselves something less menacing than “Decepticons?” Like “Friendlybots,” or “Pal-borgs” or something?
Also, in The Lion King, do you suppose Mufasa and Scar’s parents were deliberately trying to make things more difficult for the cadet branch of the family when they named their second-born? What assholes. I mean, if they were trying. If it just didn’t occur to them, then “what clueless assholes.”
It’s never said that Scar is his real name in the film. In fact there’s a story in the tie-in book The Lion King: Six New Adventures that says that Scar’s real name is Taka and that he took Scar as a name after he got his scar from a buffalo.
It didn’t really sweat the name Decepticon from the afternoon cartoon – I was accustomed to a lack of subtlety in childhood cartoons. Given that the franchise started in Japan, I wonder what the original names really meant – with all connotations. I should be able to find that on Wikipedia. The movie could be seen as lamp-shading the lack of subtlety – Megatron (right down to Hugo Weaving channeling Agent Smith in some of his intonation, listen carefully) is frequently openly contemptuous of humanity – we’re too meat-based to be considered intelligent beings. Have you rescued an ant today?
Actually, you weren’t all that far off. In addition to the Transformers, there were the Gobots. Gobots toys were cheaper, perhaps because they didn’t transform quite as completely (fewer moving parts).
Clueless parents everywhere crushed the hopes and dreams of a generation of children opening Christmas presents to find the dorky stupid fake Transformers instead of Optimus Prime and his ilk. (Even though Gobots actually predated Transformers on the American toy market.)
Did the decepticons ever name themselves? Or was it something the autobots gave to them?
Apparently they all came from a planet called Cybertron once upon a time. So why aren’t they all just “Cybertronians”? Autobots and Decepticons I guess are their “gang” names.
Great, so I spent my childhood watching cartoon gang warfare.
That explains a lot, actually.
Don’t worry about it. I grew up in the target demographic and am still a little confused about the difference between Transformers and Voltron(another show about robot cars that turn into robots). And apparently there were also “Gobots”, another robot-vehicle transforming machine that was bought out by the Transformers people and made into a separate-but-related cartoon. It really is a case of the marketing people coming up with a toy first and foremost and then making up a cartoon as an afterthought.
The names that always get me are the ones from Harry Potter. Seriously, you name your kid “Remus Lupin,” don’t get surprised when he turns out to like wolves a lot.
To my recollection, the original decepticons in the series are fairly explicitly militaristic in their “transformed” versions. And IIRC one of them has a stealth function. (The one that transforms into a cassette player, and who has associated cassette transformers.) So my complete fanwank is that the whoever created the transformers created the decepticons as a clandestine military group, and called them “decepticons” because their function did in fact involve deception.*
After whatever happened to make the transformers their own thing instead of someone else’s workforce, the decepticons kept the name because it’s what they’d always called themselves. Why not change their name? They’re into power, and to change their name would be a sign of weakness. Instead they keep it, saying effectively, “Yeah, we’re the decepticons, we even own it in our very name, and what do you think you’re going to do about it?”
*Hey yeah, and maybe the uninspiring name “autobots” was because they were designed to “automate” various functions in the society that produced them. That’s the ticket.
They got named “Decepticons” for the same reason that Magneto decided “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” was a good name, or the DC Universe decided on “Injustice League” and “Secret Society of Super Villains.” You’d think some of these villains would be smart enough to recognize bad PR, and not name their team “Neo-Hitler and the Babykillers.”
Not so. Although the toys are Japanese in origin, the franchise is American. Hasbro bought the rights to some Japanese toys, and then had writers from Marvel Comics come up with names and backstory for them. When the Transformers concept became hugely successful in America and Europe, Hasbro sold the idea back to the Japanese companies they’d licensed the toys from in the first place, and it became even more hugely successful there.
People were sending my kids Transformers before they were born. They loved those things, they baffled me. Toy cars don’t turn into robots, you play with them until you get bored, the you use them for targets, set them on fire, or throw them in the quarry. Sheesh, kids today.
As for the names of the bad guys, it’s standard for the comic/cartoon world. And it’s in the rules too. All of children’s animation at the time was conducted under codes that would specify that evil villains are clearly identifiable as such. One reason for using robots as cartoon characters was that the level of violence against robots could be increased in ways that wouldn’t be allowed with human characters.
I always thought King Arthur got what he deserved. Not for sleeping with his sister; that was just a mistake. It was naming his son Mordred. Did he want his son to be evil?
In the IDW universe, the name Decepticon was coined in their early days as a rebel faction - their motto was ‘You are being deceived’…specifically by the corrupt Senate which imposed an alt-mode based caste system, and the Autobots, who were a law enforcement organization, thus enforcers for the Senate (and several of the Primes were utterly insane). (The Decepticons have the same origin in the current Aligned continuity, but the name doesn’t.)
In all other continuities…they’re not really concerned with not looking sinister. They are terrorists and tyrants. (Even by the time the actual war broke out in IDW, they were already gone down the wrong path.) They want to be feared. Even in the continuities where there are sympathetic Decepticons/Destrons (IDW, Japanese G1), that’s the faction’s major MO, even if the Breastforce or Glit are generally pleasant, and fighting for generally good reasons.
I always thought the pun names on Astro Boy were ridiculous. Turns out some of the original Japanese names were just as bad. “Mr. Mustache? Hamenegg? Lamp?”
Yes. Breastforce. They’re a Destron (the Japanese name for the Decepticons) subgroup from Victory, one of the Japanese series. The name is sometimes transliterated as Brestforce, but that doesn’t stop the snickering.
They’re so-named because their gimmick is breastplates that turn into animal companions. (And weapons. Very versatile those Breast Animals.)
In the manga, the Breastforce and Dinoforce were eventually revealed as fighting to defend Decepticon civilians, including their families.
