For the longest time, that pesky good/evil dichotomy that is a fundamental underpinning of the Transformers universe bothered me, persistently gnawing away at the back of my brain. Perhaps it's something that bothers many a Transformers fan, especially those who, like me, are drawn to the Decepticons. It was something that profoundly disturbed me for quite a while. Not the dichotomy itself, mind you, but the fact that I was favoring the characters who were supposed to be evil incarnate. The issue of the Decepticons' evilness is one that doggedly plagued me for years. Until, that is, I sat down to actually think about it in a methodical fashion.

But let me "set the stage" a bit first, as it were...Quite a long while ago (at least 10 years ago), I was working on a Transformers fanfic. In this fanfic was a small but important little scene involving two characters, one Autobot and one Decepticon, who eventually wind up debating, among other things, the natures of their respective causes. As a result, the Transformers in general and in particular the nature of "good" and "evil" were on my mind and continued to be on my mind, simmering away for quite some time. I often found myself thinking about those two characters, thinking about who was "good" and who was "evil" and, more importantly, why one was labeled "good" and one was labeled "evil."

Because it bothered me, you see, that I didn't know the answer to one seemingly simple question: What is evil? As strange as it may seem, I found that my mind of its own accord kept pondering the nature of evil, not only in the sense of how it applies to the fictional world of the Transformers, but also in the sense of how it applies to life in the very real world in which we live. The issue would not leave me alone. So one night I decided to set aside a chunk of time to just concentrate on the issue, resolving to try to settle it, one way or another, once and for all.

The conclusion that I eventually reached that night was...surprising. To me, at least...

According to the opening voice-over in the pilot trilogy of the cartoon series, the Decepticons are not only evil; they're "eeeeevil." (I love the way that the narrator drags out that "e" sound, as if for emphasis...) And I must admit that, in all honesty, I often felt a bit...guilty?...for favoring the characters that are supposed to be "evil." And I had, of course, always taken it for granted that they were evil. For one thing, it said so right on the box, but more importantly because that's what I was told. Like many people, I tend to believe what I hear if it makes a bit of sense and if I don't really think about it too much.

And calling the Decepticons evil certainly made sense in some fundamental ways. After all, the 'Cons are a bunch of nasty folks who do nasty things to the humans who inhabit the Earth of the Transformers universe. The 'Cons want to kill the nice Autobots who seek to protect the humans and every other hapless species upon which the Decepticons prey. The 'Cons want to conquer every planet they can get their paws on and utilize the resources they harvest from those planets for their own evil purposes. And they want to enslave every sentient species they can find. So of course that makes them evil!

Or does it??

I'm really not so sure anymore.

I know, I can almost hear everyone in TransFandom yelling, "Say what?!!" How can I even think that a bunch of giant robots who get their kicks by stealing from, killing, and/or enslaving other sentient beings could be anything less than pure evil? And I'll admit that it's a good question! And I'm not sure that I have the answer. I can only relay what I thought about on that odd night long ago. And I can only reflect upon the fact that my opinion has not wavered in the 10 or 15 years that have gone by since that night. In fact, recent world events have strengthened my convictions...

But enough blather. It's time now to gather 'round and gawk in horror while Nightwind waxes philosophical. And historical. At the same time. I know it's scary, but bear with me here...

First, a bit of review. The Decepticons came to Earth and promptly started to drain its energy resources for their own uses. This made the natives--the humans--very upset and the Autobots none too happy. Fine. But does that make the Decepticons evil, simply because harvesting Earth's natural resources and killing and/or terrorizing humans and Autobots alike in the process upsets the population of Earth?

Let's face it, as far as the Decepticons are concerned, humans are nothing. I'm sure they don't give a tinker's dam about what the humans think of their cause. To them, humans are worthy of slightly less concern than humans have for cockroaches--which humans gleefully stomp on, fumigate, or otherwise exterminate. Humans are completely inferior beings who must be, in the Decepticons' eyes, not worthy of the marvelous, bountiful energy reserves that they're sitting on, and that the Decepticons desperately need. So the Decepticons try to wrest that bounty from the lowly humans whenever they can and by whatever means necessary, even if it means killing every last human or even destroying the whole planet itself.

So is that what makes the Decepticons evil, then? Because they're a menace to the well being of human civilization on Earth (or to the civilization of any planet or civilization that they might target)? My first reaction was something along the lines of, "Heck, yeah!" But...before you repeat my ever-so-eloquent pronouncement, ponder something for a moment, as I did. Let's look into that nasty and unforgiving mirror called history for a moment, shall we?

It's the early 1500s AD. Some guy with the Latinized name of Columbus has accidentally stumbled upon the Americas, the "New World." Spanish explorers who follow in his footsteps to this New World discover that--Glory be!--it has lots of gold and silver and precious gems and stuff in it, stuff that is precious to Europeans, stuff that will eventually transform Spain--a relatively impoverished and obscure kingdom in the medieval world--into an "overnight" world economic power.

But what about those people who were already in the New World, who were quite happily sitting upon that heap of riches--the Aztecs and the Incas? Did their lives and their "puny" little civilizations really matter to the Spanish conquistadors? Heck, no! To them, the natives were just inferior pagan savages, savages who had no idea what they had, who even practiced human sacrifice, of all things. Besides, the Spanish had guns, cannons, and body armor. The natives had far more primitive weapons, and they ran around half-naked, to boot. What possible resistance, the Spanish had to wonder, could the natives offer?

So these Spanish conquistadors, with their metal armor and their advanced weapons, sailed on over to the New World in greedy anticipation. And when they got there, they violently and brutally destroyed civilization as the native peoples of the New World knew it. They took all of their riches, and all of their land, and everything else of value that Central and South America had to offer for themselves. And they--just like the Decepticons!--never looked back.

And the conquistadors certainly weren't the only ruthless, conquering humans in history! A few more examples of distinctly Decepticon-like human behavior throughout history, though this is by no means an exhaustive list:

In ancient times, Alexander the Great ruthlessly conquered and shamelessly plundered everything between the ancient Mediterranean civilizations of Greece and Egypt in the west and India in the east--basically the whole of the known world at the time. And the Roman Republic/Empire conquered almost the whole of Europe and the Middle East, forcing the cultures they conquered to adopt the Roman way of life--or die.

European settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries essentially destroyed the cultures of the native peoples of two continents (Australia and Africa) and one sub-continent (India), while they attempted to "civilize" people who were already civilized. They even took to enslaving African natives, turning enslavement into a profitable business. That's something that probably would have warmed Megatron's heart, had he been around at the time.

American settlers of the West in the late 19th century literally forced the Native Americans off of their ancestral lands, in many cases starving them out by deliberately destroying their main food supply--the buffalo. That's sneaky underhandedness worthy of Starscream.

More recently, we have the Holocaust in Hitler's Germany. In the 1950s, the Chinese military invaded Tibet, attempting to destroy an ancient and supremely peaceful culture. Still more recently--today, in fact!--we have the "ethnic cleansings" (Such a polite phrase for the politically correct 1990s!) in Iraq and in what used to be Yugoslavia.

The list is virtually endless. Almost no human culture, ancient or modern, is untouched by the stain of imperialism, of wanting and taking by force what others have, of--let's face it--genocide. And for what? For many reasons, really. For power. For land. For material wealth. For kicks. For philosophy, religious doctrine, and sociopolitical ideology. For resources. Sound familiar? Humans have always killed and oppressed each other for the same things for which the Decepticons, in the Transformers universe, seek to kill and oppress the humans and everyone else.

So...Were (and are) all of these conquerors and settlers and tyrants "evil" then, I asked of myself? And are the Decepticons "evil" because they're trying to do to the humans (and everyone else) the same things humans have always done to each other, just on a larger scale?

Again, I don't know the answers to these questions, but I thought about them for quite a long time, trying with difficulty to be impartial. Right or wrong, this was my conclusion: Whether or not the conquerors (or the Decepticons) would be considered evil heavily depended, I think, upon one's viewpoint, depended upon which set of eyes was beholding the carnage. In short, viewpoint is everything, I think.

If I was an Aztec-on-the-street at the time of the conquistadors, for example, and Cortez was killing everyone that I knew and loved, then I would probably say of the conquistadors, "Heck, yeah, they're the most evil things ever to come down the pike!" But if I was a member of another native group, say one that was hostile to or had itself been conquered by the Aztec Empire, I'd probably say, "Heck, no, they're the best things since the wheel!" Or if I were a Martian--if there were Martians--I'd probably say, "Who the flarg cares?" And if I were a conquistador...? Well, I'd have to say that I and my army were doing what we had to do in order to ensure the survival, expansion, and economic prosperity of our people.

It's all a matter of point-of-view, you see. If the definition of evil is determined by an individual or group's opinion about an act or set of acts, can anything (or anyone) be truly, universally evil to every sentient creature, or even just to every human? Again, I don't know for sure! I don't know that anyone can know for sure. But I do know that what some see as the evillest of evils, others will simply not care about, and still others will see as a necessity vital to survival.

Certainly there are bad things and bad individuals in the world. There are things that are morally reprehensible to us. There are things that by common societal consent are against the law. I'm not denying that at all. I'm not saying that everything is justifiable, though it may seem like I am... What I'm saying--or trying to say, at any rate--is that the definition of evil for me or for you is not necessarily the definition of evil for everyone or anyone else in the universe. Therefore, I think that it's unfair for one small group (ie humans) to blithely label the whole of another small group (ie the Decepticons) as strictly evil. Or strictly anything, for that matter. Life is rarely so black and white, I've found. There are all those pesky shades of gray to consider.

Ultimately, I think that evil is not an absolute. It's an abstract. I don't think that it's something that can have a carved-in-granite definition because, like love or beauty, it can mean so many things to so many people. Above all, I think that the concept of evil (or the concept of "good," for that matter!) is based upon perception, upon personal or cultural perception of a person or an act, and perception is far too biased a thing to apply to the universe in general. I think that all such sweeping judgements are, in the end, too colored by one's personal or cultural point of view to be entirely, universally valid.

So, if you're a Decepticon fan, like me, then I think there's no need to feel guilty about it. Whether or not they are "evil" depends, I think, upon your own perception of them. And your perception is no less valid (but, bear in mind, also no more valid!) than anyone else's perception.

And who knows? A few million years from now in the TF universe, if the Decepticons should win the war, then maybe Megatron and his "evil" Decepticons will go down in Cybertronian history books. Maybe they'll be lauded and romanticized as fearless and brave heroes who boldly conquered and civilized backward worlds. Maybe they'll be Cybertron's version of Cortez and Pizarro, those two Spanish conquistadors of 500 years ago, who--despite the fact that between them they destroyed two advanced cultures--are presented in American schoolbooks as intrepid explorers who brought "civilization" to a desperately primitive world.

It just goes to show that history--and maybe the definition of evil--is written by the winners.