#dastard

A bunch of random men

(I also randomly transify characters don't mind me)

Dear Aegis Agent,

I have indeed. Allow me to continue my tale of the ultimate Titan Masters, and I promise your curiosity will be satisfied.

While Arcee was tracking down the Titan Master hidden on Caminus, a separate mission was being carried out on the colony world of Biosfera—known to the locals as Eukaris. Grotusque, Twinferno and Repugnus journeyed there to find another Titan Master, this one believed to grant incredible fireblast. The Monsterbots were not Optimus Prime’s first choice for the mission, as he worried their bellicose disposition would create conflict with the native population—but with the so-called jungle planet having no roads to speak of, only Autobots with bestial alt-modes would be able to handle the terrain.

As Biosfera had been largely insulated from the Autobot-Decepticon conflict, the Monsterbots expected its inhabitants to be pushovers, who would do little to impede or expedite their search one way or the other. Instead, they arrived to find the planet on the brink of all-out war between the four major tribes. Something was terribly wrong: the kinds of weapons being amassed were beyond even those used by Cybertronians in their raw destructive potential. Still, the Monsterbots decided the brewing tensions were none of their business, and decided to focus on searching for the Titan Master.

It was at that point that I was forced to intervene. I materialized in their midst, which proved to be something of a miscalculation: they were taken by surprise, and turned on me immediately. Naturally, I am no lightweight, but I must admit the three of them had me on the ropes. I forced a time-out, separating us from physical spacetime, to allow us to communicate without violence. Once they were prepared to listen, I told them what I had seen.

In the future, Biosfera is an irradiated wasteland. Algorithmic engines crawl over the ash, feeding carbonized trees into immense furnaces, liquid metal pouring from foundries to coat the planet, constructing some kind of superstructure… to uncertain ends. The few survivors of the global devastation have shed the last vestiges of their organic biology, becoming purely robotic lifeforms in order to weather the potent radiation.

The Monsterbots refused to believe me without proof, and so I removed my head, Safeguard. Repugnus briefly swapped Dastard for Safeguard, and saw in his memory banks what we had witnessed of that apocalyptic future. Begrudgingly, the Monsterbots agreed to help us, and we separated, each to visit one of the four tribes.

High in the mountain eyries of the Cloud Walkers, Grotusque and Fengul discovered that they had forged a partnership with the Decepticon Fangry, who had given them a powerful attack jet. At the same time, Twinferno and Daburu found the Scale Walkers to be strategizing with Krok, who had armed them with an unstoppable armored tank. So too were the Wave Walkers consulting with the crab-like Squeezeplay, and as I discovered, the Fur Walkers had welcomed amongst them the ferocious Horri-Bull. It was obvious to us that the Decepticons had completely infiltrated the planet’s tribes, and were deliberately stirring conflict between them. Unfortunately, stirring conflict was the Monsterbots’ specialty, and they each started fights with the Decepticons on sight, leading to them quickly being ousted from the other tribes. Safeguard and I had the most luck, managing to convince the chieftain of the Fur Walkers that they were better off without the “guidance” of Cybertronians—though unfortunately, this included ourselves.

We regrouped, and the Monsterbots decided to resume their search for the mythical Titan Master hidden on the planet. I hoped that in the course of our hunt, we would stumble across a centralized base of operations for the Decepticons, which might produce the evidence we needed to sway the tribes. As it turned out, we were being followed: one of Twinferno’s heads spotted a bird flying overhead, and recognised it not as one of the Cloud Walkers, but as the Decepticon Wingspan. Twinferno almost flew up to take out the snooping Decepticon, but I was able to convince him to hold. We waited until nightfall, and when Wingspan left to make his report, we quietly followed.

He led us to a foreboding tower of steel, a weapons factory hidden in a barren valley. Inside, ensconced within the topmost chamber, we found the true mastermind behind the hostilities: the lost Titan Master, Scorponok. Once, he had commanded one of the Titans of myth, but he had been usurped by the alien Lord Zarak. Driven to madness by this defeat, he had begun traveling the galaxy in search of new evolutionary pathways. On this remote and primeval colony, he found them: and now, his machinations had brought him to the precipice of his return to power. In the fallout, once the biomechanical natives evolved into a purely mechanical existence to survive the nuclear winter that followed, he would use a planetwide relay to reach out and upload his consciousness simultaneously into thousands of bodies—becoming a gestalt lifeform on a scale that would surpass even the Titans.

Well, we certainly weren’t going to stand around and wait for that to happen! The Monsterbots made short work of Wingspan and Horri-Bull, but Scorponok was far from finished: he recalled the jet and the tank from the tribes, and they joined together to form the almighty Overlord. One Titan Master formed his head, while another plugged into his chest, right alongside Scorponok himself—giving the combined giant three times the power.

As it happened, deploying Overlord turned out to be a miscalculation: unbeknownst to us all, skillful trackers from the four tribes had followed us to Scorponok’s lair, and when they saw that the Cloud Walkers’ and Scale Walkers’ new weapons were in fact one and the same, they finally had proof that they’d been deceived. They raced back to their homes, to urge their leaders to begin peace talks. Unable to take down Overlord, we beat a hasty retreat, and he split into his individual components once more to menace the tribes.

Unfortunately, the nuclear submarine Scorponok had built for the Wave Walkers remained in play—and once he gave the command, it launched its payload, sending a dozen missiles up into the atmosphere. Converting to starship mode, I flew after them, and began an arduous process to disarm the bombs. First, I froze the missiles in time, halting their trajectories but maintaining their velocity relative to the planet’s rotation in space. Then, with a boost of power from Safeguard, I isolated each individual warhead, accelerating time to allow billions of years to pass in what was, from our perspective, mere cycles. During that time, the fissile material experienced many half-lives’ worth of radioactive decay… until finally, the payloads were rendered inert. Although I had saved the planet from nuclear fallout, the missiles still had enough raw explosive power to cause untold destruction—and I was powerless to stop them. The radiation from the warheads needed to go somewhere—and although spread over a short period, it was still a strong enough burst of gamma rays to cause a chain reaction, unleashing an electromagnetic pulse which knocked me offline and sent me plummeting into the ocean.

The rest, I heard after-the-fact, once the Wave Walkers dredged me up and brought me to shore. The Fur Walkers and Scale Walkers united, ambushing Overlord’s tank half, while the Monsterbots waylaid the jet—just long enough for the Cloud Walkers to intercept and destroy the missiles in midair, before they reached their targets.

As for Scorponok, he was able to slip away in the confusion. The Monsterbots were frustrated to have failed their mission, but after seeing the sheer destructive potential of his fireblast, they knew it was for the best that Cybertron would have to do without his power. They resolved that when Scorponok next appeared, they would be ready and waiting to settle the score.

Back on Cybertron, the situation had gone from bad to worse: Powerhouse’s seismic forces disturbed Trypticon from his hibernation, and he awoke very hungry indeed. After consuming several Titan Masters, including Powerhouse, and gaining their abilities, Trypticon lay waste to the Autobot defenses, felling Fortress Maximus. Just in time, Iron Apex arrived from Caminus, merging with Magnus Prime to form Omega Prime, who was able to drive the beast back to the Praetorus Wharf.

What better way to get started than with Fire Emblem's favourite word, dastard, which appears in just about every game, be it officially or unofficially translated? This shot in particular is from the new (fan)translation of FE4, but it was present in the older one as well. Fans often seem to assume it's just a butchering of "bastard" (for ratings reasons) without realising that it is a real word with a real meaning.

( "Implore" is also a possible candidate, and perhaps also "adore" and "undercut" as well if you want to be thorough. )

An Emblematic starting word, indeed!

Fire Emblem's relationship with pejoratives is an interesting one, and while dastard is definitively a distinct word from bastard, I do think there is a relationship between the use of old-timey insults and the need or desire to keep things "Nintendo-friendly." It was rare to see even a damn in the first localized games, and part of the way localization circumvented this was to have the characters use epithets that sounded... well, medieval. Hence your craven!s and your cur!s and, if you're feeling extra spicy, your craven cur!s. I'm actually hard-pressed to recall a usage of dastard in at least FE7 (which was fond of blackheart in similar circumstances); maybe the ESRB thought it was a little too close to the B-word for comfort.

Of course, as the series settled comfortably into a consistent "T for Teen" rating, sensibilities surrounding language loosened up. Awakening was the first game to see characters swearing on a fairly regular basis— up to and including bastard with a B! Yet we still see dastard often enough in modern FE games, which should put to rest the notion that it's merely a euphemism for a more offensive term. They're used differently, and that boils down to both meaning and tone.

(This is where I was initially going to expound on bastard, but just as that section of the post was getting to be too long, an angel of mercy sent an Ask for that very word. So stay tuned, all you beautiful bastards.)

Kidnapping is, of course, Dastardry 101.

So, what exactly does it mean to be a dastard? Merriam-Webster gives two definitions: 1) “coward,” and 2) “a person who acts treacherously or underhandedly.” 

While people do seem to assume dastard as it appears in FE is a willful typo, I’d wager most of you have actually heard its adjectival form: dastardly! Yes, that’s an adjective, not an adverb, despite the -ly ending— same with words like friendly and unsightly.

If the context hasn’t made it clear by now, these words are practically synonymous with villainy. But we’re not just talking any old villain: the key word in the above definitions is underhanded. Dastard carries the sense of cowardice with it because it’s associated with backstabbing, behind-the-scenes scheming, sneak attacks, and just generally dirty tactics. Arguably the most famous “dastard!” in Fire Emblem is directed toward Arvis in Genealogy of the Holy War, and it’s patently well-deserved. And even though Chagall in the asker’s provided screenshot might be projecting juuust a little bit, he actually does well to give us some context clues, as he accuses Eldigan of getting close to his father in order to get one over on Chagall— which, if it were true, would certainly qualify as underhanded. Not as underhanded as murdering your peace-loving king and father, maybe, but who’s to say.

So while modern audiences will sooner associate this word with being a villain than with merely being a coward, it’s important to note that not every villain is a dastard. Your big, strong, honest warlord types— Walhart, for instance— are generally not going to be very dastardly. Neither are your force-of-evil gods and monsters… after all, who needs trickery and deception when you can turn your foes to stone, incinerate them with your breath, or simply eat them? And while yes, dastard and bastard are different words, one commonality you might have noticed is how male-gendered they both are in practice. Nothing whatsoever is stopping a woman from being a dastard, but it’s unlikely she’ll ever be called one. 

As for the other words:

Implore basically means beg, though it implies a little more dignity. Rather than falling to your knees, folding your hands, and crying a lot, you need a more strategic and sophisticated approach when imploring. Eldigan’s completely sincere in his desire to put a stop to Chagall’s warmongering, but he doesn’t lower himself upon asking.

Adore means love, especially in a worshipful or fawning way. While it can still be used in an earnest way, it's just as often tinged with condescension, implying disdain for the adorer, the adoree, or both. I’m not sure when adorable came to be synonymous with cute, but I think there’s an intentional hyperbole in that usage that became lost as it became common. Chagall may likewise be hyperbolizing, intent as he is upon framing Eldigan as… well, a manipulative dastard. Having already learned his true feelings toward his father, what's meant to communicate sympathy for the king to Eldigan rings hollow and ironic to the audience.

Undercut as used here means the same as undermine, which is to weaken or make useless via subtle or covert means. It’s all very underhanded… or shall we say, dastardly. Undercut does have more of an association with direct competition or rivalry, though, which gives the sense that part of this may be personal to Chagall.