In my universe, Starscream is 12.8 million years old, having been constructed cold in the late Golden Age shortly after Sentinel came to power.
Most of the galaxy experiences massive cognitive dissonance when dealing with him.
To most of the Autobots, he is a terrifying, silent demon on the battlefield who strikes without a single word.
In addition, a completely fabricated myth exists in low-level gossip portraying him as a clumsy, dramatic traitor akin to G1. Megatron actively lets that embarrassing rumor spread simply to humiliate him and isolate him further.
The worst tragedy is what happens when Megatron pulls his psychological triggers.
Megatron is a master of psychological manipulation. He doesn't need to hit Starscream to break him, he just needs to hijack his brain chemistry.
Starscream knows objectively that he is brilliant and that Megatron’s insults are lies. But as the trauma bond creeps in, a cold, irrational self-doubt infects his processor. He watches his own confidence erode from the inside out.
To survive that internal friction, his brain defaults to a severe fawn response, triggering a complete personality shift.
During these "episodes," he temporarily becomes an infatuated, entirely subservient servant who thinks twice about absolutely nothing.
He will even welcome physical harm, because pain has been normalized to him as a familiar baseline of safety.
To an outside observer, witnessing this shift looks like he's suffered brain damage, a lobotomy, or some other variety of neurological change.
After these, Starscream often wakes up on a medical berth, covered in physical aches. His true self snaps back online, and he feels a metric ton of disgust and shame.
The worst part for him isn't that Megatron hurt him, it’s the memory that, just hours ago, his own mind betrayed his identity and actively enjoyed being beaten.
He is trapped in a loop where his survival mechanism uses his deepest guilt to make him a willing victim, leaving his true self to clean up the wreckage.