So Tumblr ate my reply to this ask. I was able to save it because I got a "could not process post" warning and I knew the ask would be gone if I refreshed the page, but this does mean Anon won't be notified of my reply. So hopefully they come here often?
Anyway. Calling TF: One Prowl an asshole in the making because he wasn't jumping up and down is the most ludicrous evaluation of a character I have ever seen. And all the more so when you consider that he was jumping up and down.
If you wanted to read anything into him clapping instead of jumping, you could point to the way he moves after the jump and suggest he decided to stop because he lost his balance. Maybe he's a bit shaky because Sentinel has been working the miners too hard, or maybe he just doesn't have good balance in general. Maybe he didn't lose his balance at all and is just shifting his weight a lot because he's excited. Any interpretation makes more sense than "he's not emoting enough, so he's going to be a jerk when he grows up."
I would like to say I'm surprised. But considering the state of Prowl's TF Wiki pages, and the way people reacted to EarthSpark Prowl being hostile to Megatron, and the way people write Prowl in their fics, I am not. I am resigned to the fact that if canon doesn't give them a reason to hate on Prowl, they will find one or invent one.
Would be nice if I could have a conversation about Prowl (no specific continuity) without someone using IDW as evidence of why he'd act a certain way, though.
The primary purpose of a wiki is to archive and share knowledge. I don't expect every page to be free of mistakes, but I do expect the information they contain to be generally accurate and free of biases and unnecessary speculation. Prowl's pages, in particular the G1-based pages, fail this purpose at every turn by pushing one version of the character onto multiple continuities, creating conflict within the text and giving new fans a completely false impression of who Prowl is in most canon. Welcome to my TED talk.
G1 Prowl's main page opens with an image of the character simply captioned "Prick", alongside a brief description that ends with a quote from the first issue of the Marvel comic: "Listening to you, Blue Streak, taxes even the endless patience of Prowl. I have little to say, but my logic center dictates the most advantageous course of action in any situation." This quote is repeated for the section that redirects to his Marvel page. The first instance is tagged with "Prowl begins his long history of prickery", and the second, with "Prowl tells you everything you need to know about him, ever."
This line of dialogue is a witty 80's one-liner meant to establish the character as quickly as possible. It is completely without nuance and might not even carry over into how he's actually written. I haven't read the Marvel comics, so I don't know his character. But I did skim his main Marvel page, and apparently at one point, he is trying to maintain a tenuous peace between the Autobots and Decepticons pretty much without help. Things go sour and the Decepticons betray them, but Prowl's "crime" in this instance is naivety, not prickery.
And yet, because he is in conflict with Grimlock (who is a far bigger asshole than Marvel Prowl could ever be based on skimming his page), these few issues are used for multiple prick jokes. Including a quote from Grimlock, accusing Prowl of wanting to be leader, being tagged with, "Grimlock may or may not quite have the measure of Prowl". Nothing in Prowl's Marvel page even remotely hints at that level of ambition, so what is this tag doing here? A better tag would be "Grimlock projects onto Prowl", because at least that would be based on Grimlock's canon behavior of wanting to take control from a leader he doesn't agree with.
Returning to G1 Prowl's main page, we next see the redirect link for his cartoon page, along with a screenshot captioned, "Prowl's quest to become the power behind the throne started early". Heading to that page, we are met with a character description that simply reads, "Prowl. The prick on TV who little children in the 1980s learned manners from." This. Tells. Us. Nothing. About the character. Worse than nothing, because what it does tell us is false.
G1 cartoon Prowl never comes into conflict with anyone on his own side. The closest he comes is telling (an admittedly upset) Optimus to let Ratchet look at him and getting snapped at, advocating for a retreat and being told by Optimus that they need to fight it out, telling Optimus he's running into a trap and being ignored, and getting a rather rude, "So much for your security," from Smokescreen. Simple disagreements and a few instances of being the one on the receiving end of jerk behavior.
Other notable Cartoon Prowl moments include:
being remote controlled by Chip to fight some Cons, and praising Chip for his handling of the situation
coming up with a plan to rescue a captive Sparkplug
telling Spike to run as the Autobots are charged by a crowd of mind-controlled humans
volunteering to escort Ratchet when taking an injured Spike to the hospital
joining a mixed team of Autobots and Decepticons to go after the Combaticons on Cybertron, and expressing doubt only about how easily Megatron let the Bots return to Earth afterward
Like many G1 Autobots, Prowl mostly had minor appearances with few defining moments. Those moments he does have paint a picture of a cautious but friendly mech who genuinely cares about protecting and helping people. Just. Look at him:
This mech is not an asshole. He does not cause problems. He is not antagonistic. He is level-headed, compassionate, and a team player. The Transformers has no shortage of Autobot jerks, but Prowl is not one of them.
Returning once again to G1 Prowl's main page, we are met by one of the absolute worst prick jokes on the entire site: a picture from a story book, in which Prowl fires at an attacking Ravage. It is captioned, "Prowl gets greeted by his loving cat and... tries to shoot it. What a prick." So apparently Prowl can't even fight his enemies without being declared a prick.
Yes, it is a joke. But sometimes the joke doesn't work. And if you have to misrepresent every element of a situation to make a joke, the joke does not work.
Further down the page, most of the Dreamwave comic panels are captioned innocently enough, but after that, almost every caption is a prick joke. Doesn't matter if it's a comic, a game, a toy, or a cartoon, and it doesn't matter what role he played in the media. They all get labeled pricks.
G1 Prowl's "Toys and Merchanise" page? Opens with the summary, "Prowl has many toys! All of them are pricks." And wouldn't you know, almost every caption is a prick joke. Considering there are pictures of almost every toy, that's a lot of prick jokes.
Once you get away from the G1 pages, other versions of the character actually get captions that make sense for their personalities: Robots in Disguise (2000 cartoon) Prowl gets police-based jokes. TFA Prowl gets ninja jokes. Energon Prowl gets Sonic the Hedgehog jokes (except for a picture of a black and white toy redeco, which is captioned, "Not blue anymore? Well, back to the Prick jokes then"). And then you have Cyberverse Prowl, who hardly has any captions, and EarthSpark Prowl, who barely has a page (it has been almost a year since EarthSpark S3 came out, and Prowl's page has not been updated. Every other character I checked has been updated with S3 appearances, including the ones who have less screentime, so who even knows why Prowl's is barren).
Reminder that almost all of this information came from a handful of main pages. This does not include snide jokes and commentary on individual episodes or comic issues, like the quote tag about Marvel Grimlock maybe having the measure of Prowl. Anyone who goes looking at one of G1 Prowl's main pages so they can write their fanfic or whatever is going to see all those prick jokes and think, okay, so this guy's defining character trait is "jerk". And it shows, because G1-based fics constantly portray him as one of the most arrogant, controlling, self-important, Decepticon-hostile, and generally antagonistic Autobots. A caricature of all of the worst traits of IDW Prowl, without any of the redeeming qualities (yes, IDW Prowl has redeeming qualities. I will fight about this).
TL;DR: Every version of G1 Prowl gets labelled an ambitious prick on the wiki pages as a "joke", often painting him in a harsher light than Autobots who are objectively worse. This contributes to him being characterized by fandom as one of the biggest jerks in the Autobot ranks, with no regard for the actual canon.
So Tumblr ate my reply to this ask. I was able to save it because I got a "could not process post" warning and I knew the ask would be gone if I refreshed the page, but this does mean Anon won't be notified of my reply. So hopefully they come here often?
Anyway. Calling TF: One Prowl an asshole in the making because he wasn't jumping up and down is the most ludicrous evaluation of a character I have ever seen. And all the more so when you consider that he was jumping up and down.
If you wanted to read anything into him clapping instead of jumping, you could point to the way he moves after the jump and suggest he decided to stop because he lost his balance. Maybe he's a bit shaky because Sentinel has been working the miners too hard, or maybe he just doesn't have good balance in general. Maybe he didn't lose his balance at all and is just shifting his weight a lot because he's excited. Any interpretation makes more sense than "he's not emoting enough, so he's going to be a jerk when he grows up."
I would like to say I'm surprised. But considering the state of Prowl's TF Wiki pages, and the way people reacted to EarthSpark Prowl being hostile to Megatron, and the way people write Prowl in their fics, I am not. I am resigned to the fact that if canon doesn't give them a reason to hate on Prowl, they will find one or invent one.
Would be nice if I could have a conversation about Prowl (no specific continuity) without someone using IDW as evidence of why he'd act a certain way, though.
Once more, we. were. robbed. This style was only in issue 7 for "Optimus prime" they change styles in issue eight(8) and look at Prowl, they gave him, Optimus, Jetfire, and practically everyone else the princess treatment.
.... Following my rant, I got more Prowl panels from robots in disguise soo another Prowl post is in the future
tf 2009 prowl is probably my favorite idw-1 version of prowl. the way his character was handled in this story, especially in the last few chapters, was almost perfect
i like his personality - isolated, brooding, calm, composed, mysterious, always on his own mind, playing his own games. a lone wolf. a hunter. ready for anything. in control of everything. i like the way he thinks, i like that we can finally get inside his head and find out how he sees the world. i like the way he behaves, the way he presents himself, the way he talks and reacts to everything that happens around him. i like his constant sly half-smirk, insightful gaze and tricky speeches
i like the way he interacts with others. i like that he's "two-faced", he thinks highly of his mates, he values teamwork, support and help from others, he cares about the crew and each of its members, but he doesn't let any of them too close to him or his business. i like that no matter how hard he tries to stay true to logic, no matter how much he tries to keep his mind pure, detached, collected, he can get attached and he can get hurt and he’s not always able to let go of feelings so easily. i like that he can get confused, lost and vulnerable, he could be gullible, could be wrong and could be outsmarted, despite all his skills, experience and intelligence there are some things he can't handle
i like that he doesn't want to be a leader. he will lead if necessary, but he understands perfectly well that it’s not what he was created for. i like how passionate he is about his real job, i like that he treats his duties both responsibly and playfully, that he gets naturally high from his work. investigating, searching, analyzing, questioning, manipulating - this is his life, his true purpose. i like that he’s good at it, damn good, and i like that he knows it
An updated amendment for all active personnel: If you’re going to fraternize with the leader of the Decepticons, make sure to do it while off the clock [and in private].
Credit for the dialogue is by my dear friend @thevioletathena , who made me wheeze with the idea while texting.
every time prowl is featured in a media and the instant reaction i see is "god please make him an asshole" like no, please make him interesting without defaulting to his idw counterpart with the constant "angry prick who flips tables all the time" y'all im tired, they could do better than that. like do they hate prowl that much?
"It's funny though!"
It may have been funny before a ton of the fans started insisting that his character has always been like that and the fandom hadn't run the joke into the ground yet. Now though? It's tired and gone through 50 rounds of flanderization at least by this point. Do something else. Plus, a lot of folks have zero sense of nuance when his personality is "table flipping prick". Like, IDW1 Prowl was extremely traumatized and isolated, but heaven forbid the fandom acknowledge it! He was mean to [insert popular character]!
Just saw your recent ask about prowl and honestly preach!! I personally love IDW prowl both in his asshole moments but especially for his depth
I think so much can be done with his character if they have him be someone who tries to make the tough calls that no one else would even if it means losing everyone
Idw prowls self destruction and isolation onto of how much he genuinely seemed to care about the autobkts even if he had a fucked up way of showing it genuinely makes me ache and I wish more people talked about it
Its a great way to show a difference approach on how war impacts people: prowls actions get more reckless in the name of what he thinks is logic because he WANTS to do good and his GUILT man his fucking guilt that they brought up in sins of the wreckers
I also feel like so much could be talked about his past as someone raised in a highly functionist town and being a friend of SENTINEL and how that impacted him but I think it was kinda overlooked in idw
Id say more but I already typed up a storm haha
Honestly, Prowl is such a fascinating character in IDW1, but it so often gets buried under rampant flanderization and writers not making up their minds on how to handle him. MTMTE, for example, couldn't make up its mind on how to treat Prowl because it does approach the fact that Prowl's mind has been violated multiple times, but one of the characters responsible for that gets to participate in mocking him with no push back plus it hyped up the concept of Prowl flipping tables which has then been flanderized to death.
There's so much to really work with, but IDW1 was something of a convoluted mess.
He's also a character that does resonate with me on a certain level. Being friendly to someone who then gets a little too obsessive (Tarantulas is also a fascinating character, but fans woobifying him when he is an evil and extremely creepy person and giving his life for Springer was the only good he did has ruined it for me), the self-isolation and self-punishment because you think you deserve it, underlying frustration and pent up emotions that you don't feel like you can communicate with other people, and the need to Be Right™️ and putting a lot of value in personal smartness. And I think a lot of people would agree that these deeper parts of Prowl would resonate with them as well... Except too many people just leave it at "Prowl is mean and flips tables!" and leave it at that.
So yeah! Fascinating character handled not very well!
Maybe if there was someone who was actually invested in telling a nuanced and complex story with this characterization without brushing off the fact he is both a victim as well as a perpetrator, I would be interested in seeing more... But I am not holding my breath and would be more glad for the return of GENUINELY G1 Prowl.
While I don't particularly care for prowl the same way I do trailbreaker or thunderhowl I can acknowledge that he's a very well-written and intricate character.
If we're talking g1, he's an absolute sweetheart. I don't have much to say about that version of him atm. He's cute. They're all cute.
But if we're talking IDW... I adore how he's written. The fandom doesn't quite understand him. He's a guy who always thinks about the future and will do whatever he deems necessary to end the war.
But I think he is treated unfairly by fans. People use their disdain for him as an excuse to overlook his trauma. I haven't seen take into accountability that he had his brain tinkered with by chromedome or the whole brainwashing fiasco. It's always "Prowl is an asshole who has no feelings," but if you really pay attention to him in the comics, you'd notice that sentiment isn't true at all.
Can't say much about prowler from IDW2 because I haven't read it in a really long time, and forgot a lot of what I read due to how unremarkable the run was. Still, I love him and his little pet.
Sorry for rambling. In short, I enjoy his character a lot! Thank you for the ask.
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