#i love prowl... no really!

[kookieroosins]

I like this cartoon. It lives on in my heart

[keferon]

What are your thoughts on a decepticon prowl?

Oh I'm all for it. But! Only if he's actually a Con. Like. Wholeheartedly.

Not "nnnooo we're doingg a bad thing and I kind of dont wanna do bad thing but I have no choice poor me".

You know how in canon he truly believes he's on the right side and makes everything to ensure that Optimus wins the war? You know how he's willing to make every tough decision so Optimus doesn't have to risk his reputation? You know how he literally makes Autobots look like shiny brave and clean heroes who did nothing wrong ever?

I want all that but the other way around. I want him to do that for Megatron and for the Decepticons. The implications would be so fucking dramatic I could write a whole essay.

Low rank Cons would hate him so fucking bad.

Starscream would try to murder him at least once a day.

Megatron would absolutely treasure him. Autobots would have it r o u g h

Can you imagine

[lyretheinstrument]

ratchet design finally up !!!! next batch of designs coming soon trust

[ihatebrainstorm]

Test page for the Rogues Gallery AU comics I'm planning hdhf

It'll be pretty rough in terms of art quality bc it takes me way less time this way (+ I get burnt out from drawing comics really easily lmao)

First arc once I finish the full script: Jailbreak (Minimus focused + some Brainstorm and Percy shenanigans)

[kairukitsuneo]

My Big heart embrace your hurt

[brandwhorestarscream]

Have you ever considered TFA Team Prime defecting from the Autobots? Considering that most (if not all) of them have been wronged by Autobots in the past and then learning of the heinous things they’ve done while keeping it a secret from the public’s eye.. That would definitely make them question if they’re even on the right side of the war in the first place.

I like the idea of them defecting from the Autobots but not quite becoming Decepticons either. Maybe they’re on a more neutral ground, only stepping in if the Decepticons bother the human cities but otherwise just not even bothering to help the Autobots.

I feel like Optimus would be the most betrayed. He fought valiantly and literally died for the Autobots only to find out that not only did they not even care, but they had turned around and wiped entire cities off the face of Cybertron and then lied to their faces about it. It would definitely disillusion him. He fought so hard to be an Autobot and for what? For them to be the people he was supposed to be saving Cybertron from all along?

No, he wouldn’t help them anymore. Not when they clearly couldn’t give any less of a damn about him and his team, not when they didn’t give a damn about all the people they’d hurt in pursuit of their selfish goals, he wouldn’t lay his and his team’s lives on the line just to be betrayed again.

Sentinel calls them traitors, useless maintenance bots, any insulting thing under the sun he can think of, he yells it at them when he finds out about Team Prime leaving the Autobots. Optimus takes the insults towards him, he’s so used to it by now that it doesn’t even hurt anymore, he just accepts it. But the moment Sentinel turns to target Bumblebee when he makes a snarky comment, Optimus snaps.

Sentinel doesn’t see the fist flying at his face coming.

When the Elite Guard leave, Team Prime now just spends their time watching over the protecting the human city. Since Team Prime refused to fight the Decepticons anymore unless they were attacking human cities, the Elite Guard is on Earth more often now, and that makes things very tense between the two teams. Optimus stopped caring a long time ago, though.

Ooo maybe after Team Prime leaves, the Decepticons take notice of how strained things seem between the Autobots and Team Prime, and decide to for a truce between them; they stay away from the human cities + try to keep the Elite Guard of their backs and Team Prime doesn’t attack them + does favors for them every once in a while.

Maybe this ends with Team Prime joining the Decepticons. Who knows. I just wanted to write this for fun lol

Let me know what you think!

Unironically I play with the idea of TFA Team Prime leaving the autobots a lot, one of our favorite subjects in discord

But like. I'll be so honest. I think they'd have to join the decepticons eventually, for their own safety

The TFA autobot government is brutal. Cybertron's state is ruled by the military, everyone is forcefed propaganda from the day they're born, and they're brainwashed into perfect conformity, constantly told that they're little more than a cog in the machine and to die for the greater good is not only commendable, but expected. Their lives as individuals do not matter, and like with any cult, anyone who tries to leave shall be brutally punished.

If Team Prime tried to secede, the elite guard would come to collect and imprison them as traitors. I wouldn't put it past them at all to, at the very least, get into Ratchet and Bulkhead's brains. One is the last imprinted handler of a Supreme, the other is the leading expert on space bridge engineering. They don't need those two alive, but they do need their processors. The autobot council wouldn't hesitate to do to them what they did to Perceptor--"deleted his personality to make room for science", my ass. Call it what it is: shadowplay. They did it to their head of science, or perhaps he became their head of science because they took his emotions away, they won't have any qualms about doing the same to Ratchet and Bulkhead. After all, if you have no emotions, you have no moral compass, and will just do as you're told forever. Exactly the way they like it.

Sentinel's a huge glitch, prtty and vindictive as hell: if Optimus hit him for insulting Bumblebee and then announced that they were leaving the autobots, he'd have them all detained and arrested. They'd all get hauled back to Cybertron, split up and separated: Ratchet and Bulkhead to the labs to be reconditioned, Optimus and Prowl likely to have their memories erased and altered because they have skills that can still be useful, and Bumblebee... well. They (Sentinel) would deem him useless and have him banished to one of the gated communities where the undesirables go, those that have failed to contribute to the great autobot machine, but aren't bad enough for prison or execution. Basically a giant walled in, inescapable homeless camp, where the likes of poor TFA Beachcomber and Wheelie live.

Leaving the autobots and becoming neutrals would not work out well for them. The Elite Guard would never just let them walk away: they know too much. Ratchet, the most experienced by far, knows that, and as much as he hates it... allying themselves with the decepticons would likely be their only chance. They won't be able to run forever, especially with their ship inoperable, so unless they wanna go back to Cybertron in cuffs and lose themselves to the system... they'll have to strike a deal with Megatron

[somerandomcockroach]

Okay I really felt like exploding mentally not in a good way so putted it out in random little written scenes (bullshitting with canon and fanon because canon is fanon). Prowl and Jazz as main acting characters yesss because apparently I love these boys

_________Intercity training competition_________

The whole audition was so loud with noises despite everyone trying to whisper as quiet as possible. First time in all intercity training competition history, where chosen young mechs from everywhere in Cybertron gather together to find better rising generation of sparks, the bot won all his sparring partners in a row without losing once. Gunrunner with satisfied smile wrote down statistics about this battle. “Mistakes took place, but you give big perspectives with your agility and unpredictability.” Gunrunner already had plans on this rookie once ops group starts running.

Jazz, visibly grasping at air with ventilation at full speed, was smiling in such bright manner, showing his sparking optics behind protective glass. His smile, his reflections from black coating, his figure, still going up and down after all the battles he had – everything in him was so irresistibly refreshing and attractive. This young bot made the audience start whispering again, but on absolutely different topic this time. He still was standing over his opponent, other one was looking at him from bottom to top breathing as deep as other one, leaning on the elbow folds. Young mechs had no hard feelings against each other, everything around them was steaming with happiness over a good battle. Jazz offered his hand and helped him stand up.  

“Ya’r very brave to challenge me last but ya fought good, brotha’. Your name?” They shacked hands as a sigh of a friendly and fair battle. “Guzzle. Better to fight and lose than to never fight at all” “Oh, we’r so gonna have a drink at the end of the event!” Jazz squeezed his hand so tightly and laughed so sincerely happy. They walked out of ring shoulder to shoulder. The white and black mech with pointy red chevron, the only thing showing him off the crowd so vividly, was observing all the battles from the balcony. He still couldn’t calm down his spark after what he saw, it was such an incredible and new way of martial arts for him: wild, unpredictable, dexterous, fast and oppressive. Absolute opposite of the clear and refined, gentle manner of his hometown. He couldn't hold back his smile throughout all 10 sparring sessions, periodically jerking his shoulders in surprise, sometimes looking as if into space, trying to calculate something in his head. His brother, clearly shorter than him, tapped at his hand. Only this was able to get older brother out of entrancement he was in. “Brother, calculation simulations will begin soon” ‘Right,’ he answered with only kind look of his eyes. ‘Now my turn.’

______My priority of orders starts from J_______

“Prowl, you are not allowed to go out! You stay here! It’s an order!” Prowl’s door wings rose up in in a threatening and irritated manner. He quickly turned his head, narrowing his optics. Sharp, cold blue, freezing. Yet his lips were treacherously clanging. “You are not my commander to give me commands” “Oh, no! I have an order to keep you safe! Order from Optimus Prime itself! Do you not understand how worthy your skills are? You are not allowed to get out of here until it becomes safe, why do you even try to get out of here?” The blue light was getting darker and closer to the security bot who happened to be so unlucky to be the closest to Prowl to get this order. Red chevron towered over this hesitant mech, his knees bent under the pressure of this unbending figure. It was the first time in all his time working here, when he was truly afraid of the tactician. “I was working hand to hand with “Optimus itself” when he was just an officer,” Prowl pressed his finger into the center of the bumper with enough strength to make bot step back. “and I dare you have no right to stand on my way nor Optimus’ orders. Contact him and say that I’ve lost touch with ops, you won’t be dismissed with this explan-“ The loud crash of a broken door was heard behind interrupting him mid-sentence, Prowl stood up and lowered his wings to cover trembling mech in front of him. “Prowl, jump on, I caught signal of Jazz’s location”, there was Silverbolt straight to the help and old Orion’s group protecting main operating station alongside with other autobots. Prowl gave him a pleased smirk, his optics immediately softened (to the relief of security bot), not even thinking much he ran and jumped on top of the aerial, “long time no see, old timer. All unnecessary chatting on our way.”

[lord-squiggletits]

The thing about Prowl is I don't really think canon was ever trying to frame him as a "necessary evil" or anything along the lines of "he's a shitty person but his work was necessary" like mmm.... That feels very much like something Prowl wants to believe about himself, not something that's actually factually true in reality.

I can't really make a good argument about it because I only remember like a handful of standout Prowl Moments in IDW1 but like... Prowl dropping a bomb on a neutral city and blaming it on the Decepticons is not "a necessary evil," that's a war crime. Prowl trying to destroy the space bridge to Caminus to keep Starscream from getting power over it, dooming the entire planet and its inhabitants to extinction by starvation, is not "a necessary evil," it's a fucking war crime. I feel like trying to frame such drastic measures as him "doing the dirty work of the Autobots" feels way too much like an excuse for actions that actually aren't justifiable. Especially since Prowl himself is far from being the 100% rational guy he thinks he is, considering how often he bases his decisions on things like his anti-Decepticon bias and his general refusal to follow any orders that contradict what he thinks is The Right Thing To Do (TM).

But also I think this is kind of the fault of the narrative of IDW1, since very few Autobots besides Prowl are given the chance to actually be morally gray even when the worldbuilding implicates them in some very morally gray things. Like, for example, JRO adding in the existence of MTOs which implies that the normally squeaky-clean leader Optimus was willing to approve the creation of new soldiers just to throw them into combat (and even the attempts to humanize the MTOs by giving them "an education" were eventually cut down to nothing but combat optimizations). And there's also the fact that Optimus knows about the Wreckers and has been known to call them on missions at least once (Stormbringer), meaning he's very much aware of the Wreckers and their tactics and is willing to call them in for fights when it's necessary.

I don't think you need to use Prowl as a crutch to make the Autobots morally gray. I think the Autobot leadership (or at least, Optimus, since few people besides him or Prowl seem to have major tactical command over the army as a whole) is plenty morally gray enough on its own, because the nature of war is inherently morally gray no matter how righteous your cause is. Reducing the lives of your own people into numbers on maps, harvesting resources, bringing MTOs to life just to die in a war they practically have no stake in, those things are enough.

And tbh it kind of bothers me when people try to saddle Prowl with the "dirty work of the Autobots", not just because it frames Prowl's blatantly evil actions as some sort of savior act taking the blame from the rest of the Autobots (which isn't even accurate, because the blame for war crimes falls on the entire army as an institution rather than one person), but because it downplays the moral grayness of the Autobots and pretends that no Autobot BESIDES Prowl ever participated in morally gray actions, which simply isn't true.

TLDR: Prowl isn't as much of a hero as he thinks he is because committing atrocities in the name of your cause doesn't change the fact that they're atrocities (and may not have even been justified). However, painting Prowl as the "token evil teammate" of sorts also places too much blame for the atrocities of war on him in particular, when in reality that's a burden shared by Optimus Prime and any other members of the Autobot military command structure.

[breakdownsbuttlights]

GEEN

[theomaru]

Prowl from transformers is autistic and theres nothing you can do about it

[keferon]

By chance can ya make a list of prowljazz fics you recommend??

Tyy!

Hmmm let's see

Domino Milkshake by SilenceoftheLlamas

What Makes A Monster Series by WandersUnderStarlight

Crime in Crystals series by Aard_Rinn and BaeBeyza

And of course~

Mistakes on Mistakes Until— by jabberish

[earthspark-shockwaves-reduction]

...I do not want prowl in earthspark.

[stone-stars]

ep 99 short rest is so much all the time to listen to

[decepti-thots]

as we're talking about how tarantulas views prowl re: his behaviour towards others, this is going a little off on a tangent so i'll put it in its own post, but i was thinking the other day about the positive reinforcement prison and what it tells us about mesothulas and prowl in terms of what they were doing together.

mesothulas got told to make a perfect prison. so he created a perfect prison. the positive reinforcement prison is clearly a fucking fantastic way to ensure you reduce the likelihood of escape to near-zero. it completely disincentivizes any resistance. it keeps a threat pretty close to perfectly contained. it's clearly horribly immoral, for a start it LITERALLY brainwashes people- but prowl asked for a perfect prison and he got a perfect prison, courtesy of mesothulas.

prowl's objection to the prison is notably not like his objection to the noisemaze; it's not one of ethics. no, mesothulas mentions offhandedly that prowl felt that it was an issue because it didn't punish the prisoners enough. it rendered them completely harmless and secure, but that wasn't what prowl wanted, apparently. what's the point of punishing prisoners who are at no risk of escaping and therefore need no dissuading? well… prowl presumably just feels they 'ought' to, because they 'deserve it'. his sense of morality is one where you punish people who 'deserve it' regardless of whether it serves any actual purpose.

mesothulas has absolutely no moral compass. but the thing is, that really is no moral compass. he will do what he wants to do and it does not matter if it hurts other people doing it; but he doesn't have any active desire to hurt other people either. they're just irrelevant. he'll torture roadbuster if it gets him what he wants, but he doesn't tell himself roadbuster 'deserves it', even just in the sense of 'he's beneath me' or whatever. he just sees it as a way to get from point a to point b. hence the positive reinforcement prison: it's not that he wants to spare anyone suffering, he just wants to find the most efficient solution to the problem.

prowl has a moral compass, unlike mesothulas. he thinks that evil exists and must be defeated, he thinks harm to others is bad in the abstract, he thinks he has a righteous cause, all that. this pretty much universally results in him doing much more harm than mesothulas overall, because no moral compass is bad, but a sense of morality and therefore drive which is turned to bad ends in the name of 'justice' is often worse. mesothulas doesn't care about the war and never gave a shit about making weapons to fight it. prowl, in his desire to end the war at any cost, gets him to make a bomb and nukes a refugee city. mesothulas didn't care about that, but it never would have occurred to him to do that if prowl hadn't incentivized it. mesothulas doesn't care about 'bad guys' getting what they 'deserve', so he's happy to make a perfect prison that doesn't punish anyone if that's not a required part of making it work. prowl, who needs the 'bad guys' to be punished to satisfy his sense of morality, insists upon shelving it in favour of something less inadvertently merciful. (spark extraction doesn't seem to be torture, but it's clearly not actively pleasant.)

and mesothulas makes stuff! he doesn't do it for altruistic reasons. but he makes things; he makes a whole person, in fact, just to do the making part. he makes ostaros! and sure, his original motivation there was almost certainly pure fascination… but that doesn't change that fact that he is capable of creating something wonderful just because he wants to do so.

meanwhile, prowl tosses mesothulas in the noisemaze because his sense of moral injury gets too great… and then that sense of guilt doesn't stop him from trying incredibly fucking hard to kill ostaros, the absolute most innocent person it's possible to be. he KNOWS he shouldn't, and so he tries to get around his own inability to do so by sending impactor. it's not a. subtle difference between them.

it makes me think of that bit in OP #25, the epilogue issue post-Unicron... where prowl talks to shockwave about how he understands now that it's not what you think that matters ('our hopes'), but what you do. prowl thinks of himself as inherently more moral than mesothulas no matter what he does because he has the ability to feel the way you're 'supposed' to about things. sure, he only ever destroyed, whereas mesothulas could make things. but mesothulas is selfish, and prowl cares about other people. sure, prowl did terrible things that killed people, and mesothulas in large part only helped because prowl enabled him to. but prowl feels bad about nuking that city, and mesothulas only wouldn't have done it on his own because he doesn't care. sure, mesothulas also, you know. wouldn't have done it. but prowl thinks that an important part of being Good is following a certain set of moral rules as dictated by society, and he sees himself as achieving that where mesothulas fails, so he must be better in a moral sense. that's why he thinks getting rid of mesothulas will fix what he's done, stop him doing bad stuff. he thinks mesothulas is just fundamentally a worse person because there's something wrong with him, and prowl is fundamentally a good person because he has what mesothulas lacks, and when it turns out to be more complicated than that he has no idea how to fix it. and he cannot conceive of the idea that he made mesothulas more dangerous at least as much as the reverse is true, because he can't imagine anything being worse than not having a sense of morality.

[deadlifeseries]

So unlike you

Oh boy oh boy angst time. This was requested by my mutual @callisto-moon-bot150 she asked for angst with a happy ending, involving Prowl and Bulkhead arguing.

Honestly it was hard to think of something they'd argue about but i figured it out, this ficlet takes place during\after that one episode where Prowl teams up with Lockdown and has a sort of craze for mods.

"Prowl?.... PROWL! What do you think you're doing?! You can't go after Starscream alone!" Bulkhead looked towards the sky at the small ship that Prowl took to go after the allspark signal on the moon.

"Don't worry, Bulkhead. I know what I'm doing, I have the emp and stasis cuffs there's nothing to worry about". Prowl's tone was as calm as ever, but something about the confidence in his voice felt different. Prowl wasn't one to doubt his abilities, but he was never cocky. Now his words were laced with the kind of overconfidence that Bulkhead wold moreso expect from Bumblebee.

Soon thereafter Prowl went into complete radio silence. Of course this worried everyone, especially Bulkhead. But they could still pick up his energy signature and no distress calls so they all hoped for the best.

But nobody could have guessed what would happen next.

To see Lockdown again was bad on it's own, to see Lockdown with Prowl was worse. But to see Prowl and Lockdown working together? It made the fact there now somehow was two of Sarscream into nothing more than an afterthough.

"Prowl... what are you doing?! Why are you working with Lockdown?!" Optimus stared in disbelief at Prowl. Ratchet looked a lot more angry "and why do you have all of those..." he vaguely geastured towards Prowl "...things?"

Prowl deflected all of his teammates' comments, and they didn't have any time to argue with multiple Starscreams to deal with. During the whole ordeal Prowl acted so unlike himself that it felt like he was someone else.

In the end he snapped out of it and threw aside all the mods that he borrowed from Lockdown. But it wasn't that easy for everyone else to forget it...

Prowl was firstly scolded and grilled with questions. And he understood that, he really did and he didn't argue about it. But even after that he could still feel the distrust coming from his teammates. As much as they tried to hide it it was obvious that everyone was still worried about if this was a sign of worse things to come. Prowl understood that too, he wasn't oblivious to how the others could see this as some sort of implication.

But what really hurt was the distrust from Bulkhead. It was like he was avoiding Prowl, and as much as it hurt Prowl really didn't have a hard time rationalizing it. Bulkhead was the one who told him not to go alone, and Prowl remembered acutely the look of betrayal he got from Bulkhead when they saw each other after Prowl returned.

It was the worst punishment of all. To have the person who's supposed to love the most you avoid you completely. Prowl tried to talk thing out, he wanted so badly to apologise, to beg for forgiveness. But every time Bulkhead would just talk for as short as possible, or avoided talking all together.

This lasted for days, and it was absolutely unbearable. Everyone else was slowly moving on from it, except for Bulkhead and it was driving Prowl insane. It made the worst case scenarios play through his head on repeat. Did this mean the end? Did this mean that Bulkhead didn't want to be together anymore? The thought made Prowl's spark clench, how could he have ever even though of somthing so idiotic? He should've listened, he should've stayed and not gone out on his own.

Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. One evening Prowl went to Bulkhead's room, he took a deep breath an knocked on the door. He entered slowly, looking at Bulkhead with both anxiety and hope. Seeing the way that Bulkhead looked at him cut deeper than any blade.

"Bulkhead.... I... came to apologise" Prowl was hoping so dearly that Bulkhead would listen. "You were right, I shouldn't have gone out on my own, I should've never even considered working with Lockdown. Please, how can I make it up to you? Please, talk to me", his voice was pleading as he hoped so deeply to get any sort of response.

When he didn't get any response he sighed and hanged his head in defeat, "I... understand, if this means.. the end, then I'll accept it", Prowl turned around and was about to leave the room when Bulkhead spoke up.

"I was so worried about you", he spoke quietly, but with a slur of emotions in his voice. He turned to look at Prowl "I thought that the worst had happened when you would't respond. And when you did come back you acted so... unlike yourself... I thought I'd lose you in a different way".

Prowl looked positively baffled, he took a step closer to Bulkhead "you... though that i would..." he searched for the right way to say it "... go with Lockdown? Become like him? Bulkhead, I... I could never. Yes, I admit I acted like an absolute fool but I could never do something like that".

Bulkhead still looked apprehensive but didn't look away from Prowl, didn't object to Prowl approaching him. Prowl took it as a good sign, and continued "I'm so sorry, you were right! I should have listened to you! I acted like an idiot... please forgive me, I'll do anything" he was almost on his knees. If begging is what it took then by god he'd beg.

Bulkhead stood up, and walked up to Prow, "Anything?".

"Yes! Anything! Anything it takes!" Bulkhead's willingnees to talk made Prowl hopeful, when he said he'd do anything he meant it.

Bulkhead took another step forwards and grabbed Prowl, holding him close to his chest. "Never scare me like that again. I know I can't force you do listen to me but just... promise me that".

Prowl immediatly wrapped his arms around Bulkhead's neck, even if it had only been a few days since they last heald each other it was still far too long. "I promise, I promise I'll listen more, and i won't pull any stunts like that ever again", he said this wholehearthedly. This was a lesson that he wouldn't forget.

"Thanks. And uhm, sorry for the silent treatment... I just didn't know how to react" Bulkhead looked a lot more at ease and he leaned in to kiss Prowl.

Prowl accepted the affection like it was what kept him alive, "I understand, though I must admit these past few days must have been the worst ones of my life". He couldn't resist, he kept kissing Bulkhead like there was no tomorrow. It was almost hard to believe that he's normally so distant with everyone.

And it seemed like Bulkhead also didn't like the consequenses of his silent treatment, because he seemes equally as needy for attention. "Yeah, mine too. Now come here, I'm not letting you go until we've both had our fill", he smiles and picks Prowl up, holding him close.

With that it was like whatever invisible wall that stood between them fell. They held onto each other as if letting go would kill them, they exchanged kisses and words of adoration like they needed it more than anything else.

"I'm never giving you the silent treatment again", Bulkhead chuckled a little to himself "honestly, I wanted to stop after a day and a half. You're real irresistible you know that?".

Prowl was already flustered but hearing that only made it worse. He laughed and smiled warmly, it was rare sight but he couldn't help it when Bulkhead was so damn charming. "Likewise, I know I act very distant a lot of the time but now I simply can't imagine a life without you", he leaned in and kissed Bulkhead, this time more passionatley, "but enough talking, I have a few days worth of attentoin to catch up on".

[sunoflegend]

i love being obsessed with metalhawk and starscreams dynamic despite the fact it happens so early on in RID and he's barely a character who's there