#i'll stop here but there's a lot of stuff to say about arcee and him honestly

[decepti-thots]

Hello this is out of nowhere but I found myself suddenly musing on Prowl and responsibility. You're a very good Prowl thinker, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on how he takes or doesn't take responsibility (or blame) for things.

This is an interesting question! It's one of those questions where I'm inclined to answer it with a bit of meshing of interpretations of the character that 'disagree' with each other, regardless of authorial intent, because between writers and series I think that gets a bit... messy. But that makes welding it together fun. So! Prowl and responsibility, let's go, completely free of the thought 'did any of the writers intend this?'

I think he's a character who has circumstances in which he takes on an inflated sense of responsibility, and circumstances in which he overly abdicates responsibility, without much in between. Which is the kind of thinking that real people do all the time but can come across in fiction as paradoxical I think, haha. On the one hand Prowl tends to assume he is the one person on which everything hinges and if he doesn't do something, it won't get done- more to the point, if he doesn't do something, it won't get done and there will be consequences. A lot of that comes from arrogance, because he thinks of himself as fundamentally more competent than the majority of people around him. And a lot of that translates into trying to control what other people do (often by controlling what they can do), so any influence sits with him first and foremost. And finally, a lot of it involves him feeling like he's the only one who will do what needs to be done when the thing is something he doesn't want to do. Which ties into the whole 'overblown sense of taking responsibility' thing a lot, because it feeds into a complex of: here is a thing that people will find excuses not to do because it's awful and they don't want to. If I don't do it, noone will. It makes him miserable, but it also gives him an inflated sense of importance. We have all either known someone like this or been that person at one point, to a less exaggerated degree, I think. The person who thinks that something being unpleasant means it's their sole duty to take it on... aaaand so also, everyone else shouldn't criticize them because look at what they've done for everyone! (And never mind that nobody asked and that maybe nobody had to force themselves to do the shitty thing they hate for the sake of doing it.)

And then on the flip side, there are things that he just. Will not take responsibility for period. And those are usually things where if he did so, it would contradict his self image too much, so they have to be made external. Sins of the Wreckers is one long ironic reversal of the 'Prowl has his fingers in every pie and does it all behind the scenes' narrative; in Sins, and generally in Roche's work in fact, Prowl allows himself a kind of emotional distance from things he is very much responsible for by... adding a few degrees of separation in. He doesn't kill Mesothulas; he tells Impactor to deal with the lab. He has him thrown in the noisemaze. Realistically, this is in no way anything but Prowl's murder attempt. But he can create a degree of plausible deniability. Not to anyone else- nobody else is supposed to know- but more to himself. Or another example is when any time Optimus in exRiD goes against what Prowl wants or disagrees with him, he always shows that he thinks that this is Optimus not understanding, and any fallout from Prowl going behind his back is, therefore, Optimus' fault. Even when Prowl's ideas are absolutely what caused the issue. When there's a hypothetical scenario he can imagine where he would have been backed up, Prowl says: well if you'd backed me up my plan would have worked, so this is the fault of everyone who just doesn't get it. Not mine.

(I'm trying to remember if the moment in exRiD where he's annoyed that Arcee won't play along with his 'well of course you tried to arrest the Decepticons you attacked first' nonsense is before Bombshell... I thiiiink it is? There's an example of Arcee puncturing his defenses, which she does a lot. She's like. lol shut up. I killed them like you asked. It's not quite the same- he's trying to get her cover story straight more than anything- but it feels a little like he finds her bluntness... uncomfortable. Even if he knows it's a lie, he still prefers, well. The lie.)

It would be pretty easy to gloss this dichotomy as 'Prowl takes responsibility when it gives him something or works for him, disowns it whenever something goes wrong', but I don't think that's... quite right. A little underbaked. Prowl takes responsibility when it puts him in a position where it justifies what he does on a wider scale, whether or not it goes well for him necessarily. And when that justification starts to look flimsy and the threat looms that he might be wrong on a fundamental level, that's when he starts to insist it's someone else's fault. Like grit in the machine, and if you took the grit out, of course it would work perfectly. Other people are the convenient grit when the machine is breaking down. (Going back to Sins: the single biggest 'this is not my fault' he pulls in all of canon is, IMO, the blatant lie that Mesothulas was 'influencing' him to be worse somehow. His personal justifications for his behaviour started to crack when he killed a bunch of civilians in cold blood and immediately realised that was completely unjustifiable, but he can't take responsibility without admitting his approach is the issue, and therefore without not just taking responsibility for this, but for all his actions in the war to date that were just... wrongheaded. So he goes 'no. this isn't my approach making me act this way. it's Mesothulas', even though it's ridiculously obvious that if anything, Prowl has been at least enabling Mesothulas to be worse. As he says, he wouldn't have started making bombs without Prowl's 'for the greater good in war' perspective.)

So you get this kind of slippery character who will insist everything is directly his responsibility one minute, even when he's miserable about it, and then turn around the next and say: no, no, none of this is my fault. If it reinforces his belief that his way is the only way and therefore anything he does can be justified, it's his responsibility. Even the bad stuff, or the stuff that will land him in trouble. If it challenges that belief, it's no longer his fault but just external influences that need removing, smoothing away, fixing. We haven't spoken about MTMTE Prowl as written by Roberts yet, but I think he shows a lot of this in the Overlord arc. It goes against his self-perception to think that how he acts or what he's doing puts Chromedome off agreeing to work with him in itself. That he finds Prowl repugnant now, in a way he didn't used to. So he gets pissy at Rewind, acting like he's getting in the way. You get the impression that Prowl is the sort to think Rewind is clearly the issue here and if he can just get Chromedome alone, things will go fine. (The irony, of course, being that he did, but doesn't remember it because of just how badly that went.)

Prowl has set himself up in a very precarious psychological trap by staking his entire sense of self on something which, if knocked over by a stiff breeze, would basically ruin every single thing he does or has done for the past few million years. His belief that his ends always justified his means. If he takes responsibility for anything that contradicts that, every single one of his decisions loses its place in his weird moral calculus and becomes a candidate for something not worth it that he cannot fix. And if he doesn't take responsibility for all the shit that he thinks needs doing but hates, then every awful decision he's made to the present becomes pointless, because if he can't end what he started there's no ends to justify the means. He can't stop or else it falls down. (See: him not wanting the war to be over despite hating it because it didn't end on the terms he was working toward.)

And I think that's how you marry the Prowl we see in stuff like Wreckers, whose stock in trade is gliding on through without it touching him and insisting there was always someone or something else to blame, with Prowl in exRiD, who takes way, way too much responsibility for everything.

tl;dr god i would also punch this guy if i met him jesus christ

[lifetimeshipper]

Life's New Adventures and Secrets

Chapter 17

~~~~~~~~~~

Emberwing knocked on Arcee and Wheeljack's door, waiting for one of them to answer. Seajumper answered, "Emberwing!"

"Hi, Seajumper. Do you and Nightback want to play? Papa said it was okay."

"He did? You bet we do! Come in," he says as he makes room for her to enter.

Emberwing made her way in, saying hello to Wheeljack and Arcee. Once they were in Seajumper's room, Emberwing was greeted by Nightback, "Your father said you can play with us again?"

"Yeah, I was going to wake up Oka-san but Papa stopped me before I could knock on the door. He said that Oka-san needed to rest because she was still exhausted from yesterday," she replied as she sat on the floor.

"Why? What happened?" Nightback asked.

"They fought some Decepticons. When Bumblebee took me to see them they looked... funny."

"Funny how?"

"Oka-san looked sad. Also, I got up to get some Energon last night and saw Papa sleeping on the couch."

"Wonder why your dad was sleeping on the couch. Hope everything is okay with your parents," Nightback says to Emberwing.

"I hope so too."

"I walked in on my parents kissing earlier, again."

Seajumper sounded disgusted while Emberwing giggled, "You seem to do that a lot."

"Yes, I do."

"How is your mom doing?" Seajumper asked Nightback.

"She seems to be doing better."

"What happened to your mom?" Emberwing asked.

"She got really sick last night and Dad had to take her to Med Bay," Nightback replied. 

"Bumblebee came back after dropping you off and I overheard him and my parents talking about your mom and dad. He said they were both poisoned but your mom got the worst of it, he said it was so bad she almost died," Seajumper added.

"Oh man," Emberwing gasped quietly, "Did he say how they got poisoned?"

"That femme they brought in had put poison somewhere on Steeljaw's body and Strongarm got it somehow and got sick."

"I saw two Wolf-Cons yesterday, they put one of them in the stasis pod but the other one was giving Sideswipe a hard time," Emberwing stated, "Do you think they know the femme?"

"I heard the grown-ups say they were all related," Nightback replied.

The three went quiet when they heard a knock at the door, they heard the door open and Nightback heard his dad's voice. He runs out to greet him, "Hi, Dad. Is Mom okay?"

"She is but I need you to go watch over her for a bit while I go for a drive, I need to talk to Thunderhoof but I don't feel comfortable leaving your mother alone in her condition. I want you to watch over her and get her anything she might need as she's too weak to walk and get stuff herself at the moment."

"OK, I'll see you guys later!" Nightback called to his friends as he ran back home to look after his mother.

The two wave at him as he runs off and Steeljaw chuckles, "Alright, I'll see you guys later," he says as he heads out to find Thunderhoof.

Nightback gets home and goes to his parent's room where he finds his mom asleep, he goes in and climbs up onto the berth, laying next to her. Strongarm wakes up and looks at him, "Nightback, what are you doing here? I thought you were with Seajumper."

"I was but Dad didn't want you to be by yourself. He said to help you if you need anything."

"Your dad can get a bit overprotective at times, but you know I always enjoy your company," she says as she taps her finger on his nose. Nightback giggles as he hugs his mother, "So, what shall we do?" Strongarm asked him.

Nightback thought momentarily, "I can show you this neat card trick Bumblebee showed me the other day."

"Sure, I would like to see that."

"I'll go get them," he said as he raced to his room. He comes back and shows her the trick.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Steeljaw quickly catches up to Thunderhoof, "Hey, is everything alright?"

"How would you feel if you found out your mate allowed two other mechs to frag her?"

"I would be pissed. I wouldn't know what to do."

"Exactly!" He shouts as he transforms, "I thought Wolf-Cons can have only one mate. I'm supposed to be the only mech she can frag and have as a mate. But I saw her in the cave hugging that Wolf-Con while he fragged her, she wasn't even fighting it."

Steeljaw transforms as he thinks of what to say, "I know it had to hurt seeing that. But it could be that it was because Saborfang was in heat. Some male Wolf-Cons can send out really strong waves of their heat to draw in a female Wolf-Con to come to them and help them find relief. It's not supposed to affect a femme that's already mated unless they're not strong enough to resist it."

"I would think that Metalsound would be strong enough to resist something like that. I think she wanted to have sex with a mech that's her own kind."

"You might be right. Or maybe she's not as strong as she should be when resisting a male Wolf-Con in heat. She's probably never been around a male Wolf-Con in heat before so she doesn't know how to resist them. But I have no doubts that she really does love you."

"I'll have to talk to her and find out. Did you know that she actually believed them when they told her I was dead?"

"She did? That's strange, she should have sensed you through the bond."

"She closed off the bond while she was with them and didn't bother to open it to see if I was really dead." Thunderhoof paused for a moment, "Come to think of it, she's been really off lately. We couldn't even fully enjoy our anniversary date, she cut it short because she wanted to be alone and while we were together she didn't seem to be all there."

"I heard she had a run-in with Saborfang and Razorclaw that day before your anniversary date. Grimlock told me that she told them to let them go when they tried to chase after them after they ran off."

"That's odd, she's usually the main one to chase after a criminal to take them in. All this is just adding to my suspicions. I better go talk to her," Thunderhoof says as he transforms.

Steeljaw transforms as well, "We better head back, I need to check on Strongarm," he says as they drive off.

"Oh yeah, I heard about what happened last night. How is she?"

"She's doing better, she's resting right now."

"I'm glad she's doing better."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Metalsound made her way outside, instantly closing her optics to shield them from the bright sun. After a moment she opens them again to see Thunderhoof driving toward her, she turns to run off because she doesn't want to talk to him right now, at least not until she can come up with a good way to explain her actions. Thunderhoof quickly transforms and grabs her arm before she can get too far, "Hold up, Metalsound. We need to talk."

Metalsound started panicking and she released a bolt of electricity, shocking Thunderhoof who quickly let her go while screaming in pain. "I'm sorry," she said with guilt evident in her tone.

"I guess hurting me emotionally wasn't enough for you. We need to talk this out, Metalsound."

"I'm sorry, it was instinct."

"Tell me, was it because Saborfang was in heat, or did you want to have sex with them?"

"It was because Saborfang was in heat. It was as though his heat was clouding my processor."

"And why did you not want to chase after them the first time you encountered them? Were you thinking about them during our anniversary date? Was that why you cut it short to go be alone?"

"Yes, they kept crossing my processor. But everything that happened that day was on my processor which was why I needed to be alone for a bit, I needed to think."

"You also had an attraction to them because they were Wolf-Cons, I know you did."

Metalsound was quiet for a moment before speaking, "Yes, I had a slight attraction and I think part of me wanted to frag them. I wanted to see what it was like to have sex with a Wolf-Con, to see how different it was, and it felt really good. I couldn't help but enjoy it. I feel really bad about it and I'm sorry."

"You feel bad? You're sorry? You shouldn't have even thought about trying it when you already have a mate! Get out of my sight, I can't look at you right now," he says as he storms off.

Metalsound placed her servos on her helm as lubricant filled her optics, she really screwed up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 1

Next Chapter

[quietbluejay]

Sins of the Wreckers 1

and on that note about good execution, bad themes/implications, here we go! I'm going to assume anyone reading this also read the background info and not explain things that are covered in that

Also, as usual, Roche the madlad did both the art and the writing.

Arcee is narrating

I do love the Alaska art for this comic

you know i feel like it would be a lot more relevant to point out that he's a very wanted bot right now also i think this is the only place that actually calls him the chief strategist has he…ever actually done strategy? secret service spook i'll give you okay i guess the war was over at that point and im splitting hairs, but some of what he did for Bee counts, I guess -Narration: I don't want Prime or anyone else in on this collar. I want Prowl to see my face as he's being taken down

the rabbit is a surprise tool that will harm us later

the Kup is also a surprise tool that will help us later. And yes he's floating through space

Prowl, incidentally, turns into a police car.

also this one is probably going to be longer because I really love the art for it.

we cut to a snowstorm, zero visibility

Narration: and that's when I came looking for you

Narration: but I couldn't find you either

The colouring in this comic really does a great job of setting the tone. Another win for Burcham (did the colouring). It's also maybe patronizing to say but it's really impressive how he's improved over the years compared to his earlier stuff.

so Kup was doing some riveting (literally) work outside and didn't expect to black out

Arcee is a bit suspicious and asks if this happens often

you know, and this probably sounds cold of me to say, but…it's, not really bad news for the majority of people? unless he knows the location of a working superweapon or something and they're going to play around with it he does have the vamparc ribbon stashed around somewhere, to be fair

love it when art does this

so, who are the usual suspects? the Decepticons? has Arcee checked the DJD? I honestly think Arcee could solo the entire DJD there's the EDC which Arcee undoubtedly checked (that's Earth Defence Committee, they've already kidnapped Cybertronians in the past) there's Starscream also, chronologically speaking, riiight before this Arcee dismembered and killed a dude in Starscream's room just to make a point, and then stole the enigma of combination before agreeing to put it back (note from future bluejay: I legitimately forgot about that) -Arcee: something strange is happening, Kup, all made stranger by you being off-deck when he disappears -Kup: you tryin' t'say somethin', kid? kup calling her a kid is hilarious given the later reveal that she's from basically the dawn of time -Arcee: Yeah: "Do your job" -Arcee: Prowl's a security risk, and - when you're not on the nod - you're our security chief. -Arcee: one way or another, you're helping me find him

-Arcee: stalling, Kup?

so who is talking...

what an odd thing to say

Guzzle (it's not revealed here but that's who is talking): You gonna lock me in a box, Impactor, huh? That's what we do now, right? Someone gets too real, we put them away and forget about them

Guzzle: I'm an Autobot, Impactor; I'm a Wrecker. Who does that? Who does that?

Guzzle: I know who does that - Springer. You're Springer now. You lock up a bot when he don't fit no more.

Impactor: You're not me, Guzzle, and I'm not...

Impactor: forget Springer. Springer's gone, okay?

???: No, Impactor, he's not.

lmao

-Impactor: ever think it's time to… -Roadbuster: stop? don't know if i could. -Roadbuster: Nothing else to be doing, right? -Impactor: hhhh -Roadbuster climbs up and sits beside Impactor -Impactor: the Wreckers are dead. Peace killed us. -Impactor:So why put myself through this; moving around, picking off Decepticon resistance cells? -Impactor: what is it in me - in us - that won't let me quit?

ok i know im an ass about this but like are they somehow bartering with someone for energon or running a protection racket?? energon and medical supplies general supplies etc etc etc it does seem like the kind of thing they'd do tbh

I'm genuinely proud of Impactor here!!

uhhhhhhhhhhhh UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (my reaction will make sense when we find out what he did to the cadets)

I'm pretty sure she is enjoying this

Suspicious face i think it's trying to show arcee as like paranoid about every single thing

Kup is also suspicious here, after all he's only got her word that something is up at all. He's been nice, he hasn't called her out on any of the weird stuff she's been saying...

Arcee tells him to dial it back and that all this search has been showing is that Prowl is even more sus than she thought

-Kup points to sth on the screen -Kup: wait, That one. Open that one -Arcee: "remember Garrus-9"? This can't be good

it's a best girl!

Kup gives some backstory on how Verity joined the Wreckers on their trip to Garrus-9

the prisoner rescue was still their objective...it just wasn't the only one

i love the art...

-"Ironfist died on the way back home and Verity took it hard." -"Now it looks t'me like he made more than one copy of the trials, and this poor deluded girl is using it to put the squeeze on Prowl." -Arcee narrating: is she insane?

Arcee wants to be detective

I remember when you missed the war, Arcee. Hanging around with Optimus has been good for you.

but also lmao releasing the aequitas data is going to reignite the war exactly how the first two are pretty valid though

Also I'm honestly surprised the Decepticons just sat on Prowl's Aequitas copy when they were mind controlling him, that would have been the peak moment to release it and cause serious unrest it would have done a great job of pushing the neutrals away from the Autobots, they were already deeply unhappy with the Autobots

-Arcee: Springer -Arcee: Springer?! -Kup: yeah, Springer was…

Arcee, chill, it's pretty clear the recording was made during the war and way before Springer's coma and the two of you started working together

to be continued!