reverse hot take meme: tell me why I should care about Prowl?

I assume you’re talking about IDW1 Prowl. Truly I love him. I love how everyone is so passionate about him whether they love him or hate him. Mmm this was a fun ask and it got long, so under a cut it goes!

He seems like a good character to me, because I can always see where he’s coming from, even if he’s what we call an awful person. I think Prowl is the Phase 2 character with the most cohesion across his different writers. I know that may sound strange, Barber, Roche, and Roberts write him with a different flavor, yes, but I think they all have the same core understanding and just focus on different things according to their respective genres.

For example, JRo’s Prowl feels way pettier and more emotional than Barber’s, which fits with how Mtmte puts a lot of focus on interpersonal flaws. However, I’d argue Barber’s Prowl is just as petty, I mean *point to the whole ordeal with Spike on Earth* or like, he’s willing to let Caminus die so that Starscream doesn’t try to rule all the galaxy which while Starscream did wanted to control the Colonies, he would not start a war against the cosmos again, he knows better than that. Prowl’s motivations are influenced by the fact that he hates the Decepticons and he can’t let Starscream win, but he’s able to rationalize his actions so he can keep telling himself he’s entirely reasonable.

But you asked me to give you specifically reasons to care about him, so I will argue he’s a lot like Megatron (and oh, Prowl would flip a table if he heard me, that’s so fun):

Both Prowl and Megatron are people extremely Machiavellian and willing to do anything for their specific vision of the Greater Good and both are lacking in self awareness and won’t admit to their actual motivations or that their methods are antithetical to their supposed goals. There are both convinced they are the only one that can do what needs to be done. To Prowl’s credit, he’s far less vainglorious, while Prowl does want credit, he doesn’t need a whole cult to worship him. Prowl wants influence rather than power and unlike Megatron he doesn’t actually like violence. He’s actually quite disgusted by it, which is part of the reason he needs other people do it for him.

But both run on paranoia, spite and a need to be war. They both need the war to give them meaning. Again, to be fair to Prowl, I think he actually does genuinely want the vision he claims to want, but anything else will mean he was wrong and all the things he did was maybe not as justified so he has dug himself into a hole of keeping the war running until he gets his desired ending or his whole idea of himself falls apart. While Megatron will use this unrealistic vision to have an excuse to keep on fighting because fighting is what gives him meaning.

Okay yeah, they’re not exactly the same, but they do have neat parallels and you like Megatron, right?

Prowl feels deeply tragic to me, because while he was always kind of a prick, his pre-war self really did seem to operate on a belief that rules and order are good. He had a lot of ideas of the old Cybertron internalizes, yes, but he does attempt to make things better for everyone. He prevents Sentinel from eradicating the Decepticons, he tries to stand against corruption, tries to keep Orion in check. Yet everything still goes to hell, so he sort of goes “fine, if everyone is going to make compromises I will too, except I will do the right ones because I can tell what they are” and now he’s trapped in a cage of his own doing and he’s aware of it but too deep in his own head to change even when he wants to. There’s some delicious irony because more than anything Prowl wants to be understood, but he won’t value anyone’s input over his own.

He's interesting, there's a lot to chew about him. He's a good character. This is fiction so I think that more important than anything else you can say about him. Thinking about Prowl is endlessly entertaining, he's so full of pathos and irony.

Also fun fact: he's Barber's favorite character dasfhgjsa, I believe that, Barber has such fun playing with him. I think JRo also mentioned him being a favorite at some point(?)