Transformers - ongoing series

[Dominic]

Clearly Costa has a use for Prowl as a literary tool in this story and you've consistently said that that's all you care about in regards to characters, so by extension this should be right up your alley (especially since Costa seems to actually have something to say). This is what I've been saying in the comics thread, if a character's value only lies in their utility to the writer than why even bother defining them?

In this case, the tool is being misused. Defining a character is part of telling a story or making a case. The problem here, as I said a few posts back, is that there really are no characters in TF with the needed stupidity to do what Prowl did.

Part of the characters serving the story and writer is that they have to fit where they are used. In other words, defined characters can be more useful. But, it behooves the writer to use the characters carefully, not out any absurd sense of obligation but out of a practical need to preserve the tools of their trade. Yes, characters can be replaced, but that can be difficult and/or time-consuming. (Or it can just be clumsy and stupid.)

Wait, defending yourself against a genocidal enemy is intellectually and morally bankrupt?

Prowl was not defening himself agains the humans, he was defending Breakdown (another genocidal enemy) against them. Like I said, if Prowl was protecting an Autobot, that would have *almost* made sense. But, Prowl got all angstry about poor Breakdown and how those mean humans were killing TFs.


O6 more or less explained the definition of soft sci-fi. But, he forgot one thing, (ironically, the thing that prompted my comment), which is that soft sci-fi is more likely to give the characters convenient lapses in judgement or morals as the writer needs them to, resulting in normally intelligent or principled characters doing something really stupid to move the story along.


The problem with hard sci-fi is that it is *very* hard to write, goes over much of the audiences heads, and most of the guys who can do it well can find more profitable and enjoyable work elsewhere. (Just consider the amount of expertise one would have to have across several fields to write such a story.)


Dom
-sees nothing wrong with the soft scifi genre.

[Onslaught Six]

In this case, the tool is being misused. Defining a character is part of telling a story or making a case. The problem here, as I said a few posts back, is that there really are no characters in TF with the needed stupidity to do what Prowl did.

Bumblebee, maybe? Or even one of the Aerialbots, with their just-created-really-stupid characterisation.

[Shockwave]

Well I think that clarifies what you mean, Dom (about characters being tools). I still disagree with it as an approach to recreational reading but at least I conceptually understand the point you were illustrating.

I still disagree about Prowl though:

Decepticon or no, they can't just start executing us!

US. This means Prowl is clearly looking at this from a racial perspective, not a factional one. He doesn't care about Breakdown at all, he cares that humans are just going to exterminate every TF on the planet just because they're TFs. That eventually will lead to him and he decides to fight Skywatch. It's about fighting Skywatch, not saving Breakdown. He was perfectly happy to sit there and let Skywatch haul him off to whatever torture chamber they had waiting, but indiscrimanantly killing him because of what he is, that's where Prowl drew the line.

Also, Prowl was very clearly ambushed. As soon as he stood up, "unit 2" incapacitated him, meaning that they were there waiting for him the whole time and it was in fact a part of Skywatch's planned operation to draw him out into revealing himself. Again, he didn't get caught trying to "save Breakdown". That would be the case if he had jumped in front of a bullet that was going to kill Breakdown, but that's not what happened here. Prowl didn't even have time to jump anywhere, much less take one for Breakdown.

I will say that I agree that Prowl wasn't the best character that Costa could have used here, but I'm kind of at a loss to think of who else he could have used. Hot Rod would be the obvious choice for the rash "I'm not sitting still for this" attitude, but he doesn't turn into a police car and clearly Costa needed a TF that had that disguise. Maybe Prowl is the only police car TF Costa could think to use that would have the moral conviction not to stand by and let Genocide happen.

[Sparky Prime]

Yeah, I can see some Autobots jumping in to save even a Decepticon. And I have to agree with a lot of what Shockwave is saying here.

I think there is an important distinction to be made here that isn't being taken into consideration. The Autobots in this issue keep saying that the war is over. With that being the situation, wouldn't it make sense for the Autobots to be thinking about starting to mend things between them and the Decepticons for the Cybertonian race to start rebuilding rather than as separate factions? And what better show of good faith to that end than for an Autobot to risk his life to save a Decepticon? I think that might be where Prowl's logic was going, thinking ahead to reunite their race post-war. However, he underestimated the humans and walked right into their trap.

There is also the point that humans don't make the distinction between Autobot and Decepticon. As Shockwave points out above here, Prowl does say "Decepticon or no, they can't just start executing us!" Clearly he's thinking with the whole Cybertronian race best interests in mind, not their separate factions.

[Shockwave]

Hey look! You agreed with me again! Sorry Sparky, just couldn't pass up the opportunity to poke fun at myself.

At most, I would say he might have been thinking in terms of fighting a common enemy.

[andersonh1]

I think Prowl's moral instincts were right on here, but he really ought to have seen the ambush coming, or at least considered the possibility and had a plan of action in mind ahead of time. Still, I'm not sure what else he could have done even if he did see it coming... it was react quick to do something to keep Breakdown from being killed, or else sit there in disguise and watch it happen, which he was apparently unwilling to do. And as you say, he was shot in the back, so he didn't see the attack coming.

[Onslaught Six]

The big issue with Prowl's actions here is that there's a decent argument to be made that anybody in that situation could make a bad judgement call and not see an ambush coming, especially if they underestimate the enemy. (Rorschach does this in Watchmen, actually, arriving at Moloch's only to get ambushed by the police and realize he's been set up, and he's quick to scold himself for it.)

The problem with this is that Prowl is a robot, not a human, so he shouldn't be susceptible to the same kind of problems. But then, it's soft sci-fi, so.

[andersonh1]

I find it interesting that team b, who actually take Prowl down, are disguised as police. So in effect, they've adopted the Transformers' tactics of disguise. Ironic. Prowl was ready to take on the humans in mechanized suits, not the presumably harmless (to him) civilian police.

[Shockwave]

I think the real reason Prowl is out of character here is because he should have been logical enough to realize he was outnumbered and reported back to Prime to form a plan of how to deal with a genocidal enemy as a group. Prowl is basically the Autobot's version of Shockwave, logical, rational, everything thought out ten moves in advance and this scene is a complete departure from that.

And, having bought the full issue, I liked it and I can see where Costa is going with some of this and intrigued to see how the rest will play out. I fell meh on the character models. It just feels like IDW is trying to merge the movie asthetics with original G1 or even Classicverse and it's just not working for me. Oh well, they'll have a different artist soon enough and these will go right out the window. It's tolerable.

Continuum was exactly what AH1 said it was. The history of the TFs IDWverse so far and apparently rewritten to mesh as needed. It's useful if for no other reason than the chronology in the back showing how all the different books fit together chronologically. I had been going to compile my own list of how all of this relates in that way, but with this IDW has saved me the trouble.

[Dominic]

I canot see Bumblebee being that stupid either. And, The Aerialbots were that srupid for such a short time that they would not work.

The "Prowl is xenophobic" arguement is nor wholly out of bounds. And, given that the Decepticons probably won the war, it makes sense to curry favor with them. But, I doubt that is the case though, and Prowl's whiny tone throws me off.

And, when did Prime take his stupid pills? I assume that it was sometime before he decided to hand himself over to a species known for killling and brutalizing Transformers.

Dom
-but the art is real purty.