You know the thing is, Prowl would totally do the things Getaway and Chromia did if he needed too, he's that big of an asshole. That is, if he hasn't arranged something like their actions before.

 

The disturbing thing about this train of thought is it somehow justifies what Prowl does.

And no, Brainstorm doesn't get a free pass for what he did even if he wouldn't ultimately benefit himself or the universe wouldn't let him do it anyway. What I find absurd is a lot of people are okay with what he did because of the above circumstances in spite of the fact that what he wanted to do would screw with even people who didn't remotely have any sort of involvement with the incident he wanted to fix.

 

Thankfully Whirl was there to fix the universe.

 

no Necrobot in the list? he has all the power to save any dying cybertronian but chooses to just catalog deaths. lol

 

Nah, negligent to be sure, but it takes far more to be worth mentioning in this company.

He hasn't sent anyone to their deaths, blown anyone up, or decided that some bots are acceptable sacrifices to the cause.

Hey, can we mention Springer? He sent *dozens* of bots on a suicide mission to rescue one bot, even as casualties mounted.

I'm not saying you have to change your mind, but there's a big difference between 'you don't like the consequences' and 'there not being consequences.' There's definite consequences that had a major impact in the story, the problem is not the writer wanting to brush things under the rug or such as some of the recent complaints. However, the consequences largely revolve around Windblade shielding Chromia and being the one who gets most of the consequences, which, yea, you don't like, but are things that happened as part of the story and aren't small, they've gotten a fair amount of focus.

You can dislike the consequences without saying they aren't there.

"It's BS that Windblade shielded her from the consequences, and didn't tear her a new recharge socket for having to do so," would be an alternate form of complaint on her actions that I'd suggest.

 

I think the difference is that a lot of the stuff that Prowl has done is A) for the greater good (ostensibly), and B) part of his job... and also C) during a time of war.

I mean, Prowl, when written properly should be the kind of head spook who has to make the cold, calculated decisions that someone who leads with their heart (like Optimus, and, well... every other Autobot) will never make. I think it touches on the moral ambiguities of war and espionage.

On the other hand... I can't really sort out what his motivations have been in the last year or so. I don't feel like Barber handles the character all that well. It seems more like Prowl's schemes are mostly just in service to keeping conflict rolling along, month to month... but not with any coherent goal that he's striving for.

Mind you, the Combiner Wars mandate might have screwed up a lot of planned storyline material. It really feels like every time Hasbro decides there needs to be a big promotional event, the stories suddenly take some awkward sharp turns and lose their thread a bit.

This isn't necessarily to exonerate Prowl from all of his crimes... but I think that his circumstances are more professional, less personal. He's an amoral control freak, but he also has a strong set of ideals that guide his actions.

zmog

 

Bingo especially on Barber Prowl just be the defacto villain ball instigator.

/thread.  

 

For Chromia there are no consequences.

For Windblade - yes, because she has to work with Starscream now. So Chromia's absolutely untouched. But ok, not every character must be faced with consequences. Comic books would be really boring if every evildoer was always met with a laser-guided karma.

Too bad this is soo clumsily written. Stitches are thick and visible - after this miniseries it's obvious that it had to be this way to put WB in a situation when she has to deal with Starscream.
It isn't even coming as if WB was cunning. She's just doing what plot demands.

Even then, it could be achieved without writing Chromia as an imbecile playing Russian roulette with WBs life. Blow some locals, leave some grafittis like "Aliens Go Home", blow WBs living place when it's empty, Iacon already is a powder keg, so no real need to bomb WB to mess things. Starscream would be the first suspect anyway.

Also, in-universe TFs don't really act as if they were expecting being night unkillable. When Thundercracker or Rung are shoot in the head it's taken seriously. So, again, Chromia probably comes with a plot armor detector installed.

But I suppose Scott simply isn't a very finesse writer. Her plots in second Windblade mini also were quite simple.

 

Well, she's a television writer. I think that really shows in the episodic structures in the second season.

I still like her dialogue better than Barber, and she writes Starscream pretty well for the most part.... but lately, I haven't been impressed at all.

The "consequences" of the Chromia incident feel plot-mandated, and largely incommensurate with her crimes... I think that's it. It's like "Chromia did something she shouldn't have, so now we have to cover for her"... as opposed to "Chromia callously murdered innocent civilians through terrorist action".

... and not even ideology-driven "real" terrorist action for that matter. It was a fake-out designed to incite conflict and scuttle diplomatic relations, undertaken by a lone bomber with a personal agenda. It was basically a Prowl-type false-flag operation, but without being clever about it, and without any official sanction.

zmog

 

Unfortunately it still shows. Simplifications and shortcuts needed to squeeze plot and characters into limitations of TV script don't always translate very well into comic book medium. They could be easier to overlook if WB books were also heavy on action, but they're mostly dialogue and even the best dialogue sometimes can't cover how basic is plot or characters.
IMHO part of Roberts popularity comes from him being able to balance everything, character development, demands of plot and occassional action.

 

I wouldn't say plot-mandated, but I would say incommensurate with her crimes, as the biggest consequence is Windblade being forced to cover for her, and that's very much the point.

Any time someone high-up covers for someone else, they're not going to get proper consequences.

On it not being as clever as Prowl, sure, but it only had to convince one person (either directly, or indirectly convincing others to push her to the desired goal), and there was no official sanction to be had... save from the person it was intended to fool.

She felt they were isolated around dangerous people, in short, so wanted to push for the objective no matter the cost.

 

I just realized that one of the worst parts about the Chromia plot-point is that we haven't seen ANYTHING about her own perspective of the crimes she commited.

Forget about the whole "will Windblade forgive Chromia?" deal, is Chromia even remorseful about what she did? I mean, Scott tried to get over that in a pretty quick and clunky way that doesn't actually show the character's own thoughts about it. What is happening in her head? Are the deaths she caused torturing her? Is she in her full mental capabilities after all that?

There could be potential for some interesting character exploration for all those questions but I doubt we will get them from Scott.

 

^^Or maybe she could later on. Who knows? Anyway that is a good question. We haven't really seen if she felt remorse or not yet about what she did. I've heard people say otherwise but from what I'm also hearing,we didn't get more in depth with her decisions and why she felt that was the best course of action and not consider any other method. Perhaps the Till All are One series could bring us that hopefully.

 

Which is exactly what I meant by "plot-mandated", actually. The consequences of her crime are... that WB remains on Cybertron, and the series named after her continues along the same path as before?

And somebody "being forced to cover" for you is not a consequence... it is sort of an evasion of consequences, by definition. But in terms of the tone of the writing, it doesn't feel like Chromia's crime is taken seriously as a crime (and a reflection of her character and judgment) as much as it is simply treated as an exigency for the plot. What she did is not at issue... so much as the fact that she needs covering.

Exactly. She pushed her unsanctioned personal agenda, one that also happened to have grave potential ramifications for both her entire world, and the civilians of Cybertron as well (their lives and the life of the Titan)... something she was relatively indifferent to. She put her selfish goals above all other considerations, without exploring other recourse or seeking outside counsel. Those were not decisions that she was in a position to make (officially or morally).

I don't really feel her actions are defensible, and I dont feel like the author has really addressed the significance of her actions very meaningfully... which may be worse. I'm fine with having a "flawed character"... but it's awkward when a writer tries to downplay and backtrack on behaviour this seriously problematic. I think that this should probably get addressed with her character sooner rather than later, in an "after-thought-ish" fashion.

Anyway, all of which to say that I think Chromia fully deserves her place on this poll.

zmog

 

Prowl. Chromia's crimes do not rely on others being dumbed-down in order to work.

When Prowl's being a bastard, it means Optimus has to be brought down to the IQ of a grapefruit for his plans to work. All the other autobots, too. It's not a fun ride. The first Windblade mini was a fun ride, and a lot of good characters really got the chance to shine in order to discover and end her plans.

Chromia, as a character, elevated other characters, Prowl has only ever undermined them. And of the two, I feel that Chromia's not likely to repeat the same story beats over and over and over again. She's grown past that. Prowl's been a repeat offender at least three times.

Chromia's not bad now as far as her writing is concerned. Prowl's still pretty terrible.

Prowl-type operations are rarely clever, although they often have characters crowing about how clever they are. And given how often mind control is used as cheap justification for his actions, nobody's sure how many of his schemes are really Bombshell's or Scrapper's, or who knows, Chip.

 

That seems like a fairly lazy way to dismiss it to me. It was a logical course of action, and it put Windblade in a position of closely working with Starscream that he character naturally wouldn't- which was not how it was before, she was avoiding him and not working with him. This is what set Windblade on the character path she's on, too, and that's had definite consequences, Windblade's willingness to cover has been further explored and elaborated on.

It set up what came after, but fit with the character's motivations and goals. That's character-mandated that drives the plot.

A lot of the complaints aren't that there's 'no consequences for Chromia,' but rather that there's no consequences to the plot or that the plot forgot it. Which is false.

Now, 'no consequences for Chromia' is true, or mostly true, but the consequences to the plot are most significant.

I wouldn't mind so much if people complained about 'Ugh, Chromia got off because Windblade covered for her.' And we have definitely seen much more of how it affected Windblade than we have Chromia, as others noted.

But people use complaints like 'bad writing' or 'just forgot about it and pretends it didn't happen.' Which, it just isn't. It affected the plot of the comic in major and significant ways.

 

I think this is the legacy of being in Barber's hands too long. A clever schemer can only really be as clever as the person writing him... and Barber doesn't excel at that kind of shell game (admittedly, the Bombshell twist was nicely set up at least). I concede that Prowl hasn't really had a good game in a couple of years.

By contrast, in the first mini, I don't really mind Scott's writing (though I find her uneven lately). It's only really at the end that Scott flubs a bit... and one of those flubs is in her rushed handling of the Chromia reveal (and subsequent indifference to dealing with it as a real issue).

Except that I sort of have to call BS on that. As the delegate and city-speaker from Caminus, it would still be largely impossible for Windblade not to work with the elected ruler of Cybertron. Either way, the stakes involve a subtle (or not so subtle) power struggle, and a shakey peace between worlds. All Chromia's actions did was further reinforce the story path the series was already on... though they also sort of set in motion the events that laid bare Starscream's corrupt games to Windblade... because of the series of bombings, Starscream was forced to be proactive in his shows of force.

No, I actually feel like it went the other way. The character's actions served only really to propagate the plot structure, rather than the other way around.

I mean, everything about Chromia's plan paints her as selfish, reckless, callous, immoral, and/or stupid... if that is how Scott wants us to feel about the character, then fine, I guess... but I don't get that impression. It feels exactly like Scott started with a "big twist ending" and worked backwards from there, trying to come up with a dubious character motivation to fulfill the 3rd act reveal she needed for her miniseries.

Is that bad writing? Not always. But in this case, I think she totally fumbled it, and hasn't done a very good job of following up on the personal and moral implications of that storyline. Chromia still functions in this storyline pretty much the same way she would if it had never happened, playing the sturdy sidekick role... with only the very occasional terse word from WB to suggest otherwise.

That may be the influence of Scott's television writing background... a tendency to work in very self-contained plot structures. It certainly describes her recent storylines.

zmog

 

I couldn't second this fast enough. Just more fodder for Windblade's supposed character development, I guess; Scott's specialty. Even the Prime episodes she wrote disregarded the characters existing personalities to do whatever plot she felt like writing. The treatment shes given the characters in her comics is disappointing, but no surprise whatsoever. It's still absolutely beyond me how she got ongoing.

Prowl is a weird case because hes he is constantly doing nefarious things, but for the greater good. He's the ugly side of the Autobot cause that no one (in character) wants to acknowledge exists, but everyone knows it has to. And when other Autobots are reminded of it, they all use Prowl as their personal punching bag... Literally. How many times has the guy been beaten on by his own team? Optimus threw him out a damn window and beat the tar out of him and almost shot him point blank in the face. Not even Megatron got that kind of treatment when he was brought in for trial. They all justify their revulsion of him because he does it while sitting behind a desk, but they all do the same stuff out in the field...It's just easier to paint cold/collected Prowl as a villain. I'm so interested in seeing what happens to him. He's really become a favorite of mine.

Getaway's offense was smaller in scale, but he won my vote for this one. It takes a special kind of messed-up to tear people apart for the sole purpose of grooming one of them to commit suicide-by-tyrant, especially when he knew about Tailgate's history, relationship, and standing on the ship. Megatron was set to die anyway, it just wasn't fast enough for him; he didn't care who had to die to get his way. Total sociopath. I can't wait to see how deep that wormhole goes and how Skids is involved.

 

Heh...

Prowl at times feels even more plot-driven than Chromia.

He's supposed to be an amoral schemer pushing his own approach for the greater good, but it often feels like he was acting only to keep the plot running.
His obsession with Cybertronians being the scourge of the universe felt like it came out of nowhere for a bot who was sacrificing everything for victory of his own faction.
Combiner Wars was probably his lowest. It was just Prowl throwing a combiner-sized fit.

Plot with Bombshell was ok, but at the same time it felt like it should be a turning point to force Prowl into re-evaluating his attitude. After all it did happend because Megatron played on Prowl's attitude and way of doing everything. Instead Prowl remained mostly the same.

Elevated Starscream, maybe. But the way Chromia was written was a total Prowl pulled on Windblade.
The only thing it does to me is making me totally uninterested in WB save for the toy. Because I know that this entire issue will be dodged forever.

I'd say... I don't really look forward to the next ongoing written by Scott. Her first WB mini was sorta ok until this very "meh" ending, but the second series hardly left me impressed. It wasn't even terrible. It was not enough to evoke any reaction. Sort of - it was there and that's it.

 

Even with merging into a combiner with OP would be good way to show Prowl how others feel about him. I mean Prowl had insights to Mirage, Sunstreaker and Ironhide minds not just OP. Even though the plot was more Hasbro doing than IDW. Afterwards when OP beat the living day lights out of Prowl and Rattrap taking him somewhere.

Prowl has yet to admit his schemes lack subtlety and are in the shadows. Pointing a gun to Jazz's head was stupid when there are so many ways to handle the situation.