cyril (he/him)

Okay Transformers Fandom, serious question time here. 

Where and when did the “Prowl - Last Survivor of Praxis” trope originate? 

It Goes Like This

-Praxis was a beautiful well ordered city/city state

-There were huge living crystal gardens

-The crystals produced music somehow

-Prowl was an “enforcer” a police officer stationed there

-Praxis was utterly destroyed fairly early in the war in a war crime

-Prowl himself is extremely logical often seen as cold was 

A few more sub-tropes that aren’t quite as ubiquitous.

-Prowl has a glitch that shuts down his processors.

-Praxis tried to remain neutral

-Bluestreak was a sparkling and another survivor of the attack.

-Prowl’s main emotional support after the attack came from Jazz

So Prowl was NOT like this in G1 and he is an extreme form of it in IDW. When did the change occur?

I cannot find anything but the referenced to crystal gardens in Praxis cannon and yet this concept is perhaps the single most concrete fannon after Optimus being contractually obligated to die at lease once in every universe. 

Generally speaking Jazz and Prowl had been part of the same squads in many lf the Furman-led series so it was easy to grab that to support that Jazz had offered support when Praxus went kaboom.

Prowl being cold or emotionless is a takeaway from the Marvel comics in the original G1 set up where Prowl was more single minded and focused on defeating the Decepticons. I wouldn’t say he was emiotionless but he was usually the one pushing to get this war going so it could be over. Prowl and Grimlock were actually rivals, both expecting to lead the Autobots in the absence of Optimus Prime. This was during the Furman era.

It was further solidified by his behavior and attitude in the -Ion series at the beginning of the IDW TF comics during their own Furman era.

During Dreamwave’s era, Prowl was actually established in two ways. Someone who took leadership when he had to and was actually good at mediating and getting things organized and going but had a difficult time with dealing with the public. His workholic fame came from DW where he engaged in detective-work of sorts. He still showed better people skills though.

And the other was in the War Within, where he actually was more outspoken, I would even say a bit more passionate, rather than talk with just numbers and calculations he actually considered emotions and feelings. Optronix/Optimus was the pragmatic one. He took leadership of the Autobots at some point along with Jazz.

The glitch thing actually was two things combined. The original toy bio mentioned Prowl had trouble dealing with things that were ilogical. The other was the episode where Prowl receives damage which affected his “battle computer”.

People in the fandom back then took to associate both things as one and the whole glitched Prowl thing began. Prowl actually only had this problem once in said episode and it was the only mention of a battle computer, something fandom took to assume as exclusive to Prowl (like the Insecticon’s stomachs).

In the Aligned continuity novels Prowl is also mentioned as being from Praxus along with Ironhide.

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