Sestra

Firstly! Transformers is, at its inception and core, a ploy to get people to Buy More Toys. Curses, capitalism! However, this comes with the fun bonus that we get to play with those toys. Canon is soup! Stories are what you make them! There are so many reboots and remakes and characters that you really can just throw anything at the wall and it has a chance of working out, and I find the fandom characterization of Jazz and Prowl to fit this. Is Prowl Praxian or Petrexian? Is Jazz from Staniz or Polyhex? Does Jazz love organics and their culture like G1 or is he initially apprehensive of the squish like in Animated? It’s all very flexible in the fic world.

Jazz and Prowl are characters that are popular, but not so popular that they’re oversaturated or that they need perfect characterization to suspend disbelief. They have a lot of canon content but they are not always mentioned in every show or comic. They, like everyone else, have an assorted grab bag of backstories and character traits, which you can mix and match to make the best soup iteration of the character for your story. Their options just happen to be extremely interesting. They even share qualities! Some of these aspects work REALLY well with one another. I’ll list a few of the things I see frequently.

And Primus, these aren’t even CLOSE to all of them! They have ✨so many problems!✨You really can just throw anything together! There’s enough about these two that you can leave out even some core aspects and it still feels like you’re getting jazzprowl. Want a Jazz with no spy experience? No problem, his people skills will still get him out of that bind! Want a Prowl without the enforcer background? Sure, but the numbers anxiety will get to him anyway! Occupation Swap? Still the same core characters! Does Jazz edit his own consciousness to go under the radar as a spy? Is Prowl a deadbeat father? You get to choose! They’re interesting on their own and they’re interesting together! 

Jazz and Prowl are the typical “opposites attract” ship as well, which can manifest in enemies/rivals to lovers (makes for a very popular ship). With how people usually portray them, Prowl is an introvert with a few close friends while Jazz is extroverted with a thousand acquaintances, Jazz is spontaneous and prone to recklessness while Prowl plans and is more cautious. While you know you’ve hit a wall with Prowl when he finally starts yelling and flips a table, you only realize you’ve fragged up with Jazz when he gets really quiet. They’re very different despite looking similar! They drive each other insane, too, with how Jazz’s improvisation can jeopardize Prowl’s carefully-laid plans, and how Prowl’s attempts to control Jazz infringe on his autonomy. Jazz thinks Prowl doesn’t care because he reduces people to numbers (statistics help save more people) and Prowl thinks Jazz doesn’t care because he gambles with their lives (spec ops missions (even rescue ones) are always risky and dangerous). It often takes a while for them to realize that they are actually valuing the same things! They push each others’ buttons and they’re the only ones competent enough to successfully curb each others’ worst inclinations. It’s such a good point in fics when they finally get on the same page, or at least realize that despite their differences, they are terrifyingly competent when working together. The AU where Jazz is a human jaeger pilot emphasizes their competence via balancing each other out, because they literally have to meld minds to fight. Which, holy crap, emotional intimacy and trust? Woagh,,,,

Other fics have them balancing out in different ways! For example, Jazz goes with the flow and gives perspective when Prowl stress-micromanages but appreciates the structure Prowl provides when he starts to fall apart emotionally in the cute family fic Hold Them Tight. After they stop trying to kill each other in the intermissions of Ninth, they both get one massive rescue each, with Prowl moving around the entire war front as a distraction to help Jazz, and Jazz heading a daring infiltration to rescue Prowl. It’s all in character. There’s so many things. They may be strangers and hate each other at first, but eventually they’ll have each others’ backs. 

Another reason I think the ship is so popular is that the humor and dynamic kind of writes itself. You can have them laughing at each others’ failings. You can have them both being So Confused because ‘glitch you live like this????’ World’s most popular expressive liar vs guy who refuses to show even One (1) emotion despite having thrown someone the other day. The joke of everyone wondering how Prowl bagged that baddie. Why/how Jazz wooed his opposite. It’s amazing. They’re very clever in different ways, and the banter between the two can be some of the funniest stuff ever. Their dynamic can change and because Jazz is often secretive and Prowl is often private, the reveals in the dynamic feel a lot more potent. 

Something that jazzprowl fics excel in are the types of genres and tropes that tend to be written about these two. There’s a post I’ve lost somewhere here on tumblr dot com that says something like “yeah I’ve been getting really into spy thrillers with enemies to lovers and identity mysteries (jazzprowl fics on ao3)” and it’s honestly so true. There’s a LOT of different types of jazzprowl fics but there are an unusual number of fics focused on the two smart cookies evading the powers that be and kicking aft together because the things they get into force them into Situations together. It’s so tasty. Also, Deus Ex Optima keeps happening.

Prowl and Jazz’s positions in Autobot high command or their respective social circles also make it a good ship. They are often roughly equal in rank on the same side, which means that it’s pretty feasible for them to have gotten together despite the lack of canon screen time. They could have been dating the whole time, and no one would know! While Jazz and Prowl getting together can beneficial to the war, it does not guarantee the war ending (Whereas if MegOp is going to continue having the planet fighting their literal custody battle for Cybertron, I feel they better be well and truly Divorced). Jazz often heads a gaggle of spies with faces like Mirage, Bumblebee, and Hound, who are each bound to have Opinions on his relationships. Mirage gives him slag about it, and I can appreciate a Bee who’s written mildly terrified of Prowl. Prowl gets to see how well Jazz’s team works despite his unconventional methods, and it’s a tally in his favor! There’s also Jazz’s friendship with Blaster, who sometimes has to cover for their various escapades if they’re doing anything in secret. Prowl is frequently written as related to or close coworkers with Bluestreak and Smokescreen, and while Smokescreen often fills the Mirage role of making fun of Prowl’s relationships, Bluestreak can be the voice of encouragement even in enemies to lovers fics when he thinks Jazz is really cool. He’s also very humanizing in relation to Prowl, as Prowl sometimes fills the role of mentor and Jazz gets to see “hold on, this guy cares about someone For Real”. Optimus is a mutual acquaintance, and I LOVE both an Optimus who knew something was going on all along and an Optimus who’s completely oblivious about his high command dating. Throwing a vaguely supportive dad friend into any fic is going to make it 10x funnier tbh, and these are his top employees who have suddenly started dating.

Admittedly, Prowl and Jazz as a ship are so prevalent now because they’ve already been popular before. For a while it was the most written ship on TF Ao3, above even MegOp. The best authors in the fandom are statistically more likely to have written something jazzprowl than a rarepair. By sheer volume of fics and art pieces, people are likely to have been exposed to the contagion already and the backlog of options means there will be SOMETHING out there that they vibe with. They’re asexual. They’re obnoxiously thirsting after one another. They’re a secret third queerplatonic thing. They’re lesbians. Doomed Yaoi. Portal 2 AU. Demon summoning. Fake dating. Decepticon Prowl AUs. Vigilante assassinations. Meticulously researched AU soup crossovers. Jazz as the entire ocean. You have OPTIONS. It’s easy to fall into the JP trenches because we’ve dug the trenches so wide <3. No one gets out.

And yeah. I think they look cute together. I’m a sucker for high-contrast monochrome, and they have enough accents that you can assign them a color. They’re iconic enough that I can draw them flawed from memory and it’s fun/recognizable. You can Bouba/Kiki them. You can turn them into microbes. Very malleable blorbos visually.

I adore deeply flawed characters who often are trying their best and assist each other in ways that are sorely needed. I’m very happy that these two are uniquely suited to fill that niche in a hundred different ways :D