MYoung23 wrote:The Autobots are supposed to be the good guys stopping the Decepticons. Letting innocents die when you can save them goes against what these IDW Autobots are supposed to be about. Cold logic is flawed. Prowl is a big reason why these Autobots lost their way and acting like Shockwave is a big reason why.
1. The humans seem to be doing a great job of stopping the Decepticons themselves at this point. And the Autobots aren't even actively trying to help, they're just sitting around on their thumbs hiding. Prowl's right, they'd be better off moving to a less hostile planet, seeing as how the humans not only can take care of themselves, but are an active threat/enemy to the Autobots.
There's gotta be plenty of other organic races out there in the galaxy who truly would appreciate the Autobots' rebuilding from their own Decepticon attacks or would be non-hostile that the Autobots' time would be better spent helping; why instead waste your time on a species that doesn't want you and your help?
2. And if, while saving said innocent, he ends up dying and/or sparking an even worse anti-Cybertronian frenzy of people saying how "Now the metal monsters are attacking our children!" or something similar, even more people besides that one could die. Prowl got really, really lucky (yay Contrived Plot Luck), as there's so many ways that could have gone wrong and just made things even worse.
The Autobots didn't lose their way at all. They've always been the good guys in this series. That line from Drift was just BS from a writer who misinterpreted most of the -ations and thinks all good guys need to be Lawful Stupid paladin types to be "real" good guys.
Meanwhile, as was pointed out in AHM #15, the various loose cannons and impulsive decisions that backfired are part of why the Autobots are so badly on the rocks right now. If the Autobots keep doing impulsive things in the short term that damage the greater good in the long term, then there will be no one to do any protecting at all, as the Autobots will be wiped out.
(...well, you know. If we weren't reading a story where magic unrealistic Contrived Plot Luck always happens.)
3. Actually, the IDW Autobots were always about being soldiers in a war against their enemy, balancing protecting innocents where they could with the reality that sometimes you have to compromise in the short-term to achieve the greater good in the long term. I liked those Autobots; they were believable and respectable. The Autobots in AHM and the ongoing I just want to slap upside the head and tell to grow some ball bearings and some intelligence, respectively.
On top of that... I'd point out that these are the same Autobots who have done counter-infiltrations on countless planets and seen many of those planets suffer worse massacres than Earth did. Why now, after millions of years, do they suddenly turn into native-worshipping hippies? What's so special about humans compared to all of the other organic species they've met up with and observed and seen suffer?
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If this spotlight was about almost anyone else, it might make more sense, though it'd still be kind of boring. But it bugs me seeing the type of character I can relate to and empathize with--the one trying to advocate reason, logic, and practicality in a sea of emotional people who do stupidly impulsive and damaging things and ignore you--made into just another boring generic character stripped of what made him interesting.