#I'm not someone who has any desire for angst specifically but chunks of the rvb fandom feed off of it

[tvckerwash]

I've seen a couple of posts here and there about the "sigma tortures tucker for 10 years in 10 seconds" scene, and I've gotta say I didn't realize so many people interpreted it literally. not to say that e!sigma couldn't have tortured tucker for 10 years, but I personally don't think that was the intended interpretation (unless it was specifically stated that it was meant to be taken literally but I'm operating under the assumption that it isn't).

restoration built upon epsilon's previously—and continuously—established unreliability as a source of information post caboose's churchification, and how he pushes his personal biases onto the people around him. we saw it with e!tex, we saw it in the memory unit, we saw it on chorus with carolina, and we saw it all throughout s15-19, assuming one chooses to see everything post chorus as a series of simulations.

epsilon doesn't know anything about sigma or the meta beyond secondhand information, so as far as he's concerned they were an ex freelancer turned power-hungry killing machine by an evil ai that wanted to reform the alpha and be one again, and that he psychologically manipulated maine to do so (which isn't entirely wrong, sigma is shown to be a manipulative jerk several times in s10, but I personally think the situation between maine and sigma is far more grey than that, as most things involving pfl are—in s9 maine was just as willing to kill a teammate as he was to put his life on the line to protect one).

with that in mind, I think it's pretty clear that e!sigma didn't literally torment tucker for 10 years in 10 seconds or whatever, in universe he only messed with tucker for 10 seconds, but he tricked him into believing that 10 years had past because epsilon thought to himself, "yeah that's pretty fucked up, totally in character for the version of sigma I've created." out of universe however, that was just the writers acknowledging the pain of the audience, as we were left hanging for 10 years on potential meta tucker angst and all we got was a 10 second scene for it lmao.