#there some key ways eiffel really doesn't understand hera or what it's like for her. and that's actually important to me. like.

[commsroom]

OHOHOHOH i like this train of thought with car guy eiffel who always has a tiny screwdriver/one of those with interchangeable heads in his pocket eiffel going to engineering and screwing around with spare parts and fixing things when he needs to think eiffel who always has little metal bits and screws that hes messing with on his desk eiffel who makes little metal trinkets for his loved ones. he sits and rambles to hera about engines and different manufacturers and they design the perfect car together with her knowledge of the world and his brain for design and mechanics. im thinking very much kaylee from firefly who never understood people but somehow machines just talk to her and spring to life in her hands. doug eiffel who wanted to go to college for aerospace engineering and work for nasa but never went to college and picked up a job hauling scrap parts to pay for said college degree before he dropped out and ended up working as head mechanic and whose dreams of building space ships were reignited when cutter found him in prison. or, my saddest thought yet, eiffel already planning on building a car with his daughter for her sixteenth birthday before she was taken from him.

idk also brings new life to his relationship with hera as the ship and how no one else on the hephaestus was really fit to do big repairs, but if he had a background in mechanics he could understand her on ANOTHER level that the other crew members dont get

oh gosh, i really don't think he'd be into anything that complex! like - don't get me wrong, eiffel is smarter than people (including himself) give him credit for, but he's a handyman, not an engineer. he is like the model for undiagnosed adhd class clown; he got through high school because he tests remarkably well without ever studying, and that was just enough to keep him from failing on account of all the homework he didn't do. i fully believe that eiffel never went to college, and never intended to. he's unambitious, and i love that about him.

maxwell's got the genius mechanical aptitude, minkowski's got the hard work and dreams of spaceflight... eiffel's passion is radio. when i say he's a car guy, i don't think it's his thing like radio is his thing - he's just a guy with a head full of american pop culture biases, who likes tinkering with stuff, and who lists "monster trucks" as one of the top ten things he misses about earth. like - i feel bad that so much of this is me disagreeing with you, these are just very different things! eiffel's definitely got tools on hand, he keeps one of his tool bags by his bed, he likes building things out of spare parts - canonically, he's got a lot of technical know-how, but it's in a much more practical, hands-on way. i don't think he'd be telling hera about design, much less his own design concepts, as much as he'd be ranking his dream cars. and i do not think functionality factors in as much as "he thinks it's cool" and/or "they used that make and model in a movie that he liked."

and speaking of hera, honestly, like... eiffel's good with his hands! and he can follow her instructions and do repairs if necessary. but the kind of electronics eiffel works with are nowhere near as complex, and i don't think spaceship maintenance comes naturally to him - and it's certainly not something he wants to do!! and while it makes a pretty big difference whether we're talking general station maintenance vs. specifically hera's hardware here, i think the fact that he doesn't know how to navigate this stuff without her input is part of the reason she feels safe with him. he didn't even think about what "optical system" could mean. eiffel couldn't (intentionally) mess with hera's systems even if he wanted to. hera is so used to people who "understand" her in that way taking advantage of her; i think it's reassuring eiffel has no interest in it. he is a people person; hera's just a regular person to him.

but anyway. i think he was looking forward to teaching anne how to drive, and that would be a depressing note to leave this on, so. eiffel could not be an engineer, and i think even the thought of the work that would require would make him break out in hives, but he could be a mechanic, for whatever length of time it'd take him to get fired. and i think that would be hot. put him in another set of coveralls and get him greased up. that's what's really important.