#words have more than one meaning

[edutainer2022]

The convoluted dynamics between the Mechanic and Scott keeps fascinating me, as they're antagonistic/contrasting characters, but also mirrors. This is a bit of a darker spin on the issues that drive them and inform mutual (explosive) reactions. I left the ending open to interpretation (hopefully!). Maybe there's hope for a road to a working relationship. Maybe there's more than one. Maybe it's a dead-end, or a clean slate.

Many thanks to @janetm74, as always, for bearing with the twilight of my mind.

CW: mention of implied past assault and mental torture. Nothing graphic.

MEANINGS

The way that day started, he would never have guessed how it would end. Yet there he was. There they were.

The morning met a round up of a grueling overnight rescue. For the first time since the neurolink to the Hood had been severed, they tried out several of his customized mechas on a rescue for difficult to reach places. The Illustrious Commander was, of course, vocally against the field test. Or granting him any more access to their systems beyond what was necessary for the T-drive. No surprise there. But Brains was excited, and with a helfty support from the orbit, the Commander was outvoted and outgunned. In the end, the rescue nearly cost the Commander's life anyway, when the idiot ventured further beyond where his mechas would go. Beyond what was prudent, humanly possible, or sane. The Mechanic had long got his own suspicions, but that night - he saw red.

Technically, it was the next morning, when he stormed the locker room showers in the hangars. Thunderbird One was the last one back to the island, held back on site by reporting to the local authorities. Or maybe delaying the inevitable. He suspected the other Tracies were giving their Intrepid Leader a wider berth before the debrief. The Mechanic had no such qualms.

He yanked the stall door so hard - the hinges keened. Paying no heed to the scalding water blasting from the showertop, he slammed the younger man face first against the wall, an effective chokehold immobilizing his any attempt to wrestle free or fight back. The Mechanic saw Scott spar with Kayo or with his brothers in the island gym, on occasion. More often he would pummel the equipment, working through whatever demons haunted him. The Mechanic was certain he was at least one of those. Scott was good in a scrap. Very good. But with at least five inches and fifty pounds on him, Scott was currently no match to the Mechanic's FURY. He was so angry his voice went hoarse:

"Listen up! You wanna get yourself killed - that's between you and whatever the heck you believe in. But don't you DARE use me as a TOOL to punish yourself EVER AGAIN! I won't be your flagelation puppet! You pull another stint like that - you can build your own damn T-drive!"

He was panting, the blinding ire had winded him. It took a moment to realize Scott wasn't struggling against his firm grip. In fact, the man was completely still, each muscle and sinue stiff, thrumming with tension like a live wire. Frozen. He was expecting a lashing out. A showdown. He'd have welcomed it, in fact. The tension building for weeks from the very bowels of the dormant volcano got him antsy. He was ready to erupt. And so was the Tracy Commander. But from the vantage point of his height the Mechanic could see blue eyes squeeze shut. The hiss came out stifled, like Scott's airways were closing up:

"Go ahead... Get it over with..."

Only then it occurred to the Mechanic how dubious the situation was. The realization rippled a chill through his veins, despite the heat of the running shower, rapping over his back. He looked up Scott Tracy's GDF file way back in the Hood's thrall. The classified parts and the ones Tracy Sr. made sure were stricken from the record altogether. The Mechanic knew firsthand what it felt like to have no control over one's own body. Over one's own mind. And now he was nearly perpetrating the same brand of violence. Or so Scott's triggered instincts read into his intent. His hands let go of the other man's body almost automatically and took a step back. Horrified. Through the fog of the scalding water he could see the rigid body start shaking, leaning against the wall. That particular clash was far from over, he understood as much. But they didn't exactly do apologies, so without another word he stalked out.

***

He expected nothing less than a throw of hands when Scott Tracy next showed up in his workshop. Technically, it was a portion of Hiram's labs, allocated to him, complete with sleeping quarters and even a bathroom of his own. He WAS cordially offered guest rooms on the upper levels of the villa, but he knew better than to accept. His current status didn't bode well with broad daylight out in the open. Besides, he preferred not to stray far away from the T-drive specs and test simulations. In case inspiration struck at odd hours, which it frequently did.

Surprisingly enough, Scott Tracy was not seeking a fight. Or immediate termination of his arrangement. Or a lawsuit for aggravated assault. Which would be a moot point anyway, since the Mechanic was technically a fugitive. His jailer, Rigby, definitely reported he didn't exactly comply to being released into the Tracies' custody before the Hex exploded.

He wasn't quite sure either if Scott Tracy was seeking oblivion or offering a truce, when he stepped into the workshop at a small enough hour of the night, brandishing a bottle of scotch. The Mechanic wasn't a conossieur of top shelf alcohol, but he knew enough to recognize the Macallan 1926 single malt that could easily pay for most of Zero-XL deep space supplies. It took several minutes of comically shuffling among the battery of cups, amassed through long hours of agonising over failed T-drive tests, but they finally poured two fingers each. They were drinking a century and a half old scotch out of chipped, coffee-stained novelty mugs. In complete silence. The Mechanic didn't feel like pursuing a fight after the incident in the showers. Or a more recent one, in the hangars. He gave Scott the space to speak first. Or not. A flash of blue finally turned to him.

"I'm sorry."

That was new. Apparently, they WERE doing apologies. But the Mechanic needed a bit more context to go on, so he took another sip in carefully crafted quiet.

"I'm sorry I made you feel like a tool. Again. I didn't think... it would hurt you thus."

Hurt was a word he didn't expect. But couldn't but appreciate. Hurt rarely featured in any conversation around his previous gig as Hood's henchman, if it were not the hurt he inflicted. There was definitely no shortage of the latter. He raised the cup in acknowledgement and the tension in the blue eyes eased up a faint bit. He took an extra minute to consider his own words.

"I'm sorry for lashing out. You scared me."

Maybe it was the second helping of scotch talking. He was almost befuddled to pinpoint the truth of it. His inventions had never been heretofore used to save. Only to destroy. And on the first try they failed. He could hardly ever imagine regretting not saving Scott Tracy, of all people, yet there they were.

A mirthless bark of a laugh broke through his impromptu reverie.

"You're new here. You'll get used to it!"

Maybe it was scotch talking too. Maybe Scott Tracy was so accustomed to his own self-destruction mode, he didn't see the points of no return anymore. Didn't see the point anymore. The Mechanic could certainly drink to that. But his newfound freedom, newfound lease on life, and with it - newfound PURPOSE, made him hyperaware of such all too familiar mindset. He wasn't Scott Tracy's sibling, or friend, or mentor. He wouldn't roll over and let the man martyr himself on the altar of his perceived failures. Several days ago he probably wouldn't believe himself ever thinking that. Definitely the scotch talking. Yet there they were.

***

They could certainly attribute the rest of the night to the rest of the scotch. It didn't come to words between them beyond that, but it did come to a showdown. His split and swollen lip and a bruise blooming on the edge of Scott's jaw would tell a story, come dawn. Definitely scotch talking.

The eruption was inevitable, as they probably both knew - tension cackling in the space between resentment and recognition. Speaking of live wires. He maybe should have been aware Scott was still chasing retribution for himself. He might have been aware he was still on a mission to reclaim control by all means. For a brief, cathartic while it didn't matter. So there they were. Back to square one.

[ilynpilled]

it frankly pisses me off that what is essentially “rapists and abusers should be depicted as monstrous caricatures because humanizing them is inappropriate” is considered a very moral and enlightened position to have on art by so many people. a rapist can feel pain, have moments of vulnerability, be amiable and charming, express remorse and compassion at times, be a victim themselves, and so on in real life. they are even capable of doing good things. they can have different sides to them and have individuals in their lives that they are kind to or have a decent relationship with. they will be a human being, and that fact encompasses a lot. conflating that with the claim that they are entitled to and deserve forgiveness or absolution is an issue. nurturing a mindset that believes they need to be one note and uncomplicated to be a correct and tasteful depiction of a rapist inadvertently falls in line with the logic of “how could they have possibly raped you? they are so normal and kind to me. they did all these good things here and there.” ok that doesn’t change that they are a rapist.

[hinamie]

i mean he's got all the outfits now might as well show them off

bonus:

jjk atla!au with @philosophiums

[lucabyte]

Different standards

[starry-bi-sky]

Who is the more well-adjusted twin; Damian, or Danyal? Why, it's Damian, of course!

And I have an explanation for this! But first I wanna preface this that this is just me like, rambling about this thought I have and it's not an attack on the trope as a whole. I love the Danyal Al Ghul au which is why i'm so deeply passionate about it, because I think it has a lot of potential to be explored. It's no secret that I've mentioned before that I think Danny's psychological development tends to get overlooked and underutilized in DAG aus, and the impact that growing up in an assassin league often goes ignored. This is just me further expanding on that.

Now lets set the stage! This is specifically for Danny who is adopted by the Fentons later down in life. Lets go twin au. At 10 years old, Damian goes to the Wayne Family, Danny is adopted by the Fentons (regardless of their affiliation with the League). By 14 years old, who ends up the better adjusted, more socially aware, spiritually in-tune with themselves, sibling? Why, Damian is! Why is that?

Because he has the actual support he needs compared to Danny. And I'm not talking about good or bad parents Fentons, because either way my opinion doesn't change. Damian would end up the better off twin, because, frankly, his family knows his background. They know he grew up in the League, they know what the League's teachings are, and they know he's a born and raised assassin. Knowing this, they can then help tackle and dismantle the teachings and lessons he has been given and ingrained into by the League. They may be a dysfunctional family, but they're functional enough to at least actively help deprogram all of the League's teachings that have been ingrained in Damian throughout his childhood.

Can't say the same for Danny.

Lets say Fentons here don't know his background -- and even if they do, the results may just stay the same if they play their cards wrong, -- Danny's now just been thrown into the deep end of a pool and is essentially being told sink or swim. Regardless of how he got there -- undercover, faked death, etc -- he has no proper support. He knows the League is meant to be secret, he's not gonna speak on it for various reasons. Whether it be some still lingering loyalty, fear of harm, or whatever. Whatever the reason is, he does not have a proper support system in the Fentons, no matter how nice they are. They can only tackle the surface level stuff and whatever Danny allows them to see -- if Danny ever lets them see it at all. For what do assassins do when they don't want to be caught? They hide. Sometimes in plain sight.

"But Jazz--" Jazz is a child. She is 2 years older than Danyal and no better at giving him a proper support system than the two adult Fenton parents, even with parentification. We don't know when she got into psychology or how long she'd been studying it by the time Danny's 14. We just know she's really into it. Even then, Jazz is not a licensed or reliable therapist, or even an experienced or implied good therapist, and should not be used as one either. It's a disservice to her character to reduce her down to 'supporting female emotional crutch'. Besides, therapy only works on people who want to get better. Danny, who'd be hiding who he really is, has very little incentive to want to, or to even think something is wrong with his way of thinking, even with exposure to the outside world.

When people's beliefs are outright challenged, they tend to double down on them, and Jazz canonically has a habit of psychoanalyzing her family and declaring what she thinks is the problem -- regardless of whether or not she's right about it. Jazz would get into psychology, try and psychoanalyze Danny, and all it would do is cause him to clam up, shut into himself further, and throw up even more walls so that she can't figure out that he has been lying this whole time. It would do more harm than good, and would actively hinder any progress he'd make in trying to open up to them. Roads and good intentions and all that.

That being said, I think Danny's development and dismantling of the League's teachings would be slower than Damian's. Much slower. Because he would be the one having to pick apart everything and figure out what is right, what is wrong, what he wants to keep, and what he wants to toss. Everything he unlearns would be stuff he has to unlearn himself. If he even gets to that point at all -- depending on his experiences, he very well could not change at all, or change very little. The League acts as a purge for humanity, meant to reign in their hubris and retain balance, they just also happen to be assassins for hire. Danny's time spent in Amity Park could as well strengthen his belief in their teachings just as much as it could weaken it, especially if it goes as canon and he gets bullied.

Regardless, being tossed to a civilian family as someone who is very much not a civilian, without any support, would be actively detrimental to Danny's overall mental health and development. Especially to strangers like the Fentons. Damian was closed off and standoffish even with blood family, and it took him time to open up to them -- Danny, with the Fentons, would be even more so. He doesn't know them, he doesn't trust them, he has no rhyme or reason to open up to them, and since the Fentons don't actually know him, they can't help him the way he needs. Once "Danny Fenton" is made, he has even less reason to open up. So long as Danyal allows it, they will only ever know Danny, and they'll never know Danyal.

TL:DR the Fentons aren't the better family option just because they're civilians, and actually that makes them the worser option between the two because they can't give Danny the proper support he needs. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[tremendously-crazy]

Relationship envy except I envy the bond between iconic fictional characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson

[felassan]

.

[roomba-mangga]

thoughts on thistle and yaad's dynamic that i vomited in the tags of another post but will now try to articulate here: they're not actually family, or at least they shouldn't be. not in a conventional sense anyway. framing them as uncle and nephew (even in a non-literal, silly fantasy world way) rides more on technicality than anything concrete.

what i mean by this is yaad calls thistle by name and says he and delgal were raised "like" brothers. he talks about thistle like he's an outsider imposing himself into the melinis' space, and it's clear that thistle was never legitimized as a member of the family. for thistle's part, though we don't know how he would treat yaad pre-demon brainrot, it's safe to assume based on the way he punishes him—turning him into a doll—and how little is shown in the way of any sort of relationship between them that thistle only cares* about yaad as an extension of delgal (otherwise i'd expect something like kabru and milsiril, because it's not like another complicated interspecies family dynamic would be out of place, yet there's next to nothing on them even in bonus content, just their scant interactions in the main story).

in essence, they're strangers to one another. thistle's desperation to preserve the illusion of a family, a model where he doesn't even fit, was the snare they were caught in for the past thousand years of stasis. yaad-as-nephew is a prop to uphold that illusion, and thistle is playing a role he's unfit to play. in the context of post-canon interactions, attempting to reconstruct that facade would only be a reenactment of trauma for them both (in a deeply compelling way i'd love to watch unfold, tbh), as that "uncle and nephew" framing places thistle in an implicit position of power over someone he's already traumatized through misuse of authority in the past, a role which also perpetuates his adultification and yaad's infantilization in turn. it'd mostly be an obstacle to any real connection.

best to burn the melini family bridge, i think, and if there's still anything salvageable left in the rubble, let something different supplant it.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

FOR A BEAT OF HEART, THE BREATH IS SHOT. AND WITHIN A BREATH, THE HEART IS CAUGHT. THE PIPES ARE BURSTING, UNDER GREAT STRESS, BOLTS TORN ASUNDER, MAKING A MESS. A FINAL COUGH, A FINAL RETCH, A GOREY SLOUGH, CLAIMED BY WRETCH.

[codacheetah]

The start of the Loop segment of the Siffrin & friends twitter QNA, and the message that flipped Loop's answers from silly to dodgy and blatantly upset.

Loopchat from speaking to Loop 20+ times.

Certified Loop dysphoria post

[michyeosseo]

I am determined to take Shen Li home.

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

OH. okay so normally i dont touch discourse with a 20 ft pole, but this has been niggling at my brain tonight and i finally realized why

the people who are mad at qbbh for the memory loss and “dodging consequences” dont understand that he doesnt want to dodge consequences. Like they cant know that, they werent focused on him when he was literally feeding himself to the soul vultures and planning his eventual imprisonment and also. The Many Many Many hints he made towards suicide/sacrifice/Just Fucking Dying.

ccbbh is a subtle roleplayer, he’s been building this shit up for two whole months- it was day FIVE of the eggs going missing that he resolved to do whatever it took (hurting his friends) to get the eggs back. It was day three that he followed in dapper’s footsteps and started feeding himself to the soul vultures (and gaining a Massive headwound beneath his hood in the process- you can only see it if you go on namemc and remove the layers). He’s got impaired judgement. Even the memory issues arent a new thing- i cant remember exactly when they started, but one of the first big moments i remmeber was september 30th where he spent an hour falling into a delusional frenzy searching his base for cameras that he forgot he asked aypierre to plant.

The super murder of purgatory and the memory loss afterwards probably all feels very sudden for people who havent been following his story, but as someone who has been- all of this has been true to character. The only cheap swings he’s made have been combat-based in purgatory, and even the motive for those was built up in rp.

People are calling for consequences, but he has alrwady been experiencing self-inflicted consequences for months. The blue on his usual outfit is blood. This recent memory loss isnt a restart to get away with the atrocities - it is yet another consequence of his egg-protecting complexes and the ways he punishes himself for failing them.

he is NOT a moral character. he’s a demon hiding in plain site. he has eaten people. he has killed people. he understands the cruelty of his actions, and the consequences of them for the loved ones of his victims. but it matters when that harm is being done to his loved ones. he’ll still do it, because he will do anything for the eggs, but it matters, and that means that he has already started the process of self-inflicting those much-demanded consequences

[cipherr]

[tiger-in-the-flightdeck]

.... Roy, you're supposed to be explaining why people think Connor's gay, not why they think you're gay.

[makotonaegiunderstander]

something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.

“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”