Let's talk about our feelings

[detonatable]

The tl;dr CR meme

• Post with your characters
• Respond to other people's characters with your characters
• They tell you in detail what their character thinks of your character
• Other people do the same to you!
• Good to use for CR charts or just or just ramble about your characters' feelings

Comments

[ersatzeverything]

/gets up in your business

[notglitching]

/WAVES MURDER THREATS HARDER.

Deacon's a pain. By which I mean a glorious wonderful person who's pretty much got Rinzler figured out, but Rinzler... well. He's a ball of pissed off at the world right now, and Deacon's overtures of help aren't something he's inclined to accept.

It's funny, because in some ways, Deacon absolutely does get Rinzler. Rinzler's an elite killing machine, a reprogrammed synthetic person who's been deprived of personhood for way too long. He's murderous, lethal, and easily set off. But he's been forced into this shape, and he doesn't like it. He wants to be able to exist as more, but he doesn't think he can.

But Deacon, as both a user and a liar? Is one of the last people whose encouragement Rinzler can take.

Partly, there are some... misconceptions? Differences, really. I'm canonblind, so I could be completely off, but from the way Deacon talks, it sort of seems like synths come in two flavors-- rebellious enough to want to escape their creators, or loyal and uncaring. Rinzler's from the middle ground, and his programming is very actively restrictive. He can't remember. He can't speak, or disobey, or choose to reject his programmer's control. Up until recently, he couldn't even bring himself to want more. Deacon compares him to Glory, and Rinzler just gets flat out bitter, because he sees that sort of thing as impossible for him. And he's partly right and partly not, but it's certainly not as easy as just choosing to change.

The other part is, of course, Deacon's role. The whole "pretend to be a synthetic" tactic was... well, under normal circumstances it might have been irritating? When Rinzler was already so keyed up from Peter's treatment and Alan's reprogramming plans and this general despair over his nonperson status... yeesh. It was offensive in a huge way, especially used to gain sympathy and make Rinzler open up. If Rinzler had been in slightly better shape, there would've been violence there. Deacon's "I have friends who are synths" argument isn't doing much better, particularly coming second.

Deacon's a liar, and worse, he's someone who claims sympathy and understanding towards something he'll never have to face. He's telling Rinzler to just brush off all the very major obstacles in his way, both in terms of internal coding and external prejudice and ill-treatment. But Deacon hasn't been in Rinzler's position, and acting like he knows what Rinzler's going through just pisses Rinzler off. Acting like he cares is worse. Because users don't do shit like this without a reason, and whether he's angling to control Rinzler for himself or rack up a debt or just feel superior about having "helped" something inferior, Rinzler's not inclined to give it to him.

tl;dr: belligerent cynicism. When Rinzler's not in quite so bad a spot, he'll chill a little-- and the fact that Deacon was working behind the scenes with Vision and etc. to offer actual relief does make things a little more genuine, though Rinzler's still going to be a twitchy unhappy murdercat about it all. There is potential in the long run for him to accept help, but it's going to be a very rocky start. And middle. And everything.

[ersatzeverything]

It's funny, because just the other day I was telling Glazed that someday somebody should probably tell Deacon that pretending to be a member of an oppressed class when you're not is not good ally-ing. (The fact that in canon, even half the Railroad thinks he's synth, and he tells this lie in part because he feels that he doesn't deserve to be in the Railroad because as a youth he used to be a horrible bigot who lynched a synth, and he makes up this "I'm a synth" story to explain his motivations for joining the Railroad to his colleagues without having to reveal his actual history just...makes it worse.) He genuinely means well, but I'm surprised Glory hasn't punched him yet she probably has, but never explained why.

Canon does largely present synths as either rebellious escaped slaves or loyal Coursers. Most of the synth characters with lots of dialogue options fall into one or the other. There do seem to be ones that are in-between, too, but Deacon has no interaction with them so he mentally compartmentalizes as "the synths we help" and "the synths who are trying to kill us." Which is the source of his confusion of what to do about Rinzler because he's used to his active response to synths coming in just two flavors: support completely or shoot in the head and run away, and he can see that neither of these is appropriate for Rinzler, since he did murder people and that's got to stop, but murdering him back is clearly not the ethical choice here, either. So Rinzler's situation is a new one for him, and he's still trying to work out what a solution would look like because this isn't in his usual playbook at all.