cainightfics

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girl give us some content pleaseeee im dying

mamas got nothing for ya rn finished fic wise. but imagine this as a ermmm audiovisual coda fic of what tyrell was doing in s4e3 waiting for elliot to come home

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and right after i complain its back up yippeeeeeee

ofc ao3 is down right when im in the middle of uploading. and remains offline for 9 hours after that. lol

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ofc ao3 is down right when im in the middle of uploading. and remains offline for 9 hours after that. lol

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'MR. ROBOT' premiered 10 years ago today

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any updates on fics?

i need to be strapped to my laptop and forced to write bro

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did you hear mr robot is coming to american netflix??

great im sure this wont bring some very annoying individuals into the fandom...

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anyways

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What are your thoughts on Elliot's mother? She's barely in the show both as the actual person or the alter, but she is still very important.

hmmm.... good question. i think we only know JUST enough about her to figure out what elliots mommy issues are all about lol

she was clearly emotionally and physically abusive to both darlene and elliot. like, almost comically so. the bit in red wheelbarrow where elliot tells us about the childhood cat their mom tries to put in a bag and drown in the lake is so over the top she almost comes off as a disney villain at times. i think it's also likely she knew edward was assaulting elliot given how she blames him after elliot jumps out the window. i can only assume this added to her resentment. i suppose her and edward were a situation where two horrible people get together and have kids they can be horrible to.

in the narrative, she's constantly pitted as "the evil one" against elliots kind, meek, doting father. ofc the clues that elliots memories of his dad are carefully selected show up early... he ignores the fact elliot is being bullied in school and uses it to increase elliots dependence on him for company, for example. he also appears to not care for darlene much at all... from the sounds of darlenes kidnapping story, she was left totally unsupervised at coney island while edward and elliot went on rides without her??? A+ parenting. however, from the way elliot lovingly refers to his father, and disparagingly refers to his mom, it's kind of hard to know if she was horrible all the time or not.

i think what's important to elliot about his mom is that she's strict. to him, she represents order and control. in his constructed f corp world, she's totally the opposite; this stereotypical dress-wearing and lunch-making mother figure who frets over his weight and stays at home all day gardening. this is obviously the total opposite of how she was. his prison delusions represent perhaps a more realistic ideal version of his mother--strict and controlling, sure, but also literally "guarding" him, keeping him locked away. note the similarities here to elliot trying to lock himself in his room at night and hiding the key so his dad can't get to him. i think elliot always wished his mother's violence would become something that might protect him from his dad, but this never happened. tho we don't see much of the persecutor personality, the few scenes we get show that she IS this: strict, mean, constantly policing elliot, yet still invested in his wellbeing enough to want to "guard" him.

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Considering what you responded to a few days ago, what are your thoughts on people pushing away the inherently queer motifs/aspects of the show because they're deterred by Mr. Robot being a vaguely satirical redditor show? So much of the show hinges on identity that our "villain" of the show is someone who struggles with between the lines of their life and their identity I think it's difficult to miss these marks on the overall narrative. But maybe that's just me?

ya imo whiteroses writing is a major weak point of the show. her backstory scene is kinda peak lazy queer character writing lol. her dead partner doesn't even have a name and the whole thing gets like 5 minutes of screentime. i don't think it's like... dumb necessarily that she wants to go to another universe that might treat her better, where she can redo the past, but i think this motivation was 1) brought in super late and 2) handled sloppily at the 11th hour. i wayyyyyy preferred her character in s1--this shady, impenetrable, totally dominating figure of legend who could not give less of a fuck about elliot outside of how his plan interfaces with hers

i also think her being a high up minister in the ccp is stupid. AND i think her knowing price thru that is dumb, even tho it gave us lots of great dialogue (price and WR scenes r some of my fave). they absolutely did not have to make her a politician lol she could have just been some random terrorist with tons of connections and political sway due to under the table deals with people. i think the whole "she's living a double life... in TWO ways!!" thing is unnecessary, and at times sloppy. the fact we also never see her DO much (we don't see her hack, don't really know what she does as a politician, etc) leaves her feeling like a plot convenience instead of someone actually intimidating, post s2. perhaps a more interesting route to take would have been if the dark army was a mercenary band being simply paid for by the ccp, a totally neutral group that gives its services to the highest bidders... maybe price and WR could have met in this au thru price pressuring the president to buy the dark army and bring them onto the american side to root out fsociety and reinforce the american dollar?? think north korea paying hackers to do the bangladesh bank heist, for example. this would have also been a nice contrast to elliots whole "i don't give a shit about money" ethos... a mercenary group that will do anything for cash because they think the time machine they're trying to build will wipe away all of the wrongdoing needed to get there?? like a totally nihilistic libertarian doomsday cult lol. i would have fucked with this hard. if u wanted to take this further, u could have the dark army go public and start broadcasting their messages like fsociety did, and have ppl irl start to believe in this new fringe cause. it would definitely fit with prices critique in s3 that fsociety is running on vibes rather than a concrete set of beliefs--fsociety is good for whipping up a fervour about things, but dark army really gets results. tons of people, depressed and destitute post 5/9, would be willing to buy into a charismatic cult promising to make the whole world and it's problems go away. and then i FURTHER think you could have added more tyrell subplot by having him start to lose faith in elliot/mr robot and start thinking maybe whiterose is the one he'd rather work with... at which point elliot/mr robot would have to win him back to fsociety. why try to be a god of destruction in this world when whiterose has a plan to become the god of a NEW universe? (<- this is how tyrell would interpret anything he learned about the time machine lol. he'd be skeptical of it but hey, when your leap of faith in elliot goes awry, maybe it's time for another leap of faith in a different direction....)

i have gone off course and maybe im missing the point of your question but i think whiterose is a trans character whose transness is actually made way too big a deal by the narrative. like it truly does give cishet guy trying to write a transfem character lol. same thing with darlenes friend post s3 credits being a nameless sex worker, and carla being a constant victim of rape who is also made parallel to elliot by virtue of the fact that they "both can't be their true selves" or whatever... longstanding tropes surrounding transfem characters that are lazy at best and totally transphobic at worst

edit: ok im realizing i missed ur point. to hopefully answer ur question... ppl who don't think mr robot is a queer show have totally missed what was going on. like u would have to be actively ignoring major parts of the show to think that lol

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what do you make of the therapy scenes in the show? its pretty obvious that like you say theyre a reference to the sopranos. i can never really figure out what the "point" of them was when we already had access to elliots internal monologue.

ya definitely like sopranos they hold together the "themes" of episodes and arcs. sopranos does this better ofc but sopranos is a very different sort of show.

i also think therapy in mr robot works to show how wrong elliot is about himself at times. like elliot thinks he refuses to be "therapized" because its all fake bullshit, and krista is often made out to be (through his perspective, which we're forced into) ineffective. like fuck look at how he sees her dating profile lol:

elliot feels exposed and angered he has been forced into therapy by a court mandate. if you remember, he starts seeing krista after being locked in a server room at his old job and then smashing a bunch of equipment in what i assume is a mr robot episode of rage against injustice. he views krista at the start of the series as stupid, controlling, and unable to help him. however, as we see in s4e7, krista has had him figured out for a longgggg time, knowing things about elliot that he himself has completely repressed and buried. after the reveal in s1 that mr robot has been him all along, elliot starts to latch onto krista as a potential "voice of reason" who can tell him "who he really is," since 1) he can no longer trust himself and 2) its clear his diy therapist, friend, is no help.

i think krista is one of many examples of situations where elliot thinks hes better/knows more than everyone, only to be disproven. i actually dont think this means the show is pro-therapy at all. rather, elliot constantly seeks out these therapy-like situations, both within and outside of himself, because hes DESPERATE to "get better." he self-medicates, he confessed to someone who isnt there, he turns to religion, he falls into routines and takes his psych meds and tries to Be Good At His Job and Get A Girlfriend and in general adhere to the recommended "cures" for poor mental health. however, this is at odds with the deeper recognition that much of elliots problems are structural. not just that his dad molested him but that hes been let down at literally every point by the medical system. like jesus you would think after a kid jumps out of a window that there would be more investigation into whats going on with this family, but nah. the medical system exists to be carceral and manipulative, whether thats insurance tied to employment, sending elliot to court-mandated therapy, drug testing him, pathologising his crimes... this form of systemic control is taken up by other characters, too, such as angela who sedates him when his disorder is "out of control," or the dark army treating their life-saving surgery after elliots shot by tyrell as a sort of debt that hangs over him.

all of that to say i think sopranos is more about how therapy becomes a useless, masturbatory exercise contributing to the rot that creates a guy like tony. sure, tony had an abusive mother, but he also lives in a reality where he can do whatever the fuck he wants with very little consequences and sees next to no value in human life unless it pulls on his heartstrings in the right way. even platitudes like the "sometimes i go about in pity for myself" quote is subsumed by tony and used to mock others rather than inspire any sort of meaningful self-reflection. hence therapizing in the show merely reproduces and flames the fires of pre-existing violence. people will often say "melfi is a horrible therapist!" but the more accurate read would be "therapy is stupid at best and violent at worst" lol. its not like tony is ever in danger of being institutionalized or whatever, we all know melfi wouldnt dare and even if she somehow did tony would intimidate or pay his way out of it. elliot, on the other hand, experiences psychiatry as more of an apparatus of state control, and goes back and forth between criticizing it and wanting it to work depending on whether hes trying to be edgy or normie that episode

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thoughts? www.tumblr.com/ transmutationisms/784349171166642176/could-you-pls-pls-say-more-on-mr-robot-being-a?source=share

theyre not wrong but the fact that mr robot is at times a major american cringefest is also literally its conceit lmfao. hence why it draws on every single similarly cringey and weakly anticapitalist media property of the naughts and early aughts: fight club, office space, american psycho, etc.

im not gonna go like point by point bc i do think theyre kinda right about some things. but most pressingly. other characters CONSTANTLY critique elliots/fsocietys goals as close minded and ineffective. i think to characterize the chinese stuff as "anticommunist" is a major stretch when whiterose's role in the CCP is like a macguffin plot convenience at best (and works more to point to the real world conflict current boiling over the resources in the congo, which further adds to my first point about the show presenting a very purposefully close minded american privileged view of world politics). like the most convincing thing is probably how the dark army are willing to just kill themselves for the cause, and how they are treated basically as cannon fodder that constantly replenishes itself, or as a brainwashed mass—this tracks with tenets of anti-chinese sentiment that go wayyyyy back. the islamophobia serves a narrative purpose too... look at how easily everyone in-universe accepts that the poor white man tyrell was framed for terrorism, and it was ACTUALLY a couple of evil islamic radicalists!!! and then that shit starts a war with iran, which is constantly present in the background but none of the main characters really seem to give a shit about it. will hacking the deus group and redistributing their wealth help the people in iran, or in the DRC? probably not, but who gives a shit, right, now that the americans all have a bit of extra spending money? (and lets not forget that, as price tells us, most of the money the deus group has was earned through neoliberal expansionist ventures... like to the point where he DIRECTLY traces their rise to power back to the fall of the berlin wall. the labour aristocracy of america has it pretty good comparatively)

i dont think sam esmail is a political science genius or anything but when you know his motivation for writing the series came in the wake of what he describes as the "failures" of the arab spring, and how technology, a sort of discombobulated vigilante-style larpy anarchism, and lack of structure caused that... alongside foreign interference and disaster capitalism.... like. is it not obvious what his point was in making the series lol. its pretty much like irving says—rich people are buffered from calamity, and always end up profiting. thus you should try to eliminate the existence of a rich class entirely, not just the ones currently in power. fsociety has pretty much no ideology, no structure, no long term goals; it is the most childish and short sighted of groups. and like ive previously mentioned, TONS OF CHARACTERS CRITICIZE THIS. price, irving, darlenes friend in the post s3 credits (who literally tells her she has no idea what shes talking about and she needs to read marx), even fucking tyrell lol.

i think op and tons of other people who make similar criticisms dont really get the satire. same with the therapy stuff—does therapy ever really help elliot? not really. in fact, its weaponized against him. yet he seeks it out constantly, just like he seeks out other individualized capitalistic "cures" to poor mental health—think of his desire in s3 to "become normal" by being a good e corp worker, or the "ideal world" he creates for host elliot, where hes a business owner, a heterosexual man with a pretty wife who hardly exists as her own person.... its business and nuclear families all the way down.

imo these sorts of criticisms are like watching sopranos and being like "well these characters are all racist and sexist and the therapy scenes are stupid!" like yes thats the fucking point lol. in general i find posts like these to be on the same level of weak analysis as cinemasins. like its easy enough to point at something and go SINOPHOBIC!! TRANSPHOBIC!!! RACIST!!!! but like lets actually parse this out and assess what these things might be saying/doing both within and outside of the narrative. i dont refute the fact that the show has tons of redditor fans that take all of this at face value and are more interested in being like ELLIOT IS MY EMO HACKER INTP KIN!!!, nor do i refute some of OPs very correct criticisms, but man come on

it also comes down to a difference in how you approach art ig. like i would read/watch/listen to the worst dogslop ever and still find something interesting in it. not to say mr robot is the worst dogslop ever, but you get what i mean. i find these bad faith "and now i will point out to my followers how this thing is PROBLEMATIC" posts tiring, if only for the fact that they are prescriptive and dont really have anything interesting to say beyond stating the obvious with little elaboration. i also think it's annoying to tag the show ur doing this to but that's besides the point

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saw this format and immediately had to make it with them :)

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when you say tyrobot "was way better evidenced + more likely to happen in canon than tyrelliot" what do u mean

pretty much just that lol. a lot of scenes ppl attribute to tyrelliot are scenes where its mr robot who is fronting (the arcade, the "youre not seeing whats above you" conversation at coney island, etc) and tyrell and mr robot have more implied time together as well (aka all of s3). tyrells arc is also pretty much dependent on the way mr robot uses him both as his work mule and as a way to protect himself from elliot (by which i mean MM ofc) and how this reproduces a lot of his behaviour at e corp. hence the whole "puppet" argument before price walks in on them, mr robot saying hes gonna recruit tyrell because hes "the only one who can protect me from me", etc.... you will notice the numerous parallels here between this and elliots soliloquys on control and "i think youre the only person i know who actually likes me."

like i said in the post youre referencing, i think ship wars about this are kinda dumb because its super interesting how robot and elliot both view tyrell and their relationship to them, and how it changes over time. and also, like i say, i think tyrell has sort of a love/hate relationship with both alters.

i think part of this has to do with how ppl either misunderstand DID or misunderstand how its being used in the show as a narrative device. or idk, maybe its just more convenient to believe that everything is tyrelliot rather than the perhaps more canonical fact that tyrell appears to like both of them

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Thank you very much, Mr Roboto

For doing the jobs nobody wants to

Mr Roboto, Styx

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What do you think the real Elliot is like personality wise? I'm stuck on the idea that we do see the real Elliot at least once in the real world when Darlene comes to visit him on Halloween, and he's still an awkward mess but he seems more adjusted if that makes sense?? Still hacking ppl and shit but not planning an entire economic meltdown. Like just the way he talks is like a lazy dream compared to Elliot's clipped way of speaking. But what do you think?

hmm yeah i wonder this too. i also get the vibe real elliot is a quiet, socially anxious, awkward, nerdy guy who craves connection and normalcy but feels like it's out of reach. in fact i ACTUALLY think he is probably a lot like f corp tyrell lol which is very interesting to me.....

he certainly has less of an edge to him than mastermind, and is far less vindictive, vengeful, and cruel. angela seems to notice pretty fast that elliot is distant and cold after mastermind takes over, and similarly, judging from the way elliot and darlene are on halloween, real elliot seems more chill and easy to get along with. the moments where real elliot has those "angry episodes" is likely entirely mr robot lashing out on his behalf... the anecdote we hear about elliot destroying the server room when he gets locked in there at his previous job, for example.

i think real elliot THINKS he would have been happy with just a simple, normal, non-lonely life, but as we see in the loop mastermind sticks him in, that life he thinks he wants is a hollow pantomime. real elliot even says he finds that the hoodie-wearing hacker character he "creates" in the loop thru the comics he's drawing is, at the end of the day, not the sort of person he wants to be: angry, bitter, self righteous, perpetually unsatisfied, a huge asshole. i think both mr robot and mastermind are outlets for the negative feelings elliot has, yet also NEEDS to feel. from the timeline were given, mastermind was obviously "created" on the night of angelas party, when elliot hacks rohit for something to do and finds out hes a pedophile. mr robot isn't really in the business of punishing people who didn't hurt elliot directly, since he's more elliots protector, so the mastermind comes to be the avenger, the equalizer, the expression of elliots pessimistic anger and desire to try and save the world, no matter how dysfunctional.

i think you're right that "real" elliots way of speaking during halloween is a lot less clipped than mastermind--i actually have always thought elliots cadence sounded closer to mr robot, though mr robots body language is different. in terms of how he ACTS though, mastermind does a pretty good elliot imitation. like i have no doubt that people would have clocked Something Is Up faster if it had been mr robot instead of mastermind taking over full time.

part of the reason ill always defend the final twist (tho maybe not its execution) is that it's soooo hilarious to never actually show "the real person." the concept of there being a "real" elliot is closed off from us necessarily, because we ARE elliot. the whole show is just the audience living those flashes of memories elliot is exposed to before waking up in the hospital; we are brought into existence by the mastermind and thus are released when he lets go. the "real" elliot is something we cannot know, and that fucks with the usual hyperfocus on identity that tv has. ive often said i think mr robot is a brilliant satire of prestige tv lol and i think this final twist is the funniest aspect of that: what does it mean to spend the whole show never telling us about who someone "really" is? to deny the possibility that a "true" or "real" or "actual" self exists to us? we know host elliot is there, we can assume he has a big long revealing conversation with darlene right after the cameras cut off, but we'll never get to see it. mastermind and mr robot appear more "real" to us than elliot. it totally flies in the face of how both psychology-as-a-field and character driven narratives always strive to "uncover the truth" about someone. how delightfully frustrating lol. it reminds me a lot of the sopranos ending, which is also controversial and which i also love! like yes deny me closure i love itttt

i think this is why a lot of the best character development wrt this question unfortunately happens in the red wheelbarrow. mr robots explanation of elliots condition as being like a venn diagram, circles distinct yet overlapping, is imo the best description we get in the show. not separate, and yet not the same. his explanation is also very close to how one might describe the holy trinity, which i love for its irony, bc he spends most of red wheelbarrow ragging on mastermind for attending bible group study, lol. maybe they should tapped into whatever religious psychosis tyrell was on and started being like "DID? nah man. hypostases and homoousion"

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thoughts on tyrobot?

i think it was way better evidenced + more likely to happen in canon than tyrelliot, for sure. howeverrrrr i think the TYRELLIBOT drama was wayyyyyy more fun than anything. like in s2 when elliot and mr robot were fighting over tyrell I LIVEDDDDDDDD

i think what rly works about tyrobot is the moments where robot is much more adept at speaking tyrells language. he'll grab tyrell, he'll choke tyrell out, he'll call him a crazed idiot to his face while laughing, and despite tyrells little tantrums at the time, he genuinely seems less bothered by robots behaviour than he does with elliots. even just elliots "you eat here?" seemed to GENUINELY hurt tyrells feelings and push him way deeper into his whole "im a scary business man whos better than you" thing much more than a lot of robots more obvious trolling and dominating behaviour. like if mr robot had been in that scene he'd have goaded tyrell into taking him to the executive lounge outright, then ordered a molson light and the same french fries tyrell offered him in the cafeteria. his way of fucking with people is much more obvious. but then youve got elliot who ACTS like a scared animal and yet is a massive fucking cunt, which gives tyrell whiplash and makes him unsure who is really "in charge" during their interactions

in this sense i think tyrobot is a lot more honest with each other—like robot is sooooo up front about the fact hes manipulating tyrell lol tyrell is just too obsessed and delusional to see it. meanwhile elliot is wayyyyy more underhanded (and imo often confused about how he himself feels about tyrell)

my reasoning for primarily writing tyrelliot is actually BECAUSE i think its less evidenced (they honestly do not have much screentime together) and i also find the combo of their personalities funnier. but i always add in my pookie mr robot for some flair, as is the case with trotw.

in general i like to think of mr robot as spending the entire show in a hostage situation where our elliot is some freakazoid annoying body snatcher who hes gotta simultaneously manipulate AND go along with AND problematically has a soft spot for... i think tyrelliot would be his biggest fucking nightmare bc anything that makes our elliot more attached to the world, and thus less likely to be satisfied and leave after destroying e corp, massively fucks with his goals. to me this dynamic is funnier than just straight up tyrobot. also mr robot is like an underratedly long-suffering character and i kindaaa prefer to push on that bruise lol. like even the fact that he looks exactly like their abuser? ouch. imagine that being ur life

ironically the way elliot often feels about tyrell (he came out of nowhere and forced his way into fsociety, hes unstable and unpredictable, hes fragile yet terrifying, hes interesting but also a threat) is how mr robot often feels about elliot. its also fun to see where and when this opinion on tyrell is shared by mr robot, and also how their sympathies towards tyrell both flip and yet mirror each other as the show goes on. this is pretty similar to how much i love the way mr robot gradually becomes the voice of reason as the show goes on and elliot grows more unhinged.

tldr i prefer any scenario that pushes mr robot further towards this:

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Your new fic is so good 😭😭 tyrell and Elliot r so dumb I love them sm

You're a really good writer ❤️

thanks! im glad ur liking the fic