#brian on mje?

[carmillatism]

my followers whenever they see my gay-posting about drumbot brian again: God fucking damn it

#i won't be stopped #and no i'm not sorry #who do u think i am? #brian on mje? #drumbot brian #the mechanisms #nas' thoughts

[send-me-a-kae-via-subspace]

i think drumbot brian should have prophecied FALSER actually. if i were him i would straight up lie. mje who? actually lying is morally just because im just a silly little guy full of whimsy

#it speaks ! #the mechanisms #'they were all true' they couldd have not been #kae shitposts #drumbot brian

[shitty-mechs-headcannons]

The Mechanisms (especially Jonny) love using Brian as a human shield in shoot outs when he’s on MJE. They don’t do it to avoid being shot or dying, they just do it cause it pisses Brian off. He goes on about how his mechanism heals weird or like he can still feel the bullets after he’s healed. They think it’s really funny.

LMAO real

-mod fen

#the mechanisms #shitty mechs hc #drumbot brian

[em-cosplay42]

Started as joke I made @flowers-all-around-me​ back in summer I think? And then yea. F it I made update with Tim

And then I was like why not. Let´s make Brian babysit them all! On MJE and all nice, keeping the rest from murdering out planet before concert. And so I present you my work of last few weeks (done in laboratory in between experiments). The Brian babysitting other Mechanisms!

And Aurora of course, but she is far away. Don´t worry, all ropes are long enough to let them have their preferred entertainment reached! And bit thanks to Flowers (already mentioned) and to @brittleskyblue​ because motivation to do this was required. OWO

#the mechanisms #Em freaking draws #this is one of the worst-best things I have done and I am stupidly proud given the conditions I worked at this #labs are fun and I do enjoy work #but there is only so much I can do before being bored waiting one more hour for PCR to be done and 45-50 minutes for the separation of DNA #Also please appreciate the little shitty as heck details #also the shitty and definitely NOT-OSHA-SAFE-HOLDING of erlenmeyer flask #and the bright green fluid #also I was too lazy to do skin tones beyond Brian because doing this in the app I usedand condition was nightmare and looked awful #also Brian Tim and Marius (and Jonny) are stripped of facial hair. Just look at TS it looks so freaking odd #anyway #nastya rasputina #marius von raum #raphaella la cognizi #jonny d'ville #drumbot brian #ivy alexandria #gunpowder tim #the toy soldier #ashes o'reilly #the starship Aurora #they are all having a time

[transbot-brian]

So many thoughts on the morality switch.. Does Brian consider Mje and Ejm different versions of himself? Yeah its the same guy but his principals and views on the world are very different and its not that hes unable to do immoral actions, on mje he genuinely believes that its something he should not do under any circumstances.

Mje going on a spiel about morals and his switch gets flipped and he just stops.. his entire worldview has changed

Is it like putting a car into reverse while moving forward? Systems shutting down and rewiring in his brain and theres not enough power to take in five senses and pilot his body? Or is it just instant? barely even a pause and his sentence easily changes

If the rest of the mechanisms prefer Ejm, how was he on Mje for hnoc and ignominious demise of dr pilchard? Is there a timer on how long he has to be on a setting before it switches or does Brian switch or himself. I doubt the rest of the group will switch it themselves

idk mann there just isnt enough about that switch

#drumbot brian #the mechanisms #high noon over camelot

[mechsconfessions]

I think the general fandom kind of misinterprets Brian’s morality switch, and a lot of it is partially due to in universe the other mechs not really caring about it? mje vs ejm doesn’t actually flip what he believes is good or bad, for example he’d think it’s wrong to lie no matter which mode he’s in, the switch just dictates whether he thinks the methods or the end result matter more yknow? But since people just hear it referred to as “Brian is fun/boring right now” it becomes really easy to flatten down into exactly that

I kind of wish it had been explored more in canon because it sounds so interesting but we hardly even know how it works

#i always interpreted it as a sort of Jekyll Hyde thing #with one side of the switch being more comfortable with lying and whatever #the mechanisms #the mechanisms band #the mechs #the mechs band #drumbot brian #the drumb

[lillianlilie]

Honestly i kind of think the mechanisms said ‘what passed between them then is perhaps too personal for us to speak of’ in hnoc because they actually just. don’t know what is said.

I mean. Not like they ever cared about keeping their characters privacy before so why would they now? That moment is the most emotionally charged moment of the album, the resolution of the finale and of one of the main plot strings (mordred being arthers child) so i cannot imagine them leaving it out because they wanted to.

Now there are a few options.

1. brian doesn’t know what happened. In my opinion really plausible because. well. he was still hanging. he wasn’t actually IN the room when the polycule-showoff happened so why would he know what is said? I think if this is what happened he knew about the showoff because of his prophocies, probably up until ‘I’m sorry father‘ which would also explain why he only tells arthur about his son, because that seems like the most relevant thing there (y‘know with mordred killing everyone and stuff)

I can only imagine him foreseeing that scene and kind of grasping at straws to think of what the hell to tell arthur to do in order to safe the world, eventually ending up at ‘so recognise, embrace and believe him’ because well. fatherly love can’t hurt, right?

2. he doesn’t want to tell.

a) maybe he knew that the mechs would forget him in the sun and that’s why he tried to prevent the world from ending, which would potentially make his not-telling a revenge fuck you to the rest of the crew for leaving him. This also makes sense because it would be justifiable in both mje and ejm mode and i can’t imagine none of the mechanisms tried switching his mode when he refused to talk.

This also makes me think of a distraught crew trying to get brian to talk, while he just sits there smug. Except for nastya whom brian has told before but enjoys their suffering too much to tell.

b) but also, they hadn’t actually seen him for a millennia at that point so maybe they forgot that switching his morality switch was a possibility. This gives us another option if they wrote the album while he was in mje mode: He saw what happened but genuinely thinks ‘its too personal for [them] to speak of’, which would mean that line came from him. Maybe because he was genuinely emotionally attached to mordred, arthur and their world, which also makes sense with his effort to safe the world.

Maybe after leaving earth the toy soldier flips the switch because it wanted something from him that he would only do while in ejm. Then, when jonny expresses his frustration again about brian keeping quiet he happily starts talking about what happened. The crew just stares tiredly. Raphaela asks why he decided to tell now (‚just because you wanted to annoy us? By waiting until we finished the last concert?‘) but before he can answer ts pipes in like ‘Oh No, I Just Switched His Mode! We Talked and Were Both In The Mood For A Fight But He Didn’t Want To Start It, So I Switched Him To EJM!’. When asked why it didn’t remind them of the switch when they made the album it says it didn’t think they forgot about such an important part of brian and just didnt want to switch for whatever reason. ‘I Wasn’t Sure What Your Reason Was, But I Just Thought It’s Not My Business!’ Cut to a lot of defeated deadpans (and a guilty frown from marius) and ivy announcing she’s going to bed.

3. he forgot. He did spend a millennia in the sun so like. What did they expect?? That he remembers every little detail? He’s not ivy.

#it talks??? #the mechanisms #hnoc #high noon over camelot #drumbot brian

[brookreader]

Consider: Brian could very well have been the one to mechanize Raphaella (and maybe also Marius). I mean, we know from his backstory that he can perform mechanization, hell, he even seems to have figured it out independent of Carmilla.

And surely he could justify it at least in MJE (saving their life is the right thing to do, regardless of the long term consequences), if not in both modes. Especially if they requested it, which I could certainly see Raphaella or Marius doing.

#the mechanisms #drumbot brian #raphaella la cognizi #Marius Von raum

[biterflies]

hey does brian think murder is wrong on mje. ive never thought to ask it but. its based on what BRIAN thinks is wrong. not general morals. does this murderous space pirate admit that murder is wrong but just not. care. unless he is forced to care because he thinks its wrong and therefore cant do it set to mje. and does he think violence, in general, is wrong. what about violence against fellow immortal space pirates. no harm no foul or.

#drumbot brian #the mechanisms #psspt psspt psspt sunny come cry at my post boy

[miralines]

actually I also want to talk about the mechs’ approaches to the concept of good and evil and why literally none of them are anywhere near good

under the cut because it got so so long

I truly believe there was a point in Jonny’s life when he wanted to be good. That time was a decade past even by the time he met Carmilla. I think Jonny learned pretty early on that good was not an option for him, which soon morphed into a deeply-held belief that good is not something he is capable of. In reaction to this, he leans heavily into being terrible (see Interview Transcript). He believes there are good things and evil things (and plenty of ambiguity as well), and he finds good admirable, if uncommon and more than a little naive, but I think he fundamentally believes that any part of him that might have once been good was broken beyond repair before he became a teenager.

Nastya, on the other hand, views herself as capable of goodness. Sometimes. If she’s lucky and not missing anything and nothing goes wrong (see the storming of the Winter Palace). She even tried, post-mechanization, to continue to be good. But between the events leading up to her death and the unending horrors that followed, she came to the conclusion that good is not worth it. Good gets you hurt or killed or blows up in ways that make things even worse. She keeps to herself, looks out for herself and her own, and will actively hurt anyone else (because given the chance, they’ll almost certainly eventually do the same).

In a similar vein, Ashes probably figured out “good” doesn’t get you anywhere by the time they were eight. Good got you taken advantage of or killed. They do value loyalty-- if you’ve formed a relationship with someone and you value it, you will help them out, or at least not sell them out (cough mickey). This is honestly more pragmatism than anything, though-- they had no issue leaving Daedalus to die, despite having a “deal.” Mostly it applies to people they’re stuck with. Not betraying people makes things much easier when you have to spend a lot of time around those people. Do they care, in some weird way, deep down? Yes. Are they personally hurt by betrayal? Also yes. But for them, it’s the consequence of picking the wrong person to do business with, and bad things happening is as natural a force as stars shining-- including when they’re the person doing the bad things.

I think Ivy actually values good and sees it both as a desirable trait and one she’s capable of. She just has... a really skewed view of what constitutes good. A combination of trauma, personality, and the inevitable corruption of immortality have led her to an extremely utilitarian set of ethics (”for the greater good”). The “greater good” is very often preservation of knowledge, and that comes above everything else-- human life, continued existence of planets, etc. I firmly believe that at least once, the mechs have been on a planet where some authority was trying to destroy Terrible Knowledge before it could make it into the hands of their enemies, and Ivy brought it to those enemies for the sake of keeping it known. This may have led to the destruction of the whole planet, but at least the survivors fleeing from the wreckage still had the records! Ivy’s perspective is so zoomed out that most petty immoral actions (murder, theft, whatever the hell “neuro-arson” is) don’t really register as important one way or another.

Brian. Brian is a master of moral justifications. His two settings correspond to the most extreme possible version of the moral philosophies they represent: EJM Brian might destroy an entire planet to prevent the possibility of an interplanetary epidemic, whereas MJE Brian might give corrupt authorities the information that leads to mass arrests and executions because it would be wrong to lie to them. Also I think he enjoys coming up with these justifications and playing with being the moral equivalent of the monkey’s paw.

As far as the Toy Soldier is concerned, it’s not a person. Good and evil are person things. It’s exempt. I very much read its backstory as it slowly coming to reject humanity and all the things that come with it-- emotion, responsibility, even pronouns that don’t traditionally refer to objects (the latter of which can absolutely be read as voidpunk, but there is certainly room to criticize the other two). TS does what it wants, because it doesn’t see itself as part of the group obligated to follow moral rules.

Tim had a moral compass at one point. Maybe even a decent one. But then the horrors of war, etc. Tim believes and behaves as if all of his goodness died with Bertie. He can do whatever he wants now, because what’s the point?

Raphaella does not believe in good and evil. At best, it’s a nice fairy tale, at the worst, it’s a fiction designed to repress freedom and independence. Like Ivy, Raphaella is driven by knowledge, but where Ivy preserves it, Raphaella discovers it-- at any cost. Nonconsensual human experimentation poses no issue to her, because it will yield knowledge. Of course, being rude or hurtful exists, and doing bad things without sufficient reason may be rude or hurtful, but it’s not evil or wrong. Mostly in those cases the main problem is that other people don’t like it.

I’m going to be honest, I’m still very shaky on my characterization of Marius beyond Funney Man (death of byron von raum WHEN), but at the moment I see his crimes as falling under impulsivity or revenge. He feels like killing someone? Sure. He’s really annoyed at someone so constructs an elaborate plot to drive them to madness? Sounds fun. He might have felt bad about it at one point, but by the time he settles into immortality he cares more about A) whether it made him personally feel better and B) welp, can’t change it anyway. In this way, he can be a bit like Jonny, but while Jonny will do bad things for the sake of doing bad things, Marius most often has at least some reasoning, or something he hopes to gain.

If you’re still here thank you for reading and I’d be very curious to hear other thoughts

#the mechanisms #the mechs #jonny d'ville #nastya rasputina #ashes o'reilly #ivy alexandria #drumbot brian #the toy soldier #gunpowder tim #raphaella la cognizi #marius von raum #this ended up being 1k words somehow #character analysis

[ceaseless-rambler]

Okay so Brian's morality switch, I've seen various fics and stuff say that his actions on MJE require more agonizing over decision but I feel like it'd be the other way around? Like, let's say it's a situation where he'd have to kill two people to protect one person. MJE says killing is bad no matter what, so he doesn't kill them. EJM would be like "well two deaths is More Death so is that a less morally right end? Is the removal of people trying to cause harm a morally correct end?" Like, I think he'd have to have more justification for anything he did and that's far less cut and dry than "lying is bad so I can't do it"

#the mechanisms #drumbot brian #yhis post made me thing of a mechs/good place au where chidi gets the morality switch

[majorshatterandhare]

I love Brian to death, but I really struggle to try to write him because I can understand EjM and MjE in themselves, but applying it, repeatedly, is a struggle. And keeping it in mind for every decision! Some things you can justify under both philosophies, which makes me doubt I’m thinking about it correctly. Plus with EjM you could justify almost anything, I think, because you just have to pick the right End.

I also love caretaking Brian at least as much as the next guy, but would be ecstatic to see more of Brian being taken care of in fics.

#the mechanisms #drumbot brian

[watcherglowcloud]

mje mode drumbot brian said i’ll let everyone on this space station die if it means not outing a trans person

#unfathomably based #i’m hnoc posting today but i do not care #hnoc #drumbot brian

[shitty-mechs-headcannons]

totally inspired by my inability to tell them apart at times, drumbot brian nearly always gets caught and imprisoned for gunpowder tim's crimes. whenever hes on MJE, he cant break out to kill tim for it, because hed then have to kill the guards, and has to wait for the others to get him out. this has once led to him being stuck in jail for 3 decades

Hot take: Brian is strung up in HNOC because of something Tim did

#shitty mechs hc #the mechanisms #mod andy #drumbot brian #gunpowder tim #high noon over camelot #hnoc

[trashburgersblair]

For @mechtober - Day 22 - Headcannons!

Summery - Brian paints and The Toy Soldier joins him

Tags (summarized) - No archive warnings apply, General Audiences, Drumbot Brian & The Toy Solider, fluff, painting, The Toy Soldier is happy to be included, Brian is on MJE mode, no beta we die like The Mechanisms

#again i still don't know what im doing #but i hope you enjoy it #the mechanisms #the mechs #the mechanisms fanfic #mechtober #mechtober 2023 #the toy soldier #drumbot brian #my writing

[cobalt-knave]

Incorrect The Mechanisms #2

Jonny d’Ville: You know what it means when he’s on MJE? He can't hurt any living thing. It means he can't even pick flowers.

Drumbot Brian: What? Yes I can!

#i was thinking about that quote and cracking up #hope you enjoy #harmony's such an icon #the mechanisms #incorrect quotes #incorrect the mechanisms #the quotes are from buffy #buffy quotes #buffy #jonny d'ville #drumbot brian