About Robert and his relationship with violence (among other things)
I saw this post about robert being a dirty fighter and was five and a half paragraphs deep typing up my own opinion in the reblogs before realizing I should just make my own post about it. So.
It is comically easy for writers, when presented with the scenario [guy that has no powers that uses a mecha to do superhero bullshit], to fall into the trap of making said guy kind of hopeless when separated from their mecha of choice
the first thing that tipped me off to the fact that dispatch was NOT about to fall into this trap, was not, in fact, the fact our first major decision was a choice of whether or not to drop a guy off of our balcony, but rather when he was talking to Blazer and Chase post first shift, and when he said "I do not fuck around with my job" (or something along those lines.) I was kind of thinking. Oh. you're like. Locked In.
I've seen speculation that Robert could have been anywhere from eleven to seventeen when he first picked up the mantle after his dad died, but no matter how much of a hardass Robbie could have been about training and what have you in relation to preparing robert to be the next mecha man, you can only do so much to prevent what you taught from flying out the window the moment you get shot while out of the suit you claimed you would be dying inside of. Sincerely, I refuse to believe Robert was any semblance of sane or stable for the majority of his career as mecha man. He self admits to "running on ducktape and determination" for "the last few years", not to mention spending millions on repairs and maintenance, and I imagine he blew through most of that in his early years before getting the hang of Not getting blown the fuck up all the time. He refers to himself specifically as infamous, there is a built in self awareness to how he behaves and carries himself as Mecha Man.
We also forget that Robert is fresh out of an approximately four month long coma. By the time of the bar fight, it's been maybe five to seven months since he's become the Z-Teams dispatcher. This means at best he's just begun the long term phase of post coma recovery, and at worst he's still in the early recovery period. Invisigal must be blind and deaf not to notice that he's sticks and bones during the time she called him "dad bod", he probably makes minecraft skeleton noises when he walks, I just KNOW he had some eating disorder adjacent nonsense going on even before the coma, we've all seen how fucking miserable his apartment looks. He doesn't have furniture, he sleeps in a plastic chair???? The dog looks more well-fed than he does—just. All I'm saying. I'm just trying to set the scene.
We all know how the bar fight went. Ripping augments out of peoples skulls and biting fingers right off of people hands (he is such a biter. literally. A Biter). What I'd like to point out is that he is extremely blase about the whole Causing Permanent Injury thing. This is not nearly the first (or last) time he's done something like this, neither in universe or even on screen. He flung toxic out of the warehouse without double checking the guy even had powers, like, period, not even regenerative, this literally could have been A Guy he sent flying. Also: Flambae. It's a little hard to gauge whether or not Robert meant to cut the guys fingers off, or if it was moreso a "heat of the moment, we are literally trapped inside of a burning building" kind of thing, but Robert clearly doesn't care much for the fact he did that. If anything, it says a lot about how he categorically treats people across the board very similarly. His hands being E rated for Everybody really isn't a false statement. His bigass laser sword getting a mean swipe at Flambae and him biting the fingers off of a guys hand are equally notable to him in the fact they aren't notable to him. A guy actively burning down a mall complex versus a random in the midst of a bar brawl are deserving of equal reactions, or rather, they are equal threats to Robert
I'm not trying to imply Robert was like, more or less scared/frightened/etcetera in one of these scenes than the other. I just think Robert treats violence in a pragmatic and very very impersonal tool and type of action among the roster of other ways one can react to a situation. Categorically, these likely situations rank pretty similarly to Robert. Of all the crimes to Flambaes name, murder isn't one of them, so engaging with him was probably a "risk of death without (strong) intent to murder" situation. The bar fight is just about the same too. I'm not certain how common knowledge it is, but it's actually really really easy to accidentally kill people, and it happens especially often at bar fights. I personally am aware of the fact smashing a beer bottle over a persons head very often leads to near immediate accidental deaths, but upon some fact checking, there are PSAs and campaigns going around warning the dangers of one punch kills. Back on track though—a bar-wide brawl is honestly probably more dangerous to Robert than his entire encounter with Flambae, because at least he had the suit at the time.
Let's take it back a couple steps for a second. As a kid, Robert messed around with the Mecha Man suit, and subsequently had his ear fucking blown off. (Not to mention, it very well could have been his head without Chases intervention.) As contradictory the comics are to the main plot at times (Robbie death inconsistency I am Looking at you), it's still relevant. Robert, by all means, would reasonably have some form of PTSD or trauma from this. Throughout the game, him missing a chunk of his ear is just that, nothing more to it, and I feel like that demonstrates Roberts feelings about violence enacted on him and violence he enacts on others—it happens, but what's more to it?
Violence isn't personal to Robert, which is probably why the choice to confess that he was Mecha Man after the brawl was even an option, despite the fact he knows that Flambae has a grudge against Mecha Man. Robert fucks around with Mecha Man? Well, shit, no wonder his ear was blown off. Guy is trying to choke Robert out? Uh, goodbye fingers. Hell, Invisigal reveals she's the direct reason he got put into that four month coma? Well, that one is up to you, but it's not like Robert was looking for the person who did that, he just stuck it into the "Shroud bullshit" bin and called it a night. Violence is only personal to Robert when someone makes it personal, and the only times he makes it personal himself are during times where he considers it unreasonable (re: Prism throwing that mug of coffee at him in the break room), but even then, he doesn't take it any differently than, say, all the rest of the hazing when he was new to dispatching.
I could get even more into it, case by case style, but I think I've gone on long enough. The point has been made, by now, though I'm curious if anyone had similar or different interpretations of this topic. I'm obviously very late to dispatch, so maybe I just missed the part where everyone is awesome and has correct opinions about dispatch all the time.
Sources: [About recovering from comas] [Dispatch timeline post] [Characters crimes list] [Once punch can kill]
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