-CHAOTIC WAFFLE-

Okay, yes, just finished your ‘The Way Out’ Tucker fic and it was great. Buut what was that “S16 is Tucker’s Recovery One” thing abt again? V curious

I’m so glad you asked (also thank you for reading!)

Basically, I was thinking in the wake of all the Tucker-talk on s16 that if we’d seen Wash’s character arc in chronological order, people probably would have cried OOC fowl on him for the stuff he did in that Recovery Era. But people do stupid stuff under heavy stress, and the stressors and results of those stressors look different for different people. 

I’ve actually reworked a bit of this theory in the last couple days, but the gist of it is that Tucker and Wash have character arcs with very similar shapes, with Wash a few steps ahead. It looks kinda like this:

BGC Tucker Soldier DavidGo with their assignments only to get more than they signed up for in the form of alien prophecies and crappy superior officers. They step up in the forms of killing Wyoming and whatever minor mutiny Wash pulled that got him court martial. 

Desert-s10 Tucker PFL WashNow theyre getting thigns done. Fighting the good fight (supposedly). Not exactly overflowing with confidence, but making it work. Chorus Tucker  Season 6 WashThings get dark. Trusts, gets betrayed for it. Post-betrayal, what are you gonna do about it? Risk your life and drag them down with both hands, that’s what.

post-Season 13/Blue vs Red Tucker  Season 8 WashJust. So done. Do not cross his path, do not collect $200 dollars. Makes stupid mistakes he regrets later. (If Carolina hadn’t stopped him, I do believe Tucker would have killed Temple.)

Shinso Paradox Tucker  Season 11 WashIs supposed to be “a leader.” Has no idea what the hell he’s doing. Defaults to what he knows (For Tucker, leader is The Cool Guy who everyone respects. For Wash, it’s a hardass who wants everyone ready for anything at any moment; basically Carolina) Both of them fail at this spectacularly. 

Singularity Tucker  Wash for the rest of ChorusHey maybe I can just be a leader by being me? Like regular me? Just bein’ me and having friends? That could… that could be cool. 

After that they’re gonna have to diverge a bit, cause I don’t really see them pulling a ‘debilitating injury for the sake of all existence’ thing twice. …wow on that thought, I’m not worried about Junior at all I’m sure he’ll be fine

Anyway the point is that Wash is an excellent 20/10 mentor figure for Tucker who’s already helped him avoid some of Wash’s own worst pitfalls. Also I really like character analysis and understanding what causes characters to reach their worst extremes so that I can better reign them in in my own writing with copious amounts of FLUFF and that’s more or less how this fic was born.