conagher brainrot
Sometimes I think about the fact that in Loose Cannon, dell's father never gets alluded to . like at all . Fred as the shabby little bridge between radigan and dell makes me a little sad though, so I'll just be looking at weird implications and make a poorly organized set of points
With how confidently Dell talks about his grandfather's personality and the state of his blueprints, I can only assume that a)he was practically raised by him or, b)his dad talked a lot about him (and by extension fred and radigan were close) while radigan was off doing...whatever
Dell is a genius, but a lot of his gear (most, actually) comes from his grandfather's blueprints (gunslinger over there was radigan's original design). Hell, even dell's iconic sentry gun was radigan's blueprint.
If you look at the first panel I showed, dell is immediately hesitant of his ability to fix it, but switches up just as fast when blutarch mentioned radigan's blueprints, blutarch even mentions that they've plagued him for 60ish years bc they were written in complete gibberish. HOWEVER, bluetarch has also been shown to be a complete idiot, so its possible that the blueprints were in english, but just completely incomprehensible to him.
Now, lets go back to the A and B scenarios earlier. The reason I mentioned some estrangement between family members is because things start to...not make sense. Let's say that all three conaghers were quite close (with fred somehow not having any time conflicts with his job and all), how come dell never alludes to him at all when referring to a 'mr conagher' in the field? How come fred never told him that radigan's blueprints were exhumed after his death? Dell's spy domination voicelines drops the lore that it was his dad that taught him how to deal with backstabbers, so if they were open about the nature of their work how come that one important tidbit was never told to him? There could maybe be some physical distance due to work and whatnot, but I cant imagine fred not revealing that about his father to his own son.
There's also...whatever this picture is. This is a photo of radigan in the years proceeding his influence under australium, which conflicts with the comics' and dell's portrayal of him. Its possible that this is merely him a few more years down the road, when both fred and dell are fully grown and out by themselves- but in that case that would be a TIGHT window for his death, blutarch's 60-year stressing over deciphering his notes WHILE fred's still in BLU, and the news to reach dell by the time HE'S the new engie.
The fact that fred is still up and kicking in the current day (hes pushing in the 70 at the VERY LEAST) also makes the timeline stricter, since theres no way he was born during radigan's youth (makes the estrangement thing more likely too cuz are you telling me that fred never corrected dell at all/dell dgaf that radigan was more like a jolly aussie than anything, or that they BOTH didn't know too much about him)
The hundred years thing is maaybe an exaggeration, I did the math and there's no way a literal hundred years had passed between the creation of the first LEM and dell's employment (this is with the consideration of 1890 being the absolute earliest time, and even then it reached 1990). HOWEVER the half a century (or 50 years) thing is probably, as it lands square into the 1940s-- a decade into fred's employment in BLU.
The 1890s was when Radigan was called to create the machine, and its also the time that is referred to right after the 60 years thing. So if the machine was built 60 years ago, but only started to malfunction around the 50 year mark; then there would be one entire decade of the thing just breaking down with no one to fix it.
Did fred get access to the notes? I'm not actually sure. There's this moment in the comics where he flubbs with the immortality machines, but I think there's more to it
"more biology than engineering" my brother in christ you have fully functional prosthetic LEGS and your guy best friend (who btw is a sniper aka guy whose profession relies on eyesight the most) let you pluck out his eyes and replace them with better ones. There's also the offhand mention of "lookin' at the old man's robots" aka probably referring to radigan's creations, but if we go by the thinking that radigan's notes were never shown to him-- that would mean he was reverse engineering them.
And honestly? It makes sense, esp if you consider tfc engie's gear in his own game.
TFC was created waaay before tf2 so the lore implications were most likely not intended at all, but just. Compare fred's sentry guns to the blueprints that radigan has on the walls of his workshop. The dispenser and the teleporter? Way different, and the dispenser even functions differently (it has to be restocked, but it can also damage people when it is destroyed by tfc engie). Fred had big shoes to fill, but he managed to live up to them anyways; I think cheavy would have kicked him out otherwise. The TFC gen is more militant than tf2's, and with how tightly cheavy runs his crew + is concerned about formal standards (like him not wanting to hire tf2 medic due to a history of medical misdemeanors), fred would have been long gone if his creations weren't up to par.
Keep in mind that most of the world is still kinda bummy while australia (and ig new zealand) have all the super fancy stuff to themselves (with the way aussies act with other non-aussies I highly doubt that they would just hand over their own formulas for Teleportation Tech) (these war-loving guys even canonically hid up the existence of australium too, and there's a newspaper clip showing a headline of the aussies calling the discovery of magic gold a false alarm) so fred figuring out all that shit on his own is kinda impressive.
But lets say that he DID have access to the blueprints. Did he deviate from them out of stubbornness? The want to be his own man? Was he smart enough to figure out the fundamentals, but eventually failed to understand the sheer complexity of the LEM? Or did he actually do work on it, but ended up not being significant enough? If the LEM started breaking down by the 1940s, is it really possible for it to STILL keep chugging for an entire decade without human intervention? Did he knowingly lie about the immortality machines cuz he didn't want a deranged cheavy to live forever, or was he actually thinking ahead and taking the potential australium shortage into account (esp since the thing cheavy was holding was a more greedy, simpler model)?
Still, whether or not he had access to the blueprints doesn't change the bits about virgil's eyes or his prosthetic legs. I know they knew each other before the war (gravel war, world war, idk) but it would still be a huge risk for a sniper to just let someone pluck his eyes out; that sort of trust takes a looot of time and experiences.
Tldr; fred is a smart little cookie and I think he gets underestimated too much : ( . also my math isn't the best so if I get anything wrong pls pls pls correct me
