Who else thinks Randall is awesome?

[Nexas]

I see PBL got here before me just as I was typing this up hehehe…

I wouldn’t call Randall “brutal”…but I wouldn’t call him a “hero” either (maybe at first, he can become one, but mostly in “anti-hero” it’s dependable).
Randall’s goal had it’s personal gains (mostly on things he figured he “needed”, and nobody else bothered to give it to him, those things being what most people need to live), but yes, a large part of it was to be the one to make things better for the city.
Doing this does two things. One, Randall expected it would get him the admiration and respect he deserved (which he had had at one point earlier in his life and it was taken from him), and, like everyone would want, to actually live decently enough instead of going paycheck-to-paycheck with no real support structure.
Two, it fixes a problem the city was having. We’re talking shortages and city-wide blackouts. Read newspapers. It was a problem…and back-up generators aside, imagine if hospitals and the like were affected. Energy is used everyday, and when one of your main suppliers is doing it’s best and yet not meeting demand…a solution needs to be found.
Now, not going into the whole “humans are animals to monsters basically” thing…but at the basis, humans were a resource, and the practical method of scareing was becoming less and less effective as the march of industrial progress went on. It needed to be improved. Hence, the extractor.
Now…this machine took time to make…and the seemingly-questionable nature of it’s use made it’s construction essential to be put under the radar. So, Waternoose had Randall (and suggestibility Fungus depending) make it. If he screwed up, the blue-collar would take the fall, not the boss. Randall was easy to put in a position where he’d see the machine as his only means to get what he felt he needed, so he stuck with it. No harm really…he was being supplied company parts by Waternoose to build it…and all it really took, at first, was countless nights, loss of sleep, probably no spared attention for health in general, and keeping his mouth shut. Oh yes, and doing his normal job along with it.
Now, Randall may not seem the easiest to work with…but he’s an honest worker at least. He managed to do his job and work on the extractor, all the time thinking of the end goal that he’d get what he’d need.

Then…testing.
Of course, making a machine like the extractor took time, naturally…but it also had to be efficent and SAFE. Killing a human child wouldn’t just be stupid, and dangerous it would be a waste in terms of an energy provider. That’s probably a reason why Randall was taking so long, making sure it wouldn’t do that…Waternoose would probably care less though, as he would do anything to keep his hands on his CEO position and not “dishonor” what his father/grandfather held.
Essentially what this thing would do is forcibly extract scream energy from a child…presumably producing at 15 times the power (as the extractor, if I recall, was hooked to 15 separate canisters) one door venture would make. Now the effects seem to be an extreme “out of breath” sensation, obviously, with depleted sensation and the subject being drained of…well…energy. Aside from that, a few minutes later the subject would be fine. (This comes from Fungus who, being on the receiving end, was fit for a chase moments after his event. As monsters have similar make-ups to humans for the most part, his result would be similar for a child).
The machine, itself, seems to be an answer to the problem alright. Improving energy production by 1500% (I think somewhere around there) per venture? That’s a no brainer. Debaters on human subjects however, might find the machine to be dangerous to put into practice…but then again, so is for a monster, trainer or not, to go into a door himself. By the time the prototype was completed, and tested, it would be revealed as the only way to solve the problem. By then, blackouts would have been more apparent. Whether through understanding the extractor’s benefits…or desperation from citizens…it would be accepted.
Whether Randall would be shown as a “hero” or not…depends on what exactly Waternoose allows.

Sorry, a bit of a ramble there…not a completed one, but figured to clear up a bit.

In the end, there was no way Randall would be aware that laugh energy even existed. He was trained to scare children and he was really really good at it. Not having much laughter himself in his life, he probably didn’t enjoy things too much as other people. The event of him getting a child to laugh near an energy using source was…very unlikely.

I DO find it a bit unnerving though…rather unprofessional…for Randall to leave the door like that. If I recall, it was his station…Mary was in his list of kids…and he left the door on. Mary could have come through on her own if she had the mind to. Sure, maybe most monsters think human kids aren’t so stupid as to open the closet door (ok, Mary did in the end, but she knew what was back there)…but still, a veteran like him…
Still…I guess he was at the end-game, grabbing the test subject…it was late, he was tired, feeling sick, he just wanted to get it over with and it skipped his mind. We all have a moment like that where we just drop the ball. And yeah…because he dropped the ball, it all happened.
Earlier, when he was at the top of the board, Randall probably wasn’t too absent from working a little overtime at night for a few extra cans for everyone…so him being there probably wouldn’t faze anybody (such as Roz, who may have been thinking WAZOWSKI was mixed up in things…given…well…his record ahem). Sullivan didn’t notice it was a door in Randall’s station, but then again Sullivan’s not really good at noticing things.

It’s all really a bunch of connections. If Wazowski hadn’t forgotten to file his paperwork (again), he wouldn’t have had Sullivan go and get it. If Randall hadn’t picked that night to finish things, the door wouldn’t be there (I can imagine him setting the door up and then realizing “oh crap, I forgot the container” and just sighing it off to get it), Sullivan wouldn’t have opened it and taken Boo, which led to city-wide panic and…well we know the rest.

I’m not sure if Randall would get credit…he DID want to revolutionize the industry for personal reasons…and it would have worked if Sullivan hadn’t bumbled into things. At the core of it, none of them expected what was going to happen.
Though, do have to remember there was a chance for a “reset button” moment, if Sullivan had followed along with Wazowski to take Randall’s offer to just “leave the kid and walk away”.
In the end, it was the two “heroes” of the moment who got credit. It’s hard to say what may have happened to Randall if the Scream Extractor went through…Sullivan would be below him, naturally, where a (to Randall) “cheater” belongs…as for Wazowski…well who knows, maybe Randall surprisingly would have made him his assistant or something (lower position than him, yes, but higher than a scare assistant. Though on Randall’s part that’s ignoring his legendary lack of paperwork finesse Wazowski has…but maybe he’d ignore it for a reason.). But of course, that’s up to Waternoose.

Then again, it’s not like the Laugh Energy thing, as I’ve said many a time before, is a happy ending either. Maybe the two should have taken Randall’s offer earlier…they’re going to be dealing with a lot of issues…
Also…yes, Randall never intended to hurt anybody. He wanted to be the good guy. Sure, he comes off abrasive and moody, but we’ve all seen what he is at heart…a friendly, considerate, helpful guy who got the short end of the stick. Eventually…people who keep trying to keep themselves together snap…and unfortunately, he did.

[pitbulllady]

Probably need to point out something that few people have noticed, but which ties in with what Nexas just said about Randall having to be careful NOT to design a machine that would inflict lasting harm upon, let alone kill, human children. Whether or not they were seen as dangerous lower animals, human children were still a priceless resource, one upon which the Monster World was absolutely dependent. You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, after all. Dead children can’t scream. Dead kids also can’t grow up to produce the next generation of Scream-producers, so for that machine to have been lethal would have meant that the Monster World would completely run out of Scream energy in one generation, and that would amount to self-genocide! Dead kids DO attract a lot of unwanted attention from adult humans, though, and THAT is something else that the Monster World would definitely want to avoid, since it would mean that the chances of a monster getting caught while attempting to secure another victim would increase a thousand-fold. Even in MU it was emphasized how extremely important it was NOT to alert adults or even teens, and what would happen if the humans discovered the existence of the Monster World.
The control panel for the Scream Extractor prototype had variable settings, from zero to 100 percent power. Randall uses different settings for different subjects. When he was trying to scare Mike into revealing where “the kid” was, he set the controls at roughly 25% capacity. When he had Boo in the seat, he lowered the setting to just 15%, probably the lowest setting needed to get a reaction, and honestly, I do believed he picked her, out of all his Scare assignments, because he KNEW she would scream, no matter what, thus “hedging his bets” a bit, the closest he comes to actual “cheating”. Whether or not the machine actually worked perfectly, it would appear to work to Waternoose, who was supervising its test run, because Boo would scream reliably and loudly simply because she was that terrified of Randall! That way, Randall would fulfill his end of the bargain and be done with his work, Boo would sustain no damage at all, Waternoose would be satisfied, and hopefully reward Randall for his hard work(I wouldn’t hold MY breath on that last part ever happening) and then it would be up to Waternoose to secure legal approval of the thing using his clout in the business and political realm. Most people, though, only notice what happened to Fungus when Sulley put HIM in the seat, and fail to notice that Sulley had pushed the power setting on the control panel all the way up to 100%, MUCH greater than any setting that Randall had used! What made the Scream Extractor so efficient in collecting Scream energy wasn’t just the fact that it was a scary piece of technology, but the fact that the subject was screaming directly into a mouthpiece, so there was no Scream energy wasted in transit between the kid’s mouth and collection canister on the other side of the doorway. Again, it would have been absolutely stupid and pointless to have designed it to harm human children. Was there a chance that, on its first few test runs, that might have happened anyway? Well, yeah, there was. That was one of those things that would not be known until it was actually tested, unfortunately. It was a chance that had to be taken. Bear in mind, as I’ve said before, that monsters did NOT, for one second, ever consider that a human child was a person, that they were equal to monsters in any way, shape or form, so using them for testing a piece of new technology would have been no different, aside from the threat that the CHILDREN supposedly presented, from human scientists and technology developers using animals to test new technology in OUR world. Most of you ride around in vehicles which were, at some point prior to their development for public purchase, based on a concept or prototype vehicle which was tested for safety with live animals-dogs, goats, pigs and even ferrets to simulate human infants-strapped into the seats while the vehicles are crashed into barriers at various speeds. Auto makers do this before they even use crash test dummies, and few people have any idea that happens. It is a necessary part of testing many pieces of new technology in OUR world. From a monster perspective, the old way of collecting Scream energy simply could no longer keep up with demand, so that meant that SOMEONE had to come up with a better and more-efficient way to obtain energy, and that meant testing it on actual live human children, one way or the other. There simply was no getting around that.

Now, the drawback to Laugh energy is that while it’s more powerful, it is also harder to make someone laugh than it is to scare them. Fear is a basic reaction found in ALL complex animals, from worms to humans, because FEAR is what keeps us alive, keeps us out of harm’s way, and one of the primary things that drive all animals is the desire to stay alive, to avoid things that want to harm you. Getting a kid to laugh means having to develop a one-on-one rapport with that kid, which means spending a lot more time with them than it would have taken to simply scare them…and THAT means increasing the risk of getting caught. There is also the unavoidable FACT that most Scarers are NOT going to be able, or willing, to make that transition into Comics. Not everyone is funny. Not everyone is willing to do what it takes to get a young child to laugh, since that usually means doing something demeaning to oneself, like throwing pies in your own face. I can see a big, big problem with this, in that it will mean that a lot, and I mean a LOT, of Scarers are going to find themselves out-of-work. Not just Scarers, but the whole support behind them, the education system, etc. is going to either be forced to change, very drastically and suddenly, or lose their jobs, too. Think of what THAT many workers suddenly without employment, without a means to earn a living and support themselves and their families, is going to do to the economy in the long run. No job market, even in a booming economic turn, is going to support re-hiring and re-training THAT many people all at once, and from what I could gather, the economy at the time of MI was not so good in the first place, and NOW there’s going to be all these unemployed workers. No paycheck means that they won’t be able to put money back into the economy, either, so things are going to go downhill really, really fast following that brief upturn following the switch to Laugh energy. What at first appeared to be a blessing, could very well wind up a curse.

pitbulllady