#I feel like this is less anti-Booker and more anti-fandom's prioritization of Booker's pain (which is what I am) but ymmv

[oranges8hands]

It's Not Your Life to Give: Booker Edition

I'm assuming somewhere out there is already meta for why the exile wasn’t wrong, but fuck if you can find shit on tumblr anymore, so here's mine:

I'm not denying Booker needs help; he's suicidal, he's depressed, he's tangled in his own grief and loneliness, he’s got survivor’s guilt, he's likely got complex-ptsd along with his alcoholism and probably some other stuff. I admit, the shorthand of "fuck Booker" is not nuanced to that. That said, I am really not a fan of this fandom narrative that his depression, grief, etc, is a good reason for his actions [1], that his victims owe him enough immediate forgiveness to continue to help him in the aftermath of his actions, that he is the only hurting person in this situation, or that his (self)-destruction - obviously a common symptom - didn't blow up a very basic foundation between him and the others that doesn't just get waived away by an apology. (Which... he never actually offers?  Fandom posits he apologizes and feels bad for what he does in the aftermath, but that's one interpretation, and canon can just as easily be read that he gets a little bit of a rude awakening when Andy is mortal, but frankly he comes across as someone who is sorry it didn't work out and he ended up in a worse place, not for what he did.) 

  Plus, I think a lot of fandom mindset works under what happened [2] and not on what he either planned or did not see the obvious pathway was going to happen [3], as well as ignoring some of the context he put into the situation (his resentment of Joe and Nicky didn't just magically disappear after they escaped), and are looking at his end result (even less familial support than before, in the apartment getting drunk - and shit knows loneliness/isolation is an esp hot button for people right now) and not on the fact he just sold out his family to experience their worst nightmares (a fact he's reminded of again in the middle of his betrayal) and that they can't trust him.

THEY CAN'T TRUST HIM. They had no way to see this coming because it would never have occurred to them, but that barn door is open now. What keeps him from calling in their new safe house? maybe finding a different kind of partner, leading them to another trap on a job? hell, maybe contact Kozak again [4] and see if she made any progress. share their secrets with someone new. do they have to hope Andy's mortality (which is the only thing that made him pause) will reach him enough when apparently their love and affection didn't before? what happens when she dies? what sign are they supposed to somehow intuit if he tips from bad mental health to making actionable decisions to try to die and dragging everyone else into it with him again? if someone picks up this trail of breadcrumbs Copley and Merrick left, is he going to help clean up or go with it? Basically, what stops him from doing this to them again?  Like, I can arguably make a list for reasons I don't think they should have 100 year exiled him (though again, time works on a different scale for them [5]), but at this point I am definitely pushing back on the dominant fandom idea that the exile in and of itself was wrong [6], or that it was only a punishment.     They are going to feel guilty for what they did/didn't do to help him, for not seeing how bad it got [7], (in Andy's case esp) for helping him lean into the bad coping mechanisms, and yeah some of that does need to be owned, but they should not feel guilty for him betraying them or needing time away to deal with that betrayal.  It's funny, cause my immediate response after seeing the movie was that the betrayal story line did not work for me, but it's canon and the response that they should put aside their reaction to help him definitely feels like it ignores the severity of what he actually did to them and how long it could take to (emotionally, mentally) recover from it. That they owe Booker to put it aside to help him. That the others are wrong for the choice they made because of a situation he put them in. [8]  He didn't mind them being tortured, being separated, or being dead; if they want a 100 years to figure out how to continue to love and welcome someone who would do that to them, how to trust someone like that again, they get a 100 years.  And at the end of the day, even Booker understood that.

____________ [1] mental illness does not cause you to try to murder someone (and it is very clear that even if he thinks Andy wanted to die, he knows Joe and Nicky do not, not to mention Nile), and that's frankly a very harmful myth used to dismiss larger violent patterns irl

[2] 2 days of medical experiments, Andy being (luckily!) non-lethally shot, I'd add Nile's general mental well-being but lbr that doesn't tend to factor into it for fandom

[3] Joe, Nicky, Andy, and later Nile be taken and medically experimented on/tortured until... well, forever, cause honestly it's a big assumption they'd let them go or kill them even if they discovered the secret to their death; earlier on, Nile either being left alone - yanno, the thing he said was his reason for doing this (even if it's obviously just a part of the tangled reaction for why he did it) with no answers and forever dreaming about their torture and/or more specifically Nile being left at the mercy of the us military/govt with no answers and forever dreaming about their torture while experiencing her own. 

[4] them not killing Kozak or destroying the lab was hollywood-sloppy - even though I totally love the hc that either a) their spilled body parts disintegrate after a bit or b) there is absolutely nothing in their system that shows their immortality - but it does mean there's a little more clean-up needed than Copley erasing some tapes. 

[5] which is not an excuse to infantilize him? he's a grown man. he may be young compared to the others, but he's not actually a "teenager" and he's esp not too young to realize the ramifications of his actions (aka that his family won’t react well to him selling them out)

[6] maybe not the smartest choice in terms of safety since they'd have even less ability to see if he betrays them or himself again, and being split up makes them more vulnerable, but also not wrong; it's basically a load of shitty choices and that's the one they picked. cause like he said, what else can they do? frankly, now or in a 100 years, Booker is the one that needs to rebuild trust, but at least 100 years gives the rest of them some time to deal with their own trauma before having to deal with him either trying (or not) to fix what he broke, leaves them possibly more open and receptive to changes he’s made.

[7] though as someone whose been on both sides of it, the idea you should be able to just tell how bad it actually is for someone (or even tell that it is bad) is frankly not actually that realistic or fair; people are very often good at hiding and/or downgrading how bad it is 

[8] and specifically that Joe is wrong for the choice they made. like the fact Andy and Nicky both want to get him out the building or that Nicky isn't vocal in his reaction means they didn't reach this decision together, that Joe is the only angry one, that Joe is the only one to aggressively pursue this course of action. like, come on, the pattern of this definitely comes from fandom's racism

#this is both a) a response to a comment of a comment on someone's fic and b) something I've been thinking about for awhile #I feel like this is less anti-Booker and more anti-fandom's prioritization of Booker's pain (which is what I am) but ymmv #I am back on my footnote bs #haha just kidding I never left it #cross the street #fandom repeat fight #in a very real way they kind of have to forgive him #or at least learn to live with it #a kind of preordained forgiveness #how fucking galling is that #to not get to decide forgiveness #to not get to decide how to *give* that forgiveness #and he knows it too #what are they gonna do kill me?