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firebirdsdaughter · 4 years

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Okay…

@briansastro10

… I think we have a bit of a language barrier here, or something, and I’m afraid I don’t quite follow. If you don’t mind bearing w/ me, I get confused easily, but I do have things I want to say:

1) Horobi had no choice but to follow the Ark. He was hacked, aka mind controlled and brainwashed. He wasn’t ‘choosing’ to do any of that stuff, he was merely being used as a tool.

2) I don’t recall Horobi ever finding out Aruto was even at Daybreak, let alone lost family in it.

3) The thing I was criticising was the show’s decision to include a flashback of Soreo’s death in that sequence, bc it implies that the show and therefore the audience consider/should consider Horobi responsible for Soreo’s death, when not too long ago, they had Aruto shouting at Gai that he was the true cause of the Ark, and, again, the above brainwashing. Horobi was literally not in control of his own actions anymore than a MaGear at that point, it’s not right to let Jin, Naki, and even Raiden off the hook for the stuff they did under the Ark/Gai’s command and then blame Horobi for what he did. Jin was distributing ZetsumeRisers, Raiden was a spy, and Naki was manipulating everything and giving out RaidRisers, all by an external command, bc of manipulation (in the case of Jin and Naki) or hacking (in Raiden’s case). It’s really not right to recognise Yua’s, a full matured human adult who exhibited reasoning and at least reasonable emotional control and knowledge of morality, situation, to excuse her as having been manipulated and mistreated into doing the things she did, whilst blaming Horobi. Including Soreo’s death in that flashback implies that it should be considered equitable w/ Izu’s death, which it was not. Horobi did not kill Soreo, or even cause his death. For one thing, the explosion was caused by people trying to kill the Ark (another Soreo?) and, again, Horobi was brainwashed and not in control of his actions.

4) I will also repeat this as many times as necessary: Horobi was conditioned and used by the Ark. Again, to bring up Yua; she very nearly killed Izu in cold blood on Gai’s orders while Izu was panicked and confused and trying to run away. The only reason that did not happen was that Gai said the wrong thing and Fuwa snapped out of it in time. Here, Izu was completely calm, had plenty of time to dodge, clearly saw the threat, and did nothing. I bring this up bc both Horobi and Yua were in abusive, manipulative situations where they were controlled by someone else—the difference being, Yua was, again, a fully fledged human adult w/ a developed sense of right and wrong, enough that she knew what she was doing was wrong, but her situation had convinced her she had no choice. She was unwell and not in a good place. But she knew. Horobi literally couldn’t. On top of that, he was exposed solely to the Ark’s selective data (courtesy, Amatsu Gai), for years. Like he said in the AIMS basement, his understanding was that the Ark would always rise as long as human malice existed—and he didn’t turn on the Ark bc he suddenly realised humans were ‘good,’ but bc the Ark turned on HumaGear (and tried to make him kill Jin), and he realised what he wanted was peace and safety for HumaGear. But even after breaking free of the Ark, the conditioning and that belief still lasts. To him, seeking human destruction was merely the logical conclusion in order to ensure the safety of HumaGear. Humans teach HumaGear evil and give rise to the Ark, which is a danger to HumaGear, and caused him to do things that hurt HumaGear, the way his mind has been conditioned to work, the logical conclusion is to cut the knot and remove the ‘source,’ humans. It’s not a personal grudge, it’s being logical. That’s his thought process—and, honestly, he’s got a point, the Ark was created by humans, and they’ve never owned up to it, the guy responsible is walking around free, and a number of HumaGear died and suffered for it. It’s unclear when exactly the emotions start catching up to him—he was def managing to hold on to the logic, I like to think by focusing on the fact that he thought this would be best for Jin (he knew Jin was important to him, even if he didn’t know why, and he took the time to take care of him before going out). He’s very calm when talking to Izu and shows no aggression toward her, it’s not until Fuwa and Yua show up guns drawn that he reacts violently—bc he perceives a threat, sees their aggression, which counteracts Izu’s claims about the goodness of humans. All he sees is humans looking to destroy. But despite that, he still goes and asks Fuwa about proving the Ark will not rise again, and that’s another important thing; Horobi is looking for an absolute. He is looking for an absolute assurance that the Ark will not come back, that human cruelty will never be a danger again, and that’s not possible. Fuwa’s response, although it can be translated as a believable blunder on Fuwa’s part, does nothing but make the situation worse, bc he violently rejects Horobi’s question and says he’s there to destroy him and then prepares to shoot him. To Horobi, who got tortured the last time he asked a question, that’s enough. And right on the heels of that, Izu comes in and starts pressuring him about emotions. He’s stated to have been literally terrified of these sensations taking over him, and the Ark trained him react to that kind of thing w/ violence—bc he can’t attack the feelings inside himself, he system concludes Izu must be the source and fires on her… Only that doesn’t work, the sensations actually get worse. His increasing aggressiveness in insisting he doesn’t have a heart after that is basically a little kid getting more and more insistent that they didn’t steal a cookie when they did. He was conditioned to think removing Izu would remove the feelings, but instead that made it worse, harder to control, that frightens him even more, bc he doesn’t know what’s happening, he doesn’t know what those feelings are. He falls back on old answers to Jin’s questions bc he doesn’t know the answer (but we can’t let the son know that, father’s always have to have an answer). Meanwhile, he doesn’t understand why Aruto’s the Ark. Like, he def expected humans to resist, why wouldn’t they, I don’t think he’d’ve been surprised by Aruto being mad, Aruto’s been mad at him before for people he knew less. I think it was Aruto going as far as using the Ark’s power (also, I think the Ark still terrified him) that threw him for a loop and pissed him off (something he might’ve understood? But it had def never controlled him like that before). Additionally, I don’t think he could have conceived to seek revenge on his own—when Jin died, he was clearly overwhelmed and very dazed. It took Azu showing up and telling him how he felt for him to react. A friend put it really well, so I’ll paraphrase: Azu’s role for Aruto was ‘you are absolutely right to want revenge on Horobi!’ while her role for Horobi was ‘hey, hey, you want revenge on Aruto, right?’ Aruto jumped at the chance while Horobi didn’t know what to do, and ended up following the first lead he had—which was literally how the Ark kept him so easy to manipulate. I still don’t see the Aruto side of it (well… it’s complicated), but if you go back and look, I think you can def see how the Ark was conditioning Horobi as a patsy for this from the start.

4) Bc I refuse to ever let this go unsaid when discussing it, Horobi was not the only person responsible for the Izu situation. If I were to list the people I hold responsible, in order, it’d be: Amatsu, for creating the Ark in the first place. The Ark/Azu, clearly the AI w/ the most know-how, who very deliberately manipulated the whole situation, was well aware of what Horobi’s mental state would be like, and manipulated both Jin and Izu into being stupid. Fuwa and Yua for escalating things, esp bc Fuwa’s character development was allegedly about learning not to rush in swinging and literally the next episode Yua is giving a speech to Williamson about how they shouldn’t respond to the HumaGear’s ‘new hearts’ w/ aggression, like she didn’t do that exact thing, like, yesterday, wtf. Aruto, for hanging around outside instead of doing what one might expect from someone who wanted to resolve stuff peacefully and going to the root of the situation, and for not keeping an eye on Izu (I have other opinions about his behaviour there, but those are for another time), and for apparently not even bothering to try and give Izu a backup. And, finally, Horobi and Izu. Yes, I hold Horobi the least ‘responsible’ and I hold Izu responsible. Bc, and I do not mean this as an insult to any of the characters, it’s like taking a dog that was abused and used in dog fights and leaving it alone w/ a domesticated dog it doesn’t know. More than likely, if the domesticated dog starts trying to play like it’s used to playing the abused dog is going to react aggressively, possibly even bite. Neither Horobi nor Izu had the emotional maturity to handle that situation. He had been conditioned to fear and reject emotion, had been kept away from it, and therefore had no control over it, nor knew what it was—to him, it felt like some unidentifiable ‘sensation’ wrenching control away from him, clouding his mind; additionally, he’d just had his one attempt to reach out and understand violently shut down, and he’d been conditioned for years to respond to uncertainty and confusion by destroying the source—when Izu was prodding at him about feelings and ‘hearts,’ she pushed his already fragile state into full panic that he lacked the emotional maturity to handle, and he reacted the only way he knew how. W/ Izu, if she had just told Aruto, or anyone, anything about where she was going, tried to coordinate rather than just running off like that, if she hadn’t rushed him and repeatedly pressured and prodded him, if she had dodged, then things would have gone differently—but, ultimately, her data was just as biased as Horobi was, and she had absolutely no way to understand or work through what was going on for him. Horobi didn’t seek out Izu and kill her in cold blood, she approached him, and made a conscious choice not to dodge. If we want to get really deep, I also blame Korenosuke bc Izu not having a backup is stupid, it protected literally nothing, if they had actually tried to back her up and there was a reason why they couldn’t, I’d be less judgemental, but wtf the Zero-One equipment got hijacked up the wazoo and it’s very uncomfortable that Izu was just cool w/ that bc it ‘benefited humans’ and it made Aruto look kinda hypocritical… But that’s more the writers. But, to try and sum this up… I do give Horobi some responsibility, bc he yeah, he did pull the trigger, but the fact was, he didn’t understand what he was doing (also likely didn’t know Izu had no backup, it probably never occurred to him humans would do that), or why. Essentially, he was still being used as a weapon by the Ark, who manipulated the whole thing bu showing Izu that vision, making her rush in and not tell anyone, then the humans abandon their reasoning for an day and go in all aggressive, Horobi sees this as a threat, but even then still tries to reach out only to get shot down (literally), and then Izu comes in and stresses him out further and he cracks. And she chooses to stand there and take the hit. Gai knowingly shutdown multitudes of HumaGear w/ the intention of them never coming back online, Yua nearly killed Izu before, actively hunting her down, Fuwa, I love him dearly, but Fuwa was down to smash every single robot he saw no matter what they said. These were human adults w/ knowledge of morality and emotional maturity and control (okay, Fuwa’s a little debatable…). All of them, esp Gai, are walking around just fine. Like. Gai. Gai. Aruto goes Ark on Horobi for this but is letting Gai walk???? I don’t even like Aruto, and that’s ooc! But to try and sum up my sum up: Horobi was the gun Azu shot Izu w/. It was a gambit. She deliberately manipulated them all into a situation where this would happen. Yes, Horobi pulled the trigger, but if this were court, a plea of insanity could be made/he’d be being sent to a psychiatric ward rather than regular prison.

5) Horobi blaming himself is one thing. It was very clearly depicted before that he had no sense of free will for himself, he only knew the Ark’s will. It is absolutely natural that after being so deep under the Ark’s control for so long, he’d have immense trouble differentiating between his own, new will, and the Ark’s. He might not be able to tell what he wanted or what the Ark wanted. He genuinely does not know how to make that distinction. He also has literally only just kind of gotten a grasp on consequences and cause and effect. I’d love to think he’ll be allowed to figure out he was manipulated by the Ark and that things like that weren’t things he wanted to do, but I dunno if the show will give me that. What I’m criticising is the apparent intent of saying that the audience should blame him for those things. What I want is confirmation that Aruto knows that the situation was manipulated, that Horobi wasn’t ‘in control’ when that happened. I wanted Aruto to respond to Horobi blaming himself for Izu and Jin’s deaths w/ ‘it’s more complicated than that.’ Horobi blaming himself is understandable, bc he’s barely figured out cause and effect, regret, anger, that shooting things is not an appropriate way to handle a situation. He’s only just gotten a few emotions. Nuance is going to be lost on him for a bit. He’s been trapped seeing only in black and white for so long, he’s going to need help seeing grey. Horobi blaming himself makes sense. I’m just criticising that the humans, who should know that it wasn’t as simple as that, didn’t let him know tha t he didn’t need to shoulder all the blame. Bc he was just a single part of a whole chain of events, not the sole cause. And I’m criticising that the show seemed to be implying that he also had a responsibility for Soreo’s death, which was a completely different situation that he def was not responsible for.

This is likely way more than you were expecting, and I do talk a lot, I know. I just wanted to try and establish my reasoning here. I hope I wasn’t too incomprehensible, I have trouble articulating my thoughts outside of fictional writing. I think I’ve just been keeping a lot of this in.

I should say that if you are bothered by my stance on this, I would recommend blocking me or my Zero-One tags, bc I am stubborn as all hell and will not budge, and will occasionally be very vocal. Horobi is very important to me, and I have no sympathy for victim blaming, esp not when it involves literal perpetrators getting away scot free (*cough cough* Amatsu Gai *cough cough*).

#briansastro10 #Replies #Firebird Negativity #I've seen a lot of victim blaming and I'm sick and I'm tired #well not sick as is COVID or anything no worries #just fed up #so I'm just gonna lay it all out

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jeanandthedreamofhorses · 5 years

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You're into ASOIAF too? Oh wow. You certainly made the right call dropping this shitshow -and yeah, looking back, I didn't think it possible to have a worse season than S5 but hooo boy, was I wrong-. Knowing its abomination of an ending now, I'm trying hard not to let it ruin the books for me, too, so take this as a cautionary tale, lol. And bc some positivity would be nice and I do always enjoy reading your opinions, if it's okay, could I ask you about your fave ASOIAF characters and such? thx!

Frick yeah, the question I’ve been waiting for! I can gush about pretty much every character since they’re all so amazingly well written, but for a brief list of the top contenders… (TWOW spoilers ahead!)

5. Asha Greyjoy

“If there are rocks to starboard and a storm to port, a wise captain steers a third course.”

Irreverent, cynical, mocking, confident and dangerous, what’s not to love about Asha? She immediately made an impact with such scenes as her “sweet suckling babe” quip and was one of my favourite side characters in ACOK.

AFFC, however, was when she really got to shine, where to my elation she got a POV chapter, and more in ADWD. Despite her seemingly Ironborn-to-the-core personality, we discover she’s actually one of the least zealous of the Ironborn, sympathetic to the New Ways and those influenced by the culture of the ‘greenlanders’ like Rodrik the Reader. As one of the few reading Ironborn, she’s clearly one of the most intelligent of the Ironborn and certainly more open-minded, which leads to her down-to-earth sales pitch for the Kingsmoot, a sensible, realistic policy which would be genuinely best for her people - while still, of course, maintaining some elements of conquest: she is the kraken’s daughter, after all.

This side to her personality that sympathises with the fringe elements of her society and is able to make realistic assessments of the possibilities of success comes largely from the difficult position of being a prominent woman in the hypermasculine, heavily patriarchal Ironborn culture. Being raised as Balon’s substitute son has landed her more freedom than most Iron women, but in a complicated position nonetheless. She manages to handle it to the best of her ability, however with Balon gone she comes to realise just how precarious her position always was.

Now, like many other characters in ADWD, she is dealing with the hardship of broken dreams. Disaster piles upon disaster for Asha, from the failed kingsmoot to the loss of Deepwood Motte to becoming captive to Stannis (a dynamic I can’t wait to see more of btw, what an interesting clash of personalities!). Like Tyrion, her bravado serves to mask her insecurity, and her sense of powerlessness from recent events - both in commanding her own destiny and the heartache from the ruinous state of her family - really comes out in her inner monologue during ADWD.

How fitting, then, that this is when she reunites with Theon, another character whose lofty ambitions were torn brutally to the ground. Asha lorded it over him in Winterfell, but perhaps now she can relate. Mock as she may, Asha genuinely loves her family, and it’s another appealing aspect of this lonely character navigating her way through her unusual existence on the tightrope of social norms.

4. Tyrion Lannister

“You poor stupid blind crippled fool. Must I spell out every little thing for you? Very well. Cersei is a lying whore, she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know. And I am the monster they all say I am. Yes, I killed your vile son.”

Everyone loves Tyrion, and how can they not? He’s one of the wittiest and most intelligent characters in the series, and the first stumbling block when it comes to which side we should root for. While he was always one of my favourite characters from the start, factoring in his complex family life and struggles on account of his dwarfism (and later the maiming of his already ugly face), my favourite part of Tyrion as a character is how all the things we love about him are flipped on their head in ADWD.

Tyrion tells us in AGOT to wear your shame like “armor and it can never be used to hurt you”. It’s an empowering statement, but throughout ASOS we see how insecure Tyrion still is inside, and his ignoble treatment at the hands of his father and the people as a whole in the kangaroo court for Joffrey’s murder, can, ultimately, be boiled down to his being a dwarf. His armour fails him, and he is still utterly unable to be loved, appreciated, or respected by anyone. Only by Tysha, as he finds out, who is now lost to him - ripped from his hands by the machinations of his father and the one family member that Tyrion still loved, his brother.

It’s at this point that Tyrion is never the same again. He murders Shae in cold blood, and he murders his father, and he regrets none of it. He is becoming the monster they said he was.

When we see him in ADWD, the dark side of Tyrion that had always been hidden behind the hope he had clung onto creeps all too shockingly for the surface. His jokes are now too cynical to laugh at, dark and disturbing and cruel. He uses his intellect for no greater good beyond his own personal amusement, deliberately influencing Young Griff to attack Westeros prematurely just in the hopes that his sister might get the axe. He is on no side but his own, acting brazenly irresponsibly as he has no interest in the grand schemes others have set out for him, or even in his own life. The chips on his shoulder are now genuine murderous intent, daydreaming about raping and killing Cersei and mounting Jaime’s head on a spike next to her. Where Tyrion’s whoring habits had seemed roguish and humorous before, in Essos he is depicted raping clearly reluctant sex slaves.

What makes this all the more disturbing, and all the more literarily brilliant, is that it casts aside the biased curtain we had seen Tyrion through before, and the result is shocking. How much more free to consent is a Westerosi prostitute than a Pentoshi sex slave? How worthwhile were the barbed comments he made so frequently when they ultimately led to a litany of testimonies against him as soon as he lost his privileged position? The worse devils of Tyrion’s nature come out in full force, and we see much more of the black of the character Martin described as “the grayest of the gray”. Perhaps the difference now is that Tyrion’s POV lacks a single element of self-love. The readers are repulsed by him in the same way he repulses himself.

Nonetheless, Tyrion seems to be rekindling something of a purpose in ADWD, as characters nurture themselves back up from the wreckage in the aftermath of the War of the Five Kings. He has lost the Lannister’s golden influence, but his silver tongue still serves him well. However, we may never see the old Tyrion again. This Tyrion has not repented for the vile things he has done, or the vile things he intends to do. He was caricatured by the citizens of King’s Landing as an evil advisor whispering into the monarch’s ear - this may become something closer to the truth when he at last meets with Daenerys.

3. Jaime Lannister

“Does my lord wish to answer?” The maester asked, after a long silence. A snowflake landed on the letter. As it melted, the ink began to blur. Jaime rolled the parchment up again, as tight as one hand would allow, and handed it to Peck. “No,” he said. “Put this in the fire.”

Who saw a Jaime POV coming? What an incredible way to open ASOS after the prologue, to see things from the eyes of one of the series’ most notorious villains. I don’t think I need to explain at length how impactful it was to gently peel off the layers of Jaime’s character, revealing the true reason he killed Aerys, his growth in his interactions with Brienne, the embodiment of the chivalric values he abandoned, and most significantly, losing the hand that was his entire identity and vanity. Anyone who has read the book or watched the show can relate.

Since then, he continues to fascinate. He is discovering talents beyond swordsmanship, entering into a negotiation even Tywin could have been proud of. He has learned how to use his bad reputation for nobler ends, scaring Edmure Tully silly enough to end the siege of Riverrun without shedding a single drop of blood. He is still fighting for a Lannister king, true, but that is only staying true to his role as Kingsguard: now that he has lost his sword hand, he is discovering what it means to be a knight again, in an unconventional and thrilling way.

I chose the above quote because it captures the beauty of AFFC Jaime, breaking away from the sister he fought so hard to return to and decisively cutting out her influence for good. In Jaime’s reverse knight’s fable, refusing the call of the damsel in distress is one of the most upright things he has ever done. How fitting that he should then meet up with the woman who influenced him to take the other path - only she seems about to betray him, too…

It will be so interesting to see Stoneheart’s perverted justice on a character whose head we once wanted on a chopping block but now want to survive at all costs. I don’t think Brienne will be able to follow through with it to the end. After all, Jaime must live on to fulfil a certain prophecy…

2. Euron Greyjoy

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.”

It’s common enough to hear writers and critics talk about how your villain can’t simply be evil, and that they need to have sympathetic motivations or else they’re badly written. I think that’s true sometimes, but only when your evil villains fail to capture the raw horror of what evil really is - that’s when they feel wooden or cartoonish. To successfully capture that heart of darkness, however…

That is what George R.R. Martin achieved with Euron Greyjoy, the most terrifying character I have ever read.

Everyone underestimates Euron. They know he’s mad, but they don’t know how mad he is. They think they can outmanoeuvre him, like Asha, or betray him, like Victarion. They think he’s lying when he says he’s sailed to Valyria and means to conquer Westeros with dragons. Only Aeron knew. Only Aeron knew the depths of Euron’s depravity, and how far he means to fly. Because he’s the only one who heard the scream of the rusted iron hinge.

The Forsaken showed that it was all true, that Aeron was right all along - that he, like the oracle Cassandra, warned the Ironborn but was condemned to be ignored. Euron has an ambition unparalleled by any other character in the series - he means to turn himself into a god. He’s the only one depraved enough to go to the lengths it would take to make that dream a reality.

We should fear Euron, we should fear him very much. And yet, I think his dreams of godhood can never fully come to pass. He is, after all, still a man - still fallible, as we saw him shrink away at the Reader’s reprimand in The Reaver and change his tactics accordingly. His humanity will be the death of him - not any goodness in his heart, but a weakness common to the human creature. The dragons he means to dance with, and potentially the Others too as some theories go, will move at a pace beyond those mortal legs.

His attempt to fly will inevitably end with a fall. But that headfirst plunge will take the Seven Kingdoms with him.

1. Stannis Baratheon

“I know the cost! Last night, gazing into that hearth, I saw things in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning… burning, Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him into ash. Do you think I need Melisandre to tell me what that means? Or you?“

Here is a man so totally dedicated to his duty that he is willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish it, even if it means his own destruction.

He is a character that believes in justice and the word of law more strongly than any other, and watching his dogged persistence to put a corrupt world to rights no matter the odds has always struck a chord with me, especially in this world teeming with such selfish and barbarous characters.

He is not such a performer as other characters, not as openly humorous as Tyrion (though lowkey he has an incredible dry wit), nor as pretty as Renly, nor as lighthearted as Littlefinger. He’s a dour person, hard and unpopular. But if you listen to the conversations he has with Davos, there is an incredible heart to this man who has placed all the troubles of the world on his own shoulders, and strives through cold and stormy weather to make the best, most just decision he can for no other reason than that - because it is just. Justice is hard, sharp and unyielding, not pretty, not humorous, not lighthearted - but necessary. In a king more than anywhere else. That’s why those who do follow Stannis, like Davos, follow him with such faith and loyalty.

He often proceeds about this goal in questionable ways, compensating for the imperfections of his forces and of his own personality. This is the rickety bridge Stannis walks on, as a man who will go to any means necessary to accomplish what he feels must be done. Sometimes this might mean unleashing dark forces better left locked up, sometimes it might mean committing so terrible a sin as kinslaying, sometimes it might mean sacrificing a child to awaken stone dragons - and sometimes it will mean rescuing the realm from a wildling incursion when no other king cared.

Moments like that unforgettable “STANNIS! STANNIS! STANNIS” stick so powerfully in my memory because, much like Jaime, the real virtue of this character had yet to shine so brightly as it eventually would in ASOS. Something which had always been there takes us unawares. And he is evolving, too, ever becoming more flexible, more willing to compromise, more hesitant to burnings, more dedicated to the good of the realm over himself.

And there is a whole other layer of tragic pathos that lies behind his character. Try as hard as Stannis might, and God does he try, he is not Azor Ahai, and every reader knows he will not sit the throne at the end. Even Stannis knows where this road will leave him. But he persists anyway, in the face of death. The courage of that, the self-sacrifice - how can one not be moved by it?

One of the finer points of Stannis that often goes missed in (understandably) overzealous attempts to correct the show’s butchering of his character, is that there is a part of him that does want to be king. He’s lived in Robert’s shadow his entire life, as Asha thinks to herself in ADWD, and there is a part of him that does yearn for recognition. Quotes like “Robert could piss in a cup and men would call it wine, but I offer them cold clear water and they squint in suspicion and mutter to each other about how queer it tastes.” reveal that, I think.

So this is a whole other internal battle within Stannis - he must be careful not to allow his judgement to falter against the part of him that is jealous of Robert, of Renly, that wants to be the hero Melisandre says he is. This very human aspect complicates further the already complicated war between deontological and utilitarian ethics that wages in his head, with Davos and Melisandre as their respective spokesmen. Much as he may want to be a perfect king and avatar of justice - he is still human.

The depth and tragedy of Stannis Baratheon is Shakespearean. My heart shatters in advance for the moment Stannis has made his greatest sacrifice of all to halt the advance of the Others (not the Boltons, he’ll flatten them like pancakes), and for it to do nothing, nothing at all. For him to realise he was never the hero of this story, and that now he has gathered all this blood on his hands where there is no spring to wash them in.

A man so just as Stannis could never forgive himself. But we, the readers, shall never forget the battles he fought as an axle of this universe striving to be something greater.

Honourable Mentions to Aeron, Victarion, Barristan, Jon (Snow and Connington), Cersei and Brienne. Yes, I really like the Greyjoys 🦑.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #stannis baratheon #euron greyjoy #jaime lannister #tyrion lannister #asha greyjoy #not snk

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unsuccesscr · 5 years

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Hello and welcome to HD Wrote 3k words of Pain.

ft @invisiquirk hc that Tooru dies at 21.

Also @needlxd and @amplifyingtrace and @rrenao make an appearance bc...OC rights babey

Heroism is a profession that is, by its very nature, fraught with danger. As such, there isn’t a single hero in existence without some scars. Physical or otherwise.

Prism was one of the few that carried hers over from childhood. By the time she experienced her first battle she was already scarred. Already bent and bruised. Already prepared to look into the face of oblivion.

Tooru is the type of person to try to hide their pain. To pretend everything is fine, to focus on everyone but herself. It’s hard to tell if her wounds have begun to heal at all, or if she’s just better at shutting people out.

Izuku likes to believe he knows her well enough to tell the difference. Knows her scars, has traced over them with gentle, careful, fingers, as she has done with his own. The ones not on her skin but within her mind and soul...those are a little more difficult to detect.

He knows some. About as much as she knows about his own. They’re not quite secret, but also not the type of thing one wants to talk about in any sort of detail. The kind that bring everything rushing back in an instant. So he doesn’t know everything, every bruise her mother had left; every nasty, vile word, spoken.

But he supposes he doesn’t need to. Tooru doesn’t need someone to hate Yue Hagakure, she needs someone that loves her. Despite all of the years that she’s been told she’s unlovable, despite all the lies Yue told her about her lack of worth. That she’s loved.

Of course, Izuku Midoriya is not the only one, not by a long shot. Tooru is as well loved as she is kind. He is, however, the only one who knows how much she needs to hear it. How easily she forgets that the world would shatter without her presence.

He’s the only one who bares witness to moments like this. Woken from some unknown nightmare, with shoulders curled forward, away from him; so she won’t wake him. As if rest is more important than this, more important than the quiet sound of her sobs.

“Tooru,” Spoken in a hushed tone. Always careful because loud noises, sudden movements, they can all reopen those unseen scars.

In response there’s a hiccup, a hitch of breath followed by forced even heaves. A rustle of the sheets around them, as Tooru turns towards the source of the voice.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” her own voice shakes, sounding oh so tired. And it hurts to wonder how long she had been like that before he had noticed.

“You should. You should wake me, I want to help.” The usual reply to the usual response. It has somehow become a part of their routine. These nightmares. Slowly, hands find hers; weaving their fingers together. He would like, in this moment, to hold her tightly. But that may be too much. “Is this ok?”

“Yes,” The affirmation is just as worn as her initial response. For a few moments they lay like that. Just listening to the sound of each other’s breathing, taking in the warmth of their shared space.

“Why do you stay with someone so broken?” Tooru asks. And she may not be broken but her voice is, clearly still in the mindset of her dream.

“You’re not broken. You’ve never been broken. Just...scarred,” Silence follows Izuku’s words. The kind of silence when she doesn’t want to argue, but doesn’t believe what he said. “I don’t know...what you were dreaming about just now…”

Tooru’s breath hitches and she tenses once more.

“I won’t ask, if you don’t want to talk about it,” The tension bleeds back out, slowly. He traces circles over her palm with the pad of his thumb. “But it wasn’t real. Even if it was a memory. It’s a lie to say you’re broken.”

There is more of that silence, so he simply continues.

“You know me better than that. You know I don’t settle. I’m with you because I want to be. Because, whether or not you believe it, you deserve love. And I'm incredibly, insanely, lucky, that I get to be someone who gives it to you.”

Finally there’s a response, a snort of laughter. Not derisive, not even laced with bitterness; genuine, if somewhat sad at the same time.

“You’re so corny,” Tooru teases, when she’s done laughing.

In place of a retort, he brings her knuckles up to his lips and gives them a small kiss. She can feel his smile against her skin. Feel the nightmare melting away.

“Hey,” Izuku speaks again after a moment “You should call in, we could stay in and watch movies and eat junk. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chill night.”

“I can’t do that, I have work. Lady Hydra depends on me, we don’t have a lot of sidekicks,” What’s unspoken is that she doesn’t want to acknowledge just how much this is affecting her. Doesn’t admit that she’s tired and the idea of doing patrol work after less than an hour of sleep isn’t appealing at all. Nowhere as appealing as sleeping in and spending time with her fiance.

“It will be fine for one day. You have sick days for a reason, someone can cover for you; just this once. Sasaki will understand, she cares about you too, you know,” One of the benefits of working for an underground hero. Or perhaps Lady Hydra was a special case. “Please?”

This is selfish, he knows. Because any day Tooru is not working as a sidekick is experience missed. She prides herself on being reliable; is reliable. But she’s also exhausted and in no state to fight. Likely, it would be fine. It always is. She’s strong and smart and always comes out relatively unscathed.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t worry. And if there’s one thing Izuku has learned over the years, it’s that sometimes being selfish is the right choice.

“This could be our last chance to hang out for a while, you know,” He adds. And it’s true, what with them both working as heroes and the wedding just around the corner.

“Okay,” Tooru relents, because it does sound like exactly what she needs. Just, a quiet day at home.

…

When Izuku stirs the next morning, it’s not with a start. It’s slowly, deliberately grasping at the dream even after it fades away.

They’ve been tormenting him for months, these ‘could have been’ dreams. He can’t tell if they’re better or worse than the nightmares. Would she really have stayed, had he simply pressed harder? If he had insisted would she still be here? Questions like these were useless, but plagued him anyway.

In the end, things had happened the way they happened. Tooru had gone to work with a smile, Izuku hadn’t stopped her. And the hero Prism was no more.

No more than a dream that gave him a few hours of respite a night.

The buzzing of bedside alarm was no more relentless than the forward motion of time itself, and with a worn sigh he reached over and shut it off; blinking away the lingering wetness in his eyes.

After a dream like that, it would be a good idea to book an appointment with a grief counselor. They could tell him that it wasn’t his fault. That you can’t erase someone’s trauma with affection alone. (He knows that, of course he knows that. But he could have made her stay, made her rest). While he pretends to believe those words. Pretends that guilt isn’t festering inside along with a different, more ugly, feeling.

Izuku had been doing that for months, though, with no results. Therapy didn’t help overnight, he knew that. Was still going for things that had happened to him a decade ago. But this was different. There was something impeding any sort of progress. He couldn’t move past the moment of her death.

Holding her cold, lifeless, hand, in his own.

There were more healthy ways of grieving. His friends insisted on them. Cards with professional’s numbers on them and pamphlets for support groups. They meant well. And they were going through the same loss. Izuku wasn’t so naive as to believe that he was the only one hurting, was the only one she had left behind.

It just seemed like he was the only one unable to move on.

Somewhat reluctantly, he heaves himself out of bed and away from the comfort of the ‘what could have been’ dream and prepares for the day ahead.

…

It’s a coincidence, really, a twist of fate; that the name Hagakure passes his desk. Not Tooru Hagakure, no, there would be no reason for that name to be attached to a recent report of organized crime in Osaka.

No, this was Yue Hagakure. Cold eyes staring back through a photograph.

Funny, he’d tried to imagine this woman many times. Tried to picture the kind of person who would hold such wrath towards her own child. Somehow, she seemed even more evil than he’d assumed.

He wonders if she knows that Tooru is dead. Wonders if she knows that it's her fault. That Tooru was always a little willing to die because of what she had done.

Sick of looking at her, her name and her face, he files the folder away quickly, and moves on to the rest of the paperwork assigned to him. Not exactly glamorous work, but necessary. And informative. As Izuku files away past reports he always skims for details, learning about villains he may one day have to face.

He tries to forget what he had read about shadow manipulation, about the Yakuza branch in Osaka headed by the woman named Hagakure.

Tries to forget how long it would take him to get there from his home in Kyoto by train.

…

Iida is the first one to notice. Perhaps because he knows the feeling of wanting revenge. He sees the storm brewing before Izuku himself does. Because he’s still pretending he didn’t see that file. Ignoring all the ways he could negate shadow manipulation.

Osaka isn’t in the area covered by the Wild Wild Pussycats, anyway. It’s neighboring. The report was just about the spread of Yakuza related activity. It wasn’t a mission. He was just a sidekick.

Revenge was a dangerous path.

Iida takes him out to lunch, just the two of them. They’re friends, certainly. Izuku can even safely say that the engine hero is one of his closest friends. But they usually go out as a group. And Iida never wants to meet up on a day he has patrol, never shirks responsibility.

Izuku pretends not to see the red flags. He does an awful lot of pretending, these days.

“Midoriya,” Iida breaches the topic with an air of formality, despite their familiarity. A nervous tick Izuku knows well, but ignores. Maybe if he continues to pretend everything is fine, it will be. At the very least, he refuses to look up from his menu.

“Why haven’t you gone to the counselor?”

This gets Izuku’s attention, causing him to flinch. Appointments were made through the agency. They wouldn’t know what was discussed, but they would know if he canceled repeatedly. Which he had. Mandalay had probably relayed that detail to Iida. He wouldn’t hold it against her.

“It doesn’t help,” He opts to answer honestly. “I went a couple times, it didn’t help.

Iida frowns at the pitiful excuse for a reason, gently taking the menu from his friend’s hands and setting it down. “This kind of thing takes time. Itou still going.”

That made sense. The ex-villain was closer to Tooru than anyone. No one ever really talked about it, but Kitiara had been saved by Tooru. They were sisters, if not by blood. And if anyone knew the hole her loss had left, it would be her.

Izuku hadn’t seen her since the funeral. Not that that was her fault, he was avoiding her. Avoiding seeing that emptiness reflected back.

“I’m dealing, in my own way.” Izuku says, uncomfortable with the concerned stare of his long time friend.

“I hear there’s been a rise in Yakuza activity near Kyoto. In Osaka.” Iida says, his expression clearly stating that he sees right through the core of Izuku’s darkest thoughts.

“Yeah, I suppose so. I don’t see a lot of action, as a sidekick.” Izuku tries, in vain, to keep the conversation casual.

“Revenge won’t help.” Iida moves straight to the point.

“I know,” Izuku replies. Because he does know. But it’s getting difficult to ignore how badly he wants to make Yue Hagakure pay. At least the criminals behind Tooru’s death had already been put away. Lady Hydra had made sure of that.

Iida looks unconvinced. “I learned that lesson back at UA, you saw what happened.”

“I know. I did.” Izuku winces, trying not to look at the scar on the back of Iida’s hand. “You’re right. And I….I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

…

The next, almost as if on cue, is Todoroki. Whereas Iida has been in Izuku’s place, he has been in Tooru’s place. Has scars from the hands that were supposed to raise him gently. Had been molded into a weapon for his father’s use.

Unlike Iida, he doesn’t take no for an answer. Tells Izuku where to meet him.

Somehow, he ends up staring at the name Hagakure once more. Tooru Hagakure, engraved in stone. Early spring frost causes the grass to crunch under their feet, and Todoroki says nothing; allows Izuku to grieve in silence.

He’s not sure how long they spend there. Long enough that he can no longer feel his fingers or the tips of his ears. He’s not even sure he’s had a single thought, the entire time. Brain filled with static as he stares at the marker. Surrounded, as always, by fresh flowers.

The ice and fire user waits until they’re ready to leave to speak.

“I’ve thought about it,” Todoroki says, voice impassive “Taking down my old man for the shit he pulled.”

Izuku’s not sure how to react to this confession, looking at the unreadable expression that follows it with concern and confusion. Todoroki, in turn, looks at Tooru’s grave.

“Sometimes our demons get the best of us. When that happens...we don’t hurt only ourselves, but everyone around us. That’s why I didn’t do it. Not because he deserves forgiveness, but because I wouldn’t really be hurting him.”

Izuku swallows hard, mouth suddenly dry at the double meaning to his words.

Todoroki looks, much like Iida, directly through him when he continues. “Don’t do anything stupid, Midoriya.”

…

Predictably, the one who is able to crack through his walls, in the end, is Leia. As it so often has been since they were children.

It takes little more than her plaintive voice over the phone, telling him to get some rest.

“You haven’t taken any time off since it happened,” Leia says, in the somewhat firm (but still, oh so gentle) tone that she reserves for when either he, or Katsuki, are being particularly stubborn. “You’re going to get burnt out.”

Revenge won’t help.

Don’t do anything stupid.

“Take some time, process things. Get some rest. Please, Izuchan, i’m...worried about you. I haven’t seen you this tired since highschool.”

And she’s right. He still had nightmares, to be sure, but hadn’t outright neglected self care for years. He slept, plenty, though. It was the only time he was able to be with Tooru again.

But he’d also been working more hours than necessary. If he worked all day and slept all night he didn’t have to be alone with his thoughts. That had always been a problem for him. He’d just forgotten for a while, because for a while he wasn’t alone even when he was alone.

“I miss her.” Izuku admits for the first time out loud in a long while. “I miss her so much I...Tooru deserved better. She deserved a long, happy life. She shouldn’t have died it’s not fair.”

And he’s aware that he sounds like a child, whining about how it's not fair. But it truly wasn’t. Tooru had already been robbed of her childhood, and now she had been robbed of her future as well. She deserved so much more. A light like that shouldn’t be gone. Not when the awful woman who had hurt her still walked free.

It’s in that moment, with Leia’s words of comfort floating through the speaker of the phone, that Izuku realizes what he’s missing. Why he’s been stuck.

Closure.

…

Even if he’d tried, he didn’t forget. Didn’t forget that file on Osaka. It hadn’t contained her exact location, of course. If the police knew that, they would have brought her in already. But Izuku was smart, and he’d plenty of time on his hands; since he’d finally decided to use his time off.

Mandalay was thrilled enough that he seemed to finally be mourning in a somewhat healthy way, that she had granted the leave request without question.

From there, it was just a matter of following the trail. Yue Hagakure wasn’t as much of a ghost as she’d like to think.

…

Deku isn’t sure that Yue is surprised to see him. He doesn’t even know for sure if she knows who he is. Or, at the least, who he was to Tooru.

And he doesn’t really care. The less he has to listen to Yue Hagakure, the better. Doesn’t care what words she uses to defend herself, if any.

Instead, he focuses on what needs to be done.

Closure.

…

The battle is hard fought, and hard won. Yue, even without the use of her quirk (he’d made sure, before cornering her, that there would be no shadows to manipulate) is a skilled fighter; and not one to give up easily.

But she underestimates him. The hero without a quirk. And that, ultimately, is her downfall.

With her face in the dirt she continues to antagonize. The words she speaks foul and acidic. Towards him. Towards Tooru.

So she did know, after all, the reason why he, specifically, was here. He thinks about all the satisfying ways to shut her up.

…

When the police are called in Yue Hagakure is restrained and injured, but very much alive. Albeit with a somewhat spiteful gag, preventing any more vile insults.

Later, when Izuku is commended on his restraint; he doesn’t mention the fact that he’s still shaking with the urge to end her life when she’s taken away.

…

Yue Hagakure doesn’t exactly look the picture of regret, even in her holding cell. Pissed, certainly, but seemingly confident that she won’t be in there for long.

She has no idea, the enemy she made. Enemies, plural, because Izuku isn’t even close to the only person who wants her to suffer for what she did to Tooru.

Just because revenge was off the table doesn’t mean that she would get away with everything.

“You can escape. But I’ll find you again.” He says, voice startlingly calm even to himself. “And again. And again. And again.”

“I will do whatever it takes to make sure you rot in here like you deserve.”

Tooru wouldn’t get what she deserved, the happy life, the peace. There was nothing he could do about that now. But Yue Hagakure would get all she deserved, that much was certain.

#invisiquirk #amplifyingtrace #needlxd #rrenao #;;out of character #v;;my deku means you can do it (pro hero)#so uhhh basically this is how it goes down in main verse #Izuku still goes off the rails a bit but uh less murdery #tw;;death #tw;;child abuse #tw;;recovery

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danyka-fendyr · 6 years

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Scar Tissue Chapter 1: Gotham at Fight

A/N: The name is a pun off of “Gotham at Night.” I’m tagging @writingtheworks bc...well, she asked to be tagged. This is meant to be a full-length fic, and this first chapter is just to kind of give people a taste of what’s to come. Enjoy!

The air over the city buzzed, hot and heavy like the rain pelting down through the night. Even in the dead of summer, it still rained in Gotham. If New York was the city that never slept, Gotham was the city where the sun never shone.

Jason looked over at the girl crouching on a gargoyle next to him, her cape fluttering behind her, a wash of darkness fading into Gotham’s sky. He could still remember when Bruce had brought her home. It was the tail-end of his first year of being Robin, and he had been offended by her existence. It was only natural, of course. He had been training, had earned his way here. She was only a little girl with a tiny, quaking frame, drenched in rain like she was tonight. She was quivering, curled in on herself and unsure, black hair slicked down to her head and dripping water. Defying all of this, her eyes glowed the brightest green Jason had ever seen. It was unearthly almost, the way they cut through him like knives, hesitant and afraid, but also curious and sharp.

Jason had to admit that a lot had changed in the 3 years he had known her. She had gotten taller, for one. Had filled out some, thanks to the regular food she was provided with. Jason told himself that it was only the food causing her to fill out, and that there had been no other changes, even if the Batgirl suit was skintight. Her sharp elbows and knobby knees had turned into softer, rounder edges, but Jason knew better than to mistake her for being soft. Maybe some other girl, but not his Rorie.

He winced at the possessive note in his thoughts, brushing it aside. It was true. She was his Batgirl, just like Barbara had been Dick’s. That was all there was to it. And if maybe he was falling in love with her a little, well, Dick had done that with Barbara too, so Jason reasoned that would probably be fine as well. He wasn’t, but if he was.

Her hair fluttered in the wind, inky strands reaching out towards the twinkling stars. When another dark haired child arrived at Wayne Manor, Alfred had wasted no time in making a joke about how if Bruce wasn’t careful he’d end up with a collection. Jason scoffed at the idea that any kind of trend would start with that. Clearly more than just hair color went into choosing a Robin.

“Where to next, Boy Wonder?” she waggled her eyebrows teasingly, interrupting his thoughts.

Thunder cracked across the sky, and a grin cracked across her face. Rorie had always like thunderstorms, crazy and wild just like her. One time, in the first few months she had been at Wayne manor, Jason had found her standing underneath a tree in the middle of a storm, arms thrown wide as she basked in the chaos. Jason had quickly yanked on a jacket, rushing out to scold her and explain the probability that she would be struck by lightning. She had turned up her tiny, sharp little face to him, and said, “Huh.”

Suffice it to say, she had not moved a muscle until the storm was over. Jason nearly had a panic attack the whole time, but he also wasn’t a snitch. Either Bruce hadn’t known, or he hadn’t bothered to go out and save her. Either way, she came back inside later, much to Jason’s relief.

“Your call,” he said, shrugging nonchalantly.

“We could visit that bakery on the upper east side,” she sing-songed suggestively, hopping off the gargoyle and shimmying over next to him.

“We could.” He continued to stare impassively out at the city.

“Hey!” she pouted. “You said it was my call!”

There was a beat of silence.

“Fine. We hit the lower east side, see if there’s any scum there by any chance, and then we visit the bakery.” She said it like the matter was already decided, not like she was offering a truce.

“Deal,” Jason said anyway.

“Yay!” she lurched forward, wrapping her arms around Jason’s neck, fingers grabbing handfuls of his cape as she teetered from the strain of reaching to his greater height. She was by no means short, but neither was Jason.

His hands reached around her waist to support her, and he laughed into her ear.

“Careful Batgirl. You’ll hurt yourself before tonight’s thugs have any chance.”

She pulled away, rolling her eyes, but she still bounced on the heels of her boots.

There was a rustle and she stilled, narrowing her eyes. Jason looked over their heads, finding the Batman himself hovering in that brooding manner he always had when the cowl was on.

“I see you two were productive while I was gone.”

If you looked carefully, you could detect an undertone of humor in his voice.

“Yes, we were. We decided where to head next for you,” Rorie piped up, hands on her hips in an ironically Superman-esque pose.

Clark would be proud when Jason told him later.

“Oh? Where to then?” Batman did not sound unskeptical.

Jason said, “Lower east side,” at the same time she said, “Cookies!”

“Those are in opposite directions,” Bruce pointed out.

“Not if we hit the lower east side first and then head toward cookies,” Rorie reasoned.

“That would still put them in opposite directions,” Jason piped up.

“Hey! I thought you were on my side!” She elbowed him, hard.

“I’m on nobody’s side,” Jason teased. “I’m a rogue. An outlaw!”

She giggled, and Jason could swear he saw Bruce roll his eyes behind the mask. Then again, maybe it was just a trick of the light.

“Well, this outlaw still has an hour of patrol left. Patrol first, then cookies,” Bruce said.

“So we are getting cookies?” Rorie gasped.

“I’ll think about it.”

Before he could say anything else, Rorie was launching herself off the edge of the building, grappling her way over to the lower east side. Jason ran after her, and Bruce sighed before shaking his head and following suit.

“So, that was nothing short of awesome!” Rorie said, looking up at Jason in awe, a wide grin plastering her face.

Jason felt the hot blush sweep across his cheeks, but he told himself it was only from the post-patrol excitement. Never mind that he was already chewing on a cookie in the kitchen of Wayne Manor and his adrenaline had sufficiently disappeared.

“Wasn’t anything special,” he said, mouth full of chocolate chip.

“Are you kidding me? You totally saved me.” She giggled, half-nervous and half-gleeful, still coming down from the near-death experience high.

“You would have done the same for me.” He shrugged.

“Nah,” she joked. “I would have just let you die.”

“Heartless.”

She hugged him again, still wobbling. Jason wondered if there would ever be a time when she wouldn’t wobble or have to reach up on her toes to hug him in this most impractical of ways, arms wrapped around his neck and face painfully close to his own.

“Thank you, Robin,” her voice was softer, the joking tone gone.

She sounded tired, something Jason could relate to. She also sounded grateful, like she knew just how dangerous the metal bat zeroing in on her face had been. Jason watched it replay in his head again for a moment, her body there on the ground, the gang banger poised to ram the end of his bat down into her head, wild with whatever drug had been in his system.

She pulled back, and Jason felt something soft against his cheek. Her lips, feather light, pressing against him, her eyelashes fluttering against his temple. Jason’s hands seized up around her waist, his heart going almost faster than it had been beating the crap out of that thug.

She turned to walk away, presumably to go to her own room and sleep in her own bed, but Jason stopped her.

“Hey Rorie?” She paused. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

She turned around, giving him a shaky smile.

“Yeah. It’s not the first time, right?”

“Doesn’t have to be the first time.” Jason frowned. “You wanna be alone?”

She paused for a moment, deliberating. Jason knew what that meant.

“You could always come sleep in my room, if you wanted.” He said it casually, easing her pride into the idea.

“I mean, I guess if you’d be alright with it.” She shrugged, traipsing off to her room to grab some pajamas.

When she came back, she looked, in a word, cozy. She was wearing her comfort pajamas, and she looked 5 minutes away from stress baking and stress eating while the cookies were in the oven. What? Jason was a detective, he noticed things.

Her thick, fuzzy pants and oversized flannel top hung loosely off of her frame, and when she smiled Jason could see the tops of her retainer. Bruce’s wealth and social standing had provided her with a set of designer teeth, but they did not come without a certain amount of maintenance.

“You wanna watch a movie?” she asked.

“We have school tomorrow,” Jason pointed out.

She groaned. “Please don’t remind me.”

“You like school.” Jason laughed.

“Yes, but you know what I don’t like? Waking up. And you know what I have to do for school? Wake up.”

“You would sleep forever if you could,” Jason teased, slinging his arm over her shoulder as they headed down the plush carpeted halls of the manor to his room.

“I like sleep,” she whined, leaning into him.

“Then why did you volunteer for a job that keeps you up all night?”

“Well once I’m awake there are so many distracting things to keep me awake. I like being asleep, but I don’t like actually going to sleep. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, Jay-bird.”

“Whatever you say.” He rolled his eyes.

Jason opened the door to his room, and Rorie snickered.

“What?” Jason asked, confused.

“I forgot you were like this,” she teased.

“Like what?” He was seriously lost here.

She gestured to his room. Jason couldn’t see anything wrong with it. The bed was made, sheets crisp and clean, not a wrinkle to be seen, and all his clothes and other various belongings were off the floor and in their proper places. His music was neatly stored off to the side, organized alphabetically by artist for ease of access, and his books were stored alphabetically on his bookshelves by author. It was flawless. What could her problem possibly be?

“You’re so clean cut!” she giggled, bursting into laughter. “You don’t even realize what a classic good boy you are Jason Todd.”

“I am not!” he protested, even as her crouched body grew concerningly nearer to the floor.

If she started rolling on the floor laughing, Jason was convinced he would suffer the ultimate humiliation.

“You get straight-A’s, you’re a complete nerd for Shakespeare, and I’m calling it now, you’re going to audition for the school play. Also, you spend your spare time stopping evil. Goody-two-shoeeeesss,” she sang.

“I hate you. So, so much.” Jason sighed, her teasing relentless.

“Gosh,” she said, her apple green eyes locking with his own, “I love you Jason Todd.”

Jason gasped, quiet and almost imperceptible. The way she said it was so raw, so truthful. The most casual thing, hitting him like a 50 lb weight landing square on his heart.

“I love you too,” he whispered to her back while she crawled into his bed, peeking out from under the teal comforter.

“You coming?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t be a bed hog, okay?” he said, pulling his own pajamas out of the drawer.

“Never fear. You should know by now, boy detective. I am a cuddler, not a bed hog,” she informed him as he headed to the bathroom to change.

When Jason came back, she was once again sober and solemn. Her eyes were dark and clouded, filled with all of her thoughts. Jason walked slowly, as though he were approaching a wounded animal. She didn’t hesitate, though. She reached out her arms towards him, and he fell into them, hugging her tightly as Gotham’s dark night sky wrapped around their consciousness like a blanket.

“I’m tired, Jay,” she whispered.

“I know. Go to sleep Rorie. It’ll be better in the morning,” he told her.

Jason knew he was lying. He knew the city would still be bursting at the seams with crime in the morning, dotted with seeds of people willing to murder teenage girls in one overripe sewer of a city, and the sun rising wouldn’t change anything about that. Jason knew the city better than anyone else in this family, and he knew it would not be better in the morning.

But this was Gotham, and sometimes lies were necessary if you wanted to make it through the night.

#scar tissue #jason todd #jason todd x oc #batman #batfamily #gotham

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daveyjacobss · 7 years

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cold coffee | davey jacobs

french vanilla part two

inktober day nine

reader x davey jacobs

[newsies modern au]

summary: Warm mornings and sweet love songs are things of the past. Regret and cold coffee are all that remains.

a/n: pls let me know if you get the feeling like you just watched the end of la la land after this bc the end is sort of inspired by that and that’s what it feels like for me. i’m sorry that i crushed the cute couple’s dreams !! pls don’t hate me !! but in other news this is literally 3700 something words so y’all better enjoy. also (and i know you guys will be happy about this one) guess who’s turning french vanilla into a series?? ;)

( french vanilla masterlist )

__________

Davey and Y/N had been apart longer than they had been together. The time they had spent by each others side was characterized by warm mornings and cold nights spent talking and kissing and everything in between. Their relationship had been lyrics from love songs written in french and the smell of Davey's regular order at the coffee shop Y/N had worked at. Now, after an entire year of being together, and over a year being apart, their relationship was nothing but bittersweet memories. Nothing but the sting Y/N felt in her heart when she smelled French vanilla coffee. Nothing but the way Davey skipped over the song La Vie En Rose whenever it came up on his phone. Nothing but memories that were too painfully happy to reminisce on. Memories of a time when smiles were constant and days were whiled away in bed, lying lazily in each other's arms. Memories of a time that was long dead, no matter how much anyone wished it wasn't.

It didn't matter anymore that Y/N no longer spoke to any of Davey's friends. It didn't matter anymore that she had cut off all ties with the people who had become her friends, her family. It didn't matter, because they pretended it didn't. Race and Spot acted as though that hadn't been close to her at all. As if they hadn't become best friends with the girl who used to show up on their doorstep at ungodly hours seeking advice or simply because she was bored. Katherine put on a brave face, acted like she and Y/N hadn't spent countless nights pouring their hearts out to each other over movie marathons and makeovers. Jack tried to ignore the sudden lack of her presence in his and Davey's apartment, knowing better than to bring home any French vanilla coffee. All that mattered was that she was gone, and no one cared. No one gave a damn, nor did they still feel the pain of losing her. No one. Especially not Davey.

Except they did. They still passed by the coffee shop and peered in, even though they knew she wouldn't be there anymore. Race sometimes still left a key under the mat outside his and Spot's apartment as if she would be coming in. Spot still slept lightly, awaiting her knock on the door. Katherine still occasionally went to reach for the movie she had lent Y/N, the one she'd never been given back. Jack still half expected to walk into the kitchen in the morning to see Y/N making breakfast while dancing to music playing quietly from her phone. But while everyone else still found themselves missing her, searching for her, waiting for her, Davey took every precaution to keep the memories of her at bay.

He hadn't stepped a foot inside that coffee shop since they had broken up. He'd even deliberately taken routes that avoided having to pass it. He found a new favorite coffee and a new favorite song. He packed away all the things she had left behind and put them in a box that was tucked under his bed where no one ever cared to look. And yet, there was still an emptiness in chest. There was still a cold that chilled him to the bones each time he woke up alone after a night spent dreaming of the days when she had been at his side, always. There were still guilty nights during which he opened open the box - her box - and went through each thing. Nights when he read through all of her notes and let himself smile and laugh and cry. Nights when he held her sweater in her hands and tried to convince himself that she would come back for it and he'd see her again. Nights that ended in warm dreams and cold mornings.

Y/N L/N and Davey Jacobs had broken up, and Davey hadn't been the same since. When she had walked out the door with all that she could gather of her things at the time, she'd taken a piece of him with her. He hadn't realized just how big of a piece until he realized that she really wasn't coming back. When he realized that he had screwed things up and it was his fault she was gone.

Because it was his fault, and he knew it. But he hadn't told anyone else. All they knew was that one day Y/N had been there and the next she was gone, and Davey had pretended as if that was perfectly normal. As if the girl he was madly in love with hadn't just disappeared into thin air. And if they knew that Davey spent his nights crying over the loss of her, they didn't say anything. They adjusted as fast and as best as they could to her absence, if not for themselves then for Davey.

Davey, who relived every word of the last conversation they had ever had every single day. Davey, who had been quieter since she left. Davey, who got better at pretending to be okay once she was gone. Davey, who could still hear himself yelling a N's her screaming right back at him. Davey, who was haunted by the echo of the door slamming closed behind her. Davey, who was still in love with a girl he hadn't seen in over a year. Davey, who would probably always be in love with a girl he would most likely never see again.

There had been a day, a single day that held a single moment during which Davey had wished Y/N was dead. Because if she was dead, he could mourn her. He could miss her and cry over her and no one could ever tell him to stop. No one could ever tell him he was overreacting. If she was dead, he wouldn't have to worry that she was out there meeting someone else and falling in love with them instead. But he hated himself for having thought such a thing, pushing it out of his mind quickly.

Sometimes, he thought himself ridiculous. He couldn't even go back to the coffee shop without thinking of her (head tried only once before), and she didn't even work there anymore. She was still affecting him, even after all their time apart, and he wished he could hate it. But, instead, he was grateful for the constant reminders of her, no matter how sad they made him, because he never wanted to forget her. He didn't think he could, if he was being honest.

So he suffered in silence as the memories of them became bittersweet at best, her absence killing him slowly as each day passed without her return.

__________

Y/N has always been one for taking pictures. She wasn't sure when it had started, but she loved photographing moments that she wanted to preserve. it was rare that she was the subject of her photos, or anyone else's, as she herself was very camera shy. However, almost all of her friends had a folder filled with photos of them on her phone that she had taken when they hadn't known a camera was being pointed at them. She supposed she liked to remember what people were like in their truest moments.

She still had a folder for Davey. She still had a folder for Davey filled with more pictures than any other folder she had ever made. There was one for Race, and Spot, and Katherine, and Jack, too, but none of them had nearly as many as Davey's. Every so often, she still went into the folder and scrolled through, reliving their best moments. There so many pictures of Davey smiling, blissfully unaware that she was photographing him. There were pictures of them together, as well. Being in a picture with Davey had somehow demolished her dislike for having her picture taken. Some of her favorite photos were ones of him laughing freely, or even those rare times when he realized she had her camera out and he blushed heavily. If she scrolled through them long enough, studying each one carefully and trying to recall every detail of the moments it had been captured in, she could convince herself that Davey Jacobs would still be waiting for her when she got home. She could convince herself that if she walked up to the door of his apartment she wouldn't even have to knock.

Which, really, she wouldn't. Because she still had a key to his apartment on a necklace that she hadn't worn in a year. But she didn't dare go near his apartment, not after the way she had stormed out that night, leaving everything they had behind. Each day, she wished more and more that she could remember the things they had said. But in her head it was just a sad and angry blur filled with loud voices and slamming doors. She wish she knew whose fault it was, but she truthfully couldn't recall anything that they'd said. She could remember why, though. She could remember what had started the argument very clearly. She had started the argument - so maybe it was her fault. She didn't know. She wished she didn't care.

Occasionally, she'd allow herself the quiet days during which she reminisced. The days when she made herself a cup of French vanilla coffee, still an expert at brewing it despite how long it had been and watched the movie she had never given Katherine back, still able to recite each word. The days when she let herself read back through her text conversations with Race and Spot that she couldn't bring herself to delete because they made her laugh too much. The days when she cooked breakfast and listened to music, able to pretend as if Jack was behind her dancing goofily.

The days when, in her mind, at least, Davey was just at school, or maybe work. The days when she let herself believe that he would be walking through the door, ready for hugs and kisses and late night talks and everything they used to do. Davey Jacobs was a fantasy she couldn't really relive forever, but she'd be damned if she didn't try. Davey Jacobs was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and she had walked away from him.

She still curled up on only one half of her too-big bed, as if Davey would be lying down next to her, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her temple as they feel asleep. She still dreamed of him, almost every night. And she knew she was pathetic, but she couldn't help it.

She was living her dream, but it had been the life she had imagined for herself before she had met him. And now, after it all, not having him by her side didn't feel right. She would sit on the balcony of her flat and stare out at the city below her, letting the feeling of Paris fill her veins as the sight of the Eiffel Tower rattled her bones. But Paris - the city of love, the city of light, the city of her dreams - felt empty and cold. She was almost happy when she got on the plan back to New York after a year studying abroad in France.

She was better at hiding her pain and longing. She still joked and laughed and smiled as if nothing had happened at all. None of her friends knew why Davey had disappeared so suddenly, but they knew better than to question it. She had thought, in the beginning, that being in a different country than him would make it better, but she had been so horribly wrong. It had only made the longing worse.

Y/N L/N was still wholeheartedly in love with Davey Jacobs, no matter how many times she declared otherwise. She hadn't even laid an eye on anyone else since Davey. He was all she had ever wanted and needed, and her was gone. And disappearing with him was any trust she had once held in the idea of true love and soulmates. Because if finding your one true love, your soulmate, meant that you would get to be happy with them for the rest of your life, then somethin had gone terribly wrong in the cosmos. Her and Davey we're meant to be, anyone who had ever seen them together knew it.

And yet, they hadn't spoken in ages, and were likely to never speak again. If the universe wanted them to be together, it had a funny way of showing it.

David Jacobs and Y/N L/N were miserable without each other, but there was nothing they could do about. Fate or destiny or whatever the hell it was seemed to have plotted against them. Fate was cruel and heartless, and they a suffered because of it. And, sometimes, fate played tricks with the false promise of hope and new beginnings. Y/N and Davey both wished they hadn't mistaken the false promise for a real one.

__________

It was an autumn day much like the one they had first met, though admittedly later in October. It was a different coffee shop - one were waiters and waitresses actually came up to the table to take orders - and Davey was reading a novel, one of the rare times he had no more school work to do and got to read for pleasure. It was his senior year of college, and the professors were piling on work and life lessons they claimed would help in future careers. Davey appreciated the challenge, really, but at that point he was just ready to be a reporter. He'd been in a state of total relaxation, no thoughts of her in his head. He was blindsided by it.

"Can I sit here?" The words made his heart sting, skipping a few beats as he almost stopped breathing. In a split second he could hear voices whispering in the dark, laughing quietly and kissing between words. He looked up in surprise and she was smiling shyly, uncertain of herself. She glanced around before looking back at him, biting her lip nervously. He didn't know what to say, but his head started nodding yes before he could even think about it.

She pulled out the chair across from him timidly, lowering herself into the seat softly. Her fingers pulled the scarf around her neck loose, moving it to her lap, where she fiddled with it anxiously. She had a habit of needing something to do with her hands whenever she was particularly stressed. He had seen her do it whenever she had a test coming up or she was in a situation she wasn't comfortable with. It hurt to think she wasn't comfortable around him. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, Davey just watching Y/N as she avoided his gaze.

"How have you been?" He finally asked, clearing his throat. She seemed startled by the sound of his voice, frowning at the simplicity of the question. Davey knew that she hated small talk, but he didn't know what else to say.

"I've been good," she answered, granting him a small, gentle smile. He couldn't tell if she was lying. He almost hoped she was, selfishly wishing that she had been as distraught without him as he had been without her. "You?"

"I've been better," he responded honestly. He knew better than to lie to her - she'd always been able to tell when he was bluffing, no matter what it was about it. Her lips turned downwards slightly at his answer. He wondered if she wanted him unhappy like he did her, but he knew she was too kind for that. No matter how much he liked to pretend she would be selfish like him, he knew she would want him to be happy despite what had happened between them. He wondered, briefly, why she had come up to him at all. If the roles had been switched and he had seen her first, he would have walked right out, running away as fast as he could. "How was Paris?" He asked, trying to hide the slight bitterness in his voice. He expected a wistful smile like the one she used to wear whenever she talked about France, but he didn't get it. Instead, she seemed to recoil at the question for some reason.

"It's not all it's cracked up to be," she laughed slightly, but he could tell it was fake and, maybe, just a little bit pained. He suddenly felt awful for ever wishing unhappiness upon her. She deserved to be happy more than anyone he had ever met. Before he could come up with a response, a waiter came over with a bright smile on his face.

"What can I get the two of you?" He asked cheerfully. Y/N smiled at him, though Davey recognized it as the fake smile she used to use when dealing with customers.

"A hot chocolate and a French vanilla coffee, please," she ordered for both of them. Davey didn't bother correcting her, telling her he hadn't had French vanilla coffee since she'd left because he was pathetic and he couldn't handle thinking of her without breaking. He stayed quiet and let himself be a little bit angry when the waiter seemed to steal a glance at Y/N before he left. She didn't seem to notice or care, though, which satisfied him. "So, how's writing going?" She asked, a genuine smile spreading across her face as she leaned on the table and watched him intently. "You're still going to be a reporter, right?" He nodded yes, feeling a warmth replace the awkwardness that had been surrounding them.

"It's going great, actually," he grinned. "I know I'm going into journalism and all, but I've got this creative writing professor, and he's just great. I think it's my favorite class." She smiled and nodded as he spoke, clapping her hands together excitedly when he was done.

"That's great, Davey!" She exclaimed. He tried not to let his heart flutter too much at hearing her say his name. "Maybe you'll get to actually write a book one day, like we talked about."

"If I did, I'd probably need your help," he admitted. "You're the one who helped build the idea for that story, after all." She waved him off but didn't stop grinning.

"Well, I'd be happy to help if you ever wanted to really pursue it. Just give me a call anytime." They seemed to realize at the same time the weight of those words. When the waiter came back with their drinks, they were quiet again.

"Was Paris really that bad?" Davey eventually asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"No," she sighed. "It was beautiful, but I had a hard time enjoying it, I guess. Plus, you build something up in your head enough than it can never really compare to what you've imagined. You remember how Jack used to say that he preferred his imaginary Santa Fe to the real one?" Davey nodded in affirmation. "It was like that," she admitted, taking a sip of her hot chocolate. Davey reached for his own drink, letting the warmth of it slip down his throat. He'd forgotten how good French vanilla tasted. When Y/N set her drink down and went to pick up her napkin, she laughed. Davey furrowed his eyebrows in confusion as she did so, but she just kept giggling.

"Oh, God, you'll never believe it," she breathed. She held up the napkin so that Davey could read the phone number and name written on it. It seemed he had been correct earlier when he thought the waiter had been checking her out. Despite the jealously churning his stomach, he couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. "Is this what it was like when I did this to you?" She wondered aloud. "I am so sorry," she giggled, not looking at all as if she meant it. Davey hoped she didn't.

"You were a little bit more creative with it," he assured her, earning a bright smile from her in return. He was almost positive that if she just kept smiling at him like that he'd be content for the rest of his life. But fate was fate and their was a sudden crack of thunder outside that made them both jump as they looked out the window and the rain started to come down. Davey swore it had been sunny just a minute ago.

"Oh, I should get going," Y/N spoke quietly, staring at the rain. Davey wondered if the sun and her leaving at the same time were related somehow. He was sure they were. "It was really nice talking to you, Davey," she smiled and looked at him with those eyes of hers that he had never stopped getting lost in. He looked into her eyes and he saw everything they had once had, and everything they could've been. He saw the days and nights they had spent together, and the years they could've stood side by side. He saw the life they could've built together, days upon days of happiness and love. He saw the sorrow and regret behind her smile and knew that she could see the pain on his face at having to match her walk away again.

But then they were just in a noisy coffee shop and it was raining and she was wrapping her scarf around her neck as Davey sat in his seat, immobilized by the sudden rush of memories and what-if's.

"Goodbye, David," she said, waving and she picked up her bag. He could tell, in that moment, that she was making up for the way she had left before. That this was her real goodbye, the one she never got the chance to say. That this was it.

"Bye, Y/N," he whispered. And just like that, she was gone and he was cursing himself for not remembering that fate was cruel, and it would never be so kind as to grant him the one thing that could make him happy. Y/N L/N was gone again, and his French vanilla coffee had gone cold.

He pulled out his headphones and left a tip on the table, going into his music app as he walked outside. He hit shuffle before shoving his phone in his pocket to keep it from the rain. Slowly but surely, the soft melodies of La Vie En Rose began to fill his head. For the first time in over a year, he let the song play.

_________

tag list:

@isarants @tomanybandstolove @seriously-ceci @tommyboyneedshercoffee-blog @bens-platt @ohblue @sorryyouroutofmyleague @tumblogbykarapaloma @earlyjunes @broadway-trashh @interwebseriesfan24 @whatacatchdxnnie @returnoftheborle @cozykleinman @timesarehardfornewsies @jackclyde @last-an-eon @annabethgranger123 @musi-xals @notyouraveragegryffindoor @magic-made-by-melody @i-also-miss-our-talks @linfuckingmirandaaa @shatteringinprogress @storytellersun @psych-stereo @books-cats-sprinkles @me-andthe-sky @connor-is-my-sunshine @merediths2003 @papesfordavey @larryisinfactnotstraight @casifer-is-cute @gem-evieve @actually-lizzy @broadwayobsessedteen

(ask to be added to my october tag list or any tag list !!)

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bonnissance · 7 years

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critical ranting about holby under the cut (bc I am also sick of long holby text posts bc reading is hard)

But I have Thoughts(tm) I need to air because there are many things that really really get my goat about Serena’s current story and almost all of it is due to the fact that her entire narrative arc has been constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

To begin, I hold that this narrative arc is an example of poor storytelling. As I’ve vague discussed before, I think Elinor’s introduction+exit=the fall out of her death was very poorly constructed and executed. The pacing is wrong, the rhythm of progression is beyond clunky, and the “you fill in the blanks” between the plot points the writers are handing to the audience are too large and frequent to be of any benefit to the narrative.

They reintroduced Elinor far too briefly for anyone to actually care that the character die, because, of course, the point wasn’t that Elinor died: it was that Serena Campbell’s daughter died. Following that, they left out crucial and oh so very important scenes in Serena’s story. For instance, discussing Elinor’s condition with the Doctors and Edward, their decision to turn of the ventilator, and preparing for the funeral. Nevertheless, those plot points were left out of Serena’s narrative as a deliberate decision.

So too was the choice to leave out any depiction of Serena’s grief at home. Which in itself, I shall concede, is understandable given Holby is a medial drama situated in a work place hospital and generally only includes out of hospital scenes when large concentrations of hospital employees are there at the same time such as Albie’s and work functions, etc.

However, there are exceptions to this rule, such as the trio’s house and now Dom and Issac’s domesticity. Those scenes are included because they are essential to the story those characters are telling at the time. Zosia’s early story is inherently connected to her personal life. As is Dom and Issac’s storyline necessitates the blurring of profession and personal and how Issac’s abuse alters depending on the situation. Thus, Holby has a history of included non-work place related scenes when it furthers the story they have chosen to tell.

Yet the deliberately decided against including allowing Serena to grieve in the safety and comfort of her own home, just as the arguably essential scenes above mentioned scenes were left out of scripts. In fact, that entire section of Serena’s storyline was barely even acknowledged. Now, we all know that Russell would have knocked those scenes out of the park. So leaving them out wasn’t the writers factoring in to a lack of ability on behalf of their performer. Nor do I believe they left them out because the writers were unable to write the content. On the contrary, I think Holby’s writer’s room to be more than capable of producing that type of content and doing it rather well.

It then follows that the writers made a deliberate decision to they breezed over what ought to have been a significant point of character development in favour of inserting her straight back onto the ward. To ensure that her grief and every unhealthy coping mechanism she uses to get through the day would be on full display to her colleagues, and to the audience. The writers forced Serena back onto the ward, to the same physical location of her daughter’s death, in order to deliberately blur the lines of the character’s personal tragedy with her professional existence.

They explicated unhealthy coping techniques that directly affected Serena’s behaviour towards her colleagues, and they did it without providing her with an adequate support network.

They created an unhealthy inter-generational dynamic between Serena and Jasmine that, at times, epitomises the ‘old queers are predatory and dangerous to young women’ trope. They glazed over Serena’s panic attacks and fugue states in favour implying she’s drinking on the job. They justified the narrative shaming of Serena reaching out to the one person in the world who understood what it meant to lose their daughter: Elinor Campbell, without bothering to make it clear that problem was never Serena wanting emotional support from Edward. The problem was that she continued to try and engage with him after he made it clear he was in no way prepared to provide Serena with the care she was requesting. Once again leaving Serena without a support network as well as implying her desire for the support was unreasonable.

They continued pushing the mentor/mentee dynamic between Jasmine and Serena to unprofessional and unhealthy levels. Now, while there is certainly examples of emotionally abusive behaviour between Serena and Jasmine, I avoid using the term “abusive” to describe their entire relationship. I don’t believe the mistreatment occurring has been sustained long enough to warrant the term. (It bears mentioning that this classification is based on my own personal experiences with emotional abuse and that I have little interest in expanding on this reasoning should anyone take issue with this statement.) Instead, I would classify this situation as incidental grooming between two people who have positioned another in an unhealthy and toxic position in their live.

Granted, they both agreed to a mentor/mentee dynamic. However, Jasmine in no way deserves to be belittled and bullied in the work place, to have Serena use her as a project to help process her grief, or to become the focal point of Serena’s need to make sure what happened with Elinor never happens to anyone else. But nor does Serena deserve to become the source of Jasmine’s validation, to overcompensates for Jasmine’s already developed sense of unworthiness, or become a maternal care provider which Jasmine so clearly wants her to be. Both of them are using the other in horridly unhealthy ways and desperately need counselling to process their own emotional traumas.

But once again, the writers don’t bother to make clear the actual issues in these exchanges, nor handle the fall out of these situations with the degree of seriousness issues such as these actually require. Instead, they continue to escalate things between Serena and Jasmine, which we know cumulates into Serena telling Jasmine she wishes Jasmine were dead, because this was their intention all along.

Despite the fact that Elinor was Serena’s daughter, the point of killing off her off was not to give Serena a storyline. Elinor’s death and the resulting grief, which has irrevocably changed the character at the very core, was not about Serena at all, because this entire narrative was constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

And that fact makes me furious.

Because Holby gave us the story of a middle aged woman discovering her same-sex attraction in a situation where her desire was mutual and returned. They gave us a story in which that character was about to embark on a healthy, fulfilling, sustainable relationship that satisfied her emotional, physical, romantic and sexual wants. They implied the character was going integrate that romantic relationship with her other filial bonds and, for the first time in possibly her whole life, have her emotional needs actually met.

Then they took that character, who in universe was finally finally about to be happy, and decided to add to the other numerous instances of suffering the writers have already put her through by killing of her daughter. Killing off her daughter in her place of work only to cut short her grieving and send her right back there to suffer in the public eye.

And they did it to give a new and barely formed character a storyline. The fact remains that Jasmine had literally millions of plausible storylines they could have gone with; so many options that would have ended with substantial character growth. She could have stopped drinking and studied harder, she could have taken up running, gotten a boyfriend or a puppy, learnt tact and become an actual decent doctor, and the character would have grown.

Christ, she could have stubbed her toe on the edge of a bed, sworn on the ward, and gotten a dressing down from her boss about appropriate workplace vocabulary that character growth would have carried the same weight as the storyline she’s now had to endure.

They writers have irrevocably written Serena into a corner, because that character will never be the same again and there is very little they can do with her now, without actually letting the audience see the some of the most important narrative points. Moreover, they have also cut off almost all of Jasmine’s further storylines, because unless they give her a surprise pregnant with Ollie’s baby and then she miscarries after deciding to keep it (which I wouldn’t put it past them tbqh) there’s not a lot the writers can do with her that will have the same intensity and significance as what they’ve already put her through.

In short, the Holby writers took a queer mentally ill abuse survivor and guttered her from the inside out for the sake of another character with barely touched potential. They treated that character with a level of disrespect and disregard I’m not sure I’ve seen since The L Word drowned Jenny Schecter in her neighbour’s pool and nobody really cared. Because they gave us Serena Campbell, implied that she (along with and everyone she represents) deserves to be happy, only to turn around and burn her beyond recognition for daring to hope. And they did it because they wanted to.

#tw: mentions of abuse #cw: emotional abuse #Elinor mentioned for ts #death mentioned for ts #this is all heavy shit kids i hope that covers it all #i have long and complicated feeling about holby city and its existence as a cultural artifact #also in the works is a rant about how the issues ive outline above do not discount the significance complexity or important of the slowburn #narrative that came before it i still hold that bernea is on of the most interesting and complex examples of queer realisation depicted in #contemporary media its existence as a piece of positive complex and important queer representation cannot be denied #it is not undermined by the story that came after it bc the relationship between the two sections of their narratives is more complicated #than a simple *good v bad* description bc that isnt even the arguement in the first place its whether it is intriguing whether or not it is #interesting and complex and give the scenic realism and real world setting whether itfeels authentic between those two characters #any i jsut spent far too long writing hthis out when i ought ot have been working on my article but this has been bugging me for weeks and i #needed to get it out so i can get on with the rest of my life so here it is and well done to anyone who actually reads it all the way to the #end there are a lot of words and reading is hard so *thumbs up*#holby city #i wrote a thing

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pengiesama · 7 years

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GLENWOOD RUSTLEMANIA CHAMPIONSHIPS

and now i’m at the final dungeon in Berseria, ready to kneecap anyone who stands between me and my true goal of launching a spinning heel-kick at Innominat’s skull

as always, BIG TIME SPOILER EXTRAVAGANZA UNDER THE CUT, as i am at the endgame at this point

for the curious, per Eizen, a scarlet night happens when the moon and the earth line up such that the earthpulse gets drawn into the moon by gravity

"i'm a wicked little boy, doing this for my own selfish needs!" SWEET BABY!!!! SWEET BABY!!!!!!

it's such an understated character quirk but i love how huge of an appetite Laphi has and how much he zeros in on delicious things. in like two thousand years once your and Sorey's sleepover is concluded i'm sure Mikleo will make ice cream for the both of you

every time Eizen says shitty things about women or is creepy at Velvet, Edna adds another notch to the tally of times she needs to powerbomb him into the mountain. the tally is frustratingly high

bye shigure you're far more appealing than your brother and are one of like, four decent NPCs in the game *plays Taps on kazoo*

bye old fat man you sure were old and fat *plays Mambo No. 5 on kazoo*

"WHEN THE ELEMENTAL EMPYREANS AWAKEN THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF THE EARTH WILL SHAKE AND HORRIBLE DISASTERS WILL RAIN UPON--" you are trying to reason with the wrong ass crew, man. get slormped

Velvet projectile vomits the souls of the abbey bosses she ate into the volcano earthpulse, causing the elemental empyreans to awaken and literally dropkick Innominat into outer space. it is now up to us to get some golf clubs and finish the job of caving his skull in. and somehow steal a rocket ship to get up there; no one's really addressed that part yet

the best part of the empyreans awakening? because Innominat is now so weakened, his suppression on the malakhim/seraphim's free will is gone, meaning we got to see a bunch of malakhim ripping off their masks and loudly tell the abbey to fuck themselves sideways before poofing away.

so now i guess is the point where i would normally fuck around with so many endgame sidequests that i'd never wind up getting around to fighting the final boss, but i wanna break Innominat's kneecaps so bad that that's not gonna happen. the true Sweet Baby must take the throne

that's not to say i'll be skipping endgame sidequests entirely, such as the sidequest where i just fought the main guy from Xillia (?) who got turned into a penguin (???)

normin island is super cute and packed with Zestiria references, including but not limited to: 1) normins daydreaming about finding a nice master to serve, like "a pretty girl who makes terrible puns" 2) Zaveid arriving with little Dezel in tow, who he let wear his coat after saving him from daemons. i believe in Zestiria Dezel is said to be a fairly young seraph by seraphic standards, and Berseria takes place 1000 years in Zestiria's past -- if 1000 is "young" for a seraph, like, Mikleo must be considered a zygote

Zaveid loves kids so much that he and his now-dragonified girlfriend collect orphans and then kidnap random humans to help raise them. specifically he kidnapped some cooks bc he doesn't know how to

anyway we killed the dragonified girlfriend and now Zaveid and Eizen are friends and Zaveid promises to make Eizen's death wish a reality someday. once Eizen goes dragon Zaveid will run down the two-person list of people interested in having sex with him so i'm sure it'll be painful on his part as well *plays Single Ladies on kazoo*

and then we killed dragon-Silva again and confirmed he's the dragon skeleton on Hexen Isle. sometimes i feel Berseria tries a little too hard to shove LORE!!! LORE!!!! in our faces but i think that's just because i want it to focus entirely on lore that canonizes sormik more than it already is

hi other person from Xillia. is the penguin thing an in-joke i don't understand because i don't play Tales games that aren't gay

welcome to Katz Korner and here is where i remind you that Katz Korner explicitly has a sex club that you have to be 2000 years or older to enter and in Zestiria they state Zenrus was their most frequent guest

Laphi wants to enter the Katz wrestling championship where you make biscuits on your opponent and the first person who purrs loses. SWEET BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the final component of that legendary medicine we were gathering to save Laphi's Little Pal proves to be malakhim tears. can confirm that if Mikleo cried, i would gain the power to rend the earth in twain to annihilate the cause of his woes

Phoenix is here to fight again (pre-again? whatever prequels), and despite him putting forth the challenge only because he stalks Edna enough to know Eizen is deliberately avoiding her, he actually puts forth a remarkably coherent and comprehensive argument on how immature and horrible Eizen is being for keeping what he's truly doing a secret -- so much so that Eizen is basically sputtering red in the face in furious embarrassment towards the end and is all but screaming "FIGHT ME THO" to put a stop to it

that's all the compliments i'll give to Phoenix though because his fight makes me realize how much i HATE THE FUCKING STUN MECHANIC IN THIS GODDAMN GAME JESUS CHRIST. DO YOU LIKE GETTING STOPPED DEAD IN YOUR TRACKS EVERY TWO SECONDS IN BATTLE, FOR ABOUT FIVE SECONDS APIECE, GETTING YOUR MAX ABILITY POINTS REDUCED EACH TIME, UNTIL YOU CAN LITERALLY DO NOTHING AT ALL? WELL YOU FUCKING BETTER BECAUSE THERE'S NO WAY TO AVOID IT LOLOLOLOL FUK U

anyway after all that Eizen sends Phoenix to watch over her and is convinced to come clean to Edna about being a pirate. you then receive a letter from her, in which she casually accepts the news in the traditional Edna Way ("well that was obvious. the new doll you sent isn't cute but i'll keep it since you sent it.") then Eizen starts crying and it made my dick stiff

i think the Seres = Lailah theory is dumb and very well-debunked at this point (considering Seres is like. very dead) but Velvet does state in an event skit that Celica loved to make puns so maybe Lailah helps carry on her purpose into the future

i poked my head into the Empyrean/Artorius' Throne area to clean up a hunt but i found a pair of freed malakhim there who stole the Water Divine Artifact (aka Mikleo's bow) from the Abbey and are planning on smoothing out the armatus arte to make it less dangerous and more of an even exchange of power than it is at that point -- as it is it's just exorcists flat out stealing malakhim power with zero consent and then melting from the strain.

yet another chapter in the Who Fucking Edited This Game's Localization saga; localizing Glenwood as "Greenwood" because who cares about consistency in a pair of linked games. that might sound minor but, seriously, there are skits and dialogue that have complete gibberish as the subtitles/on-screen text. for example: Magilou has a line of dialogue: "That's a little goose I'm even by my standards." I was straight-up staring at my screen and eventually pieced together that they were going for "gruesome". i had a suspicion on how it happened, and checked out videos of the dub to confirm -- sure enough, Magilou's EN VA (who still sounds obnoxious lol i am so glad i changed to the sub so early) says the line, and if you were in fact a poor innocent speech-to-text converter software, used by a bunch of lazy localizers who decided to use a speech-to-text converter to automatically transcribe dialogue so you could whack off in the bathroom instead of doing work, it's very clear how you could parse the line reading as "goose I'm" instead of "gruesome".

okay i think that metaphor might have gotten lost there. what i am saying is the lazy ass localization team clearly used speech-to-text converters to transcribe dialogue for subtitles, and couldn't be arsed to proofread the result. this happens CONSTANTLY in Berseria's subs/on-screen text. christ, what happened here? Zestiria didn't have this problem...

#i guess this is my personal tales of berseria tag now #i guess this is my personal tales of zestiria tag now

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khakikyrie · 7 years

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Honestly chapter 8 is the most blaring and obvious example that Sangwoo might be developing some form of Lima syndrome (in which an abductor starts to feel sympathy for their captives (which is why I say “some form” because I don’t know if sympathy is the right word, and in many cases like this the captors end up letting their captive go which is obviously not the direction this is going, but I digress, the concept of “feeling affection” for a captive still stands)) in the story thus far which sounds weird cause that’s the chapter where he’s the WORST and MOST violent to Bum but like.

“Don’t cross this line. If you do, I’ll pull back your neck and slice it up, nice and slowly. At the same steady speed.”

This is what Sangwoo promises when he first let’s Bum upstairs. Don’t cross the line or you’ll regret it. I’ll cut up your neck. It’ll be slow and painful and I absolutely will not hesitate to do it. We as the audience, can feel the intent of this threat. Sangwoo has been very little but cruel and violent to this point.

But then chapter 8 comes, and Bum DOES cross the line. In fact he leaves the house. Sangwoo lets him, mocks him, and then, when he’s tired of standing around in the rain, he does this

Bum has explicitly done the thing he absolutely was not to do, and Sangwoo, in his own fucked up way, is giving him another chance. He’s willing to forgive it. This is 5 chapters after he promised him violence if he ever crossed the line, and now he’s carrying him back into the house and offering to make him tea after Bum deliberately broke his most important rule. I genuinely think in this instant, Sangwoo had no intention of harming Bum for leaving. I think he was going to let it go. What Sangwoo wants here is to pretend this didn’t happen, warm up in “their home” and go back to the strange domestic life they’d sort of started living together.

But then Bum fights back, and Sangwoo get’s violent.

Sangwoo drags him down into the basement, muttering “if you just hadn’t come out” and then offers him the choice between the two sharp objects. When Bum tries to derail him, Sangwoo allows it and then ties him up instead. This lasts fairly briefly, as quickly after Bum starts calling Sangwoo’s name in an informal and affectionate form of address and asks him to save him, Sangwoo, clearly visibly shocked by this

runs to grab his legs and supports him, getting off in the process (bc the kids fucked up obviously, but this also says to me that he might get off on and DEEPLY crave affection to some degree as well, which would explain the VERY uncharacteristic blush in chapter 5 when Bum says “I wish you and I could mix like this”). After this exchange, Sangwoo seems to have calmed down, if only a little, and it appears that maybe this is the end of it. He still hasn’t made good on his promise to cut him up.

But Bum continues to be mouthy, and Sangwoo retaliates by pushing his head into the bucket of water, stating “Let’s use this and calm down. Before I do something I’ll regret.” Sangwoo, for how abusive and obviously violent he’s being (he’s a serial killer, he murders people for fun I’m not forgetting that when I’m talking about him in his “kinder” moments, none of this is meant to suggest he’s a good person in any capacity, obviously) is STILL not following through on his promise, and is trying to calm himself down in probably the only way he knows how. Then Bum scratches him, and finally, FINALLY Sangwoo really loses his cool and goes through with his threat to cut up Bum’s neck.

It takes him THE ENTIRE CHAPTER to get to the point that he promised in chapter 3. While I don’t think the reason for this is “Sangwoo doesn’t want to hurt Bum” cause that’s obviously not the case, I think “Sangwoo really just wants Bum to trust and rely on and listen to him without having to go through the trouble of testing him constantly and he’s come to care enough for Bum and want his companionship enough that he’d rather do things the easy way then the hard way because some part of him probably enjoyed the easy domestic life they were living together and he knew he couldn’t allow it to continue when Bum disobeyed him but he wasn’t quite willing or ready to give it up yet, so while he obviously has no issue with hurting Bum, it would be easier for him and his goal in the end if he didn’t have to” is probably close.

As evidence of this, immediately following chapter 8, Sangwoo gives Bum another test, an easy one that he cannot fail unless he ignores Sangwoo’s directions (which is EXACTLY what he did in the previous chapter that got him in trouble). Bum passes this test with flying colors, and Sangwoo guides him through his “first kill,” assumedly rewarding him by letting him leave the basement again.

Everything Sangwoo is doing is done to turn Bum into a suitable companion. He wants Bum to be the same as him, and to listen to him and follow his orders without question. He rewards him for passing tests (The basement, the “date” to the store where Bum doesn’t run away, and imo, the “rat poison” which I’m positive wasn’t, and that Sangwoo planted there, hoping to see if Bum would try to poison him, and if he was willing to die just to kill Sangwoo, which is why the situation improves drastically IMMEDIATELY after this. Sangwoo is incredibly impressed with Bum, bc he did this of his own accord without any prompting) and punishes him for failing them, all to manipulate Bum into listening to him. Sangwoo ABSOLUTELY wants Bum to stay, and has no intention whatsoever of killing him. If he did in the beginning, it’s long gone now. Sangwoo wants a partner. He wants someone who will trust him absolutely, someone who will listen to him, someone who will support him, and probably someone who loves him. Sangwoo feels like he’s found that person in Bum.

Whether you think he’s developing Lima syndrome or you think Sangwoo’s growing and disturbed affection for Bum is stemming from somewhere else (which is equally if not more likely), it’s impossible to say at this point in the series that he DOESN’T feel something for Bum, no matter how twisted that feeling may be. Sangwoo has every intention of keeping Bum close to him. Not because he’s afraid he’ll be discovered (though I’m sure that’s somewhere in the back of his head), but because he doesn’t want to lose Bum as a companion (his MASSIVE freakout in chapter 13 when he thinks Bum is gone is more then enough evidence of that). The question now is what will Bum do, and how will he move forward. He’s begun to put up a fight, but will it continue or will he remember his feelings and get caught up in Sangwoo’s pace.

At this point, I think the only way Sangwoo can guarantee Bum’s willing companionship is if something happens regarding his Uncle, who we know had been sexually and probably physically abusing Bum, to a degree that Bum HESITATES leaving Sangwoo’s house because he’s not sure that the serial killer is the greater of the two evils. It’s likely that one of the many reasons why Bum began to fixate so strongly on Sangwoo is because he saved him from sexual assault while he was in the military, and he couldn’t help hoping and wishing that Sangwoo would save him again, this time from his Uncle. I think that if Sangwoo kills Bum’s Uncle, or allows Bum the opportunity to do it himself, the tides may change. But we’ll see.

#Meghan talks #This GOT LO NG #Not gonna tag it cause this is mostly me talking to myself #Anyway Sangwoo is definitely developing some kind of affectionate feeling for Bum #Again even if it's severely messed up and twisted (which it is)#And the question now is really what will Bum do #Will he escape?#My feeling is no I think they're both going to die in the end #But that's just how I feel #Anything could happen at this point

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inhale-in-hell-theres-heave-blog · 7 years

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romanticisation and reality

i’ve always been one to hold onto the past. it’s a very unwelcome part of me which decides that i should definitely still be awake at 2am replaying moments from days or weeks or years ago in my head and wishing i could do them again differently instead of doing what anyone else would do by laughing about it and moving on

like when i suddenly remember a much better meme i could have used to end a twitter argument which would have likely made me look a lot funnier and like i didn’t care and less like i was actually crying into some chicken selects because i had been simultaneously dumped and then humiliated lol xD

or when i think about when i used to get a bit wild on yunghan420 (follow if u want to be pissed off by the shitposts about once a week) and post things i’d immediately regret and then i’d end up with about 7 less friends than before and a lot of lost respect from people WHICH IS FAIR ENOUGH bc tbf was such a cunt on there i shouldn’t even be allowed it

or when i could have just handled things a lot better. i never know how i feel about astrology but i do basically fit the characteristics of ur classic aries, especially in doing things before thinking and putting emotions b4 rationality etc,. which is not really ideal ahahhahahahahahah it’s so bad i basically regret about 91% of social decisions and just torture myself w/ thinking about them over and over

but there’s another side to this. i realised that past memories go either way with me- either i’ll repress them and then use them as reasoning as to why i am not a functioning human & should probs be euthanised or i’ll overthink them to a point where the actual events become very overexaggerated caricatures of how they actually happened lol

e.g from september to christmas felt like a peak for me - i had a pretty stable friendship group, a boyfriend, i felt so confident etc etc

or did i???

have I just over thought it? was i really happy? am i just remembering the positives about that group and deliberately blocking out the parts where i felt left out in order to regret distancing myself (because i am alexander hamilton and i will never be satisfied clearly)?? am i overexaggerating how happy i was in that relationship and forgetting the distrust (amongst other things lmao)?? was i really happy then or am i just choosing to portray that part of my life as the happiest to make up for how i feel now? i dONT KNOW gosh darn it

again with the last boy i was with. as soon as we met i felt a click immediately and i knew that i could spend months with him. i enjoyed spending time with him more than anything else in the world, hence why i am still very hung up on him and listen to jeff buckley about 3 times a day because it reminds me of him but i digress. did i really feel this or has this only come about since he ended it? i know i’ve romanticised it to some degree, partly because it was the relationship i’ve dreamed of for so long. he took me out at night and we sat in the car and listened to the sound of the smiths and watched louis theroux in his cute lil room which was so ideal and he was older and could drive and it gave me the approval i wanted from not only him but also everyone else. it was perfect until one day it changed and he ended up telling me very nicely and gently that he wasn’t really looking for a relationship which was obviously a fucking blow when you’ve invested so much of ur already fragile self in him :-)

but what i’m trying to get at here is that i’m not sure what is really true and what i’ve romanticised. yes we had a wonderful time but it wasn’t all great. i knew he had to go to uni etc. we probably weren’t a perfect match at all. i think its just the fact it never really got started which left me able to speculate because it ended at a point where anything could have happened and gave me endless scope to romanticise what might have been if it hadn’t ended. (e.g easter ball. i had such high hopes for easter ball and when i got there all i could think about was that i could have gone with him ffs). through no real fault of his own, he left me with no choice but to picture everything that we could have been while he’s likely to have happily moved on and probably gives me very little thought or maybe thinks about me only when he sees me in school or sees my name in his contacts or scrolls past louis theroux on netflix because he’s moved on and probs sees me as a charming but unstable girl who he regrets introducing to his parents or some shit whereas i blatantly haven’t (and i probably should just face the fact i was more invested than him) AS U CAN SEE i’m just out here wondering what might have happened if we were still together

and i see myself doing this with so many things which tbf makes me worry i am basically jay gatsby who, although fictional lmao, i draw many similarities with. this sounds quite far fetched but roll w it i promise i am both revising eng lit here and also making conclusions about myself lmao. gatsby dates daisy for a month and ends up hung up on her for 5 years. he reinvents himself, changes his name, buys A MANSION TO LIVE OPPOSITE HER, THROWS HUGE FUCK OFF PARTIES IN THE HOPE SHE’D GO u get the picture. and when he eventually gets her back he’s still not satisfied. he wants more and more, for her to erase the last 5 years. DO U SEE WHAT I MEAN !! if i got him back, or my old friends back, i probably still wouldn’t be happy. i wouldn’t be able to compromise in a way that i wouldn’t regret at least one decision in that process. i would still want more SO I AM BASICALLY GATSBY AND WILL PROBS GET SHOT IN MY POOL (or hamilton bc am never satisfied so will probs get shot by my political rival or something)

so i think the real moral of this absolute shambles of self realisation is that i need to stop living in the past and focus on the future. yes i have been happy in the past but just bc these things have ended doesn’t mean i need to be unhappy. they aren’t defining factors of how i feel but merely just things to contend with which i am very sure i can do if i stop clinging onto things which once made me happy

how to do that, you ask? well i am not entirely sure but it seems fairly logical that if most of the world’s population, excluding the $10 founding father and 1920s literary figure james gatz, are able to move on and function normally then i’m sure with a bit of work i can. by acknowledging the things that happen to me as happy memories which are in my life for a reason rather than mistakes which i constantly wish i could change, hopefully i can start to move on and focus on other things !!

easier said than done haha cannot wait to slide back into sadness after writing this

jks i am trying to be positive i promise

hope u enjoyed this self absorbed shitpost with almost no real meaning except for a weak literary comparison and how i should probs move on from him bc its been a solid 7 weeks hahahahHAHAHAH banter

peace x

#what is this #why DO I STILL LIKE U ITS RUINING MY LIFE #get out of my head i'm tryin to move on #its failing can u tell #lover you really really really should have come over we would have been a beautiful couple at easter ball #look what ur missing oh wait nothing really ur probs better on ur own #self deprecation is my forte #OK DONE bye

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