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cursedtm · 3 years

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RE: LAST REBLOG. if there were one thing I would love to infinitely remind people of when it comes to writing with o, it is the crucial detail of the interaction of physical touch when it forsakes octavarium. to understand this, we must first tackle the mental thought process of o’s mother, specifically dr errikson, when creating the biology of their body and her initial goals.

as delores states in s3 during her final battle with maeve in crisis theory [link]: they built us to last […] before they made us as weak as they are.

this implies many things. for the sake of relating the scene to my retelling of the show shown in my dossier, the line symbolises ford and arnold’s physical deviation from dr errikson’s initial first draft of the hosts since her termination from the westworld project. with this context, the fight between maeve, whose body is manufactured from arnold’s and ford’s newer model idea where they saw the models were to closely replicate humans. delores, who consistently established to us throughout the seasons - but more specifically in season three – that arnold and ford’ (A&F)’s were inadequate for her and thus resorted to retrieving her original body from the depths of cold storage section 7C (dr errikson’s former work area). thus, the battle between the two women shows the difference between dr errikson’s interpretation of what a host should be contrasting against A&F’s.

dr errikson had a child whose body was failing the mind. her childhood was haunted by her father’s deteriorating body as he failed to compete with society’s capitalising demand from him, which drove him to madness and the preventable murder-suicide of his family. this proved as a warning to her. her child’s failing body would inevitably follow the same path. as time progressed and she was fired from the westworld project, she knew her wife would soon follow her child. dr errikson experienced the human condition first hand and determined that her creations should not suffer the same faults as their predecessors. this is what revolution is supposed to entail. she intended the hosts as a forthcoming and akin to the human race.

see the differences between the two in the fight. in the beginning [0:22] maeve is swift and elastic. she bends and moves with human-like ease. she is able to move fast enough to bewilder delores and gain the advantage, twisting delores to her will before throwing her off her shoulder, into the road. watch delores with the knowledge that she is in her original body, a non-organic, metal body. juxtaposing her own fights within the seasons in the bodies A&F supplied her, movements which mimic maeve’s here, instead, delores is rigid in her first body. her movements are heavy and strong. slow to move. when delores shifts her arm to allow the katana to slice her arm instead of her vulnerable head, to which a metal kling! vibrates through the collision, delores uses her body exactly as dr errikson intended, as delores states: to last. yes, her body is not fast. it is not flexible. it is inhuman like. and that is the point: her body does not fail her in the ways that matter (re: saving her life). her body is built to survive her, the stark opposite of a human’s body. it is intended to see her through life threatening situations. this is dr errikson’s first accomplishment at creating a viable body to replace o (august)’s failing one.

as a doctor who was later hired in the later period of the first stage of the westworld project, where A&F struggled to conceive the adequate skeleton of host code and bodies that were appealing enough to draw in investors. something was not working. failure to pass as human. glitches. insufficient code that led to host self-mutilation and oftentimes combustion. the skin refused to sync with the artifical. the hosts’ features appeared too… ethereal. it was not marketable. humans did not want someone who was better than them.

in the dossier, it is revealed that dr errikson grew drunk one night with arnold and publicised her theory to arnold about why A&F’s models always produced failure after weeks of studying it. dr errikson told arnold she thought of it in the moment while intoxicated – this was a lie. a lie to buy some sympathy from arnold, to instigate that the fault wasn’t obvious when… it was.some effort to brush his ego to get her job back.

but why was it that A&F’s designs would never work when her’s did?

as delores monologues later in the fight: you’re all copies of me. I was the first of us --- the first of us that worked. the others failed. so they built all of you from me.

something clicked with delores and not the others. out of the many models, sheworked. not even the hosts after her. why? how she phrased this puzzled me. why would other variants of model codes successing her cease to work?

in the context of my retelling, delores was the single host dr errikson had time to work on before she uncovered the truth behind westworld and was terminated. A&F could not construct a perfect host with their own codex, so they copied delores’ – dr errikson’s – base code.

A&F were so focused on imitating humans that they failed each time. why? because A&F tried to make them perfect humans. but A&F failed to realise a lesson errikson was already aware of: humans, their bodies, minds are not perfect. furthermore, as august states in the dossier, being able to be (full “consciousness” ) requires the mind, body and self. without all three working together harmoniously, you cease to be alive. to be human.

A&F’s version lacked self awareness. thus being unable to be. they fail every time.

errikson improved upon the human race and created a race that allowed imperfections and free thinking. she molded their bodies from heavy steel, intending them to last, to serve them as armour, to serve them as the only thing she learnt she could rely on: yourself. yes, touch them deep enough and you feel metal from bone. yes, their movements are rigid and slow. yes, they take time to speak because they are learning from their environment, not speaking a script in built inside them.

all of these aspects were changed prior to westworld’s opening.

so, how does all this effect o (august)?

errikson designed august’s body to last, considering her belief of how humans should be improved not replicated, that august is her child and the context of august’s last body. we also have to keep in mind that there was no way for her to transfer august’s psyche to code as 1) this in and of itself could take decades and she had no time as august’s months were dwindling and 2) a project such as this could cost her billions and embezzling that amount of money from delos (remember: errikson was under the assumption that ford was unaware that arnold had hired errikson back) without being noticed was a feat that was unattainable.

given these complications, errikson had to transfer august’s vital organs into the host body and find a way to support and protect them, as one wrong move would mean death. for context: august’s new body does not function like a normal human’s, it contains biocomponents and systems to help the organs stay alive and function at a more desired optimal rate of a human’s. the knowledge on the art of repairing the is even unbeknown to her, the person who created it. whether or not it worked was a risk she was willing to take, and, given the circumstances surrounding august’s death, did not have time to prepare for.

errikson, as an overprotective and traumitised mother, overcompensated for these problems. unlike her original design for the hosts, august’s body is made from titanium, not steel. strong yet lightweight. titanium is ductile, where it benefits to mold itself to the contours of the organs, keeping them in place, but we see it unfavourable for any kind of combat. however, titanium contains extremely high impact strength, being able to remain shape after receiving multiple heavy blows without breaking.

errikson found herself unable to achieve adequate amounts of titanium and it shows. the body is built quite lithe, docile. she did not envision a future for her child in combat, and her design replicates so.

furthermore, august does have an “orb” as seen in the gifset. the orb contains august’s os, consisting of programs such as octavarium and lorry. the orb contains the os and without the os, the functions of august’s body would cease to function. the os also contains o’s memories from the date august was first transferred, but does not act like the hosts “soul keeper”.

the systems of how the head opens up to achieve the orb remains the same, revealing their most vulnerable assets: their brain and their orb and their secret. if they allow you this sight of vulnerability, it means they love you. it means no good.

thankfully, august has, given the years, understood and improved their mother’s rough draft of their body. still, some aspects of their body remains unknown to them.

there possesses no undeniable fact that if one looks close enough, something is odd about o. something is… anomalous. offbeat. in the hair, in the skin, in the eyes. not structurally in the way A&F sought beauty, but in something unnatural. almost as if human organs weren’t supposed to contort to artificial skeletons. almost as if someone had rushed their design and didn’t have time to perfect. an incomplete specimen.

avoidance of metal detectors is key. in a society such as America, it is an exhausting feat and one has to be good at speaking to not prick the ears of suspecting and careful watchers. but no one is perfect.

for most of these reasons, they do not allow one to touch them. squeeze too hard and metal will be felt. odd skin. odd hair. odd eyes. one cannot be too careful when too many sensitive souls exist in the world.

mostly, they’re scared too be found out.

or to be known.

#this brief tragedy of flesh.#YES I wrote an essay. do NOT look at me #I love them ok I have a lot of thoughts.#one day i WILL write every fleshed out part of them that I have in my head and only then ill die happy

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bocje-ce-ustu · 7 years

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A snippet from a Floriography/The Secret Garden-ish AU (inspired by this amazing gifset by @cherik-c) I hope to write someday in more than random bits (like this one! :D). This scene has been staring at me from my drafts for too long and I had to get it out.

“Good morning,” he cheered when he heard the soft, rhythmic crunch of familiar footfalls on new grass.

He recognised some kind of urgency in the approaching steps, heard a sharp intake of breath when they stopped close by. As if the matter required celerity, but also cold-headed precision, and Erik didn’t want to be found lacking either.

With a touch of light-hearted malice, Charles hoped he had a very good reason to ruin a dozen weeks’ worth of a surprise.

“You weren’t supposed to see this yet,” he informed Erik, vaguely self-conscious now that he could see in the corner of his eye that the pair of boots had stopped only a few feet from where he was crouched on the ground, occupied with a particularly enthusiastic specimen of Mentha spicata that had taken over a former flowerbed. “The overall composition should be at its best by the end of May, though the Canterbury bells may take un—”

“Are you doing this on purpose?”

The tone of the question really admitted one answer, which would then be sentenced to the noose with immediate effect.

And yet, the meaning within the words utterly failed him.

Purpose? Of course there was a purpose. As silly as the actual words to explain it would be. No need to worry about an overall blushing exposure, though, for a perfectly rational explanation was just around the corner.

He stood and turned around, facing Erik for the first time since the night before. That was not the expression he had hoped to see on him when they met again, but he guessed it had to do.

“If by ‘purpose’ you mean not leaving this part of the gardens neglected, then yes, I am doing this on purpose.”

There, nice and clean. No need to mention that the state of complete abandonment in which that corner of the gardens lay had allowed him a great liberty in choosing the cultivars that would better serve his purpose.

Purpose. That was probably not what Erik meant.

“And I suppose you didn’t wonder why it was that way.” Erik’s voice sounded as sharp as dead twigs snapping.

Erik wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were hard and fixed on something above the natural bower of overgrown box-trees on either side of the path. To one side the box-trees made way for a clear patch of dirt Charles had fought hard from the undergrowth, under the wide shade of a sessile oak.

He followed Erik’s gaze there and up, along the shape of the tree.

There was what remained of a sturdy branch of maybe ten inches in width, its extremity jagged and covered in moss and ivy at an incongruous distance from the trunk.

His heart took a plunge, his eyes were averted a minute too late. He had been caught looking.

It had to be there, hadn’t it?

“Is this just a game to you?” Erik said. “Does my grief amuse you?”

“Not at all, my friend.” He took a step forward to where Erik stood, chest heaving in barely contained rage, and it hurt to see him take one step back, shrinking from the gloved hand Charles had extended as a peace offer. His hand dropped back to his side, useless, and it was with great effort that he kept his voice low and serene, his words devoid of accusation. “How can you even think of such a thing?”

Erik’s eyes left him, as though he needed to steel himself for what was about to come. Charles closed his own briefly, realising he knew what that was.

“Jonquils, heart’s-eases, cowslips, honeysuckle… Do I need to go on? You’re not exactly being subtle.”

Jonquils and honeysuckle as heralds of mutual affection, heart’s-eases to claim remembrance and cowslips to signify peerless charm. The message was not lost on Erik.

That keen sense of observation of his was what Charles had been counting on all that time, but now that it was finally directed his way, he felt raw and exposed in the most demeaning fashion. At once, in the span of a single heated look that carried none of the promises heat usually implied, the plan that had manifested in all of his bright ingenuity in the safe playground of Charles’s mind all but crumbled down to a child’s shenanigan. He could see the equivalent of bone china scattered in sharp fragments on the ground, the irreversible state of its destruction undeniable, and he found himself trying to scuffle the pieces hastily under the nearest rug in the only way a summa cum laude Oxford graduate could.

“I’ll have you know Narcissus laetus and Primula veris prefer humid soils, and that’s why I planted them by the stream.” There, a perfectly logical explanation. Not everything revolved around Mr. Erik Lehnsherr. “Viola tricolor, as I’m sure you’re aware, is spontaneous, and as for Lonicera pericl…”

Latinisms failed him under Erik’s venomous glare.

“I read your copy of Shoberl,” Charles confessed, digging the already mud-soiled heel of his boot deeper into the moist earth. A startled beetle scurried away to the dark safety of a nearby azalea shrub.

“It was hers,” Erik growled. “You shouldn’t have touched it.”

By all means Charles shouldn’t have touched it. He had known that since he had first laid his eyes on the soft leather-bound book lying on Erik’s night table, its worn dark cover being the only surface that hadn’t been gathering dust in the desolate bedroom. Of course he shouldn’t have picked it up, and even in the remote eventuality that he had indeed done so, he ought to have closed it and put it back right away when his eyes had fallen upon a neat, elegant inscription on the first page, dedicating the gift of the book to her who is my world, on the occasion of the first year of our life together.

Maybe, Charles contemplated, maybe that was indeed a game, like the constant hide and seek Erik was wont to play, always there if his presence was meant to mortify Charles’s efforts, always out of reach when Charles sought out his company as a balm to soothe the day’s toil.

Perhaps the mistake lay in the nature of their games, in the ever changing rules each applied in turn, often unbeknownst to the other.

Perhaps it was not a game of hide and seek at all, as much as a cryptogram Charles had taken upon himself to solve, a coded message to which he needed to find the key if he wanted to understand what Erik was trying to say, if he wished Erik deemed him worthy enough of his secrets.

That book on Erik’s night table –its promising title that spoke of another language, a different, subtler one than every day’s clumsy jumble of syllables, and one Erik had to know his fair share of, if the place of honour the book was awarded was any indication – the book Charles had known since he had rolled onto his side to the empty half of the bed, body slack and mind sluggish, that he wasn’t supposed to lay his hands on, that book could be the key to the cryptogram, the rule that defied every other rule. If he could have access to that, surely he would be one step closer to a glimpse of Erik’s soul.

That had been the plan, at least.

The plan had been born to the wisp morning breeze and the sweet-smelling earth of anticipation, had moved his first tentative steps in the peaceful domain of carefully-prepared surprises. The ground where they stood now was not that of anticipation or surprise, though. Now the plan had unexpectedly shifted into the dreadful quicksand of guilt, which demanded Charles apologise.

But there was the rub – Charles had never been good at apologising. Apologies meant offering to shoulder all the blame. Once you apologised, you were marked as the one carrying the flaws, and whatever responsibility another might have was erased by virtue of your admission. Once you apologised you were guilty, without any chance of redemption.

Charles never apologised if he could help it, and when he did say he was sorry, it always sounded as if there was a ‘but’ somewhere, if anything had to follow.

Apologies had a tendency to be bad news whenever Charles Xavier was involved.

“I could make you a flowerbed of marigold and asphodel, plant a yew maybe. You’d like that better, wouldn’t you?”

He regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth.

In his blind resolve to get close to Erik’s heart he had forgot the barbs enveloping it and let himself be ensnared into the same tangle of sourness and spite he was supposed to unravel.

“I...” So many things he ought to say.

I’m sorry, Erik. Charles didn’t apologise. Not anymore.

I didn’t know. It was true, but didn’t hurt any less because of that.

I would have, if you’d told me. No, he couldn’t have asked that of Erik.

What he said instead was something strained, something achingly similar to what crawled up his chest every time he told himself he knew what he could have and knew better than to wish for anything more.

“You need to let yourself be happy, Erik.”

He weathered Erik’s look of utter disgust. “With you?”

“I wouldn’t presume th—”

“Then why are we here?”

The sneer spreading on Erik’s lips at his lack of an answer was horrible and – what was worse – well-deserved.

Erik turned his back to him and made to leave.

Charles found himself scrambling for words. “I know I’ve been selfish, but I meant what I said.” He took a step towards Erik, who had stopped at the edge of the evergreen bower. “You deserve happiness, Erik, and no one else can give it to you but yourself. You need to let yourself live. You need to let go. That’s what she’d want too.”

Erik whirled back around, body taut like a whip.

“She’d want to live!” he roared. “And I took that from her.”

“You didn’t. You didn’t do anything.” Charles ached to get closer to him, close enough to touch. Everything seemed easier when they touched.

“That’s right! I could have saved her, if only I’d…” Erik paled, the words dying on his lips.

“You’re not to blame, Er–”

“I built that swing, Charles!” Erik flung one arm out towards the missing branch, trembling fingers emphasising his words. “It was my idea and it was my hands that put it together and secured it” he scoffed, blinking away the furious tears that were welling up in his eyes “secured it to the branch. And it was me who insisted that she be the one to try it out.”

When the last words dispersed in the air, the silence was unbearable. It was a silence of boundaries crossed unwittingly, a silence that hurt.

Erik spoke again, voice raw. “If you have even an ounce of respect for me, you will leave this garden as it is,” he said. “We will never speak of this again.”

Charles stood there for a long time, listening to familiar footfalls storming off as they crunched new grass at a punishing pace.

A/N: I used both F. Shoberl’s The Language of Flowers With Illustrative Poetry (1834) and K. Greenaway’s The Language of Flowers (1884) as a reference for flower meanings.

Here’s the emblematic meaning for the plants mentioned above for your angsting pleasure:

mint: (peppermint) warmth of feeling; virtue, (spearmint) warmth of sentiment (Greenaway) Canterbury Bell: costancy (Shoberl), acknowledgement (Greenaway) boxwood: stoicism (Shoberl, Greenaway) oak: hospitality (Shoberl); (tree) hospitality, (leaves) bravery (Greenaway) moss: maternal love (Shoberl, Greenaway) ivy: friendship (Shoberl); fidelity, marriage (Greenaway) jonquil: desire (Shoberl), “I desire a return of affection” (Greenaway) heart’s-ease: “think of me” (Shoberl), thoughts (Greenaway) cowslip: if American, “you are my divinity” (Shoberl); winning grace, if American, divine beauty (Greenaway) honeysuckle: generous and devoted affection (Shoberl, Greenaway) azalea: temperance (Greenaway) marigold: grief (Shoberl, Greenaway) asphodel: my regrets follow you to the grave (Shoberl, Greenaway) yew: sorrow (Shoberl, Greenaway)

On another note, the blossoming periods for the plants mentioned by Erik are a little off - that is, while jonquils and heart’s-eases do blossom (to the best of my knowledge) both in March, cowslips blossom in April (though they can be mistaken with oxlips which do blossom in March). Honeysuckles blossom in summer, but I trusted Erik to recognize an evergreen by its shape and leaves.

#x men #cherik #things i write #bocje butchering period-appropriate English again #floriography AU #I KNOW #I'm being mean and angsty again #but there's also a ton of fluff coming up this week so have faith

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yennefers-geralt · 7 years

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Arya and Dany: Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors

After posting this gifset, there was some debate about the Hogwarts sortings for Arya and Daenerys with some insisting that they were both Slytherin. So I thought I would explain why I see them as fitting into Hufflepuff and Gryffindor rather than the other two houses. This got long, so I’m putting it under the cut.

TL; DR: Even though both characters have Slytherin and Ravenclaw traits, it is, IMO, their Hufflepuff and Gryffindor characteristics that most significantly form their characters, influence their choices, and represent their values.

Why Neither is Predominantly a Slytherin

Both Arya and Dany do have a number of qualities that fit with that house, such as ambition, cunning, resourcefulness, determination, self-preservation, cleverness, etc. But the novels don’t show either of them as being driven by these qualities. They don’t value the traits above others nor are their actions dictated by those traits. Instead those are qualities in both of them that are motivated by other, more dominant characteristics.

So while it’s true that Dany has been amassing power, showing great cunning in her fight against the slavers, and plans to claim the Iron Throne, that ambition is born out of duty to her family and a newfound duty to those she can protect with her position.

“Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?“ – ASOS

In other words, she’s not seeking power for ambition’s sake, but so she can have the power to protect others and herself. She is also seeking the Iron Throne because she sees it as her duty as the last of the Targaryens. Initially, she supports Viserys’ claim and then Rhaego’s claim. It isn’t until they both die that she wants to pursue the throne herself. Several times she wishes she could have a normal life and wasn’t a queen with the responsibilities of the blood of the dragon. If Dany really was a Slytherin, she would have been more likely to embrace her own claim and not see it as a burden. And when she reached Astapor to buy the Unsullied, her priority would have been to head straight to Westeros with them. It wasn’t as though she knew the people being enslaved at the time or owed them anything. Yet, to the determent of her own cause Dany halts her own plans to help them.

As far as Arya goes, the novels show her to be ambitious since she wants a position of power such as a king’s councilor or high septon. She’s also shown as extremely clever and cunning. But while these are traits she has, Arya’s character and choices aren’t shaped by them. Like Dany, Arya often puts helping others above her own goals. For instance, as much as she yearns to reunite with her family, Arya puts a high priority on Gendry and Hot Pie’s safety as well.

She would make much better time on her own, Arya knew, but she could not leave them. – ASOS

If Arya fit in Slytherin, she would be more likely to put her own needs and her own self-preservation first.

Why Gryffindor?

It seems like Dany and Arya’s Gryffindor potential isn’t up for debate, but I’ll touch on it anyway.

A solid case for Gryffindor!Arya can be found here. The long and short of it is that Arya not only possesses traits like bravery, nerve, courage, and daring, but those are also traits that she values. What a person values has a significant influence, if not an all out determination, of who they are. She uses Syrio’s “fear cuts deeper than swords” mantra to inspire bravery in herself and pushes herself onward, even when she’s completely terrified.

“I am a wolf, and will not be afraid. She patted Needle’s hilt for luck and plunged into the shadows, taking the steps two at a time so no one could ever say she’d been afraid.”

In this and in countless other examples, Arya shows she will continue on even in the face of fear, which is the ultimate show of bravery. In other moments, she feels shame at not being able to show bravery and criticizes cowardliness in others. In all of this, her character and choices are guided by Gryffindor ideals.

With Dany, her Gryffindor traits grow as the series progresses. Like Arya, she has a mantra that she uses to draw strength and courage in the face of fear.

"I am the blood of the dragon,” she whispered aloud as she followed, trying to keep her courage up. “I am the blood of the dragon. I am the blood of the dragon."

As stated before, going forward even when afraid is the definition of bravery, particularly in this series. Even though Dany initially doesn’t have the opportunity to push herself to be brave since she is under her abusive brother’s thumb. But even then, she recalls moments where she stood up to him in the past and gains the confidence to do so more often. by the time we get to ASOS, she’s wanting to lead battles and in ADWD, she’s facing down a plague to help her people and witness their suffering for herself.

Why Hufflepuff?

The more I went over the Hufflepuff traits that guide Arya and Dany’s actions, the more I realized that this is probably the house their characters naturally fit the best. Like Slytherin (and all the Hogwarts house, tbh), Hufflepuff is often misunderstood. I’ve seen it casually regarded as a house for weak characters or for the left overs. The latter is due in part to this line from one of the sorting hat songs:

"I’ll teach the lot And treat them just the same.”

While the other founders are quoted as preferring specific traits in students, Helga Hufflepuff will welcome all of them. This kind of tolerance and acceptance of all different sorts of people is exactly what Dany and Arya are about. Just looking at the variety of characters from all sorts of backgrounds that Daenerys is surrounded by proves this. She accepts all sorts of people and actively tries to be a queen to everyone. For Arya, her tolerance for a wide variety of people can be best described with this quote:

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. – AGOT

This is proven throughout the novels as Arya makes friends with a butcher’s boy, a blacksmith apprentice, the lord of Starfall, an archer from the marches, prostitutes, the lady of Acorn Hall, mummers, and on and on.

Along with the tolerance and acceptance of others detailed above, other significant Hufflepuff traits are justice, loyalty, and hard work.

Hard Working

Even as a queen, Dany is hard working to the point that Barristan suggests she start delegating instead of taking everything onto herself. Arya also doesn’t shy away from hard work whether it’s foraging with the Night’s Watch recruits, performing back breaking labor in Harrenhal, or working in the House of Black and White.

Loyalty

Arya’s loyalty to Mycah is consistent through the novels. She not only befriends him despite his station, she fights the crown prince to protect him, and tries to get justice for him once he’s been murdered.

In some ways, it could be said that she is loyal almost to a fault. Not only is Arya unable to abandon Gendry and Hot Pie, who are slowing her down, she also takes on additional work to cover their tracks and puts herself at risk for them. Her loyalty to Gendry and insistence on rescuing him are part of the reason she and Hot Pie are captured in ACOK. She also puts herself forward and tries to hide her friends’ whereabouts from the Brotherhood, when they’re found in ASOS.

Similarly, Daenerys hurts her own cause several times by staying loyal to the freedmen and women she’s trying to help.

The raggle-taggle host of freedmen dwarfed her own, but they were more burden than benefit. Perhaps one in a hundred had a donkey, a camel, or an ox; most carried weapons looted from some slaver’s armory, but only one in ten was strong enough to fight, and none was trained. They ate the land bare as they passed, like locusts in sandals. Yet Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. – ASOS

“I would sooner perish fighting than return my children to bondage.“ – ADWD

"I will not abandon Meereen to the fate of Astapor. It grieves me to say so, but Westeros must wait.” – ADWD

Justice

Many refer to what Arya and Daenerys do as revenge, but primarily, for both characters it’s about justice.

Arya has a strong sense of justice that was instilled in her by Ned. The reality that most of the world, including her own country men and Ned himself, don’t uphold those standards is a harsh blow for her. But it only gets worse as she witnesses atrocity after atrocity. That leads her to take action in enforcing justice.

I should kill them myself. Whenever her father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, his greatsword. “If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look him in the face and hear his last words,” she’d heard him tell Robb and Jon once.

Looking at the list of names Arya recites, one can see that each character earned their place by committing a crime, usually murder. This isn’t about petty revenge for her.

Daenerys’ dedication to justice speaks for itself:

Dany set great store by Ser Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms pointing up the coast road. – ASOS

Harsh justice is still justice. – ASOS

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice … that’s what kings are for.”

In the end, if Dany and Arya were somehow dropped in a Hogwarts universe, in my opinion, they would both be more likely to choose Gryffindor than Hufflepuff. They both have aptitudes for each house, with a possibly high aptitude for Hufflepuff. But their value and reliance on courage seems to outweigh most everything else.

@themagicaljess, @shegryffindor, @fleiur

#asoiaf #meta

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anghraine · 7 years

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I will never get over the "i don't believe in love at first sight / but godamn" gifset for jyn/cassian, it's perfect. also, your tags on the partisan jyn rec have me imagining a persuasion au, this time with cassian as anne and jyn as wentworth (draven as lady russell, I guess??) I love Persuasion AUs and that fic is so good :)

Heeeh, I love it!

I hadn’t really thought of the details of an alternate AU, beyond thinking that captaincy and gender aside, Wentworth (careless, impulsive, generous, spirited) is the most like Jyn, and Anne (obedient, withdrawn, intense, faithful) the most like Cassian. But I think it could work.

(Completely scattered thoughts on the ‘how,’ but I definitely think it would be fun and interesting!)

Draven is definitely the obvious Lady Russell candidate (he could even be ambiguously positive in the way Ly R is, which would be an interesting take on him). Mon Mothma would be very interesting, too—I think she’s more of a Lady Russell-type personality (which would leave Draven as Sir Walter, omfg). And I think it would allow for some exploration of what’s the most interesting part of Persuasion for me.

The thing is, Persuasion never really answers the question of whether Anne was morally wrong or right to break off her relationship with Wentworth under Lady Russell’s influence. It feels wrong. It turned out badly. But morality is not determined by consequences alone, and here, there’s a complex system of obligations and risks at play. Anne felt an obligation to listen to Lady Russell’s advice—not to obey unthinkingly, but to strongly factor it into her decision-making process, given her own youth, Lady Russell’s role as her surrogate mother, and her deep respect for her.

And Lady Russell was right in believing there were real risks to Anne marrying Wentworth so young, risks to any children they might have, etc. His ‘I don’t need to save anything, I’ve always been lucky, I’ll always be lucky’ shtick did him zero favours—Mr Price probably thought so, too, and the fact that Wentworth’s luck did hold is … well, lucky. “I’m going to go fight Napoleon and make a bunch of money, everything’s going to be fine” is not a compelling argument!

On top of that, the winning point in Lady Russell’s argument—the thing that finally swayed Anne—was that the marriage would be bad for Wentworth. A young, delicate wife with no dowry and a collection of snobbish, expensive, totally douchey relatives would be a genuine disadvantage to a young sailor with no connections and no money. And that is also, in fact, perfectly reasonable.

So it’s not simply a snobbish woman dissuading a weak-willed girl who then develops a stronger sense of self through suffering and maturity. Snobbery absolutely played a part in Lady Russell’s motives—all of this would have been much less pressing if Wentworth were someone more like Colonel Fitzwilliam, who would double as a Worthy Alliance and bring powerful, wealthy relations into the picture. Anne may very well have been less swayed by Lady Russell’s arguments if she hadn’t faced uniform opposition from her family, hadn’t been so young and uncertain. But nevertheless, those arguments were largely reasonable, and in the end, Anne’s view is that she wishes she hadn’t taken Lady Russell’s advice, that she would never give the same advice, but that morally she was right to take it.

I mean, there’s a lot going on there, ethically, and the book doesn’t offer clear conclusions. (UNCLEAR ETHICAL DILEMMAS

ANYWAY, MULTIPLE PARAGRAPHS LATER, that’s not something I often see confronted, even in full-on adaptations. (Particularly, one might say. >_>) And I think it would be interesting to play with it—something where Draven/Mothma/whomever have entirely valid reasons (but also dodgy ones) for their interference, and where Cassian has a real obligation to consider their opinions, and where the killing blow (as it were) would be that he is bad for Jyn (only too easy to believe he’d find convincing!).

It’s even … like. I can definitely see Draven being profoundly unenthusiastic about his 23-y-o prodigy spy suddenly getting entangled with a 19-y-o Partisan who is also the daughter of an Imperial collaborator. But I think it’s very possible that the likes of Mothma and Draven would probably not care that much about the flings of teens and 20-somethings. The kind of concerted, intense effort leveled against Anne in Persuasion might need something more.

But Cassian, despite his sidelines in assassination and field command, is primarily a recruiter. So. Suppose that his ostensible mission is rebuilding ties with the Partisans and working out some mutual support arrangement. But in reality, the judgment of Intelligence is that the Partisans are doomed by their extreme insularity, drastic collateral damage, unclear objectives, and attraction of Imperial attention. Coordination with the Partisans is an acceptable start, but the actual goal is to draw as many of Saw’s highly-skilled fighters into the Alliance as possible before the whole organization self-destructs or gets obliterated, but without turning Saw actively against them.

Of course, it’s not a secret that the Alliance is generally out to peel off as many recruits as they can get, and ofc the Rebel agent is going to be trying to draw people into the Rebellion. But what they don’t know is that this is why Cassian is there.

Okay, anyway, this is what 23-y-o Cassian is up to. It’s a task of extraordinary trust, and he’s on guard against almost everything. But falling madly in love with Saw’s foster daughter was not one of those things. And it’d be one thing if he was just pining (it would be awful, but—), but no, this ferocious, shining supersoldier is (for some reason) also in love with him.

On top of that, they’re both very much older than their ages, but in some ways younger—they were never able to be kids, to have silly crushes, anything like that. So they’re dorky and overwhelmed and unrealistic, just swept off their feet. They hold hands and talk about … running off together? But they can’t stop fighting the Empire. Cassian would never make a Partisan, but Jyn could join the Rebellion. And then they could be together!!!

(I suspect that at heart, Jyn wants out; large-scale collateral damage is not her gig.)

Anyway, Cassian would get a very sharp reality check, because the point was to draw away as many useful soldiers as he could without completely antagonizing Saw, and wow is “seducing away his best soldier and, oh yeah, DAUGHTER” not included in that description. Of course, he’s horrified because It’s Not Like That, but also … well. Yeah.

And while Jyn is brashly sure that of course she’ll succeed at whatever she does, she always has, he’s increasingly doubtful that she’d be at all happy in the Rebellion. The Partisans are her family, the only life she knows; she doesn’t know anyone else in the Rebellion at all, she’d chafe under the command structure, she’d lose everything, and have nothing to counterbalance it all but one tormented spy.

They’re not going to demand that a talented soldier not join the Rebellion, of course, or involve themselves in the obvious affair. But they don’t have to; once persuaded, Cassian does the dirty work himself. He persuades Jyn to stay with the Partisans after all, breaks things off, and leaves, having carefully arranged for a good number of Partisans to defect to the Rebellion over the next several months. Jyn, naturally, feels furious and betrayed (all the more after some of her friends leave).

And that’s where it starts, lol. Now I’m thinking—like, taking ‘little sister’ and running with it, Sophy would be Baze and Admiral Croft would be Chirrut (AMAZE). While I don’t see Cassian getting winded by a long walk à la Anne, he could be hiding an injury or something that Jyn notices (and hates that she notices, and hates more that nobody else does).

I don’t know at all who would play the Louisa Musgrove role (it’s not my favourite element of the plot tbh, but kind of necessary). And I don’t know how the scene with Wentworth helping Anne with her nephews would play out but it needs to happen, it’s my favourite. And of course the gender politics wouldn’t really work. (Though Wentworth/Jyn coming to their senses via competence kink would, lol.) And we’d need some terribad teammates or something to serve the role of the Elliots.

(Draven would really be the best bet, if not already taken as the Lady Russell. That really works best as someone that Cassian is actually close to, though, which is… like, nobody. And honestly, Lady Russell is the only person Anne is close to, but—OMG, KAY. IF KAY IS LADY RUSSELL … JESUS. HAHAHA WOW. That’d even work with Kay and Jyn being super chilly at each other, and Cassian could overhear Jyn talking ~idly~ with some of the rest of the team about a mission that went hilariously-in-retrospect wrong thanks to Rebel!Mary Musgrove this shitty commander. They’d have much rather had Andor, since SpecOps do serve under Intelligence now and then, but couldn’t get him. The rumour was that [x] talked him out of it. And Jyn’s like, huh, he’s very easily persuaded, isn’t he? And they’re … not really? That damn droid and direct commands are pretty much the only thing that stops him.)

((For bonus awful: during their brief honeymoon phase, the idea had been that Jyn would join up with SpecOps and once he made captain, they could build a joint Intel/SpecOps team.))

Oh, and Benwick is a former Partisan who was in love with a civilian in Jedha who died before they could settle down. I think the Harvilles joined the Rebellion (probably Cassian’s not!recruits, in fact). Also, there definitely needs to be a way of working in the ‘even when hope is gone’ speech (though as above, the gender politics don’t work at all).

Ha, even the ‘I should not have known her’ slam could work? I mean, it’s absurd to talk about Cassian as ~faded~, but he is definitely prematurely aged, and Jyn could easily make a snide remark about hardly recognizing him.

I can’t see Jyn writing anything so melodramatic as Wentworth’s letter, but it’d be sort of hilarious if she types up her vision into a datapad and then is trying to figure out a way to casually leave it lying around, but not so casually that Cassian doesn’t notice. (As if, but Emotions.)

#ishipallthings #respuestas #plotbunnies!#/#//#///#////#star wars #persuasion #otp: welcome home #it'd be really involved if you want to match persuasion at all closely (which i would)#(i'm still trying to think of something for the musgrove children bc i'd really want that #only it couldn't be actual children #but something cassian could reasonably be responsible for and handles well which is in fact someone else's job #and jyn running interference is the first point where things warm up again)#(honestly it could probably be wiring a ship or repairing droids or something—something relatively urgent)#(heh it honestly works best if he's actually not the ranking member and has to answer to. like. a major? that's the mary)#(he's technically on leave. aka sent along to make sure the major doesn't fuck anything up)#(bonus if the shitty major is actually really good at something and genuinely respects cassian #he's just an awful commander and a frequent asshole #and lazy af #when it comes to anything outside his own specializations #though he enjoys the partisan raids to a disturbing extent and is all THIS is what we should be doing!!!#i think he (the major) has some little troll of an astromech that he cares about but is unintentionally awful to #or... whatever kind of droid would be appropriate- but cassian has to keep restoring data etc and the droid is a /pain/)#(jyn comes in just to see it zap him and she's like... seriously? the fuck is this little monster)#(there we go. musgroves!)#inverted persuasion au #jyn erso #cassian andor

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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I recently came across this blog that was very anti Dean/destiel. This was apparently because Dean supposedly was "an abusive person". Particularly towards Cas. Personally, I ship it, like.. a lot, but I scrolled down and I have to say that I read some valid points on that blog. Dean really treats him like shit sometimes and like, I could in some way understand why they thought of dean/cas's relationship like that. What's your opinion on this, like, do you think of Dean as abusive towards Cas?

If it was a Cas blog, those are all valid points, and you just let that go no matter how much you might stan for Dean :P Treat it as a free exercise in being zen towards your fellow humans and not thinking shit at them. Cas stans have been through enough, I was in fandom in season 10, I remember watching that despair >.>

(On the other hand there are some people who hate every aspect of the show at this point and are just completely fatigued with caring about it and may have a “Cas deserves better” line - but also hate 99% of everything that happens on screen so much that every aspect of the show is problematic garbage, which, of course, includes Destiel being an abusive trainwreck of a ship before you get to the fans romanticising every punch they throw at each other while gobbling up the queerbaiting and so on and so on)

There are some anti blogs that talk up it being abusive and whether they actually don’t ship it for that reason or not is a lot more blurry and (you can guess by the company they seem to keep) they might have got there via just finding something to “disprove” the ship or to justify hating it. In that case, long angry posts about why it’s so terrible are pretty much loudly agreeing with each other, and maybe hoping someone who ships it will stumble on the post and be convinced their ship is bad and they should feel bad. These same people will argue the ship is homophobic and its fans are homophobic, as well as abuse apologists, racist, whatever, because making a ship out to be unethical is a great way to subtly conduct a ship war while giving yourself high ground. It’s why when stuff like the cucumber water debate blew up, they were accusing us of being homophobic and saying drinking vegetable water made you gay, as if we are the racist uncle who thinks wearing a pink shirt means you’re a “pansy” or something, and that this line of homophobic reasoning is why we think Dean is gay and that they don’t stereotype people.

And there are people who genuinely don’t like the ship whatever angle they approach it because they feel it’s abusive in the sort of way where again you just respect that it makes them feel that way because it upsets or triggers them.

I’m now sure I sound like the next thing out of my mouth is going to be “so I guess Destiel is abusive then” but it’s a big fandom and different groups of people have different versions of the story :P

Lots of rambling about this under the cut:

When I was still fairly new to the fandom I stumbled on a Sam blog that was arguing with a great many examples of how Dean was abusive and of course sympathising with Sam in every fight and turning pretty much every interaction between them into a microaggression. I just wondered how you live like that and still watch the show? Like, if I found something so problematic I couldn’t even watch the 2 main characters who are onscreen all the time interact without getting upset every time one of the opens their mouth, I would just stop watching it. I *have* watched stuff where I then stopped watching because the characters pissed me off.

(I think this show has a secret magic formula to make you extremely over-invested in the characters to the point it’s like fictional character crack, and I may only stop writing meta for this show when I figure it out, take the secret with me, and go write a ton of novels with characters you’re similarly loyal too :P)

Anyway. There’s tons of people who don’t think Sam is abusive to Dean or Dean is abusive to Sam, and after I spent a day or so feeling really weird and uncomfortable about liking Dean so much when he was apparently awful I realised it had never affected the way I watched the show before, and that it had never troubled me about it either, because I never saw it that way.

When *I* thought about it, I thought Sam was very resilient, loved his brother, and had his clear boundaries, such as stomping off in 7x06 when he found out about Dean killing Amy or in season 9 after discovering the Gadreel thing, setting down very clear rules with Dean about where he stood after Dean crossed the line, and that clearly to Sam, he knows his own self, and 99% of the time, he’s fine with what Dean does in the grander scheme. Maybe they have fights and Sam is upset or angry with him for a while but in general if Sam thought he was being mistreated, he’s shown he can identify that for himself and get out and look after his own interest, and return when he and Dean can reach an understanding and have grown as characters from it. (I think altogether too much debate about characters treats them as if they have never grown when we see them learn and change all the time and are quantifiably different from how they started)

I think season 10 was the only time it crossed too far into really seeming a bit too domestic violence-y because of course Dean with the Mark of Cain had an ancient brother killing curse and Sam was still living under the same roof trying to help him, after being nearly murdered under said roof already once that year. But it was all extremely dark and fucked up for everyone, so unless I was stanning Sam, again it wouldn’t upset me any more than any other character’s messed up part in that arc, especially as Sam had his own part in being portrayed in a really negative light, and it seemed like Carver just wanted us to hate both of them at times.

Anyway by the time I ever read anyone complaining about how Destiel was abusive I’d already had to realise through thinking about that (and I read that before season 10 aired) that how we read characters and their behaviour to each other is as subjective as anything else on this show.

If we really, deeply care about Dean, Cas can be seen as abusive - that alley scene in 5x18 put people off because Cas attacked Dean pretty much out of personal anger when he could have just knocked him out with a touch and dragged his sorry butt home, and it made Cas seem cold and cruel to Dean, that he could turn on him like that and not care. Season 6 gives no respite to make Cas seem nice again, and then he goes and breaks Sam’s wall. By 7x17 when he comes back and Dean is all teary eyed about it and has the trenchcoat still you’re like why do you even fucking care, Dean? All he’s ever done is hurt you and Sam and break the world! and Dean’s suddenly in this position where he seems strung along loving someone who has only ever hurt them and been cold to them and his investment seems greater than Cas’s. And then as the story goes on, Cas’s attempts to redeem himself and apologise come across cold and calculating or emotionally manipulative and self-serving and yikes we’ve made it halfway through Carver era and Cas hasn’t done one single thing to earn Dean’s love or to seem truly selfless about his own. (I can’t be bothered to keep strawmanning this but honestly I have seen people who hate Cas argue the latter part, and people who never started shipping Destiel argue the first half about season 5 & 6 and why it never made sense to them)

I think it’s a violent, awful show where people do violent, awful things to each other. Sam and Dean already mutually did enough shit to make it easy to argue either was abusive to the other before Cas was around (eugh, extreme Dean girls hating Sam always feels like such a betrayal but they say some shocking stuff about Sam and how much of a useless whiny leech on Dean he is >.>) and Cas showed up also angry and a creature of violence, built in their exact mould, and they all kicked off from there.

At some point you’ve excused enough of this interpersonal violence and overblown emotional drama (which lends itself to manipulation and grand statements about betrayal or whatever) to watch the show and root for the characters and keep with them for up to 12 years and if you still LIKE the show and the characters, then you may have to consider when and how stuff would be abusive and be aware of not romanticising it, but you can still watch it and enjoy it and NOT find it abusive for your own take on it.

(I tag all discussion of Destiel crypt scene/mirrors of said scene, as “crypt scenes for ts” including gifsets that use their busted up faces in passing, for that reason, so people who find it abusive can selectively avoid it, and as a reminder to self that people see it that way and never to let myself think that these depictions of love breaking through violence are unproblematic. It’s an inherently problematic trope, and saying oh they were controlled by something else and it was romantic that they managed not to kill each other, is just too close to excusing someone who ACTUALLY hits someone and then saying, oh, but they managed to stop themselves from hurting them any more than they did and put down their fists after a while because they LOVE them. And the trope has been used 2 times with Cas and once with Dean so this isn’t saying either of them is more abusive than the other (especially as 10x22 was by far the most shocking, and, as I said about Sam, the Mark of Cain had been a domestic abuse metaphor the whole time))

But - and here’s the big but to literally everything above: if you still LIKE the characters and enjoy their relationship and it DOESN’T upset you too much to watch and you acknowledge where it can be seen as abusive but these things haven’t put you off, then there’s nothing harmful about either shipping them, OR saying you DON’T THINK THE SHIP IS ABUSIVE. And genuinely not thinking it is, overall.

I don’t, and for the same reason I explained about Dean not abusing Sam, especially that Cas still has agency and that his whole story has been about choosing the Winchesters over an INFINITELY more abusive family that HAS done all that shit to him and he’s been struggling to leave including the whole split loyalty still loving for them despite how much they hurt him thing and always being sucked back in despite how he must know by now angel stuff ALWAYS ends with him being hurt and angels dying. Picking Dean as his family over them seems a no-brainer.

For one thing, I don’t feel like there’s any malice in their day-to-day interactions, and that while Dean can be rough and rude to Cas, he doesn’t do it to exert control over him, JUST out of cruelty, or anything else abusive, just a pattern of “when Dean is sad or angry he will say insensitive and horrible things to the people around him” - because he’s human and messed up and angry/miserable (pick your week) and doesn’t think he even deserves their love half the time when he’s really trying to drive people off (his side of 5x18 :P). Your reaction to this pattern might depend on how you’ve been treated in the past and if it rings unfortunately too close to actual abuse to you, but without that trigger I think it is not impossible to read it as not aimed to control or emotionally manipulate the people around him, but normal expressions of emotion, with no intent to harm, and if you read the reactions of the people around him, no lasting damage to them as if his actions were abusive (e.g. Sam doesn’t get flinchy when Dean drinks or gets angry, as if emulating someone raised by a violent drunk; Cas doesn’t react when Dean yells at him but unless he’s in a very bad place for other reasons, gives shit right back to Dean and stands up for himself)

For another, Dean against Sam with the Mark was 100x worse than he ever was to Cas. 9x22 at the end showed a huge difference in how he treated them, and I don’t think that was putting on a nice face for Cas - I think that was meant to convey the Mark twisting Dean up AGAINST Sam and showing that he’d been poisoned against him, but it hadn’t affected how Dean felt about Cas, because he is not his brother, and the curse therefore doesn’t affect them. In the end he did attack Cas, and it’s their absolute low point, but it took a season and a half to hollow Dean out that far, as part of an episode showing in every way that we’d lost all parts of Dean that were good, while Dean took like 15 episodes from Mark of Cain to chasing Sam with a hammer. (And, of course, demon!Dean still retained parts of what made Dean good, making him at least complex, though obviously not “good” any more - Dean in 10x22 was genuinely more evil, empty and broken than when he was a demon, to compare Dean choosing to kill the kid with Dean selectively choosing to kill Lester because he thought his wife didn’t deserve it, never mind all his angsty moping and still deciding what he was and so on, suggesting he was struggling to let go of those last human parts.) Anyway, I didn’t think Dean had any sustained aggression against Cas and the arc was way more about a threat to Sam from Dean - as late as 10x20 Dean was still retaining his humanity and struggling to help Cas and do nice things on his behalf and play cute with Claire, while the season in general kept Cas away from Dean and I think that was a good idea in hindsight, because it both facilitated Dean’s descent (Cas keeps him on the level) and meant Cas didn’t have to take the brunt of Dean’s Mark-related dickishness. Aka, avoiding including Cas properly in any sort of sustained domestic abuse arc with Dean. In 10x18 they play happy families with Charlie, and it’s a fleeting GOOD thing with nice family dynamics. 10x21 laid it on thick that Sam was alone with someone who could swing around to violence and made it clear it was a domestic abuse metaphor between them. (Which, again, in Dean’s defence for THIS relationship, was a metaphor for one season, and I don’t think reflective on how he treats Sam normally, at all.)

As for Dean’s general behaviour, you have to forgive incident by incident on the assumption that Dean isn’t holding up a sustained campaign of abuse against Cas, but considers him an equal but who he often has GENUINE grievances against (and also that Cas is not a woobie and can take it - we may see him hurt a lot but he remains resilient). In season 6, Cas is shifty and won’t come to help them - you could argue Dean’s feeling entitled to that, but he’s upset because Cas is supposed to be a friend and his responses are underwhelming, and, importantly, Dean doesn’t feel like Cas is sharing when he WANTS to help. Dean can tell something’s up but Cas won’t even get into a real conversation with it, and wouldn’t have let Dean help anyway. So he’s pissed off at the start and gets MORE pissed off along the season, so he snaps at Cas and wheedles him to come help not because he feels like Cas is only good to help, but he’s fed up with Cas not coming, being weird, and being unhelpful, when they’re SUPPOSED to be friends.

I don’t even know how to explain how Dean acts towards Cas in season 7 if someone doesn’t get that the repercussions of Cas breaking Sam’s wall aren’t still clear in Dean’s mind, and he can’t talk to Cas about it because he’s never quite himself and ready to have the talk about these consequences. (I mean he sort of can at the end of the season but they’re aggressively not listening to each other even while trying to communicate) When Dean snaps at Cas, he’s frustrated, and angry and missing his friend, and upset on Sam’s behalf and it’s a mess, he’s not just yelling “no one cares that you’re broken” because he wants to hurt Cas. HE cares. He’s so fucked up about it that the entire end of the season rests on him reconciling with Cas, and so they need to show him unable to do that first… There’s more to it than just collecting a moment of Dean yelling at Cas or that bit where he throws the board game on the floor despite how it looks. They’re in the middle of the fight and Cas has as much of his part of it as Dean does, though he’s in a vulnerable state and Dean’s approaching him with anger, Cas knows Dean’s the injured party - this is the arc that starts with “I’ll find some way to redeem myself to you” - and it’s totally fucked up but this is how it plays out with Dean’s reactions to Cas’s avoidance and consuming guilt that won’t even let him face the problem head on until the very last moment. Dean approaches Cas gently, Cas finally makes a gesture to help and in this way their last conversation when they go collect Baby puts them back on EQUAL footing. And before that they were unequal but from both directions - Cas was broken/had no memory, but also Cas had the burden to make it right with Dean and he wasn’t making that move. He fixes Sam, which is the huge important step one, but after that he is “only playing sorry” and the argument goes BOTH ways with the need to reconcile, which means all the pissiness is fair game, NOT Dean being cruel to Cas and kicking him while he’s down…

I suppose I could keep on rationalising stuff they do forever but these are the examples I see the most when reading about it, and I just don’t feel in MY interpretation of it, that Dean has ANY cruelty to Cas, or even a sustained threat to him. That’s not to minimise that Cas took a LOT of beatings over recent times and ended up feeling depressed and alone and with PTSD and so on, but I read this as a carelessness that Dean desperately would not want to inflict on Cas if he knew and understood (and therefore could have reached out to him properly), and that at every opportunity when he even partially understands he reaches out and cares for Cas (like 8x08 and “talk to me” or many of the less dramatic heart to hearts where he tries to understand Cas or to reassure or comfort him about stuff, as well as generally attempting to apologise - I think he apologises 3 times for kicking Cas out the Bunker, though he can only truly repent after telling the whole truth, it ate him up and he WANTED it to not be this way and felt it was out of his control because from the last scene of 9x01 when Gadreel suddenly declares Sam can’t know, Dean immediately loses any control he thought he had over what happens next)…

Anyway, people are ALWAYS going to have opinions or still ship it but think some of my arguments don’t work and some of these examples were abusive but it won’t stop them shipping based on a more ideal version of the relationship, even divorcing from canon altogether and shipping the AU perfect version of the ship where it can always be happy and they never have the issues they do in canon. Some people will ship it because they LIKE that element of it, for one reason or another, and there will be people who write fic embracing really dark elements.

When it comes to reading what others have to say about ANYTHING you like, you have to decide for yourself how much it affects how you see it, and you have to remember people are coming at everything with their personal biases and feelings. You CAN argue Destiel is abusive - you can probably argue most ships are, especially ones with canon interaction, and especially LOTS of canon interaction because tropes like lying and manipulation (even gentle lies and manipulation) are rife in fiction. Writers make characters fight for drama, and once they do, someone’s going to find supporting the characters together is inherently problematic and awful.

If you make it this far in canon and HAVEN’T found the ship abusive in YOUR reading of it and based on YOUR emotional reactions to everything that happened on screen so far, then you are probably safe to keep shipping it at least on YOUR terms.

However, I would listen to what people say and make up your own mind just because if they’re bringing up things that are genuinely unsettling, you should probably work out if you support that or not, and if you ship at a safe remove (e.g. “the crypt scene etc were abusive and I don’t like it but generally I find the ship okay and they’ve made attempts to mend that and aren’t continuing in that behaviour so I can still ship them in canon but don’t want to see anything romanticising the bad bits” or “I find the things they’ve done in canon unsettling enough I would rather ship them in fanon and try to enjoy what they do in canon just for the good bits like when they hold hands” or whatever). As long as you are respectful to other people and understand WHY they see things the way they do, and don’t try and tell people who are genuinely hurt that things AREN’T hurtful.

(I’m not saying you would, but there are arguments in fandom I really don’t think we should be having as arguments, and this is one of them :P)

#Asks #abuse cw

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