if you do not follow/haven't seen my recent posts, i really recommend you read this one and this one before continuing, just to make it hit the right way.
also reminder that i have an ao3 right here (and it's not all pain, promise!)
sorry in advance :)
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the more time passes, the easier it is for joel to talk about sarah. it still hurts, always will, an old bullet buried in his heart surrounded by scar tissue, but except for a few memories, words don't make him bleed anymore. tommy tentatively starts bringing her up once he notices that joel no longer flinches when he mentions her name, and it feels good to breathe life into their shared experiences, his brother the only one who comes close to understanding his pain but also the joy that colored their years.
ellie asks, too, just as hesitantly as tommy at first, but soon her curiosity takes over and not a day passes by without a question in-between sentences about his past. joel answers all of them, stories spilling from his lips and spinning themselves into a sarah-shaped web that he can share with her.
"she played soccer, right? when did she win her first competition?"
there's a few sports teams in jackson, and of course the soccer one caught her eye, making joel dread all the twisted ankles and bruised shins he was going to have to tend to. getting grass stains out of sarah's uniforms had always been a task and a half, and eventually they both stopped caring about it and just watched them pile up, turning white fabric a greenish-brown.
joel opens his mouth, the coffee cup in his hand hovering above the kitchen table, and then he stills, every muscle in his body turning to ice.
ellie's joel? is drowned out by the ringing in his hears, knuckles turning white and gripping the porcelain so tightly he can feel it crack in his palm, and he must have stopped breathing because his vision is growing fuzzy, black dots scurrying in his periphery.
joel lets the cup fall more than he sets it down, stomach turning, bile rising in his throat, because ellie asked him a question about sarah, his sarah, and he doesn't remember the answer.
it can't be, right? just a small gap in his memory, nothing big, it'll come back to him in an hour and he'll tell ellie about it later. but the panic squeezing his chest is real, terror slithering up his neck and curling around his ear whispering what else did you forget?
more than ever before, he tries to think back to all of it, from the first time he held her in his arms to the moment he buried her, and something odd happens to him when he finds that so much of it is. blurry. frayed at the edges, burned holes and white blotches obscuring important and unimportant details alike, memory an old role of film decomposing in the back of his mind.
the color of her baby blanket (blue, it had to be blue, he can't see), the first movie he watched with her, her favorite book in primary school, the way he did her hair on the first day of kindergarten, the friendship bracelets they made together, the posters on her wall, the dress she wore to her first dance (purple right? right?), memories surfacing as his panic cracks him open like an earthquake, and joel tries to cling to them, nails scratching at the parts that should be there but aren't until he tastes blood, desperation growing and growing because he is forgetting her.
"joel you're scaring the fuck out of me right now what's wrong?"
ellie's voice is distant, and he hates worrying her, hates the almost hysteric edge beneath it when she repeats herself, hands squeezing his shoulders, softly, first, then harder when he doesn't respond. all of the years that he didn't even know she existed, memories she has that he never will, all the firsts and buts and what ifs and failures that define a childhood, their innocent light fractured into vivid fantasies by the stained glass window of life. he has had all that and more with sarah, clung to it in the after to remind himself that she is real, that he is still a father even with his daughter buried by a nameless river.
it is all he has left of her, the childhood she never got to outgrow, and it's fading in a mind that has mourned her for longer than she got exist.
not for the first time, joel wishes he hadn't flinched, his brain worthless if it allowed sarah to fade away. without ellie bound to his heart, he would have tempted fate again for that alone.
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"who hurt you" too many people to count and luckily tumblr lets me make it everyones problem
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Apparently Moriarty in Traum took the Norn, the 3 fates of Norse mythology, into himself, so he could weave together the threads of fate, presumably to regain some of the control over his future he lost. This immediately stood out to me, because the other crime butterfly spider clown, Mephistopheles, carries around a pair of scissors which I theorized way back whenever, are actually the shears of Atropos the inflexible, one of the moirai, fates of Greek mythology, specifically the one who cuts the threads of fate and determines your exact moment of death. So if I’m right he long ago did a similar thing as what Moriarty did. For. Reasons? The opposite reasons even. To sever fate.
Pictured: person whose eyes function in a similar way to Atropos, specifically annoyed by said scissors, and focusing on them as the subject of curiosity through the event (calling him scissors as a nickname) although if I’m right he’s absolutely using them the wrong way, which might be why Shiki struggles to pinpoint what bothers her so much about them (when she meets other heroic spirits in this event and does not give their weapons this kind of attention)
On the other hand if he stole them to cut the threads of fate it’s odd that he concocts an entire scenario here for you to beat him up until he turns good, since you’d think he could have just severed the fate of his bad self and killed him with the scissors or that when teaming up with you to do so he’d at least use them the right way to show off how he’s The Strongest (TM CR). So there are some things that feel Off about this theory I admit. However since the shears of Atropos work as an authority which can undermine even Zeus, I can still maybe come up with a few justifications as to why they’d give him this motif.
The boy who hands out explosives in the form of insects is actually a distinct character in the play Faust. He is basically a manifestation of Fausts subconscious desire to escape into a dream world, a reality he can control and manipulate. said character has a more beautiful, youthful form than Faust, so others are naturally drawn to him and trust him. Faust calls this character “son” and loves him quite a bit even though he’s basically a nameless one off character introduced briefly in part 2. Since our Mephy is not a devil, but a homunculus Historical Faust raised, part of the basis for him probably comes from this character, among several others in the play. Of course, characters who represent everything in the story are pretty commonplace in fate, but scissors are not at all relevant to the play, while pretty much every other motif on Mephy I can pinpoint as something particular mentioned on some character or other in Goethes Faust. but in particular this “charioteer boy,” who hands out fake gold which turns into explody bugs, is within his scene, associated with the Greek god of wealth, Plautus, a god who was blinded by Zeus so he could not tell right from wrong, a decision meant to benefit the already fortunate, since Plautus would just as readily bestow his wealth on an already wealthy person as a broke one. Fausts Plautus is, of course, just a conman version of himself. But he really seems to believe in this kid and want him to succeed.We see in fgo Mephys voice lines imply he struggles to tell good from bad in a way the devil in the play is not at all preoccupied with understanding, but a false construct based on Plautus might be, as Plautus is not actually a bad person, and in mythology there are tales written meant to rectify what Zeus did to him.
At the very least, the sheers of Atropos renders decisions made by the fates immutable even to Zeus, so the input of any other authority in the Greek pantheon regarding who the fates choose to kill is basically irrelevant, they have the final say. However even if that’s the case, either he can’t use them properly as a death tool, is purposefully destroying them by using their ”determines time of death” shtick to instead make his dinky little time bombs, or he’s saving the reveal they cause instant death for something special although it’s hard to rationalize he’d be able to keep it secret this long if that’s the case, since he can’t shut up about literally anything else. I’d say it doesn’t have anything to do with the Greek pantheon specifically and more to do with a desperate bid for agency, the same way Moriarty uses the norn. It’s possible he just doesn’t know what they are, or forgot what he’s even doing with them. Or it’s possible I’m just entirely wrong and they are, as his artist says, just a random decision! But considering how well researched the rest of the motifs on him seem, I still have doubts it’s irrelevant, I especially had to bring it back when Moriarty who assumed all this adjacent clown symbolism to Mephy, also made the choice to absorb the Norn. Since if I’m right Mephy here has the specific tool which could undermine what Moriarty has done. One spider clown to weave fate and another to sever it
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fascinating lens on taylor's goings on in s6 there re: Romance. epic win that they have rian turn them down but i'm also really not sure why they did. oh you know, rian who's always defined by being so prudent [montage of actually pretty much everything seemingly defining rian has been pretty anti prudent] like ok w/e
but we start out with taylor Particularly Unmotivated By Work and instead watching a The Bachelor beach proposal which involves extasis through this Reality(tm) pastiche of romance. i am assuming. wherein the journey Ends with this transcendent all-consuming joy upon the realization of said Romance for one contestant. then when their somehow still bestie mafee (relevant tangents about how all taylor's relationships seem to involve their having an approach where they have low standards like "well but i guess this is all i can get / expect" including that they can't even necessarily expect shit they like/enjoy/are at all supported by, while readily accepting whatever blame/reproach from others) is like "gee but are you really happy" they're apparently inspired to pursue happiness by pursuing romance. which they seem to consider is possible only through rian, intriguing here when the entire basis of their dynamic seems to be [trapped in work hell together] like boy we have nothing outside our jobs? i sure hope we can be Everything to each other then :) and how it's even more baffling that rian is completely unbaffled by this development when you might operate on some assumptions like "you should have ever seemed to enjoy any interactions you've ever had" to consider choosing more vulnerability and more time / effort spent on this relationship, and "you also don't need to have Found Fault with someone / otherwise have some grievances or dislike of them to not want to date them" especially if rian's apparent sense of responsibility for taylor's theoretical negative feelings about rejection supposedly doesn't involve thinking about any power dynamics, she just feels the need to repeatedly reassure them she'd actually Love to date or have sex but she's just so set on not dating through work, b/c of the complications, that she's never considered not having casual sex with bosses and also never mentioned this stance to turn down winston nor done anything but revel in how he might feel about even being rejected as a conversational partner. too prudent to mention it. certainly also a relevant matter that it Need Not Be Explained to anyone that winston for one is excluded as a potential Romantic partner for pretty much everyone i guess. whilest as this potential mirror to taylor, he's not only considering specifically rian w/"we're similar; let's hang out; i'd like to have sex maybe even" (though winston's sexuality, like his communicative capacities, is also simply Not Allowed) but also seems to be like "i guess this is all i can get / expect" or hanging on for a long time to the possibility of Otherwise at his own expense or taking blame / whatever pretty egregious treatment like. taylor being willing to talk to wendy still is akin to winston still being willing to talk to rian. though maybe that's changed by the end of s6; it'd be very warranted after the pretty make or break [rian & winston Share An Interest; hang out outside work about it] moment there and also after Everything Else on its own, just like how it'd be very warranted if taylor expecting Nothing Better from wendy could turn into their hardly being willing to interact
anyways, sure is fortunate for taylor (or is it???) that Work becomes more enriching for them suddenly, and through someone with whom they have this promising personal dynamic with, a Peer with whom, in fact, they do both seem to find reward in interacting with each other / want and choose to do so, imagine, while [reiterating for emphasis]: they are both finding reward in interacting and feeling Complementary rather than only seeing exactly themself in each other, while having this respect for each other and flexibility and knowing they don't Have to work together, and may not always be doing so.
but most to the point it sure is something that the season starts off with taylor being dissatisfied with their work situation and responding by not being at work and instead watching people be overjoyed about their (also, relevantly, Peak Normal Correct Cishet) romance, though they don't outright claim to straightforwardly enjoy this. then they Do outright claim to us repeatedly, if ever begrudgingly, that everything rian does is worthy &/or sympathetic (and totally comprehensible and consistent so as to believably retain any sense of Character....) while every time they interact, it's a business meeting and one or both of them is unhappy about some part of it. but then once taylor's asked to think about their happiness Beyond Work they apparently are simply motivated to go ask someone out, and it may as well be rian For Lack Of A Better Option really, but then there's the wrench of "for some reason rian is unsurprised and not at all put off by this, or even just somewhat confused" and "for some reason rian's like 'sorry but no. fr im soooo sorry'" with these perspectives of [happiness Outside Work = romance] and [someone deemed Objectively Worthy = you'd of course at least consider romance, or else you must think actually they're Unworthy in some way, or have some more general Reason you'd reject others categorically in just the same way] (rian rejecting winston for unworthiness so much that she doesn't even need to bother actually telling him as much; rejecting taylor for [i don't date through work] with followups to reassure them it's Not the unworthiness) (that on and off paper winston & taylor have no reason to not be kissing but i think we can assume that won't happen, b/c billions itself may also assume we understand that [winston is unworthy] is just true. &/or that anyone Worthy understands as much)
so hoping that taylor has Some kind of enriching lasting relationship with philip, truly, which was the hopes for winston and rian but the updated hope is his enriching lasting disengagement with rian, f
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