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alphawolfice1989 · 5 years

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barney and robin’s actions during the Robin

Robin’s actions during “The Robin”: What do you think about Robin’s actions during The Robin”? What does this tell us about her feelings for Barney?

Robin at this time period is truly a woman tortured by her feelings and struggling against them while at the same time still feeling compelled to fight for Barney too. I've said this before but I really think that the Florence and the machine song "The Hardest of Hearts" is THE embodiment of what's happening with Robin during 8.07-8.12. And because she's fighting her feelings for so much she's an absolute mess. But it's clearly all about her love for Barney from start to finish. Something that bothered me at the time and still bothers me on rewatch of 8.09 is the way Robin’s lobster allergy is handled and specifically Lily’s comments on it. Lily makes it sound as if Robin only wanted the lobster (Barney) solely because she was told she couldn’t have it. That makes it sound like she doesn’t really want him; she only wants what she can’t have like some sort of spoiled child. But I think the rest of the episode does a fantastic job of showing that’s not what’s happening at all. I actually had an identical experience to Robin where just recently I was told I’d developed a sudden food allergy and, like Robin, I didn’t want to accept it and tried to eat the food anyway and got violently ill. And, like they demonstrate in 8.09 with Robin’s interest and feelings for Barney, it’s not about only wanting it because now you can’t have it. What it’s really about is taking something for granted and assuming it would always be around to enjoy whenever you were ready. So once you’re told you can’t have it, it freaks you out that you can never, ever again have this thing you love and it makes you realize that you didn’t appreciate what you had back when you could have it, and you squandered your opportunities back when you had the chance. That is what we see happening with Robin in 8.09, not that she only wants Barney because he said he was done and now she can’t have him. And I think Robin’s behavior in the episode demonstrates that, but then Lily’s comments undermine it. I don’t even know why they’d have her say that, unless it’s simply to show that the gang doesn’t really take B/R or either of their feelings for each other seriously. Also Robin’s idea that she’ll sleep with Barney one last time to “get him out of her system” is extremely revealing because she likens it to trying to eat lobster again and how much that hurt her, so much that she’ll never make that mistake again. Which means Robin thinks sleeping with Barney again will lead to pain and getting her heart broken (when he goes back to sleeping around afterwards and they say it “never happened), so it once again demonstrates her state of mind of still not understanding how Barney really feels about her and that she wouldn’t get her heart broken by him. (I don’t think that understanding comes until the minute he proposes.) But, furthermore, this idea that she’s going to get him out of her system is clearly just her justification to allow herself to sleep with him (like she really wants to) but that’s not the true motivation here. If all she wanted to do was purposefully get hurt by Barney after sleeping with him again so she’d never go back there again, she could have done that back in 8.07. But, instead, protecting herself from that pain is the very reason she pushed him away and said we can’t do this. And the only thing that’s changed in the time period between 8.07 and 8.09 is that Barney told her he’s through with her. So what Robin is actually trying to do is put herself back on his radar by sleeping with him again. If she sleeps with him one more time, she can claim he’s out of her system now, go back into denial about her feelings for him, and yet Barney’s been reminded and his actions have vividly proven that he is NOT done with her, so Robin can go back into this safe place where she continues to assume she and Barney can be together sometime later on in the future, if not right then.

Robin was tryin' to deny her feelings for Barney just like she did back in Season 6 but, when Nora give him another chance in 'Challenge Accepted', she started to slowly realize that she wasn't over him and in 'Stinson's Missile Crisis' she acted in the same way she did in 'Lobster Crawl': she was trying to get his attention and flirting with him (but in S8 Robin was so confused that she didn't realize that her freaking out wasn't a new thing). The interesting thing is that in 7.04, Robin let it go, at the end. She put Barney's happiness before everything else and let him stayin' with Nora. After 8.09, instead, Robin didn't do the same. She continued to interfere B/P's relationship trying to breaking them up. I understand her behiavor in 'The Final Page part 2' when she said she wasn't in love with Barney. I think she realized that she had still feelings for him after what she said when she hugged Patrice. But, in the moment she heard he was going to propose to another woman, she got back to the denial in order to avoid the pain and move on. The problem was that this time she couldn't pretend to be ok with that situation. It's huge, especially for someone like Robin, that she went on that roof ready to stop Barney's engagement. When she found out The Robin and got mad at Barney, i think it's important the fact she said THAT (and so all the Plays) was the proof of why they will never work. Because he's not serious, he manipulated her, he just wanna sleep with her and nothing else. When she saw Barney on his knees with the engagement ring, all her doubts fade away, because she knew he would have never done that if he wasn't truly in love with her. And of course she said yes, that proposal was just everything she was looking for.

Barney’s actions during “The Robin”: what do you make of Barney’s actions while running “The Robin”? What does this tell you about his knowledge and feelings for Robin?

Watching this again and all at once, one episode right after the other, knowing the grand scheme of things, you can see all the more how brilliantly done the entire B/R reunion is. Obviously, the speech at Splitsville is the key moment and the turning point for them, and it’s everything that Robin wanted Barney to say back in “Tick Tick Tick”. But I think the defining moment for Barney comes a tad bit later, at the very end of the episode. Clearly, he went to Splitsville just desperate to keep Robin from staying with Nick (so she wouldn’t end up married to him, like he earlier shared is his fear) but I don’t think he had any clear plan of what he was going to do or say once he got there, and then he ends up saying much more than he ever intended to. And Robin just doesn’t even take it seriously until he starts talking about how he wished he could stop loving her but he can’t, and it’s that inclusion of the real, raw details of what’s actually gone down between them that makes her stop and seriously wonder if he could actually mean it. But, again, I don’t think Barney intended to say it at all (though it was such an important moment, and an eight year silent truth finally spoken, which is why they had to show the entire gang’s reaction because it was so important), so he tries to save face and backtrack afterwards. His defining moment comes in when Robin simply won’t let him get away with it and won’t let it pass like she ordinarily would. She actually stops him, calls him out on it, and won’t let him just laugh it off but wants to face it, literally, head on. That’s not something Robin ordinarily does or would ever, which makes it extremely significant. Then the way she looks at him and is touching his chest in a clearly romantic (possibly even possessive) manner is when it all clicks for Barney that Robin wants it to be true and she’s trying to get him to admit that it’s all true because she feels the same way too, she’s just been afraid to admit it. And it’s such a defining moment that they make sure that the audience notices Barney noticing. This isn’t just something that he again misconstrues or misinterprets. He’s finally getting it loud and clear. And then the rest of it – looking up to Robin pointedly (but amused and happy) about the chest touching, and then suggesting and even beginning to attempt a kiss – is Barney’s way of testing the waters and seeing if his new revelation is indeed correct, which it is (the way she shyly moves her hand the moment he notices, the way she was going to kiss him too). I believe that it’s after that point, after the moment has passed and she probably tries to play it off as he walks her home and says goodnight, that Barney starts formulating his plan. He’s realized now that Robin IS in love with him, but she’s fighting it tooth and nail and he’s got to come up with some way to get her to stop fighting it, which is how he gradually comes up with “The Robin”. I just think that all of Barney's actions throughout are so incredible and show how well he knows Robin inside out, far better than Ted. He can anticipate her every move before she makes them and knows her feelings better than she's willing to admit it to herself. And I love that we get to see Barney play with Robin in episodes like 8.07 and 8.09. This is the only time in the series where he gets to sort of flirt and tease her now with the full knowledge that she is absolutely in love with him and that he has her heart in the palm of his hand. So the "drunken" kiss and the way Barney makes Robin think he's going to sleep with her and then backs off at the last minute are just fantastic. And the thing is she absolutely needed that, but I'll get into that more in "The Robin" thread.

I think it's AMAZING how well Barney knows Robin. Only a person who truly loves you and knows you even in the little details, can realize something like 'The Robin'. He resisted her dressed in lingerie, he built a fake engagement and let's say he also threatened to undermine his friendship with Robin if she hadn't accepted the proposal. Barney did all those things to get her and that is absolutely the most obvious proof of how much he loves Robin.

https://barneyrobin.livejournal.com/1047511.html

#barney-x-robin #livejournal entries

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wellmeaningshutin · 7 years

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Short Story #88: Elegance.

Written: 4/5/2017 Music Week Song Listened to Before Writing: The Knife - Rock Classics

Ever since she was a little girl, Sue and her family had been labeled as “Swamp Trash”, a term she took a long while to understand, since whenever she walked around the swamp it was usually pretty clean, well, for a swamp, and there was more trash in the towns and city than near their trailers on the outskirts. For a while she wandered if trash had different meanings in different areas, and she would often stare out the trailer window, in the humid heat, staring out at the bogs, wandering what the different meaning was in the swamps. At first she thought it may have been the picked over carcasses of animals she sometimes found, but it just made her more confused to think that people would call them animal bones and innards, which was basically as pointless as calling somebody a lampshade or a satellite dish. Eventually she figured (after thinking that they might be talking about the swamp gasses, which sometimes shone at night) that the people were supposed to be the trash, because they didn’t naturally belong in the swamps, and it was like people were telling her that society had basically thrown them away, littered them in the swamp, since they had become boring or broken, and when she told a friend of hers this, her friend replied, “Are you stupid? They mean your family is poor, and you live in the swamp.” Sue liked her interpretation better, but her friend’s words had stuck, and she wanted to find some way to give her family a different label.

However, Sue quickly learned, if there was an easy solution to stop being poor, then there would be a lot less poor people. So, at the age of eight, she decided that it would be easier to settle for the illusion of wealth, so that people wouldn’t know that she was swamp trash, which was the main problem anyways, because it wasn’t hurtful that she was poor, since she had grown up that way and it wasn’t that big of a deal to her, but she couldn’t stand having to constantly get shit for it. Seeking the illusion of wealth, however, began to make her resent her family for their poor lifestyle, and day after day she realized more and more ways that made them look even worse, with her father being a stereotypical drunken dad, her mother’s way of yelling at the kids all the time, and don’t forget their way of mispronouncing words (she realized this in class, while learning grammar, but wasn’t aware of slang or dialects, which her family used, and she had started to believe, if only for a year, that there was only one way to speak, and anything outside of that was just trash-talk), which made her skin crawl. Every so often she thought about running away, but she knew that she was to young to do anything more than living on the streets, and then she would just become a different type of trash. It was just unbearable for her to try to pretend her way out of her situation, until she had her first brush with wealth.

The first encounter wasn’t very exciting, she had only seen a woman, from across the street, step out of a limo wearing a fur coat, but when she saw that coat it seemed like the ultimate status symbol, and she knew that she would have to have it. When researching fur coats, she soon realized that there were wide varieties, consisting of all sorts of strange furs, like chinchilla, and it was hard for her to figure out which type she would want to save up for, but then she realized that if she only wore one coat, then people would just see her as swamp trash in a nice coat, like putting makeup on a pig, because everyone knew that rich people could afford multiple coats, which were probably worth nothing to them since they were able to bathe in champagne, and it was easier for them to get away with crimes. She also saw that there had been controversy around people wearing fur, but she just figured that it was more trash doing the complaining, and if trash hated these coats, then she would seem less trashy if she wore one. That night, she vowed that she would get a fur coat for every animal out there, one for every occasion, so that people would never think to call her trash again.

Of course, some complications arisen when she learned that skin coats, like sealskin, were also a thing. What about all of the animals without fur? And what did that mean for fish and birds, did that mean that she should wear feather boas, and whatever the hell fish are worn as (further research taught her that the answer was, surprisingly, cosmetics, with lipstick being the most common)? How would she get her hands on clothing made of exotic animals, like gorillas or tigers? Stuck in a conundrum, she realized that her plan to have the illusion of wealth actually required wealth, and it made her poverty problem even worse. So, in order to not sit around all day, every day, and just sulk about how her parents didn’t have any money, that she had lost the lottery of birth, she formed a plan to start from the very bottom, to work on collecting the easiest animal based products while slowly working up to the harder to find, the more exotic pieces, and a lot of it she didn’t have to buy anyways, because she could just steal, and learn how to sew.

If somebody would have asked her why she shifted from fur coats to wearing every animal, why it had seemed so luxurious to her, she probably would have told them, “Rich people love to destroy beautiful things. They tear down rain forests, they kill the ocean for oil, they hide away beautiful works of arts in their homes, its just what rich people do. So, if animals are beautiful, wouldn’t people think I was rich from destroying so many of them?” Her father had a habit of blaming the wealthier people in the city for all of his problems, even though they had no idea of who he was. Sometimes, when the sun went down and he was almost out of beer, he would tell his children about how there is a secret society of rich people in the town who plot to keep other people in poverty, just because they knew that they could only be wealthy by making people poor, since wealth was subjective. If somebody has twenty dollars, and another person only has five, then the person with the twenty dollars is wealthier, even if twenty dollars isn’t much. If everyone was a millionaire, then nobody would be rich. He would always let that last point hang in the air for a while, sometimes for dramatic effect (even if the children had heard the speech so often that they mimicked it to each other, just for laughs), sometimes because he was actively trying to repress the poison that he had drank all night, and was trying to exit his stomach through his throat and mouth. This lecture was also where Sue got the idea of the wealthy destroying beautiful things, because her father likened them to swarms of locusts, to a disease on society, while some of the wealthier parents in the city would tell them similar things about the poor people living in the swamps. The father would sometimes claim that rich people had turned him into an alcoholic, and that addiction that was a disease that was released into lower economic communities, as a way to ensure that they wouldn’t be able to get up from the weight of their vices, which was also why you never saw any wealthy addicts (anecdotal and not based on anything solid, except for the fact that he rarely dealt with the upper class), and it was the same reason that the government (his opinion) kept cutting funding for mental health treatment and national health care.

When Sue would have to sit through these stories, she knew that her dad was mostly full of shit, since he made a lot of wild claims whenever he was intoxicated, but it was hard for her to figure out what was and wasn’t real, so she just picked out the parts that seemed right, like the destruction of beauty. Sure, she reasoned, they could have actually been the evil people that her father made them out to be, but it was better, in her eyes, to be rich and evil, than to be poor and righteous (a word her father detested, since it always reminded him of religion, which he believed was only created to make people complacent about being poor, filling their heads that it was somehow alright to get put in an unfair situation). So, no matter how much vitriol her father had for the upper classes, Sue was still consumed with the idea of having an article of clothing for every animal on the planet.

Lipstick was easy to get, since it was easy to cram into her pockets and walk out of stores with, as long as she was fine with cheap versions sold at convenience or grocery stores, because the more upscale stores had security guards that would practically follow her all around the stores, on top of those machines that mad a racket if you walked by with stolen merchandise. The rest had taken a lot more effort, especially since she had to settle with making it from scratch. Crawdads didn’t take too long to find, and they were easy enough to make into earrings that she decided to keep in three layers of sandwich bags after they had started to smell awful. Occasionally she was able to find stray feathers here and there, but it would take forever to build a boa out of them, and she had considered settling for earrings, or putting them in her hair, but she decided that was just the trash in her talking, and people would think of her as some sort of inbred bog witch, instead of the classy woman she wanted to appear as. Rats were easy enough to find, especially in areas of the city, and all she had to do was lay out rat traps in the alleys, and after a couple moths of hard work, she was able to skin enough rats (using a wood carving knife that she borrowed from a neighbor boy, which cost her a kiss every time she wanted to use it), preserve enough furs, to finally be able to sew herself her very first fur coat.

She wore that coat all of the time, unable to take it off, except for sometimes when she took a bath (sometimes she kept it on, or wrapped on top of her head, because she figured classy women were always classy, and couldn’t imagine them bathing naked like she had), which caused it to have a very unpleasant smell when it had gotten wet. She also wore lipstick all of the time, even if it clashed with her outfit, and labeled each tube for the fish she thought it belonged to, just guessing by the color (bright orange was labeled “clown fish”, a yellowish one was labeled “Moray eel”, a dull gray was “shark”, etc). It made her look ridiculous, but it had increased her self esteem significantly, until, after months of constant wear, her coat had started to come apart, which lead her to do the same. It was a sign for her to not have to be complacent with one coat, like she knew in the beginning, and that she had to go out and get more fur, had to have a larger wardrobe to become extra classy.

Since a lot of animals in the swamps made her uneasy, especially the gators, she preferred to prowl around the city instead, looking for classy city animals, which caused her to end up in the suburbs, which seemed to be teeming with the most adorable cats that she had ever seen. There were all sorts of different kinds, they were all very friendly, even if they were a bit cautious, and when, after a long walk, she sat on the sidewalk with a beautiful calico in her lap, she realized that she would have to come back to the area after kissing the neighbor-boy, probably around night time. And, when she finally did return with her brother’s pillow case and the carving knife, its not like she didn’t feel bad about what she did, its not like she had any sense of malice towards the cats, she just had ambition, or at least thats what she told herself, as she got a fat, white furball (which almost made her feint from seeing all of that beautiful fur, which would make a lovely collar for the coat) on her lap and began to stab down on its neck, quickly and repeatedly to make sure it wouldn’t have time to process what was happening, it wouldn’t scream at the horrors of the sudden and approaching void, which would easily bring trouble when people would check to see what upset the cat, only to find a young girl stabbing it to death with a small knife. She didn’t know a whole lot about these middle class people, so she figured that they must be a mix of poor and rich, meaning that they were both addicts and crazy (the two categories he put poor people into, explaining that he was an addict, and their mother was crazy [this was true, since she was severely bipolar, and would either lay around the house, getting her children to keep her company, to try to remind her about the good in life, or was driven by a motor to do some task, which often caused her to disappear on nights on end, sometimes coming back with bruises, or with the news that the family was further in debt]), but also had an intense need to destroy poor people, probably, she believed, because they were at risk of being shoved into poverty, so they had to make sure that the current poor didn’t get any ideas, and stayed down. After the sixth stab, when she was sure the cat was dead, she had to quickly, and awkwardly, make sure to flip it upside down, holding it over the gutter, so that the blood would drain out, and not stain any more of that precious fur than it already had. However, after she bagged that cat, the other ones in the neighborhood avoided her all night, so she went home, dismayed that it would take so long (she figured it would be a quick operation since they were much, much larger than rats, and she would have to kill less to have enough material for a coat that would fit her small frame), and she tried to think of a way to lure them over.

First, she considered using a saucer of milk, like they enjoyed in cartoons, but she didn’t know how she was supposed to carry that all the way into the far off suburbs without spilling it, and after a small amount of research, she learned that it wasn’t good for them anyhow. So, the next night she went off to visit the feline infested neighborhood, not having returned the neighbor-boy’s knife, since she deserved it more than that pervert did anyhow, and on the way she decided to shoplift a couple tins of sardines, figuring that it wasn’t amoral since nobody ate them anyways, and if they did, then her coat was more important than some hungry stranger’s need to eat disgusting food. It was easier to lure them in, and kill them, so she had a very productive night, having tricked and killed six cats, one of which she had to toss into somebody’s backyard, because it noticed the descending knife before it struck, causing it to try and flee, and causing Sue to slice its belly open instead of painlessly severing its spine, which lead to an awkward chase where she had to run after the bleeding cat that was beginning to drag its innards behind it, as it tried, wetly and desperately, to call for help, or to warn other cats that a predator was nearby. When she finally caught up to it, and kicked it into a mailbox with enough force to crack it’s skull, she realized that the fur was too blood soaked to be of any use to her, that the blood trail was already bad, but that if people saw the mutilated cat, she would have to find another neighborhood to hunt in, so she tossed it into the first backyard that she saw with a “Beware of dog” sign, with the hopes that the owners would think the dog had gotten to it, had done what dogs enjoy doing, and they would scold the animal instead of thinking that some eleven year old girl might be killing neighborhood cats. However, the sign was only up to deter trespassers or burglars, and there was no dog in the backyard, but she ended up with enough fur for a coat, making her lucky enough to not have to deal with the now extra-vigilant neighborhood watch.

After she had taken the care to skin the cats, toss their remains in the bogs where she hoped gators would get to it, she got to work on her new coat, in the lamp lit area behind the trailer where she liked to sew, mainly because there was hardly any room in her trailer, and the family would probably be uncomfortable with the effort that she was putting in to elevate herself from poverty, which she was starting to believe they were incapable of doing, since they fell into the mentally ill or addict categories, and she felt, no, knew that she was neither. Usually when she got to work on a coat, she couldn’t stop until it was finished, so she was ready to work all night, but when she was about half way done, the neighbor-boy that she was starting to despise came over, wanting his knife back. “You don’t deserve this knife as much as I do,” said Sue, “this is my ticket out of the swamps. You’re just trash, you’re only wasting it, dulling it out making your stupid wood carvings.”

“Fuck you,” said the neighbor-boy, “If you don’t get that shit right back to me, which is my knife in the first place, I’m going to take it from you.”

Holding the short blade out to him, trying to be threatening, “Look, if you come any closer I’m going to have to cut you good. I would make you into a coat afterwards, but I already got a rat co-”

Before she finished her sentence, he had jabbed at her, right in the nose, which caused her to drop the knife, reeling backwards as she held her bleeding nose, trying to make sure the blood wouldn’t be anywhere near her hard earned furs. Picking up the knife, “You ain’t nothin’ but swamp trash, and wearin’ rats don’t make you any better than me.” Pointing the knife at her, only to gesture, “You’re sick in the head, you know that? There ain’t nothing wrong with wood carvin either.” Walking away, muttering to himself about how dumb he was to fall for a pretty thing whose coat (that the boy really did think was elegant) was actually made out of nothing other than rats, that would threaten to stab him even though he was just came over to flirt.

Sue had to put that coat on hold for the night, as she attended to her busted nose, and when it was later finished, it not only looked nice, but felt great too. Yet, what would stick with her months later, as she tried to expand her wardrobe, wasn’t the feeling of progress, of becoming closer and closer to being something that wasn’t just swamp trash (she was no longer in this for appearances, she was starting to believe that the attire actually made her wealthier, as if it were something outside of how much money you had, like a state of mind, a state of being), she remembered the threat she had told the neighbor-boy. She would think of the threat as she looked for dogs that were tied to chains, that she could lure with purloined bologna, and who couldn’t run when she began to stab them, now with a larger knife, also stolen. She would think of the threat as she cased pet stores, planning to break in later to kill and bag their Guinea pigs, hamsters, birds, snakes, mice, and lizards. She would think of the threat as she saw a bear skin rug in an upscale furniture store, and tried to figure out how she could leave the store with it, without spending any money. Because, with all of these coats she was going out of her way to make, she was slowly coming to terms with the fact that there was one coat she was avoiding, she had to take a break with furs, and start focusing on skins.

The question wasn’t where she was supposed to find it, since this had been the easiest animal for her to find, but it was who she was supposed to get it from. Now, she wasn’t worried about any legal troubles, and as soon as she had come to terms with what she would have to do, it started to seem clear that it was the one article she needed to shoot herself all the way up into the one percent. What screamed “upper class” more than wearing the skin of the poor? However, she, only at the age of thirteen, still wasn’t very large, since being short and small had seemed to run in the family, especially with her mother, who was in her late thirties, but still was carded most of the time that she bought liquor for her husband. So, its not like she could just go after anyone, since the neighbor-boy, who sometimes watched her from a distance, taught her that just having a knife didn’t give her any power.

So, for a few weeks she was lost in thought, trying to figure out who the best choice of prey would be, who she would be able to kill. Children were easy targets, obviously, but she wouldn’t be able to settle for just one, because they were too small to provide enough for just one jacket, while they also had parents who could want to enact revenge against Sue for harming their young. Babies were disqualified for similar reasons, and the elderly were a no go because their skin was practically useless, and would probably make a terrible jacket in the first place. Strung out addicts were also out of the questions, because even though they wouldn’t resist if the were high, they were also covered in scabs, sores, rashes, etc, and could have some sort of disease that she could catch if she dealt with their blood. One night, as she thought this over, sitting on the floor of the main room in the trailer, her father, who was the only one home with her, was lying on the couch, wasted, trying to explain to her how he had a ticket out of the “shit hole of a swamp”, until the rich had decided to hurt him, to weaken him by ruining his chances at a way out. Rambling, between gulps, about how the rich were after him.

Sue almost told him to shut up, as she sat their in her golden retriever coat, since she was trying to solve her problem, she needed some peace and quiet to think. She wanted to tell him that the rich had done nothing to put him in this position, that it was just his fault that he was there, that no high class people were trying to kill him, but she realized something which solved all of her problems. Sue realized that she could be the high society woman to bring about her father’s downfall, and when she got up to get her knife, she had to admit, the man was right.

#Free Write #Short Story #Writing #Writers on Tumblr #Fashion

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