#but also isolating herself from them with her own guilt and her assumption that they all blame her as much as she blames herself'

[bookofmirth]

“I have headcanoned for a really long time that Azriel self harms. I could see him cutting or otherwise purposefully injuring himself.”

I could definitely see this. Maybe he doesn’t wrap his hands when he trains and lets his skin get cut up and bruised easily and doesn’t let himself heal. If Azriel does cut himself, do you think his brothers would know or have their assumptions? I feel like if they did know it wouldn’t be because Az told them. I don’t think he would tell anybody.

Also, for Gwyn, how do you think she deals with her trauma? I know some people view her only as passive and optimistic/upbeat, (which there’s nothing wrong with), but I wonder if deep down she has some intense rage, (which would be very understandable) and deals with things like Azriel or Nesta, but hides it from everyone. We don’t have her POV, but I really want to know more about her character.

I use to cut myself and I’m a survivor of assault, so it makes curious, and a little nervous, as to how Sarah will approach these topics. I think she’s done research on disabilities for Chaol when writing TOD, but I can’t be too sure. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

First off anon, giving you the biggest virtual hugs ever, I am glad to hear that you aren't harming yourself anymore. It may never go away, but you've come out the other side stronger and wiser.

Yes, harming could be something that no one could accuse Azriel of doing intentionally, but instead they may notice him playing fast and loose with his own safety. I think we can already see a bit of that with the risks that he takes on his missions, how willing he is to do things to others (IE torture) without regard for how those actions might affect his own psyche. It would be really easy for him to brush off the injuries as being part of the job, for him to make excuses about how he was injured. If he pushes himself a bit harder than he needs to and he ends up in a dangerous position, then people might have a hard time saying he's actually being self-destructive, you know?

I don't think his brothers would know or that he would tell anyone. Just speaking from experience, if people know then they want to help and then you get attention and really you just want to suffer and self-destruct in isolation. He's a pretty closed book, he doesn't really share his inner life, and perhaps he doesn't even acknowledge those behaviors as being harmful? I kind-of headcanon that he thinks he deserves it. Also, I think that people who have never done anything like that just... will never get it. It's so foreign to them. It's fine that they don't, that just makes it really tricky to navigate telling anyone and then hoping to get an understanding response!

I see Gwyn's competitiveness and pushing herself to train as the way she is dealing with her guilt and grief over Catrin. I don't think she's self-destructive at all, but her attitude seems to be more along the lines of "never again". I am rereading acosf so if I find any quotes I'll add them. She's one of the characters that sjm has described as being kind and optimistic despite what she's gone through (like Mor and Elain), and so to me, her training is the way she is being proactive. Gwyn definitely carries guilt for her sister's death, but I think she knows cognitively that it wasn't her fault (also like Elain! who acknowledges that her father's death wasn't her fault, but still has regrets).

Funny story, but the omniscient narrator did actually give us a peek into Gwyn's mind in acosf.

Roslin, Ananke, and Deirdre were close on their heels, propelling Gwyn to push her group harder. She wanted to be the first. Wanted Nesta and Emerie and her to be the ones who wiped the smirks from Azriel’s and Cassian’s faces. Especially Azriel’s.

Gwyn didn't tell Nesta this information; the omniscient narrator is telling us Gwyn's thoughts and feelings. There may be other points in the book where this happens, it's just the first one that comes to mind!

But anyway, I don't know if I see rage in Gwyn, so much as I see determination for the events of her past to never be repeated, and to me, that comes out as her competitiveness towards Azriel, wanting to cut the ribbon, making it through the Blood Rite, etc.

Sjm did do research on disability! I went to her Tower of Dawn event in London (in 2017) and she mentioned interviewing people with Wounded Warriors Project to better understand their injuries and to try to write Chaol's experience with care. There isn't a recording of this event as far as I know, back in the day you either went in person to events or you waited for people to make recap posts on Tumblr. Fun fact, that event was also where she announced her first pregnancy!

I'm personally not worried about how sjm will handle either of their healing stories, mainly because I'm not sure that she would actually delve into the depths of Azriel's self destruction. She pulled Nesta's story away from those themes pretty quickly and easily in acosf, so...

I hope that their stories help you feel seen and understood, however they turn out <3

#gwyn #azriel #acotar #cw self harm #ask #anon

[explorerspack]

feeling really headinhands about. kobus on the rooftop with mina, auberon as a weasel curled up on montery’s back and then in the forest with sabin, fásach walking among and commending the soldiers, cerise holding calista and making plans with elliot and just quietly sitting with the other sorcerers, cami celebrating in the streets with all the people of the city....man....

#it's like that one bron post from ages ago #about how everyone in this party has their Other Loyalties #we have some crossover! and some aligned goals! but at the end of the day we each have our Priorities #we each have our people! #it's like.a short rest with the whole party sitting together and passing around a flask and bandaging each others' wounds can be so personal #but a short rest with the whole party spread out in these different tableaus can ALSO be so personal #y'know? #c:crop #cha:cerise #also. for cerise's part #my first instinct had been 'ah she's gonna do the same thing she did after rhest where she's devoted to these people and protecting them #but also isolating herself from them with her own guilt and her assumption that they all blame her as much as she blames herself' #but she's not doing that pleading emoji #i think bc of a combination of 'dragon's dead and won't hurt them again and also didn't get away unscathed' #along with calista and maurice both approaching *her* #and even elliot not showing a flicker of anger toward cerise #and then the fact that. she doesn't have Time to isolate herself #she had two weeks on the road after rhest! here she has to be functional within like #two hours! #so the guilt and the 'they should blame me' gets shoved in the same box as all the trauma and just sits there Fueling Everything #and then she goes and hugs her people #<3

[priorireverte]

Congratulations Clementine!

Your application for Hannah Abbott has been accepted. I so love seeing people take on Trio characters because in a lot of ways they’re so new to me, having a mostly Marauders background, and it excites me to see what people make of them. You’ve done some great development on her already!

Please look to the checklist for the next steps and reach out if you have any questions!

OUT OF CHARACTER

NAME & PRONOUNS: Clementine, she/her

TIMEZONE: AEDT / GMT+11

ACTIVITY LEVEL: Fairly active in the afternoons/evenings and on weekends.

ANYTHING ELSE: No triggers or anything. Experience-wise, I’ve been RPing on and off since I was about 17, almost exclusively in some form of HP-verse.

CHARACTER DETAILS

NAME: Hannah Abbott

BIRTHDATE: August 1st, 1980

DEATHDATE: N/A

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Hannah identifies as cisgender with she/her pronouns. In terms of her sexuality, she has always assumed that she is primarily attracted to men, because it is what she has, in her mind, deemed safe. Despite the more open and accepting nature of Wixen society, one of her Muggle mother’s sisters, who Hannah is extremely close to, lives with her female partner and Hannah has seen the way that Muggle society treats same-sex couples. This choice for Hannah, however, is heavily based on her own assumptions of what she should do, as she has rarely felt sexual attraction for anyone, needing a strong emotional connection with someone in order to do so. (She will eventually identify as demisexual, however, she has never come across that kind of terminology before / may not do so for a long time)

BLOOD STATUS: Half-Blood (muggleborn mother, magic father)

HOUSE ALUMNI: Hufflepuff

OCCUPATION: Waitress at the Leaky Cauldron, works occasionally at a Muggle florist owned by her grandparents

FACECLAIM: Eliza Scanlen

CHARACTER BACKGROUND

POSTBELLUM

In the weeks after the war ended, Hannah chose to isolate herself back into the Muggle world as she struggled to come to terms with not only what they had won, but what they had lost along the way. Having to repeat her sixth year at Hogwarts would have been difficult enough for Hannah, but the added circumstances had left her with both physical and mental scars and she had been in no real place to assist with much of the rebuilding. Hannah, who cries and anything and everything, ended the war with barely a tear, as if it had all completely dried her up. She reentered Wixen society slowly - guided by friends who understood what they had all gone through and her determination to build her shattered family back together again. Getting a job at the Leaky was one of the best things she could have done for herself: it allowed her to not only be around other people once again but to see the ways in which society could grow and thrive after a war.

Hannah has no real regrets about her actions and involvement during the war - she could not live with herself if she hadn’t fought. Her fight began when they first took Cedric from them, and it only continued when they took her mother too. She chose to put all her fears and worries behind her until the war was done, and that was when she could collapse.

Despite all her progress, the news of the Returned set Hannah back once more. No matter how hard she tries to cut down her own hope, she opens the Prophet every day, desperate to find the name ‘Abbott’ on the list. Logically, Hannah knows it’s near to impossible - her mother was a Muggle, no matter that she loved a wizard, that her children were magic. But deep in her heart, all Hannah wants is to be able to see and touch her mother once more.

PERSONALITY

Hannah is generally a bright and cheerful person - she has a smile and a wave for everyone who enters the Leaky and is often found deep in conversation with the regulars. She has a knack for names and faces, and it was her decision to fill the back alley with pots and planters, spending her breaks with her knuckles deep in soil. Hannah is a quiet listener and while she can babble when nervous, she knows that sometimes silence is the best response.

On the flip-side, however, despite her outward appearance of calm, inside Hannah is a permanent mess of anxiety and panic. She can be remarkably high-strung despite her patience and she often requires validation and reassurance - when younger, she was happy to follow along with the thoughts and actions of others: her independence seemed to come later. Hannah is an easy crier: tears for frustration and stress and panic, tears of sympathy and laughter. When flustered, she becomes clumsy, which often results in a cycle of more panic and usually ends with something broken. Hannah struggles with looking after and caring for herself, often choosing to take care of others instead.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY

Hannah was born to a pureblooded father and a Muggleborn mother, leading her to spend most of her life split between both worlds. Her parents were quite adept at sheltering her from the judgement of other families - particularly those who believed her father had ‘tainted’ the bloodline, however, Hannah soon began to realise that not everyone was as accepting as she had believed. Her parents really pushed for Hannah to be as accepting and as loyal as she could be: they instilled a heavy focus on just being kind to others, something that was not difficult for their quiet daughter. The Abbotts were unable to have any more children after Hannah, and so she was completely doted upon by both sides of her family. Hannah was exceptionally close to her mother and her mother’s side of the family, having spent many summers growing up, pottering around on her grandparents’ farm.

Her mother was murdered during Hannah’s sixth year at Hogwarts, in a targetted attack. While the family will not openly discuss it, Hannah has come to understand that the intention had been to warn her father from not only continuing to outwardly express his pro-Muggle views at the Ministry but from attempting to use his influence to halt the corrupt ongoings. As a result, her father completely shut down, shuttling Hannah to her grandparents’ in a cloud of grief and guilt, and she barely saw him for the remainder of the year. After the war, when her father realised he could have lost the last of his family, they slowly came back together. The Abbott’s healing is slow, but gradual, and Hannah knows that patience is what they need right now.

HISTORY

Before the start of the war, Hannah was three things: patient, uncertain, happy. Before the end of the war, she was three different things: angry, broken, determined. At once she was almost two Hannahs: the Hannah who cried during her OWLs, who spent her free time in the greenhouses, who smiled at the first years and made stupid jokes to cheer them up. And she was also the Hannah who sobbed at the loss of Cedric, who buckled under the weight of being prefect, of knowing their whole house was grieving and it was she and Ernie they would look to. The Hannah who lost her best friend and herself when her mother died, and didn’t know when she would ever get herself back.

Hannah finds herself carrying these things with her: every tear, every panic attack, every story she’s ever listened to. And, more than anything, she wants to prove that Hufllepuffs are more: more than just Cedric being killed and tossed to the side, more than just “that other house”, the spares and the leftovers. She is driven by the need to show that being hard-working and patient and loyal and true is sometimes just as important as being brave or wise or cunning.

OOC EXPLORATION

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

This RP was recommended to me by some friends I have RPed with in the past / am currently RPing with. I think I’m looking most forward to playing a trio-era character in a different time of their life to anything I’ve played before - my usual characters have either been Marauders-Era or a recent foray into middle-aged trio.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Here are some hcs I wrote like…six years back? And here is a pinterest board because that is who I am as a person :)

#prioriacceptance #hannah abbott

[bestworstcase]

“The s3 parallels fall flat because Cass is the opposite of Gothel” Please bless us with your analysis.

okayyyy this is about more than one incident but i’ll start with The Big One

“You want me to be the bad guy? Fine, now I’m the bad guy.”

this is THE line. and the manner and visual framing of how cass repeats it are identical to the way gothel delivers it in the movie. and you know what i honestly don’t know what the intention was here in terms of what this repetition says about cass as a character or her relationship with rapunzel but...

when gothel says this line, it is an act of dropping the mask. taking off the kid gloves. ending the charade of what meager affection and kindness she had used to control rapunzel up to this point and revealing her true nature as somebody who would go to any length to keep what she feels belongs to her. it’s gothel announcing her choice to escalate into physical abuse, and blaming rapunzel for it in classic abuser fashion. and it’s provoked by rapunzel asserting her independence. rapunzel can’t be controlled the “nice” (read: emotionally abusive) way anymore, therefore in gothel’s twisted logic it’s rapunzel’s fault that gothel has to get violent. it’s a calculated, cruel, manipulative thing to say.

when cassandra says this line, what she means is: i tried to come back, i tried to fix my mistakes, i believed you when i said it would be okay, and you shot me in the back, so fuck you. from her perspective, it looks like rapunzel’s plea for her to stand down because it isn’t “too late” was simply a ploy to distract her so they could encase her in amber, something that as far as cass knows is intended to be lethal force. (hell, team corona does treat the gun like lethal force.) so cass is looking at this situation, looking at what rapunzel did to her when she attempted to surrender, and saying, fine. you’re right. zhan tiri was right. she tried to do the right thing and everybody, including rapunzel, attacked her for it. so cass accepts that, internalizes it, and lashed out in anger. in once a handmaiden, cass is a villain because the citizens of corona (with a little unseen help from zhan tiri) made her one. every avenue she had to escape from that role like she wanted to was closed to her when that gun fired. cass says “you want me to be the bad guy? fine, now i’m the bad guy” and then destroys corona the way a cornered animal lashes out and mauls somebody. it’s a blend of panic and rage.

also the power dynamics are reversed. gothel delivers the line as an abusive parent-figure, looming over a helpless rapunzel, who is now isolated from all her friends and trapped alone with gothel in the tower. cassandra delivers the line after literally every single person at the gopher grab attacks her. cass is in an extremely vulnerable position at this point and (given what she knew or believed to be true) her options were essentially try to fight her way out, raze the city, or accept being murdered. she has no power over the situation except through violence.

they say the same words, in the same way, but they mean wildly different things. so where is the parallel here? what purpose does this verbal and visual callback serve for the narrative, for cass as a character, for her villain arc, or for her relationship with rapunzel? it doesn’t make any sense to draw a comparison between gothel and cass here.

and the same is true of cass and gothel in general. cass as a character is defined by her ambitions and drive, to be a guard and later to claim her own destiny; gothel spent two thousand years living in a cottage where her only real achievement was vlogging about compliments she received. cass is self-sacrificing to a fault until it becomes to much for her and she cracks, seizing the moonstone in the first truly, purely selfish decision she makes in the entire series; gothel is self-serving to the point of being utterly incapable of caring about anybody else’s needs or wellbeing or feelings. cass wavers and doubts and displays guilt repeatedly over the course of her villain arc; the closest gothel ever gets to remorse is transparently fake performances of it to guilt trip rapunzel for asking anything of her. cass suffers from a crushing inferiority complex and her own self-loathing; gothel is shallowly obsessed with herself and egocentric in the extreme. etc. etc. every time the show draws a parallel between them it just... doesn’t work, because they aren’t alike. up to and including the last one:

“Felled by your own ego, just like your mother.”

except neither of them were felled by their egos and they were defeated by two very different things this quote makes me lose my MIND because it’s the exact moment zhan tiri, the masterful manipulator who knew precisely where cassandra’s strings were, was lobotomized into zhan tiri, the big dumb monster.

in the film gothel’s vanity and ego drive her to hoard the flower and kidnap rapunzel, then go to great lengths to keep her under control, and in that sense ego can be understood as indirectly leading to her death. but it’s not chasing her vanity that kills her; it’s her failure to understand selflessness and genuine love. she lets rapunzel attempt to heal eugene because she can’t fathom that eugene would ever willingly give up the very same magic that gothel has spent centuries clinging to, in order to save the girl gothel just sees as a vessel for that magic. her fatal weakness is that she can’t predict eugene’s compassion. it’s classic Evil Can’t Comprehend Good.

on the other hand cass is defined by her insecurity and feelings of inferiority, which make her miserable. to say that her desire to have her own purpose and her own life separate from rapunzel is egotistical is to fundamentally misunderstand the pain she’s in. bc it’s not about her ego, it’s about her wanting to not hurt anymore. and her fatal weakness is a kind of inverse of gothel’s, in that she underestimates the lengths zhan tiri is able to go to to stab her in the back. i guess one could argue that her assumption that zhan tiri was trapped in that cage comes from arrogance, which is a form of ego, but that feels like a bit of a stretch because that’s not the root of the problem really. the root of the problem for cass is that she’s so caught up in her pain that she can’t see anything else, and zhan tiri steps in and twists her thoughts around so much that even after she gets away her mindset stays the same until she’s shocked out of it. cass isn’t driven by pride, she’s driven by pain. and zhan tiri should know this god damn it

[deep breath]

the point being, cass is nothing like gothel, and every attempt the show makes to draw parallels between them fails because as characters they are perpendicular to each other. rapunzel has much more of gothel in her than cass, and that’s why the single most effective gothel parallel in the entire series is “enough, cassandra!” but that is. a whole other rant.

#rta #cassandra #gothel #man watching plus est the first time and getting to that line was like #[record scratch] wait WHAT? #zhan tiri only said that to foreshadow her OWN demise which WAS caused by her ego #but hcbfsfvvfdhfdgjh its such a weird thing for her to say

[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

how about some meta about Jett Reno/Tracy Pollard, if you feel like it?

OKAY SO my thing with this ship is that. Both of them are both very sarcastic and very open/earnest at the same time. Specifically, as well as being fairly straightforward about who they are and what they want to do and what they believe, they each place a high value on life, human and otherwise, in this very...I guess I would call it a very sincere way.

In what I think of as Tracy’s defining-character moment, the sickbay scene with Michael and Chris in the ep in which the Sphere is introduced, Michael characterizes the Sphere’s interference with their systems as a “virus,” prompting Tracy to tell her, “You’re attaching a known medical diagnosis to an unknown entity”—a medical-division counterpart to Michael’s science-officer reminder to Chris only hours before that “it is premature” to characterize the Sphere as a malevolent “spider” without knowing more about it. 

It’s an incredibly Star Trek-y characterization of Tracy, but also a complex one. In context, she isn’t being “woo” about the sphere being potentially not as malevolent as it seems, but rather the opposite—the topic comes up because of her grim reminder to Michel and Chris that “life support’s down to 60% percent, but who’s counting?” which prompts Michael to argue that “it is not logical for a virus to kill its host” and Tracy to deliver her attaching-a-known-medical-diagnosis-to-an-unknown-entity rejoinder. In other words, Tracy is urging caution, and potentially an adversarial viewpoint, towards the current threat to the lives of her crew—but doing so through a framework that suggests an underlying openness to observation, discovery, and resisting easy assumptions about the universe around her.

Meanwhile, Jett has a similar balance of being simultaneously pragmatic, sarcastic, and sincere in her integrity. She stays behind to care for the critical-condition patients on the Hiawatha, and jumps into dangerous situations again and again on the Discovery, from the engineering explosion to the time crystal, putting herself at risk to protect the people around her (and, unlike say MICHAEL, seems to be doing so as someone fully able to fairly consent to risking herself, rather than being unduly influenced by guilt/depression/the attitudes and sometimes coercion of those around her--but, ahem, anyway.) And, in true Trek fashion, she even forms a bond with a lifeform much different from herself—aka Paul Stamets—as they navigate their annoyance with and deep care for each other (the “I still don’t like you” “it’s mutual” hand-clasping scene before Jett stays behind have her brain blasted by the time crystal? I WILL NEVER BE DONE HAVING FEELINGS ABOUT IT). Jett cares deeply about the lives of the people around her. But she isn’t about to be, like, gooey about it.

In addition, Jett and Tracy are both very competent, and clearly value and respect competence in others. Not to mention that they’d have a lot to talk about on a professional level re: Jett’s foray into field medicine. 

And, last but not but not least, as that one gifset points out (linking in a reblog so Tumblr doesn’t auto-hide this post from the character tags)... they can bond over being partners in one of the noblest pursuits starship crew can undertake: taking the piss out of their commanding officer when he gives them gratuitously redundant instructions.

-

Putting a divider here because all of the above is meta about canon, and the following is a headcanon, but: I will also mention that the backbone of my personal Tracy fanon is that she is innocent-until-proven-guilty of the Strap Michael To A Chair And Torture Her To Death Plan, and, as such, a big part of how I write her in fic is as someone who—like Culber with Lorca’s captaincy in s1 — is willing to be critical of systemic issues within Starfleet (or, at the least, to not take an active role in enabling them).

As well as being innocent-until-proven-guilty simply by virtue of not appearing in 2x10, I think this is a plausible extension of her canon character—no way would this thoughtful woman who cares so much about her patients and her colleagues and life in all its forms enable a plan to literally STRAP MICHAEL TO A CHAIR AND TORTURE HER TO DEATH—erm, sorry, still not over it. 

(Which, in fairness, is equally true of many of the characters who did appear in the ep going along with the plan, which is why I have to informally decide when writing any given character whether I’m writing something that is/is not consistent with tHE JOKE OF AN EPISODE THAT IS 2x10–okay, okay, I’m done now.)

Anyway, that headcanon is a big part of my own interpretation of Tracy’s character. I will go to the mat about Tracy having gotten as much canon characterization, by the end of season 2 as, say, Ellen Landry or Keyla Detmer did (said characterization is just less overtly noticeable because it’s largely professional and compassionate rather than antagonistic, and, in fiction, non-antagonistic characterization easily fades into the background as a default/non-characterization, despite the fact that—especially in a social setting as flawed as dsc’s Starfleet—it is anything but.) However, she is still very much a background character, so any major headcanons I come up with for her make a relatively large splash in how I individually write her.

As such, in my fanon, Tracy’s integrity and unwillingness to go along with the Time To Just Frickin’ Kill Michael plan is something that I see Jett being very attracted to/relieved by. Given that she’s someone who spent most of the war isolated away from Starfleet, I have to assume that Jett got one hell of a culture shock when she heard about what Starfleet had become (and/or had been revealed to be, depending on your interpretation—that degree of systemic violence and corruption Does Not Spring Up Overnight) by the time of her rescue. So, finding someone who sticks to what Jett thinks of as Starfleet values—compassion, integrity, openness—AND is extremely competent, AND is sarcastic? Jett probably has bluebirds fluttering around her head and little pink hearts in her eyes.

-

(Send me a meta ask!)

#tracy pollard #jett reno #meta #tysm for sending this in!! #I wrote it up this week and ironiquely was just coming online to post it when #I saw you were also soliciting asks #also sent one lmk if it gets eaten #this ended up being such a ship manifesto I'm dsfdsksdf #I love them #pollard #reno #burnham #pike #stamets #the sphere #saru #should rly have a character tag too I realized just now #culber #lorca #jett x tracy #torture #character death #depression #literally edited this after posting to add even more saltiness about Michael's treatment bc *screams* #ANYWAY. in my better cooler universe (and Perhaps in s3???) jett and tracy are both supporting michael thru that crap :)

[potterandpromises]

Plague Times: Chapter 1

Lucy downs a shot of vodka, her ration. It’s the amount she allows herself as a sleep aid, no more and only when needed. A rule she created years ago, within weeks of Rufus’ death. Anything else must be consumed in a social setting. Or at least with other people— meaning Flynn, mostly. But he’s not here, because she left him.

One mouth, almost exactly. Perhaps current events lead the dates to be emphasized. December 6th though January 4th they lived together in his new and decrepit ex-safe house, sold to him for one dollar by the United States Government after the war’s supposed end. That decision, as Lucy understands it, was half laziness, half embarrassment. An excellent outcome, and she barely had to threaten anybody.

[Read the rest on AO3]

#timeless #garcy #timeless ff #garcy ff #Fic: Plague Times #lucy preston #garcia flynn #fanfiction #my fanfic tag #tw alcohol #trying something new with just a preview #let me know if you prefer complete cross posting

[monster-bait]

Curses and Divination for Tate? He's my absolute fave and I love how you write him

Curses: How do you show affection?

He...does not, lol. Or at least, not in a traditional way. Silva is the first person he’s let into his heart in a very long time, he’s softer with her than he is with anyone, and she’s still not really seen him make himself vulnerable. 

Tate is someone with a lot of “friends,” but when asked he would say he has one friend, or more likely, no friends. Ainsley and Elshona (who are absolutely his friends) simply accept that’s just the way he is. He wears a series of masks and he’s a terrifyingly good pretender, but he’s fiercely loyal to the people he does care about. He knows Cymbeline (the gorgeous moth who works in his restaurant) is a struggling single mom, and ensures she’s able to support herself and her kids. He acts like they are THE WORST anytime she brings them around...but he knows when all of their moth holidays are and buys them gifts. He takes in every misfit who comes to his door with their own tale of isolation and woe, finds room for them on one of his staffs, gives them a place to belong. He doesn’t show affection with words, but he does unconsciously through deeds and actions...not that he’d ever cop to it.

He’s fueled by a bottomless vat of spite, but under it all he also has a relatively good heart.

Divination: What do you think about yourself?

Tate: I am the best looking, most clever person in this room

Also Tate, simultaneously: I am the most unlovable piece of trash in this room

He has a very high opinion of himself on the surface, knows that he is clever and quick and a born hustler, and can wriggle his way into having the upper hand in almost any situation. Despite presenting as orcish in looks (which he hates) he also knows he possesses what he calls “a very pretty face.”

...but he also carries an enormous amount of guilt and self-loathing, long ago crimes from which he was never granted absolution, the assumption that all he will ever do is hurt the people he loves, with an unhealthy dose of abandonment issues to compound it. Tate thinks very highly of himself but he doesn’t actually like himself very much, and has a hard time accepting that anyone else would either...if he were to actually let them get that close.

Thanks for the ask, Tate will be back in the next installment of my Girl’s Weekend Universe, Parties.

💖💖💖

#monsterbait answers #writer asks #tate #alexisnotalex

[introvert-celeste]

You know, I have to wonder if White actually knew the whole story about Pink Diamond and Rose Quartz from the beginning. Given Blue Zircon's accusation in The Trial that it was one of the Diamonds who shattered Pink Diamond and had the "supreme authority" to "cover it up afterward," it would make sense for it to have some validity. Otherwise, what would be the point of including it? To mislead the audience? That was certainly a reason for it, but the scene places too much importance on the statement for it to be a throwaway, false detail.

White was conveniently absent from this trial--for the murder of a fellow Diamond, no less--and it's clear that she is familiar with this fact by the confrontation in CYM. She states that Pink "took the form of Rose Quartz to deceive [her] pathetic friends" matter-of-factly, without a hint of surprise or betrayal. Logically, she wouldn't have learned about it during that episode. Plus, she does have the most "supreme authority" in Homeworld, and it is specifically noted that she has the ability to judge the other Diamonds like they would their courts. We don't know the scope of her mind powers, but her analysis of the gems under her control shows that she is capable of putting 2 and 2 together, so to speak. At the very least, she could have predicted that Pink betrayed them, then decided to intervene before the war escalated further to protect Pink's identity. It wouldn't be for Pink's benefit, however. After all, if it was revealed that a DIAMOND rebelled, well, that would throw a wrench in the works.

A Diamond is supposed to be inherently perfect, as well as a leader of Homeworld. If it's revealed that one of them rebelled, that would mean they are neither, thus calling to question the validity of the system itself. There would be gems who lose faith in the Diamond Authority, gems who feel emboldened by Pink's rebellion, and gems from Pink's court who would follow her regardless of her allegiances, and all of this spells disaster for Homeworld. Even Blue and Yellow are not immune, either choosing to help the gem they have parented for so long or being forced to confront their own imperfections, thus weakening the leadership. To reduce the risk of this coming out (and perhaps with some deep desire to protect Pink from being discovered and harmed), White stepped in, ordered all Homeworld gems to evacuate, and helped "destroy" the remaining gems. She probably knew that Rose would have blocked her attack to save herself, so this would have also been a punishment meant to isolate her, to take away all the gems she cares about. Her still functioning ship was left on Earth, so it would only be a matter of when Pink decided to come crawling back. She was clearly expecting Pink's arrival, and she informed everyone on Homeworld of this, as they chanted "Yellow! Blue! Pink!" when the ship landed.

So, we have a clear motive and a relatively sound method, but I still have to wonder about the extent of White's knowledge. It is very possible that her correct assumption might have only been that, an assumption. If Pink is Rose Quartz, then this punishment and exile will teach her a lesson. If she isn't and was actually shattered by Rose, then this makes for a great show of power and the all of the rebels would be gone. Seeing Pink's ship and this kid who arrived on friendly terms with Blue and Yellow would have confirmed her first theory, and she would have had thousands of years to stew on this possibility. It no longer surprises her. This is indirectly confirmed with the way she refers to Pink's antics as her "latest little game" and asks condescendingly if she "had fun" and "got everything out of [her] system," namely her desire to rebel.

There is also the matter of how much information she gained from her mind controlling/manipulating. It is very possible that the weird dream Steven had in Together Alone was in some way influenced by White to manipulate Pink. At the beginning, we're shown "Pink" (in her new identity) having fun with her Pearl. Yellow, a gem who Pink has a history of conflict with, comes to check on them, and they are quick to hide the nature of their relationship. Satisfied that they have decieved Yellow, they laugh, only for Pearl to disappear into darkness. Also in this sequence, "Pink" begins to cough up Rose's hair. After, she is surrounded by the accusatory glares of the gems at the ball, and sees images of the CGs being poofed. Finally, White is shown looming intimidatingly. All of this would be used to evoke guilt: her Pearl was taken away and her friends were poofed because Pink's rebellious tendencies encouraged their own poor behavior. The one in CYM is even more telling, beginning with a memory of Blue scolding Pink, mentioning that White will take away her Pearl if she continues like this, and ending with Steven questioning his identity, switching rapidly from his own body to Pink and Rose's forms while the corruption light charges up in the background and again ending with White's face. Again, it facilitates guilt by bringing up her Pearl and by reminding her of her betrayal. While it's shown that Steven has Diamond dreams, the two he had previously were not as clear as the two he has on Homeworld. Granted, the one with Yellow on the jungle moon was influenced by Connie's presence in Stevonnie, and the brief one of Blue scolding Pink on the moon base happened before the big revelation, but neither went beyond his mother's memories in the way his Homeworld dreams did.

As a side note, I also have to wonder how much information White gains when she mind controls someone. The way she accurately describes everyone's struggles in CYM--Yellow's weakness, Blue's need, Amethyst's insecurity, Garnet's dependency, and Pearl's obsession--makes me think that she gets a clear sense of their characters when she controls them. With Yellow and Blue, it would be a simple matter because they are pretty much the embodiments of her own flaws, but the CGs? She knows nothing about them (except maybe Pearl), but she summed up each of their struggles flawlessly, one word each. Did all of their memories flood her mind when she took control? Did that complete her understanding of what Steven is, not Pink herself but a human child Pink has embedded her gem in? Was she able to view Pink's memories through Steven's mind while she (presumably) planted those dreams? Did she take Pink's Pearl after Pip was damaged, under the assumption that they were having inappropriate relations, and only learned the true nature of their relationship when she took control of Pip?

Tldr; White probably assumed Pink was Rose, if she didn't know for sure, and did the final attack to cover up the fact that a Diamond rebelled and to punish Pink. The dreams Steven had on Homeworld were probably influenced by White.

#steven universe #long post #white diamond #pink diamond #yellow diamond #blue diamond #pink pearl #theories #fuck sorry this post was way longer than expected

[scratchface]

Reworking Aoi and Miyu in season 2

For a while now, I’ve seen some fans (understandably) frustrated with the direction season 2 has been taking the Water Origin plot thread. In light of the most recent episode, and naturally everything that accompanied it, I got to thinking about what could have gone differently. 

So, how would I have done this arc?

To start with, I’m leaving everything leading up to S2 the same: no backstory changes, no changes to the previous season, no headcanons nor assumptions. Everything we’ve been given is the same: Aoi’s parents die, leaving only Akira to look out for her, they struggle to get by, she meets and befriends Miyu, takes the blame for the ring, never sees Miyu again, idolizes the Blue Angel character, etc. Likewise, S1 goes exactly the same, for the sake of this little “what if”.

Here’s how their roles in season 2 could have gone:

1. Miyu is introduced alongside Haru and Bohman

The first fundamental change is that Lightning steals Miyu’s consciousness before he takes Jin’s. She’s already been completely brainwashed when the season begins with Jin’s kidnapping, and instead of Bit and Boot stalling for Bohman and Haru, it’s the brainwashed Miyu who stands in Playmaker’s, and then Soulburner’s, way.

Blue Angel witnesses this confrontation and thinks, oddly, that this mysterious girl dueling SB seems familiar. She can’t quite put her finger on why, until she’s struck by a long-forgotten memory of a much younger, but identical face. 

Up until this point, Aoi doesn’t remember Miyu or think of her much at all. No memory hijinks, just the expected fading of one’s childhood memories. Somewhere in the back of her head, Aoi remembers she had a friend for a short while when she was a kid, but can’t really remember what that friend’s name was or what she looked like, just that they couldn’t be friends anymore. Over the years since her childhood, as Aoi grew more and more self-absorbed, more hungry for Akira’s approval and attention, more wrapped up in herself and eventually the Blue Angel persona, her memories of Miyu got left behind. 

And now someone has the same face as that long-forgotten friend, triggering the resurgence of some faded memories, but it’s all wrong.

2. Miyu’s consciousness is mostly intact; she’s aware, but manipulated

Unlike Aoi, Miyu never forgets. Miyu was kidnapped from the playground she and Aoi met, where she spent a great deal of time hoping that Aoi would return and they could be friends again. Aoi never came, Miyu’s relationship with her mother deteriorated. Between Miyu’s stubborn determination to wait and her mother’s frustrated negligence, she gets snatched. During the Hanoi Project, she clings to any positive memories she can; her relationship with her parents too tumultuous to be much of a source of comfort, so instead she holds on to her memories of Aoi. Because of her extreme circumstances, her desperation for something to rely on, Miyu has a much better recollection of their childhood together than Aoi does.

But at the same time, Miyu starts to resent what happened. She’s trapped, isolated, and tortured, and she can’t help but wonder, if Aoi hadn’t told that lie back then, if they both simply had told the truth, would things have turned out differently?

If that lie hadn’t torn them apart, if Miyu hadn’t been left all alone at that playground, would she still have been taken? 

And so Aqua is born, with the unique ability to see through lies like glass. And Miyu grows up, carrying those twisted feelings with her. 

Then Lightning targets her, and uses those feelings to twist her mind. Miyu isn’t like Jin, who shut down in the wake of the Hanoi Project, but her mind was vulnerable in a different way. Lightning makes her hate her parents, for being unable to see the truth, for not protecting her. Makes her hate Aoi, for lying to protect her only to abandon her to a much worse fate. Makes her hate humanity as a whole.

3. Aoi joins the hunt for the Ignis to find Miyu

Lightning’s group escapes, including Miyu, and all that is clear to Aoi is that that girl she can’t stop thinking about, that person who she knows she knows, someone she knows she has to meet again, is related to the Ignis somehow. She can’t let it go, so she goes to find her brother and Ema, and discovers that they too are going after the Ignis. 

I feel like this line of thinking gives Aoi a much more concrete reason to get involved in the hunt for the Ignis and to partner with Ema; a much more definite and personal investment in figuring out exactly what is going on, because there’s something she needs to know, not just because she wants to help Akira. It also gives her a better reason to challenge Soulburner to a duel, instead of just being frustrated by them rejecting her offer for help. 

If she gets an Ignis, than maybe Miyu will come to her. 

She still loses, but its a much more frustrating hit. Not just a blow against her ego, but an invested failure. Especially since Miyu and Soulburner, in this version, were evenly matched and now Aoi’s coming up short. She’s not strong enough. 

4. Instead of switching personas, Aoi finally fights as herself

The war with the Ignis begins, and Aoi becomes aware of just how much danger Miyu is in. She meets Aqua under mostly the same circumstances, but it’s a much more uphill struggle against her fear for her friend, her own feelings of inadequacy. She’s hiding behind her avatar of Blue Angel more than ever before, clinging to the idea that maybe Blue Angel, the heroine, can save Miyu. So she hides that she’s obtained Aqua, begging Ema to help her keep it hidden from Akira and SOL, so they don’t realize that Aoi has obtained an Ignis. 

Aoi hopes that as Blue Angel, this time she’ll be able to protect the people important to her. The time to go after Lightning comes, and finally she and Miyu meet face to face again, and the duel is going badly right up until Aoi realizes that it’s not Blue Angel that Miyu needs. Miyu doesn’t need some storybook hero, some larger-than-life angel, she needs Aoi. The real Aoi, not the masks she wears and the roles she puts on. 

Mid-duel, Aoi casts it all aside. For Miyu’s sake, she gives up on hiding behind Blue Angel. She drops the flashy avatars and usernames and faces Miyu as just herself. She risks her identity, her real life, and her own fragile self-confidence for the sake of her friend, finally managing to make a truly selfless decision.

This is not only in line with Aoi’s arc in season 1, how she forced herself and everyone around her into roles to better suit the narrative she built up in her own head, but it also furthers the parallels between her and Go: right there and then in Vrains she duels with her own name and her own face, out in the open and not hiding behind anything or anyone. 

And in turn, with her friend finally back and reaching out to her, Miyu is also forced to be honest with herself, realizing that all the resentment was just her way of hiding from her own guilt. Even though she’d become a little obsessed with the truth, she was still pushing the responsibility of her actions on others. Back then, she hadn’t had the courage to tell her mother the truth, and instead hid behind Aoi’s lies. And now she sees that Aoi has found the courage to be honest.

Obviously, it’s not perfect, but I do think this kind of plot line and direction would smooth out Aoi’s choppy character development and inconsistent motivations without simply erasing her prevalent character flaws and prominent personality traits. Not to mention the theme of honesty is ham-fisted enough for a kid’s card game show, but complicated enough for Vrains’ complex views on morality and mistakes. Can lies really protect anyone, or are they just a way to hide from reality? Did Aoi really make the right decision back then, sacrificing her friendship with Miyu just to save Miyu from a more short-lived stress? Did Aoi’s regret over that short-sighted selfless act lead to her future egotism and immature selfishness? 

Plus, the idea of Aoi somehow dropping her masks feels like a more natural progression for her character than her rapidly cycling through avatars and usernames in a constant identity crisis. Instead of completely reinventing herself, she learns that it’s okay to just be Aoi, that she can change the parts of herself she doesn’t like without needing to hide who she really is. Meanwhile, Miyu gets to be an actual character, which I think is something we all desperately want.

Anyways, that’s my ramblings on the subject.

#yugioh vrains #vrains #ygo #aoi zaizen #vrainalysis

[shinneth]

Gem Ascension Tropes (Peridot-specific: I - K)

Reference:

Primary Peri Post ▼ Primary General Post ▼ Full Article

I Am What I Am: While technically in Chartreuse’s form in this moment, Steven’s (as Pink 2.0) intensive Epiphany Therapy towards the end of Chapter 8 of Act III revolves around Peridot’s inner turmoil and self-acceptance regarding her past life as a Manipulative Bastard, which has wracked her with endless guilt since her canon Heel-Face Turn. Said guilt turns out to be what is really inhibiting Peridot’s ability to fuse with Steven. Once it’s lifted when Peridot fully accepts herself, she not only finds that she and Steven can fuse after all, but together fulfill an ancient prophecy as the Diamond of Miracles.

I Gave My Word: Peridot promised herself and everyone else that she’d save everyone trapped on Homeworld and make sure they’re brought home to Earth, and remembering this often helps shake her out a mental funk she’s stuck in.

I Hate Past Me: A major internal issue for Peridot that only gets worse the further she progresses through Homeworld as former repressed memories of how horrible she was as a Homeworld Gem are inadvertently regained. White Diamond actively tortures Peridot by making her watch these memories in Act III, and this ends up weighing down so heavily on Peridot’s conscience that it inhibits her potential for fusion.

I Just Want to Be Special: Peridot is well aware she’s the weakest Crystal Gem, is one of the most common types of gems in existence (as well as the lowest-regarded kind in society) and is destined to be insignificant as an Era 2 gem who will never measure up to her friends. That hasn’t stopped her from going above and beyond to avert this even in her Homeworld days, and now being able to legitimately lead what’s left of the Crystal Gems is Peridot’s opportunity to really stand out and shine. However…

I Just Want to Be Normal: By Act III, it’s revealed Peridot is not only a Chosen One, but a one-of-a-kind Unwitting Test Subject that hasn’t been seen in several millennia. She becomes the first and only ascended gem, capable of being an ordinary gem and a Diamond simultaneously. This consequently makes her the only Era 2 gem with Era 1 capabilities, the only Diamond to be created from another gem, and then there’s her ridiculously powerful ability to conjure things by willing them into existence. All of this is thrown onto Peridot at once, who was determined not to let White Diamond compromise her identity… only to succumb to her fate following a Moment of Weakness. This trope is especially prevalent in Peridot at the very end of GA and all stories following it, as the consequences of her achievements in Act III force Peridot onto a pedestal she doesn’t feel ready for. Ironically, all of this is something Peridot would have been fully on board with prior to her Character Development.

I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Double Subverted with Pumpkin. Celadon Diamond – a fusion of Chartreuse Diamond and White Diamond – killed Pumpkin (while attempting to kill Greg, which he narrowly avoided). While Celadon used willpower (inherited from her Peridot/Chartreuse component) to do the deed, Peridot herself tried to do everything she could to make the fusion hold back. However, resigning to the fusion the way she had made Peridot’s influence on Celadon very limited; White was a much more dominant presence in the fusion, and her desire to kill Steven’s father overpowered Peridot’s resistance. It was only after this happened that Peridot managed to find a way to break the fusion, after several failed attempts. Had she been able to break the fusion earlier, all of this could have been avoided. While Peridot knows it wasn’t fully her fault that she lost Pumpkin, severely injured Greg, and destroyed the Crystal Gems’ spaceship, the fact remains that it was her power that caused this mess. Peridot failed to use her powers to save Pumpkin despite her efforts, and until Steven consoles her later in Act III, she laments that she could have spared Pumpkin, Greg, and their ship from this if only she had been strong enough to break or hold back the fusion. She also could have prevented this if she hadn’t fallen prey to White’s tactics earlier that rendered her emotionally vulnerable, which allowed the Celadon fusion to happen in the first place.

I Lied: Manipulative Bastard Peridot says this verbatim to 9FC in a flashback shown in Chapter 2 of Act III in regards to their friendship.

I Owe You My Life: Peridot wholeheartedly credits her life to Steven. It’s more than him simply liberating her from the oppressive Homeworld life where Individuality is Illegal and giving her a second chance when no one else would. Because he spent so much time teaching Peridot about Earth, as well as talking to her and enjoying life together, Peridot has very good reason to believe her “Great and Lovable” self would never have existed without him. She’s deeply grateful for it and makes sure Steven knows she feels that way several times in the story.

Before this (though it takes a long time for Peridot to remember this), Lapis is similarly credited simply due to coming in just in time before Peridot’s Near-Rape Experience with Jasper went any further than that. Lapis had no intention of saving Peridot; in fact, she was more than willing to let Peridot be subjected to the full extent of being violated for the sake of her own safety. However, Jasper was naturally more drawn to Lapis not only out of instinct, but lust/alleged “love” – meaning Lapis inadvertently took the bullet for Peridot anyway. Several times, at that, while the three were a team together. While the trauma surrounding the incident and Peridot’s own reprehensible behavior during this time were so overwhelming that they had to be fully repressed and nearly forgotten in order for Peridot to function properly after this, she never let herself forget that Lapis did save her from an incident that nearly erased her entire identity – which can be seen as her life being saved. This was the main reason why Peridot went out of her way to be accommodating for Lapis in canon, even at her own expense.

I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Played with. Peridot was fully prepared to be rejected by Steven when it came to the pursuit of a romantic relationship. No matter how jealous she was over her competition, Peridot valued her friendship with Steven far too much to jeopardize it over a selfish desire. She will gladly put Steven’s needs above her own every time. Thankfully for her, it never came to this.

I Will Only Slow You Down: Her rationale when she tells Steven and Garnet to Go on Without Me. White Diamond is just a couple of minutes away, which affords them no time to break the gate with brute force, while Peridot is too fatigued and injured to save herself. While she tries to smile at her friends without showing any tears or sorrow, that briefly fades when Peridot turns her head to hear White Diamond closing in. She resumes her smile when she looks back at Garnet and Steven, now more adamantly ordering them to leave her behind.

I Will Wait for You: Has this sentiment for Steven regarding her feelings for him, under the assumption that he may not be ready for that kind of relationship yet or if he’s with someone else entirely. Peridot’s got all the time in the world to wait for her turn. Luckily for her, she doesn’t have to wait too long.

I’m Having Soul Pains: When Peridot tries to do too much with her willpower in her base form, she will suffer this in the form of headaches, fatigue, and overall physical strain. This is due to her form not being a very good conductor for this kind of power; this kind of side-effect does not happen when performing the same feats (or greater) as Chartreuse Diamond. Only problem is that Peridot doesn’t exactly like to be Chartreuse unless she absolutely has to…

The Immodest Orgasm: It’d be more surprising if someone as naturally loud, expressive, and dramatic as Peridot didn’t behave this way. And sure enough, this is what happens in Chapter 2 of It’s a Birthday, Yes It Is.

Improvised Weapon: Even post-ascension, Peridot never gains an official weapon. Beforehand, she literally could not summon one from her gemstone due to her limitations as an Era 2 gem. Now charged with willpower, Peridot can summon pretty much any weapon she wants for the right situation, assuming she can decide on what to go with. Prior to this, Peridot improvised at least two weapons in a hammer (which she later gifted to an unarmed Connie) and a piece of metal scrap she was able to manipulate into whatever shape she wanted. Although it was mainly a mode of transport, Peridot also used a steel beam to ram into a pallid gem late in Act I.

Drop the Hammer: Though she used it very sparingly before giving it to Connie, Peridot did use the hammer to damage Yellow Diamond badly enough to stun her for the entire battle.

Indy Ploy: Peridot is forced to resort to this in Chapter 5 of This is Who I Am. 5XG is strangling the Light Steven in a separate dimension – consequently, Dark Steven (Peridot’s opponent) is unable to breathe due to his life being bound to his counterpart’s. Being isolated in a separate dimension makes Peridot unable to directly interfere with her counterpart’s efforts… except for one way: injuring herself. The problem is that 5XG is extremely resilient to damage, so Peridot has to inflict a severe injury on herself to have any hope of causing enough mutual damage to disrupt her dark self. With both Stevens moments away from being choked to death, Peridot has no choice but to go with her instincts, as there’s no time to think anything through. She knows it’s a bad idea to directly damage her own gemstone, but being bereft of options and not having the luxury of taking time to think this through leaves her with no choice. She stabs her own gemstone with a broken floor tile – this does force 5XG to stop, but now both Peridots are on death’s door. Luckily for them, Light Steven is merciful enough to heal the one who almost killed him while Dark Steven begrudgingly respects Peridot’s efforts to save his life and heals her to avoid feeling indebted. Ultimately, this insane plan helps end both deathmatches, as both Peridots are too injured to function while both Stevens are too fatigued to carry on, leading to a draw where both Steven and Peridot escape with their lives against all odds.

Inelegant Blubbering: Downplayed, but Peridot’s reunion with Steven in Act I includes sobbing into his chest, calling him every derogatory name she can think of, and punching his shoulder for each insult. Being that Peridot is severely injured, she’s not hurting Steven at all and it isn’t long before she fully devolves into this. Badly enough that the Crystal Gems need to split up and relocate, since Peridot’s cries are garnering unwanted attention.

Inferiority Superiority Complex: Still burdened with this, as Peridot can’t really escape being faced with constant limitations as the only Era 2 of the Crystal Gems… until she ascends, of course. But even then, she has limitations on her new powers unless she shifts into Chartreuse Diamond. She’s constantly self-conscious as a leader, and now that Peridot has regained her memories of her life as a Homeworld Gem, she has a lot of Old Shame moments that are hard for her to live down… especially when the Homeworld refugees constantly remind her of those times.

Insecure Love Interest: Downplayed, as this mostly applies to Peridot after she regains her memories about how awful she used to be during her pre-Earth life. It’s only hinted at in Act II; by Act III, Peridot also struggles with her identity as an Unwitting Test Subject that led to her betraying her friends early on. While it’s seemingly mended with Steven’s declaration of them being an Official Couple by Chapter 5, another problem arises in their inability to fuse. By Chapter 8, it’s revealed the primary cause of that was Peridot’s own guilt over her past crimes weighing her down to the point where she subconsciously believed she didn’t deserve to fuse with Steven.

Insistent Terminology: At the end of It’s a Birthday, Yes It Is, Steven points out the Department of Redundancy Department nature of Peridot’s GA-exclusive catchphrase, “stupid idiot”. Peridot’s response?

Peridot: “It’s not redundancy, clod. It’s emphasis.”

Steven: “I’m… not following.”

Peridot: “Some people can be stupid; others are idiots… but it takes a special kind of clod mentality to achieve the level of stupid idiot, Steven. When I say you’re a stupid idiot, I mean you’re an idiot even by idiot standards, get it?”

Insufferable Genius: Per canon, Peridot definitely has her moments of this, although she’s often prone to self-criticism in the story as well. Sometimes, she deliberately invokes this trope in an attempt to cover something up (usually an insecurity).

Internalized Categorism: Downplayed as time goes on; in Act II, she admits to envying Amethyst for being a gem made on Earth rather than Homeworld, as Peridot had grown to loathe being associated with her home planet in any way. Still, Peridot knows there’s nothing that can be done about it, and she soon no longer has the luxury of lamenting over such trivial details. But then, it’s revealed Peridot is part-Diamond in Act III – and this trope returns with a vengeance. Peridot learns to accept herself by the end of the primary GA series, but still isn’t really comfortable about embracing her Diamond heritage.

Involuntary Shapeshifting: Happens a couple of times. Most notably, she shifts into her Chartreuse Diamond form as she grieves over Pumpkin’s death that only makes her destructive reactions worse.

It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: For all the times Peridot wanted to stand out and be special, she didn’t get to enjoy even a second of it when it was revealed in Act III that she is a very unique Chosen One after all. While Peridot eventually has Steven to lean on to share her burdens with, the Post-GA stories exaggerate their woes as the new Era 3 operation looms over them, as they are the designated centerpieces for the operation, being the only diamonds left in existence at that point. Stories taking place after their project launches show that the burden of responsibility and work have weighed heavily upon the pair.

It’s All About Me: Heavily downplayed due to the high stakes and circumstances of Peridot’s goals in the story, but still has her moments of this. Played very straight regarding who Peridot used to be before she was assigned to monitor Earth.

It’s Personal: Messing with Steven automatically makes any matter personal for Peridot. After Act I, it becomes more personal as White Diamond directly messes with her life and compromises her identity that brings life-long consequences. Then Pumpkin gets brought into it, and… the results are not pretty.

Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She’s still full of herself, she’s still a brat, and she’s still prone to respond aggressively, but don’t ever question Peridot’s love for her friends, her loyalty towards her family, or what she’s willing to do or what she has to sacrifice to keep them out of harm’s way.

Jerkass Ball: Chapter 6 of Act III: after failing to fuse with Steven during their private time together, Peridot covers up her misery with this in order to function not only as a Crystal Gem, but a co-leader of the team, as well as avoid admitting her confirmed inability to fuse to the rest of her friends. However, this façade only makes it more apparent to the others that something is wrong with Peridot, who absolutely refuses to talk about it.

Jerkass Woobie: Peridot in a nutshell after her Near-Rape Experience with Jasper, but before her Heel-Face Turn when she aligned herself with the Crystal Gems.

Jumped at the Call: The moment she realizes Steven’s in trouble, Peridot not only does this, but is irked the others didn’t react like this and instead waited for her to reform before doing anything at all.

Karma Houdini: Until she met Jasper, Manipulative Bastard Peridot suffered no consequences whatsoever for her horrific behavior on Homeworld. She literally got away with murder on several occasions; even worse, often got rewarded for it. Peridot’s good fortune abruptly ran out once she was finally promoted and got on Yellow Pearl’s bad side; ever since her first encounter with Jasper, misfortune followed Peridot everywhere she went. Before long, she was finally suffering the consequences for her cruel ambitions.

5XF expresses that she has no desire to become “another 5XG” regarding her own despicable actions during Chapters 4 and 5 of This is Who I Am. Apparently “5XG” is a synonym for this trope now.

The Killer in Me: The Amnesiac variety, as Peridot is horrified and disgusted to remember how reprehensible she used to be once she reaches Homeworld, and how many lives were lost due to her actions, directly or otherwise.

The Klutz: Per canon, but also the reason why Gem Ascension didn’t end with Act I. Actually heavily downplayed in Act I after leaving Earth, specifically so it happening in Act I’s climax would be even more impactful and unexpected.

Knight, Knave, and Squire: The Squire to Bismuth’s Knight and Lapis’ Knave.

#gem ascension #gem ascension tropes #gem re:ascension #ga references #tv tropes #steven universe #su fanfic #su fanfiction #stevidot #peridot #su peridot #lapis lazuli #su lapis #bismuth #su bismuth #greg universe #garnet #su garnet #amethyst #su amethyst #pearl #su pearl #su pumpkin #connie maheswaran #white diamond #yellow diamond #pink diamond #yellow pearl #jasper #su jasper

[timeshuffles]

so yesterday i saw what i believe is a huge misinterpretation of ‘monster’ and specifically the reason elsa surrenders at the end, and i’m still annoyed about it, so to be 100% clear about my take on this: ‘monster’ is not about elsa surrendering because she thinks she’s a monster or because she’s intimidated by hans. ‘monster’ is not about elsa being a passive observer of her own story. ‘monster’ is not about an angry mob storming in to burn the helpless, frightened witch. 

‘monster’ is about elsa grappling with the very real consequences of her decision to run away from her coronation and turn her back on arendelle when it needed her most, which has resulted in a situation where lives are in danger and foreign usurpers have taken command over the crisis.

‘monster’ is about elsa coming to terms with the damage her father’s instructions and her rigid adherence to them has done. 

‘monster’ is about elsa weighing her desire to disappear into the wilderness where she feels safe against her sense of duty to her country, her people, & her sister, and deciding to walk the difficult, uncertain path of a queen instead of hiding herself away again or giving up and killing herself. 

‘monster’ is about elsa triumphing over her worst inclinations. 

from the moment she hurts anna as a child until the moment hans shows up at her ice palace with the mob, all of elsa’s actions are guided by anxiety, depression, and guilt. ‘monster’ is the turning point, the moment when elsa finally takes a clear look at herself & her past and consciously chooses to break free of those psychological chains and live.

and in order to do that, elsa has to surrender.

see, in the show, the way ‘monster’ is staged, elsa is alone on stage for the first half of the song. she can hear the mob approaching outside, and they are important only insofar as their arrival will force her to make a choice: she can’t continue to pace and fret and do nothing as she has since sending anna and kristoff away from the ice palace.

beyond that, elsa is not scared of or even particularly interested in the mob. her focus, instead, is on herself, her magic, and what she can do to put an end to the crisis she created when she lost control: 

It’s finally come, come to knock down my door. I can’t hide this time like I hid before. The storm is awake. The danger is real. My time’s running out, don’t feel, don’t feel. 

the method she has always used for controlling her magic no longer works, but that doesn’t stop her from instinctively falling into it even though she knows it’s not going to work.  (& one thing the musical does, which i like very much, is directly echo pieces of ‘monster’ during ‘colder by the minute’ to emphasize that these harmful thought patterns are still very much there in elsa’s mind even after she chooses to reject them, eg. “conceal, don’t feel, don’t feel, get back into the cage!” while also using the word monster in a different way so that it is less self-referential and more like elsa is treating her magic like an adversary she now needs to beat.)

Fear will be your enemy, and death its consequence. That’s what they once said to me, and it’s starting to make sense. All this pain, all this fear,  began because of me.

the assumption of both elsa and her parents throughout her life was that the prophecy pabbi delivered to her after saving anna’s life meant that other people’s fear of elsa and her magic would be the cause of elsa’s death. however, elsa is now beginning to interpret the warning differently: it is her own fear that is putting other people’s lives in danger, because she suppressed her magic out of fear, and then after losing control ran away out of fear, and that directly resulted in the devastating summer blizzard they’re trapped in now.

Is the thing they see the thing I have to be? A monster, were they right? Has the dark in me finally come to light? Am I a monster, full of rage? Nowhere to go but on a rampage? Or am I just a monster in a cage?

now... in the interpretation that i disagree with, the one that prompted this post, the writer of that took issue with the line “am i a monster, full of rage?” on the grounds that elsa is not an angry character and — yes. to an extent that’s true. but i think it’s very important to remember that the feeling that actually causes the blizzard, the actual trigger that makes elsa lose control over her powers at the coronation, isn’t fear. it’s anger. she loses her temper with anna and yells at her and it is that burst of, yes, rage that shatters her grip on her magic.

the whole storm is borne out of anger and only exacerbated by fear. elsa recognizes this. and this verse is her — somewhat poetic — way of interrogating those feelings. the blizzard began because she lost her temper for just one second; what if the reason she can’t get it back under control is it’s being fueled by all the pent-up frustration and anger she feels about her situation (forced into isolation and loneliness by dangerous magic she can’t control, with no end in sight)?   and what if the reason she can’t stop the blizzard is simply because she’s just too weak & ruled by her emotions? 

( i also think it’s an intentional parallel to ‘dangerous to dream’, in which elsa laments “i can’t be what you expect of me/and i’m not what i seem” and “i can’t show you i’m not as cold as i seem” — she longs to open up and be herself with both her subjects and especially her sister, whereas in ‘monster’ she confronts her fear that she is exactly who she now appears to be.)

at this point in the song, the mob interjects again, and elsa is visibly startled by their cries. which, if you ask me, is a very strong point of evidence in favor of ‘monster’ really not being about the mob; elsa is so deeply absorbed in her introspection that she loses track of the people storming into her home to kill her. anyway — the reminder of their imminent arrival pushes elsa out of this mournful speculation and into urgently evaluating her options. 

What do I do? No time for crying now. I started a storm, gotta stop it somehow. Do I keep on running? How far do I have to go? And would that take the storm away or only make it grow? I’m making my world colder— how long can it survive? Is everyone in danger as long as I’m alive?

knowing that the “conceal, don’t feel” method has been unsuccessful so far, she considers running even further away and hoping that the storm will follow her away from arendelle. but since that didn’t work last time, she also begins to consider that perhaps only her death will guarantee the safety of her people.

( i have seen a surprising amount of backlash against the suicide ideation threaded throughout ‘monster’ and i really do not understand where it comes from. no one argues that elsa isn’t depressed — because she is, and it’s perhaps even more overt in the musical than in the film. she never worked through the trauma of nearly killing her little sister when she was ten, she’s spent the last eleven years living in near-total isolation and silence, her country is locked in the grip of a magical winter she caused and has no clue how to stop, and just hours ago she nearly killed her sister again. in purely emotional terms, it would be a miracle if the thought of suicide didn’t cross her mind in this dark moment — and on top of that, she has an actual genuine reason to believe the world would be a better place without her in it, because her death might end the blizzard, & that kind of logic has incredible power on a mind that is already entrenched in habits of guilt and self-sacrifice. )

( i think it’s also worth noting that this is the second time in the show elsa asks herself “what do i do?” — the first is in ‘dangerous to dream,’ after she manages to get herself coronated without freezing her scepter: 

Father, I did it! Now what do I do? I can’t stop smiling, how strange— does this mean that things are different? Could they really change? And could I open up that door, and finally see you face to face? ...I guess a queen can change the rules, but not the reason they’re in place.

and once again, its use here feels like an intentional inverse of its use in ‘dangerous to dream,’ where instead of being so giddy with success and optimism that for a second she considers relaxing the strict rules she holds herself, now elsa is in a situation where the rules are crumbling all around her, she’s beginning to see that they never protected anyone in the first place, and she has no fucking clue what to do without them. )

anyway, this part of the song is when the mob breaks into her ice palace and finally enters the scene proper. and the physical staging of this moment is really important, because it’s what really drives home the balance of power here and what elsa is doing in this scene. because what’s the first thing does elsa when a mob of scared, angry, armed men break into her sanctuary? 

she turns her back on them.

like — they don’t even get to ENTER properly because she controls the space, and elsa barely even spares them a glance. and just as elsa denies them entry into her palace, she refuses to be distracted from her internal quandary.

Was I a monster from the start? How did I end up with this frozen heart? Bringing destruction to the stage, caught in a war that I never meant to wage. 

if anything, the arrival of the mob becomes, to her, a kind of symbol of how badly she has failed them. like — just imagine how desperate you’d have to be to storm the castle of somebody with powers like elsa’s in the middle of a blizzard so deadly cold that you know you will die if you stay in it. 

this verse is, i think, really elsa empathizing deeply with the mob and recognizing herself through their eyes — she waged war on her own people. it was an accident, yes, but that doesn’t end the devastation nor undo the destruction she has already caused. she’s not afraid of them, because they are completely at her mercy. and she’s not angry at them, because she understands the fear and pain fueling their anger. 

& most importantly, she still sees these people as her subjects, and that makes their safety her responsibility in her mind. which is what brings her to: 

Do I kill the monster?

ultimately it is the sight of the ordinary people she has failed — not anna, who has a personal history with her and thus trusts and loves her in a way no one else can, but regular subjects who are scared and hurting and confused and are literally just innocent bystanders in a disaster that grew out of a simple spat with her sister — that pushes elsa into actively contemplating suicide.

Father, you know what’s best for me. If I die, will they be free? Mother, what if after I’m gone the cold gets colder, and the storm rages on? ...No! I have to stay alive to fix what I’ve done, save the world from myself and bring back the sun.

this is the most important verse all of ‘monster’ and, i would argue, the entire show in terms of elsa’s character development. why? because it is a direct echo of the conversation young elsa has with her parents after almost she almost kills anna — even the melody is the same: 

AGNARR: We must keep her powers hidden from everyone, including Anna. 

IÐUNN: What?! No, they’re sisters, we can’t ask expect them to stay away from each other—

ELSA: Mother, it’s how it has to be. What’s best for her is best for me. Father, I’ll do what you say—

AGNARR: We’ll help you to control it. I know we’ll find a way.

IÐUNN: Only until we get more answers, and then

ALL: We’ll find our way back to be a family again...

as a child, elsa took her father’s advice and hid herself away, shut down all her emotions and metaphorically ends her life in order to keep her powers hidden (“i can’t laugh, i can’t cry, i can’t dream, i can’t live without it bursting out!”). in contrast, her mother rejects the idea that she must live in fear, objecting to keeping her isolated from anna and later trying to comfort her when she’s upset instead of scolding her to keep it hidden.

& here, as a woman facing down all the myriad ways that her father’s teachings have failed her and her country, elsa consciously chooses to follow her mother’s advice instead—embracing life, and trying to control her magic without sacrificing her life in both the literal and figurative sense. she chooses to seek out the answers her mother wanted, the better alternative that her parents went in search of when they left arendelle on the voyage that killed them. 

If I’m a monster, then it’s true there’s only one thing left for me to do, but before I fade to white, I’ll do all that I can to make things right. 

so this is her conclusion: if it’s true that she really cannot end the storm any other way — if she really can’t bring herself into balance, if she really can’t find a way to rule her emotions instead of being ruled by them — then, yes, she will kill herself as last-ditch effort to save her people. ultimately, she values their wellbeing above her own life. 

but.  she is not there yet. it’s kind of funny because, despite the fact that elsa is literally planning to kill herself if she can’t stop the storm any other way, this verse is, in contrast to the despairing tone of everything leading up to this verse, actually filled with hope and determination. this is elsa rejecting the idea that she’s a monster, rejecting the idea that the only way to keep people safe from her is to lock herself away and suppress all her feelings, rejecting the fear her father’s ideas represent. this is elsa saying “if my father was right about me, then i’ll die, but i don’t think he was right anymore.”

& having articulated this conclusion to herself, she finishes up the song by taking the first step in acting upon it. how?

by taking control of her magic and setting her people free. 

I cannot be a monster. I will not be a monster— not tonight!

the other big point of contention in posts i read yesterday that prompted this post is the idea that elsa surrendering to hans at this point makes her — weak? passive? a helpless object in her own story? but the thing is —

elsa still holds all the power here. after she lowers the ice, the mob readies their weapons and advances on her...

...but all she has to do to make them back off is tilt her hands at them.

a mere glance over her shoulder and they recoil. they don’t dare actually attack, and elsa holds them back like this for several seconds with nothing but the power of their own fear — and then she surrenders by saying, “I surrender, take me to Princess Anna.”

because the thing is. she doesn’t surrender because she thinks she deserves it. she doesn’t surrender out of guilt or because she believes she’s a monster. she surrenders, i think, for two reasons: 

first, these are her people and it is currently so cold that they will freeze to death if they stay in the mountains. she needs to get them to safety. surrendering and allowing them to escort her down the mountain, back to the comparative safety of arendelle (where there’s fire, food, blankets, and plenty of shelter), is the best way to accomplish that. 

and second, anna came after her with nothing but trust and love and unshakable belief that elsa could get the storm back under control. elsa drove her away out of fear, but now that she has consciously chosen to fight against her fears and try her best to end the storm, she wants to accept the help anna offered her — and given that catalyst for all of this was, as i said, elsa losing her temper with anna during an argument, it’s also not unreasonable for her to think that maybe resolving that argument with anna will help end the blizzard too. 

in any case, she now has a pressing need to get to anna as soon as possible, and every reason to think anna is already back in arendelle, and surrendering is, again, the best way she can think of to accomplish this. 

& also, i’ve pointed this out before, but elsa is still positioned as the one in charge after she surrenders. we see hans gesture for two guards to go up and put elsa in shackles, but when they actually go to do so, they wait for her consent before even attempting to actually put them on her. 

they don’t try to force the shackles onto her hands — they don’t even touch her. while hans and the duke of weselton (both foreigners with no legitimate authority in arendelle!) posture and bicker with each other about who is in charge, these guards—actual citizens of arendelle—WAIT for elsa to to grant them permission to put her in chains. she slowly holds up her hands, then nods, and only then do they actually move to restrain her. 

she is in charge. she is the one holding the cards throughout this scene. 

& throughout the rest of the act?   elsa is willing to play along with hans’s authority only for as long as his decisions do not interfere with hers. she wants to see anna, he wants to bring her to arendelle — that works for her. he says anna isn’t back yet and she’s to be imprisoned until anna returns — that’s fine, she’d be waiting in arendelle for anna anyway. but the second he gives an order that doesn’t align with her own goals, she breaks the shackles and leaves. 

( caissie also rolled her eyes at him after “i charge queen elsa with treason” when i saw the show again in july. it was delightful. )

ANYWAY. this got a hell of a lot longer than i intended because i have so many goddamn feelings about how important ‘monster’ is and how necessary it is for the development of elsa’s character to have her fight this vicious internal battle between her greatest strength (compassion) and her greatest weakness (“conceal don’t feel” & the ethos of self-sacrifice) and emerge triumphant after a lifetime of clinging to her father’s misguided lessons but — 

TL;DR ‘monster’ is elsa battling depression, anxiety, guilt, and self-loathing so she can whole-heartedly accept the responsibilities of rule, choose life, and finally turn away from “conceal, don’t feel;” her subsequent surrender is equal parts deep compassion for the mob and a calculated decision that allows her to accomplish all her goals in the safest and most efficient way possible based upon what she currently knows of the situation. also pacifism does not make a character helpless or weak and at no point does elsa lose or relinquish control over the mob situation thank you for coming to my TED talk. 

#⌈ ONE WITH THE WIND & SKY ⌋ ( hc : elsa. ) #[[ musical elsa is the only valid elsa & you can't change my mind ]]

[everydayanth]

22 July Film...

So I watched the Netflix movie last night, and I have a few thoughts.  

Warning: This turned into a personal rant with some anthropology-thoughts thrown in. TL;DR: I think this is an important example of the kinds of stories we need, and the debate about the representation of the terrorist on-screen as an ethical one seems to me a moot point.

Second warning: SPOILERS (kinda, vague ones)

I would love to see the Norwegian Utøya - 22 Juli (U- July 22) and do a better comparison of the perspectives. Both films were released in 2018, one by Norwegian director Erik Poppe, the other by English director Paul Greengrass. But that’s for later... after I’ve recovered a bit lol.  

Culture is an interesting thing, and so many of the critiques and comparisons of these films involve the ethical question of portraying a terror event and a terrorist him/herself as a story, or on screen at all. 

This was interesting to me, because the intended audiences for each film seemed to be so diverse, one was telling the world of the event, while the other (I have not seen it, so I can’t confirm) seems to be giving Norway an art piece preserving and telling the story of the event to the people who know it and need little context - cultural or otherwise. 

Terror and disaster are culture shaping and defining. How we respond, how we react, the consequences and the way we tell the story, they are all revealing. And how/why we portray them to ourselves and as outsiders is also revealing.

If this film did one thing perfectly, in my opinion, it was the portrayal of PTSD and the sudden and immediate flashbacks, often sounds, that don’t go away, the isolation and exhaustion that they cause, and the feeling that vulnerability is a weakness you can’t afford. I’m speaking from experience that I’m not ready to elaborate on here, those things are powerful and extremely misunderstood and misrepresented in American culture. PTSD is often used as a MacGuffin, a simple plot device that causes chaos or explains some rash and nonsensical choice, and is often reserved for stories about soldiers returning from war (thanks Hemingway), but sorely left out of conversations about rape, or abuse, or bombings, or terror attacks or any other trauma we go through (then again... so is the representation of those stories). 

It was so hard for me to watch, and I had to fast forward through a few parts, I didn’t sleep because of my own triggers and whatnot, but looking at it from what I would consider an “average” perspective, of people who haven’t witnessed or experienced something so traumatic, it puts viewers in a position they are forced to empathize with. And I think that is a valuable and powerful cultural perspective. 

How did human empathy get tied in with a connotation of weakness? This film challenges that cultural assumption, it asks us to consider: how did emotion and fear become synonymous with coward? How did we twist the world so that victims become responsible and personal forgiveness is a sin?

Maybe I pulled more questions from the film because of my personal experience, relating or overcoming my own challenges - it was something of a challenge to push play and it sat on pause for nearly an hour after the first 20 minutes. The film doesn’t give you answers, but it does seem to provide a safe place for asking questions as our primary protagonist, Viljar, learns to cope. We, the audience, are, if we allow ourselves to be, challenged with an unspoken question: have you chosen to live? Have you chosen hope? Or are you angry all the time, are you defeated and nihilistic, are you passive and apathetic, do you want to ignore and run away and hide in fear? Have you taken steps forward to face your life and made a conscious decision to live it lately?

And that was hard for me to hear because it’s what I’ve been working on, on living consciously and making choices consciously and forming thoughts and opinions and understanding my own values, and not living in my head where everyone else is more right, more valid, more everything; where I dismiss myself and my experiences because of what they are. I’m still working on coming to terms with a lot of things, Jake divides it between acknowledgement, acceptance, and growth or adaption. 

I’ve acknowledged the things that happened, [SPOILERS] and I think that’s what Viljar does on the snowmobile. I’ve accepted the things that happened as beyond my control, I think that’s what Viljar does by deciding to appear in court, what his father does by encouraging him, and what his mother does by... well, personally I think she does this when he tells her to win the campaign for mayor, she decides then to carry on and try her best to reassure them and fight with her boys, not for them (the younger brother could have used a bit more character, but I get it). And then, for me, I’m struggling with the adaption, and we see Viljar struggle, constantly: physically, emotionally, mentally, it is his speech that tells us the truth - he is going to keep struggling, but he is ready to adapt to that, to grow from it, to choose to be vulnerable and depend on his friends and family, to reach out to them and to try, to understand himself and how this event has impacted him so that he can continue to live a life he values. 

This is where I, and I think a lot of people, get stuck, and why I think this film had to feature the terrorist, though I do understand the ethical fears of giving a terrorist a platform by featuring them. But this was a real event, and by giving the guy a face and a story, we see how it juxtaposes Viljar’s growth, how the terrorist did not grow or learn from his fears or struggles, how he isolated himself and what that intentional ignorance does to a person. If we do not grow from our trauma, if we do not adapt to the ways it has impacted us, like in Viljar’s speech, how he acknowledges that he pulled away from his family and friends, he avoided Lara’s calls for weeks, but he’s ready to understand that he is different now, and that’s okay.

We tend to leave this out of our stories in America, and probably other places as well. We end with the happily ever after when the physical body is saved and we rarely go into details about the mental or emotional journey that is yet to start. We can perceive it in films, we can write tumblr posts about Tony Stark’s PTSD and Steve Rogers’ issues, we can transpose ourselves onto these characters, which makes them so universal, but we do not see them specifically address or combat these problems. We do not see Captain America lamenting a world he knew or the confusion and trauma that would result from such a drastic transition, we do not see the Hulk’s loss of identity plague him as anything more than a good one-liner (okay, this one is a bit more debatable). These are good films, and they have limitations they have to work with - source material, fandoms, broader story archs, time limits, etc. But the mental health journey is nearly always left to subtext at best. 

Of course we struggle to understand our mental health in context in America, our stories don’t remind us of the importance of responsible emotion, of the pains of growing that last our whole lives, they don’t tell us about our changing identities as adults, or give us the tools to cope or find help after trauma. There are always exceptions, obviously, but collectively, they seem few and far between. But when they do happen, they stick around for a long time, like Christmas classics It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th St. that look at adult growth and development from the primary struggle. Then there are your intentional dives into mental health, diversity, and trauma like, A Beautiful Mind, Good Will Hunting, Rain Man, Room, Charlie Bartlett (a personal favorite, oh, also Gran Torino imo), even The Breakfast Club. 

I think we want stories that teach us how other people get through trauma, so we can learn from them, see ourselves reflected, and grow and adapt to our new identities after something has happened to us. We want to deal with difficult subjects, but to do that, we’re going to have to start talking about personal ethics and consumer responsibility more and more. We can’t dismiss that as classroom conversation or over-analysis or invalid. We’re going to make bad stories, and we’re going to mess up, but at least there will be more variety and we won’t just be repeating the same shallow stories that end as soon as the physical person is in a physical or economically stable place, occasionally a romantically stable one too. 

To encourage directors to look at mental health and tell new stories, we have to support them when they do. We have to watch and then discuss. We can’t just write it off as inherently right or wrong, because our worldviews are so different. People like that terrorist exist in the world, and ignoring it and not representing that social fear in our media does not even attempt to acknowledge the problem. Trauma hurts us and we’re often told to put some pretty tape around our cracked and broken selves and make do. We teeter through life fearing exposure, anxious, depressed, hidden, and we just keep cutting ourselves on all our jagged pieces. 

But films like this say it’s okay to be broken, it’s okay for Lara and his brother to feel the same as Viljar, even if they weren’t shot, it’s okay for them to face their fears in different ways and to be patient and understanding with themselves as they fit all those cracks back together and learn what they can do to glue them and sand them and make themselves whole again. It’s okay for the parents to struggle, to feel inadequate, terrified, and consumed by guilt and fear, and then to grow and gather strength from their own children and learn to be stronger together. 

We have this independent mindset, that to overcome by yourself is stronger, the lone wolf is the awesome badass, but we know, even our stories know, that we require teams. Even the Avengers need each other (getting into Civil War territory here lol). Our YA masterpieces teach us about the power of friendship and teamwork in developing our identities and overcoming pain and trauma. But we still walk around jaded and in pain, we don’t know how to talk or listen to each other, and we get frustrated and angry when others begin to talk about their vulnerabilities. 

But work like this, it gives us an opportunity to understand what we might not have the experience to relate to, it gives us the ability to be empathetic to something we may not be able to completely comprehend. It tells us that it’s okay to hurt, and it shows us that we can still grow, if we so choose, and that the choice we make is what we control. And we get so overwhelmed by our choices these days, there are so many, and yet so few. I think it’s hard for us to remember to choose to grow and reflect and redefine ourselves at all, hard to find the time to even consider our options. But it’s the most important choice we make every day. It defines who we are and we spend so much of our lives ignoring it or building a protective wall around it. 

This was not a perfect film, but it offered perspective in-context and I think it did justice to the trauma, and the resilience and growth required to overcome it, to choose to have hope. And I don’t think it could have done that without also showing us how easy it is to give up and assume we are right, like the terrorist, to assume we know best and can fix the world ourselves with our own walls firmly planted between us and our own identities. 

This film needed an antithesis to prove it’s point, for the same reason The Silence of the Lambs requires a Hannibal Lecter (and, like the greatly respected Anthony Hopkins, the actor, Anders Danielsen Lie, who played the terrorist, is an accomplished and greatly respected Norwegian actor, and that seemed important to me; this was not an opportunity for a new actor, this was an experienced artist telling the dark side of the story). 

We need filmmakers and story tellers to break rules so that we can all adapt and grow as a society. We need to start telling our stories and stop repeating our own folktales and bedtime stories over and over again. They lead us to sweet dreams, but they forget to help us learn how to stay asleep, and how to wake up, determined to live each day. 

We do not need to simply exist, and while existential crises are frickin’ impossible (there’s that personal experience again), and seem to be a massive current social problem, maybe they are not the cause of our lack-of-hope endings and false identities and fake happiness, but rather the result of a society that doesn’t allow itself to be broken, and therefore doesn’t allow itself to grow. 

You’re allowed to fail. You’re allowed to be wrong. You’re allowed to mess up and make mistakes and hurt the people you love. You’re allowed to be hurt and vulnerable in your life. 

And when you’re allowed to be these things, you’re allowed to be forgiven and grow from them, instead of hoarding all your broken pieces where they cut you over and over, or only revealing them to anonymous Tumblr netizens. You are not a static object, you are not made of stone that can only be cutaway, you are human, and flesh grows back. You can grow back. And I try to tell myself these things every day, to step into the world knowing it will hurt, but that I will grow back. 

Viljar has a hard time facing Lara, he doesn’t call her back, but when he meets her before the trial, she forgives him, and because of that allowance to grow, she is able to be persistent and keep being his friend, and he is able to be vulnerable and strong, which translates into his acceptance of help. We need art to tell us that it’s okay to be human, and to stop comparing us to these things that are supposed to be better than us - aliens, superpowers, mutants, super-spies, the wealthy elite, etc. 

And I think we need to focus on more than just romantic relationships, we need parents and friends and siblings and teachers and idols and well, more diverse romances; our stories reflect our values, and if this were a “Hollywood film,” I don’t think it would have done the story justice or let its audience come to its own conclusions. What does that say about us? Do we not give ourselves enough credit? Or do we intentionally misinterpret art that challenges our perceptions of reality, like trauma and relationships and other personal ethics because we find it offensive? Can we even hold others accountable for what offends us? Is there a line there involving accuracy and representation and culture, or is it all subjective?

I don’t know, I’ve just been thinking about all this while I spent all night and morning not-sleeping. So I thought I’d just get it out there where it can float for a while. I thought it was a good film, because it was a good story, and it was a good story because it focused on that elusive symptom of trauma, that nihilistic existential identity that refuses to reform. And because that is the story I am living right now, that is the story I needed to hear. Because we are social learners, like all primates, and if Viljar can choose to live and be vulnerable and strong, then maybe I can do it too. 

This turned into a personal rant more than a review... whoops. But I don’t have context enough to compare the film, I think I would have to see the Norwegian-made one (though the cast and setting were still Norwegian in this one), to really compare, and look at what happened in real life, how the world reacted to that event, and basically do a full lit-review to get an understanding of whether this film was accurate or if its portrayal was “good.” But then I would have to define good, and we all know where that will lead. 

So in my opinion, we need more stories about tragedy that don’t end with the acceptance of others, but the acceptance, acknowledgement, and reformation of self. And this movie followed that whole story, or at least, I think it did, and I appreciate it for that. 

#anthropology #cultural anthropology #rant #22 July #film review #trauma #ptsd recovery #stories #art #culture #relationships #growth #ethics #discussion

[bsdstolemysanity]

Ashes Weighted Upon My Heart Pt. 2/2

Originally posted on Ao3 ( https://archiveofourown.org/works/37298599/chapters/95159422#workskin )

Yet another continuation of episode 9.

Jinx no only had shot at Piltover but at her own home of Zaun. Leaving a disoriented Caitlyn and Vi to find their way back.

There was no longer the silence that brought on feelings of debilitating fear or uneasiness. In its place was a new form of silence. In a dark and quiet room. The ringing was long gone but nothing replaced it. There was no sound, in its place it left a feeling of agitation. If it wasn’t for the unbearable amount of pain that shot off from various places within her body, she would’ve been long gone from this room and its unbearable silence.

Shadows danced upon the walls from the slow rise and fall of the small amount of sunlight that slipped through the drawn curtains. It was all that Caitlyn had seen since she woke up. Her father would come and check on her periodically. Busying himself with her care, He would silence her anytime she began to inquire about any of the topics than ran rampant through her mind, pinning the blame on a concussion. There was far too much time to think through.

“Answers will come once you have focused on yourself.” That was his answer every time.

Was her mother dead? She felt that one was perhaps the most important of them all and it left her feeling irate at not only her father but also her condition. It had to be a much more complicated answer than yes or no for him to not be telling her... or perhaps was he delaying the grief.

No, that would be too cruel.

What exactly happened? Was yet another unanswered question that plagued her mind.

What was the extent of her injuries? That one at least could be estimated by her own pain. A concussion was obvious as it was the only one confirmed to her. Her leg felt numb and there were many healing bruises and cuts.

Where was Vi?

Her last memories were of Vi. The fear and guilt in the brawlers’ eyes. What was Vi trying to tell her? She had a clouded memory of Vi stumbling back. It lasted only seconds if that. How did they even manage to make it back to Piltover?

Caitlyn wanted to scream. Demand answers. Find them if no one held the answers she needed. She wasn’t sure how many days into her recovery it was when she finally grasped onto her father’s wrist.

“I need to know- “It was nearly unbearable to speak, her head was pounding and her throat burned with every breath “Give me something... anything...”

Her father said nothing. He gently twisted his hand until he could grasp her own. It was too dark to see if there were any facial indications. His other free hand encompassed their intertwined hands and the warmth of his callused hands offered a sense of solace. No words needed to be exchanged. No matter how much she sought for answers, it was made clear to her that he had no strength left to communicate those answers. She was left with the assumption that perhaps her own heart wasn’t ready for those answers either.

Quickly they resumed their day-to-day routine as he set her dinner on the side table and handed her two glasses. One contains an assortment of pills, what they mask remains unknown to Caitlyn but she takes them without question.

In the following days, no words were exchanged. Darkness remained, both in her surroundings and in her mind. With every passing hour, she became more and more restless. As the pain of her injuries subsided, she began to move more. Slowly she began to sit up, bearing the pain that followed such steps in her recovery. The faster she could muster her recovery, the faster she could find the answers.

Caitlyn was lost on how many days exactly had passed.

“Hey… cupcake”

Caitlyn initially convinced herself that she had finally lost it. This isolation in such a dark room was bound to start to meddle with her mind. She closed her eyes, hoping that sleep would allow her to escape again.

She had been repeating the same two dreams since initially waking up.

One was of the wreckage; it was just as vivid as that day. Even the feeling of the flames lapping against her skin as she walked would be conjured up by her mind. The only difference was exactly how cruel her mind could be. Her search would not be long as in comparison with its real-life experience, but rather short before she would come across the first body. A mangled corpse of someone she loved, it changed with every slumber. It left her to wake, restless, and in a cold sweat. Surely delaying her healing.

The other was almost as if she hadn’t left her room, she was safe and back in the grand room. The sunset streamed gently into her room, casting a warm glow over her. The warmth was reflected by the grey eyes she looked into. Gently reaching over to stroke Vi’s cheek she once again felt safe. No words were exchanged, just like that day but it was a comfortable silence.

“Caitlyn…”

She nearly jumped when the bed dipped beside her.

“Vi?” Her voice was just as scratchy and thin as when she last spoke to her father.

Silence returned. Vi must’ve peeled the curtains open at the opposite end of the room as the sunlight allowed itself in just enough to make the details of the room distinguishable; including Vi’s tense features. Vi was peering down as she fidgeted with the loose strands of her wraps, gently biting her top lip in deep thought.

Caitlyn did her best to shuffle herself into a sitting position, much to the protest of her aching muscles and sore ribs. “Vi?” She tried again, this time reaching out to gently lay her fingers on the rigid muscles. They tensed slightly more under her touch.

Vi gently placed the tray she was holding down onto the side table, the same tray her father had been bringing her. Containing the same pills and same bland meal.

“I- “Vi began. Her words fell back into her thoughts. But Caitlyn was patient, leaning back into the piled pillows against the headboard she awaited the lost words. Vi had seated herself at the end of the bed from a wobbly stance. “I’m. I’m sorry… I should’ve. I shouldn't have stopped you”

“Vi” Caitlyn’s voice was strong for the first time. Her heart ached at the pain that was spilling from Vi’s mind. Without hesitation, she leaned forward and wrapped herself around the broad shoulders.

They sat like that for what felt like an hour, Caitlyn could feel the slight whimpers and the occasional tear spill onto her back. A deep breath from Vi preluded their separation as she held onto Caitlyn’s shoulders, keeping eye contact.

Vi wanted to say something, anything. The silence of the room added weight to her tongue. There was so much to say and yet, where to start?

“Y-You can hear me, right?” Vi’s voice was shaky, unsure of herself. Very unlike her, and it worried Caitlyn.

“Yes,” The voice was once again strained.

Vi sat there once again, her mind racing with the million things she could say at this moment. Thinking of what response each possibility would elicit from Caitlyn. Would she be angry at an apology? Angry if she didn’t apologize? Despite Caitlyn maintaining eye contact steadily from less than a foot away in the dim room.

“Vi” Caitlyn was the first to break the silence.

“Y-Yeah”

“Can you just tell me what” Her voice dropped for a moment, as she braced herself emotionally. “What happened to my mother”

Vi’s mouth opened and then promptly closed. “Your father never told you?” Vi hadn’t meant to say it as loudly as she had and felt guilty the moment Caitlyn winced from the volume. “I’m so sorry! um well, your mother... she is alive. She is in a heavy coma I think it is. Your dad went to visit her today, so that’s why I finally got sent in.”        

“Oh,” Caitlyn felt like a weight was finally lifted, finally an answer. One answer wasn’t enough though, she wanted to know everything. Understand what has happened the last few days. “What exactly happened? After I blacked out?”

“I finally reached a part that was less… damaged than where we had been.” Vi began. “I'm not sure what you last remember but...”

“You were trying to say something... I – I couldn’t hear you though”

“I thought so... you scared me there, cupcake” Vi gave a half-hearted smirk, attempted to lighten the mood but it hadn’t worked. “Once I was able to make out where we were, I could find my way to the bridge. It was absolute chaos. Enforcers were everywhere. Panic had set in. I was grabbed at some point; you were on my back. I refused to let them take you. To sum it up quickly, they took us over but threw us into a locked cell… Your father came once he received word that you had been found. Brought us back over and now we are kind of on house arrest.”

“But- Why would they put us on house arrest?”

“They think we know what’s happened. We are to be interrogated once we both have fully recovered.” Vi looked away as her hands slipped away too. “I-I can’t betray her Cait… I don’t know what to do... but they need a story from us”

“We will figure something out” Caitlyn tried to reassure her. “Why would they believe I had something to do with an attack on the council, an attack on my own mother?”

“They are scared Cait; they want to be able to point fingers at someone.” Vi began to run her fingers through her hair “and why would they believe anyone from the lanes? I’m screwed either way.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you; I promise” Caitlyn grabbed Vi’s hand. It was tense but loosened as she brought it back down to Vi’s lap.            

“I promise” She reassured as she leaned in.

#Arcane #arcane fanfic #Arcane Fanfiction #violyn #caitvi #caitlyn x vi #angst #lots of angst

[drink-n-watch]

Genre : Josei, Horror, Mystery, Psychological Thriller

Studio: J.C.Staff

I hear a lot of you grumbling about this show. I’m guessing expectations may have been very high at the beginning of this season because people feel let down? Nevertheless, a lot of you seem to be stubbornly holding on. Maybe you see a glimmer of hope. Maybe you have a masochistic side. I’m not sure whether this week helped or hurt from your perspective but for me – it stayed exactly the same…

except it’s a cute Slice of Life now

OK, that’s not entirely true. I do believe Zack and Ray are starting to play off each other a little better. It’s still not quite the synergy I’m hoping for but it’s not as painful to listen to as it was. Still, having another actor to moderate remains extremely helpful. I quite liked Zack unceremoniously carrying Ray around like a prop.

I’m just going to throw at you the jumble of random things I noticed this week. For one, it seems that everyone knows each other. So far every new floor “boss” (or judge…) has called Zack by name and seems to be very familiar with him and his personality. This week we had crazy Cathy, and they were chatting like old friends. Cathy didn’t seem as close to Ray as sackboy was but she didn’t consider her a complete stranger either.

I like the obvious fake sky in her window – it’s a nice touch

Likewise, Zack hasn’t been particularly surprised by any of the new players they’ve encountered and hasn’t ever questioned how they know him. The starting assumption was that people simply didn’t travel between floors and each was completely isolated. Zack having committed quite a taboo in the first episode by leaving his basement. However, that doesn’t seen to be quite the case after all. At least, it’s definitely not the full story.

Also why aren’t there anymore sentient typewriters? Rachel should have taken it with her. Sure it’s a hassle to carry around but I bet it would have had some nice insights.

Cathy looked like a B model compared to other characters so far. She seemed less detailed and her animation was rougher. Is it just me? On the flip side, light and shadow play remains interesting.

or maybe I’m just a little bored with the harlequin types

Here’s a mildly amusing to neutral fact. It seems that Rachel and I are pretty much the same size. I smell an easy cosplay in my future!

I warned you it was going to be a jumble….So here’s my crazy theory trying to link all this stuff together. I’m not completely sold on it myself but I think it works. Basically this is Rachel’s own personal purgatory or hell. She is the only real character in the show.

There’s a little scene in the OP that shows a person hanging. We only see the legs but from the build and size, it looks a lot like Rachel. Rachel also seems somewhat preoccupied with God and having broken God’s rules. I think Rachel may have killed herself. This entire hellscape is a product of her guilt ridden psyche.

in reality she’s only torturing herself…

This is why she’s harsh on herself. She judges herself quite clearly and worries about sinning but seems indifferent to the wickedness and misdeeds of those around her. She also doesn’t appear particularly affected by their deaths.

She’s the only one that doesn’t have her own floor so far, because the entire building is her domain. The rules don’t seem to apply to her in the same way. And although everyone knows her, she doesn’t recall any of them. My theory is that she is completely unemotional because the other characters represent different aspects of her fracture mind that she’s divorced herself from.

Zack is her savior but as she can’t truly accept that she deserves salvation. As such, her savior is a flawed, stupid, violent murderer who promises to kill her when she outlives her usefulness. Similarly the various villains are extreme representations of her ego and id corrupted by her self loathing and regret.

have dolls ever not been evil?

Danny is her rational self pushed into delusion and obsession. Eddie is her pride and preservation subverted into a yandere extreme. Cathy may be her righteousness gone way out of bounds and doling out punishments with impunity for any and all perceived failings.

This is why Zack can’t leave without her. None of them can. They don’t in fact exist without her or outside of this place. This is also why there are unsettlingly mundane elements all over. The inhabitants are clearly not quite human yet for all their striking appearance, they all remain very possible looking. At most like cosplayers, not like actual monsters.

All the objects and rooms we have seen may act in unusual ways but they remain common things we can all easily recognize and name. There aren’t any odd magical devices or strange contraptions we’ve never seen before. They are all things a young lady like Rachel would easily know about and know how to use. Finally there was that closing quote “A sinner has no right to choice”. Sure there’s a bit of intuitive leaping required but it all fits.

you just have to straighten it out a little

No one is punishing Rachel, no one is keeping her trapped against her will. This is a prison of her own making and she is the one with all the power. She is the only one keeping everyone else here.

Like I said, it’s only a theory and a rather subjective one at that. One of my favorite short stories is Etgar Keret‘s Kneller’s Happy Campers (it was made into a comic book called Pizzeria Kamikaze and a movie called Wristcutters. I own all 3 and love them all, the movie has a great soundtrack). As such, I have an odd fondness for post suicide redemption stories. It’s a peculiar niche…

everyone loves a good niche

I am loving the slideshow…do you guys like it?

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Angels of Death ep 4 – Hairbrained Genre : Josei, Horror, Mystery, Psychological Thriller Studio: J.C.Staff I hear a lot of you grumbling about this show.

#anime #episodic #Horror #Mystery #psychological #scary

[monsterinamusicbox]

About page

You should already know this from the guidelines but it’s important to repeat it: I’m writing from Jemma’s pov, and Jemma is NOT okay. So how she reads the world is a mix of things that actually happened and how her already struggling mind perceived them, a result of the way they all piled up together: self-hatred, guilt, some actual hostility from the others and misunderstandings. Which leads to changes because this is the AU where she got bitter.  

***

NAME: Jemma Anne Simmons BIRTH DATE: September 11, 1987 ETHNICITY: Jewish GENDER: cis female ROMANTIC AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION: demi-hetero-romantic (requires a very strong bond, she has trouble reading her own feelings and distinguishing romantic love from platonic) heterosexual. RELIGION: atheist SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English, British and American Sign Languages, Italian, some Spanish, Latin. (oddly good with accents) RELATIONSHIPS: many hook ups, two failed attempts to see men for more than a couple of times (with Milton it lasted two months, that's her longest relationship). At first neglected by her mother and cared for by her father, once her potential was more clear Jemma was emotionally abused and pushed to her limits by the woman while her father was the one neglecting her due to his work; that's when she developed an exaggerated sense of responsibility/guilt. She raised her little sister, while her older brother hated her due to jealously, and she had a grandmother until 12 and the house staff try to take care of her as much as possible. INTELLIGENCE: canonically a super genius, able to have 2 PHDs when sixteen, to remember engineering-related codes years later even if she’s not an actual engineer, perform surgery and with an incredible memory especially when feelings are involved.

***

Jemma was taught by her father, as a child, to put all her troubles away, inside her music box, and she kept doing so as she grew up. All the traumas, all the anger she didn’t feel she had the right to let out, all the pain, got repressed because there were more important things to think about, because her friends were the ones'really suffering' and not her, and simply because she never learned how to process and deal with it. But the system stopped working and Jemma started feeling like a villain while simultaneously wanting to fight against the people who didn’t help her and, worse, misjudged her and the kind of dangerous person she could be.  The more she uses questionable methods and is aggressive to people, the more she convinces herself she’s lost. And the more she convinces herself she’s lost, the more she makes herself do questionable things. She has conflicting feelings about Fitz, she expects Coulson to be against her and is preemptively antagonistic with him, May and Daisy were more or less on her side so she's ready to die for them, Mack and Bobbi were nearly strangers she never got close to but who betrayed her when she already had enough of SHIELD so they are no friends, Hunter is equally a stranger but he never did anything against her or the team so she's not feeling anything special in a good or bad way for him, and she didn't get to meet any new teammate. She doesn't have the healthiest life-style, has mood swings at times, also due to sleep deprivation, and deep down is in desperate need of being told that she's fine the way she is.

 So, this is the version of her backstory for who doesn’t need a full recap of the first two seasons of aos. Long but it explains the turns her mind took to get to that darker place, I bolded parts to help you 'skip' the least important bits if you can't read too much at once: 

Jemma had PTSD as well as survivor guilt and an already exaggerate sense of guilt in general. Considered herself responsible for Fitz’s brain damage in particular and everything that came with it: for his frustration, when he got angry she took it as a personal failure, she watched him struggle to be better and suffered, she hated when she couldn't finish his sentences but also knew she was slowing down his recovery by doing things for him to keep him from being angry at himself, and felt responsible for not finding a way to make things work. She was falling apart and ran away, undercover, to save him from herself and not for her own health, which instead needed some safe and quiet and not be isolated in enemy territory to avoid getting worse.  And after coming back to the base, she finds herself isolated again, and learns that people actually assumed the worst of her, as well as talking about it with the new guys while she was gone. She was already thinking the worst of herself, and finding out that the people who tried to see the good in everyone else believed she’d be capable of abandoning her best friend because he wasn’t 'good enough' was already a bad hit. And not only she couldn’t voice her own reasons and pains because unable to communicate her feelings, but was aware that telling Fitz she had left because his recovery was slower thanks to the pressure he puts on himself to work better with her, and because she made him worse, would make Fitz feel even more guilty and ‘useless’, and do nothing good. 

She was mostly alone, once again, even if surrounded by people she knew as opposed to undercover in Hydra, and not a comfortable kind of alone. She overworked and even when repressing her emotions she had to hid to cry often. Skye was facing her own tragedies but did try to show some support and Jemma was thankful for it, but much like May who was equally impartial and close, Jemma didn’t get to see her much anymore; Bobbi was there less than two months before she turned out to be part of another faction, too little time to be nothing but just a friendly acquaintance to Jemma. Her betrayal was still anger-inducing, especially since she brought up Fitz to try to get her out of the locker room, but Jemma wasn’t trusting her with her life before either.  The real last straw after all the self-hatred, all the anger she felt for Ward, all the assumptions the others made, the isolation, the inability to fix things with Fitz, and even Trip’s death and watching Raina slaughter her team in Porto Rico with her new powers, was realizing that Fitz had hidden Skye’s powers from her, expecting her to be capable of hurting their friend. It wasn't something she'd hold against Skye, at least not with anger, because she understood Skye was scared out of her mind, but it did make her doubt Skye's trust in her. 

Jemma believed she deserved many bad things, she believed she also deserved Fitz’s anger for leaving, for being the cause of his suffering and unable to make it better. But while she’d let anyone berate her over the things she had done, she refused to accept being seen as someone who could hurt one of her best friends, especially because ‘different’. Her concern had always been alien viruses, like the one that had infected her, and Skye’s potential death, not that Skye would be ‘different’. That, and it did start to feel like everyone beside May was closer to Fitz and mostly thought of her as part of the Fitz/Simmons duo.

And that’s what brought the canon divergence, because the music box cracked, and she started feeling all the anger, the need to attack and fight, the need to defend herself, while simultaneously giving up on proving she was worth of their friendship, giving up on trying to be better, to be good, and just start letting out some bitterness, some sarcasm. She started feeling she didn’t have a place in shield anymore, and didn’t get closer to Fitz through gossip and small attempts of reconciliation before and after the attack from the other faction of SHIELD, but kept distance and animosity. She still felt she deserved the anger over being the cause of his brain damage and the suffering after, but nothing else beside that.  She was far more aggressive with the other faction of shield, but May voiced her wish to protect her and gave Jemma a bit more will to stay and fight. After all, Skye was still out there and Jemma wasn’t giving up on her either.  Upon finding out that Skye’s powers were natural for her, that she was part alien, Jemma was at peace with her change.   Later on that day she tried to kill Ward and got Bakshi instead, and even tried to get Ward to shoot her. Fitz, not knowing the details, but with good intentions told her that it was okay if she couldn’t try to kill Ward, he wasn't able to really try kill him even if he wanted to either, it just meant they weren’t like him. And Jemma pointed out that she did try to kill him and was kicking herself for failing, the next bad things Ward did were going to be her responsibility. If anything, Fitz’s comforting words were a reminder that she was, in fact, not at all like Fitz and the rest of the team. At that point, she accepted that she was more than capable of killing and felt nothing about murdering Bakshi. She was different, and if she had stayed in the team it would likely because she could bring that to the table, and dirty her hands so that people like Fitz or Skye wouldn’t have to. Do what was needed, even when technically there were other options.   But she didn’t want to stay, because the team, minus May and Skye with their vocal support, and still in Skye’s case with some doubt about Skye’s feelings, felt like a team of strangers now. And she felt she was always going to be the bad guy to them, and worse, the kind of bad guy she actually wasn’t, as opposed to the one she had embraced being. 

But just as she meant to leave, she took a curious look at the Monolith and got transported to an alien planet. It was a new kind of hell (and while she had no hold backs, no intention of dating anyone, she wasn't the nicest to Will either so 'getting together' was still sparked by the need for some sort of comfort, only one month before leaving Maveth, and she wasn't in love with himb. But naturally cared enough to want to save him), and when she came back she was surprised to learn that Fitz had fought so hard to rescue her even with the bleak turn their friendship had taken - not so surprised that the others had given up even before finishing to follow all the leads. 

At first it was heartwarming, but the disconnection between the two of them, especially with the way she had changed, more to the point, less delicate, too tired to be anything but who she felt, was all too obvious. And the bitterness grew as she realized that the rest of the team seemed to be worrying more about Fitz’s feelings over her relationship with Will and harder personality than about her wellbeing, meaning once again she was seen in terms of how Fitz would be affected by what happened to her. She also expected Fitz to be waiting for his Jemma to come back, the one he fell in love with, and

she was too angry to see things any different, just thinking about wanting to leave a soon as possible and training.  But she stayed and fought to get Will back to Earth. Sadly Will had died saving her, as she found out after being tortured by Hydra and watching Fitz almost give his life for her again. And that was all too much, she needed to leave.

Now. And due to her intention of fighting Hydra, she still had her own little reunion with Will/Hive later on.

As soon as Daisy becomes Quake, after leaving SHIELD, Jemma is of course available to have her back if Daisy hasn't been antagonist with her by then. And even if she has, Jemma is likely to try to help her because she understands Daisy's reasons, even if she herself can lose her temper at times and feel frustrated by her former team. She also tried to find them after finding out the base had 'exploded' by the end of season 4, and managed to track down agent Piper eventually, who told her they had been trapped in a virtual reality program, came back, destroyed the bad guy behind it and disappeared again. Jemma knows they can take care of themselves so that was enough to make her walk away.

How and when they meet can change depending on how we plot threads.

Generally speaking, as much as she’s now a vigilante, and she hides behind a mask of 'bad guy trying to do the right thing’, she’s still Jemma Simmons, she still wants to save people, even if it means doing some morally questionable things to do so. May and Skye in particular are family, Fitz is a bittersweet old friend/former friend, and the team can be someone she’s very bitter about. A lot depends on the take rpers have on them. She’ll keep tabs on them and show up even if not thrilled about it to help. Characters from other fandoms can find her vigilanting, training to be even more lethal, using all sort of techs we know to be part of her world to help herself, and being extremely broken and tired of being who she is, but with no idea of where to start changing things, because every time she tries to do good, people suffer or die. 

A longer version of her bio, only needed if you want more details about what happened in season 2 of aos and how Jemma took it in this AU, otherwise go ahead and skip it.

season 1

And when she’s out of her element after starting a life of adventure, traveling around the world, and sees people die, is asked to be the medical doctor she doesn’t have the right personality to be, is asked to do things above her abilities or people’s deaths will be on her, watches her new best friend Skye nearly die despite her best attempts to patch her up, is infected by an alien virus and jumps off a plane to die and not take the team down with her and is rescued at the last second, is betrayed by a dear friend who drops her and Fitz in the ocean, where Fitz, her best friend, her other half, confesses is love and then gives her the one last bit oxygen left, almost dying and brought to surface by a Jemma who then learns he suffered of major brain damage over it, she puts everything in the box and keeps trying to help. She’s angry at Ward, homicidally so, and that’s okay because he betrayed them, everyone is. 

But everything else is locked up. 

season 2

Fitz is in pieces, he’s pushing himself too hard to prove Jemma he’s still good at what he does, but at first he can’t even speak, and Jemma learns very fast that she can’t help him, that everything she does to try to make things better, is making him feel worse. And her heart can’t take this. She’s traumatized, she’s alone in taking care of him because everyone in the team has their duties and they have to rebuild SHIELD, Fitz is frustrated and isn’t healing as fast as he should, possibly because she’s there doing too much for him while simultaneously not bringing him any comfort. 

So Jemma leaves, goes undercover in Hydra, something she’s not trained for. Does horrible things, knows she’s helping them hurt people, but is also saving so many by stealing information. And she’s hopefully helping Fitz, whom she’s told is okay.

And then she comes back at the base. She finds out Fitz told people he confessed her love and she bailed for that reason, and maybe that’s not the only version, other seems to have thought, including Fitz himself, that it’s his brain damage that drove her away, the fact that he’s 'useless’ as he puts it. Skye catches her crying and reminds her it’s okay to be angry. May still believes in her. But things with Fitz are fully broken, he felt abandoned and apparently most of the team did too. 

And then Skye is mostly gone, facing her own tragedies, Coulson is busy, just like May. Bobbi is new and friendly, but Jemma has problems trusting people. Mack is on Fitz’s side, and Hunter might be too, in a way that paints her as the new, unwanted element. Jemma is a bit jealous and a bit hurt, but also understands it’s all her fault, she hurt Fitz and she has no way to fix this. 

Fitz tells her he’s leaving to work with Mack, and then Trip dies. Jemma is alone in Porto Rico while the team is back at the base, dealing with the guilt of not protecting Trip from an alien threat, and watches Raina slaughter her team of scientists and escape, changed by the same alien object that has killed Trip and might have infected Skye. She comes home to check on her, speaks of potential dangers of a virus, of how she should have eradicated alien threats. Doesn’t know Skye was changed too - it would be different with her, of course, she’s a friend, she'sd just want to keep her healthy and safe. But Skye is scared, and Fitz thinks Jemma has changed too much and can’t be trusted, so they agree not to tell her.

When Jemma finds out, when she finds out that the person who knows her so well, and who wanted to believe in Ward until the very end, believed her capable of hurting Skye, her music box cracks. Things truly can’t be fixed between them either, it’s over. 

She has so many justifications and reasons for what she’s done and said, but it’s useless as well as impossible to let them out, and the resentment is growing day by day. Jemma wants Skye to know she’s safe with her, but after Skye is gone, to learn how to deal with the changes in her body, soon enough it turns out Bobbi and Mack weren’t really loyal to Coulson and it’s a whole new mess. 

Jemma doesn’t start any reconciliation with Fitz, she’s cold and avoids him as much as possible. She still comes up with the plan to protect the toolbox and send it away with Fitz, and after that she’s more actively aggressive against the other SHIELD. May told her she was trying to protect her, and Jemma clings to that, just like she clings to the few friendly interactions she’s still has had with Skye, because everything else just reminds her that she’s different and everyone else can see it too.  In the end they are all reunited - Skye is apparently an inhuman, her life is not at risk, and Jemma is relieved and has no more questions about her powers, at least none that are scared for her life - and Jemma tries to kill Ward with a splinter bomb. Fails because Bakshi stopped her and died for it, and tries to push Ward to kill her too. Why not, she failed again and she hates him too much to be scared.  Probably sensing her change of mood when she’s back, Fitz, despite their tense relationship, attempts to comfort her reminding her that not being able to push herself to kill Ward is good, he couldn’t do it either, they are not like him.  And that, while she recognizes it as the reassurance it is, just reminds Jemma that she’s worlds away from Fitz and people like him. Because she does have it in her to kill. Because she didn’t lose any sleep over murdering Bakshi, her first kill. Because she’s capable of anything to protect her friends, people she wants to keep safe, and out of revenge as well.  She tells Fitz she did try to kill Ward, she’s kicking herself she failed. She’s not hiding that part of her, she feels it’s time to accept it, to use it. She gave up on trying to become a better person, it only brings more pain, and she’s now letting all the resentment and the clashing feelings of frustration over unfair treatment and acceptance of her role of bad person come out.  She wants to leave, go help people away from the team, go hurt other bad guys like Hydra without having people who look at her like she might kill them next, but her curiosity over the monolith takes over and she’s taken to another planet right before she quits.

While she’s not planning to date Fitz, she’s not exactly the nicest most positive person when on Maveth, and her relationship with Will still doesn’t start until the last month, from her side more of a physical comfort than love; she still cares for him, doesn’t want someone else to die for her. Sadly, once home, while she almost reconnects with Fitz, she has the chance to notice more hurtful things, such as how there were still leads and yet the rest of the team gave up on finding her alive, or how the team is more focused on Fitz’s feelings and reactions over Will and what happened to her than they are about her. She still feels like an outsider, spends her time either trying to open the portal or training even if it’s too soon.  She’s then captured by Hydra, tortured, Fitz once again sacrifices himself for her and goes to Maveth; she frees Lash to help herself, finds out he killed innocent inhumans later, then that Will has died to save her, and is officially done with SHIELD. Too many negative feelings and she can tell she’s going to direct them to the team if she doesn’t get out of there. 

As much as she’s now a vigilante, and she hides behind a mask of 'bad guy trying to do the right thing’, she’s still Jemma Simmons, she still wants to save people, even if it means doing some morally questionable things to do so. May and Skye in particular are family, Fitz is a bittersweet old friend/former friend, and the team can be someone she’s very bitter about. A lot depends on the take rpers have on them. She’ll keep tabs on them and show up even if not thrilled about it to help. Characters from other fandoms can find her vigilanting, training to be even more lethal, using all sort of techs we know to be part of her world to help herself, and being extremely broken and tired of being who she is, but with no idea of where to start changing things, because every time she tries to do good, people suffer or die. 

#about page for mobile #about page

[destroyyourbinder]

finally,

I wanted to write something quickly while I was sitting in my family’s house again. Many, many thoughts come to me here. This place is absolutely not what it once was to me, now that I have left and have another home, yet I am still subject to encapsulation by the forces present here. While here I am alienated from my new life, emotionally and physically; while at the place I now call home, I am alienated from nearly everything of my old life, which includes my family, the only people I had any significant proximity to for about twenty-six years.

 I come here about every other week to visit my father, who has lung cancer and is now, with almost certainty, in the process of dying. This place has always been saturated with anxiety, but now it is impossibly dark, headed towards infinite darkness. Switching back and forth between my new home and my old is disorienting, especially under these conditions. It feels like total jet lag of existence. I don’t know how to walk through my parents’ front door, knowing I am walking into the world in which I was held captive and isolated for years, and knowing I am walking into a world in which I am completely subjugated to my mother’s abuse, but knowing that I must walk anyway, because I may be able to now count the number of times I will see my father again on my hands. I escaped my parents’ house in August of last year to live with my sister, who had an apartment in an even more isolated rural area of this state. I suppose now it is roughly the anniversary of the first time I had ever lived apart from them. I expected that this event would be life-changing. It was. But it was not life-changing in the way I expected, at all. When we tell people that it is ok or encourage them to make a huge decision, one that is self-actualizing or affirming, we often do so by discounting the fears they have about the decision, or attempting to get them to make a “rational” decision by listing the pros and cons and weighing them, as if positives can cancel out negatives. I do not regret moving out of my parents’ house, nor making the decision to move out of my sister’s place to live with my girlfriend, but many of my fears did absolutely come true. I am poor. I am lonely. I cannot get a job that is enjoyable or worthwhile, or uses my strengths, or even respects me as a human being. I did not make it to graduate school and never likely will. My mother disowned me for a few months, absolutely knowing how sick my father was, and would not permit me in the family’s home, nor would talk to me. She acknowledges I exist, now, but she has banned my girlfriend from her house, from my father’s future funeral, and has even banned me from using the word “girlfriend” in her presence. I am now subject to more homophobia, now that I am visibly and openly gay, than I ever thought could bear down on a real, living human being, one that existed outside of the realm of scare stories. I am still depressed, anxious, and dysphoric. I am in excruciating pain from the working conditions of my job and cannot make it to a doctor, because I have little free time and have no car. And so on. 

My life looks like exactly how I feared in many ways, and exactly how my mother warned me it would become. If my past self a year ago knew what my life looked like now, she might not have moved out at all. The decision would still have just been as brutally difficult. I could never have predicated the decision on my becoming “happier”, because in most ways I am absolutely not. When I was trans-identified I thought that someday, I would reach a state where my hardships would end, or at least I could significantly mitigate or avoid them. I was in denial that these facts-- that I was a woman, that I was not interested in men, that I was autistic and disabled by mental illness, that I had a circuitous path through schooling, that I was abused in childhood, and that I was raised by two parents that although they made it to the middle class in adulthood had grown up in poverty (and my mother in severe poverty) -- meant that I was always going to unavoidably face a number of hardships.

I was still in denial of this when I attempted to apply to graduate school while working 12-hour shifts at a distribution warehouse, trying to study for the GREs, thirty minutes a night in the bathtub, while soaking my throbbing feet that were ground into hamburger by the metal catwalks I walked miles on. I think I stopped being in denial of this sometime around when I was standing in the parking lot of the town grocery store in the bumfuck mountains, at about 10 PM on a frigid January night, about ready to leave to go live with my girlfriend in the big city, listening to my mother tell me over the phone that I was no longer her daughter. I don’t really know what changed in me, then. At some point I realized there was no escape, as the sort of woman I was, as any woman at all. But I think I must have realized in that moment that even literally escaping, having my sister stuff blankets and food and clothes into her car and drive me and my girlfriend in the winter dark, miles and miles away from everything I had ever known, did not mean that I could really leave my past, myself, behind. What I did was worth it in many ways, as were many things I chose in the last year or so. But it should be made clear that these were choices made out of necessity, out of deep conflicts in my life, rather than empowerment. I chose not to transition, for example, and this will affect my life forever. It was a choice I made in accordance with my values, but it was not a choice that made me fulfilled or happy. If I had chosen to transition, it very likely would have turned out similarly. When I was trans-identified I believed strongly that it was only the things blocking me from transition that stopped me from being fulfilled or happy, and once I was able to transition I would be on a path towards contentment and meaning. But this was false; that would have not been so.  One of the biggest things I have learned over the last year is that often, we-- all people, but women in particular-- are forced to make choices where there is no good option, only the least bad. The devastating part of making these choices is that we will always end up having doubts or regrets about whichever fork of the decision we chose. This is the case even if it genuinely was the least harmful decision or was, in fact, the only decision we could make. I strongly regret moving out of my parents’ house. I feel guilt beyond guilt, both for leaving in the first place, and for not returning home. My father was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer only a few months after I had left. I could have turned back. I could have chosen to turn towards them when they had no one else to comfort them or help them, but instead I abandoned them. I will likely regret this for the rest of my days alive. But imagine I had stayed. It is difficult for me to imagine ever being able to leave; my mother would have had the ultimate trump card with my father’s sickness and his eventual death, and I would have remained in her house, probably until she was gone herself. A forty-year old version of myself who had never lived apart from her abusive mother, who had to grieve her father under her mother’s thumb and knew it meant also the end of her independent life, would also have plenty of regrets. Occasionally I think to myself, “finally, I’ve arrived.” “Finally, here is my chance.” “Finally, I am home.” “Finally, I am loved.” “Finally, I am happy.” But things change. What I have managed to achieve is not permanent. When I moved out of my family’s home into my sister’s apartment, I thought, “finally,” then. It was the opportunity I had waited for all my life. I was going to go to school. I was going to get better, mentally. I was going to build myself up, bring myself up and out of my circumstances. And then my father got cancer. In the next few months I spent all my money helping someone, suddenly, under bizarre circumstances, I had to get a shitty job at a warehouse to make up the cash, and then my car’s engine blew-- right after I had spent serious money to get it to pass the state inspection-- in an unwalkable town surrounded by the Appalachians, with my sick father hours away. There was no “finally”, anymore. I had left my parents’ house thinking that I would get one. My decision was predicated on the assumption that there would be a “finally”. That I could rest, that something in me would get peace, that I could settle something down inside. What would I have chosen if I knew what would happen to me in the next four or five months alone? Could I have even faced the decision if I knew that “finally” would turn into “again and again”?  I know now that I can’t make my decisions with the understanding that I will get a “finally”. It doesn’t stop me from hoping, anyway. I don’t know how to look into anyone’s face-- the faces of the gay kids watching those “it gets better” videos, the face of a young person considering transition, my own face in the mirror-- to say the truth, which is that you don’t get to run away from your past once and for all, but you have to keep running. I am capable of enduring much more, now, than I ever could, but the fact is that I have to endure a lot. Sometimes I think endurance is pretty much what life is. I can remember sitting in the psych hospital for days on end, with nothing and nobody familiar around me and nothing to do, and feeling all of the seconds drip past me as if I could hear each one annoyingly plink from a faucet. I realized then that endurance is peculiar; in many ways, you don’t have to do anything at all, yet it torments you all the same. I endured the hospital with the understanding that it would be over in a week. But I can’t endure most things in life like this. I endured my female state with the understanding it would be gone upon transitioning to male, but what many of us who end up not transitioning or who detransition ultimately realize is that this is not what transitioning does. Our femaleness follows us, dogs us, all the same. There is truly no “finally,” when it comes to being female, and that is what makes it so difficult. I can tell myself I can endure my father’s sickness with the knowledge that his suffering will end, but this is not how I will have to actually endure. I have to endure it knowing that his senseless, agonizing death in my early life will haunt me for the rest of it. I have to endure it knowing that the end, the “finally”, spells the irreversible destruction of his existence. I don’t have any answers to this. I wish I had a way to end this piece, but I suppose the point is that there are no ends to things, and nothing tidy to sum things up.

#writings