in internet posts it is easy to cut them out of your life. they are hurting you! they aren't listening to you!
they held your hair back. they lent you lipstick. they held your hand at the train station and got you home safe. they rounded on your bully, got loud, said get fucked, spitting-mad in your defense.
they also cut the hair off again. told you that you should really think twice before wearing something like that. took you for granted. took your insecurities and threw them in your face again.
you know logically it should be easy. all the internet advice comments always read it will feel better. like an equation - if a person is rotten, you just remove them. you pull the tooth that's hurting.
but it was never a big flare-up moment. you don't live in a sitcom. they never tried to take your boyfriend or steal from your apartment. they showed up to birthdays and they wrote songs about you and bring you water without you asking. once you found out they carry an emergency inhaler for you, even though you haven't had an asthma attack in years - just in case.
where is the line? people fuck up. sometimes they fuck up badly. sometimes people have raw personalities, like a powerline, and being around them is dangerous. addicting. sometimes they can't help themselves, but you know they're trying. sometimes they are just rough-around-the-edges. sometimes they don't even realize how they sounded when they said that. sometimes it's just - you've both loved each other for so long now, the way this thing hurts goes back to the root.
and that's the fucked up part. you have pushed your fingers against the sweetheart of memory. things these days are electric, tense, harrowing. they didn't used to be. there were a lot of good days in there. sometimes you want to just close your eyes and say can this be over yet? do we still need to be fighting?
doing that would give up any chance you get of getting an apology, but you don't always know that you need an apology, you love them. once they flaked on your birthday party. once they told you to get over it, people are always dying. they also let you crash on their couch for a week after the breakup, handfeeding you when you were so sad you couldn't eat. they are also judgmental about everything, occasionally react to banal statements with an attitude that is weird and fiery. they also love you like a lighthouse sometimes, so strong they cut the storm like lightning.
but the problem is that you might be storm. you might be the thing that needs breaking. what if you are two forces who are desperately, horribly drawn to each other, shaped by the other person's passions, and both good for each other and bad in equal measure.
what if you're both just people, and you're no saint neither.
just cut them off! swallowing the saltwater, you catch yourself in the mirror. you've been shaking more than usual. there's an ache in you that is oblique, loud, impossible to soothe. is this what it looks like? when life is "easier"?
your mouth will always have a hole, is the thing, if you remove the tooth.
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Oh No. You made me aware of the implications of Mina's words (when Mina says that some may say that this is a happy occasion for her and Jonathan) that she nay already be dealing with peoples' Whispering or subtle comments... from Hawkins' circle perhaps.
Yeah. :(
See, the thing is, there has been talk since last year of an outside perspective of all this with various degrees of apparent shadiness in different characters (I think I made a post about exactly that last year). But most of those takes I've seen deal with people suspecting our main characters of outright murder. Arthur, getting into Mrs. Westenra's will and then killing her and Lucy off with the help of his doctor friends to cover up for him. Or even just killing Lucy after her mother dies and leaves everything to him. Jonathan and Mina killing Mr. Hawkins in order to inherit everything he has, including Jonathan's big promotion shortly beforehand. It's all very sinister-sounding stuff.
But it doesn't have to be that bad, even in other peoples' minds. For Arthur, his father's illness seems like something that would have been well-known, and of course he was due to inherit everything from him anyway since they were quite close and he has no siblings. It sounds like there were rumors going around about him and Lucy, so their engagement wouldn't have been a surprise. Mrs. Westenra kept her illness secret from Lucy, but not really the other characters, and it's possible she would have allowed some other friends in on the secret too, so her death might not be a surprise either. Lucy's illness was abrupt and tragic, but having a friendly doctor consult/care for an invalid at home wouldn't have been anything too weird, so it's not necessarily ringing alarm bells. The weirdest part is the inheritance and the super-fast funeral, but in addition to Arthur getting potentially more leeway since he's so high-status, the knowledge of his father's death at about the same time might have led people to be more excusing of him even if they didn't like how he conducted the funeral. The inheritance is really weird though, and I could see even people who trust he wasn't responsible for any deaths believing that he maybe manipulated or pressured an ill woman to convince her to sign off Lucy's money to him when he knows she's likely to die much sooner than Mrs. Westenra thinks. And then he had them both buried as fast as possible and tried to move right past it. Not necessarily murder, but scummy. Even then though, I feel like most people wouldn't be saying this kind of thing openly even if it did run through their minds - and it would be less likely to occur to most in the first place since they know Arthur more already.
But while Arthur's status, both as a rich and presumably well-liked member of high-society, and someone who was known to be close to both the Westenras before they fell ill, serves to make people more forgiving of him... Jonathan and Mina don't have any of that.
Jonathan didn't already have money, to point to and say "he didn't need to inherit that wealth anyway." Jonathan didn't have his own property to make him getting that house less weird. He didn't already have his own staff, he didn't already have his own title/job even. He worked for Mr. Hawkins. He literally only just became a lawyer a couple of months ago, and he hasn't even been in the country let alone actively involved in the practice for most of the time since then. His meteoric rise is definitely weird, especially if you consider that his relationship with Mr. Hawkins, pre-trip, seems to have been pretty professional. Maybe he and his boss both secretly were more fond of one another than that, but I don't get the sense they expressed it very much.
So it's much easier to make the jump to the Harkers killing Mr. Hawkins. But there's a leap that's even easier than that and in some ways sadder. We know that Mr. Hawkins didn't have family, and apparently his funeral wasn't super well attended. His gout had been an ongoing issue, and while that alone isn't typically enough to kill someone it can go along with other illnesses. Jonathan had worked for him since he was a boy, and then his first business trip went wrong.
I think it could be quite easy for people to assume that Jonathan was ambitious, and deliberately played on the feelings of a lonely, sick old man. Perhaps he manipulated his guilt as a way to get 'in' with him past professional roles, and then started acting the part of a son in order to con Mr. Hawkins into giving him everything. Again, it doesn't have to be murder to still be mercenary and cold.
At the very least, if you're an old acquaintance of Mr. Hawkins, or someone who has worked with him for a while, the sudden appointment of his former clerk as his chief mourner, heir to all his wealth and his legal practice - it definitely seems odd enough to attribute to greed. Jonathan and Mina don't have any social status or wealth to protect them from that, and so I feel like they could get a lot more open suspicion or scorn or snubbing than Arthur ever would. No one ever has to say a word about it looking like murder; they could make 'jokes' about the Harkers 'lucking out' or at least 'landing on their feet' with a certain tone and that would be enough to be quite hurtful (and yeah, Mina's line suggests that at least she suspects some are saying that). They could easily not give accounts to them, or back out of existing contracts, and apologize by saying they were used to counting on Mr. Hawkins' many years of experience, but Mr. Harker is... newer to this. They could just fail to make any social offers, in a way that the Harker probably couldn't call anyone out on. And so on.
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The AO3 kudos post is going around again and it reminds me of my eternal frustration at how whenever someone asks for Fengqing fic recs, people will only rec things from the top 3 pages sorted by kudos, which I guarantee everyone in the fandom has already read (and also they are easy to find and do not need the promotion of a rec list)
And speaking personally for my own fics that end up getting recommended, I know for a fact that the one that is most recommended is not my best work for them, it was like my 4th ever Fengqing fic and I have a lot more interesting, better paced, better characterized and more thoughtful works written after it. But some of them have never been recommended because they don’t have as many kudos and they’re just lost in the archive void now
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I sort of like the thought that Zuko and Aang take the Sun Warriors' warning not to tell anyone about the dragons a little more seriously… and they keep it between them. Of course, they trust Sokka, Toph and Katara. Of course they know they wouldn’t tell anyone, but now three people (including Iroh) know the truth about Ran and Shaw. And that’s three too many when you’re trying to keep a secret.
(and there are other people at the temple as well - like Haru, Teo and The Duke - who, while trustworthy, aren’t as close to them as the others, and when it comes to secrets with as much consequence as this one, you can’t afford to take any chances.)
Furthermore, the culture within the Fire Nation since Sozin’s rein has been warped. The culture is not to respect the dragons as the original firebenders, it’s to conquer and kill them. It’s the ultimate proof of your strength as a firebender. All it takes is one mistake before rumour spreads, and people go looking for the ultimate hunt. It’s not something Zuko or Aang can risk.
Whether Katara, Toph and Sokka (and Suki) ever find out the truth is up to you. But post-war, after Zuko returns from a strange, poorly explained trip with a dragon, and eventually develops the ability to use rainbow fire, either the others have some questions about Aang’s knowing look, or they are finally let in on a monumental secret.
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there's something so interesting about the original 3 eccentrics being completely able to mold themselves to fit the roll that is required of them (rei goes wherever people ask + is what the situation needs regardless of what he wants; wataru desires acceptance above all else so, as an entertainer, he's constantly shifting who he is; kanata was a god and did whatever was demanded of him to fulfill others' expectations) versus the additional two (shu + natsume) who are so completely and utterly themselves they refuse to change who they are... some sort of analysis there. rei/wataru/kanata's arcs rely on them learning that they can be their own people regardless of what others want because they are individually worthy of love VS shu/natsume's arcs which are about them learning that compromising is part of love and clinging to a past that's no longer there is not what love is. man
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finding out that the percy jackson show was co-created by jonathan steinberg - who was the co-creator and showrunner of black sails of all shows - has actually made me more curious to watch it despite not having any prior interest. i've only seen the logan lerman movies but i never read the books (tried to once but didn't get into it plus i'm not a big mythology person)
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