#ALSO re: arthur seeing himself in oscar. and specifically the ''maybe he's beyond saving'' / ''i'm glad parker didn't feel the same way''

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

also. while i'm posting about the aftermath of s4 on the nyc crew. i totally get why people see oscar as spiraling hard after arthur's departure, and i agree that is a possible outcome, but what i really want is to see him take that very brief connection and pay it forward. the whole, "help others when you can't find a reason to help yourself" spiel that arthur gave him, let him use that as a motivator. like, maybe he wasn't able to save this one—but maybe he can save the next one. he's read enough of that bestiary to have a sense of what kinds of things are hiding in the dark corners of the world. and he's faced them! and he's come away—not unscathed, of course, certainly not unscathed, but alive. and even better, victorious. after so much pain and suffering, trying to help marie and her family but never knowing how, they did it. scratch is gone, along with its horrible crawly entourage. all it took was a little extra knowledge, a little bit of cleverness, a lot of courage. he's done it once. he can do it again.

maybe he's not gonna leave the church behind, but, i mean, st. jean-baptiste already serves mostly people who've fallen on hard times, who are being left behind by society. there's gotta be some more among their number who are haunted, or hunted, by something unknowable. and oscar starts to see them. he knows the look of someone whose understanding of the real and unreal has been challenged. and he starts to make it his mission to reach out to them, not because someone else comes along and charitably scoops him up and ropes him into monster-hunting, but because someone very dear once told him that he was good at helping, and that it was valuable, and important, and that it could be a reason to get up and put himself together in the mornings even when everything else felt pointless.

so he does. his community center gains a second life, as refuge for people stalked by demons and monsters and curses and the eyes of ancient gods. bc he may have lost what he thought was his purpose, but he's not going to insult his memory by just passively drinking it into oblivion. he's gonna honor it in the best way he can think of. by helping.