#ANYWAY IM HAVING EMOTIONS ABOUT CAUGUST AND COZ OKAY

[navnlark]

/haven smp rp

thinking about haven smp. thinking about august and their lighthouse. thinking about their actions in the wake of navn giving them gunpowder and threatening them. thinking about the cracks in their friendship with oz, and the lengths people will go when they feel they're running out of options.

disclaimer: i have no idea where cc!august plans to take c!august's storyline, and i also am not completely caught up on lore, because uh. Life yk. so don't take any of this as any sort of gospel truth! this is simply the brain going brrrrrrr.

so, august is in-between a bit of a rock and a hard place right now. except that rock is a bedrock fountain and the hard place is the void and oh god oh no they've jumped into the void again. but basically, they've been recruited as a bit of a spy by navn, but they're also being threatened by navn, because the latter wants to keep this on the down low. additionally,navn validated them by believing them about the evil hacker man, but navn's not exactly sharing any of their own theories or plans at the moment, so they're kind of limited in trying to explore that avenue further unless they want to go and track down the being that broke into their lighthouse and threatened them with tnt. which uh. personally i would not want to do! i am not going to lie personally i would avoid doing that.

but august meets navn, and august gets a gunpowder gift and then gets their home threatened. this leads to august making tnt, as they want some boom boom blocks, and that's where things start getting really interesting. why?

because the first thing august talks about blowing up is their own lighthouse.

in their stream with gawain, august admits that they are attached to people and buildings, that they know this. navn threatening the lighthouse is an actual good threat because of that, and we've seen that august isn't willing to test and see whether or not it's bluffing— one of the things navn told august not to reveal is that navn gave august the gunpowder, and sure enough, when haven's four found the gunpowder farm, august lied and said it was their own gunpowder farm. august didn't have to do that— they could've said they have no idea who's gunpowder farm it is and that they just stole from the chests, they could've said that it wasn't theirs and that they got their gunpowder just from fighting creepers (although that excuse would be a lot more sus #augustalwaysdies)— but they didn't. instead, august lied to their oldest friends on the server, and covered fully for navn, because they don't want to give navn any kind of excuse to blow up their lighthouse, because they have a feeling navn would be thrilled to be given an excuse for destruction.

(it would be. thrilled, that is, to blow up the lighthouse. navn's biggest complaint about the server is how boring it is— an excuse to break out the tnt would be very welcome. of course, we'll never know whether or not navn would've counted august doing something else in that situation as a betrayal, but... using caution when dealing with the trigger-happy hostile mob who's threatening you is probably a good idea no matter the situation.)

but if august wants the lighthouse intact, why were they so eager to blow the lighthouse to kingdom come themselves during the most recent haven's four stream?

because the thing is, august was eager to do that. that's pretty indisputable. they brought it up multiple times during the stream, they pushed for it even after oz first said no— if oz had caved for even a second, if oz had given august the affirmative, there's no doubt in my mind that the lighthouse would be a smoking crater right now. but why would august want to do this if they're so desperately also trying to not give navn a reason to do the exact same thing? why would august not want navn to touch it, yet still be willing to destroy it themselves?

i think it's because of trust. friendship. care.

if august destroys it, they're out from underneath navn's thumb. if august destroys it for oz, they prove to oz that they do value their friendship, they prove that they don't want to hurt them and that they're willing to destroy the things they care about because they care about oz more. and— and maybe then oz will realize that august is not damned, maybe oz will see that the void isn't hurting them, isn't changing them, and everything can be okay again. (that last bit is a pipe dream, august knows that but—they find themselves hoping anyway. everything seemed to spiral out of control so quickly— maybe this can be the catalyst for things to change in a better way?)

so, why won't they do it without oz's permission? if it has that many positives, why hasn't august done it yet?

personally, i think it's because oz is already upset about august doing something for oz without checking to make sure that oz actually wanted it to happen, so august needs oz's approval here, needs confirmation that it is actually the correct thing to do. this won't fix anything if oz gets upset about this too, so august needs oz to be okay with it. personally, i think it's because august doesn't actually want to destroy their lighthouse, will be heartbroken to do so, so they need oz to tell them they want it to happen. they need oz to confirm that it will help so they can suck it up and tell themselves that they're doing it for their friend's well being, and that that's more important than their own connection to it.

and of course, of course, the kicker here is that oz will never give them that. the kicker here is that oz genuinely cares for august, and knows that august cares for the lighthouse, and would never ever dream of asking them for that. would never ever dream of telling august do that for them.

so the lighthouse keeps standing, and oz stays oblivious, and august remains stuck.