#I am trying to keep them limited

[centaurianthropology]

NYbN Belated Meta: Isaac and Fuego (Season 1 Retrospective Spoilers)

Since watching the season 1 retrospective on ‘New York by Night’ on the Project Ghostlight patreon, two things have been spinning through my head like rotisserie chickens for the past while.  One of them is outright stated, one is far more implied, but I am gnawing on them, fascinated by them, desperately needing to write meta about them so I can get all my thoughts down.

Now, below the cut are two things I either learned or realized while watching the retrospective.  That means that there are spoilers for said retrospective.  If you’re a fan of NYbN and want to read this, I seriously urge you to go and sign up for the Patreon and watch the retrospective first!  I do not want to make people feel like the information below the cut is in any way a replacement for the massive amount of information you get from that.  It’s two things.  Essentially a taster for the feast that lies one Patreon subscription away.

Cool?  Cool.  Let’s get into this.

Okay, let’s start with what may be my favorite revelation from the retrospective, that makes such sense once you know it:

Isaac’s hoarde is people.

This is such a cool concept for a Tzimisce!  There are so many ways it can be fucked up, and so many ways it forces the player and the character to act as a team player far more than the Tzimisce might be wont to do otherwise.  It is simultaneously monstrous and an enormous weakness, and that is such a great way to set up a character.

It also recontextualizes so many of his actions once you realize this.  It not only plays into his position as running a protection racket and craving prey that need things from him, but his particular attachments to Michal and Angela make so much more sense.  They were real life colleagues and the closest things he had to friends, who then became the first people in his hoarde.  His fierce protectiveness of them also makes so much sense in this context, as people messing with Michael or Angela are people messing with what is HIS. 

Particularly after finding out that he’s more or less incapable of feeling most human emotions, I find it super fascinating that his Beast probably feels far more than Issac would on his own.  That possessiveness his Beast has is possibly the closest he’s ever felt to real love or friendship (all twisted by wanting to own the people his Beast decides to latch onto, adding a real layer of horror to all his relationships), which makes Isaac the inverse to a lot of Kindred: his Beast almost makes him more human, giving him more of a sense of human emotions and attachments than he might have ever had otherwise.

That puts him in a really unique position: he is particularly weak to social needs.  And nowhere is it more obvious than with his coterie.  The second they were all paired off by Richter, Isaac essentially looked at these three other vampires and decided that they were now part of his hoarde.  I once said Serif was the first of them to really embrace being a coterie, but she wasn’t.  Isaac was, just in far more subtle ways.  Despite Fuego having a car, he insists on having Michael drive the coterie as a group; he even has Michael get the minivan especially to accommodate his coterie.  He invites them to his house quite quickly.  Many Tzimisce never invite people to their houses, because they don’t want people touching their things or messing with them.  But of course Isaac invited them over: his hoarde needs to be in his house, so they each now have rooms he’s laid aside for them.  He logically knows that, as Kindred, he can’t just force them to stay with him (although he’d try it), so he needs them to want it.  He has to be an actual friend to them to get his hoarde to stick around. 

And that, interestingly, adds another layer to Rey’s betrayal in the finale.  Because not only is Isaac pissed that he almost sold them out to the Camarilla, but he is suddenly in danger of losing a part of his hoarde.  He may find Rey to be irritating almost constantly, but Rey is also his, and Rey wanting to leave them for the Camarilla?

Unacceptable.  Isaac immediately tries to convince Rey that the Camarilla would never take him, or even if they did, they’d never let him forget what he was.  And this isn’t even necessarily a lie.  Isaac is a master of using limited truths to get what he wants; he rarely outright lies, particularly to his coterie.  He simply deploys limited facts in the best configuration to get them to decide to play things his way.

And this is where we get to my second revelation, not outright stated, but more observed throughout the retrospective: Aabria and Alex made incredibly similar characters.  Isaac and Fuego are both both overtly and far more subtely manipulators.  They are both inherently social, both need people to function.  And they are both very territorial when it comes to getting and keeping the people they’ve chosen.

We’ve already talked about Isaac’s need for other people, but Fuego’s is all about how she was built.  Aabria explained that she was an exploration of soft power.  Aabria looked at how many people looked at the Ventrue as craving power and interpreted in a very patriarchal ‘I���m going to be the boss’ way, so she decided to explore ultra-femininity and subtle power.  She was a community organizer, bound to others and to the network of  a community since she was a child.  She gets her control through getting others to give her what she wants by convincing them it was their idea in the first place.  Fuego is built to be the power behind the throne, but that requires that another ass be seated in that chair.  So she needs people nearly as much as Isaac does, but because it’s less of a compulsion for her (leaving aside the revelations about Fuego and blood bonds, because THAT is a whole different discussion), she’s able to be more clear-headed about it. 

I loved learning how quickly Fuego clocked what Isaac was about and started feeding into it.  I took it for granted that Fuego’s lack of knowledge about Kindred society was genuine, but I now we know it at least in part was an act.  Certainly, she has genuine gaps in her understanding, but I she exaggerated her ignorance, because playing young and dumb is a great way to seem non-threatening, and to assess people around her without letting them know.

And knowing that, you can see her trying to figure Isaac out from the jump.  When he offers them a ride, despite her explicitly telling him she has a car, she immediately asks if she owes him something.  She phrases it like she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but Fuego clearly knows about boons.  She’s trying to figure out if he’s boon-fishing by this car-ride, and she’s trying to figure out how honest he’ll be if he thinks no one has any knowledge but him.

And in that scene a few important things happen.  Isaac explains Boons without using the word, but at least gives them a broad—and more importantly accurate—portrayal of what would and wouldn’t incur a boon.  He also makes clear that this is just on his way.  It’s practical.

And that gives Fuego a lot to chew on.  Isaac is trustworthy, at least to an extent.  But if he’s not after boons, he has to be after something else.  And then he offers them rooms at his place (despite both Rey and Fuego actually having really nice places of their own).  And then he keeps offering them accurate information, but no more than they ask for.  He keeps trying to lure them to stick around.

And she’s got him clocked, at least sort of: he wants them to be around him.  And more specifically, he wants they themselves, rather than anything they have or could bring him.  She figures out Isaac wants to be the guy with the knowledge first, and keeps on with the ignorant-baby-Kindred act.  I’m not sure if she’s also realized his far more base need to have them around him as often as possible, but she has to suspect something like it.  Even by their first big argument, her punishment for Isaac being an asshole about her murdering a security guard is to choose to walk home, to choose to not only refuse a ride from him, but to absent herself from his presence.

I seriously hope that season 3 does someday happen, because I desperately want to see how Isaac and Fuego’s relationship evolves.  I want Isaac to finally lose his cool and try to dominate his ‘friends’ into not leaving him.  I want Fuego to finally drop the ignorant act and let him know exactly what she knows and how long she’s known it.  I want them to be forced to lay their cards on the table, to get into a situation where they finally see one another without the masks. 

It’s hard to say how that would work out. 

They could fall apart.  They’re both so poisonous.  Isaac’s need to keep the coterie around is so extreme it’s forever threatening to spill over into dangerous and toxic territory.  Fuego has to be secretly in control and gets furious when she either loses power or is forced to confront how low down the totem-pole she really is.  They could so easily be oil and water once they finally see one another as they truly are and understand the depths to which each would sink for what they want.

Or they could get closer.  The level of respect that they might be able to develop if they ever saw eye to eye could make them a terrifyingly adept duo.  If game finally recognized game, and they both understood how well they played the exact same field, they might be able to get over their differences and find ways to work around their mutual issues of pride and control to be a power to rival anything in the Bronx.

Hell, even a four-way mutual blood bond seems entirely possible with the mess of ugly co-dependency and family issues swimming around the Minivanarchs.  Isaac explicitly wanted everyone blood bonded to him, because that was a way to get them them to want to stay with him without ever having to force the issue.  Fuego has complicated addiction-flavored relationships with blood bonds, and has a need for community.  Rey might bind himself to everyone either to protect them or as a way to get them to accept him again, if he decided to go that route.  And Serif is made of endless family issues, craving a true connection not poisoned the way her connection to Argus and her mother is.  And if anyone could make Isaac blood bond himself to the group, it would be a fully-informed Fuego knowing how much he needed them all to stick together.

It could be glorious.  It could be terrible.  It would probably be the prettiest trainwreck of four needy assholes needing one another to death you’d ever seen.  And I hope that someday I get to see how it plays out.

[correct-hermitcraft-quotes]

Zedaph: If you could get electrocuted anywhere, where would you want to get electrocuted?

Tango, with way too much confidence: Eyelids.

[blackbatcass]

listen I know it’s kind of corny and inaccurate to act like every single person in the dc universe knows each other and is besties but it IS endlessly funny to me to follow the web of connections and see how many degrees removed from each other everyone is.

like look at the arrowfam okay. ollie and dinah are together, ollie is homoerotic best friends with hal, dinah is homoerotic best friends with babs. roy is dating dick, has a kid with jade, and is basically an adoptive father to both grant emerson and rose wilson. connor is dating kyle and is constantly followed around by eddie fyers. mia is friends with a lot of the second gen teen titans kids, had an on-again-off-again thing going on with steph for a while, and is currently dating sienna. emiko is besties with courtney and some of the other recent teen titans. sin has a small army of protective aunts from the birds of prey. the real question is how far does it go before ollie puts a cap on the number of people who are invited to family brunch on sundays

[tj-crochets]

Hey y'all! I learned a valuable lesson, which is that if I push through an allergy migraine so I can go to my mom's birthday picnic (even though it's outside in pollen season) what it gets me is Long Migraine Long Migraine and I are not friends. If I have not returned your message, I apologize, but the combo of Long Migraine and work still being more complicated than usual for IT reasons has eaten all my words spoons (and most of my crafting spoons) In an unrelated topic, please send me the names of your favorite kinds of food that are like "filling wrapped in dough" I have a plushie construction idea but idk which thing exactly I want to make yet I want to look at some shapes

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

As someone who watched last night’s episode, you had the right idea to stop.

Why’s it so bad

Because Tim Minear is a power-drunk hack.

[fluffydeoxys]

the urge to talk about OCs unfiltered superseded by various degrees of shame and the overwhelming internal voice of booooo be quiet (throws tomato)

[scooterpengie]

I finished Succession like 3 weeks ago and I have thought of nothing else since, what an amazing show 😭😭 go watch it if you haven't!!!

I wanna use this show to practise my colouring, like I tried to make these scenes look really colourful but I'm not sure I like how they turned out 😐

[mildcicada]

[icewindandboringhorror]

recent lounging babey images

[thebirdandhersong]

alas babes I literally cannot defend this man's name anymore except in the name of ignorance which. you can only claim ignorance for so long

[starbuck]

with respect to myself, this whole “i need to wait till i’m out of school to date,” “i need to wait till i’m more historically, politically, and culturally educated to date” is all bullshit. it’s the top surgery. that’s the holdup. they chop these tits off and i’m ready to go.

[pussymasterdooku]

my beloved imac from 2014 with a cracked screen that i conned my dad into giving me so i had a computer on which to do stupid freelancer shit for him but use primarily for personal use (file storage, use appletv to play streaming sites on our actual tv, play sims) seems to be……engaging in behaviors that for lack of a better way to put this best resemble when my elderly cat started having seizures after a hard summer of kidney problems and we had to be like. oh it’s the end the end? obviously less emotional than that but. you know. she’s had a long good life and maybe it’s her time. that’s okay. all things end. anyway. all this to say we are trying to coax her into not just waking up again but pretty please just giving me two files that are the backbone of the recurring stupid freelancer shit i do every month. please baby i have hand problems i can’t build those templates again. please.………

[loveletterworm]

(homestuck specifically does not count here because its too popular and would break the intent of this question. I dont care if you read homestuck. Pretend it doesn't exist for the purposes of this question)

[cutearose]

working on a bunch of my christmas crafts at the same time!! I dont think its more efficient than finishing individual items but its more exciting for my brain and maybe even better for my wrists since I’m alternating between very different motions

[starzwithapen]

I need to go to bed but I'm thinking too hard about how Viva's behaviour as leader to the putt putt trolls contrasts w Poppy's as queen in trolls world tour

[teenagefeeling]

"social skills are something you can work on learning and it will help with social anxiety!" this is true, but are you saying it because you want to help or are you saying it to shame people? because not everyone is gonna always have amazing social skills, even people who don't normally struggle have bad days. holding people to such a high standard and expecting everyone to be able to be at 100% all the time not only isn't fair, but imo isn't a healthy mindset because you're also putting that pressure on yourself.

yes, social skills can be learned. but for a lot of us, they're really hard to learn and even harder to put into practice. sometimes when someone has poor social skills it's not just because they don't know any better, there are other factors at play making things more difficult. i think we should all learn to be a little more patient with each other and get comfortable with the idea that different people might have different methods of communication, and sometimes you're gonna have to be the one who adjusts for someone else (whether that involves learning stronger social skills or being patient with someone who isn't there yet)

communication is hard to get right, and it's impossible for anyone to get it right all the time. it's okay if you stutter while speaking or can't ask for ketchup at a restaurant or whatever. it's okay. you will get there with practice. not being able to do it overnight is okay. it's a long process to get comfortable with these things. not everyone is always going to be patient with you, but that's their problem, not yours. be proud of yourself for the small victories and don't let demanding assholes online convince you that you aren't good enough as you are.