#I think of her as a separate character and then whatever sona I make for the game is someone else | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fatebreaking-a · 5 years ago

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☀️

I like how this is literally indecipherable on desktop, so I had to go onto my phone (where it was still indecipherable) and then open it in safari to figure out which one this was.

☀ What’s your rp pet peeve?

It’s this one and not the other one right above it that also looks like a sun.

Emoticons, man.

Well, that was fun and all but- rp pet peeves. Stuff under the cut. Pour one out for the entire community, because I’m about to take a pound of flesh from everyone.

There’s a lot of stuff in here that boils down to just being a good writing partner and all that, trying to advance the action in a natural way, and so on… and I think a lot of it can boil down to either a lack of awareness or a lack of experience. People get better at writing by writing, so I find it hard to really be frustrated and stay frustrated by someone who falls into some of these pitfalls. So you’ll notice I don’t really target things that have to do with writing skill as much as I target ‘attitude’ and ‘conscientiousness’. There is a lot that bothers me though, so here’s a short list.

Criticizing the way other people have fun. This is a big one. What this boils down to is conversations about how “this ship isn’t realistic” or “your ideals on writing are dumb” or “you take writing too seriously/not seriously enough.” I’ve seen all of these. And I used to know someone on a forum-based RP site that would actively go out of her way to criticize that people would include a lot of introspection in scenes that were fast paced. For instance, using poetic language, or talking about how they’re feeling, what the situation was, “he felt like he was up against the tide, that his heart was being torn in two, a cut made deeper with every clash of their blades” - stuff like that. She hated it. And she made sure everyone knew that she did not approve of how much they were writing, because it was ‘not realistic’. And yes, there is definite merit to the claim that people do not have time to introspect about their entire lives and their relationship to their allies and enemies between sword swings... But so what. I don’t think it’s wrong to advocate for shorter, simpler posts with less descriptive text, and to manage in 200 words instead of 600. That’s great. Simplicity has value, being concise is great, ‘brevity is the soul of wit’, whatever. But the problem, the problem was that she would criticize others for writing in a way that they enjoyed. No one got on her case for writing less, but she was so grating on this point that eventually people just did not want to be around her.

It was something I’ve experienced even here. Finding the balance between “writing to improve your ability to write” and “writing just to have fun” are two separate matters. People forget that individuals exist from both camps, and I have known people (multiple) who say ‘this is important to me, I’m growing my skills using RP as a medium’ but fail to empathize and recognize that not everyone has the same viewpoint. Caring about things that make you feel something over technically good and well executed writing does not make you a problem.

And as a big follow up, I find that this is a big issue in life in general. I think that people often forget how much time it took them to learn a certain thing, recognize their own investment, or recognize the disparity between their own idea of ‘common knowledge’ vs actually common knowledge. When I joined the community, I did not know what private, selective, independent, mun, muse, or mutuals meant. For someone who’s brand new, these are terms that can be hard to decipher. And it’s the similar with ships - I think that people forget that not everyone who comes to RP is from a writing background. Some of them may just have enjoyed reading fanfiction, or may have enjoyed their favorite bot lane duo, or they have a main and their partner has a main and they like the aesthetic. So long as it’s not inherently problematic (incest, pedophilia), it’s cruel to degrade someone and call everything that doesn’t make perfect sense a ‘crackship’. Fanart also has a big role to play in this. Do I personally like Sona with Ka/yn, Yas, Sy/las, Jh/in, or Dra/ven? No, I don’t. I don’t, but equally, it’s not right for me to get in someone’s face for liking it. If you love MF/Sona because it’s a fuckin’ sick classic wombo combo bot lane... that’s cool, more power to you. I wish people would ease up and remember to just let people have their fun. There’s a Jh/in that follows me, who politely asked if I shipped it and I said no, and then there was no hard feelings at all. And that is ideal for me. Really.

T h e f t.

And being ultra conscious of it. I am in a very unfortunate circumstance that many of my Sona hcs are very similar to another blog in the space. I found that out by accident, and we reached similar (but also different!) conclusions. But now I am terribly terrified of ever speaking to them, because gods above I want to lift all my duplicates into the air, kiss them, and scream about them... but I don’t want anyone to feel anxious that I’m copying them. It’s also why until about a week ago, I only followed one other Sona blog ever - written by one of my very, very close friends. I never want people to feel like I’m stealing from them, but I also want my duplicates to feel comfortable on my blog! I want them to feel okay about reblogging art of their characters if they like it or talking to me about things... And I’ve put in a lot of effort to be very divergent with my portrayals, but I still ended up in this situation. I won’t name names ( and I really hope that no one bothers that other Sona, because she’s a genuine sweetheart and deserves love and appreciation ), b ut... This is a big issue for me.

And it’s exacerbated by the fact that some people are lazy as fuck and actually just straight up steal ideas. It’s not ‘inspired by’, which I usually take care to do, giving proper credits or speaking about where I got information from or from whom or that it is on some level almost collaborative (because this is a collaborative space where we interact with each other, but that’s another topic). But I mean some people just recklessly steal and because we all have anxiety (TM), the line between coincidence, inspiration, and theft blurs. Understand that on some level, plagarism is an ethical dilemma, and I exist in the camp that says “hey man that’s cool come talk to me” - but I can exist in that camp because I insist on a very divergent interpretation that is almost ‘theft-proof’. I do not think any other Sona blog will ever have this combination of headcanons: “is a construct inspired by a house spirit, made up of one part crashed titan goddess, three parts demons, and each demon is represented by one of the strings of the instrument, which by the way shattered because bad reasons”. But if you’re not me, it’s hard to... stay loose about it.

And it’s hard to not get jealous.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE. Alright I wrote down a list when I actually got this ask, so let’s run off that. ( Yuki, you fuck, you’re not done? Fuck no I’m not done. ) These next ones are big for me.

MISREPRESENTING YOUR WANTS / YOURSELF

what does that mean, you ask me. It means this. It means pretending to be interested in ideas or interactions, even if you’re not interested. I do not ever want to be in the situation where I am happily chugging along, talking about a dynamic, and then find out that the other person isn’t as interested.

It’s fine to be mellow about it dude. I would rather know that you’re like... just okay on it all. I don’t want you to be polite and ‘spare my feelings’ and force yourself.

I want you to have fun. Have fun. God just have fun, you know? Please. There are a ton of interactions I’m “just okay” with, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I can be just okay with stuff and it’s fine. Not everything needs to click instantly but like...

Only showing interest to appeal to me or spare my feelings kinda sucks. It doesn’t last forever. It feels really bad. And eventually when things fall apart, it feels even worse. Like oh you really just did not care that much. Or you didn’t enjoy writing with me? Or what is it? See: jealousy/anxiety. Just be honest.

I think you especially have seen this with me, but I have a penchant for just being sincere and honest about how I feel about things. At least a little bit.

Don’t share things people tell you in confidence.

Fucking duh but it needs to be stated. Sometimes people gotta vent. It happens. And I get that ‘talking behind someone’s back’ is not great, but expressing frustration is a real thing that has real value. And then finding out that those things were shared. If I didn’t bring it up with them myself, I didn’t want them to know. Duh. I’m not talking to be catty but because I’m upset. S h i t. Some of the drama that I’ve seen happen from others doing this (and not to me, but in various cases) was entirely unavoidable. I’ve seen so many variants of this. It’s dumb dude. It’s dumb.

Hard vs Soft statements (Stating opinions as facts)

This is another one that gets me. I come from a world where we write, ‘Sona tries to’ and so on to others. Tumblr as a whole doesn’t seem to conceptually engage with the idea of ‘interrupting actions’ and accepting that interactions are a little malleable. And it in turn reflects how others speak about characters.

I never see, “I think Sona is”, I see “Sona is.” This is such a minor little thing, and I’ve come to accept that it’s part of the culture, but it can be terribly frustrating when others speak about your characters. I often say things like “I see Sona as” or “Because of xyz, Ori/anna would probably-” etc. But that isn’t something that I see here from some people. I know that I do this a lot less these days, in part because I have acclimated to the culture.

Incidentally, there are some joke versions of this that are also frustrating. People can really think they’re being funny, but end up just shutting you out of the conversation entirely when they say ‘No’. I might be a little too sensitive to this though, in that I often disengage from conversations because “it’s not really about my interpretation, so it’s better if I not say anything because it’s not relevant and doesn’t contribute.”

Really, I’m just a weenie baby, but I know when someone’s being rude vs when it’s just my own anxieties. I don’t expect everyone to have unshakable confidence, I also don’t expect that everyone be quivering in their boots. Some people can be really, really dismissive and it’s kind of not so great because it comes along with them otherwise being pretty neat.

Last one: Misrepresentation of data / using a ‘preponderance of evidence’ when there really isn’t that much.

How do I even put this.

CONJECTURE IS NOT FACT.

Phew. Okay that’s done. That right there is a big problem (and in combination with the pet peeve before that, it gets worse.)

Something to understand is that sometimes there is no good reason to pipe up to correct someone. Often, people are having a visceral, gut reaction and it’s very emotional. Criticizing that ignores the intent (that they’re frustrated), so it’s often a good idea to let it be.

But that doesn’t stop me from seeing that facts are poorly stated or misrepresented. The community likes to talk about league so I see it in OOC posts, and I also see claims that are just wrong. They’re misstated, exaggerated, or phrased in such a way that you could accept them - except one fact check will prove otherwise. But again, why get in someone’s face when they’re frustrated?

But this leads to some people feeling ‘complicit acceptance’. Which is in itself another problem that I won’t get into.

I as a person tend to be pretty rigorous. If I see facts and I can check them with a quick google search, I often do - especially League. It’s so easy to check a champion’s win rate or popularity. Other people do not always exercise this rigor.

“Alright fuckface but that’s talking about league and not rp.”

Yeah okay you make a fair and valid point, except for the part where you missed bullet points 2-4. I’m more talking about the general attitude people have but let’s talk specifically more about RP.

There’s content. A lot of content. And most of it is really vague, because that’s how R I O T G A M E S does things. We still can’t get a straight answer on whether Sona’s adopted mom, Lestara, is alive or not. H u h?

And this often leads to us making connections and conclusions based on the limited data we have. We’re extrapolating, taking what we know and trying to figure out something new.

Except when we get a new data set, sometimes our extrapolations don’t work anymore.

Except we just spent three months world building around our guesses ( because that’s what they are)

Oops I’m divergent now.

That happens. A lot. My entire blog was evidence of that, where I made extreme guesses and then accidentally got validated as Demacia went full grimdark. But it even happened last year, when suddenly we gained new information! Mage registration! That’s a thing! And it changes how we perceive things.

And you may be thinking, ‘ok fine but what does that have to do with misrepresentation’ and it has this to do with it. People will make conclusions based on their own view, then solidify these conclusions as ‘fact’.

For example, I wrote a small article on how “magical sight was not a reasonable power to have” and then soon after, Mageseekers appeared. Oops. Oops.

And these extrapolations get treated as though they are really fact. The line between what is ‘real’ and what is ‘assumed’ blurs. The truth is this. Unless it’s directly and unambiguously stated, it’s basically not fact. “But we can conclude-” I know. And then we’ll get new information and that’ll change. Ideas in this fandom are like balloons, you need to tie them down with text evidence or they’ll just float away before you even know it. I can talk about how Sona is a literal genius level intellect all day, and tomorrow I can be proven wrong by one little shift or clarification in the lore. ‘Within months’ - okay how many months? Fifteen months? Three months? Unknown.

And this leads me to preponderance of ‘evidence’. This one is long because it bothers me a bunch.

‘Preponderance of evidence’ (quotes required) is basically the situation in which someone goes and tells me:

“Listen buddy, I have these seven pieces of evidence, so I can reasonably conclude that [x] is true.” And that’s solid conjecture and extrapolation and I accept that.

Except that maybe you seven pieces of evidence aren’t all solid pieces of evidence.

Oh.

Oh no.

And that’s happened. I have seen evidence pieces one, two, four, and six all be good. And pieces three, five, and seven are a stretch at best.

But because they have so many pieces of evidence, it’s hard to critique back. Because they still do have four good pieces of evidence!

But the strength of the conclusion increases with more accurate and valid data points, and if your data points aren’t-

And that’s the rub, basically. Sometimes I see people fit evidence to their conclusion without even realizing it. Some of the most intelligent, rigorous, and well-versed writers on this site I’ve seen do it.

And it sucks.

And it’s a peeve because here’s the truth.

The truth after all this talk is this very important fact.

I don’t say anything about these things to people because I don’t want to ruin anyone’s fun or engagement.

People make mistakes and say many things because they are passionate about what they’re talking about. Often that’s the case. And harmless conjecture misunderstandings are not the end of the world because this is not academia.

except that one time I wrote a writeup on how Aphe/lios isn’t mute but whatever.

And so while I have said all these things and have a lot of these feelings, I also think there’s no point to saying most of them directly to the person that bugs me. What good will it do? To someone who is reacting with their emotions and just wants to get their frustration out, or is speaking passionately about something... Just let it go.

And so often I let it go, even if I disagree. I have an opinion, but I don’t go out and toss it back in your face. I just get mad quietly and grump about it.

And that’s why I end up being a very ‘stay in my lane’ person.

The end.

If you read all the way through this, I’ll give you a cookie tbh. Many cookies. This is almost 3000 words and 7 pages.

#yuhl #ooc #long post tw #//3k words I'm sorry dash.

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the-transfox · 5 years ago

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A “Quick” History

I’m gonna put a “keep reading” thing so I don’t clog anyone’s dash or anything, depending on how long this gets. This is basically just a quick background info on my history regarding my gender and related topics.

I’ve never really liked being feminine. Hated dresses, hated makeup, hated showing any amount of my skin, overall just... the entire idea was not my thing. The most feminine thing about me for a long time was my long hair - before I cut it, it had grown down to being an inch or two past my hips. I felt kind of... pressured, to be more feminine at times. I can only recall 2 times I wore a dress - and both times were for other people, and not me, and both times I was intensely uncomfortable and wanted to get out of it immediately. Not that everything about me is intensely anti-feminine - more recently, sometime during the time I was genderfluid (I’ll get to that in a bit), I got black lipstick. I wanted it for the aesthetic - and I only wore it once, and, again, for another person. It’s just sitting around my desk area now, waiting to be used, but never will again as far as I’m concerned. I’ve always been more of a tomboy.

When I was younger, I used to do these kind of IRL roleplay things with one of my best friends at the time. It was edgy shit, where we’d both pretend to be creepy pasta characters and the like and had this whole storyline going on and all sorts of made up drama with the characters. An... overwhelming majority of the characters I chose to act out and represent at the time were all males. I’ve always loved writing males and acting like a male - females were just... hard, for some reason. Always have been, really, even though I am biologically female. One of my favorites to do was the Jeff the Killer, obviously. He was my default, and it just felt natural, almost. It was more fun to do male characters. Hell, my first OC I ever made was a male. It makes a lot more sense now to me, looking back on it. In some cases, in more recent years, I’ve felt like I needed to go with making the character female. And I do have a lot of female OCs, don’t get me wrong. Anyway, with characters such as Coral (one of my sonas; used her often in an IRL roleplay after the former friend moved away and I moved on with another best friend) I felt like I needed to make her female, to... match my friend’s sona, Frost. I wish I hadn’t, now, but whatever. The past is in the past.

Speaking of the past, I’m a believer of past lives. And 99.9% of them are all male. Out of all of my past lives, I can only recall 2 humanoid (saying this because one was an anthro rat) lives that had female genders, and one more that was female though I don’t count because it was the life of a bengal tiger and bengal tigers don’t exactly go by pronouns so there wasn’t a whole lot of gender identity going on there in the first place. It feels natural to have male past lives, and a little... off, to have female ones. Every time I trigger a memory of a male past life, think about it, or talk about it, I used to only subconsciously refer to myself as male - though it felt great. It felt normal. My dumb fucking ass didn’t get a clue that this meant anything about my current gender identity until recently.

Sometime during my phase where I played Transformice more often, I made a separate account where I listed my gender as “male”, as an... experiment, of sorts. Wanted to see what it was like when other people thought I was a guy. I only really used the account for a single day, the day I made it, though that was enough time for me to meet people and interact. I absolutely loved it, though it didn’t occur to me afterwards for a long, long time to even think about what that meant. An embarrassing amount of time, honestly. I found my gender identity and it smacked me in the face and my response had been just “Cool, I’mma go back to being called she/her now”. Big dumbass energy, right here

Sometime in the summer/no later than early autumn of 2019 (my sense of time is... not the best, honestly) I considered becoming genderfluid. After all, I’d started to realize maybe it wasn’t so bad to go by male pronouns. Considered it a test run, of sorts. It was still primarily she/her, but online I gave people the option to call me he/him. Not many people did, but I liked the idea. It made the whole ‘internal male pronouns and identity during past lives shit’ make more sense to me at the time. In early December of 2019, I had the realization. The realization that I actually preferred male pronouns, and the idea of being male was... a lot better, than being female, or even a mix of both. It felt like me. Like it fit. My dumb ass finally figured it out, and luckily the genderfluid thing didn’t drag on for years. Since the switch to male pronouns its still a rare occurrence anybody’s actually used my new pronouns and I’ve heard it (I’ve come out to everyone I know online, though only friends in real life), though one time I was called ‘he’ irl in front of me and it made me feel great. Like a small “yeah... yeah, that’s me.” Not everyone has been completely accepting (like the person I consider my best friend - she’d responded kind of... oddly, when I came out, and said she’d been confused, and openly said that biological sex and gender are the same thing today) but I don’t really care all that much. They’ll learn to accept it if they want to keep me as a friend - or at least tolerate it. If they can’t, then I can’t go through the trouble of keeping them as a friend. One of my friends has been so supportive and it’s been delightful.

Backtracking a little, I realize I forgot to mention the fact that I hate my body. It’s not mine - or at least, it’s not one I want. Every time I think about my past lives I want to go back and have that body again. I want to be a skeleton monster again. I want to be a dragon again. I don’t want to be a weak, pathetic, human female who’s body won’t even gain weight no matter how much I eat or try, and whose throat is actively trying to tear holes in itself. And I’ve never been satisfied with the fact that its female. On a related note, I have the fear of penetration - it’s just... wrong, for anything to go inside of me down there. It should be the opposite. I miss having a cock - I wouldn’t have to worry about this anymore. Wouldn’t have to worry about something going inside of me, or having to be expected to push a fucking disgusting baby out of me. It’s frustrating.

I also feel like I realized I was transgender too late to be valid. I’ve seen so many stories (like Sam Collins) where they realized when they were tiny kids, and... what if that’s what it should be like? What if I’m wrong? What if you’re supposed to know before you’re even a teenager? So many people have realized before then, though some have realized later, and some say you can realize at any age. I just... don’t know. Anyway, that’s about it, I think - if I forgot anything, I’ll make another thing to tack onto this. Feel free to ask me questions.

#transgender #trans #transman #trans man #ftm

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salavante · 6 years ago

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Odwain! The goodest.

Wow, featuring one of the more flattering drawings I’ve done of Odwain. Like last time, I’ll post all these guys separately and then do all the headshots in a masterpost. In the meantime buckle up for...a lot. (Thank you for giving me my favorite character.)

Full Name: Odwain Novak. In Ben Yit’gab, the Bennai language, his first name would be Oediwen, and it’s what his dad called him. His mother calls him Oddy and he does not like it.

Gender and Sexuality: Male and Bisexual

Pronouns: He/him

Ethnicity/Species: Odwain is a Ben-Aleth, a Human-Bennai hybrid, also called a mosshead if you’re in coarse company. His human mother Blanche Novak is mixed race. Odwain’s maternal grandfather came directly from Earth, Poland specifically, during one of the several accidental migrations of humans coming from Earth to The Road. His maternal grandmother is from a previous wave who were already settled on The Road by that time, but the family can trace her ancestry back to West Africa. Odwain’s father, Ashatov Novak, was a full-blooded Bennai, a plant-based halfling race. Ashatov took his wife’s last name.

Birthplace and Birthdate: Thinking about this trips me out man. Odwain was born in 1946, sometime in the summer, probably July or August, in Septor Secundis, a coastal, metropolitan city and the seat of The Road’s government. He’s 27 during his first adventure and right now, in Godslaughter, he is 69 (what the FUCK). He will live maybe 20 or 30 years longer than your average human, and is in better physical shape than a human would be at 69. He’s more like late 40’s or early 50’s.

Guilty Pleasures: A lot, probably - Odwain has just a bit of hedonistic streak just because he feels miserable so much of the time that he needs to feel good somehow. He smokes cigarettes for much of his life (but eventually quits), is a casual cannabis smoker and binge eats really truly terrible junk food (and has a bit of a gut because of it, but because he’s kind of lanky otherwise, he’s just kind of gourd-shaped). He likes beer, but doesn’t drink hard liqour all that often because he gets astronomically bad hangovers. Despite having a generally weak stomach, Odwain really likes frightfully spicy food, and his kids’ obligatory dad-gifts for him are probably hot sauces. When he’s not pounding down garbage, his favorite kind of cuisine is Thai. Not a guilty pleasure per say, but he also loves all things that have to do with insects, and when he and Rusty have a house together, Odwain takes up gardening as a hobby and plants an expansive garden of flora that are attractive to bees. (A Nice Thing: Odwain plants this garden when Rusty is pregnant because he found his love of insects through his father’s garden as a child, and wanted to give his kids the same opportunity) Odwain also maintains an apiary from the time that he’s living in a warehouse in the desert, to when he’s living with a partner and beyond. When he learns how to make Hot Honey it’s over for all of us. He has a modest collection of novelty bee-themed things that he’s amassed over the years, but he is not guilty about asserting his love of bees/wasps, like, at all. He’s also a little kinky but I’m not going into that.

Phobias: All of Odwain’s fears are existential - what if I push everyone away, existing in society is anxiety inducing, what if I’m just a bad person and my existence is making everything more difficult for functional people, etc. Though he’s kind of a sad fellow and has ideated suicide, and came very, VERY close to trying to kill himself after he dropped out of college, he also fears growing old and dying. I think death is more digestible to him if it’s on his own terms, but even then, I think what coaxed him off the edge was fear. If anything ever happened to his chosen romantic partner or any of his kids, he’d be besides himself, and is kind of one severe trauma and emotional breakdown away from becoming a bee-themed supervillian.

What They Would Be Famous For: Odwain is notable at a certain point in his career for being a pioneer in AI programming, and also for designing, building and patenting an invention called the Hercules Rig, which is basically a beetle-wing inspired jetpack. You can see it here. He holds the patent very closely and only allows it to be reproduced for recreation, construction, emergency rescue operations, etc. Odwain has taken a very firm stance on not allowing the military or any paramilitary organization to get their hands on it, though it has not stopped them from making shitty knock-offs that he is constantly suing people about.

What They Would Get Arrested For: Breaking and entering. Exploding something he shouldn’t. Buying illegal hazardous materials. Doing something petty that bites him in the ass.

OC You Ship Them With: To be honest there are not a lot of other characters besides Rusty that I ship him with. Bitter college rivals, thrown back together as late twenty-somethings, becoming better people together and learning to express empathy and vulnerability…it’s good. The only other character that I really go yeah, that’s the good stuff, is Jake’s character Finnick, who is kind of Odwain’s weird BFF and fellow mad scientist type. I don’t think they’d have a super stable relationship, and I think it would most likely be a “we yelled at each other and had weird sex enough that we like each other now” kind of scenario. But I do think they would come to love each other and have each other’s back to the death. Him and Hemlock, my dirty swamp witch who’s only picture was devoured during the great tumblr purge, also make a pretty fun couple for similar reasons. Iona too, but I think they are too explosive of personalities to ever find a stable middle ground. I also think he would find certain people attractive (August, Hare, Ganzrig, Ifechi the man I have spoken of but once, Jonquil in certain scenarios) but may not put himself out there to pursue them.

Neither of us have ever posted any art of her but here’s a few headshots of Finnick I did awhile ago, because she really is my favorite romantic partner for Odwain aside from Rusty, and is the only other one that’s really relevant in our games.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Odwain is fairly physically fragile and to be honest I think that most people could kill him as long as they could get their hands on him - he’s very dexterous and has a lot of gadgets that let him get the upper hand, keep enemies at a distance or escape. He has a ranged fighting/add-spawn build so he is mostly out of direct harm unless he’s reeled in somehow. But uh, Odwain IS dead right now in Godslaughter, he died fighting an eldritch deity named Dreamer who sucked him into a nightmare dimension and flayed his soul out of his body. It’s ok though, as long as the party beats Dio, he’ll be fine. I didn’t cry you’re the one who’s crying.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Ok, so, first off HAHA Odwain canonically likes Transformers and collects them, which are a thing in circulation after the last human migration from earth in the 90’s. Imagine. Imagine your grown ass father with a genius level IQ and multiple patents collecting plastic robots. Him and Finnick have transformers sonas - ANYWAY, that aside, he doesn’t really read for pleasure, just information, and generally just puts on cable while he works for white noise (and in later years, whatever The Road’s TV streaming service is). Most of the media he consumes is incidental to him, but will get interested in strange things that pique his interest. He probably thinks true crime docs are neat and enjoys pulpy sci-fi stuff that he can complain about. Any documentary about bugs. He’d like Mystery Science Theatre if they had it around. He enjoys things that are the fun, good kind of “bad” and has a fairly high threshold for disturbing imagery.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Odwain is that guy who makes 20 minute long youtube videos lampooning movies for “not making sense”. If there’s anything that breaks his suspension of disbelief, his attention and tolerance disintegrates, even if it’s just one of those things that needs to happen to move the plot along. It doesn’t really matter what genre it is, though he is most hard on sci-fi and fantasy. There is a tipping point for him, however, where he starts enjoying the thrill of blasting something and circles back around to enjoying it.

Talents and/or Powers: Odwain is only a little bitty bit magical, and only because Bennai are the most magical race on The Road. He has latent magical ability that allows him to sense magical signatures and incorporate magic into technology, and maybe cast a low level spell if he tries really hard. If he was in a high fantasy setting, he’d be an enchanter. His staff (the big lightbulb thing I draw him with sometimes), the Hercules Rig, his Wasp Suite (robotic wasps with an AI and different spells loaded into them) and any other devilish, bug-based weapons and utility objects do his work for him.

Why Someone Might Love Them: Odwain’s a bit of a tough walnut to crack because I think that he shines in moments of sincerity and vulnerability, but he has to, well, get there. He’s capable of very great, thoughtful acts of selflessness and compassion, and deeply desires meaningful relationships with other people, but he gets insecure about how he expresses himself and can clam up. He’s passionate, emotional and expressive, but has been put down for being so, and was probably a very brilliant, curious child who was beaten down into a somber adult. I actually think that, at some point in his childhood, he was not entirely unlike Whitty in the way that he was eager to share things with people and explore the world around him, which is why Odwain feels very protective of his grandson. I think the most lovable thing about him is that when he’s at his best, nothing can stop him - he’s extremely intelligent, diligent, creative and innovative. He truly, deeply loves making things, and making them better, and when he’s not in a crash, creates prolifically. What he loves, he loves deeply and without compromise, which makes Rusty, a person that could also be said of, a good match for him. I also think his cattiness makes him very witty, he’s a genuinely funny guy who can engage in some really goofy shenanigans when he’s feeling up for it.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: Oh, lots of reasons. Odwain is an acquired taste to many, or just not to many’s taste at all. He is very petty, blunt and catty, and as a young man is extremely bitter and negative. You’d be very hard pressed to get a positive statement about anything out of him between the ages of 16-25. He’s very confrontational, can become very loud and intense if it’s something that he feels is important, and is not afraid to cut people out of his life if he feels that they aren’t good for him. Sometimes, he will end relationships/friendships prematurely because of this. Being such, he is heavily prone to self-inflicted isolation. He has no childhood friends, and only kept in touch with one person from college. He just cuts and runs. Odwain’s self-loathing runs very deep, which makes it hard for him to accept, or ask for, emotional support or affection. And that can be hard on the people around him who care about him. His executive dysfunction can also be abysmal, making it seem like perhaps he is messy or lazy, but he’s just kind of a mess himself, hah.

A weird non-psychological one but I think is enough to get someone’s hackles up is that Odwain doesn’t like animals very much unless they are insects, invertebrates, etc. He finds mammals loud, messy and needy, and that “I’m the only one in my house that is allowed to be all of those things”.

How They Change: As Odwain ages and gains a stable support network of friends, his edges soften and he learns how to ask for help more effectively. He also learns how to better choose his battles, and how to exercise the compassion that he knows he has, but has been too insecure to utilize. He manages his mental health better, but is never entirely free of it, because you never really are. Most importantly, I think, he learns how to forgive the people who deserve forgiveness, and give people second chances, accepting that people can change. Which means the same can be said for him, too.

Why You Love Them: I’ve talked about this before, somewhere, I’m sure. Odwain is one of those characters that has a very big slice of my personality, and has a lot of my more negative traits, though they are ones we’re both working on. My first session with Odwain was a scene where Odwain’s dad died after being ill for a very long time, and as it happens, it was on father’s day, on the first or second father’s day after MY dad died, after several brutal months fighting with the cancer that eventually killed him. I had to put down the dice, so to speak, and for a short time, thought that Odwain might actually be a character that I scrapped completely. He came too close to something very painful and personal. I don’t remember how, exactly, but the solution to this problem of mine was that if he’s getting close to me on his own, then I might as well just let him in on everything. I can genuinely say that doing that has changed the way that I empathize with my characters and how I make them, and that there is something I share with Odwain that I don’t have with many of my other characters. Also, I like bees.

#odwain #tyromedico

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marsixm · 6 years ago

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edit sorry this post is both long (if the readmore fails i am truly truly sorry) & longwinded im just reflecting and thinking; (another edit: u can probably just read the tl dr and get it)

anyway allow me to spin some very personally based theory here for a mo while i put off/warm my fingers up from the cold in preparation to email my therapist

so growing up i had, i think only, het ships, but i never quite had the ones you were (narratively speaking) “supposed to” have

in most media i recall when i was a kid, there were like, 2 diff structures of character romance plot arcs in media i consumed, there was the main lead and 2 best friends model, where thered be the star of the show who had outside romantic leads and the 2 best friends (who were always a boy and a girl) would have their secondary romance, OR there were ensemble shows where there was a more clear romance set up between the main boy and main girl, then side characters whod pair off in whatever ways ended up happening. in the first, see: hannah montana, the second, see: zoey 101. obv this isnt a hard rule and there were loads of exceptions but like, lets just say i tended not to care for the romances set up for the main girls in the trio models, or quite as hard for the main boy and girl in the ensembles, and in general if there was an obvious romance between two leads i either didnt care or outright hated it

basically i never liked the ships they set up for us in straight media, as a kid (namely, a girl) i liked being that “ew pink!” “i hate valentines day” sort of contrarian, but what i remember actually disliking was the predictability of it, because i clearly still shipped characters, so it wasnt /really/ that i hated romance, per se

looking back on it i think it was probably or at least to a degree more like that i hated the hetero expectation of it- i can nit pick down to more specific examples of why i disliked the main pairings (kataang, for example, i thought was weird bc katara acted like a mother/older sister figure to aang, and i didnt feel like there was romance between them at all except where it felt shoehorned in) - maybe it was also that i thought it made more sense for a main character to be with someone they clearly already spent a lot of time with and not some random new hot boy in town (i very distinctly remember shipping miley and oliver on hannah montana, and i believe that was the first time i ever read fanfiction @ age like... 11 lol) as is often the case w like these things.

theres another level to this though, which is that i notice i tended to ship characters who were more vaguely similar to each other, like, physically (ie, similar heights, or hair colors mainly) obviously this is funny now since my main pairing is johnlock which is such a physically different ship we can construct them from basic shapes and colors and theyre still recognizable as who they are, but i have some thoughts about this- but i think there might be two interesting things about this again in retrospect

first of all, this sounds silly ik, but shipping the vaguely similar ones as a child’s way of queering heterosexuality is an interesting concept and not that difficult, like, two boys are also vaguely similar to each other in a similar way a boy and a girl with the same hair color and height might be, which is something i thought of a while ago

the other way in which this is really interesting to me now, that i think might have been more actually pertinent to myself as a trans child, is that i think i shipped the characters i did in an attempt to morph the concept of boy and girl? to find the boy counterpart to every girl??? that second one makes more sense actually. anyway, i digress

2 start off i definitely had gender feelings starting from a very young age so i think these observations ring more true than just reflections, PERHAPS

so the first thing i remember shipping, ie wanting them to be together, thinking about it an inordinate amount of time outside watching the films, even imagining them eating ice cream together in their pjs (i was NINE DHFJGghfkg) was jack sparrow & elizabeth swan from potc (basically my franchise of choice as a kid bc i never read harry potter) now this doesnt quite fit the “visually similar” thing bc actually orlando bloom looks more like kiera knightly and is prob due to them like making out in one movie, but i think this works for the “shipping as gender expression” theory, because elizabeth swan dressed up as a boy, spent most of that movie wearing boy’s clothes, etc- meanwhile jack was a wacky pirate which like hello duh i’d want to be. so i wonder if beyond the fact that they kissed and flirted, there was something to this concept of me wanting two characters to be together, meant i wanted to marry together two conceptual things happening with two characters, or absorb the cool dude and the boyish girl characters into each other to make one whole archetype for myself? i likewise shipped aang and toph (toph who, normally doesnt really have anyone to be shipped with, since she likes sokka but he has a gf) who we all know is the VERY boyish girl character, so boyish im p sure her actually being a trans dude later in life is a p decently accepted headcanon (i dont actually delve into aatla fandom though so i can only hope)

another thing about this ship thing, is most of my ships had brown hair (like miley and oliver), just like i always have, and in certain cases the girl character would look a LOT like me (i also shipped logan and quinn on zoey 101, which to my surprise n delight actually came true later (although looking back im like... 11 yr old me is glad they made out a lot but adult me is like uhhh why were the kids on this show making out a lot? anyway thats another issue) and i def was a weirdo girl with glasses and long brown wavy hair) which sort of further fuels my feeling that this was an attempt by my brain to do 1 of 2 things, if my own involvement really was a greater motivating factor in this thing, 1. ship MYSELF with a boy (which is like def possible for my gay kinnie ass, but not quite my thesis here) or 2. morph these boy and girl counterparts by imagining them together, seeing them together, etc

for example, i realize now, when i was a kid i drew an avatar sona for myself and said sona looked an awful lot like how id imagine a katara/zuko fusion would be, and the fact that i shipped zutara (very hard lol) was what lead me down this thought path rn

i feel like even to me this concept sounds weird and far fetched but like, gem fusion made enough sense for someone to write with its clearly, usually, romantic implications and we all “get” that, so whom knows???

another thing ive noticed while writing this is for a good few of these ships you can argue the boys in them can be read gay, like jack sparrow and zuko and aang, which feels even more strongly like me trying to marry my gay boy feelings to my tomboy realities [thinking emoji]

the biggest reason i think this makes sense to me is because when i was 10 i became obsessed with the idea that this boy i was friends with and i were secretly twins separated at birth, like i was so into the concept that we looked alike, i like hoped and wished so hard for it to be true, i wished a christmas miracle would happen for fucking real and a magic door in my house would open and be his new room and itd all work out perfectly! and you might think this was a manifestation of my difficulties with my family and wishing to leave it, but in my dream world my parents were still my parents and he came to live with us- which makes me think the obsession of ME looking like this BOY was a manifestation of my gender feelings, which i think can maybe be traced to this concept of pairing a visually similar, possibly gay, brunette boy to every brunette and/or tomboyish girl

anyway. if you actually read all of this id love it if you lmk somehow (doesnt need to be a like) like this is clearly very long and strange but i hope it makes sense. i think i stop myself a lot from ever commenting on gender or theory or whatever but i am a living breathing trans person who has experienced things and i have opinions and i dont think im claiming anything destructive with this lol i think its not unusual to reflect on the way you interacted with the world as a gay/trans kid

also im obviously not saying that shipping straight things is somehow inherently queer, im not trying to retroactively claim something about straight ships, like, those two characters are still functionally straight, and i definitely also shipped probably all of them for normal shipping reasons (although, kid ones, so less “oh theres a lot of ACTUAL romantic subtext between these two” but rather “oh theyre friends and would be cute together!” (or like they kissed and i was like O: )) but im just trying to theorize about something its possible my tiny trans brain was trying to express- and who knows maybe im not the only one!

anyway i guess the TL;DR is: when i was a kid i had a lot of “unconventional” straight ships- i already observed that i eschewed the main canon pairings in kids media in what was probably my tiny baby brains rejection of hetero culture, but i also actively shipped side characters who looked like me, and also looked like each other (ie, both tall and brunette, a boy and girl counterpart of Each Other) OR characters who seemed to be a gayish boy and a tomboyish girl, and im theorizing that maybe the reason that was was my tiny trans brain wanting to gem fusion those two together because of my Gender Feelings and fuse the boy with the girl and this desire manifested in shipping therefore thinking about a lot these pairings of boy and girl counterparts

#please dont be weird about this post i hope its like understandable what im trying to think about here?#like i dont think its that weird to consider nor am i claiming anything bad or destructive about ppls lives n genders n whatever #purely an observation about myself and the way i consumed media ages like 8-12 #in reflection as a gay/trans adult and thinking about what those things might have potentially been expressing or something #i dont know any official queer theory stuff n i dont think that should stop me from thinking my own thoughts so here u go #also i am TRULY sorry if this readmore doesnt work

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nehapatel64 · 8 years ago

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From fringes to core of #KRPKAB episode 286

There is a lot I have been saying or wanting to say regarding everything that happened since Dev came to Bose house. Episode 286 was the one that inspired me to write a full-fledged meta in the first place. Since I would have to practically write a book if I covered Dev’s entire visit, I’m going to break apart this episode and branch out to past and future episodes where I see fit. It won’t cover everything I want to say, but it will take care of plenty.

Scene 1: Devakshi confrontation

The episode started with a volatile confrontation between Dev and Sonakshi, which was fairly true to their current characters. The conversation started with Sona’s noteworthy observation that, even though Dev is against Sona speaking ill about his mother, he knew all her words were about Ishwari. We have seen since the beginning of the leap that a part of Dev always knew that the reason Sona left the house was Ishwari, and that Sona was greatly suffering in that home. He has outwardly mentioned it to his mom in an earlier leap episode that Sona’s other option from leaving him was to suffer in Dixit house. However, both still manage to call bluff or sideline each other’s open confessions. Neither Dev nor Sonakshi see any chance of reconciliation or have any hopes that the other will understand their problem. Experience taught Sona that she should not expect Dev to be an understanding significant other, no matter how good he could be as a father or son. Sona leaving with such finality 7 years ago taught Dev that there was no chance she was going to take him back. It’s very easy to see why Sona left the house but more difficult to see why Dev never tried to get her back. Dev was so used to Sona’s unconditional love and understanding, and he took it for granted. This was the first time in Dev’s life that someone hadn’t put the obligation of everyone on him but rather made him her everything. She was a woman who Dev admired for her strength to achieve everything and face all difficulties. That’s why when the moment came that she realized she had tried way too hard and couldn’t take it anymore, Dev couldn’t understand why his wife had reached her maximum. (P.S @moredottedlines, I refrained so hard from inserting my stupid credit card reference here). On the eve of the break up, Dev begged her to forgive and forget, thinking it was the easiest thing to do. What is stuck in his mind is her response that she said she never could, that she threw her mangalsutra in the fire and said we are over. There was such finality in this moment that really attributes to why Dev didn’t go back for her and still blames her for giving up even now. I’m not saying that he couldn’t have tried. I just see what could have prevented him. We saw a flashback of the night after Sona left where Dev blamed both Ishwari and Sona for the demise of their relationship, and we were left wondering why Sona came into the picture then. The current leap episodes have given some more clarity to that. Fast-forwarding 7 years, we see that Dev is preventing Sona from speaking ill about Ishwari despite agreeing that both women, along with him, were to blame on different levels. Dev’s intention in telling Sona not to speak like that about his mother was not because he doesn’t know it, but because he feels others don’t have a right to say these things about his family. As we saw before with giving Vicky a job, Dev had a hard time accepting this new person into the rest of this blood related family. He loved her immensely, but couldn’t understand in what way her importance should extend to the family. The difference between then and now is Dev actually no longer has such an obligation to Sona, even if he was capable of involving her.

We also saw within this same conversation that Dev sacrificed his own reputation to save Saurabh and Ronita’s marriage, and that he couldn’t believe this wasn’t the same “obvious solution” that Sona had come to. This incident was proof that Dev doesn’t just channel his selflessness towards Ishwari or Dixits but for any loved one- even if it’s Saurabh. This got me thinking that Dev Dixit had the potential to excel in every role had their families been something better. He had no problem or bias in upholding individual relationships or loving Sona, but wasn’t able to maintain the very difficult ties that bound his separate relationships together. Now we see that, while Dev’s main concern is saving Saurabh, Sona’s concern was Dev should have told the truth. Sonakshi was always a strong (headstrong even), independent woman, but only started making a true showcase of this identity when being warm to unappreciative people killed her from within. She was someone who was used to excelling at whatever she tried and would do anything to achieve what she wants- whether it was being a perfect daughter, perfect nutritionist or perfect bahu. It’s important here that Dev pointed out that she’s putting a HUGE emphasis on Dev telling the “truth” without caring about the consequences on her brother. Dev has always been someone who would easily do this for his family, and old Sona would have accepted this too and understood it almost as well as Asha does. But this Sona has been disappointed and lied to so many times that the idea of anyone hiding anything angers her to the core. It doesn’t matter to her if Dev’s intentions were good or if Saurabh’s heart will be broken. She is tired of looking at good intention rather than good outcome. She is tired of seeing relationships being built on lies. It’s not just the pain of the past but also the seven years in between that have made her like this. As Dev likes to put it, she’s the obodro version of Dev Dixit. To Dev, that means someone who is curt, rude, hasty and doesn’t enjoy herself. To me, an obodro Dev is someone who has remaining bitterness from a plethora of struggles but still has the cleanest heart. The fact that Dev keeps using this term in a negative connotation is also an indicator to how he felt about himself before Sona entered his life. We know that Sona has brought Dev’s inner kindness and childishness to the surface. He’s aware that his personality changed for the better with Sona’s presence but can’t imagine why his absence in her life has reversed the process for her. Part of that could be because Sona is the one who said they are over. It’s hard to sympathize with someone when you think they made a completely conscious decision to take you out of their life. As I said earlier, Dev has started to understand in the last 7 years why Sona was so unhappy with the Dixit family. However, he fails to see why that means she couldn’t work it out with him. He wanted Sona to fight for their marriage, and she wanted him to fight for her. Dev is thinking, “I couldn’t change my family, but you let something like that break us.” Sona is thinking, “You couldn’t change your family and that was a huge thing that broke us.” Both of them have to pass an entirely new journey to learn why neither of those things is as easy as it seems. All these things are what lead Sona to the point of wanting honesty from Dev now even if at the expense of Saurabh’s marriage. This emphasis on brutal honestly is something Sona has passed on to Soha too. Soha has repeated many time that she never lies, and that might actually be one reason why Sona trusts her to be in some right state of mind at any given time.

Scene 2: Jatin and Sona phone conversation

The idea of being like obodro Dev makes Sona so worked up that she has to call Jatin for confirmation and consolation. It’s not just that Sona would hate to be like Dev but the idea that Dev claims to pity her for it. Dev’s sympathy is exactly what she has been running from for the past 7 years. She has worked years to completely free herself from any need, desire or dependency on Dev Dixit, especially after his challenge that she failed as a wife and more. Coming to the call itself- let me just say this “Ami tomake” entry is far more endearing than “iss duniya main do tarah ke log”! The fact that they can even say that without it being romantic is a true testament to their friendship. In this conversation, we see how both these men have preconceptions about Sona that lead to contrasting, but very one sided, opinions about her. Jatin was there during Sona hardships and is well aware that these are the circumstances that have changed her. Throughout this conversation we notice that Jatin’s entire focus is on how Sona has positively changed through her hardships while Dev’s focus in the prior conversation was the burden of a hard shell and cold heart. Deep down, both men know there was once a completely different Sona that has changed for better AND worse. It’s that, while Dev misses the Sona he fell in love with, Jatin knows what created the Sona that’s changed. Dev told Sona what is true but in a negative connotation that she doesn’t want to hear. Jatin is telling Sona what is ALSO true but only exactly what she wants to hear. Neither showed her the other side of the coin. I agree that Jatin overall understands both Dev and Sona better than they (want to) understand each other. But this conversation, along with many of his other scenes indicate that Jatin’s approach to making Sona see her right path won’t be to make her realize the bad in her but to make her see the good in Dev. Dev unknowingly used this approach by proving himself as a good father. However, he won’t be outwardly doing it until he’s motivated to justify himself. The same goes for Sona.

Scene 3: Asha and Dev Conversation on Sona, robbery and more.

Dev himself spelled out in this scene what I’ve already said a thousand times. Neither Dev nor Sona are in this family for each other. They have no hopes of sorting their own problems and reconciling. They are doing what they are doing only for Soha. They fight because situations bring them against each other. They fight because no matter how hard they try, they can’t ignore each other’s presence. But for both of them, the idea of staying in this resentment, idea of not forgiving but definitely putting on a façade of forgetting is far easier than the possibility that they will have to suffer from the same disaster again. I see this as a situation of did the chicken before the egg or vice versa? On one hand, they don’t really sort their problems peacefully because they see no purpose or desire. On the other hand you have to wonder how they will ever find the desire to reconcile if they don’t talk things through? The answer is that their daily situations will make this happen. We’re already seeing in Bose house that a large amount of focus is being placed on Dev’s interactions with the other members of the house besides Sona. On the other hand, the conversations between Dev and Sona are remaining fairly unprogressive and immature. While this is a method that takes a lot of patience, it also makes sense that things get sorted in some form or another with the family before Dev and Sona even express desire to figure themselves out. Through Asha, we see the mother that Dev needed to be a better person but never had. While Ishwari picked favorites, Asha remains a mother Switzerland. Asha understands both Sona and Dev and reprimands whoever is needed, wherever it’s needed. While Ishwari wanted Dev to be dependent on her, Asha demands they learn to sort their problems like adults (even if she gives them child-like punishment). Unlike Ishwari and Bijoy, Asha is willing to accept the other half of Devakshi for Soha’s sake if not anything else. My favorite thing about Asha right now is her intolerance for the immaturity. CVs scripting this into the episode show the scenes were written to shape family dynamics more than Devakshi ones. We are supposed to hate how Devakshi handle each other, because it’s forcing Bose family to interact with Dev more than they expected to.

Scene 4: Bijoy taunts Dev on the robbery

The exact balance to Asha in Bose house is Bijoy. Bijoy irritates Dev repeatedly throughout Dev’s time here, 99% of the time without Dev initiating it. At one point, he made a taunt to Ishwari and Golu for their mere presence and treats Golu rudely later at Saurabh’s haldi for his association with the Dixits. Despite very stark differences between Bijoy and Ishwari, Bijoy is serving a similar taste of medicine to Dev that Sona had to suffer with Ishwari. Dev is never able to satisfy or appease Bijoy the way Sona could never satisfy Ishwari. Bijoy provokes Dev not just if he has done something at that time but for whom he is to Sona. Ishwari did the same to Sona. Sona didn’t say anything to Ishwari, because she thought she could win the whole family over if she tried hard enough. She felt an obligation to succeed at any cost- not just because she was married to Dev but also because Sonakshi Bose Dixit never fails -even if it’s at the expense of her self-respect. Dev, on the other hand, does not hold back when it comes to Bijoy. That’s not because he’s a worse person than Sona but because he knows no level of “trying hard enough” is going to win Bijoy at this point in their relationship. There is nothing advantageous here about losing self-respect, especially after you’ve already been tolerating it for several days. He claims that he just needs to survive these few days with Bijoy for Soha’s sake. This dynamic was another one, just like Dev and Sona’s that was slathered in immaturity and making no positive progress. However, the drunken confrontation between the two men in the later episode changed that. It was such a scene that seemed anticlimactic, as both men decided reconciliation was hopeless and that it’s best to fake it. However, just the fact that Bijoy was able to discuss the true roots of his hatred was a huge step forward from his behavior and a big eye opener to Dev for his. The tears in Dev’s eyes during Bijoy’s confession showed not only Dev’s inner guilt for what he had done to the Bose family but a newfound empathy with Bijoy’s pain. There is a clear regret in Dev’s face that comes, not from hurting Sona, but from making a father ache like this for his daughter. Unfortunately, and realistically, this moment isn’t enough to make all well between Bijoy and Dev. Dev outwardly expresses what we suspected from his behavior all along; he doesn’t think Bijoy can move on. Bijoy in no time agrees, and Dev is left saying, if for no other reason, forgive and forget because it’s been 7 years. If Dev had any intention of making amends with Sona, he would not use “time” as a reason to move forward. But he doesn’t, and neither does she.

Scene 5: Ishwari’s Nightmare

Ishwari says at the end of the nightmare, “Aakhir jis baat ka darr tha, wohi hua na Dev?” Even in her subconscious, Ishwari indirectly blames Sona for the fact that Soha wanted to move to a separate house. Ishwari still feels Dev will prioritize Sona. Sona thinks Dev will prioritize Ishwari. In reality, Dev is trying to prioritize no one but Soha. @archanasean brought up a good point once that, does this nightmare indicate that Ishwari won’t even spare Soha from her insecurities? That’s the trigger that made me realize that even in this nightmare, the actual blame is indirectly being placed on Sona still. We already know that Ishwari is super determined to undo everything Sona has made Soha. As a grandmother with a history of raising dependent children, she doesn’t see the appeal in a child who has full-fledged independence. For any vice she finds in Soha, it’s going to somehow go to Sona. Which is why I’m hoping for a future event in which Ish can’t even deny Sona’s upbringing did some good.

Scene 6: Golu and Sona discussing Devakshi and their friends

Golu has been taught everything is Sona’s fault. Soha has been taught everything is Dev’s. Bijoy and Ishwari’s bias for their children was emphasized through Golu and Soha. Both parents wear blinders when it comes to their children. The main difference between Bijoy and Ishwari is that Bijoy has other sensible family members to help him find the balance and stop him when he is going too far. Plus, Bijoy has insecurity but not possessiveness. He fears Dev’s involvement in Sona and Soha’s life and fails to have a global perspective because of this reverence of his daughter and lack of knowledge on who Dev really is. We know of Bijoy’s bias towards Sona since day one, which was once jokingly reflected as Sona vs. Saurabh. His inability to understand Dev comes from never living with him and having several misunderstandings to worsen the situation. Ishwari, who was was unable to trust Sona despite living with her and being her patient, can’t say the same. Ishwari has both insecurity and possessiveness. The part Ishwari won’t admit is that she thinks Dev’s priorities will again change from his family to Sona. She feels she’s worthless if she’s not everything Dev needs. Without a husband, without a job, without any sort of independence, she is nothing if she’s not Dev ki maa. Yet it’s also true that part of Ishwari’s paranoia is from genuine concern that Sona will re-enter Dev’s life and leave him to shatter all over again. This is why she consistently brings up Elena as the sister who didn’t give up on them and is so taken aback and excited to see Dev even slightly happy again. Sona’s story about the person she was forced to be friends with was a great parallel to Devakshi. It showed that, deep down, Soha understood that fixing relationships is a long and gradual process and can’t be forced. She brought up how her teacher forcing her to fix her friendship with that girl ended up breaking them in less than 24 hours. Soha understands that forcing into geographic proximity doesn’t fix everything. In fact, the close space might make it worse. Soha’s stubbornness (may I say inherited from her parents) was never supposed to work. It was supposed to be a stupid decision that Devakshi impulsively listened to as the “single mother” and the “new parent” so that all these other relationship dynamics discussed earlier take place. Too bad this friendship story didn’t hit Soha earlier in the excitement of having her new father! I’m glad Devakshi stopped catering to such zidd and Soha herself is starting to show immense maturity again.

Scene 7: Ishwari vs. Sona

There is a genuine side of Ishwari that is against Sona coming back from fear that she will leave and make Dev become something he isn’t. This is the aspect of Ishwari that is relatable to any parent. We see the same happen with Ronita’s mom, who I find to be something in between Ishwari and Bijoy. Similar to Bijoy, Ronita’s mom is insecure about how her daughter will be treated in the new family. Similar to Ishwari, her insecurity is not just based on a general worry of her daughter living with strangers but also on one specific threat to power: Sonakshi. There is a genuine side of Ishwari then there is the side that makes her tell Sona in this scene that Dev still “worships her”. It’s not even true, but who cares as long as Sonakshi thinks mama is in charge (and maybe she’s still trying to convince herself it’s true?). This was a good parallel to show that insecurity can occur without deep pasts and unique bonds – those are just components that made Dev and Ishwari’s situation go to an extreme. Ishwari never came out of her extremity, and Dev, despite knowing it existed, couldn’t figure out how to permanently fix it. Dev couldn’t explain his complex mother-son relationship to Sona when she was begging for it, and he said it was too difficult to explain so quickly. That is understandable. Problem is he barely even tried to give it in small doses later on, and she was never able to understand because of this. That’s why up to the end of their marriage, Sona claimed balancing wife and mom isn’t that hard if you try, and Dev kept insisting that’s not the case. It’s not just Sona couldn’t understand him but that he never gave her the full opportunity to do so. This is one of several situations where one thinks he/she had the much easier solution over the other. No doubt, different situations are more in favor of Dev or in favor of Sona. It’s part of their journey to make almost every part of their life consistently easier for both.

Scene 8: The mess before Asha the savior

What Dev said about Ishwari offering to let them stay in separate homes is not only important but brilliantly timed with Ishwari’s nightmare about Dev and Sona living seperately with Soha. We know Ishwari was not suggesting this from the heart, and Dev in saying this now is him holding on to the fact that Ishwari asked despite knowing he might say yes. I’ve said in the past too that Ish has a way of saying the most accurate things with the worst intentions. This was one of those moments. She had a fair point that moving away could have helped Devakshi’s marriage. However, she’s also raised Dev with ideals and family mentality to NEVER do that. I don’t see this scene as Dev thought changing houses would have fixed all their problems. I see it that Dev thought their relationship could have been saved by some circumstance- any circumstance- had both sides of the family been respectively supportive. Dev was right saying that marriage was between two families and that the parents actually broke down their kids’ moral through their behavior rather than building it. Of course Ishwari is no Asha, and her offer to let them live apart is nothing compared to the issues she created in the first place. But it means more than anything to Dev that Ishwari offered something even resembling a saving grace while Bijoy encouraged Sona to not give Dev another chance. Dev isn’t denying that they had many problems with difficult solutions. He’s focusing in on the question of...but who gave them a second chance? Who encouraged them to work it out when they needed it the most? Bijoy has given Dev several chances- but as a FIL, but those were chances to fix his and Bijoy’s relationship. Right now, he’s only thinking of who was throwing him a life vest when his most important bond was in jeopardy. What Dev fails to understand is that Sona had reached a breaking point in their relationship where no one, not even her father, could have convinced her to try further (rightfully so).

Dev and Sona were being big babies in this fight. Sona pulling her “my house and single mom” card again, Dev pulling his powerful man card all had to come to a quick halt. This fight brought out a lot about Devakshi but also their perception of their parents. Sona, despite having no idea what Bijoy actually said to Dev, jumped on Dev from the bit she heard. This was just like she did the first time he yelled at Bijoy for Ishwari and Golu. Once again, Sona’s resentment and jumping to conclusions comes from a place of the past. Dev is guilty of the same. They can be peaceful in the moment for Soha, for Saurabh’s wedding, for society – but until they realize where they or their own parents are wrong, this pattern will persist.

#krpkab #kuch rang pyar ke aise bhi #devakshi

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