#a disfunctional one but hey can you blame them

[dvtchie]

Reposting my instagram posts part 4 i think

remember to follow my Instagram btw which is _.dutchie._

April 3 2023

[see-arcane]

So like, THANK YOU for siding with Jon and his whole "I don't want to condemn several realities to the Fears" and his friends going "But then it's US who will have to deal with them!!" and... I may be overthinking this but with everything, it feels like a very abusive dynamic? Idk if you know about the Golden Child/Parent/Escapegoat dynamic, but it's common in disfunctional families to have a favorite for the parent to project on, and a escapegoat to put blame

You know what? We’re at the end of the series and I’ve been trying to be placid about this for a long time. But screw it.

I honestly do not enjoy 75% of Team Archive. At all. 

Because every last one of them is a hypocrite and a half.

The thing is, much as we as a fandom have been trying really reeeeally hard to project a familial/jagged friendship dynamic on Team Archive, the actual interactions we get paint a picture of just...coworkers muscling through a job they hate while grudgingly working together. I know, Jon and Martin call them their friends and they’ve had lighter moments once in a while, but really? I think they just don’t have enough options to be choosy about the term.

Georgie’s cool most of the time, and at least she brought up that, hey, yeah, she really shouldn’t have plugged her ears and slammed the door when Jon was in crisis mode back in s4. Only for her to join the Let’s Cross Our Fingers and Hope We Aren’t Dooming a Whole Multiverse For Our Convenience crew. 

Basira has at least graduated from ‘If you have any more Scary Meals I’ll put you down >:(’ to ‘Thanks for not dropping me while I was living up to the ACAB vibes :).’ While also conveniently forgetting her High Moral Stance on Protecting Innocent Strangers when she gets put in Jon’s shoes, suddenly turning around and snapping at Jon when he suggests the euthanasia move. YoU cAn’T kIlL tHe WoRlD jUsT bEcAuSe SoMeOnE eLsE [READ: ENTIRE MULTIVERSE] MiGhT sUfFeR!!!1!

Melanie is a dick. Dickish characters can be fun! I love a lot of dickish characters! But Melanie is a dick who refuses to grow out of her shit-on-Jon-athon setting well after the excuse of the Slaughter bullet got taken away. Yes, she’s gone through traumatic experiences. Exactly one (1) billionth of a fraction of what Jon’s gone through and is still going through. I laughed out loud when she dropped that ‘high horse’ line at him. Pot meet fucking kettle. 

And Martin? Martin I love. I really do. But they covered his issue pretty clearly in that chat between Jon and Helen. Hell, in 199 itself. Martin is very much an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ character. He wants a version of things where everyone is safe and happy, but the closest substitute he can see is just dumping the problem on their unseen neighbors--a potential infinity of victims he’ll feel distantly guilty about, but will never have to interact with. Which makes it as close to okay as he thinks they can get. 

This whole episode was a microcosm of why I feel most for Jon out of any of them, regardless of what reasons the narrative might come up with to excuse the others’ do-as-I-say-not-as-I-doisms. Jon is the only one who’s given the decision any real thought beyond ‘At least it won’t be our problem anymore.’ Not because he’s the Archivist with a bottomless well of painful knowledge, but because he knows this is morally the wrong thing to do. 

Every choice is a wrong choice, but this poor empathetic chew toy of a man knows Team Archive is choosing the option that’s most convenient for their world, not because the logic is sound, but because they’re desperate enough to throw away all those scruples they were so eager to bludgeon him with when he made the mistake of not dying in the Unknowing. 

Which is all a roundabout way of saying, yes, Jon is absolutely the unfavorite in their merry band. And after 5 seasons’ worth of hell this man has gone through for the sake of these same people who shat on him, deemed him a monster, alternately cut him out of their lives or used him as a tool, all topped with shouting him down when he dares to point out that the move they’ve decided on is a selfish one--the same choice they shamed him for in s4 when the choice was ‘be a good boy and starve or be a monster and eat’--I am amazed at how Jon hasn’t gotten one single moment in which he gets to chew them all right the fuck out for it.

So I will instead.

Fuck ‘em. They’re well-written, they’re believable people, they aren’t cookie cutter characters, all that good stuff.

But fuck ‘em. You deserved a lot of better things in your miserable life, Jonathan Sims. Friends who were actually friends being chief among them. 

[elavoyy]

Worn Wear Won Wars (aka Chuck Hansen Birthday Fic)

Chuck’s 17th birthday started as uneventful as any other day he spent in the shatterdome. He had woken up, trained, walked Max, showered, had breakfast, then trained some more.

The atmosphere in Sydney Shatterdome was filled with an undercurrent of anxiousness and anticipation, and a routined busyness as always. Everything seemed the same as yesterday.

He didn’t expect to see Herc before their afternoon combat training session, but there he was, sitting at their table in the mess hall at lunch, having a seemingly pleasant conversation with one of Striker’s J-techs.

If Chuck had learned anything during the past year of drifting with his father, it was that Herc hated when Chuck publicly demonstrated how disfunctional their relationship was. It hadn’t much to do with shame or pride, no. Rather everything to do with how private a person Herc was and how much he hated assumptions, particularly on their father-son relationship, and how the soldier in him expected his son to act like one at all times.

So Chuck cursed to himself inwardly and made way to where his father was sitting, tray in one hand and Max’s leash in the other. He took the seat with a mumbled ‘hey old man’, then picked Max up and dumped him in Herc’s lap. Almost a peace offering as good as any.

‘Hey kid,’ Herc replied, scraching behind the tail-wagging bulldog’s ears without any protest to the deliberate greeting, which really was a surprise to Chuck. But he made no comment on it, instead picked up his fork and started attacking on the egg salad.

It wasn’t often that he and Herc ate lunch together when their schedule didn’t overlap in the morning. Chuck preferred to get ahead the busy lunch rush and finish eating as quickly as possible while Herc usually waited until the last fifteen minutes before they stopped serving. And in his stubborn mind Chuck had always thought Striker’s team being seen together was more for appearances’ sake than them actually wanting to spend time with each other.

Which was why he couldn’t help feeling a little alert when Herc made no move to leave after he had obviously finished his food. He could feel the old man’s attention focusing on him even though he was still idly chatting with the J-tech across the table.

That was another thing with sitting side by side with your drift partner, no wire or machine was needed to feel the other’s existence in the back of your mind, nor does every intention need to be read through body language or eye contact.

Finally Chuck broke his silence when the J-tech left the table and Herc showed no sign of following, ‘Don’t you have something better to do than sitting around, old man?’

Herc glared at him for a second and said: ‘Don’t call me that.’ Then he looked down at Max, clearly avoiding eye contact, which he rarely did and that just got Chuck more on edge.

Now that Chuck actually turned to look at him, he could see the slight awkwardness on Herc’s face. The typical “I have something to say but I don’t know how” face which could only mean the next thing that comes out of his father’s mouth would be either extremely infuriating or tremendously embarrassing. Great. Chuck regretted not just take his lunch and leave when he had the chance. He was having an okay day until then and really wasn’t in the mood for emotional conflict.

He was just about to get up and leave but of course Herc sensed his retreat and stopped him before he could.

‘Striker’s crew wants to throw you a party.’ Herc said, in a carefully neutral tone.

‘What?’ Chuck asked. Because none of the words Herc just said made sense to him.

Looking at Chuck’s furrowed brows and genuinely confused face, Herc sighed, ‘They knew it’s your birthday today. And they wanted to celebrate. They asked me to ask you if you were down.’

Chuck looked at Herc like he’d just lost his mind. ‘What? No! Why?’ Then he realised he was probably over reacting a bit, so he lowered his voice, ‘No. What were they thinking? This isn’t a fucking summer camp. And why didn’t you just tell them that?’

Herc, surprisingly let the swear word slide, just shrugged. ‘I told them a surprise party would be a very bad idea. And that you probably won’t say yes.’

‘A surprise party.’ Chuck repeated dryly. Just saying these words out loud made Chuck want to grimace. Yes it’s only been a little more than half a year since he started working with these people, but nevertheless they should know that Chuck passionately hated both socialising and surprises. A surprise party. If Chuck didn’t know better he would think they were trying to get back to him for breaking Striker’s fingers on their last drop.

‘They mean well.’ Herc said, ‘And you can’t blame them for finding every excuse to let loose a bit, eh?’

That last comment brought up some unpleasant memories for both of them, and for a short moment Chuck didn’t know what to say.

‘Besides, it’s your first birthday as a Ranger. Reckoned you’d want to celebrate.’ Herc stood up and made to collect both their empty trays. ‘I’ll just tell them that you don’t then.’

Chuck picked up Max’s leash and followed his father’s movements without thinking, still feeling a little off balance with what Herc just said, though he couldn’t quite figure out why.

Herc turned to face him at the door way and hesitated, but in the end he just clapped Chuck’s shoulder and said: ‘see ya later, eh kid?’ Then walked away.

————————

Their training session that afternoon went as well as training sessions could go, leaving them with sore muscles and aching bones and a wonderful aftertaste of adrenaline rush. To Chuck’s relief, Herc didn’t mention anything about birthdays or parties or surprises again, so all in all Chuck was quite happy with how this day ended, now all that left to do was to shower, get some food, then go back to his bunker and do some reading before bed while cuddling with his dog.

Chuck was about to go pick Max up from his sitter—a nice mechanic lady who works in the workshops in the hangars, before heading to the mess hall, when Herc called out to him.

‘Chuck, wait.’ Herc strode down the hallway and gestured for him to follow, ‘Come for a sec, got something for ya.’

‘What now, old man?’ Chuck’s tone was sceptical and wary, as he seamlessly fell into step with his father, ‘This isn’t about that party bullshit again, is it?’

‘Watch it kid.’ Herc warned without really meaning it. ‘No, it’s not. I got something for your birthday, you little wanker.’

Now Chuck wasn’t expecting that. See, after Angela had died, the Hansens just didn’t do birthdays anymore. Mostly because they were usually apart at the times, and evidently calling to say “Happy Birthday” was beyond their capabilities. In the past six years, Herc had gotten Chuck exactly one birthday gift, and that gift was probably getting a belly rub from a nice little lady in the mechanic shop at this moment. So Chuck really didn’t know how to respond, except with his usual “when confused with emotions, act like a little shit” tactic.

‘Since when do you care about anyone’s birthdays?’ Chuck scoffed as they came to a stop in front of Herc’s room, ‘Is it a head injury or just being old?’

‘For fucks sake, Chuck. Can you stop being a brat for one second and accept that people actually care about you?’ Herc pulled the metal door open with an unnecessary amount of force, and purposely ignored the loud noise when it smashed against the wall. He rolled his eyes when Chuck was startled at the sound. ‘And I’m not even forty. Get in.’

Chuck sat on the desk chair and watched Herc close the door behind him, then went straight to pull something out from the cupboard in the corner.

‘Here, try it on.’ Herc threw the jacket at Chuck’s head, but Chuck’s reflex was way too fast to get hit.

It was a leather bomber jacket, dark coloured with short faux fur lining the collar. The leather dull but thick and resilient, the weight heavy and the touch soft. Striker’s logo was sewn onto the right upper arm, its colour vibrant and stitches new, a jarring contrast to the old leather. But Chuck’s eyes were caught on the back, where a little Kaijiu head was spray painted to the left.

‘You got me a second hand bomber.’ Chuck was trying to sound judgmental but he couldn’t stop himself from tracing his hand along the Striker logo and the soft leather over and over.

‘I wore it in Hong Kong.’

Chuck looked up at Herc, there was reminiscence in his eyes, which quickly dissolved into smugness when he saw how carefully Chuck had caressed the garment.

‘It’s probably a bit big for you now, but you’ll grow into it, hopefully.’ Herc said with a smirk.

‘Yeah yeah, and soon it’ll be too small.’ Chuck grinned in that way when he knows he’s being a brat.

‘You wish.’ Herc chuckled, shook his head, then opened the door and waved a hand, ‘Now get out of here and go eat your veges.’

Chuck folded the jacket over his arms and walked through the door, then turned back to look at his father, who was looking at him with the same expression as at lunch, and said: ‘Thanks, dad.’

Herc smiled at him, and for some reason, looked almost relieved as he replied: ‘Happy birthday, Chuck.’

Chuck nodded once and walked away, he never heard the loud clang of a metal door before he turned the corner.

Fin.

[mindless-noise]

Losing the love of my life to booze and video games.

I've been drinking heavily since I started, something like 10 years ago. I smoked, I drank, I snorted, but mostly, and steadily, and desperately, I drank. I drank while working nights inrestaurants and bars. I drank the night away after the shift, trying to wind down. I drank the afternoons after working day shifts in restaurants. I drank on my days off, cause why not, and I drank after school, cause that's what you do. When you're addicted, that is. I quit most other drugs, quit cocaine, quit MDMA, but I kept drinking. I never addressed it.Maybe four or five years ago, I started gaming a lot. Dota 2, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Diablo 2, Path of Exile. That last one has a fitting name. I figured I'd rather be gaming than imbibing god-knows-what harmful chemical my friends would have the brilliant idea of ordering. I figured it was any better. I thought it was better for me to isolate myself, game until the wee hours of the morning, and to down a 12-pack simultaneously, than it was to go out. I made myself believe that. And then I met her. I was fucked.My ex-wife moved in with me very quickly. We were madly in love, and she was staying with her parents when we met, so we naturally spent a lot of time at my place, drinking beer, wine, listening to music, making love. We went out a lot. We were always up for a sesh at the bar. She nearly flunked her Uni semester cause of the wild fucking weeks we were having. My roommate and I were parting ways in September anyways, and so it made perfect sense than R. and I would find a nice cosy Villeray apartment for the 2 of us, even though our friends were warning us not to move too fast. I was intending on going back to school, to study computer science. But I kept gaming, and I kept drinking, alone, or not. At some point, she realised what she had gotten herself into. She'd go to sleep cause of morning obligations : school, work, sport. You know, real life. I stayed up. Almost every night. Gaming. Sometimes I'd tell myself I'd take it easy and I wouldn't drink, or drink just a bit. I'd still end up going to bed past 2 or 3 am. I could smoke a gram and a half of weed, thinking "hey at least I'm not drinking".  Such is the mind of an addict. I ended up dropping CS a couple weeks into the semester. It has been a grim pattern in my life to drop stuff before completion. I ended up quitting my job that winter, and I spent the next six months just wallowing in my own shit, gaming, drinking and eating fast food. This was only the first of a couple bouts of me trying to get into something, then quitting abruptly, without telling her or anyone beforehand. I'd tell her with bloody hands "Hey, I quit my job" or "Hey, I dropped out of school". She hated not having any idea of what the fuck was going on with me.She saw the empty cases. She smelled it on my breath. She felt it on my skin. At this point I knew my limits well enough that I wasn't completely disfunctional hungover every morning. But I'd be late for work, at least half the time. I'd botch my school assignments. I'd order takeaway. She'd be the sunshine of my life getting ready for her day being excited for what was to come, telling me about her classes, her dreams, her ambitions, and I'd lay there, disheveled half-hungover asshole. I'd be that cynical snarky know-it-all who doesn't do shit but complain. For two and a half years.I stopped seeing my friends. My mind was being completely consumed by the holy trinity of work, relationship and substance/game abuse. I'd let them go through rough patches, barely caring. I'd let them spend months abroad without a message. I'd go for months without a ring. My wife was going through some shit on her own, issues with body image and food, and she had denounced her teenage abuser to the police, so her stress and anxiety levels were pretty high. I tried to help her cope by listening, making dinner, watching tv shows, etc. I thought I was doing a good job, turns out I was doing too much of the bare minimum. She needed excitement, she needed culture. She needed to share interests with me, to go out, to see the world, to laugh, to dance, to cry. I didn't catch on. I was so invested in my own little virtual worlds I didn't understand when she told me she needed me to take less care of her and more of myself. I didn't know what that meant. I thought I was happy doing the things I was doing. I knew it pained her to see me abuse alcohol and investing so much time and energy in video games. I thought things would pass. I thought a way would find me. I thought we'd be fine.At one point, in an attempt to connect with me, she agreed to install Steam on her computer. We added each other as friends, and she downloaded the Sims and Dota 2. Now the problem with being friends with your wife on steam is she can see just how many hours you've sank in the past few weeks on various games. It shows on your profile, and it weirdly feels like a badge of "real gamer" of sorts. She didn't fathom how fucking far gone I was, I don't think. Eighty-five hours in the past few weeks, she said. She didn't comment on it much. She laughed nervously and we moved on to something else, like a dying couple does. For the record, I have over 5 000 hours recorded on that game, and over a thousand on Path of Exile. That's over 4 or 5 years, not much more. It's like I've had a full time job gaming and gaining nothing but fucking points. I had given my old steam account to my youngest brother Z., a couple years prior. I'd have to ask him how many more hours played I had on various games, namely Counter-Strike 1.6. It can't be under the thousands. We never did end up playing Dota 2 together. I don't blame her. She had seen me raging on the microphone because complete strangers didn't play the way I wanted. She knew how hard and involved the game was. She wasn't interested in it. She was just grasping at straws, trying to find a way to connect with me.I am now forty pounds over what I was when we met. I wasn't the most jacked dude you'd ever seen, but at 185-190 pounds and 6 feet, I was relatively lean. I remember having some amount of muscle definition, around the abs and arms and such. Now I have a real goddamn beer gut, fat drooping from where my pecs are supposed to be. I had to change almost all of my clothes. She tried and tried so hard not to fat-shame me, but how the fuck are you supposed to love the fat fucking mess I was becoming while she was hustling at school, at work and at the gym, looking better and better and getting closer to her goals every day? Needless to say, our sex life took a huge hit. In the last year we probably had one or two sexual encounters a month, if not less. I'm not saying I'd fuck me, either. And when we did have sex, my stamina was a fraction of what it was 2 years prior.Now she tried to give me an ultimatum a couple weeks ago. She said she couldn't bear living with my sorry ass anymore, if I didn't do something about it. I told her I'd curb my drinking, which I sort of did. I didn't change jack about my day-to-day habits, though. Most days, I'd still woke up, have a coffee watching some useless shit about video games on my laptop, gamed a while, ate late cause I was doing "intermittent fasting" - which by the way doesn't count if you don't at least try to eat healthily when you do eat, gamed some more, etc. And then some nights I'd kiss her sweet dreams and relapse and drink a case of beer, trying to hide it the best I could. But if she didn't know in her rational brain, she knew in her heart that things weren't working out. I wasn't making the necessary changes to become a husband you can think about the future with, to succeed in my own life, at school, at work. I didn't get it.Fast forward to last Monday, when she  finally couldn't bear the weight of this relationship with me. She left. And instantly, I knew. I knew I had fucked up so much for so long. But it took a couple days to accept it. I was angry, I was furious.I told her I'd be staying in the apartment for as long as I needed to find a new place, and that she wasn't welcome, and that it wasn't my problem. I told her I didn't care if my attitude hurt her : "Tough luck", I said.Jesus fuck, dude.We spoke yesterday, on the phone. For two hours, a painful, slow, emotive conversation. One of those you never want to have.One of those you wish you could have avoided by being better than you were. I told her I'd change. I told her I'd do anything to be with her. You know, the usual. It feels like such a cliché but it's fucking real. I've never loved a woman like I love her. I knew in my heart I wanted her to have my babies, one day. I was set and I fucked it up so bad by not caring, not listening. Fuck.I brought her flowers today, at the Uni. with a hand-written note, saying that I'm sorry and that I'm going to get help. That I would give anything for another chance at us. I believe it, though I'm not sure that she does. After I had made her late for class I left, and I called for help. I have an appointment on Monday morning with a social worker, to evaluate my needs. I won't let the pain of her being gone prevent this valuable lesson to help me. I wish with all my heart that she finds her way to me, somehow. I'll be working hard, regardless.I can't live this way. Anymore.