#bonding w my moot gone WRONG

[1864reruns]

il actually going to kill myself i had to close my phone for like 30min

OVER WHAT 😭😭😭😭

[shipcestuous]

Odd and True episode 3: also Revenge of the Shipper (because RotS was the 3rd SW episode and I KNOW that) (Submission)

This one will cover chapters 7 through 14.  Sorry for sending this in before giving you time to even post the second installment!  This review thing has gotten seriously out of hand, but then, I didn’t expect there to be so much freaking content for this family’s relationships.  I came into this expecting a cute but non-canon sisters relationship, something to read over a free weekend or something, but this…  This family is consuming my life.

Anyway, Od and Tru arrive in Chicago, and Od quickly latches onto a ghost-hunting mission.  Tru, for her part, still has some valid concerns.  “My eyes moistened with tears over her belief in me–and yet, I still found myself not believing in her.  I still worried about her sanity, dreadfully.“  They’re attacked by a mugger, but when Tru is threatened, Od wallops the guy.  Protective siblings are another one of my favorite things.

The following scene of Od and Tru taking shelter at a hotel for the night also mirrors the scene of Magnus and Od finding shelter in the previous chapter.  Except that this time, it’s a contrast.  Magnus had just exposed Od to some upsetting truths, and then he brought her to a brothel of all places for shlter.  Here, Od is still shielding Tru from the truth about their parents, and brings her to a nice hotel and ensures she’s well taken care of (even if she is also talking to Tru about ghosts, which make her uncomfortable).

Od also reveals that while she was away from Tru and traveling with the circus, she fell madly in love.  Tru narrates, ”Jealousy stung my heart.  All that time that she’d been gone, I’d pictured her as being as miserable and lonely as I was.“  Od claims she and the person she loved were forcibly separated a year ago, and Od was told they just weren’t meant to be together.  If nothing else, this kind of parallels her and Tru, too.  Also, Tru continues to be so explicitly jealous, and I love it.

Tru then has an upsetting premonition, and Od comforts her, holding her hands and telling her that they can face whatever they need to face, because they’ve already faced worse and ”we’ve done it before, Tru.  We’re lionhearted.  Both of us.“  I love how Od always gets upset on Tru’s behalf whenever Tru claims she’s weak.  I love how, even though she’s Tru’s protector, Od also seems to wholeheartedly believe in her sister’s own strength.

In the next chapter, we’re back in 1896, just after Maria moves with little Od and Tru to Oregon.  Maria has a miscarriage and is rushed to the hospital, and six-year-old Od desperately sends a mental message for Magnus to ”come help us.  I’m still mad at you a bit, but please, please, we need you!“  In Oregon is where Tru gets polio, and Od takes on that protective role toward her sister (“my Tru,” she calls her) even though she’s still so young herself. The girls are taken in by their aunt and her husband during this time.

Next chapter, the present-day (well, the 1909 present-day, haha) Od and Tru reach Philadelphia.  Od runs into a young man she recognizes, and immediately Tru’s heart stops (figuratively, of course) with the fear that this is the “beloved” Od had spoken of. Apparently it’s not, but it is Cy, a boy she mooned over when she was younger in Oregon, so Tru tries to make him leave them alone.  Though Od isn’t really happy to see the guy (she alludes to an incident in the past that left her life “in shambles”, which I presume we’ll learn about later on), even turning her back on him as he’s inviting her to join him on a supernatural adventure because she’s just that upset.

Instead, Od opts to look into this lead with just Tru.  Tru is starting to believe Od about all of this “monsters and magic” stuff by now, which of course pleases Od.  And then the girls visit their mother’s address, although Od fears that Maria will “bring up all sorts of awful things” (probably family-related bc honestly, are any even semi-important characters in here who aren’t part of this family?). Her fears are moot for the moment, since nobody answers the door.  (Turns out she left the house the previous week, according to a neighbor.)

In chapter 10, we get another Od POV flashback–this time it’s from 1905, 4 years before the current plotline of the book.  It’s Tru’s eleventh birthday, and she asks Od to tell the story of her birth again because it’s tradition.  Od notes that she “vowed to never tell her the truth about our father’s absence on the day of her birth, or of the fact that he had kept our mother hidden away in a remote part of the world for more than seven long years while married to another woman.  Tru didn’t need to know that our mother continued to work in the city to pay off debts and that Aunt Vik referred to Mama as ‘immoral’ and ‘sinful’ whenever she spoke of her….  I didn’t know how Mama earned money.  Aunt Vik kept us so sheltered, I wouldn’t have understood it if she ever named our mother’s profession.”

I know I’m just retreading old ground here, but I love how determined Od is to protect her younger sister.  Not just physically, but emotionally.  Even if the truth eats away at her and it would probably feel better for her if she could share it with her closest person, she keeps it from Tru anyway to protect her.  And I. Love. That. So much.  (Even if I also can’t wait for Tru to inevitably find out because I’m always a slut for angst.)

Anyway, that same night when Tru falls asleep (“with a birthday smile lingering on her lips”), Od is startled by banging at the front door.  She sneaks out of the girls’ room to see who is her aunt and uncle’s visitor, and it’s Maria.  She’s worried for Od as her fateful 15th birthday is approaching, and she also asks Viktoria if Magnus has come by because Maria is worried for his safety.  She also comments after a brief exchange with Od that she’s “so much like your uncle Magnus.”

Viktoria shuts the door on Maria (who has been “drunk as a fiddler,” Vik says ,“and running around with strange men”), fearing that she’s going to be a bad influence on the girls.  Maria bangs on the door, crying for her daughter.  When Od returns to the bedroom, Tru is awake and hears the screaming, so Od claims it’s La Llorona, the weeping spirit seeking children, so Tru won’t have to know the truth.  Od tells her something similar to what Magnus told her before she learned about her father: “You’re safe and loved.  Don’t worry.“  And that’s the way the chapter ends.

Back in the present, the sisters eat at a restaurant, and their waiter asks about Tru’s cane.  She’s understandably wary, but then learns the man’s little sister also had polio and just got put into a wheelchair.  Tru and the waiter, Ezra Blue, quickly bond (their surnames are even similar, Grey and Blue) but tbh most of it is over the shared experience between Tru and Ezra’s five-year-old sister Celia.  Tru tells him, “Tell little Celia you met a polio survivor who now hunts monsters.”  (Not super relevant to our shippy interests here, but it’s a powerful and badass moment.  Although Od immediately jumps to the conclusion that the guy has a crush on Tru and vice versa.  If it does turn out to be true, there’s still the Od-and-Ezra and Tru-and-Celia parallel to point out here.)

Back at the hotel, Tru tries to ask Od how she knows Cy, the guy they ran into earlier.  Od keeps trying to change the subject.  She tells Tru, “Let’s stop talking about Cy, please.  This is our journey, not mine and his” and calls Cy the last person in the world she wanted to see.  That night, they fall asleep with Od’s head on Tru’s shoulder.  “I trapped my arms around her and held her close, as if I were the older sister and she my little Odette.”

The next chapter is another Od flashback, this one from two years prior to the present.  After the death of Viktoria’s husband, Od has to get a job where she’ll live under her employers’ roof (“without the warmth of my sister beside me”), and she worries about what will happen to Tru, and to Od’s schooling.  Viktoria (I was wrong, btw; she was the oldest of her siblings, not Maria) says that she stopped attending school at Od’s age when her mother, and it “forced me to grow up and take care of my younger siblings, and I don’t regret a single second of my sacrifices.“  In order to provide for Tru, Od agrees to the job.  She’ll be working for Cy’s family.  I think we’re all getting bad vibes off this situation by now.

In a situation that parallels her parents, Cy tries to seduce the younger hired servant.  But Od instantly responds, "I can’t let anything come between my sister and me."  But eventually she caves because he’s persistent.  It’s not exactly nonconsensual, but it still rubs me the wrong way (as it’s supposed to) because he’s her employer’s kid who therefore has power over her, and she’s also completely ignorant about what sex is and wouldn’t have let him do it if she’d understood what he was doing.

Even when she gives in, Od reflects that ”I should have kept my thoughts on Tru at all times and found relief from my loneliness elsewhere.  But he was there to comfort and hold me, and all my other nights down in that basement hollow had proven so cold and desolate“ compared to how she was used to sleeping beside Tru’s warmth.  In other words, she only did this because she was lonely from Tru’s absence, and here was someone offering her what she hoped would be comfort.

Back in the present, Od decides because of Tru’s wishes that the sisters will join Cy’s hunting party, but even then, Od says it’s because she’d regret missing this chance and she wants to catch the Leeds Devil instead of Cy doing it. When they do join up with Cy and co., he’s obviously trying to win Od over again by being nice to Tru, because it’s that obvious that Tru is the key to her heart. The rest of the posse they join up with want the sisters to stay behind because they’re sexist jerks and because of Tru’s leg, but Od keeps going on about how great Tru is, because of course she does.  But even so, they leave them behind, alone.

In the next chapter, we’re back to Od’s POV from two years ago.  She recalls her uncle Magnus urging her not to "grow up and make the same mistakes as your mother,” referring to Maria’s relationship with her employer Louis.  But now, Od is pregnant, and she loses her job and is sent to a facility for girls pregnant out of wedlock to help them avoid “social ruin.”

When Od writes to Tru, she claims she’s traveling with the circus.  Even in this, she keeps the truth from her sister in order to protect her.  By now, she’s created this entire mythos of magic just to shield Tru. And maybe it’s not completely right of her to do that, but all of it is done out of so much love.

She decides she’ll name the baby Trudie Marie if it’s a girl, for her sister and mother, and Duncan Magnus (no idea about the first name, but the second is clearly for her uncle).  She ends up having a girl, who is born only 4 days after Tru’s 14th birthday.

And that’s where I’m going to leave off this time.  The next installment will probably be the last, but who can say?

I love how close the sisters are and that their relationship continues to be so central to the story and each other. Even though that’s the title, you sometimes never know. They love each other so much.