#but better that than stagnation as far as she's concerned

[sharpsuite]

“ we’ve been wrong before ” ( alice @ ann )

↳ REMEBER TO REMEMBER ME SENTENCES

Ann is not so ARROGANT as to deny that point or claim otherwise. She's only human after all. Humans are bound to make errors. If they did not, they would never grow or change. There's also the matter of missing information. Ann approaches most problems with a scientific mindset that's practically EMBEDDED in her bones at this point. However, information is limited to what people have been gathered, and there is no proof that certain facts are true merely because THEY perceived them to be facts. There could be errors in that information or key pieces missing.

THEY WORK WITH WHAT THEY HAVE. Her information and evidence is less solid than that of her lab work prior to these lands ; it brings her back to days out in the cold at a crime scene, collecting as much evidence as possible and gathering preliminary idea of suspects or situation analysis.

" That much is true. " Ann acknowledges Alice's words with a dip of her head, taking a moment to bite into the fresh tart on fine china in front of her. At least HERE inside the Beach the obnoxious blasting of rave music is nothing but a faint whisper to strained ears. Something more classical plays on a record player. ( Ann is rather FOND of the older quality - proof of bygone times that linger on even in this ruined world. )

She tilts her head to the side ; observing Alice. The words aren't mean, just commentative. " We have been wrong before. And likely will in the future. But that is a gamble that we have to risk taking if we have any hope of discovering more about all of this. " Her hand gestures around as a sign of the world rather than anything more present. " Besides, it is not as though we have anything to lose. Regardless of SKEPTICISM to the Hatter's theory, we have to play these death games regardless. The fact we can collect the cards does indicate something should we manage to collect all of them. " There is the chance the cards are nothing but a RED HERRING, yet it doesn't seem to be the case. It would go against the spirit of the games so far. / @redemptioninterlude

[crypticmillipede]

OK EXTREMELY NICHE CROSSOVER but hear me out !! Stardew Valley Characters x TMA?

(oh yea spoilers for some Magnus Archives concepts/lore? but nothing plot-related)

the 12 Stardew Valley dateable characters as TMA Avatars:

Abigail: Could see either the Vast or the Stranger. The Vast because she adores exploring, asks existential questions, gets lost in things. The Stranger because of her character arc as an odd one out, someone who just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the town, unnatural, an outsider. Also because of her potential connection to the Wizard.

Alex: Likely the Flesh, as a sort of Jared Hopworth situation. He’s always talking about his bodybuilding, it’s pretty Flesh-aligned. I could also see him as the Hunt? His obsession with going pro, reaching his goal, something that never really happens but he’s always chasing. Maybe he begins to hear the blood?

Elliott: The Lonely. Relatively new to town, all isolated on that beach, I bet it gets quite foggy. Or potentially the Eye? I could see his fervor for writing as a thirst for knowledge, in a way?

Emily: The Spiral. Strange, bizarre, cryptic, a manic pixie dream girl (and i mean this with love), she’s gotta be the Spiral. I could also see the stranger, but she has a certain level of approachability that’s more Spiral to me.

Haley: This is tough for me. Maybe the Flesh, as someone concerned with their appearance, but that feels kinda surface-level to me. This is a stretch, but what about a Dark alignment? The way she sort of refuses to intake information sometimes (ignoring you), bores easily, she could be compensating for an insecurity by presenting a certain way? In the dark, she wouldn’t have to worry about any of it. Besides, she does have that Dark Room… (i admit this one doesn’t really fit, does anyone have a better idea? spider maybe? or even corruption?)

Harvey: The whole weight of the town’s expectation’s for their only doctor, his stagnant dreams of piloting, Harvey’s got to be affiliated with the Buried. Possiblyyy the Flesh, simply due to his profession, but the Buried makes far more sense for his character to me.

Leah: Hear me out on this one—the Extinction. She’s got a couple dialogue lines focusing on environmental destruction and humanity as a harmful species, she’s newly moved out of the city and into nature, radically replacing her environment. She’s so isolated in the forest, it might sometimes feel like she’s the only one left. If not, then the Vast, most likely. Or maybe Stranger or Lonely? She’s got options.

Maru: If anyone in this group is Eye-affiliated, it’s got to be Maru. She has this thirst for knowledge, always building, always looking up into the unknown of the cosmos.

Penny: She’s got to be the Lonely to me. How many times has she sat under that tree, picking at the grass and looking out into the river? She’s so isolated, despite being around so many people. If not the Lonely, then certainly the Corruption, with its themes of finally finding endless love and community, a hive who truly understands.

Sam: This is another tricky one to me, but probably the Vast? He’s so easy-going and carefree, for the most part, it fits in quite well with the Vast mentality of ultimate insignificance and the freedom that comes with it.

Sebastian: Although the Lonely is probably the easy answer, I could also see him as the Buried, honestly? Burdened by the weight of all the expectations pressing down on him, by his stagnation in a town he wants nothing to do with, by his lack of freedom and desire for escape. He has friends, close friends! It seems to be more of his general circumstances that haunt him, rather than isolation, necessarily.

Shane: While i know the Web is primarily associated with addiction, I don’t really feel that Shane fits with the Web in any other way? I honestly see him more as affiliated with the Desolation, given his often self-destructive tendencies, and the way he lashes out at others. Shane seems to resort to alcohol as a harmful coping mechanism. Of course, I could also see him as the End, given some of his cut scenes, but the qualities of the End don’t seem to match him as well as the Desolation.

Those are my takes!! Sorry I couldn’t narrow it down more, but there’re so many potentials, it’s hard to choose a single option for each person! These are superrrr subjective and up to interpretation, so I welcome any additional speculations or suggestions !! I kinda wanna know how other people would categorize these guys tbh? anyways yeah sorry about the long post, my brain is rotten. perchance.

[thesquishypenguin]

For general stuff, 6 9 and 12! >:))

tyty ily mwuah mwuah Ship Questions redux

KiloHertz (OC) x Maxime Le Mal (Cannon)

General - 6 - How do their personalities complement each other? How do they clash?

ooooo I'm finding this one a little tricky to think about!! Particularly because so much of kHz attitude is altered by her own choice! I think initially she she comes across as distant, disinterested, cold and judge-y. She's not at all interested in people generally speaking. KiloHertz is very..'strictly business' and doesn't tend to get close to people unless she takes a particular special interest in them, which is hard to achieve with her. But a lot of this is a learned or put-in-place façade that she's just settled into. She's very good at being persuasive, demanding and downright scary - She commands respect through power I think. I don't think Maxime would have that kind of sway on people or not in the same vein, I think he'd be 'nicer' about it. He's more of a charmer. Maxime is VERY much a people person, he's extremely outgoing and charismatic and I think he could wrap most people around his finger - at least superficially and in the moment. People seem to love him and gravitate towards him...(or..he simply inserts himself into their spaces!) These bitches do both be giving off the 'I'm better than You' vibe tho. kHz has a complex about being better than others and Maxime earned it through being 'everybody's favourite' So really they've got GREAT power couple vibes!

BOTH of these idiots are MASSIVE hot heads though. Which means they're also likely to be super fiery and stubborn towards each other when one of them starts getting mad about something-or-other. I think one of them also being in an irritable mood tends to make the other irritable. I can see them having a lot of bickering and spats over miscellaneous shit or when one of them says or does something that manages to tick the other off - but I like to think they both know they don't really mean it, and there's a lot of making up (and making out) afterwards when they've cooled off. Although it doesn't happen often, they know they've struck a nerve or gone too far when the other goes silent about it and starts avoiding them to avoid more conflict. That being said I think a lot of it isn't too serious and probably only happens on occasion - likely stemming from someone's bad day.

General - 9 - Who gets jealous easier?

This has GOT to be Maxime! I feel like kHz has the potential to be..but I also feel like she's dealt with and gotten over her crush on him once, and knowing how popular he is/was it's not really a concern of hers, she expects it. If he was the kind to obnoxiously flirt with other women or something perhaps, but if Maxime's in a social setting he spends half his time bragging about her. So she feel pretty secure with him to be honest, even if he is a socialite!

KiloHertz however is a little underhanded and will employ a little flirting if it gets her what she wants. not that it comes up really all that often. I think it's more that her work has the potential to take her away from him for hours. He'll get jealous that she's spending more time with her equipment and machinery than she is him. He'll get jealous if she's interacting with the roaches more than him ('Cute little bug?' No, No! That's him! He's the cutest bug here! Say sweet things to him!!) She often has to go visit clients which can take a long time to get things sorted out before she can come back to...then spend all her time doing work for said client. Maxime gets very pouty about not being doted on constantly. Why busy her hands with machinery when she can busy her hands with him!

It's not really a jealousy out of insecurity of their relationship, more just ..he wants all her attention for himself!! But I think Maxime*is* the more likely of the two to have insecurity issues based on my HCs, I think he worries about the relationship stagnating into nothing (again) - and he sorely hopes another villain wont catch her eye more than he currently does....

KiloHertz is only really likely to be jealous or worried if something actually happens, which isn't likely. If someone else starts flirting with Maxime however? You bet your ass she's pushing them aside ASAP.

General - 12 - Do they hide anything from each other, big or small?

I feel like kHz is the biggest culprit of this one. I don't really think Maxime hides much, if anything from her. I wanna say he's pretty open about what he's feeling or what's going on because he knows she'll soothe him and make it all better. Early/Pre-relationship maybe in the sense that he's hiding his body and reluctant to show it off, but not/nothing during the relationship. I don't think either of them hide anything in the malicious sense! There's no like 'bad secrets' or unmentionable things or anything. I think if Maxime is going to hide anything from her its probably things like gifts and little pleasant surprises he has in store for her :) kHz whole thing however is masking to be the 'best' version of herself possible, whether that's with her implant or without. She doesn't like appearing weak or stupid at all, so she's the one most likely to hide if she's having problems of any kind. Which she does and is, because her implant is a fickle thing. A lot of what she WOULD hide is relating to herself and her feelings and her health, because she's extremely stubborn about all of it; even if she knows Maxime worries or would be upset that she won't share her problems with him. (For references sake, I think she's rather fooled herself with the implant. Having it off or on doesn't really change who she is, but she seems pretty convinced she's inferior in all regards without it. And I think Maxime thinks she's absolutely crazy for having such thoughts and burdens she refuses to share with him...particularly when he's bared his own to her and she's made better for him..why would she not think he could or would do the same for her???)

[tender-somethings]

“You Should Date an Illiterate Girl”

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly.

Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

Charles Warnke

[mariacallous]

After yesterday’s post on the far right, and the refusal of its supporters to even admit that the far right exists, I want to put out a short piece on what far-right success entails.

The subject deserves more attention than it receives. For few dare spell out what, precisely, its programme would look like. We see propagandists straining to justify backlash politics and paranoid fear. But the solutions are either so small they cannot possibly assuage right-wing angst, or they are so draconian that few dare recommend them, for the time being at any rate.

Perhaps a basic decent instinct holds them back.  Or perhaps they are caught in a gleeful rhetorical reverie and do not want the downer a demand for specifics would bring. Who cares about the details, after all, when you can delight in the discomfort of the supposed multicultural establishment?

Instead of picking on a hack right-wing journalist let me make the point by looking at genuinely substantial and, in their way, admirable people:  Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Evelyn Markus. Hirsi Ali was the victim not only of Islamist terrorists, who drove her out of her home in Holland because she challenged Islamic oppression, but the awful condescension of the supposedly liberal intelligentsia.  In case you do not know her story, on 2 November, 2004, an Islamist terrorist  slit the throat of her friend, the  filmmaker Theo van Gogh for the crime of making a film about the abuse of Muslim women. A dagger was stabbed in his chest with a note that said that Hirsi Ali, then a member of the Dutch Parliament, would be next.

Rather than see a totalitarian threat to liberalism, intellectuals, who ought to have known better, sneered at her. I wrote about the scandal at the time as did Christopher Hitchens. Paul Berman wrote a whole book about the affair, The Flight of the Intellectuals, which stands up well today

In short, Hirsi Ali is always worth listening to.  As is her collaborator, Evelyn Markus, who has had to live with Islamist antisemitism in Holland. Together they have produced a typical celebration of Geert Wilders strong showing in the Dutch election for The Free Press. I say typical because it is long on invective but short of solutions.

Under the headline, “The Death of the Old Europe—and the Rise of the Right” the authors warn that liberal democracies face a reckoning if they do not deal with mass migration and the assimilation of immigrants.

The language is ominous – threatening even. Our authors write that Wilders’ performance confirmed that “growing number of voters on both sides of the Atlantic have seen their living standards stagnate—their manufacturing jobs outsourced or automated and their neighbourhoods flooded with immigrants, many of whom are hostile to them and their way of life”. While the elite obsess over climate change and “woke” identity politics, they continue, ordinary people face crime and an untenable cost of living.

OK. But what do they want to do about it?

Like so many others Hirsi Ali and Markus are good at issuing warnings.

“If the Dutch elite want to regain their legitimacy, they must accept rather than seek to subvert the extraordinary victory of Geert Wilders. They must take seriously the millions who voted for Wilders—and respond to their perfectly legitimate concerns about immigration, Islamism, and the reasonable fear that their national identity is being eroded.” “If they and their ilk fail to do so, we can look forward to a future, bigger vote for Geert Wilders. And we should prepare for Wilders’ counterparts around the world to seize their opportunity, too. After a certain point—when its vote share has overtaken that of the established parties—the term far right surely loses its potency.”

The best way to unpick this is to understand that, first, the term far right does not lose its potency just because a large number of people vote for far-right politicians. It is an ideological description not a measure of scale, and writers who pretend otherwise are either dumb or affecting dumbness to divert their readers from asking hard questions.. Specifically, what policies would follow from recognising “legitimate concerns about immigration, Islamism, and the reasonable fear that their national identity is being eroded”? What, in short, does the rhetoric mean? In which direction is the propaganda taking us?

Hirsi Ali and Markus say that they do not personally support Wilders’ calls to ban the Quran, which is jolly nice of them. But what do they and their friends want instead? Here are policy options that would match their rhetoric.

A Trump style travel ban on asylum seekers and migrants from Muslim countries

A ban on all asylum seekers

An end to freedom of movement within the EU to stop Muslims and migrants from one country moving to a far-right country.

A sustained police effort to find and deport illegal immigrants?

The deportation of all Muslim foreign nationals

Leave aside considerations of human rights, as so many are willing to do, you would still need to vastly increase police and immigration service numbers and powers. To find all illegal migrants, and to patrol every border, would require tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, of new officers.  Your country would become a police state, with continual raids and deportations (although where the deportation flights would land is a moot point, as the Brtish Tories have found).

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Markus either cannot or dare not answer the most basic question in politics: what is to be done?  

We have threats of retribution We have jeering commentaries on how liberals and leftists don’t understand the modern world, and how “the people” will have their vengeance.  But they will not recommend policies because either the alleged “problems” they highlight are insoluble, and they dare not alienate their core readership by admitting it. Or, and more dangerously, they know that only dark and vicious solutions are possible and they wish to hide that from their audience for as long as they can.

Either way, the intellectual cowardice on display matches the cowardice of the comfortable, condescending men who sneered at Ayaan Hirsi Ali as she faced Islamist death threats all those years ago.

[omgkalyppso]

@sevarix-blogs tagged me for sharing some of a WIP ... and I'd said I'd share for someone else leaving an open tag for the Last Line of a WIP a few days ago and forgot. My WIPs are all a mess. Some are just dialogue, some are cut up scenes that still need to be reorganized. Still, I'll share from three WIPs here for fun.

I'll tag @boghermit, @bosspigeon, @lemonbronze, @bladesandstars and YOU.

Still working on the Astarion ate a bear conversation WIP:

Astarion had been hunting for some time, and he returned with the most graceless approach, tripping over a cauldron at Lae’zel’s tent with his arms stretched wide as if he’d been meaning to keep track of his steps. “Stay out of my things, darkling!” Lae’zel shouted, interrupting her conversation where Astarion might have otherwise been ignored. “With pleasure, gith,” Astarion said, laying one hand on his unbeating heart and stretching the other out overhead. “Alright, Astarion?” asked Shadowheart, eyebrows raised. “All the better,” Astarion’s words danced with the cadence of an elf who was far further into his cups than either Étoile or Shadowheart, “that you’re concerned for me, my sweet.” Shadowheart made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan as she objected. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m only worried that you’d return from your hunt with some contagion. These caves are riddled with stagnation and rot.” “Just like home,” Astarion exaggerated, arms spread wide again, hands flicked skyward. He quickly followed it up with a laugh that had the teensiest hiccough in it, lending to his inebriated air.

I started working on a WIP of Wyll writing poetry with Gale's encouragement for the prompt Modern AU for wyllweek but I psyched myself out so it is also still a WIP. Background Gale x my dragonborn Upton:

Wyll: [stating the obvious as Gale has a pen and notepad] Working on something? Gale: Mm. Well, just another gift for the dragon of my heart, as it were. There's few enough rhymes for bronze that I definitely need to pick up a pen when inspiration strikes. Wyll: How do you decide which gifts are worth giving? Gale: Now there's a telling anxiety if I ever heard one. If there's a possibility your audience is going to be disrespectful of the efforts you make, and your heart on your sleeve, Wyll Ravengard, then they don't deserve you. That said, poetry is as much about the audience and the medium as it is about the quality. I know that whatever I scribble down … Upton appreciates that I was thinking of them. The rest is imagined, I suppose I could talk to them about it — how I consider each syllable, and each revolving turn of phrase, with the hope that I can bring them new joy, that the maze around my heart, no more navigable by my manner of elocution, might be more manageable to them. They are celebrations of our bond, their love, their beauty, but they are also pleas of affection, calls to understanding, expressions of vulnerability. And those are harder to share when you put more of yourself in your writing, or when you can't trust those emotions to be well received — even when they are, the way people can misread intent or metaphor, or latch onto some throwaway sentiment you thought to include — it's hard, to write and to share, not even considering the technicalities and imagination of the hobby. Do you keep a journal? Wyll: No. I read and I can recite some poetry, but … I didn't— I didn't keep a journal while I was backpacking, though maybe I should have. I— I'm not thinking of writing for love, or to share with anyone. Maybe someday, but … The world has such vibrancy in it. I'm not a bard, but I'd think I prefer it through a poet's lens sometimes. Gale: As one should. There's a dreamer in all of us, and poetry has connected people to history, to culture, to themselves and to each other — since time immemorial. You needn't worry about sharing it with anyone, but those connections are always open to you. And it may be a tad hypocritical, having never shared my own work, but I'd love to read your poetry, if you're in need of an audience. Wyll: No, no, no. You don't get out of showing me yours by asking for mine. Not when you have the advantage of experience— Gale: Oooo. That may be the politest way I've been called old, but it still stings [holding his heart] right here. Upton: [sitting on the arm of Gale's chair] Wyll called you old? Gale: [standing so Upton can take up most of the chair's real estate] He said I had the benefit— Wyll: Advantage. Gale: [sitting in Upton's lap] The advantage of experience. Wyll: [in his own defense] In regards to poetry. Upton: [delighted, leaning around Gale so he almost falls over] Are you going to write inexperienced poetry, Wyll?

And I'll share a very little bit of my The Pale Elf vs Cazador fight rewrite WIP:

Astarion: You don't love anything. Cazador: Do you not know the meaning of the word sacrifice? One eats an apple and thinks nothing of it, a fruit made to be consumed. But what of eating a friend, a lover, a son. You were made to be sacrificed, but my love was no less true for my role in your extermination. Astarion: Fuck you. And fuck everything you ever did to me. Cazador: You are my spawn, you are my family, and you came home like a good little apple when it was time for harvest.

While it might just be bad and cheesy I like the idea of Cazador likening Astarion to being worth more to him than nothing only to immediately refute that in the next sentence from his mouth. He should have been a man of twisted love and contradictions imo, not blindly evil.

[electrasev5nwrites]

Ninja Daily: AIC 38

"Konoha is whining again," Mei said. She dropped a letter on Aiko's desk. "Something about 'please stop making positive diplomatic connections with Wave, it makes us feel sad and like we might not be your best friends."

"Did they really say that," Aiko said absently. She initialed a section she had just finished reading, deep into a report regarding the upcoming budget proposal. "That sounds just like them. Except I think there should be something to prompt our action in there."

"Yes." Mei took a moment to think. "I believe they said that if we play nicely with Wave, it will make them so upset that they will have to do absolutely nothing about it, because they have so little international influence and everyone thinks they're pompous. That also makes them sad, by the way."

Aiko hummed and picked up the letter. It was still sealed in the envelope. She glanced up at Mei.

"I know them very well," Mei said smoothly. She flicked her long hair back. "I can sense it." She nodded at the envelope, urging her to go ahead and open it now and prove Mei right.

With a repressed snort, Aiko broke the seal and pulled out the missive. It was fairly brief and uncomplicated. Konoha was expressing their concern, as representative of the other 4 Great Nations, about Kirigakure's apparent expansionist plans.

"On behalf of the other 4 Great Nations, they say," Aiko said absently.

Mei gave a disdainful little laugh.

"Yes, I'm sure they spent long hours in intimate conference with Lightning and Stone," Aiko mused. She kicked back in her chair a bit and read on. "They don't mention their enduring sadness here."

"It's subtext." Mei's sneer came across in her tone.

"Do you find this at all insulting?" Sanbi asked. "As a former Konoha shinobi yourself, this is not the flattering international image one would hope to convey."

'Nah, it's par for the course. Sandaime did bluster and have a surprising reputation for softness, so far as shinobi go. We definitely stagnated during his second term and lost international relevance. Tsunade rehabilitated our image a bit.'

"I'm invited to an idyllic retreat," Aiko said. She put the letter down. "We're going to have a chat about our feelings, leader to leader, and see if we can express mutual concerns and come to agreement." Her tone was bland.

"Better you than me," Mei said, despite that very clearly being a lie.

"Definitely," Aiko said. She gave her employee a skeptical look. "God only knows you'd show up looking like that and undermine our reputation."

Mei, who was wearing a perfectly pressed uniform and a full face of makeup, narrowed her eyes. Her waterfall of riotous hair seemed to puff out slightly, like a serpent's hood foreshadowing danger. She looked powerful, competent, and dangerous.

Aiko pretended not to notice this thoroughly reasonable outrage. She was experimenting today with a yukata, loosely closed with a jeweled pin. It was gaping open artfully to show one shoulder and a tight purple top. She tapped at the missive thoughtfully with an index finger. "I suppose I should go. The host is some priest, though. I don't know the etiquette for being hosted at a temple. I assume it's different than staying with nobility."

"As our resident expert in everything, I have every confidence you will succeed," Mei said in a silky tone that meant 'I hope you choke.' "If you have a moment, I meant to ask about the escorts we are sending to Wave to bring our honored noble guests."

Aiko glanced up expectantly.

"We have adequate shinobi guards," Mei allowed. "However, I think we need at least one figure of significant political importance, to improve the optics. Someone who is a noble in their own right, to act as welcome and guide. We don't want to look like hired thugs forcibly removing disfavored nobility to aid a coup."

"That's a bad look, yes," Aiko agreed. She sighed. "Hozuki-san is going to welcome them to their accommodations, isn't she?" Aiko said idly. She frowned. "I see your point, however. I don't really have time to address it personally. Make a recommendation, explain why, I'll approve."

Mei swept into a bow. "By your leave," she said, and glided out.

Aiko sighed. She put the letter aside for now, since it didn't require immediate action, and went back to the paperwork that had been priorized. Once the budget was on track and she'd ordered an audit of those suspicious fuckers down in accounting (oh! The tables turn!), she deposited the completed stack on Nishikawa's desk. He was nowhere to be seen. The woman sitting in his desk looked up briefly to make eye contact, nodded, and went back to her project. At first glance, it did not look work-related.

...Aiko leaned over to look more closely. "Rats?" She gave the temp an uncertain look. "Why are you making rats?"

The other woman didn't look up again. "It's the year of the rat." Her tone strongly implied the conversation was over. She was drawing shut a bunched bit of fabric that, judging by the squadron of completed rats overseeing, would become a little rat butt and get a string tail later.

She felt her brow furrow. But she didn't have any specific objections to rat arts and crafts. And presumably they were all adults here and whoever this person was had finished their work, so… "Carry on, then. I'll need the blue-marked folders-"

"To Amae-san when pickup comes, and the green go with the general outflow?"

Reassured all was well, Aiko nodded. "Thank you, I'm out for lunch now."

"Bring me back a coffee, please. Two cream and three sugars."

Aiko stopped at the door and squinted back. The temp didn't seem to be joking. Aiko didn't have a frame of reference for whatever this interaction was. She furrowed her eyebrows again. "Okay," she said. And she promptly resolved to not spend any time thinking about whatever was going on, because it was clearly not her business and she trusted her office's staffing decisions.

She went out for lunch at a tonkatsu place, asked them to make breakfast for her instead, and felt a little bit guilty about it. She avoided looking directly at the sign proclaiming that breakfast ended at 11. It was past 1 by the time she got her toast, eggs, and salad. The coffee and fruit came a few moments later.

While eating the ill-gotten gains of her reign, Aiko mulled over the invitation to meet with Konoha. She didn't care that much what they thought, and she severely doubted that they would be willing to object strongly enough to force her to let go of Wave.

She was doing a good thing, and she didn't intend to back down on it. That stubborn determination made her give serious thought to telling them that she was too busy and just weathering their disapproval. Tazuna's little island had a budding local defence force of locals that her chuunin were giving basic training to. The island was beginning to bustle with tourism over their bridge, drawn to stay at the appropriated mansion Gato had abandoned, eat the exceptionally fresh seafood, and buy the pearls that local women were beginning to dive for again. As for the more cental area of Wave- they were doing well, too. The Daimyo had been prodded into paying attention to his country, the worst of the leeches were being pulled away from influence, and Aiko expected better things were going to come.

She was relatively certain that Konoha was not willing to use enough muscle to forcibly extract her from influence in Wave. That would mean a protracted cross-continental military campaign.

Of course, there was the small but significant risk that Konoha was not totally exaggerating the extent of international concern. Aiko had made a very informed risk assessment that there was no appetite for international cooperation on that scale any time soon. But if she was wrong and Kiri was enough to bring Lightning and Konoha together despite their differences, it would be best to know that as soon as possible.

Fuck. She stared sourly into her empty cup. She was going to have to go hang out with the Sandaime and a bunch of other old men at a shrine.

"Then go," Sanbi offered lazily. His tails lashed as he stretched, like a sleepy cat. "Why is this so difficult?"

'I don't want to make any faux pas.' Aiko sighed and tried to catch someone's eye to ask for a refill. 'My religious education was lacking. There is always the chance that I unintentionally do something mortifying and we end up having to do penance, or pilgrimage, or issue apologies. I just don't want the international conversation about us to include that we're heathens.'

"Are you?"

She had to think about that one. 'Less than other people?' She finally got someone to take away her coffee cup. 'I used to be pretty certain that it was all bullshit. But now I know at least one of the gods is real, out there, and dislikes me on a personal level.'

"..." Sanbi paused a very long time in his answer. He stood up, turned in a circle, and then sat again. When he finally spoke, it was in a carefully diplomatic tone. "It seems possible that a faux pas in a religious context could have more serious impacts for you than bad publicity."

Aiko grimaced.

She was really tempted to say that it couldn't get any worse. She was an unpaid intern of the thoroughly unsympathetic god of death, who was either going to keep her undead as a servant in the living world or drag her to the land of the death whenever he remembered about her.

The thing was, she had a sinking feeling that it could, actually, get quite a bit worse than that. She didn't know how, but something about the tension on the back of her neck felt like a warning and validation that she still had a lot to lose, even if she didn't know what it was.

'Field trip it is,' Aiko decided. 'I'll have someone set up an interview with a religious teacher. A priest or priestess, I suppose. I have a month to read up before I need to go talk with Konoha. I can fit that in my schedule.'

She stopped at a cafe on her way back to the office and ordered two coffees to go, one for her and one for the stranger at Nishikawa's desk. The caffeine powered her through the rest of the work day.

At the earliest time that she could, she slipped away from her work and to the closest shrine from her office. She had no idea when it would be busy, but it was deserted at the moment. There was something reassuring about that. She didn't want to have a lot of people around while she tried to figure out how to not be blasphemous and damned.

There were two priests at the gate to the shrine. One was a fatherly-looking man, whose laugh lines implied he was nearing 50. He paused, broom in hand at the top of the stone stairs, and watched her approach. The other one was absolutely ancient-looking. He was so thin that she could see his wrist bones clearly when he raised his hands and gestured for her to shoo.

Affronted, Aiko frowned. "What's this about?" she asked.

The younger man answered. "Welcome, Mizukage-sama," he said. He bowed humbly. He did not seem to notice that his companion was making a face at her. "How can I help you today?"

She looked at the elderly priest again. "I've been invited to conference with the Hokage at a shrine and I want to talk with the head priest about any etiquette or background information that I should know."

"I understand." He bowed again. "I'll retrieve the senior priest." And then he went away, leaving her with the rude old man.

He frowned at her.

She frowned at him. "What?" Aiko asked again.

The younger priest turned around to give her an inquisitive look.

Aiko gave him a smile and gestured for him to go on. "Not you, sorry."

His untrimmed brows pressed together in what looked like confusion, but he nodded and continued on his way.

She waited until he was out of hearing range to try again. This time, she was calmer and carefully respectful, despite the old man's rudeness. "Good afternoon," Aiko said, because she had manners and she was hoping this could be smoothed out. "I'm Uzumaki Aiko, and you are…?"

He gave her a disdainful look. Then he very pointedly looked down at the ground.

Aiko felt a spark of irritation and then she realized there was nothing on the ground. As in, he wasn't casting a shadow. She felt her lips go open in an "oh" of recognition. Her mind stalled for a minute. It wasn't… It wasn't the first time that she had seen a ghost, but the others had been much less solid-looking. This man looked alive, aside from the fact that he looked like he should have died of natural causes 20 years ago.

"Never mind, then," Aiko said. She blinked quickly. "You're the first non-shinobi ghost I've seen."

He gave her a curious look, mouth twisting to the side. But he didn't open it and attempt to speak.

"I wonder if it's because you are a priest," Aiko mused. She couldn't help but glance around the shrine, as if she might see other ghosts. "It could be more common for people who are connected to the spiritual to stay. Do you know?" She addressed the last bit to him directly.

He folded his arms into his sleeves, looked into the distance, and began drifting away.

"Rude," Aiko said under her breath.

The ghost swiveled around to give her an affronted look. He pulled one arm out of a sleeve to gesture at her, up and down, as if there was something visibly wrong with her.

"I'm not doing anything," she denied. Aiko was sorely tempted to roll her eyes. "I came here to learn, so that I don't make death any angrier or make any other enemies."

His eyes narrowed at her. The breeze picked up, and it brought a heavy, sickly stench. She had never actually smelled rotting meat, but Aiko instinctively knew that was what it was. She brought a hand up to cover her nose and sneezed.

It only took an instant to realize that had been a faux pas. The ghost was suddenly furious. His mouth opened for the first time, showing a blackened stump of a tongue and releasing grave breath. He spat something foul and incomprehensible at her and wheeled away. There was something wrong with him, on a level that unsettled her. Before he had seemed like a badly-tempered old man. He had disliked her on sight, but he hadn't seemed wicked or inhuman at all. Now, there was something actively malevolent in the air. There was something else that was making her uncomfortable, but it took a moment to pin down what it was. She saw it, when she looked at the ground beneath him.

He was more solid. He was casting a shadow.

That was concerning. She didn't know much about death, but she knew it was far too active and she didn't want to live in a world where the intangible could become tangible and kick her ass.

She had to know if he was truly solid.

As the ghost turned his back on her, she bent down to pick up a bit of gravel and lob it at him. If he was solid, it should have bounced off of his heel. If he was stil a regular harmless ghost, it should have gone through him.

It did exactly neither of those things. There was a surprisingly loud bang, and then gravel went flying. She put her arm up to protect her face, but she could still see that there was a circle of bare earth where the ghost had been standing.

But the ghost himself was gone.

"...Huh," Aiko said. She put her hand down. "That was interesting."

And she had learned at least one possibly useful fact: it made dead people very, very angry if you acknowledged that they were off-putting. That meant gritting her teeth through graveyard rot. It was gross, but she could do it now that she knew it would offend.

Someone cleared their throat. When she turned to face the sound, she saw yet another priest. The fatherly-looking man was hanging back behind him, so she expected this was the senior priest. She gave him a polite bow. And then she froze in her tracks as she saw that the ghost was manifesting slowly by his fellows. His face looked strained and thoroughly moody- but totally human again. He didn't seem.. Well, was demonic the right word for the ugliness that had twisted his eyes before?

"Mizukage-sama," the living priest said firmly. "I think that you need to leave now."

...What, like the problem had been her? She bristled, just a bit. But she looked at the bare earth, the pebbles embedded in a nearby tree, and backed down. It did look like she had been bizarre for no reason. "Goodnight," Aiko said resentfully. She made eye contact with the smug-looking ghost. "This isn't over," she told him.

"Go home," said the priest.

Aiko gave him a bow. "I wasn't talking to you, just to the dead man over there. I'll return to have our conversation tomorrow. I apologize for the trouble."

The ghost sneered at her and glided away.

"Wait!" The priest called out. "A dead man?"

She pursed her lips at him. "Yes," Aiko acknowledged. Her gaze darted over to the man in question. "A priest. He looks to be... senior in age. Green eyes, a wooden bracelet, a spot on his left cheek."

The living priest raised a hand to his own face, indicating the spot where the mole was. Aiko nodded in answer.

"I see," he said slowly. Then he nodded. "I suppose that you angered him?"

She had to nod. "Not sure why, but yes. He seemed to dislike me as soon as I walked in."

"Well, yes," the senior priest said frankly. The dead man gave him a satisfied look of approval. "This temple is dedicated to Izanami, lady of the land of the dead, and she has no love for the death god or his servants."

Aiko bit her lip. "I... I want to say I'm not his servant," she said, not sure if that was dangerous or not. "I did not deliberately choose the nature of our association."

There was a long silence, as the two elderly priests looked her up and down. The younger man was looking humbly at his own feet. The dead man's face twisted first. He seemed to huff a great sigh and then gestured at her to follow him.

"I think that you should come inside after all," the head of the shrine said. "Please follow me."

[asoiaf-source]

Even if you wanted to be generous and explain Sansa as being in denial again, it is a disappointing explanation because after so many examples of her in denial, she has yet to mature/grow past it. As you said, she remains stagnate.

I thought as much during her escape from KL with Dontos. We were lead to believe that she was meeting and planning something with Dontos for weeks, so when it finally happens I expected to see Sansa very much involved in her escape, but she wasn’t.  In that chapter, we do see that Sansa isn’t dumb, she figures out Dontos was involved in Joffrey’s poisoning and that by wearing the hairnet, she was implicated too, so she understood she had no choice but to follow Dontos, a murderer in her eyes, because she had no other options.

Then she just follows him... Sansa knew nothing about her escape plan except where to meet Dontos, she didn’t know how they would leave, where to go, what ship, where the ship was to take her, etc.. she especially didn’t know about Baelish, but I’ll give her that one, how was she to know that twist... but everything else I expected her to know or to have at least directed or questioned Dontos about the plan in advance. What were they talking about for weeks?! I mean if something happened and Dontos never showed up, Sansa would have been stuck without even a clue in how to even leave the palace grounds.

This was quite disappointing to read, it is always 2 step forward then 1 steps back with Sansa... you can get excited when she displaying some smarts and cleverness and the potential that you expect to see from growth, then she will revert back to showing lack of common sense, not being more questioning and critical more often and not only when her back isn’t literally backed into a corner. She still displays a lot of self-centered interests which (to me) leads to her denial issues, because knowing the truth isn’t useful to her, so better to not examine it too closely cause she doesn’t want to or can't deal with problems. 

This is the main reason I really don’t understand why people think she would make a good leader. This doesn’t absolve her of all blame, but it also doesn’t make her a strong thinker or reliable person, especially as a leader type. And even if she could develop into a strong thinker, and solve her denial issues. She doesn’t have the personality to take on problems and solve them, she isn’t someone who wants real responsibility or wants to deal with the consequences of hard choices. This is one of the reasons she developed her denial in the first place, to not have to completely deal with issues she doesn’t like in reality.

Sansa dreams of peace, and gardens, parties, dresses, music, of children, and basically a no stress life, all of it is personal wishes and self-interests, nothing wrong with that, but not the qualities of a leader. Her personality is not geared toward the realities of leadership, wanting to make the world better, making sure people are feed, making sure the borders are safe, basically living a life of service to something greater than yourself, etc. Sansa would do things that please her, like planning a party, listening to music, organizing a sewing circle.

She doesn’t want to go to meetings on trade and economics, dealing with pirates off the coast, or the infighting at court. Hell most of us would not, not blaming her, but also she is not the person who should be in charge of bringing stability and protection to the realm. This idea of her, especially at this age, is ridiculous and honestly I can’t understand anyone who can read her chapters and think this is in her immediate future (by the end of the series)... maybe a Sansa in her 30-40s would be seasoned enough to think more broadly (maybe after having children), she will mature into someone who thinks beyond her family and personal concerns, but not young Sansa as she has been written thus far.

Often I just want more self-reflection and examination from Sansa, and that will not happen without her being able to acknowledge her tendency to slip into denial, ignore any difficult problems, and never learning from her own mistakes. You can’t work on your flaws unless you know about them and actively work to not keep falling into them. You may always have the flaws, you can’t always rid yourself of all your personality tendencies, but you can learn to recognize them in yourself and your actions and actively / logically course correct yourself to rise above them. That is want I ultimately from her character. I hope this is GRRM plan for her.

This post is inspired by @fromtheseventhhell's post

If Sansa isn't just seeing what she wants to see, but following LF because she has no alternative ( I mean fair...what's a girl to do? She needs roof over her head at least), then it means she knows now what sweetsleep does.

Father and I have larger concerns.

This was said by her when she was thinking of how what's best for Robert the boy is not always good for the Lord Arryn of Vale. And it might be argued that since Sansa hadn't known about the plan it was simply stated with the view of state matters. However were Arya or Dany in her place, and they chose as she has chosen, this alone would have been enough to vilify them. Interestingly enough Sansa's choice to overlook her cousin's health in favour of political matters is shrugged off. I am not trying to give an opinion about Sansa's choice of actions here (for I have none), I am merely stating what I found in the text.

Now what about what happens after? In the sample chapter of Twow, we see her not mulling one bit on the fact what seducing Harry leads to. Harry the Heir becomes more than just an upjumped knight only when the condition of his being the heir is fulfilled. And it can only be fulfilled through Robert's death.

I know that we can't judge without reading the whole of twow and this is why I usually do not take part in the conjecture of Sansa poisoning Robert. But what sticks out as a sore thumb is when Sansa is said to be this masterful little politician in making. More intelligent and more artful than the teenage politicians who have actually proven their worth. She is also said to be the most innocent and kindliest of them all, having clean hands and no blood on them. Not so innocent now is she?

I mean even if we are to interpret that she is being forced to do this because she has to keep LF in her favour, it should ( at least to those who are so eager to criticize Dany for forgetting the name of the girl who was burnt to death by her dragons) ring alarm bells about how Sansa spares not one thought to the plot in the Twow sample chapter. I mean we see her thinking that Robert is a fool for wanting to marry her and claiming to love her; we see her happily jaunting around with Myranda Royce, being quite proud of the tourney she has helped arrange, hoping that Harry the Heir would come to at least like her, being over the moon that her "father" should raid the whole of Vale for lemons just so she can have the spectacle of an impressive lemoncake. Not once in this chapter we see her thinking about sweetsleep being forced to run through Robert's blood or the ominous wording of not "if" Robert dies but "when" he dies. It is true that nothing can be said for sure from only one chapter of a yet to be released book but for now this is all we have.

Now if we are to say that Sansa truly doesn't realize what she is being made to do, then we have to say that she is once again seeing what she wants to see. I find these lines odd:

He does have pretty hair. If the gods are good and he lives long enough to wed, his wife will admire his hair, surely. That much she will love about him.

A consideration of a future where Lord Arryn has a wife brings the possibility of an heir from Robert's own line. Harry the Heir would then be pushed back further down the line of inheritance and possibly then all the gifts that LF promised Sansa then would only be that: empty promises. So Sansa considering a future where Robert lives long enough to wed means that she isn't seeing what LF plans to do. Even when LF has conspired right in front of her. It cannot be anything but a deliberate coping mechanism then. Which again begs the question about all those bloggers who dismiss Arya's own experience of being bullied as her being an unreliable narrator and throws stalk into everything Sansa says...how come they never discuss this?

The political genius in the making gives no extra thought to the overheard conversation where LF is deliberately causing a scarcity of food while simultaneously throwing a feast fit for a king. If this girl truly were to trump both Jon and Dany, shouldn't there have been idk some thought given to this?

I am not saying that Sansa is stupid. She has potential and I am truly impressed how she reeled in Harry the Heir. But the way her stans talk about, especially when they disgrace so many other characters to prove how much better Sansa is than them, where every little thing that Dany does is considered to be a symptom of madness, while Sansa's own involvement in a possible murder is dismissed as her being naive, while simultaneously where Jon is bashed for his stupidity while Sansa's continuous lack of political awareness of the lives of the mass is not even deemed to being an important topic of discussion...it feels a certain kind of way. There is also the continuous insistence that Arya is an unreliable narrator even though the readers face the most confusion while reading Sansa's chapters.

Sansa cannot be the child prodigy of political matters and the naive dove with a dangerous coping mechanism in the same breathe. The only other explanation can be what has been pushed onto Arya for so long. That is, Sansa doesn't care one whit for Winterfell. She truly cannot perceive Robert Arryn being murdered. She wants Harry as someone with whom she can build a life with and cares not for his supposed inheritance. She cares not for her own claim on her house's ancient seat and would eventually live her life away from it. But I am sure even this wouldn't be satisfying to them.

[vickyvicarious]

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

[boltwrites]

Misfits - Chapter 2

Fandom: Star Wars - Clone Wars / The Bad Batch Pairing: The Bad Batch / Reader (Polyamorous) Rating: M (Rating May Change) Tags: Polyamorous Relationship, Force-Sensitive Reader, Slow Burn

Work Summary: After a year working with the 501st, you've been assigned a new post - Clone Force 99, aka the Bad Batch. You're concerned about the transition - you found it hard enough to fit in with the 501st, and now you had to acclimate to an entirely new squad. As it turns out, the Bad Batch is very accommodating.

Chapter Summary:  You're started to settle in with the Bad Batch. Introductions are in order, but one in particular leads down a path you never expected.

read it on ao3 | or read more below

You had said goodbye to Rex only a few minutes prior. He had wrapped you in a tight hug and told you not to get into too much trouble, and you had to try really, really hard not to start crying in front of your new squad. He’d waved as you entered their transport, and instead of dwelling on those emotions – loss, sadness, anxiety – you’d pushed them to the back of your mind. You learned long ago that acting as if they didn’t exist wouldn’t help anything, but right now, you needed to compartmentalize. You hardly knew these men, and you didn’t want to freak them out by sobbing about leaving your best friend behind.

The men in question had since been introduced to you by Hunter. The tall, slender clone who liked to lean against the side of the ship like some half-baked deathstick dealer was Crosshair, a sharpshooter and sniper. You probably should have figured that, judging by the tattoo that encircled his eye. When Hunter introduced you, he had made a noncommittal noise, looked you up and down, and then decided you weren’t very interesting, instead walking his way back to the cockpit. You hoped he was just antisocial, and didn’t hate nat borns, or women, or something.

The big burly one was Wrecker, who had wasted no time in offering you a big smile and a firm clap on the back. Honestly, you thought he was going to hug you – and maybe he was, and then he thought better of it.

“You’re our new Jedi, huh?” he had asked with a broad smile? You offered him a somewhat hesitant one back – he was intimidating, after all. He was broad and muscular like you had never seen on a clone before, and the large scar that encompassed half of his forehead and a good portion of his scalp was distracting. It made him look hardened and dangerous, but with his jovial tone, you soon found out he was anything but menacing.

“Yeah, guess I am?” you answered with a nervous laugh.

“She’s a force-sensitive, Wreck, not a Jedi. She doesn’t answer to the Council.” Hunter had clarified. You were somewhat shocked that he cared about the difference – but, then again, he had seemed pleased that you weren’t a part of the Order, likely because it meant you had less rules to follow.

“Oh, yeah!” Wrecker had grinned, clapping you on both shoulders now, as he leaned down to grin at you. You had laughed a little harder, because you were starting to see now, by both his force signature and in his voice, that he was really just a big goofball. “I never liked the Jedi anyway!”

“Weren’t you just expressing how excited you were for ‘our new Jedi?’”

That had come from the one with the glasses – er, goggles? You weren’t exactly sure what they were, or if he needed them for his bad eyesight or just tactical reasons. Either way, he adjusted him on his face as Hunter introduced him as Tech. It wasn’t difficult to figure out what his specialty was – much like it was easy to deduce that Wrecker liked to punch things in addition to blowing things up. Tech, of course, handled a lot of technical issues and data – but you were actually shocked at the fact that he wasn’t, well… tiny.

Tech was taller than Hunter, and even Rex, as he peered down at you through his glasses. He took your hand and shook it – you could tell just by his grip that he was used to intricate work – robotics, droid work, rewiring datapads – fiddly things that required a steady hand. You had nodded politely to him as he greeted you.

The last member of the team, and perhaps the most elusive, was Echo. He was paler than the others, and studded with prosthetics – most prominently, the jack that his hand had been substituted with. He had an aura about him in the force that spoke of pain – not the pain of war that the rest of the squad exuded, no. This was a deeper pain, something profound and lasting, and you had a feeling it had to do with that arm, and the bolts in his skull, and the way his cheekbones still looked sharper than that of even Crosshair.

“You’re from the 501st?” he had asked, after Hunter had led you to the cockpit and left to look at something in Tech’s travel plans for the route to their next mission. You were alone, but Echo still gazed out the front of the transport into hyperspace, his flesh hand fiddling with the textured armrest of the captain’s chair.

“Yeah – I’ve worked with them for the past year, most of the time. I get contracted out from the unit to do a lot of stealth work that the Jedi obviously can’t be pulled for. Stuff like this, I guess,” you shrugged. Echo had hummed in acknowledgement, glancing at you, almost curious.

“Were you with the 501st when Captain Rex last worked with… Clone Force 99?”

The wording was strange. Rex had mentioned to your that this squad usually referred to themselves as “the Bad Batch” due to their mutations. But Echo was more cautious – he almost hesitated on the name. His force signature didn’t give away much more – it only told you that he was being careful with his words, that he didn’t trust you quite yet. Which, honestly, was to be expected.

“No. Anaxes, right?” Echo nodded, and you shook your head. “No – I was on a stealth mission. Well, I guess it couldn’t really be called a stealth mission… I was working with a pirate named Hondo Onaka. Think I might have rather been on Anaxes.”

You chuckled, trying to make light of it. You knew Anaxes has been a mess, and honestly you had felt horrible leaving behind the 501st in order to take on what you considered a useless political mission. You knew the campaign had been long, grueling, and complicated, and you always felt guilty when you weren’t by Rex and Anakin’s side to help with something so important.

“Ah,” Echo made a soft noise, picking at some scoring marks on his socket arm. You bit your lip at the awkwardness that permeated the room, the conversation stagnating at Echo dwelled on… something.

“I used to be a part of the 501st,” he finally admitted, glancing up at you. His eyes said more than his lips – there was sadness, there. It was hidden behind his soldier’s veneer of indifference, but you could tell by the way he looked at you that his transfer to Bad Batch hadn’t been as straightforward as your own.

“Yeah?” you asked, sitting down in the co-pilot’s chair next to him. He nodded, sighing, relaxing into the chair before shooting you a glance.

“Yeah. Made ARC trooper at one point. Me and Fives – me and Fives.”

His eyes had gleamed the first time he said it – but as he repeated Fives, his face fell, and your own did as well, your first clenching.

“Oh,” you breathed, and he glanced at you, ducking down to try to make out your expression.

“You knew him?”

“He talked about you – I had – I’m stupid,” you laughed, trying not to think about Fives. You hadn’t known him or Tup long before the incident, but Fives had showed you the ropes, along with Rex. You got along with him easily – he had been funny, and kind, and if he tried to flirt with you a few times you just put it up to you being the only woman available.

You remembered him talking briefly about Echo – he had only mentioned Echo once, with gritted teeth and a set jaw, mumbling something about a previous mission, and how he and a fellow ARC trooper had handled the situation. You could tell that it pained him to mention his comrade – that this Echo had likely died – and you didn’t press the subject. You knew, even then, that Fives didn’t deal well with loss. Ironic, then, how he was the one to cause so die, to cause the grief himself.

“I worked with him, before…” you gestured vaguely, and Echo nodded, not wanting you to mention Fives’s death himself.

“He thought I died at the Citadel. Everyone did,” Echo sighed, staring out at the hyperspace lane. “Maybe I did.”

You stared at him. In the force, his emotions were a tangled mess – grief, both for Fives and himself. Pain – not only physical, but emotional, spiritual. You couldn’t fathom what happened to him – you could look at this physical evidence of his cybernetic appendages, more similar to those of a droid than any prosthetics you had seen before. You could see the pallor in his face, the way his cheekbones jut from his face, how he had squinted far too severely in the light of the Coruscanti sun. He had been through something that you couldn’t fathom, something you would never truly understand, even if he did wish to explain it to you.

But despite that, you could still feel him in the force. When he spoke of Fives – the way his signature sparked let you know that he didn’t just know Fives. You could tell they had worked together for years, that they had likely grown up together. The rest of the Batch – their signatures sang in harmony because they had grown up together, because they had known each other for many years. And you initially hadn’t caught onto Echo’s dissonance – the way that he was trying to fit in with them, but how he didn’t fit in quite as easily as the other men. And now you knew why. It was because, while he had changed, he still held onto those bonds. Rex, Fives, the rest of the 501st – even though whatever Echo had endured, those were still his brothers.

“Not completely,” you mumbled, looking down. You could feel Echo’s eyes on you, so you sighed and continued. “You – you still care about them. Those men. They may not be your men anymore – and I guess they aren’t mine, either – but you care for them. That has to count for something.”

When you looked up, Echo caught your eye. His expression was unreadable, and his signature betrayed nothing. He was hard to read already – the cybernetics clouded your judgement – but you could tell that he didn’t exactly know what he thought of your statement.

“Yeah. Maybe it does,” Echo mumbled to himself, staring out across hyperspace, as stars flew by, exploding behind his eyes as he contemplated his place among them.

After that, the silence wasn’t quite so awkward. It was comforting, almost. You knew that it wasn’t the same – that although you and Echo were both former members of the 501st, that the circumstances were wildly different. But you still felt a kinship with him. Because he still knew Anakin, and Rex, and Fives, and Jesse, and Kix, and all the others. Because he probably played the same drinking games you had with the men, he had fought beside them as you did, and he had watched them die, as you had. You knew he wasn’t ready to talk, and perhaps he never would be. But if he ever was, you would be ready to listen.

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taglist (get added!)

@killtherandomness @pastelpanda19

[iturbide]

distractions huh? SO [chinhands] tell me your most and least favorite aspects of the fe16 lords and fe13 main character (which i’m saying Lissa counts for this because she deserves it)

Lissa is absolutely a main character and to imply otherwise is a travesty

but oh we're gonna go deep huh

okay so starting with the 3H Lords (I'm sticking to the House Leaders because I can't really count Byleth as a Lord)

Most Favorite

Claude: I mean. I love everything about Claude, you know? If I had to pick one favorite thing, though, it's how kind he is. He had a rough past of his own, and he could very easily have decided to take that out on others -- but instead, he sets his sights on changing the world so that no one else will ever have to suffer the way he did. He might be secretive and keep his cards close to the vest, but strip away the mystery and he's an incredibly good person.

Dimitri: The fact that his mental health is taken seriously. Dimitri has some pretty extreme trauma in his past, and it's implied that even after he's able to face some of that, his mental health struggles will continue for the rest of his life. And that's amazing, given how mental health problems are usually just hand-waved away in media as "cured" by something when that's not how it works in reality. It's just really nice to see.

Edelgard: I actually really like how driven she is. She is a woman who has the will to change the world and she refuses to stop until she does that, even if it means getting her hands dirty in the process. That is a gripping trait and one that can be fascinating in a well-nuanced character but IntSys dropped the ball on that.

Least Favorite

Claude: I have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find anything I don't like about Claude at all. I do roll my eyes at IntSys' implied history for him in some magazine or something: having lots of half-siblings and getting pushed around by the family, which doesn't exactly reflect well on his dad in my view, similar to the whole Concubine Wars thing that Garon could have addressed but didn't which led to lots of child murder. But thankfully that's not canon as far as I'm concerned so I can safely complain about it and then re-write it to be better.

Dimitri: The effective 180 turn in Dimitri's mindset after Rodrigue's death. I love the actual arc of Dimitri's story, the generally positive approach to mental health issues and managing them, but having his sudden improvement be linked to Rodrigue's death...if not counter-intuitive, then questionable, given how well he knew the man and how deeply traumatized he's been by similar deaths in his presence (including Rodrigue's elder son).

Edelgard: The gross obsession with Byleth that IntSys wrote into Crimson Flower. I hate that so much. It makes sense to me that the war gets deadlocked in other routes (the Alliance is laying low while the Kingdom and Empire go at it in Verdant Wind, the Empire is struggling against terrain and weather conditions while trying to root out Kingdom holdouts in Azure Moon), but the heavy implication in Crimson Flower is that Edelgard's effort stagnated because she was so focused on finding Byleth rather than actually doing anything. That's an absolute travesty to me, given how interesting her character could be.

And as for my Awakening mains (Lucina's technically the tritagonist right? so she's in here too):

Most Favorite

Chrom: I love how open he is to people. This man has made so many ill-advised recruitment decisions including: A) an amnesiac Plegian, B) a thief that infiltrated Ylisstol Castle as part of an assassination mission, C) an enemy Plegian mage who didn't throw a fireball at him, and D) a second Plegian mage that just showed up out of nowhere with a bunch of birds. He doesn't cast aspersions, he doesn't judge based on past or occupation or heritage, he's just "welcome aboard, please don't stab me in the back." Also his unshakeable faith in Robin even after Validar forces them to steal the Fire Emblem from him gets me every damn time.

Robin: I love that Robin and Grima are linked. I love this so much, because while there are tons of different interpretations for what that link is, one hard fact is that Robin is an incredibly kind person who cares deeply about people and wants to keep them safe. No matter how evil Grima might be, the irrefutable fact is that Robin -- who is directly linked to the fell dragon -- is a kind and caring person, meaning Grima's direct presence is not corrupting or a sign that someone is evil.

Lissa: I love the dichotomy between her bright, cheerful personality and her deep-seated insecurities about her absent Brand. She's so energetic and so fun, a bit of a prankster and insistent that she's not delicate and therefore doesn't need to be coddled -- but deep down, she's clearly worried about her place in the family because she doesn't have the Brand her brother and sister do. The fact that Owain's Brand surfacing led her to cry for an hour speaks volumes about how that issue affects her, and I just love how both of these things exist in the same character.

Lucina: I love how strong she is. This is a young woman who has lost most of her family, whose world has fallen to ruin, and who now struggles to survive -- and rather than give into despair in the face of all these horrors and losses, she instead leads those able to fight against an undead threat and protect those who cannot defend themselves from that same danger. I have no doubt that she relies heavily on her closest allies (much as her father did before her), but she has shouldered this role without flinching, and it speaks volumes about her personal strength.

Least Favorite

Chrom: I've mentioned this before, but I'm really disappointed that we don't get full follow-through on his character when it comes to absorbing Emmeryn's lessons. We got to see him reach out and try to talk Walhart down! That was a great moment, even though it failed! But we never get to see him do the same with Grima -- and I have a feeling Emmeryn would still have tried to speak with the fell dragon, just as she tried to speak with Gangrel at the Border Pass early in the game. It just feels like they dropped the ball at the end, and that's a shame to me.

Robin: This is petty and minor and technically a wider issue than just Robin, but I kind of hate that Robin in canon is so pale-skinned. Robin is Plegian, they were born in a desert nation, their father is very dark-skinned, and then here's Robin, pale as a ghost. This affects Henry and Tharja, too (Gangrel could use further work, too, though I tend to think he's actually part Feroxi), and carries with it some really uncomfortable implications given that our evil Plegians are dark-skinned (Gangrel's a weird case again, given that he's kind of grey-looking for some reason???), but all our recruitable ones are pale. Seriously, IntSys, what the fuck.

Lissa: This is a personal thing but I'm disappointed in her Supports with Robin. Like, sure, the whole pranking thing is entertaining, but especially given the fact that they can have an S support, that's really shaky ground. I wish they could have had something more poignant, something with more meaning -- my first preference is, as always, a discussion of Brands, even if Robin's didn't come up -- rather than it just being a prank war ending in a stalemate. That doesn't even feel like a recipe for friendship.

Lucina: I really wish we'd seen her grow more. I know we only get her halfway through the game, but that's more than enough time for her to see how Chrom and Robin act and interact, how they trust each other, and how much they mean to each other, regardless of marital status. The only way that Lucina will falter in her judgment is if Robin is her other parent or if she's married to Robin, which makes it feel like she's missed a lot of her father's best lessons. I really wish she'd faltered even in the normal version, been unable to bring herself to take a life even believing that it was the way to save her father.

[fancyfade]

Damian remembers the second time he arrived in Gotham, after he'd left Mother.

He hated it. He hated having no mission, nowhere to go. The boredom of the days as he monitored the city but did not act on his notes, in case Father would discover him before he was ready. The apathy and stagnation of no training schedule. The –

fear is the wrong word, but he cannot think of a replacement – when he woke up each time in a new place – waking up to the shattering of glass as the bottle he placed on a restroom doorknob broke when his sanctuary was invaded, waking up tied to the top of a tree outside of town, to keep himself out of sight of any aggressors –

There really was something to be said for going to sleep in the same bed every night. For... well, everywhere is enemy territory. Damian should know that and only an idiot wouldn't.

But when he was living with Grayson before all this, he was at least confident that if Grayson chose to attack him, it would be in a predictable manner. Due to one of Damian's actions, presumably to restrain him from using excessive force.

Now – Grayson isn't aggressive. He wouldn't fight Damian physically. But it'd be better if he did, it'd be easier to deal with if he would attack him than if he would manipulate him with lies. At least Damian knows how to react to the first situation.

keep reading

okay so. Very long chapter. Decisions under cut

I kind of feel like while Damian doesn’t technically need Alfred and Dick to live day-to-day life but does benefit from having someone providing structure and looking out for him... not that he would ever say that 😂 but a lot of early on stuff is typical kid stuff where Dick is providing most of the structure and crime fighting lessons and we see Damian trying to be independent and set boundaries (leaving when Dick tells him off for beating the information out of someone in B&R #2, not telling Dick about Colin because he wants to have some allies away from Batman in Batman: streets of Gotham)... kind of like typical kid stuff. Which is nice.

re: Damian's kill-code. I don't think he really felt like it was wrong at the time when he killed people, but I do also think that he wasn't murder-happy (and probably didn't even like doing it). It's not like he was killing people because he really liked killing people, it was always for a reason. He's only ever really shown to fight combatants and in Robin: Son of Batman a lot of his rhetoric is clearly he's doing it for his family – because you know, that's what he's been told he had to do. We can see that with Goliath where he projects onto Goliath and tells Goliath that he should fight for his family and his entire family is counting on him. Also significant that even though Goliath is an animal, not a person, we see Damian doesn't kill Goliath when Goliath is not fighting back. I think even if he hadn't met Bruce and Dick, Damian would have eventually been unable to keep going through with Ra's' plans (like in-character Talia is).

I also think that, because it's Ra's' entire thing, Damian probably thought that killing people for Ra's was saving the world and I imagine that (+ the doing it for family) is probably what he had to tell himself if he ever had doubts.

Damian did get to have one of the lines I liked in Morrison's run (being Robin is the best thing I've done) just I used it in a different context here, because I do think that he likes being able to save people (since we see him be concerned about civilians safety way earlier than we see him ever think killing people is wrong). But yeah Chapter 45 was the explicitly rejecting Ra's' offer (for himself and his own reasons, not because he thought Bruce was approving) and this one is the deciding to be Robin.

I also know that while it is probably narratively frustrating for Damian to still insist that he's doing this at least partly due to his dad, I do really like the gradualness of his character arc and don't want to erase that in my fic. So we can see that while he has motives for wanting to do it himself (feeling a responsibility to civilians and liking being able to live with it easier, appreciating Dick's training) he's still going to phrase it as if it's related to Bruce, even if it's in a challenging way now (like “I’ll be better than you thought I could”) not in a “please like me/ doing what you wanted” way.

Re: what Talia tells Damian about his destiny. I changed it slightly from Batman and Robin #0 because even though I do regard the Batman and Robin 2011 series and Robin: Son of Batman as my main character reference for a lot of Damian stuff, the “you will lead the Al Ghul dynasty and save/rule the world” thing Talia tells him seemed like the writers were trying to give Talia something positive to say to Damian but while not completely going against how she acted in Morrison's writing? But I really prefer @sapodilas's interpretation of Talia where she's a burned out idealist (link) and she wants something better for her son – that's why in my fic she just tells him he'll be able to do great stuff (and be free 😭) without imposing expectations that he will rule the world or anything on him.

Also as you can tell in my interpretation Talia was preparing to leave the League for a while – that's why she told Damian about all the security flaws in the bases (which he then used to hide from Ra's when he helped break himself out) and that was the purpose of the birthday fight in the Batman and Son rewrite fic – she wanted to establish an excuse to take Damian away from Ra's for a bit before she needed to use it.

Technically when Damian was having his internal monologue about Talia the initial monologue was like 'he'd only seen the part of her she'd let him see / that he wanted to see' thing here but I feel like that might be a bit too mature a thought for him at the moment with how much resentment he has on her for things not being how they used to be and feeling like he wasn't trained well enough earlier.

The Bruce wanting Damian to be free from both his and Ra's' destiny is from Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul ending (also I find it kind of sad/funny that Bruce is better at understanding Damian needs to develop himself as a person and not just follow in his footsteps before he raises him, then when he's raising him he's bad at making Damian feel that way and Damian thinks Bruce just wants him to be a mini-Bruce in Batman and Robin 2011)

Either way hope you liked it this was almost certainly 1 of the longest plotlines I've done so far in this fic!

[omgkalyppso]

finally going back to my astarion ate a bear conversation wip. and you know. it's not that bad. i get so critical of myself

“Alright, Astarion?” asked Shadowheart, eyebrows raised. “All the better,” Astarion’s words danced with the cadence of an elf who was far further into his cups than either Étoile or Shadowheart, “that you’re concerned for me, my sweet.” Shadowheart made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan as she objected. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m only worried that you’d return from your hunt with some contagion. These caves are riddled with stagnation and rot.” “Just like home,” Astarion exaggerated, arms spread wide again, hands flicked skyward. His declaration was followed by a laugh which held the teensiest hiccough in it, lending to his inebriated air. Étoile shifted from beside Shadowheart, prepared to speak, silenced into a smile as Astarion exclaimed more loudly, “There you are!” “No, no no no no. No. Augh,” Shadowheart whined as Astarion swayed, leaning forward as if he might fall, but balancing back with a vampire’s grace as he stepped over and around her legs. Shadowheart moved over the bedroll that she and Étoile were seated upon, leaving Astarion enough space to sit between them. “My friend,” Astarion greeted, as he settled into place, earning an amused snort from Étoile. Étoile tilted their head to make eye contact with Shadowheart, who extended all her lower fingers away from her goblet dismissively. “Better that way,” she said judgmentally, referring to being excluded from Astarion’s current assertion of friendships. With a roll of their eyes, Étoile returned their attention to Astarion. The vampire’s gaze was warm and glazed over, but still distant, calculating something beyond Étoile’s perception. They doubted he’d be so forward as to share what it was, so they returned to the original question that had settled in their mind. “Would you even know if you were infected?” Étoile asked him. Shadowheart huffed in amusement as she refilled her goblet with wine, while Astarion’s brow furrowed in offense. “Vampires seem aware of poison, but what of disease?” They raised their left hand, an offer of Lay on Hands that had become familiar the past three days, which Astarion quickly leaned away from. “Don’t kill my buzz,” Astarion pouted. “Yes, I would fucking know if I contracted a disease. In fact, I would argue it is everyone else at camp who has less bodily awareness.” “After you just tripped over Lae’zel’s things?” Shadowheart asked. “Spatial awareness,” Astarion flicked his fingers dismissively. “Something easily sacrificed for the sake of a good drink.” “You’re a menace when you’re sober,” Shadowheart whined. “What has gotten into you?”

[kudzuflower]

G - GROWING - How have they changed over time? How has their self-image changed? Are they more or less of a risk-taker? Has their approach to romance changed?

Difficult to go into this without a shit ton of spoilers but I'm gonna try!

Sefka has changed quite a bit. In her youth, she was quiet, awkward, with a poor sense of what to say and when to say it. She had next to no confidence in the shadow of her considerably more talented and well-loved sisters, but instead of overcompensating to stand out, she just...didn't. Her youth was defined primarily by her stagnation.

Trauma(tm) and a long, long life have shaped her into a person barely recognizable against the awkward and meek thing she once was. Now she has arguably too much confidence (with a few glaring weak points she keeps stowed away under fifty layers of lock and key), she's loud, she's abrasive. Shameless may be a better word for it than overconfidence. She's not exactly hateful--but she cares little for what others think of her, and how her presence might aggravate them. In fact, one might argue that she takes delight in aggravating others. Is it an attention-seeking thing? Or is she just a bitch? Hard to say...

As far as romance goes, there isn't too much to go off of. Sefka was in one relationship in her younger days, and to say it ended catastrophically would be an understatement. Its woeful end at the hand of her mother has shaped her as a person through the years; both in her hatred for her own kind, and the fervor with which she pursues those rare, fleeting glimpses of love she finds in others. She treats sex very casually (likely too casually) but treats committed, romantic relationships with a grave seriousness that's likely just as off-putting as her laissez-faire attitude concerning sex.

[mumufic]

Some additional notes on characterization

For The Three Sisters, I’m trying to write a coming of age story with a lot of rather abnormal elements (hello, time travel and first Wizarding War!) and since I want to write the characters I have here growing into who we eventually come to know of them when they’re older, I guess you can expect:

Some of them start out rather ignorant. Sirius and Regulus (when he does appear for longer than a cameo, he’s a little shit, and not a particularly likable one) come to mind here, because of their family background. The thing is, despite the fact that Sirius is obviously progressive and inclusive, he wouldn’t really know how to frame a lot of things in ways that wouldn’t be offensive unless someone taught him how to. Kids learn by example, and the only example of words and reasoning he has are his parents and other relatives, and all of them are bigots. I’ve already covered his use of the word “mudblood” in my previous post. There’ll come times when he sounds a little like Malfoy: a little elitist, a little braggadocious, especially when it comes to his family’s privilege. And the thing is, in some ways, this is perfectly understandable too. The Black brothers in this story have had very little socialization with other children, and when they do, it’s also to other extremely privileged, magical kids. So expect some level of schooling (ok, a lot levels of schooling) for Sirius. I expect James would suffer from this as well, probably even worse than Sirius, in some respects. James has been brought up in a tolerant and loving home, but he’s an only child whose parents doted on him so much, he’s become a little arrogant. I want to be able to show them growing from their arrogance and ignorance organically, because I don’t think they come out of the box being the wonderful, loving people Harry knew in the books.

Some of them can be very mean-spirited. Petunia, Holly, James and Sirius all fall in this category. We already know about Petunia because of her actual characterization in canon, and I don’t want to do away with that. I’m writing a Petunia Evans redemption arc, yes, but I don’t want to do a personality transplant with her, so yes, she can have a mean streak, even once she’s shown to start becoming an actual likable person. Holly doesn’t have a mean streak - that isn’t how Harry Potter is characterized in the books, but when it comes to anyone associated with the Death Eaters, her hatred knows no bounds. Remember that as far as she’s concerned, Snape killed Dumbledore without remorse, Lucius Malfoy tried to curse her when she was in second year, and Bellatrix Lestrange killed her aunt and uncle, however much she disliked them, right in front of her. Her anger, the meanness, it comes from a pretty damn deep well of pain, no matter whether she chooses to dwell on it or not. On top of that, she’s still a Horcrux here, and that Horcrux? Actively corrupting her. James and Sirius played canonically mean-spirited pranks on people, that James only stopped doing when he started to mature right around seventh year, and there’s little indication that Sirius actually stopped being rather mean at all. All that dumping on Peter? Canon provides evidence. Just check Snape’s Worst Memory and The Prince’s Tale, not to mention how Sirius displays an astounding lack of remorse over the fifth year prank he played on Snape that nearly resulted in Snape’s death. And you know what, I like writing that. I don’t expect 11- and 12-year-old kids to be little angels. They’d be hella boring to write if they were. 

Some of them can be rather fickle. I’ve got upcoming chapters where Holly and Sirius are like this, Holly mostly pertaining to what she wants to do about the war, and Sirius about manners, decorum and respect. Let’s unpack this. Holly is a 17-year-old trapped in an 11-year-old’s body. Her last memory from her timeline is waiting to start her quest to hunt Horcruxes, a quest Dumbledore entrusted her, in order to end the war. She gets transported back in time, trapped in a much younger body, and treated by everyone as if she was in fact eleven, even by the people who know she’s older. Suddenly, it’s like she’s a little kid again, and people expect her to act like a kid. Nobody wants her to be all grown up, and all the company she keeps are young kids. Yes, she should know better than to engage in childish arguments and fights, but she’s so immersed in being a kid again that her maturity starts stagnating, and at times, even regressing, because she’s suddenly have to reason with kids, which means she constantly has to put herself in a kid’s mindset in order to understand where they’re coming from. Doing shit like that everyday, with no rest to be what you truly are? It’s a mindfuck. Before long, you start forgetting that you’re something else and not what you’re pretending to be. That’s what’s happening to her here. There are occasions when she’s forgotten that she’s older, she’s more mature. She starts acting like the children that she has in constant company. She’d feel bad about being petty in hindsight, but not while it’s going on. And I think that’s valid. As for Sirius, I’ve got some bits of exposition sprinkled in about how his upbringing was like besides the blood supremacy rhetoric, and believing that the Blacks are owed the world. Sirius learned manners, decorum and respect from Andromeda (it’s in Chapter 7: The End of Summer) and by all accounts, Andromeda was a rather strict teacher. So we can expect Sirius to be mostly formal, even a little stiff, have impeccable manners, and the perfect polite gentleman in normal conversation. So why does he try to high-five Remus when Remus fell over Holly? Well, he’s still eleven, and he’s seen James applaud bad behavior, and probably thinks it must be fine then because James thinks it’s fine. He’ll applaud it especially if he thinks it’s either retaliatory or mean to Slytherins, because he obviously hates them.

Some of them can’t seem to make up their minds as to whether they like someone. So this will crop up a lot in second year, primarily on Holly and Sirius, and to a certain extent, Remus. Holly basically thinks the boys are all gross. She’s 17, they’re 11. Kids are gross.  Remus is a kid with a crush, who responds to said crush in a pretty healthy way: he engages with them, talks to them more, looks out for them, but absolutely will not say anything or do anything about his crush. Why? Well, the easy answer is that he’s a werewolf, and Remus has been fed all his growing up years about how lycanthropy is contagious (Lyall Lupin was extremely prejudiced against werewolves, until his own son was bitten, so there’s every likelihood that Remus would have internalized a lot of his father’s rhetoric, especially after he was bitten, leading him to decide that he must not be allowed to procreate. As a child, that’s equivalent to not being allowed to even have crushes or have their crushes like them back.) Sirius is a bit strange to write. He doesn’t actually have a crush, but his parents have made a proposal on his behalf, one he hates. He doesn’t want it, but at the same time, it consumes him to find that the person his parents have intended for him doesn’t appear to want him, when they should! He’s the Heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black! They should be privileged that the Blacks even want them for him. But at the same time, he’s utterly repulsed by the idea of having to marry someone, be with someone he might not even care for. Man, that’s hell of a lot of spoilers, but all of it’ll make sense when second year comes around.

And, I think that’s all the meta I can come up with for this fic for now. I’m sure I’ll be back, wanking on here again some time later to talk about other aspects of my fic.

My dilemma now: I feel like I had so much happen in second year that I’ve nothing to write bout in third year. So you know what you’re going to get for third year? Puberty.

Yes, that means zits and periods.

[gunmetal-magnus]

And what if I can’t?  What if I’m not worthy of my ideals?

As I stare out my apartment window and watch the drizzling sky, I’m drawn to the subtle gradient of yellow.  Clouds coasting through the sky, gray yet without dismay.  And the sun?  The sun will live to break another day, that I am confident in.  I only wish I were so confident in myself.

....

Life is strange.  Mine in particular looks like it might be going in a good direction.  I’ve been getting interviews for jobs and as someone who’s spent their fair share of time hopelessly unemployed and depressed, not knowing what to do with themselves (besides salsaing with suicide ideation), I should be elated about any progress.  I wish I could say that I am or even that I was but that wouldn’t be accurate.  The truth is that I’m a harrowing hailstorm of things - surprisedsleepybusycuriousthankfuloptimisticexposedhorrifiedcriticalnervousanxiousinsecurepressuredtired - it’s all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?

Knocking on the looming doors of success, I find myself feeling the crushing weight of my expectations.  The walls are a deafening white with not a texture or pattern in sight.  If you try to touch them they ripple like water.  There are no windows for me to peer through.  Fog creeps around me like a cheetah stalking its prey.  It’s so thick you could choke on it.  Success is...scary.

I know I know, that sounds a ridiculous thing to say, shouldn’t I be more afraid of failing?  Welllll...no.  You see, the weight I mentioned earlier was not merely crushing, it was also comforting.  Over time failure became familiar and eventually, my friend.  I got used to failure as the status quo, smothered in its cosy embrace and the threat of change, of combing out of this embrace into the chilling embrace of uncertainty, of becoming someone worthy of their success - it’s unfamiliar, it’s scary.  But just what is so comforting about not achieving your goals - about not getting what you really want?  For me it’s because of one paralyzing question: And what if I can’t?  What if I’m not worthy of my ideals?

“But…I’m…I’m just a soldier, I-I’m not worthy.”

It’s a terrifying prospect that I could give something my all and find that I just couldn’t do it.  I don’t want to be saying “I did my best and it wasn’t good enough,” because what I may mean is “I wasn’t good enough.  I don’t have the power.”  But that’s exactly the point!  I do have the power and if that is true then I have to come to terms with my responsibility to that power - that it’s up to me to use that power because when you can do the things that you can do...and then the bad things happen...they happen because of you.  I don’t want that burden so it’s easier to cast it off and reinvent the narrative by claiming powerlessness.  It’s easier to identify as a fraud and be done with it, to say to myself “men like me should’ve never dared to believe.”

Haha…paradoxically in our journey to discover our own power we discover just how little power we hold, that our only power is in ourselves.  Time and how bound we are to what we know at present, our surrounding circumstances, and the fact that we’re only people who can only do people things - these serve to remind us that the power of what we control and free will are only so vast.  It’s strange - you are responsible for how you use your power but not the outcome because you’re not omnipotent.  Bad things don’t always happen because of you.  Sometimes they just happen.  Sometimes things in general...just happen.

Let’s say I achieve success, what then?  The pressure to maintain is immense and to exceed - it’s even more so.  Who perpetuates this pressure?  For many of us it’s society but the greater threat lies within the darkness of our own hearts.  The societal gaze is nothing without validation and that validation comes from our self-worth and how grossly entangely that is with achieving success.  There is an expectation of linearity and escalation in progress, if you get good grades you’re expected to keep getting good grades and then some, so it’s shocking and disappointing when you don't.  People wonder how that could’ve happened, you wonder how it could’ve happened, you start to doubt yourself...should you though?  Writer and retired athlete Christopher Bergland challenges the expectation of linearity in success and explained in a conversation with his daughter, “I learned as an athlete that in order to succeed and become the best that I could be, I had to fail again and again—but always keep trying. Inevitably, every time I raised the bar, and took on a new athletic challenge, I would have to fail first in order to ultimately succeed and break a record." He embraced failure as part of the ebb and flow, it was part of success.  To him, failure was no reason for doubt.  So why should it be for me?  I don’t know, because life’s not that simple I suppose?  Identifying as unworthy and fraudulent, these are not easy to shake.  Negative self-identity manifests itself in habitual self-sabotage.  Worrying about how we align with our perceptions of ourselves, procrastination via instant gratification distractions like Instagram scrolling and going back on our promises such as taking that drink we know we shouldn’t become commonplace - habitual and they will take habitual work to undo them.

Even so, is this really just about the burden of ideals?  Perhaps not.  Susanne Babbel writes in her article “Fear of Success'' that the physiological reactions to trauma and excitement over success are similar - too similar. “When we experience a traumatic event — such as a car accident or a school bullying incident — our body associates the fear we experience with the same physiological feelings we get while excited.”  Heart tensions, shortness of breath, quivering and more - they are triggered in me by both stimuli and my body cares not for the messenger, only the message and that message is “be afraid.”  

if I’m responding to excitement as if it were trauma, the question is what is my trauma?  

…

Babbel mentions that throughout our lives, we may be made to feel less than, “many of us — especially if we've been subject to verbal abuse — have been told we were losers our whole lives, in one way or another. We have internalized that feedback and feel that we don't deserve success.”  I knew someone who made me feel like this, I called her my mum.  I spent a lifetime being told by her in one way or another that I wasn’t good enough.  I remember being dragged into the unlit attic by her for losing a crayon as a child, I remember being shouted at for getting some mediocre grades in junior high school - being told that I better do better, I remember being told that she had given up hope on me - I remember, all of it.  We don’t talk anymore - except we do.  I internalised her voice and I made it my own, I began to identify with failure.  I have an excerpt from an old journal entry that illustrates this identity crisis all too well.

                                                                                                                               5.11.20

“Sometimes I really wonder

If it’s better

To be a 

Fuckup

Than a Success

Without

The Interesting Mess.

...Why do I have to compromise the things that make me who I am to be happy?...Why can’t I have my misery?...I hate doing the right thing...Maybe I like being a failure, a mess, a no man’s man.”

By this time I had long since left home but you can’t outrun your demons, only challenge them.  I have only begun to unravel this voice due the therapy I have recently completed and am fighting this battle every day.  Sometimes I lose and they gain territory.  Other times I manage to reclaim it and even add more.  It’s an endless battle.

And yet, the voice of Failure clings to me like some foul smog.  Since he doesn’t want to let me try and fall, he’ll say, “It’s comfortable here.  Flounder into the fondue of failure, it’s what you know - it suits you.  What precisely is so wrong with failure in the first place?”

…

It’s a good question.  In an ideal world, the answer may be, “nothing in particular,” because I don’t need to succeed to be valid - do the people you love need to be successful for you to love them?  I should hope not.  However, it is not so simple for me to love myself.  Failure will cost me something more than money and a career.  The price of failure is stagnation, embracing the non-linearity of progress and I hate that.  I’m grossly impatient and want to move forward with my life, not wallow in the depths of Misery Mires.  I’ve been stuck here all my life and I’ve just begun the journey out of here.  Failure, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t suit me as well as you think.  I must change sometime because I don’t want to die in the claws of the demons from which I was born.

I can’t stay in my comfort zone.  Yet I can - I’d even quite like to.  Why?  Because...because...deep down I’m still reconciling with the idea that I’m worthy, that I’m worthy of living a life worth living, that I can be what I say I am without fear that it’s all a lie and always will be.  The only way for me to challenge such a belief is to fly in the face of it - to say that “I am worthy” and to act like I mean it, whatever that means - I don’t quite know yet.  My therapist and I agreed that this would be a long road and that ideals are nothing without practice.  I guess all I can do now is drive…

“If you aren’t worthy, you’ll keep trying until you are.”   In order for me to be worthy of my ideals, I first need to believe that I even have a shot.  Beyond that, I need to believe that I deserve to take it. Being worthy means recognising my power to change and the responsibility to act that  comes with that.  Simultaneously, my power is not all-controlling as I am only a person.  Success isn’t linear and failure is a part of that.  However the burden of trauma is heavy.  The self-sabatory habits I picked up from that will require me to reinvent my self-identity and in turn deconstruct those habits.   Lastly and perhaps most importantly, I need to be willing to give the process time.  Can I?  Haha! - s-sure, why not?

Perhaps one day I will find myself staring out into the sky - maybe it’s drizzling, maybe it’s not.  Maybe through an apartment window, maybe in a lush field as the gentle breeze brushes by.  The clouds are coasting by as they always have, slowly but surely.  What colour are they?  Who cares, I don’t even know what colour the sky will be.  Maybe it’s illuminated with a lovely peach pink that reaches out and touches the heart of my inner romantic.   Maybe it’s an apocalyptic red that leaves you weak in the knees - the possibilities are endless but it doesn’t matter - it doesn’t matter what may be.  What matters is what will be and 

I will be watching.

I’ll say I’m worthy and

I will mean it.

I don’t know yet know how

But I will

Because that’s what I’ve decided.