#could psychoanalyze this but i’d rather just chill you feel me

[glass--beach]

i literally identify with slurs more than any of the more appropriate terms. yes “trans woman” in polite company but if we’re friends i’m a tranny

[five-wow]

i’m watching 10.21!!! [insert excited but apprehensive noises]!!!

by the time you’re reading this i’ll be done watching, so as always, thoughts under the cut:

i opened up the episode, steve’s voice said “previously on ha-” and i paused it because i actually need some food before i do anything right now.

food (and coffee that is 90% milk) acquired! the previously on is just the last few seconds of the previous episode, and oof, it reminded me how hilariously evil this micheal claypool sounded with that intense british accent they gave him (surprise twist: the h50 finale is actually the new bond movie), but now he just showed up on steve’s doorstep and he looks like a really kind somewhat older man, gosh.

steve: “please uh, come on in and make yourself at home.” danny, wherever he is right now: “NINE YEARS. I HAD TO WAIT NINE YEARS AND THIS GUY JUST SHOWS UP AND-”

mr. claypool comes in, sits down, hands a still standing steve a letter and then gathers his coat and briefcase and is immediately back out the door, fdjkfd. also, omfg, i don’t like that doris is still causing drama from the grave, but i have to say, it’s impeccably in character, at least.

steve looks a little disbelieving and unhappy about the contents of the letter, which is not great. it couldn’t have been just a nice “hello my son, sorry you’ve had to live without me for these past four months, i wanted to tell you one last time that i love you and hope you’re doing well”, could it? (for that matter, does mary get a letter??? it always feels like mary either got out in time by not going into anything like law enforcement and therefore not getting pulled into her family legacy of dangerous shit all the time, or like she’s just been outright rejected by their parents who keep building all of their mysteries around steve.)

okay so now we’re watching a woman and her son being held hostage by two criminals who probably killed a cop and want her to stitch one of them up, and obviously they’re bad guys, but one of them just said “think bus boy’s got a thing for you” about the dude who just rang the doorbell and hand delivered a toy the kid had forgotten at a diner and yes!!! i agree!!! and it looked super cute so maybe you could just put your guns away and let them fumble around each other for a little before one of them finally asks the other out on a date and then they end up as a really cute little family.

oh SHIT crush guy just burst into the apartment and really, really seems to know his way around a gun and how to hold his own in a fight against armed criminals. oh! ohhhh, this is the new character they were going to introduce that would potentially have become a cast member if the show had continued without steve, isn’t it? ahhh. that makes sense.

while the woman calls the police, crush guy (who heroically saved her and her son and got shot in the process) just. leaves. that’s not suspicious at all!

the intro!!! feelings!!!

we’re at the cemetary where john mcgarrett rests so i expected to be shown steve, but instead we get?? danny rolling up in the camaro to look at steve crouched by the grave? oh my gosh. ten times better.

danny is SO WORRIED. and he is RIGHT because steve is acting very unlike steve.

fdjkfdjk OF COURSE doris’s message is a bunch of symbols. doris!!! you do not write goodbye messages to your son in wingdings!!! be a good mother for maybe once, perhaps, my gosh!!!

!!!!! steve telling danny he just doesn’t think he really cares anymore and wants to be done with doris’s whole thing is !!!!! very good!!!! i am using too many exclamation points and very aware of it but !!!!!!

i just. look. i just. steve has SAD FEELINGS and he TALKS ABOUT THEM with DANNY and this is pretty much a dream come true. YES. not the sad feelings, i’d rather have happy feelings, but after everything these characters have gone through they need to acknowledge that there are sad feelings before happy feelings can be had.

also, omfg, i had a brief heart attack because steve says joe’s name but he says it with an abandoned “and” kind of tacked onto it, a little mumbly, so it sounds like “losing joe’n- and mom” and for a long moment i was like, losing joan?? what?? because that would not be okay, holy shit, no.

on a lighter note, steve: “i’ll drive.” what a suprise!!! truly a shocking turn of events. :p

yes, steve, antagonize the scary-looking dude who is grieving over his dead brother while standing over the dead brother’s body in the morgue. i’m sure that’s a brilliant plan.

wait what, we suddenly see adam and junior who are talking on the phone because junior called adam to give him an update, and then adam goes, right, but the bad guys don’t know the address yet, and we do! and it turns out he is. standing in the apartment both parties are looking for right at that second. uh. communication, adam, dear lord.

there is some team organizing in hq around the case and then they all disperse and danny looks ready to follow steve into his office but then he gets distracted by tani asking to talk to him for a minute, and then they go out onto a BALCONY that i don’t remember ever having seen before? omg. secret headquarters balcony.

tani asks about steve!! she is worried too!! i’m forgetting about the balcony betrayal and having intense feelings again.

fdjkfd danny tells tani that steve has been running non-stop and is getting burned out and tani asks “alright, well, what are we gonna do about it?” and with absolutely zero hesitation danny goes “i’m gonna force the issue.” i don’t even think that’s a bad plan per se! but the quick and determined way he says it has me laughing anyway, like danny’s been daydreaming while the team was talking about their case and thinking, hm, what can i do to help steve? i know! i’m going to push him in a corner and keep him there and make him FEEL his FEELINGS. danny’s solution here is to throw a grenade at steve, but like, one full of love and caring and hopefully pancakes.

danny is telling tani that he’s seriously concerned about steve’s functioning on the job at the moment and meanwhile steve is out with junior interviewing a guy with an axe. fdjkfd.

okay so steve and junior catch the bus boy crush heroic rescuer guy (whose name is cole) and he won’t talk, and then junior arrives back at hq and tani comes out of her office to talk about steve again, ahhh. she is so worried! and junior is extremely uncomfortable because he feels like he has to defend steve and he ends up saying that steve will deal with things in his own way and oh junior, no, sometimes being hurt and pushing it away is not the best thing. even MORE reasons why steve needs to work through this in a healthy way: he’s setting a very destructive example for junior.

meanwhile steve is chilling on the floor of their rendition room “interviewing” cole all on his own, which seems to boil down to psychoanalyzing cole in a way that sounds suspiciously like steve’s pulling apart pieces of his own mind but attributing all of the problems to cole because that’s way safer than admitting that maybe most of these are his own issues, too, that he’s giving voice to for probably the first time ever.

steve to himself cole: “you’ve been here in this hole since [name of place where tragedy happened]. you‘ve put yourself there.” SUBTLE.

fdjkfd i paused at the perfect moment because immediately after that sentence cole goes “you know, something tells me i could say damn near the same thing about you” and uh, yes. thank you for making my point in-universe, cole, gosh.

steve: [gives a hard stare for a second and then switches back to cole’s current situation without addressing cole’s comment at all]

ahhhh there is a shot that starts with lou, tani and quinn around the tech table analyzing a video that shows our Bad Guys of the moment holding the poor diner lady and her kid hostage (again!) and then moves smoothly through steve’s glass door into his office where he and danny are having a heated discussion about the case and twirls around them. that was very cool!

so the bad guys want cole or they won’t release their hostages, cole wants to do it, danny wants him to do it and convinces steve after multiple little scenes of them disagreeing about it, and then military police comes in and takes cole away, preventing them from actually carrying out their plan. oops!

and THEN cole escapes out of a vehicle with three men guarding him, hah. i’m definitely seeing the heavy handed parallels with steve they’re throwing at us, omg.

danny about cole to steve: “i think this guy might be crazier than you.” i kind of love that every time a new intended team member shows up (tani, junior, i'm pretty sure quinn too?), danny has to compare them to steve in some way. it’s a rule. every time anyone says something vaguely snarky steve physically can’t stop himself from saying “ah, did you know you sound just like danny williams?” and every time someone does something ill-advised yet heroic, danny is obligated by the universe and the wiring of his own heart to go “ugh, you remind me of steve.”

cole gets a pass because he did good stuff and is a war hero, steve and cole make friends, and then cole says he noticed the cypher on steve’s desk and we’re back to the thing i thought this episode would focus on way more heavily.

steve HAS been doing research to try to crack it! danny was right about steve not being able to let this go.

cole knows a guy who’s good at cracking codes! i guess that’s a neat way to connect him to steve’s finale plot and move it along at the same time, haha.

steve is still at the office when his phone rings and it’s danny and then steve walks onto his beach where danny is waiting for him in their two chairs with two beers, and i love that, especially because we don’t hear danny’s side of the phone conversation but it was a very short scene so what did he say, exactly? “come home, i’m lonely, i have beer”?

steve: “what’s the face, you got a face on, your face” fdjkfd. eloquent!

SCREAMING. “you think lincoln is my new bff? yo, no one can replace you, you’re my danno!” i am. oh my gosh. this is steve reassuring HIMSELF, not danny, but it is also incredibly sweet and YOU’RE MY DANNO. now THAT’S the kind of content i want. yes. good. holy shit.

danny says to stop doing “that”, by which he means deflecting, and steve just goes “okay” and looks uncomfortable but starts talking anyway and i LOVE THEM. this is a good, healthy friendship.

steve: “i kinda feel like i’ve been protecting everybody except for myself, does that make sense?” YES. YES, STEVE, IT DOES, and i am VERY GLAD you’re saying those words with your own mouth.

i am making very high pitched noises at the moment. a) steve says he can’t take a break “here” because there are too many memories and that SCARES ME because he SHOULD NOT LEAVE THE ISLAND but also really really validates a fic idea i’ve had for ages in a way that i love, b) steve says “i will say this is how i thought it would end for us, couple old guys, sitting on a beach, watching sunsets” and YES oh my gosh, and c) then DANNY GOES, “i mean that sounds great to me, we can still do that” and HELLO YES it is SO GOOD to hear them VOICE these things that they’ve obviously both wanted for literal years and which we’ve been shown through steve’s clinginess when danny wanted to retire and danny’s bringing steve in on the restaurant thing and danny’s literal dream of him and steve sitting on that very beach as old men with steve telling him he loves him. just, my gosh, this is all those things but put into words that they are saying and it is very validating and sweet and necessary and scares me very much about where this is going, but for the moment i adore it.

the episode has two and a half minutes left and i’m kind of feeling like this is enough. let’s just end it here. happy end, guys, let’s all go home! except steve and danny, who are already there, obviously, and should do the opposite of move, ever.

OH. OHHH. steve tells danny he doesn’t know anymore and danny looks sad and then steve continues about how he’s been trying to distract himself with stuff like “a bunch of dating, which was nice, but didn’t help” and the RESTAURANT gets a mention though i’ll admit it’s one that’s very confusing because steve says “when it closed”, which... it didn’t, as far as we had been told until now? isn’t kamekona still running it? i always assumed he’d have turned it into a very successful bussiness venture.

danny looks UNHAPPY ABOUT THINGS STEVE IS SAYING and i relate, while i’m at the same time weirdly very very proud of him for saying these things? i don’t want him to feel this unsure about everything (particularly whether he can stay in hawaii, because it seems that’s what he’s talking about and that’s Bad), but it is a needed breath of fresh air to have stuff that happened and that he’s been bottling up for ages actually impact him emotionally.

okay, fjdksfdjslfs, danny suggests steve should GO TO JERSEY and says that steve has NEVER BEEN and i get that this is mostly kind of a joke but actually YES, STEVE. GO THE FUCK TO JERSEY. that would be perfect! danny can subtly follow you under the guise of an extended visit to family and you can spend time there together exploring danny’s home state instead of steve’s and you can come back home to hawaii when you’re ready and it would be beautiful and a very nice, symbolic way to end the show. we start with danny moving to hawaii to find a home there, and we end with with steve moving to jersey to realize where his home is.

this argument though, it’s giving me life. steve when danny starts suggesting other places, angrily, for no good reason: “now i HAVE to go.” danny, both giving and getting up: “i’m gonna get another beer.” steve, calm again: “okay, i’m gonna go to jersey.” danny: [walks away while steve yells after him about all the recommendations he’ll need for when he’s in jersey]

danny is inside to get the beer, hears a noise, finds a burglar at steve’s desk, fights him, destroy half the living room and is found by steve who also heard noise from the house and suddenly keeps saying “yo” to danny a lot this episode.

of course the burglar was there for the cypher that doris sent steve, because she can never just pop up in steve’s life in a way that isn’t  somehow dangerous to him and everyone around him. it was good, though!!! a very nice cliffhanger.

final thoughts: VERY GOOD, VERY INTENSE EPISODE. i liked cole more than i expected for a character that gets introduced as potential main cast in the last two episodes of a show that’s by now already been cancelled (that could have been problematic, but i think the writers handled it well by brick-to-the-face using him to explore steve’s issues) and i love danny being so worried about steve and tani following his lead and wanting to talk to everyone close to steve about how worried she is, too, and everything steve says has ME worried about how they’re going to end this, but so far, it’s also amazing A+ perfect fanfic fuel, holy effing shit. EMOTIONS. FEELINGS. STEVE HAS THEM. it’s literally that easy to please me, fdjkfd.

and i will say that while i’m worried about him and he’s clearly hurting and there are ways the show could take this that i won’t like (steve leaving the island at the end of the show while danny stays, mainly, which would be kind of horrible in all kinds of ways), i do somewhat love seeing steve deal with the fact that he’s older than he was ten years ago, he’s never really worked through all of the incredibly horrible shit life kept heaping on him, and he’s just getting really damn tired of everything. old, tired steve is a good thing; it’s the start of a new chapter, one where he hopefully doesn’t keep clinging to that endless denial of hurt and his tendency to put the job above everything including his own mental and physical health. i just hope, hope, hope that this last chapter that we actually get to watch play out on screen will be one that ends in a place that feels right, because this could either end perfectly or so, so badly. 🤞

[rorykillmore]

okay i’m actually gonna try to post these before i leave Just in case i can’t get the wifi to work at the place i’m staying

so this first gift fic is for @jougletmann who requested something with camille and amma, specifically related to the night amma actually spent on denny when jay yolo’d her! while writing this i actually realized it was really my first time, not only writing in earnest for this very complicated dynamic, but writing something so intense for camille (despite the fact that i’ve rped her for awhile) so i actually really loved the opportunity to do that? for a little while i felt bad because the other two christmas fics i have done are so. fluffy and christmas-y. and then you have this, which got pretty Real towards the end. but jay just knowing how much you loved sharp objects, i hope you’ll love it anyways

anyway... jay, for two years in a row now my mom has asked us some of the best things that have happened to us in the past year, and i’ve like, immediately thought of meeting you and spear. i’m just so grateful to have you in my life and i always want to make sure you know that because i know that sometimes your kindness and generosity have been taken advantage of. so thank you for being so caring and thoughtful and always knowing how to make me laugh. merry christmas!!

(jay probs doesn’t need these warnings but for anyone else, cw for like, discussions of abuse and references to self-harm)

All we can do is try, Amma. You want a little bit of control when your life has gone to absolute shit – it helps to say you’ve tried.

When they get home (not home, it’s just the easiest way to refer to the apartment Camille’s renting in Metropolis) it’s much later than Adora would have ever let Amma stay out. Not that Camille takes that to mean that this is the latest Amma has ever stayed out – she’s not that naive. She’s been a teenager under Adora’s roof herself, after all. And she knows Amma.

(Maybe now with more clarity than she’d like.)

“I have a spare bedroom you can have,” she tells Amma once they’re inside. “It’s not really made up or anything, but I’m sure I can find you some spare pillows and blankets for tonight.”

Once, Amma might have sulked at that, or worse asked to sleep with Camille – but maybe all their time spent living together has weaned her off that, or maybe she knows that the prospect would have left Camille just the slightest bit chilled. She feels a twinge of guilt at that. She doesn’t want to be afraid of her own sister.

“We don’t have to go to sleep right now, though, do we?” Amma asks instead, pulling Camille out of her thoughts.

“It’s late, Amma.”  She glances at the digital clock on the table, which reads 1:46 AM.

Amma slumps herself down on the couch.  “I’m not tired.”

“Well, you should try and sleep anyway. Tomorrow’ll be a long day, with getting you settled, and everything.”

Clearly the prospect doesn’t interest Amma, because she doesn’t move or say anything. Instead she spends a few moments sizing up the room they’re in.  “Kinda sparse, compared to your old place.”

“I haven’t been here very long,” Camille points out.  “Honestly, I’ve never been very good at… decorating. Everything from back home was just kinda clutter.”

Amma smiles a sly smile.  “Mama hated clutter.”

Camille thinks she really ought to be over these kinds of reactions by now, but it does make her inadvertently freeze, just for a moment. Amma’s watching her closely, and she thinks it might have been the reaction Amma wanted. Or else Amma was hoping for A reaction, anyway.

It used to bother Camille, back when they were still getting to know each other, the way Amma pokes and prods pulls things from people. Often times a little too hard, a little too cruelly. Now, though, she at least understands the why of it: Amma tugs at other people’s boundaries because Adora gave her too many and too few at the same time. Amma had to pry things out of her mother to receive the bare minimum of attention and affection when she wasn’t sick, so now she tries to pry things out of everyone. It’s how she learned control.

For all that she’s standing around psychoanalyzing her sister, Camille’s not sure she knows what to do to curb Amma’s meaner tendencies. She thought for a while that just a safer, more stable environment would make things better, but then –

Well.

“Amma,” Camille says, slowly sitting down next to her on the couch.  “About Mama –”

It’s subtle, especially because she’s only watching Amma out of the corner of her eye - as if looking at Amma directly might make her feel cornered, or something - but Amma goes a little tense. It’s enough to cause Camille to trip herself up, because honestly, she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. Doesn’t know how to talk about this, even when ignoring it feels impossible and irrational.

“What do you have in your kitchen?”  Amma asks abruptly in her usual brand of deflection.  “We should make something.”

It’s pretty transparent, and Camille thinks that a more responsible person might have called Amma on it. But all she hears herself say is, “Make something?” Which she supposes about lines up with the general amount (or lack of) resolve she approached the situation with.

“Yeah. Like cookies, or cupcakes, or… something. You know how to bake?”

Camille considers that. She certainly wouldn’t have learned from Adora, or even Jackie, well-meaning as she’d always been when Camille was a child, but she used to sneak around helping Gayla out in the kitchen when she could sneak away from her mother’s prying eyes long enough. She wonders if she can remember any of those old recipes, let alone scrounge something together from whatever bare bones stuff she’s got in the kitchen.

“I know how to try to bake,” she settles on finally. Amma grins. “But seriously, wouldn’t you rather just go to bed? You’ve gotta be exhausted.”  If Amma won’t talk to her, really talk to her, then the least Camille can do is make sure she takes care of herself.

Predictably, though, Amma shakes her head stubbornly. “If you make me go to bed, all that’ll happen is I’ll lie awake for hours with just my own thoughts. I’d much rather have you for company.”

That’s a little manipulative of her, but it’s also probably objectively true. Camille thinks her own thoughts and feelings are a little too tangled up for any good decision-making tonight, so after another brief hesitation, she rises. “Well, I’m tired,” she says just for good measure. When isn’t she. “So if I pass out, don’t let the apartment burn down.”

Amma beams and bounces up with more energy than Camille thinks is reasonable. She loops her arm around Camille’s and holds on all the way to the kitchen, and Camille bits back that familiar, dangerous feeling of being tempted to lower her guard completely just because of that sisterly affection she’s been missing since Marian. She pries herself loose once they’ve reached their destination and starts checking the cupboards.

“Alright, let’s try chocolate chip cookies. Mostly ‘cause I know I bought chocolate chips the other week.”  She’s pretty sure there’s some flour under the sink, too. And sugar, because she puts it in her coffee every morning.  “Get some eggs out of the fridge.”

Amma zips off like she’s on a mission, and then gets out a mixing bowl and a pan while Camille gathers the rest of the ingredients a little more slowly. It turns out that they do have just enough to make some - very basic - chocolate chip cookies.

“These are not gonna be as good as Gayla’s,” she warns Amma ahead of time.

Amma just shrugs. “At least we can say we made ‘em.”

Camille preheats the oven and then, sleeves rolled up, they make the dough. It’s about as messy a process as she expects it to be, but Amma seems to enjoy it – especially the part where she delights in flicking flour at Camille. Camille flicks some back, and soon they’re both covered in it and it’s going to be a hell of a cleanup, but Camille can’t remember the last time she actually had a reason to laugh like this. She even lets Amma add extra chocolate chips to the dough, because they’re already on a roll.

“How long do they have to bake for?” Amma asks.

Camille - who has long since given up following this recipe from memory - checks her phone to consult the one she found online.  “Just ten minutes. Quick and easy.”

Amma smiles and slides the tray into the oven very carefully. And then they’re both left to wait.

Camille wonders if Amma realizes as soon as she does that the elephant in the room feels a lot heavier with so much waiting to do. But Amma’s still smiling at her like she always does whenever Camille’s done something to make her happy.

“I never thought that anything would ever be like this,” she confesses at length. “Like, I never really thought about other worlds existing. Not even stuff like Heaven or Hell.”

Camille wonders what kind of light that puts the blood on Amma’s hands in – or whether she ever wondered herself where she might go, because Marian always wondered about death and what happened afterwards, like she knew it was coming. Is Amma telling the truth when she says she hasn’t thought about it at all?

But she can’t linger on it for long, because Amma continues, “But I’m glad we’re here. A whole different world away from everyone else. Just me and you. It’s perfect.”

Camille feels that strange chill again, but this time it mingles with concern. She’s conscious now more than ever how much Amma has latched onto her, and how little Amma feels she needs anyone else.

“There’s a lot to do here,” she ventures carefully. “Like I was saying back at that building in New York, Amma. You could do plenty of things here you never got a chance to do before.”

Amma’s expression doesn’t shift much. “Like what?”

“Like… I dunno. See things. Meet people. There’s a whole world outside of Wind Gap.”

Is it dangerous to even offer Amma the chance? And how can she do anything but?

Amma says silent for a few moments, and Camille can’t be sure what she’s thinking.  “Are you still writing?” she asks suddenly at length.

Camille nods. “I’m working for the Daily Planet now. It’s this paper in Metropolis.”

“Metropolis,” Amma repeats, half curious and half disdainful.  “What a weird name for a city.”

“Mm. Maybe I’ll take you to see it for yourself, sometime.”

“Really?” Amma beams at her just for the offer, and Camille can’t help but smile back faintly. “Then I’ll get to see where you work! And all those stories you’re probably working on.”

“I’m not… working on much, at the moment.” Camille shrugs, downplaying on instinct. “I’ve only been here a few weeks, so. It’s gonna take awhile for things to get interesting.”

Amma goes strangely quiet at that. She looks away and watches the timer on the oven count down for a few seconds. “I bet you’ll find something good,” she says finally, and Camille wonders for a moment why she suddenly seems so subdued. Then Amma continues, “You’ll find a way to tell a story that helps people. Just like you did back home.”

In the first place, that’s a matter of opinion. For all the secrets she uncovered back in Wind Gap, most of them were revealed too late, and Camille’s not really sure who she helped in the end. But even that aside, there’s something more concerning about this:  it’s the first time she’s heard Amma refer to what happened with the girls she killed, even indirectly.

Camille knows she’s most likely not going to get a better opportunity to approach this. She watches Amma for awhile, her heart thumping in her chest, and then she says, “Amma. We’ve really gotta talk about that.”

It takes a couple of slow seconds for Amma to turn back to face her. “I really don’t want to talk about it,” she counters, calm but on the verge of petulant.

But Camille thinks there must be some deeply buried part of Amma that does, or she wouldn’t have alluded to what she had just now. “What do you expect me to do, forget it ever happened? You know I can’t do that. Especially not if you’re living with me.”

“So send me away again,” Amma suggests suddenly, and stares at her. A challenge.

Camille shuts her mouth, feeling like her jaw’s suddenly been tightly wired. “That wasn’t my choice.”

“Yes it was,” Amma insists, her composure starting to crack just a little. “You’re the one who turned me in.”

It’s irrational to feel guilty over the accusation, but Camille supposes she’s never been good at particularly rational feelings. “I had to, Amma. You killed Mae. Just like you killed Ann and Natalie.”

Something about finally saying it aloud, laying it all out, feels like it causes everything in the room to still. Amma glares at her, and Camille’s a little stunned to see that she looks like she’s on the verge of tears.

“You’re my sister,” she seethes finally.  “You’re supposed to choose me over them.”

“Amma, that’s not –”

“But you didn’t! You got me locked up just like you got Mama locked up!”

It’s a gutpunch she wasn’t expecting, and Camille finds herself speechless, almost breathless. She stares at Amma, and Amma stares back, and both of them just stay sort of frozen for a moment.

“Amma,” Camille says slowly but with a kind of understated urgency. “She was making you sick.”

Amma sort of shudders, but Camille can’t tell whether it’s in revulsion or defiance. “Only ‘cause I let her.”

“No, Amma, it only felt like you had a choice. She was making you sick, and if someone hadn’t stopped her, she would’ve killed you just like she killed Marian.”

Camille has talked about this before – not with Amma, but with several of the therapists she tried to get Amma help with when they’d moved back to her apartment together. They had all told her some variation of the same thing: Amma has trouble processing what happened to her because she still loves Adora, or because Adora’s abuse entailed a dynamic where Amma felt she had control, and admitting her victimhood relinquishes that control. Probably, realistically, some combination of both.

Those same doctors, likely sensing Camille’s loathing of her mother and inability to understand Amma’s continued desire for contact with her, have always warned against this kind of direct confrontation. But in this moment, it suddenly seems desperately important that Amma understand all the ways Adora had been hurting her.

But then Amma actually starts to cry in earnest, and Camille feels immediate regret well up inside her. The oven goes off, and she vaguely registers that it’s been ten minutes, but she can’t bring herself to tear her attention away from her sister.

And for all that Camille has been grappling with the part of her that’s now afraid of Amma all evening, she doesn’t hesitate. It’s instinct to go and take her sister in her arms and hold her close.

Amma fights it a little at first, and Camille is reminded fleetingly of that stupid ‘therapy technique’ they used to do - I love you, I love you, I love you - and just holds on even tighter until Amma relents and slumps against her and cries.

“I’m fucked up,” Amma chokes out, though Camille can barely make it out between the sobs. “I’m so fucked up, and I’m never gonna get better.”

Camille shushes her and strokes her hair, silently grateful that at least Amma isn’t in any state to notice the tears in Camille’s eyes that don’t quite fall. She wonders if she’s just forgotten how to cry, at this point. If this and everything she’s been through up ‘til now doesn’t get her, she can’t picture anything else in her life pushing her over the edge.

“Hey,” she says finally, after a few minutes of just letting Amma cry.  She pulls away and makes Amma look at her, still stroking her hair.  “You know what, I’ve – I’ve said the same thing to myself. A lot.”

Amma stares at her, a more numb kind of shock settling over her features, and Camille tries for a very shaky smile.  “C’mon, it can’t be that surprising.”

“You’ve never killed anybody,” Amma points out in a quiet, more hoarse voice.

Camille has to concede Amma’s point - and the fact that she doesn’t really know how to pull someone back from something like that - but she doesn’t falter. “I’ve done a lot of bad things. To other people, and to myself. You think if I showed people all the things I carved into myself they’d think there was any putting me back together?”

She thinks of Richard, the way he’d looked at her once he’d seen all the scars. The way he’d looked at her every time since.

There’s silence. Maybe Amma doesn’t know what to say to that, or she just doesn’t want to answer. Camille has to steady herself with a slow breath, because she knows she’s not good at this, but why stop now?

“But I haven’t – I haven’t done that in awhile. And a few years ago I never thought I’d be able to say that. And I can now. That’s something.”

She watches Amma closely. Amma seems to waver a little, licking her lips, looking uncertainty at Camille and then anywhere but. And then she stills.  “Something’s burning.”

– Oh.  

She’s right, Camille realizes, and then remembers why a second later.

“Shit. The cookies,” she mutters, grabbing one of the over mitts they set out and hurrying over to pull the tray out of the oven. The cookies look like some of them might still be edible, but many of them are charred around the edges. Camille tries not to wince visibly. Couldn’t even have one nice thing.  She spends a few seconds inspecting them, mostly because she doesn’t know how to dive back into that conversation with Amma after the fragility of the moment was broken.

“If I can’t be better,” Amma says suddenly to break the silence, and Camille stops what she’s doing. “If I can’t, then – won’t it just be worse than if I never tried at all?”

Camille wants to tell Amma that she can. Amma is so young, and it seems like there’s still so much time. She’s not sure what she’d peg the cut off age for not being a lost cause at, but she’s pretty sure it’s not thirteen.

But maybe that’d just be too much pressure too soon. So instead, she says, “All we can do is try, Amma. You want a little bit of control when your life has gone to absolute shit – it helps to say you’ve tried.” Camille turns around to face her again.  “And if you promise not to hurt anyone else… I won’t leave you, this time.”

It’s not a promise she can technically guarantee, thanks to the way the rifts work – but then again, it’s not like they’re not going back to the same world. Even if things might be about a hundred times more difficult there.

Slowly, Amma wipes the wetness from her cheeks and starts to pull herself together the way she is so strangely capable of. She still looks oddly fragile to Camille, in a different way than she did when she’d been sitting at that dinner table in a haze of sickness and Camille’d had to feign weakness to draw Adora’s attention away.

“If I believed you… then what would we do next?”

Camille exhales slowly. “Well. I guess the cookies might be a lost cause.” The joke feels hollow, but Amma’s lips twitch briefly anyway as she gives the tray a belated side glance. “So apart from that, I – I’m not really sure what to do either. Except take it one day at a time. We can do that.”

Amma considers that very carefully, and then nods. Camille bites back a dozen apologies that probably won’t do much good, and might not even make that much sense, and focuses on a small sliver of hope.

The women in their family have a long legacy of being broken, so it seems. But maybe not always beyond repair.

[herotheshiro]

i didn’t know where to post this -- here or on my other blog where i’ve moved my fandom ramblings but i’ve decided to put it here since it kind of touches on more personal topics/feelings. jk i wrote it all out and i didn’t really touch too much on personal stuff so into the fandom blog it goes. also putting it under a read more bc it ended up being pretty damn long wow

recently had a sort of issue/not-issue on twitter where i kind of openly expressed my dislike for this one character. no essay backing up why i dislike them, but i do have my (valid) reasons and i tend to be kind of semi-serious w my hate so i didn’t think too much abt swinging my opinions around. and also since this twitter is a recent development, i’m more used to tumblr where even if you openly express an opinion, you have a ton of character space to utilize to explain your opinion so you tend to explain yourself anyway unlike twitter’s limited character tweets where you basically just express your opinion and that’s it. anyway i might have gotten a little carried away since i don’t really interact w anyone in fandoms anymore and only w my fam member who we enable each others’ opinions and put my opinion on my bio and i think that along w my tweet trail led to potentially being vagued abt by a twitter account that mostly posts abt that fandom. i still have reason to suspect that /i/ wasn’t the sole target of the vagueing (if even) bc they said some stuff abt this character’s negative opinion that apparently someone expressed that /i/ never overtly said (like he’s evil and bad simply bc of how he treats this one person but i never said that, just implied that he’s a general asshole and maybe his relationship w this one person isn’t as good as i’ve seen previously from the fandom which is what i’ve deduced from reading canon content). since they never mentioned names or twitter handles explicitly, i purposely made some tweets (still being open, no censoring on purpose) to try to get a direct response and also low-key targeting the vaguers (out of my paranoia that they were indeed talking abt me which honestly prob not but also it’s a relatively small eng-speaking fandom involved w this character so they have to have stumbled upon me at one point). i did get a response (not from the vaguer(s)) from someone calling me out for not censoring my open dislike of this one character. but i also suspect they knew abt my dislike of this one character stemming from their interactions w another character bc they started talking abt shipping even though i never mentioned a ship in those tweets (but i did mention the latter character though not in conjunction w the former). anyway i felt the familiar heat of embarrassment upon seeing that notif of their callout but i almost immediately felt better abt the entire situation bc i finally got the direct callout i was waiting for and i knew what i needed to take down. direct and clear action

in hindsight after i made a series of vagueing tweets last night lol i feel like this entire situation is just me creating unnecessary drama and wildly hitting even ppl not even involved at all (as noted by the callout which was supposedly having non-involved randos in mind) just to make myself feel better or something which isn’t really respectful in any way (and i was totally open abt me just swinging wildly after the callout and my ensuing taking down of posts. this isn’t even a private twitter where ig it’s apparently socially acceptable to talk abt shit like that). and also makes me think maybe i never really learned anything from being online for almost my entire life. a weird part of me has always wanted to become fandom-famous online but i’ve never succeeded in doing so nor have i made an online group of friends i can bounce my opinions and headcanons off of. so i’ve never really developed an online community, i’ve always just been on the fringes and yelling into the mass without getting much attention. now ik that apparently twitter does indeed chuck your opinions well into that mass (good and bad i suppose), it’s a bit surprising to actually get “attention” ... i also mentioned this in my tweets last night but i really really dislike getting vagued abt which my psychoanalyzing brain was like “that’s bc you don’t like not knowing what others think abt you irl” and yeah if you got an issue w me i’d prefer you to tell it directly to my face rather than pretend you like me (which is totally hypocritical bc i do the latter to others but also i tend to just swerve ppl i dislike so it’s not like i go out of my way to pretend to be nice to them).

idk where i was trying to go w this bc now that i’m writing it out i’m like wow yeah i’m still in the wrong huh. sometimes i am in the wrong like years ago when i got called out for grossly shipping irl ppl (which yes i will admit i did do once upon a time but now i no longer do it or am ok w it) but i don’t feel like i was in the wrong this time so i just feel a little frustrated abt the vagueing bc if i was part of the group they were vagueing abt then i was definitely painted as someone w no critical thinking skills which i do, i just don’t share their opinion which they think is right (and tbh i wonder if THEY have critical thinking skills bc they said some things in defense of their opinion which i don’t agree with esp if you’re interpreting canon content like that. are we even reading the same content). i do genuinely feel better abt the series now bc before i was literally anxiety whenever i thought of or even saw the related characters. my fam member was trying to talk abt the series to me and they weren’t even talking abt the related characters but i just wasn’t feeling it bc of this whole situation which i literally made abt me even though there was no indication whatsoever it was abt me. this all make me think that i really should take a good fucking long break from fandoms and social media bc it just gives me unneeded stress and anxiety abt cancel culture, trying to be likeable enough to become fandom-famous, seeing hot takes, etc etc. i’ve already been winding down in terms of strongly interacting w fandoms but my mental health has not been doing so hot recently bc of irl things and fandoms are not ameliorating it at all. ik for some fandoms do indeed make ppl feel better but that’s when ppl actually interact w them and they’re not stuck in a bubble of no response whatsoever while ppl may potentially gab abt them outside of that bubble. my issue is that i always feel the need to create when i really get into a fandom and when you create you want ppl to respond to your creations! so you need to interact w the fandom. but then i then want to actually interact w the fandom fr instead of just posting from time to time and staying out of it and you know where that gets me sometimes. i think it’s bc i had a good time in the pjo and warriors fandoms and i want something like that again in new fandoms i’m in but for whatever reason that’s not how it is now.

i didn’t jump into the vagueing tweet mess bc as i said i wasn’t directly called out and also better to just ignore it but i couldn’t get it out of my head. and that’s making me really consider leaving fandom social media and just create fanworks solely for myself without even posting them online. my works don’t really get much response anyway which is fine tbh even having 1 like these days is good enough so it’s not like i’d be losing out. but idk man ... sometimes you just want to share stuff w others. maybe i should just make my own website and put stuff on there w no expectation for likes or whatever. this has also made me re-evaluate whether or not i really do want to go into art professionally. ik this one situation is inevitable w putting your opinion out on the internet and i wasn’t even in the wrong i feel bc it’s not like i have a problematic opinion (racism, sexism, incest, etc) but it has put a damper on creating content to put online even if the content i eventually want to create is original and is in no way associated w fandoms. even as i write that out i realize it’s kind of stupid to have such a damper put on me. i should watch spiderverse again bc that was the film that really inspired me to create my own creative visual content again and also i’ve been feeling really uninspired lately. ik i shouldn’t let this kind of stuff get me down if i really want to create art in the future but it’s hard to deal w sometimes. honestly i really should be seeing a therapist but also wow now it’s delving into more personal territory so i’ll end it here.

tl;dr i need to learn how to chill on the internet and i think i need to create boundaries for fandoms fr and stick w those boundaries for the benefit of my mental health. maybe i shouldn’t have gotten a twitter in the first place lol even if all i made it for originally was just so i could message a proxy on twitter and not to actually get involved in fandom twitter. i didn’t even get the proxied good in the end anyway bc i was forced to cancel the payment by a third party bc the proxy had not sent me the good in months despite them updating relatively regularly on how busy they were as a student. hah that just how it be

also side note i was like to myself “ok you need to chill bc these series’ characters aren’t real. there’s no need to get so worked up over them” but then i realized even that opinion is “problematic” bc there are ppl out there who really use the characters as like idk a therapy object and i’m genuinely not trying to be an asshole i just forgot the specific wording you use. so even if i’m like ‘they’re fake’ there are others who are like ‘no they make me feel better so don’t hate !!’ which idk is a mentality which i think ppl should shift away from bc you can’t be in fandoms forever unless you’re a professional fictional content creator which is also an opinion i think a good number of ppl would disagree w (“they’re not bothering anyone and it’s their life so what are you to say what they should do??”). idk this is my hot take for the day i guess but it’s fine to be a fan of stuff as you grow up but i think it should become less of a focus/active part in your life as you grow older. i mean maybe that’s a cynical way of seeing things bc maybe creating fanwork is a good de-stressor for ppl but i think i feel that way bc i’m not going into creative content professionally career-wise but ... idk what i’m trying to say here. i guess i just have complicated thoughts on fandoms in general.