#the trauma starts here

[wreywrites]

Tiger Shark

Part 2: The Sea

Chapter 9

It is cloudy when I wake up. The day is gray, and I wonder how late I have slept. Stitch is already awake, as is Elsie, who I suspect also got to sleep all night, given how long Zalea must have kept watch. I get up and move to their side of the fire so we can talk without disturbing the others.

Stitch quietly catches me up. “I was already awake when Mako went to get Elsie up, so I told him I would take over. She woke up not long after that anyway.”

“Was already gettin’ light,” Elsie says.

“How long ago was that?”

Stitch shrugs, but Elsie says, “Couple hours, probably.”

“The weather isn’t going to mess things up, is it?” I say. I don’t know anything about buffalo or causing stampedes, so I feel this is a valid concern.

Elsie shakes her head. “If the weather was bad I’d be worried, but it’s just cloudy. Shouldn’t be anything to worry about.”

The others wake before long.

“Let me guess,” Zalea says, “Buffalo for breakfast?”

In response, a parachute floats down and lands in my lap. I open the basket and can’t help but smile at the smell of fresh cinnamon rolls. I pull one out and take a bite. They’re even warm. I owe Finnick and my sponsors big time if I get out of here alive. “Looks like it’s your turn to be Finnick’s favorite,” I grin at Mako, holding up the cinnamon roll with one hand and passing the basket to Stitch.

“About time,” Mako snorts.

“How do y’all do that?” Elsie says, taking her roll from the basket. “All we’ve gotten is some tablets for water ’cause our backpacks didn’t have any.”

Zalea snorts. “You’ve seen these two, right? Know their scores, watched their interviews, all that stuff? If I lived in the Capitol I’d sponsor them too. And I wouldn’t be complaining about just getting tablets if I were you-” Zalea takes a roll, “-without water you’re dead already.”

“Besides,” I say, “It’s not like we’re getting spoiled. He literally told us he would send us a little something every day to remember him by. He’s just taking care of the crew.”

“Something to remember him by?” Zalea is back to being her snippy self. “Sounds like Finnick Odair to me. Whose head didn’t you turn?”

I raise an eyebrow. “What do you mean by that? Last I checked, he’s my mentor and it’s his job to send us stuff.”

“Just that you’ve got Gloss all over you, and Finnick sending you desserts, and sponsors lined up because they’re in love with you, and your boyfriend has to sit here through it all because he had the misfortune of getting reaped with you-”

“Okay,” Merritt cuts her off. “Let’s just appreciate the breakfast ’n’ get on with our day.”

“Please,” Mako says.

“You’re right. The sooner we go, the sooner we get done, the sooner we can split up again,” Zalea snaps.

We finish breakfast in silence. Merritt divides up the rest of the jerky while Elsie buries what’s left of the fire.

Merritt walks us through the details as we dress in our buffalo hides.

“Everyone knows the bird whistle, right? Good. I’ll lead, ’n’ Elsie’ll take tail. We go single file, ’n’ when I whistle like this-” he gives a four-note call, “-the last person stops where they are. Stay low ’n’ wait for the signal. Elsie ’n’ Annie’ll be on the close flank, then Stitch ’n’ Mako in the back, ’n’ me ’n’ Zalea’ll take the far flank. Once we’re all in position, I’ll whistle like this-” he gives two sharp whistles, “-then we go. Lose the ponchos, shout, run at the herd, spook ’em into a stampede, ’n’ keep ’em runnin’ at the cornucopia. They’ll do all the hard work for us.”

Mako hides our one revealed backpack up a tree. None of the others know about the cave, or that this is where we’d made our camp and planned on staying for the foreseeable future, so I simply say, “We’ll come back this way after it’s done.”

No one argues. Stitch says something about forest, which doesn’t eliminate much of the arena, but I think that’s the point, and Zalea says she found a water hole on the other side of the arena.

“We’ve been wanderin’ since the beginning, ’n’ I think we’ll keep doin’ just that.” Merritt glances at Elsie. She nods.

We double-check the area to make sure we haven’t left anything valuable behind, but everyone has picked up their possessions and stowed them in their backpacks, which make the other four look even bulkier than the ponchos alone. Weapons in hand, we follow Merritt through the little tree patch and onto the plain.

~~~                               ~~~                               ~~~

We walk in silence, not wanting to alert anything or anyone to our presence. I’m glad it’s cloudy, because I couldn’t imagine doing this walk in the hot sun wearing a furry poncho. The poncho’s making things uncomfortably warm enough.

I am just starting to wish I had brought one of our water bottles along when we crest a low hill and I see them. The hulking shapes of buffalo, spread in front of us, grazing peacefully. A few of them look up, but they must not perceive us as a threat; they go right back to grazing. Merritt leads us alongside the herd for a while before whistling. The next signal will be for me.

We walk another hundred yards and Merritt whistles again. I stop. Kneeling in the grass, I slowly turn so I am facing the glint of the cornucopia in the distance. I hear Merritt whistle again, this time leaving Stitch. I set my spear down. I can’t take the poncho off while holding it. Merritt whistles and Mako is in place. I lift up the bottom of the poncho as high as I dare without revealing myself. A breeze flutters through the gap, providing some relief from the heat. Another whistle. Zalea is ready. At the next signal, we run. I take a deep breath, let myself sink into the same mindset as I had at the cornucopia when the Games started.

Two sharp whistles cut through the quietly rustling grass. I let out a roar and throw off my poncho, grabbing my spear as I surge to my feet. In front of me, Elsie is whooping and shouting. The buffalo panic. For a horrible second, they run away from Elsie and me, but Merritt and Zalea turn them back and then we are all running.

I feel a surge of adrenaline as we race through the grass. The buffalo are not fast, but they are faster than us, and they are terrified. I can see it in their tossing heads and rolling eyes. We run with them, and there is something joyful about it. For a moment I feel truly free, the way I feel when we take the sailboat out and I climb up the mast and I can see forever. I am laughing and whooping and oddly I want this run to go on forever, to run until my legs just can’t anymore, to-

Something heavy slams into me, knocking me to the side, Dazed, I struggle to regain my balance. The buffalo are drifting to the side, toward Elsie and I, and one of them drifted right into me.

Elsie has noticed this as well. She is running faster now. I sprint after her, watching to see what she does. Then, she veers into the herd. The buffalo next to her throws its huge head and swerves away from her, pushing several others. Just as sharply, Elsie veers safely away from the stampede. After a few seconds, she does it again. I decide to copy her, and slowly, we turn them, just in time for the herd to slam into the cornucopia.

Just like the last time I was here, there is utter chaos. The buffalo tear through piles of supplies. I hear screaming somewhere. The dull clanging of massive, unstoppable creatures slamming into the metal sides of the cornucopia seems to come from everywhere at once. I hear the cannon sound once, then a second time. Someone is shouting. An arrow whistles by my cheek.

“Run! Run!” Zalea is shouting.

Someone grabs my arm. I whip around to see Mako pulling me away.

There is another scream.

“Elsie!” Merritt shouts.

I turn back toward the chaos. Most of the buffalo have scattered. Among the wreckage there is not a scrap of salvageable food. There are two bodies on the ground. Elsie joins them, the blade of Jilly’s scythe slicing her throat.

I barely hear the cannon. What I do hear is a wordless raging scream from Merritt. He throws himself at Jilly and we are all transfixed. Jilly is deadly, but Merritt is enraged. He has no fear. The pair exchange a flurry of blows before Merritt gets too close for the long scythe to be effective. He stabs Jilly, up under the ribs, just like Alvan and Cally. She drops. The cannon booms.

And then Merritt sinks to his knees, an arrow in his chest. The four of us who are left scatter. I sprint through the grass, going back the way we came, my only thought is that I can’t lead whoever is left of the Careers back to our camp.

The cannon sounds again. Mako is sprinting beside me. We do not slow down until we have gone up a low hill and down the other side. We are perhaps halfway back to where we started the stampede. Mako collapses into the grass. I drop to my knees beside him, sides heaving. I can only hope no one is chasing us, because there is no fight we could win.

It takes a long time to catch my breath. When I am finally breathing at a semi-normal pace, I creep back up the hill to see if anything is still happening. It is so quiet in the arena, I can almost make out the words that the four surviving members of the Career pack are shouting at each other. Almost, but not quite. I’m too far away to be able to tell who is still alive. I know Tychus is, but beyond him I have no way of knowing. I didn’t pay enough attention to the two bodies that were stampeded to death, I guess. Silly me.

I crawl back down the hill to Mako.

“Any idea?” he says quietly.

I shake my head. “Tychus. At least one girl, probably two, from the shouting, but I couldn’t tell which ones. And I could only see four of them, but who knows.”

He gets to his feet, slowly. “We should get back to the cave. They’ll be out for blood.”

“They got it,” I say hoarsely, “Elsie and Merritt…”

“They knew the risks. It was their plan. But we need to get somewhere safe, in case the pack tries to hunt down the rest of us. They saw us, Annie, they know who was in on it. We need to-”

The cannon stops him short.

We sit in silence for a long time.

~~~                               ~~~                               ~~~

“Let’s go get the ponchos,” I say finally.

Mako nods, and as the sun creeps low toward the horizon, we walk through the trampled grass until we find the first discarded poncho. I trail my fingers through the rough hair, saying a silent goodbye to Elsie. We find my poncho a hundred yards beyond. I put it on. The sun is nearly down and already it is getting cold. We hurry to find Mako’s, then, cold and exhausted, we curl up under them and listen to the anthem play. Then they show the pictures. Andromeda from Two, the boys from Seven and Nine, Jilly, Merritt, and Elsie.

“That was worse than the bloodbath,” Mako says quietly.

I nod. “Do you think they’ll find us if we just sleep here for tonight?”

Mako looks around. There are already a handful of buffalo drifting in. “No. And if they do, we’ll have an early warning system.”

I take the first watch, staying up as long as I can. It doesn’t feel long enough, but I can barely keep my eyes open, so I wake Mako.

I dream that I am being chased by buffalo, but their faces are human. Farroe, Tychus, Andromeda, Jilly, Megary Fallon…

****

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[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[akanemnon]

THAT'S A LOTTA DAMAGE (emotional damage that is)

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Council of lovefools.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[inkskinned]

they want to talk about mental illness and acceptance and how everyone is a little ocd it's cute and quirky and their "intrusive thoughts" are about cutting their hair off and you say yours are about taking a razorblade to your eye and they say ew can you not and everyone is a little adhd sometimes! except if you're late it's a personality flaw and it's because you are careless and cruel (and someone else with adhd mentions they can be on time, so why can't you?) and it's not an eating disorder if it's girl dinner! it's not mania if it's girl math! what do you mean you blew all of your savings on nonrefundable plane tickets for a plane you didn't even end up taking. what do you mean that you are afraid of eating. get over it. they roll their little lips up into a sneer. can you not, like, trauma dump?

they love it on them they like to wear pieces of your suffering like jewels so that it hangs off their tongue in rapiers. they are allowed to arm-chair diagnose and cherrypick their poisons but you can't ever miss too many showers because that's, like, "fuckken gross?" so anyone mean is a narcissist. so anyone with visual tics is clearly faking it and is so cringe. but they get to scream and hit customer service employees because well, i got overwhelmed.

you keep seeing these posts about how people pleasers are "inherently manipulative" and how it's totally unfair behavior. but you are a people pleaser, you have an ingrained fawn response. in the comments, you have typed and deleted the words just because it is technically true does not make it an empathetic or kind reading of the reaction about one million times. it is technically accurate, after all. you think of catholic guilt, how sometimes you feel bad when doing a good deed because the sense of pride you get from acting kind - that pride is a sin. the word "manipulation" is not without bias or stigma attached to it. many people with the fawn response are direct victims of someone who was malignantly manipulative. calling the victims manipulative too is an unfair and unkind reading of the situation. it would be better and more empathetic to say it is safety-seeking or connection-seeking behavior. yes, it can be toxic. no, in general it is not intended to be toxic. there is no reason to make mentally ill people feel worse for what we undergo.

you type why is everyone so quick to turn on someone showing clear signs of trauma but you already know the fucking answer, so what's the point of bothering. you kind of hate those this is what anxiety looks like! infographics because at this point you're so good at white-knuckling through a severe panic attack that people just think you're stoic. even people who know the situation sometimes comment you just don't seem depressed. and you're not a 9 year old white kid so there's no way you're on the spectrum, you're not obsessed with trains and you were never a good mathematician. okay then.

mental illness is trending. in 2012 tumblr said don't romanticize our symptoms but to be fair tiktok didn't exist yet. there's these series of videos where someone pretends to be "the most boring person on earth" and is just being a normal fucking person, which makes your skin crawl, because that probably means you are boring. your friend reads aloud a profile from tinder - no depressed bitches i fucking hate that mental illness crap. your father says that medication never actually works.

you still haven't told your grandmother that you're in therapy. despite everything (and the fact it's helping): you just don't want her to see you differently.

[storyshift-sk]

PART 1/2 - Storytime!

Once Upon A Time… Things were great! Until they weren’t. dun, dun, dun

Every great fictional world starts with a history lesson!

[suntails]

totals ur drama

[iliothermia]

I really appreciate those who gave me some advice this morning on here about types of therapy, the conversation made me realize that the original events that created my PTSD likely were not the ones I thought they were. I've contacted some therapists who specialize in EMDR and loss trauma and hoping that will help some. Thank you! :)

[threestripeslider]

Tired: Rise!Splinter is a neglectful and awful father who doesn’t care about his kids >:(

Wired: Rise!Splinter’s negligence comes from a place of deep trauma that he’s carried with him his whole life – losing his mother, having been betrayed by the love of is life, being imprisoned and forced to fight for his life, used as an experiment and subsequently being mutated and losing his whole identity as a person – and while it certainly doesn’t excuse his behavior, there is no doubt that this man loves his sons fiercely despite his own shortcomings and perhaps it is exactly that love and care that causes him to keep his children at arms length in hopes to spare them his family’s cursed legacy that grooms them into martyrs and are thus destined to die young, a sacrifice for the greater good that Splinter is never willing to make even if it means forfeiting the world to the Shredder. Splinter’s journey of fatherhood began by being completely unprepared as a fresh young single father of four young children that depend on him to survive and there is no surprise he’s hit almost every bump there possibly is when raising a child but never in his life has Splinter ever blamed or resented his children in any way – he is not perfect and he’s aware and he tries to do better all because he loves his kids this fucking much bc despite all the shit he’s been through, those kids made him realize that he can try again. to dismiss him as an awful father is a gross mischaracterization of a deeply traumatized man of color who evidently tried his fucking hardest not to pass on the hurt onto his own children while grappling with his own demons and the crushing destiny of his family’s blood line that took away his mother.

[milquetoad]

chet saying that orym had lost more than any of them to laudna was objectively correct in that moment and i feel like ppl are misinterpreting it. this conversation was about ishta, it was specifically about otohan’s sword. laudna’s repeated argument was that the sword had traumatized her and that’s why she felt justified in doing what she did, and that may have been true, but chet was pointing out that when it came to that sword, orym had experienced more loss in connection with it. that sword may have killed laudna, but it killed orym too. and his husband. and his father. if she wants to play the trauma olympics, she has the silver to orym’s gold right now.

in the past, laudna rebuked ashton for saying he knew loneliness better than she did, and she was right to do so then. but this time, orym absolutely has known more trauma in connection with that sword, and chet was right to point that out during that moment. if she doesn’t get challenged like that then she’s never going to be able to break free from delilah’s influence.

[necrotic-nephilim]

this is not a ship post, but something that frustrates me a lot in fanon concerning Jason Todd that attempts to soften Jason's return to Gotham for the sake of found family domesticity or easy hurt/comfort or just sliding him into the Batfam sooner, is they all seem to fundamentally misunderstand Jason.

because there seem to be a lot of fandom popular concepts of Jason coming home much sooner and just not having his whole Under The Red Hood arc. which in theory is fine and i can see the want to simplify canon to make room for your lighthearted more fluff-leaning concepts. but in everyone without fail, the way they address the clown-shaped elephant in the room is by having some throwaway line that "oh Jason quietly kills the Joker and moves on".

when the Joker being dead or alive is not the *point*. if by some chance accident, the Joker had died prior to Jason's return, whether by ridiculous freak accident, getting whacked by a fellow villain, hell even someone actually doing so to avenge Jason, it *would not* satiate Jason's anger. because Jason's end goal in UtRH is not to simply kill the Joker: it is to make *Bruce* kill the Joker. Jason's anger is directed to the idea that to Jason, if Bruce truly loved Jason, he would've killed the Joker. that is love, for Jason. compromising your personal values for love and not letting someone go unavenged. when Jason was Robin, almost every angry or misguided thing he did was born of love. he wanted to kill/hurt Two-Face because he believed Dent killed his father. he was so angry at Felipe because an innocent woman was dead due to that man's actions. he wanted to save his mother in a situation he knew he shouldn't be in because he loved her. his anger, his violence, it is driven by love and feelings of righting wrongs. that is how he thinks wrongs *should* be righted. that is how you avenge and *love* someone.

because so long as Jason's return to Gotham doesn't end in Bruce killing the Joker (which, it never will bc Bruce is Bruce), Jason will never forgive Bruce. you cannot wave away the layers of hurt and complicated trauma by killing Joker offscreen. because Jason will still be angry that Bruce didn't avenge him. in his eyes, that means Bruce did not love him enough. he was not truly loved by Bruce the way he loved Bruce. bc Bruce was Jason's whole *world*. prior to being taken in, Dick and Tim, they had support systems. they had loved ones. they knew what stability and healthy family love looked like. Jason *didn't*. and that's not to say that Catherine Todd did not love him with her whole heart and thus he loved her, but it certainly wasn't a stable and safe support system for Jason to grow up in. Bruce was Jason's first real sense of a stable, healthy life. and so of course Jason poured everything into Bruce and loved Bruce so devoutly. Bruce was his world. like he says, if it had been Bruce, Jason would've stopped at nothing.

so his betrayal is rooted in that he was not avenged, not that Joker is alive. so long as the Joker does not die by Bruce's hands, it will never be enough for Jason. (in this era, at least.) notably, this is also why i don't think it would change a thing if Jason knew the whole "oh Bruce wanted to kill the Joker but Superman stopped him" tidbit that fanon has really latched onto as a way to pacify Jason's anger toward Bruce. Jason knowing that wouldn't change a thing, in my opinion. because Jason knows Bruce. and a tenant of Bruce's character is that he grapples with murder *every day*. the whole point is how *easy* it would be for him. he is a human weapon, trained by killers, trained to be deadly. he is the greatest strategist to exist. he knows he could kill someone and get away with it. *no* trace, no proof, nothing. and he knows he *wants* to. wants to kill the Joker, Joe Chill, anyone who's hurt him that viscerally.

but he *doesn't*. that's the point. Bruce wakes up every day with that question on his mind, and every day the answer is the same. Bruce's morality is not a decision he made in an alleyway when his parents died, it's a decision he continues to make every day and he *must* continue to make in order to remain who he is. Jason is quite familiar with the fact that Bruce grapples with this daily. i do not think it surprised nor fazed Jason to know that Bruce did *consider* killing the Joker. that he wanted to. maybe even planned to. but a consideration, a want, a plan, is just a thought. it's nothing substantial, and substance is everything to Jason. at the end of the day, Bruce didn't. he was talked down by *Clark* of all people with an excuse of diplomatic immunity, as if Jason and Bruce don't both know that Bruce could've *easily* found a way to make it look like an accident or some other loophole. because he's Batman. there's always a loophole. he always finds a way when he actually intends to. but he never actually intended to kill the Joker. so he didn't. and Jason would know that there was never an intent. it's an interesting piece of fodder to add to the nuance of Jason and Bruce, but honestly, i think it'd make Jason angrier to have that excuse thrown in his face. as if Bruce hasn't beaten Clark half a dozen times by now. it's a flimsy nonsense excuse that Jason would rip to shreds.

so while yes, i understand the wish for easy lighthearted fanfic that doesn't have to deal with the nuances of canon, i think that Jason's character will always be so deeply robbed and altered if you try to fix his thirst for vengeance with an off-page killing of Joker at Jason's hands. it was never the point. the point was that -in his own eyes- he wasn't loved enough for Bruce to make an acception. he realized that not even his *death* would come before Bruce's Mission. Jason truly believed that Bruce loved him and held him as the most important thing in the world, and now he has proof that Bruce didn't. because the Mission mattered more.

i'm not saying i have a solution to this conundrum if you're attempting to solve it for fanfic/fanon, nor am i even saying it's a bad thing it exists. i just think it becoming overwhelmingly common has led to misunderstandings surrounding Jason's motivations and feelings about this arc and it's an unsatisfying solution that only seeks to pacify Jason's rage and his trauma responses for the sake of found family-ification.

[mellohiizz]

i need some of your parrot art very sad. like, make him very very sad, as sad as you can make it. horribly sad. depressingly tragic sadness.

oops. sorry, i think i traumatized your bird.

[py6oto]

vanilla flavor piece

[realbeefman]

stacy is sooo interesting because she's in love with house but knows that they will never ever be able to have a healthy, stable, sane relationship because they're too similar so. she finds house-lite instead and marries him and. essentially moves on with her life! and is successful in this because she's a moderately well-adjusted person!

wilson, in contrast, never manages to escape the inevitable, in spite of his best efforts to find a house-lite of his very own, because he's an absolute fucking freak and ends up glued to house to the bitter. bitter end

[zuko-always-lies]

Azula was already going to break the cycle of abuse (and Zuko maybe won't?)

The Fire Nation royal family has a massive problem with generation after generation abusing its children. Playing favorites to an insane degree is normalized and perpetuated. Azulon blatantly favored Iroh over Ozai, Iroh blatantly favored Zuko over Azula, Ursa blatantly favored Zuko over Azula, and Ozai blatantly favored Azula over Zuko. One child is treated as useful and important, the other rejected and neglected.

Azula grew up in an abusive environment where all of this was normalized. She was only 14, and had never known anything else other than this style of parenting which served to turn one child against the other.. She literally ordered to fight her brother by her father.

Yet, despite all of this, Azula realized that this wasn't right. That she and Zuko should not be at each other's throats. That there was something very wrong with the favoritism. The entire "bring Zuko back with honor" idea was premised on the idea that there didn't need to be a favorite and a scapegoat, that Zuko and her could share Ozai's favor as equals, that Ozai had been wrong to disfavor and discard Zuko like he did.

Azula was obviously a bad person, a deeply flawed person. But if there's one thing she already learned in her heart of hearts in canon, it's that Ozai and Iroh and Ursa and Azulon's style of parental favoritism was deeply, deeply wrong. This is not something she has to learn post-canon, it's something she learned in canon.

I don't think Azula, on the track she was in canon, would ever grow into a great parent, but I am sure that she would never favor one of her children over the other the way that her elders did, that she would ever favor one of her nieces or nephews in that way. She knows better. She's already on track to break the cycle of favoritism.

By contrast, Zuko never learned that this sort of parental favoritism is bad. His problem with Ozai is not that Ozai played favorites, it's that Ozai's favorite was Azula and not him. He never even recognized that violently fighting with Azula was something bad, much less recognized that parental favoritism inevitably turns siblings against each other.

Thus, unless Zuko undergoes more growth post-canon, I think it's extremely likely that he'll fall into the same sort of abusive favoritism toward his children that his forefathers practiced. After all, that's even how his "true father" Iroh acted.

As much as we would like to act otherwise, the cycle of abusive has not been ended. Zuko needs to learn and acknowledge that what all the adults was doing was deeply wrong before he can personally break the cycle.

[wickmitz]

I decided to start talking about Wick and Rocky's relationship because I like their dynamics too, I like seeing Wick scared of Rocky and Rocky being aggressive with him, which is unusual because Rocky is rarely aggressive with anyone, but of course Wick is an exception to rule

Also my mini opinion about their possible relationship, I think that if Rocky didn't have to fight for his place, then he and Wick could become friends, or at least tolerate each other a little, I also see some superficial similarities, their gentlemanly and romantic natures, and their common love for explosions (remembering the quarrymen chapter), but this is my assumption, I think that I don't understand the characters' personalities well, so I can be wrong in this assumption, something like that. So, what do you think about their relationship?

for starters, i cannot thank you enough for this ask! as i’ve said previously, i have many thoughts on these two, so it’s nice to finally be able to share some of them. although given the extent to which i think about them, i apologize in advance if this is sloppy and sort of everywhere … while i’ll try to structure things the best i can, i cannot promise i’ll succeed! but hopefully this is an enjoyable reply nonetheless.

one of my favorite things about rocky and wick’s relationship is absolutely how aggressive rocky is towards the aristocrat ; he is prone to glares and cruel jokes and borderline hissing whenever the man is within his line of sight, or can be brought to a wailing-fit over the mere mention of his name from miss m’s mouth. there is a childishness to it, but a very prominent threat as well in spite of rocky’s usual incompetence. so he goes out of his way to posture around wick, readily lying and adorning himself with the gangster drapes he so badly wants to wear, in the hopes that it intimidates … will even badmouth wick’s family and make fun of his name and rock related obsession to mitzi, and so on so forth! yet all of this is very reminiscent of schoolyard bullying rather than anything too severe, though we as the audience understand rather quickly that rocky would bash wick’s head in with a tire iron if he could. ( translation : if it wouldn’t earn the tears or hate of a certain beloved mitzi may ) and it’s all very intense despite the absence of actual violence! and i understand why many fans see this as unusual for rocky and believe that it’s only wick who makes him act so aggressively, but i’d argue it isn’t really wick at all that prompts such scary reactions from him … and that rocky is a deeply angry character who’s a.) been boiling quietly for a long, long time and b.) has turned wick into a punching bag of sorts for this inner world of resentment and hurt. basically, when he’s judging the well-to-do or poking fun, his eyes don’t look at wick and actually acknowledge him as sedgewick sable ; instead this is a being, something vague and metaphorical, who threatens to upseat rocky’s permanence in the lackadaisy and steal away his savior, and he’s had a hand in the violinist’s misfortune for a long time.

obviously, rocky doesn’t think wick robbed him of his family twice over and made him homeless, but he is channeling the fear and anguish of those events into his loathing for wick, if that makes sense? it’s easier that way -- to finally have an outlet for everything bleeding inside of you, to be able to bite and claw at something without feeling conflicted or having to take personal accountability for your own mistakes … which is something that i think rocky does struggle with to a degree. he is sort of a finger pointer! his pain has to be worth something, it has to be for someone else ; spending years homeless and losing his last bit of family was for freckle, and the scrambling of his literal brain was for mitzi, and that means he can’t ever be angry with them! well, except that he is, somewhat, but he buries it deep down instead of feeling it. with freckle there is a sense of strain between them -- an air of ���you owe me’ from rocky to freckle as he uses freckle to appease miss m, and he constantly pokes fun at his cousin too. it’s lighter than his jabs at wick, but there’s a constant pestering, a reminder of how good freckle has it : how he’s got the mom and the house and the job and the girl most notably. i don’t think rocky is intending to come across as mean, and to his credit he hardly does! but it’s rather clear to me that some part of him, some hidden and deeply hurt part, is rather indignant about taking the fall for freckle all those years ago. which he can’t understand, because how could he? he made that choice, he decided to take accountability for something he didn’t do because he loves freckle and knows it’d be so easy to believe this family tragedy was roark’s fault ; the devilish child he was, all troublesome and too broken to properly fit anywhere. so there is a disconnect born here, where rocky can’t comprehend that he’d be angry at freckle, so instead these not so great feelings are placed elsewhere and silently boil over time. and with mitzi … i don’t think he’s angry at her per se, but there is a frustrated and desperate chorus of : why him and why not me, when i’m the one out here dying for you? which is certainly unpleasant. of course, rather than allowing those feelings to be more aimed at miss m, whom he feels unloved by, he ( again! ) represses these emotions and allows them to fester into his greatest fears and fantastical complexes. i think there is a lot of other miscellaneous anger he could have towards others too … perhaps some part of him is sore upon seeing ivy’s normal lifestyle, watching her go to university and knowing that’s been taken from him. or an ache felt when hearing stories from zib and the band and how they used to travel successfully, living as nomads, and rocky is all too reminded of his similar lifestyle and how he couldn’t make it work as effortlessly. people with immense trauma are more prone to irrational anger and jealousy, to viewing everything around them as unfair and believing it’s even more unjust that so many people get to live comfortably while they’ve suffered. a situation that gets more messy when you’re someone like rocky, a man who’s willingly made choices that have harmed himself and wants to continue on with his smiling, bumbling fool of an act. he does not want to be angry, does not want to see it within himself, i think, which leads to an accidental increase of it.

all of this is to reiterate that wick is a scapegoat for rocky and nothing more. it’s why he’s rather hypocritical whenever it concerns the man. for example, it was stated by tracy that he looks down upon wick for his excessive presence at the bar, yet he appears to enjoy hanging out with zib -- who drinks just as often! he makes fun of how all wick ever talks about is rocks, when he himself is prone to poetry rambles that people find irritating or boring, and etc etc. this is also just a human nature thing, to critique someone you heavily dislike and even going as far as to belittle things you love or do in your own day to day because you just hate them that bad! but given rocky’s willingness to befriend anyone, it more so reeks of a dehumanization element. wick is every obstacle in his way, every divine force that threatens to send him packing again, so he is equal parts unnerved by wick’s presence and angry about it. it is mostly a fear response we are seeing, an emotion that’s morphed into long held resentment and anger. so his actions are extremely defensive, with him trying to push wick far away and keep him and mitzi separate, like some sort of animal attempting to ward off a threat that’s come too close to their home. despite the loaded animosity there, this hate has hardly reached its peak … but it shall only grow more intense as things continue onward i’m afraid, since as it stands ( in the comic at least ) rocky is at an all time low … and is ten times more desperate. i’d honestly say wick has become so warped in his mind’s eye that he can only strive towards ‘winning’ over the other man, because that’s all he can see anymore. i think mitzi implying that wick willingly helped her out, the intense head injury, and rocky’s fragile emotional state is exactly what pushes him towards premeditated murder in look-see. i don’t know how people perceive that arc, but to me it’s very clear that rocky actively sought to see the deaths of wes and fish that night. going as far as to lament that he’d be, “very disappointed if ( he ) dreamed them,” and purposefully luring the marigold duo away to have freckle pick them off. while you could argue that this was a smart move, in a gangster sort of sense, there’s still no denying that rocky is oddly chipper about the whole thing and is now seeking death out ; whereas before his methods of vengeance were just, well, ruining people’s livelihood but ultimately leaving them alive. this isn’t to discredit the fact that rocky is going through something! he is in a very muddled and dark place, mentally and physically, but even tracy has said that the head injury hasn’t changed rocky’s personality -- it’s only brought things to the surface.

source : q&a with tracy .

which, yeah! makes sense! head trauma can cause a person to become a wreck emotionally ( think mood swings, irritability, etc ) but it doesn’t completely morph someone either. personality changes may occur, but it’s not like you’re being rewritten entirely, you know? and given tracy’s old statement, it’s clear that ‘personality changes’ aren’t a side effect he’s suffering from. something that adds to my beginning statement, which is that rocky is a deeply angry and troubled person, more so than fans give him any credit for.

however, to touch upon your mini opinion about these two, i actually wholeheartedly agree that rocky and wick could become friends if circumstances were different. they do in fact have many superficial similarities, but one of the more prominent things they deeply share is never really belonging in the groups they frequent. this is more overt with rocky’s character, yet wick faces it too in subtle ways. the well-to-do crowd, seen through the investors, find the gentleman to be lacking in about every place imaginable ; to them he is an obsessive freak who cares too deeply for meager rocks, something they constantly mock him for, while he’s also being noticeably set apart from the rest of them … he seems younger than the investors, more excitable, passionate, and a little less experienced, and doesn’t seem to care for money or reputation as much as them either. there is a constant rubbing between him and them, where what he enjoys is seen as wrong, such as his love for the lackadaisy and his choice in paramor, a grieving widow with extremely dangerous ties. we also know that wick doesn’t have many friends at all, with the only two he has being lacy and church ( church is listed as such on his character profile, in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way ), both of whom work for or with him. they are obliged to hang around, and while they care in varying ways, they are prone to judging him just as much. honestly, it’s not shocking that wick seeks refuge at his chosen speakeasy! but even there he is rather distant from everyone else. he doesn’t speak to zib ever in the comics, nor seems all too close with viktor, ivy, or horatio … it is merely mitzi he is close to, even if he knows of the other people who work there. and, once again, wick very obviously doesn’t fit in. he is not gangster material, could never be an atlas may replacement, much less someone who could get his paws dirty in such an active way. so he has his feet in two different worlds and doesn’t know how to fit into either of them, or which one he actually wants to fit into more. i think in many ways rocky could relate -- these are two very lonely people who wish to belong somewhere and be accepted by some group or another but go about it in all the wrong ways. wick, who is too hesitant to fully commit to what he wants and is worse off for it, and then rocky, who obsessively throws himself against what he wants until he breaks every bone in his body. they also have explosives to bond over, lol, and other miscellaneous things like their taste in women i suppose … but this potential bond adds to the tragedy of lackadaisy, where we see two people who on every level should get along but we’re burdened with the knowledge that it’s an impossibility anyway, because there’s no removing the circumstance of which they’re in.

though i like to believe that despite wick’s fear of rocky, he maintains a kindness towards him regardless. i think his worries about rocky are rather surface level … he doesn’t know the boy at all, really, and thus can’t make heads or tails of him, hence him believing the lie in balderdash. so when i’m feeling particularly self indulgent, i like imagining a world where they’re forced together and sort of ‘stuck’ together ; to which rocky finally breaks and exposes his wounds to wick, in every sense of the word, and wick finally gets him. the aggression, the possessiveness of mitzi … it is all fear and desperation and a profound sadness, things he’d sympathize with. if rocky was able to explain that he loathes wick because if he saves the lackadaisy then mitzi won’t need him anymore and that it’s not fair that wick gets to so easily fix things when rocky would give his soul for his home, for her, and how wick could render every sacrifice he’s already made for naught by smoothing things over with some greenbacks and he can’t lose this, he just can’t --! … which, well, wick is too kind of a man to be able to do anything except feel awful, even though it’s not his fault at all. here we have two people who could coexist! and they should, since rocky logically can’t do every speakeasy job ( band member, rumrunner, mitzi’s shadow, also the guy who gets the money for the hooch ) by himself, just like how wick can’t save the lackadaisy with only his cash and limited booze stash. it’d be a joint cooperation, a collaboration between them, both equally important in the grand scheme of crime’s every turning wheel … but rocky’s rage and fear won’t let him see that, and likely never will. still, in scenarios where everything ends up alright for the lackadaisy and the people involved in it ( which is not how canon will go, by the way ), i fancy wick and rocky getting better within their relationship. rocky will always be prickly and quick to upset around the other man sadly, but perhaps he could see wick in a softer kind of light. or at least understand vaguely enough that he isn’t out to get rocky, so to speak. and then maybe wick learns that pancakes soothe rocky’s ire and poorly makes them anytime he wishes to talk to the man, and other fun things like that! but you should have more confidence in your character analysis skills, because you were spot on ( at least in my eyes ) about them potentially getting along if things were different. it’s certainly a fun aspect to play around with, and is important to note when discussing their relationship so you can fully understand just how warped rocky’s perspective on things are. and how unstable and traumatized he is too, of course </3 sidenote, but i also hope that throughout everything i’ve said here, or anything i’ve said before on my blog, that my love for rocky and my own sympathy for him comes across well enough. while he’s deeply flawed and i have no qualms discussing said flaws in depth, i also don’t think of him as some insane freak who’s evil at his core or anything like that. honestly, i adore analyzing him so much as a character because of how far down his issues go! he’s very well written, i’ll say, as is wick and many of the other characters, but i digress.

once more, thank you for the ask! i’ll end this here because i fear if i don’t i’ll start going in circles, since their relationship is so vast and very important for rocky in a character sense. hopefully i shed some more light on it though! i love these two to bits and pieces and i wouldn’t be half as invested in lackadaisy if their dynamic wasn’t so monumental -- at least to me.