#this relationship is like. the crux of the whole plot its is genuinely life changing for them | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dwellordream · 5 years ago

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I'd love a directors commentary for all of "my heart is a fist of barbed wire", but there's so many chapters (really, really good ones gah) so chapter 32 "ring" would be fascinating to hear your take on, it really ties into the last couple chapters and is still so shocking?! I really enjoyed it, thank youu!! ♥️

thank you! i remember going into chapter 32 i was just so worn down from the fic (as much as I enjoyed writing it) that I was kind of dreading having to wrap up so many major plot points in just one chapter. the chapter ended up being nearly 10,000 words, which at that time especially was brutal for me to try to get through, so it was kind of tiring to get through, but I ended up being pretty satisfied with it. I wrote it in parts and spent about a day on each ‘section’ since it’s divided by months. I still feel like the pacing is pretty uneven, but it got across Amy’s rapidly evolving emotional state as she figures out what she wants to do with her life. ‘August’ was interesting because this is where Amy takes her first real step towards actively deceiving Tom; we see her come to a series of conclusions pretty much all at once. she knows he is going to find out that she came looking for him in Knockturn Alley. either she can confess that she followed up on the Riddles and knows what he’s done, or she can hide it. her decision to hide is largely due to the fact that she’s now realized this is the *only* advantage she has over him. he’s committed a serious crime- murder!- and is convinced he’s getting away with it. the only way she can keep this leverage over his head is to feed into Tom’s sizable ego and play up his cunning and charisma, convincing him that he’s ‘won her back’. fortunately for Amy, she is perceptive enough to realize that she needs to go about this in a manner that is convincing. he has some massive blind spots, but she knows he will be suspicious if she suddenly seems completely forgiving and accepting of his bad behavior once again. with this in mind, Amy comes up with a haphazard plan to reel Tom back in; she’s going to play coy and distant, feed into his desire to ‘prove himself’ to her, and let him do a lot of her work for her. Tom is very smart but he’s also used to being right, and he relies on a ton of assumptions to live his life. his #1 assumption is that no one is cleverer than him or more cunning than him, and Amy is not an exception to this. he might respect her obvious wits and determination, but he certainly doesn’t want to acknowledge that it could ever be used against him, personally. therefore when Amy is reunited with Tom in ‘August’, she puts on a pretty good act, pretending to slip up and reveal that she still cares for him and his well-being; Tom is only too eager to fall for this, and leaps at the chance to convince her that he’s back on his best behavior; when he wheedles her into a date, she lets him, albeit pretending to still have her guard up. one interesting note about ‘October’ is that despite her obvious animosity and desire to get away from Tom, Amy still worries that he might be drafted after he’s turned eighteen. I think it just speaks to her overall compassion. she has plenty of reason to hate him, but she still wouldn’t wish the war upon him. In ‘December’ we see that Tom and Amy are back to their own tricks; on friendly enough terms to exchange holiday gifts once more, albeit in private. Amy is forced to remain back at Hogwarts for the break due to Wool’s closure, leaving her extremely isolated and vulnerable. Tom, of course, senses an opportunity here and presents her with a very expensive gift of pearl earrings (which Amy infamously speculates over the origins of). there is a whole lot of fucked up stuff wrapped up with this present exchange. Amy bakes Tom cookies almost as a ‘test’ experiment to see how trusting he is of her: the answer is ‘very’. he accepts her gift without question, almost as if it were expected and prompted by him. he presents her with what would ordinarily be considered a very serious and romantic gift; genuine pearl earrings (or really any expensive jewelry) was a major status symbol gift in the 1940s. no normal teenage boy would have been giving a girl he wasn’t even ‘going steady with’ such a lavish present. it would have been more in line for a married couple. this is some obvious foreshadowing of what’s to come. the very first thing Tom does after giving Amy this present is not ask if she likes the earrings or tell her he got her them because he cares about her and knows she’s fond of pearls, but instruct her to put them on. I think this is such a textbook example of his controlling and possessive behavior. it pops up throughout the fic and we certainly see it when he has Matthew attacked out of jealousy and a desire to make Amy suffer, but it’s just super blatant here. it’s almost like he doesn’t really care whether Amy likes the earrings or not. what he cares about is that she is willing to put them on, even if only temporarily, thus demonstrating (in his view) some level of devotion that he’s going to rely on later. in his mind, if she can accept the earrings without rejecting them (or him) she can accept something more serious. we then see him immediately try to kiss her, something he hasn’t done in over a year at that point; they’ve had pretty much no physical contact whatsoever since the Matthew Fiasco. what’s also disturbing here is that Amy senses he’s about to kiss her and decides to ‘let it happen’, without much regard for her own consent. she doesn’t seem to care whether or not she actually wants Tom to kiss her- he wants to, and she’s decided that it’s in her best interests to keep him placated. compared to her earlier trend of usually taking the initiative in their romantic relationship and being very clear about what she wants and doesn’t want, I think this is really sad and concerning. what surprises Amy (and maybe the reader) is that when Tom does go through with it, he almost immediately realizes that she’s not into it, at all, beyond just not reciprocating right off the bat, and backs off. there’s multiple ways to interpret this. we could argue that Tom still cares about her consent and has no interest in kissing someone who clearly doesn’t want to be kissed. we could argue that Tom realizes it’s in *his* best interests to try to *prove* he can be understanding and patient and so he reluctantly backs off. we could argue that the tender and sweet nature of the kiss itself shows a ‘soft side’ to Tom that is really desperate for love and affection, as opposed to him trying to bully her into reciprocating. in the end, this is from Amy’s POV, and she just doesn’t know. what she does see is that Tom seems visibly disturbed by her lack of reaction, and is genuinely concerned she’s about to cry. he then apologizes (or as much of an ‘apology’ as we might ever see from him in Barbed Wire) and seems to remind himself that she asked him for some space and time. Amy latches onto this, and tries to reassure him that she, too, wants things to go back ‘to the way they were’. but the cold reality here is that there is no going back. Amy *can’t* go back. the real dysfunction here is Tom’s insistence on trying to turn back time- to him, the reminder that they are graduating and will soon ‘leave behind’ their school social circles is a comforting one. the irony of course is that literally none of that happens. Tom has no intention of moving on with his life or dropping the fairweather friends he’s cultivated at Hogwarts. he intends to exploit as much as possible from them and the reputation he’s built up as an aspiring pureblood elite. nothing really changes for him, but everything is about to change for amy. finally we get to ‘May’ and ‘June’. I seriously debated giving ‘June’ its own chapter and ending 32 on ‘May’, but I decided at the time it would give readers a false impression of the direction the fic was headed in. I figured there were enough twists already without convincing everyone that we were about to have an ‘unhappy happy ending’ or I guess ‘happy ending for Tom, mediocre ending for Amy’. in ‘May’ of course comes the Proposal. I really debated combining this with ‘June’ and having Tom propose right before Amy springs her trap, but it ended up working out better this way. Amy and Tom yet again meet up in secret, this time above the dueling gallery, and they almost seem to have fully reconciled- Amy enthusiastically reciprocates his kiss, and he presents her with yet another gift: an unexpected letter of recommendation from one Oliver Parkinson, a successful healer guaranteed to ensure her a prosperous career at St Mungo’s straight out of graduation. I think kind of the crux of Amy’s character is her reaction to this gift. even while pretending to be won over, she cannot hide her distaste for this method; she doesn’t want anything she feels she hasn’t earned. to Tom, this is a pointless (if endearing) waste of her pride. he is really patting himself on the back here, going, ‘look how enlightened I am, not only being tolerant of you wanting a career of your own, but going to all this trouble to set it up for you!’. but that’s not what Amy wants. she wants a partner who is going to encourage her to forge her own path, not do the work for her. she doesn’t want an easy life, she wants a meaningful one, and her and Tom’s definitions of ‘meaningful’ just don’t align. it also has to do with his own pride- in Tom’s mind, if they’re going to be engaged, *of course* she needs an illustrious career, especially since Amy has no ‘good breeding’ or lovely country estate to fall back on. he knows it will be much easier to work her into pureblood society if she is a respected protege of a man like Oliver Parkinson; than he can arrange for people to conveniently forget about her wild school days and her muggleborn background, and really shape her into a woman he feels will best suit his goals in life; someone successful in their own right, but still owing it all to him and his connections. he then almost immediately shoots himself in the foot by bragging about his blackmailing of Atticus Greengrass to secure his own career prospects, and then, of course, unveils the fateful Ring, the same Ring Amy immediately spotted on him way back in ‘August’, which has conveniently fit very well into her plans. Tom still can’t be bothered with a more traditional propose, and launches into one final sales pitch to Amy. a lot of people have commented on about how earnest and genuinely compelling they found his speech. I felt like it had to be in order to sell the moment. he needs to *believe* in what he’s saying. it has to be the most open and vulnerable moment of Tom’s in the entire fic for it to seem plausible. he puts it all on the line for one split second of faith... and of course it blows up in his face, but the point is that he seeded his own destruction, more or less. had he been like this with Amy from the start, maybe they could have built a much more positive and open relationship, instead of a dysfunctional mess. “you’re alone,” Tom tells Amy, more or less, “you’ve always been alone, and you will always need me to make you feel less alone” but we know that’s just not true. Amy isn’t alone; she has real friends and passions, she has so much to look forward to, an entire life ahead of her. Tom is the one who’s alone, in the worst possible way. the one person who made him feel less alone, he ended up pushing away with his poor choices and selfish desires. he brings up her background in this ‘gotcha’ moment- but the joke is that Amy doesn’t care! she’s always known, and she doesn’t care. it’s painful, yes, and she acknowledges that pain, but she has moved on from that part of her life. she holds no rage or even resentment towards her mother for giving her up. she doesn’t resent her mother for being an impoverished sex worker with no means to care for a small child. she has no desire to find out who her father was or ‘confront’ her mother- that doesn’t matter to Amy. where she comes from, her origins, they don’t matter. she doesn’t give a damn about her heritage or ancestry, she just wants to move forward. and now the only thing standing in her way is Tom. I think ‘June’ pretty much speaks for herself, but I will say this; when I wrote I didn’t really feel any vindictive sense of ‘ah, she’s getting her revenge on him now!’, mostly just sadness. It’s really sad that Amy ends up feeling the only way she can even have this honest talk with Tom... is with him incapacitated and literally unable to respond. she identifies herself as being selfish, and I think this is a good example of selfishness not always being a bad thing, which I think is very important, especially for girls! (not that I’m condoning drugging anyone or blackmailing them, etc). but learning to put yourself and your wants and needs first is important. Amy is mature enough to realize that this relationship with Tom and her cannot work. she cannot be his moral compass, and she cannot turn a blind eye to his actions. his speeches about ‘letting her win’ and them being happy together are pretty and persuasive but ultimately hollow. there is no happy ending for them. he ruined their chances of that a long time ago. she’s not his enemy- he is. and I think her parting of “I love you” just really speaks to who she is as well. it’s really hard to recognize that someone you love isn’t good for you, that not all loves are necessarily good things. being with him might feel right in the moment, but in the long-term she knows it would be the exact opposite. she’s able to honestly acknowledge her feelings while still finding the strength to walk away.

#ask #anon #ask game #barbed wire

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