#I think my only in-person follow-up is going to be at 6 weeks post-op | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

incarnateirony · 9 months

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For those of you who have been following the Startup Business Drama and Vacation Man, I've got a convo behind the cut for you. Bearing in mind this man came banging at my door at 130 AM to prove how Here For Me he is after fucking off for upwards of 3 weeks at a critical time period without doing any of his promises beforehand. Like literally I pretended not to hear it because, holy shit dude, it's 130 AM, it's not my fault you can't manage your life. But he knocked until the cops showed up asking what was going on.

(Vacation Boy) — Today at 4:19 PM I agree we need to talk about several things yes. I figured I would come by either Sunday or Monday night after we have both had a few days to calm down and be pain free. I'm in excruciating pain and exhausted from this trip myself and I got back to the house that was completely wrecked. I've got at least a week's worth of trash I got to deal with and a pile of their laundry that's as big as I am just to start was before I can even do my own. I even took a muscle relaxer myself last night and it did absolutely nothing for me.

EXPY P2P — Today at 4:25 PM I honestly do not prefer in person discussion. And that stands with or without awkward conversations. My brain does not assemble thoughts well in person, everything gets lost, I become frustrated even at myself, and it causes manic spirals of anger. There is a reason I am fighting so hard for chat, not voice jobs, even if will accept voice jobs. It is a legitimate disability I do not think people understand. It's not just exhausting by nature of talking costing energy, which it does, but of a neurodiverse issue and the methods my brain functions at, which is why half the time I just. Stare or have long responses or just sit there sorting through things visually, and I inevitably lose what I've said or haven't covered yet, whereas text allows the ability to track back what has and hasn't been said. Or why the longer even calm conversations go the more my voice escalates in either volume, pitch, or speed.

EXPY P2P — Today at 4:34 PM In the time you were gone, I lost one of our leading plants, by the way. In the timeline no longer being "take 1-2 extra weeks" to "move it ahead a week, actually", broken stem girl strangled herself without time to repair. In attempting to stretch, the stem rupture broke out of the stem while the stem itself hardened to the point even attempted surgical cut of the damaged tissue was too late for the impaction. It is to some extent my fault by not attempting to clone her, but I also did not have a clone tray, and that too would have caused a developmental delay, so either way was a roll of the dice. This was on the list of reasons, beyond optimizing canopy coverage for yield, I wanted to give them 1-2 more weeks (recovering from past issues, and her stem recovery, as well as the resurrected plant.) This was an avoidable loss, but I was essentially in a corner, and needing to figure out where my minimum 6 weeks would fit without overcosting Sarah without Gen, who only came back post-flip. Just like all the stuff David tried to price gouge me on at 3x new market rate now being offered, also months late, in the final hour, after all the costs, and struggle, and saves from damages, because asking it earlier was too uncomfortable. If it comes in AT ALL, that NEEDS to go into the grow op IMMEDIATELY, not a branch off, not a learning pet project, into actually being equipped to do this properly. Mark, I need you to understand, the plants need what they need. They need them when they need them, not when it's most convenient for us. We can not simply whip schedules around over and over and demand they meet them, we cannot wait extra weeks to give them the bare minimum, we can not demand peak performance without giving them even essential conditions. If I say "hey here's a ten dollar fan I can't buy", don't go "ok do that" and sit with a thumb up your ass and wait until I get one only for it to come without a cord, only to find you have fans laying all over your house the whole time. If I say it's time consuming to manually train the plant canopies nonstop because they readjust for light, don't tell me "I forgot to get you the thing you asked for, for two months." If I say, I just took critical fall damage with my setup, don't tell me you still forgot the goddamn power strip. When I say I need grow bins when the plants are 4 weeks old, don't show up with them at 6-7 weeks and pikachu face that their roots are too big, the vegetables you are demanding on an insane schedule are literally moving faster than you are, per your request and by my skill. You can't expect me and the plants to run olympic triathalons on a timeline crunch while you stand there Forgetting Stuff or holding on to save 10 bucks yourself just so I can buy it on my pocket change too late too. These are easy things to prioritize, many of which had easy, even free answers to you. The reason the bastards are doing Great is because people paid 60$ to get me the dirt that would have been 24$ to get pickup at walmart independence supercenter. The reason they can have the HPS to themselves dedicated in a space is because John and Noiz collectively put in over $100 to add lights that should have been added months ago but I refused to put more weight on Sarah and spent my days recreating the sun moving for them.

EXPY P2P — Today at 4:42 PM

At this point we are pretty much surrendered to this continuing as a small scale operation that barely self floats through past the holidays until we can work past debts, restrictions, the fraud my old rental agency pulled et al, and if we manage to be out of here before that, we've pulled out a miracle. I am mutually job hunting all day while house hunting for independent rentals all day and yes, contacting them over and over and over as needed. You got offended when I pointed out you've lived with David for years and are out of touch with rental reality. And then you asked if you might have to call more than once, so god far be it from me to assume you went the extra mile and looked for options yourself knowing I'm busy being a horticulturist, a chemist, an engineer, and a goddamn wizard full time while training plants because of Stuff You Forgot. And what about moving costs? Deposit? Where is all this money coming from???? September 20? Unsold plants? Because I communicated what the sped up bloom period would be like, and you sped it up in your head faster than that, to essentially make impossible promises to Sarah in my name, and I told her no, no that's not right, no. NOIZ has been in on this like two weeks and already has displayed a clearer understanding of grow cycles and timelines than you have because they are actually listening, so I've been messaging them, as investors, to make educated decisions on timelines. You, meanwhile, say getting a job you want to [checks notes] throw seeds outside in early October. In the midwest. With a photoperiod strain. After the equinox. At onset winter. You don't even need to be a weed wizard to see why that was None Thoughts, Head Empty. Then, instead of offering to invest up in the business, so I could send you overstock we get in bulk, plan A Grow Of Your Own. All months late. Like okay, lesson one my guy, most plants don't grow in snow.

I am able to do this now because John also prioritized buying other things, like the trellis net I asked for since we start, which has dramatically streamlined my work.

When John saw the setup I had, he was shocked the plants were even alive much less several of them being the size of plants given twice as long to vegetate.

EXPY P2P — Today at 4:51 PM here is another grower with 12 week old, pre-bloom plants about 2 1/2 feet tall, or topped in the same strain to make the spread out version. They had extra leaves from their age but otherwise, I don't know if you notice, this was why I was asking 1-2 weeks extra. To let them get here. By 8-9 weeks, not 12. I did this on next to nothing, and essentially alone.

The neighbor commented on the dirt quality, asked if thats why I used for the ones in tent. I said no, we used timberline bc it was cheaper off the top. He shit his pants. The entire point of choosing dirt over hydroponics is to NOT force a 90 day timeline, to NOT have plants start dying after that point, to BE able to give them extra time, to TAKE the extra few weeks to double or triple your results. I had also been topping the plants when I was told I could have 1-2 extra weeks. Then, I was basically forced into abandoning that, so the topping never had chance to take, and they're going to have minimal returns from that. The plants can not time travel.

I have been still working to my last breath during the day. Sometimes literally, and knocking myself out on CO2 to try to make these plants give us more than 3-4 ounces a plant, because the hundred times I explained timelines, square meter canopies or equivalent light coverage, the differences in yield with comparison to professional growers with high end equipped rigs, et all flew in one ear and out the other, largely because someone planted "90 day grow" in your head when I told you "about 3 months, maybe 4", not 90 days, because I'm not functionally retarded, and I knew the benefit in getting 110 day plants I could push to 100 day plants, that were suddenly committed to being 90 day plants, and then 85 day plants, and I got driven to near insanity trying to make demands and deadlines and flipped the switch before I got other people committing to keeping my ass covered while I got this stable. I might not have been pushed into making this decision if, for example, Gen came around a week earlier than she did, but I was staring down Sarah having to pay september AND a chunk of october to move, before the move fell in. And we conceded I may need to sit. And I can't unflip what's been flipped already, it doesn't work like that. What had once been you saying "oh I can swipe a card for a week or two of the final month if needed" became "I quit my job and NEED money by now." Every term and condition of this has been changed on me. I say "september 20-something" for the earliest, you start promising Sarah Sept 20, not 20-something, that she won't have to pay XYZ, etc, and that is simply Not Fucking True nor did anyone say anything that would have implied that if you were listening at all. "Harvest by Sept 20-something" that goes all the way to Sept 29 = "Able to sell and move by Sept 20" to you HOW? When I was talking about extending 1-2 weeks, and you said yes, and that being 1-2 week Oct? September 20 COMES IN WHERE BEYOND FANTASY, MY GUY? 6-8 WEEK BLOOM, MY GUY.

At some point you decided you "only want an average yield", while ignoring what I said was needed to get there, and reading bare minimum sellers information without context, while giving sub-minimum conditions, lighting, dirt, and grow time all at once.

You say, "I appreciate your work" but that truly means nothing to me if you haven't absorbed what that work is, or what you're demanding, or what I'm communicating to achieve it at all, while setting expectations in your own head about what it will look like how much and how fast. I'm sitting here doing algebra about ppfd and umols and CO2 and absorbable moles in a day to try to push timelines without losing further results beyond the conditions and timelines already forced on them. I had literally ad nauseam in the chat gone over how to get sq meter canopies with 1-2 weeks and before THAT got rug pulled on me got an Uh Huh Go Ahead and then suddenly it got Backwardsed into 1 or 2 weeks LESS, when bloom simply doesn't work like that, which I also explained ad nauseam.

I literally resurrected a different plant from the dead. It could have had 2 weeks to catch up to the others. It will not.

And somewhere between there you started trying to charge me black market rates for groceries that I wouldn't have needed help with if I hadn't been trying to buy shit for the plants on my own well past my investment bar to begin with, just like Sarah, while expecting Sarah to pay more. And then I'm sorry, yes, outright either lying to either us or yourself about the car, and then bouncing when your own words on record, or your own failure to google what I found in five seconds to the same town you drove not just 97.4 miles around that weekend, but at least 50 before that calculating your gas tank capacity and the trip useage to get there. When really it boils down to something you said from the jump "I feel like I deserve this." Just like you feel like you deserve a fuckton of money without meeting the $500 bar, or doing the accounting, or the licensing, or any of it, or deserve Sarah buying more stuff, or deserve to quit your job while I'm ready to jump into working full time alongside this just to stabilize myself now that my whole livelong day isn't set to keeping these plants together. And I pass out at a semi sane midnight hour and have you come banging at my door at 130 AM until the cops show up because you didn't consider time, or that I wasn't replying to the messages, or that I might need human functions like sleep sometimes, just to prove something about you being here, weeks too late, after I pulled everyone else in to cover the stuff I was short to keep this whole operation from going in the toilet because you wanted a vacation that you justified and showed me the long, long list of seals and fluids your car had needed not since last year, but since 2019 at least and like, my guy, you not having your priorities together before isn't our cost to eat. I dare you to do the math on your chipotle drives and costs since 2019. On your 400/mo rent, 1500/mo base income and +500 work going... somewhere.

EXPY P2P — Today at 5:33 PM Then yeah, I hear "oh well no mail since a week ago" "??? the other 10 days?" "IDK David-" ? wasn't told to keep an eye out or to file all mail? That's like, bare minimum dude, that's not even work for you. There's a lot of refusal of bare minimum. If there will be a CEO of this company, at this rate, it will be John. John acted like a CEO. He took a look at my setup, what I was accomplishing with essentially nothing, and asked "what do you need?" without delay, without me bitching. Not "What can you give me how soon?" It all arrived next day in the mail. Not weeks or months later. Well most specifically he said "Holy shit your wires that's sooooo not safe. Oh my god wait holy shit you're actually pulling it off somehow. Oh my god. What do you need."

(Vacation Boy) — Today at 5:56 PM Yes David was told to look for mail addressed to you. In fact David was told twice. After I took you home the first night he met you he and I talked in detail about our friendship and the operation as it stood then, and again the day that I left.

Nothing has arrived here that's had your name on it other than the last mail I brought you before I left. David has confirmed that he has not thrown out or sent back anything with your name on it the entire time that he was here.

EXPY P2P — Today at 6:02 PM Okay. That is good. But we need a come to jesus talk about the rest, my guy. Because I have been in no way vague about plant timelines, requirements, cycles, lighting, et al, but it became increasingly clear in the last ~ETA 3 weeks that nothing has sunk in. I in fact explained these things in loops so many times I felt like I was being obnoxious about it.

(Vacation Boy) — Today at 6:04 PM I agree. We will have that conversation sooner rather than later.

EXPY P2P — Today at 6:05 PM I will not be forced to hold this conversation in person without regards to my neurodiverse limitations to leverage the conversation into your benefit. It can be had here. All the information stays on page where you can read it again and again and again without losing or forgetting anything.

(Vacation Boy) — Today at 6:07 PM Ok fine. But you will not be guaranteed to get a response from me before tomorrow night. I have already told you why.

EXPY P2P — Today at 6:07 PM That is fine. But my points are there. That is another benefit of messages. They can and will stay there, and they do not disappear, or get forgotten. We're having that conversation. You can have it as slow as you want. These points that have been spoken will not disappear, even if we take it to in person where I can't sort out my thoughts, they still exist. But if I say one last thing here today: For all of your thought about your own 10-15 hour a week work life balance, I beg you to consider how you would view a boss that treated you with the conditions, equipment, and expectations you put on me before, and during, vanishing on vacation. John has been now calling me almost daily while working carrying around 100 lb equipment on his 40 hour hard labor workweek to check in on if anything new has come up and been needed, or how to help. The only reason he was not doing this prior was because I wasn't complaining and, well, he was working full time. Keep in mind, if we had gotten a place, and he had moved in, he didn't come in asking for money, he made a contingency on having a job lined up and ready to not put a drain on a young business, not just running here to quit his, despite his own creeping disabilities. So again, remove the perception from being defending yourself. Pretend these demands or lack of listening had come from some other boss or CEO, since that's what you said you were going to be, and put the hats on you to handle. How would you interpret this supervisor and how would you feel?

Zero. Dead plants. That would be the Average Yield in the conditions and timeline I was given. Other people rescuing this made the Average Yield maybe 3-4 oz a plant. I am trying to do the same plant wizardry that kept them alive at all to make them half a pound a plant, but you know I hate overpromising. The average yield with what I was left with, and all the delays to even get power strips or clippy fans or other things laying around for free, would be Zero. I need you to wrap your head around that before this conversation moves any further.

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Fascinating that in that entire brick, he could spring forward to go "well I DID do the bare minimum about the mail, exactly" but needs even MORE delay of time to figure out how to make excuses for the other bullshit.

And that shit at the start? What is he bitching about? Who is he accusing of trashing the house that bad while he was out of town? The owner that hasn't been there half the time? Throwing in a load of laundry for them when he gets to rent an entire 1500 sq foot house for 400/mo utilities included, since said owner is only in town a few weeks a year? Who made all the piles of trash? The fucking cats?

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inkskinned · 4 years

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When the honey showed up, we all just took it inside. That was one of the things about it - it was always a little warm, always in the same simple jar and the nice plaid bow. Handmade-like. Most of us put it in our pantries or in the back of our cabinets, some put it in the fridge. we just thought to ourselves: gee, what a wonderful present.

I don’t know how long it took before we all had one. For a while, the most that would happen was two-minute feel-good op ed pieces in local newspapers. People would run little letters to the editor to find out the “culprit”. Sometimes there were faux-serious “investigations” when that parent freaked out about the possibility of drugs in honey. Most of the time, it ended quickly. After all, it was a nice gift from a neighbor, and it was yours. that was another thing. A house could be 122 people, and we’d all find our own jar on the doorstep, one at a time. we would know when it was ours and when it wasn’t, no matter how alike they looked. nobody ate it, at first. It was yours, and you wouldn’t eat it, and you couldn’t eat another person’s. it just wasn’t done. and the thing is - in that imaginary house, of 122 people? we’d all buy other honey. it was both there and took up space - but none of us thought of it as actually existing. we’d put down our storebought honey right next to it and think - why did i buy another? i’ve wanted to try this one for a while. and then the thought would simply be out of our head, because this is our third bag of baby carrots we have bought to let spoil again.

it was that one person who mentioned it on youtube. actually i think it was a vimeo “urban legends” series. some person with 6 followers who deleted like instantly. but then 6 people said something similar: everyone they knew had this one specific honey story. and then 12. and then all of a sudden we all woke up to “#honeyonthedoorstep” globally trending. we all posted our pictures of our honey and called each other liars and got into discourse fights with vegans and people without a sweet tooth. In 24 hours, it was running the media. 9-at-night serious news anchors leaned over to each other and said “now john, did you hear about this?” and despite their disbelief, they’d admit: i got the honey too. I think somewhere in march. maybe around the 5th. but i never ate it or thought anything of it. i just thought - what a nice gift.

By the end of the week, there were YouTube challenges and instagram memes and a netflix miniseries in the works. Lots of people tried to eat their honey, and most who “succeeded” were deemed a hoax - but truth be told? it’s not good tv to watch someone pick up honey and say “actually it’s not ready” or something similar and just decide to go do something else. i tried once, winedrunk and thinking i could be famous because it’s just honey. and i remember thinking that exact thing - it’s not ready. i realized i needed to go do dishes, this was stupid and kind of cringey.

and people freaked out, of course. outside of the jokes were parents who were asking if their children would get a jar one day, if this was a one-time thing. there were so many conspiracy theories the government finally had to say something (not that any of us were actually listening), there were massive hunts to find “the team of honey dispatchers”, there were plenty of false confessions, there were rallies to destroy the things. i don’t know if anyone actually did, because in the end? it was just a jar of honey, and it was yours, and it would be a shame to throw it at the floor just because the internet told you so. I moved three times that year - grad school, job, other better job. i always took mine with me. it wasn’t a real choice, it was just... like taking a plate that belonged to your grandmother, or carrying a song stuck in your head. it was just something that was going to come with, but it bore no special attention. and then back into the pantry it went.

two weeks later? we all just... moved on from talking about honey. it was in some memes, it was in BuzzFeed’s “top 5 weirdest stories (that are actually true)”, it was going to be the central plot of books and horror movies. but it wasn’t interesting, not really, anymore. it was like saying “all people need food”. it was just true, and not really changing. every consecutive conspiracy video got less likes, and by the end of the year, it was old enough to be a staple in bad stand-up comedy and in coming-of-age children’s shows.

nobody believed the first ones who ate it. the most traction that those posts got were from friends and family who barely remembered the whole fad. we all just figured it was a weird annual resurgence kind of thing.

but then people were definitely, absolutely, 100% eating their honey. i think i heard about one of my coworkers first. i didn’t know her; she was in another department. she told everyone it was very similar to “normal” honey. just a little tarter than she’d expected.

twitter was in an uproar. the honey was sweet to some. spicy to others. horrible, bitter, like a thousand stingers. it was perfect, it tasted like summer. most people said: it’s just honey, and absolutely regular.

those of us who weren’t ready were biting our fingernails for a while, going to our pantries, wondering - what the fuck do i mean it’s not ready? but it wasn’t ready.

like i said, it’s warm, always. But you just... know. one day you realize you really want honey on toast. or honey on tea, honey on a banana, just... honey. i remember opening it, but it didn’t feel like any more interesting than going to the cabinet for honey ever feels. i pour mine, usually, skipping a spoon because i’m usually too lazy. i was already in the middle of my meal before i realized - this is the honey. it’s not just a normal breakfast, it’s the breakfast, holy shit.

mine is just, you know. honey. it has a little hint of spice and sweet to it, which i actually quite like. it reminds me of this red pepper jelly my family used to get, and it makes me happy. but in the end? it’s honey. i don’t feel like i’m connected to a seventh realm. it’s good on oatmeal and bad in coffee no matter what some of you will tell me.

it’s just, you know. once you get your jar, and it’s ready, you have a little honey roughly every 24ish hours. it’s nothing absurd. it’s just honey, i mean - it’s like saying “you’re alive, so at some point, you should probably eat.” Most of us, it hasn’t really changed our schedules. it doesn’t seem to ever run out, which is good, because we’re always forgetting to check to see if we need more before we go shopping. for most of us? you don’t die if you miss a few days, even a few weeks, you don’t go crazy trying to get it back. sure, there’s weirdass cultists who worship it, but most of us just seem to think - it’s nice to have, and it’s okay to want this thing.

now, there’s some stuff out there, you know, about what it all “means”. and honestly, we all notice things. i’m not the only one who has seen that good people tend to think their honey tastes good and eat it normally. bad people tend to eat their honey frequently but hate every second of the eating. there are plenty who will snort and say “i’m a good person and i think it tastes like dirt” and plenty who will say “i’m a shit person and i think it tastes like the summer i finally kissed her”. and i don’t know, not the way i knew if it was ready, but it feels like a simple thing amidst all the messy. and it’s probably helpful that i think mine is, like most people’s, just a nice in-the-middle. i mean, the other day i heard it asked like a star sign - what’s your honey like?

there’s this one thing, though, you know. i choose to believe, because it might make me secretly happy. it’s like believing in nessie. i know realistically it’s probably just hearsay. but there’s this underground rumbling that, over time, the honey changes. just a little, every day, unnoticeable to most of us who go to work and do our best by others but still sometimes steal toilet paper. there’s these stories of people who made it rich by selling out their friends, who stole patents, who argue that others should charge for insulin - that they liked the honey, at first, but over time, it’s gone rotten. and similarly, every so often, there’s these stories of people who were normal “regular” honey people, who helped someone out of the bottom. who chose to be just a little bit better than they were the day before. who had moments of decisive kindness that changed them. they all say the same thing: since then, the honey has been amazing, and they work to keep it that way.

my grandmother and my mother were never surprised. they have this saying about bees and their secrets. my mother said to me: we have always had these tiny angels. they’re just giving us each a taste of the world we are making.

my grandmother later tells me, while watering the flowers, almost the exact same thing: they will haunt us when they go, because they keep books in their combs. and they see us giants, and no matter who we lie to? the world of bees will know.

#spilled ink #prose #short story #honey #i originally wrote this in my car while binge eating doritos happy mardi gras style #but then tumblr deleted it lmao bc i walked between 2 wifi connections #so if it sucks its bc i had to half-remember a good version

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cudan2 · 3 years

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One Last Surgery

Spring Break Shadowing Part 5.1

Carlisle Cullen x Reader

Word Count: 2,043

Summary: You finally find out the reason for going to the children’s hospital, but you’re more distracted than usual today and Dr. Cullen can tell.

A/N: Tell me why part 5 of SBS takes up over half of the whole series? I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for 5 months because I keep adding more to it smh. Now it’s too long so I’ve decided to split it up into 3 parts (in addition to parts 6 and 7). I’m making the final edits the rest of this part now - 5.2 should be posted in like two days.

Anyways, this is technically the beginning of #1 and #2 on my headcanon list.

Masterlist

XXX

Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital is only across the street from Doctor Cullen’s office, but it seems to take forever to get there. You trail the doctor like a lost puppy through a skyway and a series of corridors before eventually reaching the right building. Different is definitely an understatement.

Gone are the linoleum-tiled floors, the abstract paintings lining the hallways, and the stark white walls. Instead, there are bright colors everywhere you look. Artwork featuring various galaxies and planets scatter throughout the hospital, and giant stars are imprinted along the floors; even the whole atmosphere just feels different.

You don’t get much time to analyze the differences though. Doctor Cullen is wasting no time to reach the destination, and his long legs aren’t making it any easier to keep up.

“Not that I don’t like surprises, but any chance you can tell me what we’re doing in the children’s hospital now?”

“Impatient, are we?” Doctor Cullen chuckles. He stops at an elevator and pushes the up button, only giving into your question once he catches a glimpse of your pout. “Alright, you win. Are you familiar with a cleft palate or cleft lip?”

The elevator dings, the doors sliding open with it. You shake your head no and get on the elevator with him. He presses the button for the floor and then leans against the wall, arms outstretched on the handrail, and gives you an explanation.

“A cleft is a gap or split occurring in the roof of the mouth, upper lip, or both. It is due to improper joining of the tissue during fetal development. There are no definitive known causes as of right now, but it’s believed that the environment and genetics can play a role.

The hospital has its own craniofacial team, but I was asked to join this particular case given its more complicated nature. Hanna became one of the first patients I treated when I came to Columbia,” Doctor Cullen finishes fondly, a smile gracing his lips.

“What makes this case complicated?” you ask.

“Hanna was born with a bilateral complete cleft lip and palate, meaning her lip cleft is two-sided and continues into her nose. It took quite a few surgeries to repair the lip, but now the next step is to repair the palate.”

The elevator reaches the floor and dings. You follow Doctor Cullen out and continue prodding him with more questions, which he is more than eager to answer. It’s incredible how knowledgeable he is. Granted, it is his job to know these things, but you couldn’t begin to imagine yourself being able to even scratch the surface of these topics, not to mention give a mini lecture on it.

You’re soon standing at the door to a patient room while the doctor asks Hanna’s parents if you can observe. They readily agree, and Doctor Cullen motions for you to come in.

Inside the room, you see an infant that can’t be more than a year old – Hanna. She’s sitting upright on the bed, leaning against who you assume to be her father. You notice two fading scars going up into her nose above her lip. Her mother is waving a stuffed toy around her, but Hanna’s attention is fixated on the blonde doctor.

“Y/N, allow me to introduce you to Hanna’s parents, Anthony and Linh Pham. And this is Doctor Giselle Adamou, who will be working with me on the surgery,” Doctor Cullen gestures to the older doctor in the room.

“It’s nice to meet you all,” you say politely.

Pre-op goes differently than what you’ve gotten used to observing this week. There is no case presenting given the lack of residents on the case. If anything, this is what you would expect out of a non-teaching hospital.

Doctor Cullen re-explains the procedures to Hanna’s parents, but halfway through, Hanna crawls to the end of the bed where Doctor Cullen is and attempts to stand, arms outstretched as if to say, “Up! Up!” Bewilderment is not a word you would have associated with him, and yet you catch the brief widening of his eyes that betray his usually calm demeanor.

“I think she wants you to hold her,” Linh comments.

“I can see,” Doctor Cullen muses. “Do you mind?”

“She’s all yours.” Linh picks her daughter up from the bed and hands her to the doctor. The sound of Hanna’s elated laughter fills the room, and you can’t stop a small smile from appearing on your own face. A cute baby and a gorgeous doctor? You don’t know who to thank for the sight.

Meanwhile, Hanna starts playing with various pens in Doctor Cullen’s breast pocket while Doctor Adamou continues where her colleague left off. You try to pay attention, you really do. Like Hanna though, your attention lies on someone else, and that someone else happens to be Doctor Cullen.

The more you study him, the more the minute features you never noticed about him before seem to pop out to you. Under the bright fluorescent lighting of the hospital, the dark purple circles under his eyes are more apparent than ever. How ironic for the preacher of health to lack sleep himself. His eyes, which you normally consider to be a vivid golden, are darker than you initially thought them to be. They are liquid pools of dark amber, speckled with dustings of gold and flecks of black. There isn’t a single blemish on his face that you can see either, further confirming your belief that this man is truly the most attractive person you have ever met. Either that or he must have one hell of a skincare routine.

It’s unnerving how young his appearance is. Skincare and diet can only do so much for a person, right? Doctor Cullen has to be at least 35 at the minimum, yet he could easily pass off as someone from your own school.

“Any last minute questions?” you hear Doctor Adamou ask and snap back into reality. By missing nearly everything the older doctor talked about, you already know you’ll be so screwed if and when Doctor Cullen decides to interrogate you on this case.

Neither parent has anything left to say, so Doctor Cullen gives a reluctant Hanna back to her mother. She lets out a cry and his expression softens.

“I know, sweetheart. I’ll miss you too, but I need to get ready for your big surgery, okay? I promise you’ll see me again in a few hours.” His soothing voice does wonders for her. In an instant, Hanna quiets down and her frown is replaced with giggles and smiles again. She waves the two of you off, and you both take your leave with Doctor Adamou trailing behind you. You’re not even halfway out the door yet when Doctor Cullen starts testing your knowledge again.

“Y/N, what procedure will we be doing to repair Hanna’s cleft?”

You do not have this one in the bag whatsoever. You wrack your brain for information that could help you, but Doctor Adamou interjects before you get a chance to say anything.

“Why does it not surprise me that you’re treating students like interns already, Carlisle?”

“I am merely advancing the education of next generation’s doctors,” he responds.

“Whatever you say,” she laughs. “Don’t scare off Y/N though, or we won’t have any doctors left in the next generation.” She turns to you after picking up files from a nearby counter and says, “You come running to me if he pushes you too hard, alright?”

You grin. “For sure.”

“Good. I look forward to seeing you both in the OR,” she says before heading off.

You like Doctor Adamou. Each surgeon you’ve met here so far has had such different personalities, yet each also has the charisma and confidence to take control of a room and command respect. You, on the other hand, could barely get your own friends to listen to your own words. How are you ever going to get on the level of all the amazing doctors around you?

“She saved you there,” Doctor Cullen comments, leafing through Hanna’s charts as he walks you into an empty elevator to the operating floor. Oops, it’s just your luck that he noticed your lack of attention during the pre-op. “It’s unlike you to be distracted. Penny for your thoughts?”

The elevator doors shut, and he looks up from the chart, his eyes falling onto yours. He has that twinkle in his eyes again – the one that brings warmth to your cheeks and could make anyone weak in their knees. You know it’s silly, but a single look from him could make you spill any of your deepest and darkest secrets, yet a part of you also knows that he would keep it. You’re not naïve – you know it’s dangerous to put so much faith into a man you only met this week – but there’s something about him that told your instincts to trust him from the very beginning.

Call it intuition, or maybe it’s just plain stupidity, but you sure as hell aren’t going to tell him about how you got distracted because of his pretty face.

You hesitate for a moment and let out a sigh. “How do you do it?” He quirks a brow, momentarily perplexed, and you attempt to find the right words. “How do you make all of this look so easy? How do you know what the right thing to say is? Or trust that what you’re doing is even right? How did you know if this was all meant for you? This is really dumb, but it seems like everyone here was born for this job, and then there’s... me.”

There’s a slight sense of dread starting to form in your stomach. You’re unsure if what you asked even made any sort of sense and wonder if you gave too much away. Giving any reason to second guess your abilities is like digging your own grave when it comes to this career. Expressing uncertainty is one of the biggest taboos of the cutthroat world that is pre-med because schools would not accept students that aren’t absolutely, totally, and completely sure about this path.

You’ve wanted this for so long, yet there’s still a part of you that doubts if you would be enough.

Rather than going straight to gowning and scrubbing in for the surgery, Doctor Cullen grabs your hand and leads you down to an abandoned hallway, only letting go once the two of you are hidden in an alcove away from any prying ears or eyes.

“What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be getting ready for surgery?”

“We have a few minutes to spare. Y/N, please know that I understand how you feel,” he says softly. “There was a time when I questioned my own abilities as well… whether my perseverance could overcome adversity. It took quite some time to reach where I am today. However, without enduring those trials and tribulations, I would not be here. With time comes experience, and it is that experience that allows me to perform my job the best I can.”

His voice reminds you of a gentle breeze, rustling the leaves of a tree on a cool summer night when he continues speaking in hushed tones. It brings a blanket of reassurance, a sense that things would eventually be alright.

“I have said this before, but I see enormous potential in you. You still have a great deal of time to grow and develop your skills. It’s easy to get caught up in comparing yourself with others, especially given today’s societal standards, but I believe you are much more capable than you may think you are. Everyone’s journey is different and yours may not necessarily be as linear as you would prefer. In due time though, I have faith that you will succeed.”

What he says is exactly what you needed to hear.

The swell of tears pricks at your eyes and start blurring your vision, but you blink them away quickly, fighting the urge to wrap your arms around the doctor.

“Thank you, Doctor Cullen.” Your voice is barely above a whisper.

“You’re very welcome. Now, I believe there’s a little girl waiting on us.”

XXX

Tag List - Message me to be added or removed to either this series or the rest of my fics!

@jelly-fishy-babie @notahappytree @anxiousgoldengirl

#carlisle cullen #carlisle cullen x reader #carlisle cullen imagine #twilight #twilight fanfiction #twilight imagines #twilight renessaince #twilight saga #twilight reboot #twilight renaissance #doctor daddy cullen #you guys can't tell but this whole story was one large self-insert #i started writing this at the beginning of the pandemic #was in the midst of my junior year and about to apply to dental schools #basically got rejected from all 19 schools i applied to only for one to rescind their rejection and offer me a spot for next year's class #it's a school in new york too!!#what are the odds?#for anyone struggling out there or feeling like things aren't going the way you want them to - life has a way of working out eventually #twilight fanfic

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Creation”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Oh man, oh man, oh man. I think I'll need to steer clear of the general RWBY tags this week, simply because I know the sort of responses I'll see to this episode. From smug celebration at Ironwood's downfall, to bad takes about what makes us human, this episode is a petri dish of sensitive material handled insensitively.

Let’s unpack it, shall we?

We open on an action that feels like a summery of the last three volumes: a grimm attacks an airship from the front, no doubt killing its pilot, while the other grimm conveniently ignore our heroes, no masking in sight. The group looks a little sad at the destruction around them, but ultimately ignore it because they have bigger, heroic things to do. I could write a whole, additional essay on how the huntsmen code — to protect the people — has been warped and abandoned by our protagonists in their effort to do what they think is right. It's a tale that might have been compelling if only RT knew they were writing it.

We get a shot of Atlas drones unloading the bomb before one is taken out, presumably by Qrow and Robyn. Segueing to Ironwood and the Ace Ops, they're waiting for Penny to arrive, the former carrying a massive gun presumably capable of capturing her. Despite the horror we saw on their faces last episode at the realization that Ironwood would kill Marrow for speaking up, it seems that now the Ace Ops are entirely in agreement with these measures. A week ago the implication was that they fell back in line out of fear, but now Harriet talks passionately about "putting down" the group if they were stupid enough to accompany Penny. "The General gave his terms." Vine sighs at this, but doesn't actively disagree. He's just "retracing the steps that led us here."

So, congratulations on introducing four new characters, not bothering to develop any of them, killing one off while ignoring Qrow's hand in that, and having the other three become all, "Yeah! Mass murder is a perfect solution!" off screen. Marrow is the only one with something resembling development and, as covered in these recaps, that's been pretty badly executed too.

Ironwood sends them to deal with Robyn and Qrow after Winter reappears to "assist" him. That gets quotation marks because most viewers at this point have realized that she's who our two birbs spotted in the elevator. Winter isn't on Ironwood's side anymore, she's just skillfully clearing the field for the final attack. Indeed, we get a moment where she hesitantly brings up the bomb and Ironwood responds that he hopes she's not going to try and talk him out of it. No. Winter doesn't think that's possible. This was her final attempt at peace.

One of the reasons why I think I'll stick to my own blog for a while is because the fandom has a tendency to paint broad personality traits as evil when applied to some characters, yet simultaneously heroic when applied to others, when really it's about how that those traits are used. What I mean is, I've seen a lot of Ironwood critical posts that emphasize how stubborn he is. He thinks he's right and he won't back down. He wont listen to others. He's going through with this plan and if anyone tries to stop him? That's their mistake. Totally evil, right? Except, this is the exact same behavior Ruby displays, particularly in Volumes 6 and 7. She was stubborn about stealing from Argus and continuing the fight to the point where it endangered her and her teammates, to say nothing of the rest of the city. She refused to listen to Qrow, or Ironwood, or the Ace Ops, loudly announcing that she was right about, well, everything. If they didn't agree with her, the options were to leave the group entirely, or fight her. The actual difference here is that the writers have taken Ironwood to an extreme, one that's incredibly easy to understand as bad because it is bad: bombing Mantle has no defense. Ruby pulls the exact same nonsense, it's just not to that same extreme and her actions are followed by scenes that are meant to make us forgive her: a sad look because she didn't mean to get a city attacked by a leviathan grimm, a cry on the staircase because she didn't mean to risk the lives of an entire kingdom... even though she did. Ironwood is the bad guy because he's been written to take specific, OOC actions like shooting unarmed kids. He's not the bad guy because when other characters go, "Don't do this" his response is, "I have to." Because that's been Ruby's motto ever since she "had" to use the Lamp to rip Ozpin’s life story away. RWBY introduced those extreme actions of shooting the youngest in the group (for no reason) and threatening to bomb a city (for no reason) or shooting a councilman (for no reason) because when you remove those you've got a man who looks exactly like our hero. Ironwood's arc has been peppered with these confusing, unpersuasive actions because if you just keep the story as him stubbornly keeping to a plan he thinks will save the world, you're left with the reminder that all Ruby has done lately is stubbornly keep to plans she thinks will save the world. This moment with Winter just highlights how ill thought out Ironwood's descent has been because he does everything Ruby does... with a few, tacked on, “and randomly shoots people!” moments to ensure we understand that he’s definitely evil. No comparison to our heroes here, folks!

Ironwood is a bad guy now. That’s certain, but he was made that way so the story never had to grapple with the question of what that means for Ruby if we really start condemning things like lying, secrets, stubbornness, or endangering others for the greater good. Well then damn, if we strip away the hypocrisy then she might not be a good person after all. Or the people she’s simplistically labeled as bad might not be the devils Ruby claims they are.

But that’s a level of nuance RWBY would rather pretend doesn’t exist.

All of which is highlighted by Ironwood’s reaction to "Penny." He sighs and sags over the gun, immediately putting it aside. With his hand on her shoulder, Ironwood tells her she's "done the right thing." Precisely the same way Ruby would lower Crescent Rose and give someone a smile when they decided to fall in line with her.

Which, of course, is the moment when Emerald reveals herself, dispelling the Penny illusion and revealing Team JNPR The Second behind her. She gives a quip about it feeling "weird" to do the right thing before disappearing.

From there the action picks up fast. I really enjoyed this battle simply from a choreography and energy standpoint. It gets the blood pumping, Ironwood's hand-to-hand is spectacular — especially that moment against Ren — and the group actually displays teamwork for the first time in what feels like forever, all of them needed to land a hit on Ironwood. As always, out of the context of the rest of the show it feels and looks great. My primary issue is that we get this fantastic fight against Ironwood. Not Salem, not Cinder, not Watts (like last volume when Ironwood was still a hero), not even Emerald as a means of transitioning from murderous villain to the group's best bud. No, what's arguably the best action sequence in the volume thus far goes to beating up the guy they betrayed from the start. There's no catharsis for me here, only frustration as we watch Ironwood stand in shock as Winter powers up Nora — who's fine now, I guess — and she slams her hammer into his face.

It never should have come to this and when a good character is done so dirty, their downfall doesn't evoke the emotions the writers are looking for. Watching Ironwood fall doesn't generate feelings of victory, or even tragedy at a course of events others were powerless to stop. It's just frustration at watching years worth of bad writing, sprinkled with fantastic ideas that never go anywhere.

Oscar gets a few hits in, Ironwood snatches his cane, and just as he's about to throw a punch, Winter arrives with the most dramatic sword slash I've ever seen.

Ironwood's aura breaks and he falls, unconscious. We cut to an image of a droid's head separated from its body, one of Robyn's arrows through its skull. That doesn't have meaning or anything.

I suppose I should be grateful they didn't rip Ironwood's arm away during the fight, or outright kill him, though I'm still expecting him to die before the end of the volume.

Hmm. Wouldn't that be something? If after Salem's arrival, freezing cold, a Hound attack, grimm soup, a giant whale, a massive army, and a hack ending in self-destruction, the one character who actually dies is Ironwood.

It's looking more and more likely.

Honestly, beyond all the obvious, what's so frustrating about this fight is that characters are only now using their impressive abilities to their fullest. Emerald creates an entire fantasy of what's happening and then straight up disappears, but she only does a half-assed version of that when fighting against Penny. (And really, she put more effort into helping the heroes she just joined over Cinder, the woman she's been obsessed with since the start?) Marrow refuses to use "Stay" against a group they wanted to peacefully arrest because that's just too horrible an act, I guess, but he'll do it on his own teammates the second Qrow and Robyn don’t want to fight.

This is what I mean when I say the rules of the world bend to assist the protagonists in absurd ways. It's not nearly as egregious as Amity suddenly being up and running, but the fact that characters become substantially more powerful while fighting for the protagonists than they do against them is still a significant problem.

So Ironwood is down and out. As much as I hated watching that and didn't necessarily want more, am I the only one who felt like it was... a bit lackluster? I mean, the action was great, yes, but relatively short. There was no dialogue, such as another delve into the moral questions that led to this fight in the first place. There certainly wasn’t any hesitance against fighting a former ally. (Again, we’re meant to believe that the Ace Ops won because they just couldn’t bear to fight the group seriously, but every former ally here is capable of wailing on Ironwood without a single pause or pained look?) Ironwood just skillfully blocks for a while, is blindsided by Winter's betrayal, and then falls unconscious. Given that we learn he and Jacques will be evacuated after the rest of the kingdom, it's possible he'll escape somehow and we'll get a fight 2.0, but if not that feels like a rather tame end to the guy forced into the antagonist seat. Plus, what was the point of having Qrow frothing at the mouth to kill him this whole volume? I never wanted that to happen, I'm glad it hasn't, but I'm nevertheless left to ask why we bothered with that eleven episode side plot if we were going to erase it with one sentence from Robyn about Qrow being better than this. If that's all it took, let them work through Qrow's irrational anger while sitting around in a cell.

Winter tells the group to move onto "phase two" which is when we're treated to a flashback. We return to the ending of the last episode, with Ruby realizing that opening the vault is an option. Jaune, all smiles, goes, "We never considered using what's inside!"

This is what I mean about no consequences! This is what I mean about it all being a meaningless circle that ends with undeserved praise for the group! We started this horror show with Ironwood going, "We don't have a plan to protect the people, so I'm going to take what people we do have to safety" and the group going, "We don't have a plan either, but we're going to stop you implementing your plan because it's not perfect, risking a kingdom's worth of lives in the process." Now, the group has used two plans, one of which two characters knew about at the start and another they could have devised with the information they had. Oscar and Ozpin's, "We have an all powerful magical blast in our cane" and the group's "What if we used the Staff for something other than raising Atlas?" are both things that could have come up in the office debate. These were both always on the table! Instead, Ruby grew furious over the mere thought of cutting their losses, betrayed Ironwood again, attacked his people, denounced him to the world, and then two days later goes, "Oh wait! We could do something now that we could have easily done before if we hadn't made a needless enemy!"

Everyone realizes how much worse they made things, right? Turning against Ironwood, bringing everyone left in Mantle directly under Atlas, sitting around while an army was devoured, drawing it out until Penny was hacked... all of it would have been avoided if the group had thought and discussed things for a few minutes, not jumping straight to violently resisting what Ironwood came up with first. "We never considered..." Ruby says. Yeah, you didn't, except that's not something to smile about. The group made the situation a thousand times worse with their reaction when they could have just magically evacuated the kingdom from the start. “Maybe we could use it to save Penny and get everyone in Atlas and Mantle back to safety." Nothing has changed! They had this ability the whole time! Nothing about the last twelve episodes led them here, they just randomly thought of it after RT had padded the volume with needless drama. Considering that they're heading to Vacuo now, we could have just made this the finale of Volume 7 instead: big fight with Ironwood, revelation, get everyone evacuated while Salem attacks, leave her behind, then Volume 8 begins in Vacuo with the group knowing Salem is out there looking for them. This entire volume has been pointless. What did they accomplish?

Oscar got kidnapped and beat up, Nora was scarred, Ruby and Yang realized horrible things about Summer, and the whole world is panicking about a witch. Good things are... Ren and Ruby unlocked some semblance stuff? Weiss loves her brother again after he proved himself useful to her? Great work, team.

So this one moment makes everything they've done up to this point useless and, of course, once thought up the plan goes off without a hitch. Note that the summary of this episode says, "It's risky, dangerous, and nearly impossible — but it's the only plan they've got." Nearly impossible? That's a whole lot of talk for a plan that was implemented perfectly.

There is, admittedly, one snag, but one that is likewise made meaningless just seconds later. We'll get to that.

We see Winter call Weiss who also smiles at hearing from her sister. Obviously interactions like the group's with Emerald are the bigger concern, but it's still an issue that no one reacts as they should to people reappearing in their lives. Rather, RWBY continually confuses audience knowledge with character knowledge. We know Winter is on their side now, but Weiss hasn't a clue. Last she saw, she and Winter were agreeing to head down different paths. She has no reason to think her sister isn't loyal to Ironwood, so why isn't the group treating this call with suspicion? What if it's Ironwood trying to mess with them through a presumably safe party? I swear to god, with any consistency in the story this group would be dead ten times over because their decisions are so stupid. Oscar decides to believe in the guy currently beating him to a pulp, the group decides to trust a villain over a flawed ally, and now they see Ironwood’s second calling and are like, “Great, big sister Winter is checking in!” There’s a difference between a hopeful story filled with second chances and characters whose reliance on the narrative bending to assist them makes them come across as insanely naive.

None of which even touches on characters forgetting that other characters are presumably dead. Ironwood shot Oscar off the edge of Atlas, but doesn't react to learning he was kidnapped, or when he shows up to the fight. Thanks to Marrow's comment, Winter thinks YJOR have perished in the whale, but also has no reaction to them appearing to help with this plan. Absolutely nothing is followed up on.

We then get a flashback within the flashback (fun) of Winter — shock — not arresting Marrow. It's precisely as I assumed, with Marrow angrily asking why she hit him and Winter responding with, “Because you were about to get killed if I didn’t do something!” As I said last recap, I feel like I should let the marginalized groups lead this discussion, but I do want to add that no matter how well intentioned — or strategic, as I mentioned last time — the imagery itself is still harmful. No matter the context, we were still left with white woman Winter putting her knee on black man Marrow's back to arrest him, and it’s an image that everyone in the U.S. should be familiar with the horror of. Far more of a problem than the (presumed) ignorance of this scene is, I think, the choice to make Winter entirely unrepentant. I think some of this discomfort could have been alleviated if RT had written Winter as apologetic, contrite that it came to that and asking Marrow to understand that she only did it as a means of assisting him. Asking his forgiveness. Instead, we get this

So what, the only emotion we have room for is gratitude that Winter beat him up? Yikes.

As a lighter side note, I find the animation here unintentionally hilarious. Winter's assistive device makes her shoulders look too high, making this gesture more, "Woman exaggeratedly pouts about not getting ice cream for dinner" and less, "Woman sternly closes off during a disagreement about saving lives and betraying their general." Gotta find our humor where we can, right?

What's intentional, but far less funny, is the needless animation to show us that, yes, Marrow is peering at Winter calling Weiss. Oh, the shenanigans.

The elevator opens where Qrow and Robyn spot them. "Speaking of help," Winter says, as if she has any reason to believe Qrow didn't kill Clover. He and Robyn lower their weapons a bit, as if they have any reason to believe Winter and Marrow aren't still loyal to Ironwood. Would it really be so hard to have Winter immediately throw up her hands in the face of their almost-attack, blurting that she's not their enemy and needs their help, please listen? Again, RWBY can't remember which characters know what, let alone what their motivations and reactions should be.

We then enter the third part of the flashback where everyone piles into the Schnee dining room and discusses doing the things they could have done from the start. I'm metaphorically banging my head against that table. In RWBY's favor though, we also get a long shot of Jaune continuing to boost Penny’s aura.

Though it's only one of many issues, just the other day I asked, "Hey, why has Jaune always needed to hold onto the person he's assisting, but now suddenly he can touch Penny once and the boost remains?" It still doesn't explain why he was letting go before/why him needing to boost her continuously didn't put a hard time limit on their plan — not that Mantle's hour limit meant a thing — but at least they're showing more of that here.

Oscar notes that Atlas has enough gravity dust that it won't fall immediately when they use the Relic, but they will have to move fast to ensure no one is underneath. Yeah, like all the civilians you put there. He also cautions that the Staff isn't a "magic wand" that they can just wave to make all their problems go away... even though that's precisely what they're going to do. Ozpin gets some lines that aren't apologies or followed by attacks — hallelujah! — about how the Staff's spirit is a "character" and requires that you be able to precisely explain anything you want him to make. Blueprints, examples, a firm knowledge of how this will be accomplished — all of it is required to actually get what you're after. That's a cool limitation. It's just too bad we didn't know about it episodes ago, forcing our heroes to find ways to meet those requirements. Instead, they already have everything ready to go the moment they learn about it: Penny has her own schematics and Whitley apparently has knowledge of the entire kingdom after sending some ships out. Normally I'd go, "Really?" but I'm still just struck by how much good he's done compared to everyone else in this room. Your show is seriously broken when the side character the writers didn't even want the audience to like until a few episodes ago is more active, mature, and sensible than the heroes.

From there we see the group implementing the plan. They fly up through the hole Oscar left, straight to the vault. Penny opens it without any trouble and Ruby uses her speed to grab the Relic and stop time, halting her self-termination. I do like that combination of skill and their knowledge of how this magic works. That felt like a smart move. What's interesting though is that the Relic appears to stop time in the entire kingdom. We see people in Mantle and Atlas slowing to a halt too. I assume no one remembers that happening after time restarts, otherwise people would be freaked out by suddenly being frozen in place.

Wouldn't that have been cool though? The group often takes a while to use the Relics, either deciding what they need, or watching Jinn's information, so what if you had a population that blinks and suddenly, from their perspective, half an hour has passed? How long might Ozpin have sat on his knees after Jinn told him he wasn't able to defeat Salem? How long was that space frozen? We could have had a world built around rumors and fairy tales. Not the random stories Ozpin brings up to make a point and that we never hear about again, but tiny details that foreshadow these revelations. A Beacon where the kids tell each other spooky stories of people suddenly losing time, once a whole day. The wives, sisters, daughters, and nieces who disappear, or wake up one day with horrifying, unnatural powers. We see magic influence the world around it, but we've seen very little of the world reacting to that influence. The one time I can think of is Blake reading a book about "a man with two souls," the fiction clearly inspired by knowledge of Ozpin. And indeed, it felt great to recognize that as a significant detail and then be proven right years later as the lore was revealed. We could have gotten so much more of that if RWBY was better planned out.

I'm getting off track though. As time stops we see a series of images: Ironwood being led to a cell with Jacques, Penny succumbing to her hack, Team JNPR The Second preparing to contact the kingdom about what's going on. Then everyone is distracted by the giant, blue, buff Ambrosius who comes out of the Staff.

...there's a lot of innuendo in that last statement lol. At least RWBY is committed to the crazy design they chose? I was never particularly comfortable with the image of characters gaping up at a giant, naked woman in chains, so it's nice to balance that a bit with an equally giant, naked dude in chains.

From here things get confusing. In all honesty, I'm not sure if this is another moment where RWBY is trying to pass off a retcon as the group being brilliant, or if I, as an individual, simply didn't follow the logic. I won't bother to rehash the slow, meandering way that Ruby reveals their plan — that certainly didn't help with the clarity. Not in an episode where we didn’t even know these rules ahead of time — but it boils down to this:

The moment they have Ambrosius create something new Atlas will start to fall. Two of his creations can't exist at the same time.

He needs clear instructions about what he's making in order to create it.

The group has brought him Penny's schematics so that he understands how she's built.

They want, specifically, "a new version of her... using her exact robot parts."

They can't just create an exact duplicate of Penny because that would carry the virus with it.

They can't create an exact duplicate without the virus because that Penny would cease to exist as soon as they used Ambrosius to make an evacuation plan instead.

So they essentially want Ambrosius to create a new Penny by removing all the robot parts from the Penny that currently exists, carrying the virus with them, and leaving only the human parts of Penny behind: her aura/soul. Then, the purely robot version is destroyed when Ambrosius creates something new.

Except... this new Penny, this human Penny, still needed a human body. That's what Ambrosius created and that's the snag I don't understand. They want a version of Penny that's just her aura, just her soul, but that soul still needs something to be housed in. Ambrosius himself notes that. At first I thought the group would just have some wisp-like version of Penny they'd have to find a new body for — perhaps leading to a new one for Ozpin too — but she's just... given a human body when he takes the technology away, something she absolutely didn't have before. That is Ambrosius' creation. That is what should have disappeared along with the removed parts of Penny, leaving only her soul — what Ambrosius didn't touch — behind. Instead, the plot oh so conveniently has Penny get a new body for free and it's untouched as they move onto the next task.

Ruby drops a casual line about Ambrosius not being able to kill, or destroy, or something, which I think is meant to be the justification here. The rule (which, again, we JUST learned) about not killing anyone supersedes the rule of two creations not allowed to exist, allowing Penny to stick around. But even if that’s true, it’s a load of bull. What, does the magic think no one in an entire city might die if the floating mechanism is removed and it plummets to the ground? Ambrosius didn’t say, “Sorry, can’t stop floating Atlas because thousands of people are still here and they’ll die if I create something new,” but we’re supposed to believe the group skated by on, “Sorry, can’t destroy the last creation like everything else because there’s a single person still using that body and she’ll die if I create something new”?

Seriously, did I miss something? Or is this another, "Amity is ready because the group needs it" situation? The rule of creations ceasing to exist is bent because the group needs to have their friend around. Ambrosius is certainly enthusiastically complimentary, saying how "smart" the group is and that they've "done their homework," but I'm not so sure. It feels like a moment where the show is (once again) insistent that the group is far more talented and brilliant than their actions actually imply. It's only the rules of the world twisting and turning that allows for their success. To say nothing of how the episode dropped all these rules on the viewer in a ten minute info dump, ensuring we didn’t have any time to think about them before the deed was done.

It doesn't add up for me and honestly, even putting that aside? I hate this. I absolutely despise it. Look, if it turns out this really does make sense then props to the group for coming up with that plan. Our snag aside, the rest is a legitimately well thought out wish. I don't have a problem with the execution so much as the message. I've been saying since Volume 7 that RWBY has done Penny a disservice in terms of her "real girl" narrative. Whereas before we had a firm message that you don't need "squishy guts" to be human, to be real, Volume 8 continued to carry us further and further into the idea that it is necessary. That Penny's body is entirely inhuman, something to hate, but at least her soul is human and good. That's what the virus arc taught us: your terrible, technological body might be betraying you, but hold onto the parts of you that are really human. I hated that too, but I never thought RWBY would go this far. They made Penny fully human and went, “THIS is the version that always should have existed.”

And this isn't just me reading into the implications. It's right there in the text. Blake says that they're looking for “Penny, the girl who’s always been there underneath." Meaning, underneath the metal. The girl exists trapped in the robot body. Yang holds up her arm and says that the metal is only "extra," it's not really who you are.

That gets into two perspectives on disability that RWBY just doesn't have the nuance for: what's an integral and celebratory part of one person's existence can be seen as something separate and discomforting to another. Though there are many people with disabilities who would happily cure themselves with a magic Staff if given the chance, there are just as many who say no, this is a part of my identity. I don't want to change, I just want the world to accommodate my existence. However, RWBY takes a hard stance here, saying that any metal in your body is intrinsically bad. We didn’t use to have this take, but now the show has embraced it. Blake says the real Penny is trapped in there. Yang's words implies that she'd get rid of this "extra" bit of her if possible. Mercury with his metal legs is the enemy. Ironwood with half his metal body is the enemy. Whereas once difference was truly accepted, now it's shunned and fixed whenever possible. Those who can't be fixed, like Yang, must simply deal with the lot they've been dealt, reassuring themselves that the metal isn't really them. But Penny? Penny they can fix.

So they do and the very first thing Penny does is hug Ruby, exclaiming, “Do hugs always make you feel this warm inside? Wow. More!” and proceeds to hug all the others.

What's the underlying message there? Penny didn't understand hugs before this moment. She never experienced the "warmth" of them while an android, despite the fact that here warmth is entirely metaphorical and has nothing to do with a literally cold body. RWBY really went and said that the "real girl” android was never actually real at all — not as real as she could be — because it's only when she's given "squishy guts" that she understands the true happiness of a hug.

Wow.

I mean seriously, wow.

Never-mind that, you know, we've seen that happiness and warmth since she was first introduced.

RWBY is really rewriting all the core themes introduced in Volumes 1-3 and it sucks. The show is absolutely the worse for it.

To say nothing of all the other disservices to Penny's character here. There's all this buildup about whether she'll still be the same Penny once the wish is complete, but of course she is. We wouldn't want to have Penny struggle when she becomes something other than what she's always been, would we? After all, it took Yang an entire volume to work through the shock of a metal arm, but taking away a metal body for a human one is in no way traumatic. Having a normal, human body is intrinsically a good thing! Of course Penny accepts it with nothing but smiles. Becoming human is celebratory, but becoming more machine is a horror.

She gets to watch her body self-destruct, glitching out and collapsing in front of her. But again, nothing to unpack there that can't be covered with a hand over her mouth.

There's no discussion of whether Penny still has the Maiden powers, or whether a wish like that would mess with the transfer in any way. How did the group know this action wouldn't register as a clear-cut death, forcing the power out of her and into someone new? Obviously they couldn’t know, but no one even thought to bring it up?

And the entire time they're formulating their evacuation plan, there's no talk of whether these portals will appear before everyone currently alive in the kingdom. I mean, if they do then Ironwood and Jacques can just waltz through and escape into Vacuo. If they don’t, then Maria and Pietro don't necessarily have a way out. We still don't know if they're stuck floating in Amity, or if Amity crashed, or if they made their way back to Mantle or Atlas. More importantly, the characters don't know. I have no problem with RWBY keeping that a surprise until the finale, but I absolutely take issue with Pietro's daughter walking through a portal, seemingly not to care whether her father is going to make it out too.

It's been the same with Qrow and his nieces' relationships. The show is good at insisting that these families love each other because they hug and smile while on screen together, but when shit is actually going down, none of them care about pesky things like disappearances, arrests, or “The last time I saw you, you were with an old woman on a damaged station after a villain attack, potentially stranded in deadly cold if life support failed.”

So yeah, this entire arc with Penny has been a disaster. From throwing away her framing subplot, to giving her a virus that did absolutely nothing, to giving her the Maiden powers which she's also done nothing with, to erasing her android status for a “She's really human now” message, Penny has been done dirty by the show these last two volumes. Not nearly to the extent Ironwood has, but still. At this point I wish they'd just kept her dead dead. Why do I want her back when that resurrection produces no reaction, her conflicts lead nowhere, and one of the core things that made Penny Penny has now been magically erased?

I've been saying for weeks that killing Penny off and keeping Penny around each had serious downsides attached, yet I never expected RWBY to do BOTH.

Also, I'm warding off any, "But Pinocchio was made into a real boy too" defenses. RWBY is not Pinocchio. Penny is not Pinocchio. I thought the allusion was going to be the Pinocchio inspired girl heading into the whale, not the show forcing the exact plotline — down to a blue, magical creature — onto a character whose entire journey has been about accepting herself as an android. Congratulations, RT. You just obliterated years of work.

Again, if you'd like an example of how to do this far better:

As Penny's character falls apart, Atlas shakes, alerting Jaune and the other that a new wish has been granted. Jaune pecks at the screen and realizes "That did, uh, something…?” but doesn’t realize that there's a giant, red "LIVE" up in the corner.

Jaune tries to warn the entire kingdom about their plan, but what he actually says is

“Atlas is falling, but — !”

And then the communications cut out.

Watts, perhaps?

Our heroes are really good at saying things that make large populaces panic, huh? This is the one (1) snag in their "impossible" plan, but as said above, it doesn't amount to anything. We get a shot of Nora, horrified at the thought of kingdom-wide communications being down, but literally seconds later Team RWBY has made portals appear that everyone can walk through. So... why do we care about communications? More importantly, why does the show try to make us care? So much time is spent getting the viewer invested in problems that never come to mean anything.

Including the problem of Salem herself.

Because the group successfully creates that evacuation plan. This is it. Everyone is leaving while Salem still reforms.

Yang asks if they can use the vaults themselves as a single point for everyone to go to and Ambrosius agrees. So everyone is going to pile into the Vacuo vault that can only be opened by an unknown Maiden? They're going to put an entire kingdom's worth of people, including their enemies, into the vault where the Relic of Destruction is? Yeah, that's great. Prior to this — like if this had been the plan at the end of Volume 7 — I would have 100% agreed that these risks are better than death by Salem/grimm/cold. Now though, Oscar as axed Salem for an unknown length of time, the cold is having no impact on the civilians outside, and the grimm only attack background military personnel that supposedly no one cares about. They couldn't have spent another few minutes (especially with time stopped!) to figure out a means of getting to Vacuo that doesn't involve revealing and providing access to the location of a super secret vault? To say nothing of what they're going to do if Salem wakes up and snags one of those portals for herself. Two kingdoms for the price of one!

But that's what they're going with. Weiss gives Ambrosius a schematic of the kingdom, I guess, and he makes branching pathways appear with numerous portals for everyone to step through. They'll enter through one and, when they exit another, will be in Vacuo. Easy peasy, right? Especially since Ambrosius doesn't seem to have any limitations about how often his power is used. Is it three creations every 100 years like Jinn? We're not told, at least not to my recollection. However, I was expecting there to be a waiting period, that they'd fix Penny, go to evacuate the kingdom, and learn that sorry, I can't make another creation just yet. It feels like the sort of shit move these beings would pull — "Don't cry to me when it's not what you wanted" — it would have been another commentary on the group's insistence on putting friends over the people's safety (like demanding the Ace Ops not bomb the whale because of Oscar), and crucially, would have kept the action in Atlas. Isn't that what this volume is? The battle for and potential destruction of the Kingdom of Atlas? We have two episodes left and, unless something unexpected happens, we're moving that action to Vacuo. Why?

Meanwhile, Penny's corpse is just chilling in the background 😬

While all this is going on, Winter reassures Jacques that he and Ironwood will be evacuated too, though she makes it clear saving him was Weiss' idea. It checks out, considering Weiss is the one who turned her father's arrest into a joke last volume. Winter still takes his abuse seriously.

The group prepares to leave with a celebratory, "We did it!" from Weiss. I'm still banging my head against that dining room table. Before they can pass through the portal though, Ambrosius leaves them with one, dire warning: "Do not fall."

In any other story a line like that is a neon sign announcing to the audience that someone will absolutely fall, and maybe they will, but RWBY has dodged consequences so often I wouldn't be surprised if this was merely another way to string us along. Remember all the hype surrounding Salem? The cold combined with her army and magic? How she was going to decimate Atlas and leave our group broken in a Fall 2.0?

I mean, we still have two episodes left. Forty minutes of content. Salem might still decimate them, especially since something has to happen in the finale. But god, it's a problem that we've come this far without a payoff. Salem randomly decided not to attack anyone, was stopped by a weapon added in solely for this purpose, and now the whole kingdom is being evacuated with a plan the group could have used at the start. This volume really is meaningless.

“We go to vacuo and hope we’ve thought of everything” they say as the camera zooms in on Cinder's smiling face. For the second week in a row.

Bingo time!

Winter betrayed Ironwood, the group used the Staff of Creation, and I'm axing Maria on behalf of Pietro. You can't have the guy's daughter become human — after he was killing himself to give her his aura?? — and magically walk to Vacuo, not knowing if he's even survived since she last saw him, and expect me to think he hasn't been forgotten. Same with Maria. Has the group mentioned her since Amity cut out, notably for reasons they couldn’t explain? Of course not. Did they care to find out what happened? Of course not. I have no doubt they'll both re-appear in the next two episodes, Pietro crying over how perfect his girl is now and Maria congratulating the group on their actions, but we're still marking it.

This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever created, I hope you all are enjoying it :D

Another week, another couple feet added to the hole we’re digging. I know I keep saying I have no idea what's going to happen next... but I have no idea what's going to happen next. A Vacuo ending was not in the cards, not outside of them miraculously showing up in ships. Maybe they have been on their way to Atlas (somehow...) and will arrive precisely when everyone has left! Anything is possible at this point.

See you next Saturday, everyone. Hold on until then lol. 💜

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps #rwby creation

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granny-griffin · 3 years

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Hi guys! This post has content warnings for the following: suicide, incest, abortion, politics, and swearing. I've tagged this post for all of the above, so you should add one or all of them to your blocked tags if you don't want to see it. Stay safe friends!

@arists started a conversation with me on this post. I'm making my own post now so that I don't clog up op's notifications with our discussion. I'll post the relevant screenshots here, but I'm including the link so that you can fact check what happened if you want.

#1 (op's post)

Image Description: "A screenshot of a twitter thread. Sarah Chavez writes, 'It's not hard to see what a pro-life world looks like. It looks like a world with a lot of dead women in it." An article is linked, but the url is cut off. Emily Gould replies to the first tweet, saying, '"Amnesty International reports that suicide now accounts for 57 percent of deaths of pregnant femals ages 10-19 in El Salvador." That's what a "culture of life" looks like.'"

#2 (in the notes of op's post)

Image Description: "granny-griffin replies, 'This. Suicide is an evil we have to prevent. But murder is NEVER the answer. I'm not sure how it even became a viable option. We need a better solution.'"

(note that there is a significant time gap between images #2 and #3)

Image Description: "arists replies, '@granny-griffin the only other "solution" is mandatory vasectomies on males but good luck telling men what you want to force onto their bodies. ntm abortion at 6 weeks isn't fucking murder but science doesn't fucking matter to you.' Then granny-griffin replies, '@arists if you want to start a conversation, then I'm happy to talk! you can dm me or whatever! But if you're just angry, then I'm glad you found an outlet and I hope you feel better soon'"

Image Description: "arists replies, '@granny-griffin go start a conversation with the women of texas' Then granny-griffin replies, '@arists I mean. I am a woman living in texas so that should be pretty easy. I'll try to do that sometime soon! It's always helpful to me to hear other people's perspectives on important issues'"

Image Description: "arists replies '@granny-griffin so you're a traitor then? when you see little girls being forced to birth a product of incest you feel better about yourself? you see women who have a dead baby in their body forced to cary to full at the risk of her life and think "nice job me!!" And you've probably never adopted with makes it even funnier. youre an embodiment ignorance and selfishness.'"

#6 (private message between arists and granny-griffin)

Image Description: "granny-griffin says, 'hey I really. don't want to fight you. I know that you're upset. I think we both want to help women in vulnerable situations, we just have different ideas of how that should work out practically.' In a second text, granny-griffin continues, 'If you need to keep venting, you should do it here. That way if you say something you might regret, it won't be in public'"

Image Description: "arists sends three messages. The first one says, 'I'm not venting I'm saying it how it is' The second one says, 'I've dealt with ill-minded christians like you my entire life I know your strategy' The third one says, 'now go back to the post because I refuse to deal with you behind doors so you can appear "holier than thou" by putting on a fake image'"

Image Description: "granny-griffin sends seven messages. The first one says, 'ok we can do this in public' The second one says 'give me until tonight though I've got school' The third one says 'do you care if I make a separate post? I'll copy all the previous stuff from our conversation and the main post' The fourth one says, 'I just don't want to have a whole conversation on op's thread' The fifth one says, 'it would feel disrespectful almost?' The sixth one says, 'like they have their whole point and I don't want to completely de-rail them' The seventh one says, 'but if you aren't cool with moving them then I can come to wherever is comfortable to you'"

Image Description: "arists says, 'go ahead'"

to preface—airsts I'm still not totally sure what you want out of this. You aren't obligated to respond to anything I say—just like I'm not obligated to respond to you. We don't know each other, and this is kind of an unfortunate way for us to meet. Still, I hope we can have a productive conversation going forward. I'll go through everything and ask questions. You can respond to as many or as few of them as you want.

#3:

The only other solution to what—suicide? unwanted pregnancy? incest? Is that really the only other solution? What are some policies you would like to see implemented to deal with each of these?

How do you define murder? How do you define what a human life is? Are there particular scientific facts or theories you make use of in your definition? If you have time, please either explain them, or reference an article/book/other source that does. I would like to learn! But I understand that fact checking is a lot of work so if you're too busy I understand.

#4:

(A note here—my knowledge of the situation is not as thorough as I would like it to be, but from what I know I'm not satisfied with the way abortion restrictions are being implemented in Texas. What are we doing—reporting each other to the secret police or something? Notifying the authorities of a crime is one thing, but why is there a finder's fee? Why are we sueing each other? This kind of thing will only breed corruption and mistrust.)

#5:

Huh, what am I a traitor to? Women? Is there a point of view that is specifically the "pro-women" point of view? Traitor makes this sound like a war—are there sides? are there good and bad guys? Who gets to define all of this?

No, I don't like it when girls are forced to birth a child conceived in incest. What are some ways that this situation could be prevented? Do you think that easy abortion access could ever perpetuate abuse by allowing abusers to get rid of the evidence of their actions? Is providing abortion services to victims of incest worth this risk? (and I mean that as a legitimate question, not a leading question)

(Another note here—I am pretty sure children who die in the womb can still be born naturally (hence the term "still-born"). But again, my knowledge here is limited and my issue with abortion is largely because of the harm it does to the child. If the child is dead already, and abortion is the only way to remove them, then I don't have a problem with this.)

Do you think adoption is the only way to take care of vulnerable children? Did you know that people who adopt sometimes need help raising funds to do so, or need help with babysitting, or need meals made and chores done for them? Did you know that mothers who raise their own children need these things too? Is this an attack on my argument, or an attack on me (ad hominem)?

Sorry to assume you were venting—I should have asked what your purpose was instead of making assumptions.

Okay but do please tell me—what is my strategy? I am curious to hear your psychoanalysis of me and my goals.

Arists, I'm really sorry if I came off as "holier than thou." I'm not a better person than you. I know that I think I'm right—everybody does. But I do want to be open to hearing and learning from your perspective. Even if you don't change my mind, you can increase my empathy, and that's extremely valuable to me.

okay, that’s it! I’ll wait for your response!

#cw suicide #cw incest #cw abortion #pro life #pro choice #cw politics #cw swearing #long post

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falquinold · 3 years

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MY FORMAL DEMAND TO BE GIVEN THE RIGHTS TO (1) JOAQUIN TORRES. ( AKA - The Big Canon Expansion Post™ )

steve vc: so.... you got played by the writers. you put your trust in them when you probably shouldn’t have. they lured you in with a false sense of security and promises of representation, and then ripped the carpet from below your feet. and the sad thing is... this isn’t the first time.

hey! stupid opening aside, this is gonna be my explanation of torres’ backstory up to his presence in the falcon and the winter soldier, including the character arc that i believe he would have had if the show had been allowed to keep its original 10 episodes. this is mostly based around my own personal headcanons, so i please ask that you don’t steal or reblog this!

anyway, putting it under a cut since it’s longer than i thought it’d be!

PART 1: PRE-IW.

like in the comics, joaquin immigrated to the united states from mexico with his mother and grandmother when he was 6 years old. they moved to sonoita, arizona, where they soon found a place to live and started to settle into their new life. while the first half of his school years consisted of him working twice as hard as any of his classmates due to the faults in the american public education system, he eventually shot up the class list, earning his spot as valedictorian by the end of his high school career.

this caught the attention of multiple military recruiters, who came to his school with hopes of swaying as many teens (specifically teens of color) to join the forces as possible. with promises of great pay, free housing and healthcare for himself and his family, and the opportunity to use his intelligence to help ‘change the world for the better,’ the eager 17-year-old didn’t even have to think twice. that very same week that they showed up at his school, joaquin had taken the asvab test and passed with flying colors, soon putting in his application for the air force academy.

the next 3 years went by in a flash - joaquin moved out of his home and to the academy in colorado, along with 1000 other teenagers who had found themselves in a similar position. he remained at the top 5% of his class, though all of his studies did nothing to prepare him for the day that thanos and his army broke through the atmosphere.

PART 2: IW --> ENDGAME.

in the 3 years that joaquin had been a student at the academy, the strict schedule of his day had never been broken. however, when the giant spaceship hovered over new york, thousands of students crowded around any available tv to stop and stare. he watched for what seemed like hours, frantically texting his mother to make sure that she and his grandmother were safe back at home in arizona. everyone watched with baited breath, until the students in the mess hall started disappearing. everything went in slow motion after that, with the blaring alarms ringing and the remaining teachers instructing everyone to go back to their dorms. the halls filled with dust and the yells for people that had vanished into thin air.

calls and texts weren’t going through, and the news stations that everyone had been anchored to soon showed nothing but static. after a day, the school allowed for people to leave, and joaquin took his car and made his way back to arizona as fast as he could. he burst through the doors of his childhood home, to see dust settled on the couch in front of the tv that still blared on. he was alone.

the few weeks remaining of the school year had been cut short, and in that time joaquin found himself spiraling. at the advice of one of his teachers, he sought out peer counseling, and eventually was able to come to terms with what had happened. at the end of that summer, the true nature of what had happened had finally dawned on the population - the avengers wouldn’t be saving them and their family members. nobody was coming back. the world continued to spin on, and with that, was the air force academy sending for the remaining students to finish out the rest of their time there. joaquin, now a senior and only 21 years old, was left with no choice but to sell his childhood home and pack as many family memories as he could into the trunk of his car, making his way back out to colorado to finish what he had started.

the school looked like a ghost town, and the air of dread and grief hung around all year. at graduation, there were still the same 1000 seats on the football field. however, half of them remained empty - memorials for the dead scattered amongst the living.

after graduation, joaquin started his service. he started renting a small one bedroom apartment outside of langley air force base in virginia, where he had been recently stationed. he threw himself into his work, moving up the ranks and proving himself for 4 years, up until the very moment that the dead started coming back to life. he found himself right back at his childhood home, where the new inhabitants had freaked out over the people that had revived themselves in the living room. after realizing what had happened outside, they had allowed them to stay there until joaquin could make his way down to find them. after a series of long hugs and tears shed outside the house that he grew up in, he took them back to his apartment where they tried to make sense of what had happened.

PART 3: THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER.

six months after the dead had returned, joaquin’s family still lived in his small apartment. it was nearly impossible for anybody to find a new home when half of the world’s population needed places to stay. relieved that his survival meant the avoidance of the rapidly-filling grc camps, he and his family were more than happy to make do with what they had. he’d become the sole supporter of the household at 26 years old as his mother struggled to find somewhere to work, and he yet again poured himself into his own job, but he brought a new sense of optimism into the mix. the family that he mourned for years had returned to him. in his eyes, anything was possible.

he soon found himself working alongside sam wilson, acting as his ‘boots on the ground’ and as his intel provider for his missions alongside the air force. after a successful rescue of one of his supervising officers from batroc and his crew, he found himself starstruck at what the man was able to accomplish completely on his own. the two quickly bonded and joaquin offered his help wherever he could give it, especially after sam seemed to take an interest in the flag smashers, a group that joaquin had been following since the creation of the grc camps. promising that he’d continue to watch the group’s movements online and notify sam if things started to escalate, joaquin found himself in switzerland just a couple days later, figuring that the best way to get information would be to get in the mix himself. that lands him with a broken orbital thanks to a man that has super strength, hinting at the possibility of the flag smashers being much more than meets the eye.

after the reveal of john walker as captain america, the air force immediately puts both him and lemar on the newly formed flag smasher case. due to his discovery of the group, joaquin is recruited onto the team as the only intel officer, helping to locate any and all information on the group and keep walker and hoskins up to date as they go and try to apprehend them. at the same time, sam is running his own mission on the side, as he’s able to use redwing to track the flag smashers to an abandoned warehouse in munich. joaquin drops everything to fly the plane and take them there. he doesn’t know that the ops department put a hidden tracker inside of redwing, but that revelation makes him start to become weary of them when sam tells him.

after he returns to langley air force base from munich, he’s immediately spoken to by his superiors. he’s no longer under orders to help sam wilson, as that was a one-time mission to save captain vassant, and is told to instead focus his energy on what he was assigned to - assisting walker and hoskins. he’s not punished for his actions, but there’s a threat should he get caught helping someone with air force resources again. he agrees, though has no intentions on stopping his contact with sam. joaquin calls him after that, letting him know what went down and how he had to be more careful if he wanted to keep being able to help with things. he keeps his head down for a while, just doing what’s asked of him while trying to keep an ear out.

eventually, he’s called by sam and asked to find information on donya madani. he finds out that she and karli were registered at the camp in riga, lativa, and that she appeared to hold a loved position within the community. because of the rising threat of the flag smashers, the air force adds two more intel officers onto the case, which keeps joaquin from being able to delay information from getting to walker. he’s only able to buy sam and bucky a couple hours, before walker and hoskins meet them in latvia and the rest of episode 4′s events unfold.

joaquin sees the video of the murder in the plaza along with the rest of the world, and immediately watches as the base turns to chaos with the higher ups seeking to take control of the situation. his scene with sam remains the same, and he excitedly picks up the bag with the wings and keeps it in the trunk of his car. he then goes back to dc (?), where walker’s punishments are set to be read to him. as a part of the team, he’s told to stand at the back of the room and bear witness, and he hears the accusations that he spews to the government officials. he doesn’t expect them to make sense, taking the seeds of doubt that had planted themselves after being told to work against sam and sprouting them into a genuine distaste for the air force.

before he can leave, he’s stopped by the major from the vassant mission, a man that he’s known since his first days out of the academy. he reminds joaquin about the upcoming run of promotions, and how he’s been a first lieutenant long enough to apply for captain if he wanted to. with the reputation that he got after being the one to discover and report about the flag smashers, the major tells him that he was almost guaranteed to make the promotion if he applied for it. with walker’s voice still echoing in his head, and the wings now passed down to him, he hesitates and plays it off as being humble, telling the man that he’ll think about it.

during the time that passes during the montage, joaquin spends his time trying to locate the flag smashers while fixing his wings in secret back at his apartment, until he finally realizes that their next target is new york. since the wings aren’t finished by that time, he offers to help as himself, pushing the fact that he told sam he was his boots on the ground, and he meant it. meeting them in new york, joaquin worked to evacuate people from the buildings, and was the person to hack into the flag smasher app to apprehend them. he’s also there with the big circle of people as sam has his speech to the government official, a giant smile on his face. it’s in that moment that he makes his decision regarding his promotion - sam was able to help countless more people in just a week (?) than joaquin had in the four years after his graduation from the air force academy. he doesn’t put in an application for promotion, and makes a mental note to leave the air force in the next couple months, once his 5 years of contractual post-grad service are completed.

a few days later, joaquin video calls sam to show him the fixed wings, extremely proud of himself. sam then starts training him to take over the falcon mantle, and joaquin starts getting accustomed to the superhero world that he’s found himself in and everything that it entails.

#tfatws spoilers /#✷ ━━━━ « SAVED. »#[ this goes without saying but if the character you write is mentioned and you're canon divergent in any way #i am more than willing to accommodate that!! this is just a solid baseline as far as the eps themselves go so that i can get a feel of what #his mindset would be in any given scene! <333 ]#[ this took me...way too long but it's important let me have this ]#[ baby falcon gang how are we feeling ]

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shijiujun · 4 years

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On Translations

Once again, I’m just plain incensed by dumbasses who think it’s okay to firstly, steal someone else’s hard work and secondly, think they’ve got some right to edit that person’s work because they think they’ve got a better grip on English (not true btw) - It didn’t happen to me (well, as far as I know) and I’m not in the Guardian fandom and I don’t personally know the person who’s dealing with this ridiculous shit, but oof am I angry after seeing the tweet.

Just saw on twitter that some asshole stole a translator’s works (Guardian, Chinese to English) and edited it - Yes it’s just like the MDZS saga a few weeks ago when some white person who doesn’t have any Chinese language knowledge, tried to ‘improve’ translations done by another person who actually knows what they’re doing in both Chinese and English - And then put in on Wattpad with a ridiculous letter and intro where they said: “Great things can be made greater” to explain why they edited the English of the original translation.

“Great things can be made greater,” said the thief.

“I hope my actions will be appreciated,” said the thief again.

Like wow, once again, the audacity - There’ve been extensive arguments on translations since the MDZS saga a few weeks ago and obviously the fan who took ExR’s translations and ‘made them better’ stupidly stepped on a landmine by fucking with the MDZS fandom that has a longer history, more resources and clout than the amount of time she’s been exposed to MDZS via CQL, and got bitch-slapped by the rest of the fandom where there exists a majority of fans knowing clearly what to do and not to do.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of all fandoms, especially smaller ones - The user i saw is a translator for Guardian and the mofo 1. Stole their translations 2. Edited the translations to ‘better english’ 3. Wrote that they don’t know who did the original translations but “they know where to find me” *cue my eyeroll* 4. And after op commented to say please credit at the very least in May, they’ve been ignored so far - but luckily they’ve got some supporters as well to help report the mofo.

Aside from the ridiculous thievery (not crediting, blatantly lying and stealing, being an arrogant, indecent person stuck on that high horse) of course, the “I believe that great things can be made greater” is a fucking load of bullshit in this instance, and I mean taking someone else’s translations and adding your own spin to it because you think you’ve taken tests in English as a first language in school all your life (fuck off, a lot of these translators did too), that you’ve got some superiority over English or because you think it reads funny?

Granted, most fan translators don’t put up flawless translations (once again, these translators are FREE LABOUR), but you get it for free and you don’t have to (and can’t) read the original text, so suck it up.

Moreover, the disgust that I feel at the claim that the thief’s work is now ‘greater’ is extremely visceral - It’s not a greater piece of work because the thief stole it, period. No one asked for the thief’s help.

(In case you guys are curious the stolen post on Wattpad is here: https://my.w.tt/7dehLj7D56 and if you’d like to report just follow the instructions)

On Chinese to English translations:

1. If you don’t have good grasp of the original language, you have no right editing the translated work after, regardless of language. Until you can clearly understand the original idioms, context, characters etc. or have at least lived with the language for a substantial part of your life, honestly, just stop, you’ve got no right!

Sure, some translators aren’t as good as you like them to be, but the argument is always, well, you wouldn’t even have this minimal translation if they didn’t do it, so yay you’re like a few sentences and words closer to the text than you were before. If it’s really that bad, hopefully there are better translations and you can ignore the one you’re looking at, but the same rules apply across all translations!! Don’t disrespect the translator (especially when they’ve done nothing wrong except try to give you access to more content).

2. For Chinese, it’s even worse because the language is known for its hidden nuances and complexities within just two to four characters that, when translated into English, can sometimes take up to two long sentences to explain. That’s why sometimes shit reads funny. It’s not that these translators can’t do English, but Chinese to English acrobatics is beyond your comprehension, hell sometimes it’s beyond translators’ comprehension, so thanks for editing something you’ve got no idea about. This user Bee made a very good argument thread IMO about this on Twitter which I suggest people read

3. Adding your edits to a translated piece of work especially without permission or discussion with the translator, honestly who the fuck are you to do that? Either work your damn ass off by painstakingly translating the original and then editing it however you like, or just... enjoy the free content. Chinese BL novels (in this instance and as in many instances i’ve seen) and some of these translators have been around for longer than you’ve been in the fandom, so suddenly when you have an interest in the content, in a culture and language that you’ve never seen before, are unfamiliar with and have zero knowledge about, you think that as a fan you now have the right to edit someone else’s work that was already done correctly?

The fact is if the translator wrote a bogus line in the English translations, you wouldn’t have known, and when you upload it as your own and ‘improve’ it, you would be a joke, but you didn’t read the original text did you, so what makes you are any sort of authority to edit the translations?

4. Of course this is not to say that non-Chinese speaking people can’t enjoy the same content or have excellent, poignant discussions and understanding over the content, but honestly a lot of translations don’t capture 100% of a Chinese novel because the nuances are just that complex, and translators do their best to convey it regardless - This is why RESPECT FOR THE TRANSLATOR IS IMPORTANT. And I don’t mean simply paying lip service and typing “we respect all translators for their hard work on this work”, and then disrespect it entirely by not crediting, by the simple act of editing without permission etc.

Respect their interpretation and translations, because it can differ from translator to translator translating the same sentence (and people who don’t speak the original language want to compete with that, I don’t understand?!)

5. Honestly, considering how people are still arguing on the semantics of the Bible for example, not only in its original language but also in English alone - if people can’t agree on every sentence of the holy text and what each sentence means to different people, fan translators get a fucking pass

6. I read in Bee’s threads where someone disagreed with their argument of ‘only people who understand the original language can translate and edit’, saying that it’s okay if the editor doesn’t have a grasp of the original language - I understand that yes, someone else’s English might truly be better (for e.g. actual editors but also please don’t proclaim that you’re one just because you think the translator hasn’t lived with English for most of their lives or whatever), but even then, the editor has to work really closely with the translator because the translator is the primary source of the translation i.e. they know exactly what is going on in a particular sentence in their heads that may not have been translated fully, so how can non-Chinese reading editors truly understand the translated text on its own, editing in silos?

7. Perhaps in actual publishing houses that deal with official translations, this is a fallacy that is ever-present and editors do that anyway without understanding the original text (not sure about this, I’m bringing up the point for consideration, hypothetically putting this out here), but my issue with ‘editors’ in the fan translations space is that they come off sitting on some high horse because they think they’re better in English than you are (which of course yes, might be true, but then read points 1-6 again)

8. A thief is a thief, don’t put up an open letter or disclaimer explaining your motivations. It’s plain and simple, you stole someone else’s work, claimed it for your own and are riding on the great (sometimes not so great but still great, if you get what I mean) work that the translator did. You don’t get to claim ownership for any part of it, even your edits. And once again, “original work belongs to the translators” without actually naming the translators? Fuck off.

9. God, I hate Wattpad and Instagram (okay sometimes Twitter but Twitter seems to be a halfway point) - The Sanctuaries for Lazy Content Thieves Where The Platform Endorses Their Shitty Behaviour

10. Aside from translations, I’ve also seen assholes stealing like shitposts and jokes - These are the hardest to prove as well and it’s almost impossible to claim ownership when someone steals your jokes. Thieves only wish they had as creative a brain as some of you (didn’t happen to me but to a mutual) do. The audacity. The audacity! if the work was actually done and paid and recorded, if TurnItIn.com was available for fandom posts, these thieves would be out of gas.

11. Fan translators are not obligated to answer to any of their readers when it comes to why they translated something a certain way. You don’t like it or don’t agree with it, simply ignore, close the tab and go find another translation you like, it’s that simple. Nowadays readers 1. Threaten/Diss the translator directly and rudely 2. Steal the work 3. Add their own spin on it without understanding the original content and say: Yay! Look at this I made it so much better so give me some attention

*****

The point of this post is not to claim ownership over any fandom or content just because translators or Chinese-speaking/reading people in the fandom know the content better. It’s also not to say that non-Chinese speaking/reading people can’t enjoy, understand, have great discussions over original Chinese content, because just from MDZS alone you can see that they can. Of course there are also individuals who might not be able to speak the language but are familiar with Chinese culture etc. because they’ve studied or lived it well, or maybe they’ve actually watched decades of Chinese drama to be able to analyse it properly now, all that’s awesome.

Also, I’m all for people who are learning Chinese (or any language for that matter) to translate something as practice. That’s great, that’s good, that’s to be admired!!

It’s non-Chinese speaking/reading people who claim they know the original content better than translators without any discussions, claiming some superiority over the content because they think the translation is not done well enough without doing any of the ground work that I really have an issue with (and also the fuckers who steal of course XD).

*****

And unfortunately I had too much time on my hands today and got pissed off after seeing the tweet so some of you have to read through this drivel XD

#translations #guardian #mdzs #rambles #stealing #again XD #not me this time #but then again i keep seeing my stolen shit so it's pent up anger #HAHAHAHA #you'd think i would have learnt #but i also think it's important to get angry each time it happens #even if it's tiring and futile?#if in 100 complaints only 1 gets answered #then that's 1 less mofo and thief who got away #you know?#idk sometimes

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skybird13 · 4 years

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What Went Wrong With Clover and Qrow: The Writing Pt. 1

And What CRWBY Could Have Done Better

[Spoilers for all of RWBY Vol. 7]

Now that the final episode for RWBY volume 7 has aired (for first members, at least) and I’ve had over a week to throw my tantrum and air my more emotional grievances, I think now is the perfect time to delve into the mechanics of what I believe went wrong when it came to episode 12, particularly in regards to the writing itself. For those of you who have been following my blog for any length of time, it should come as no surprise to you that in order to do this, we have to go all the way back to the beginning of the volume and break things down. For the rest of you... this is going to be a long post. In fact, it ended up being so long, I’m going to break it down into four parts, focusing on three episodes each up to episode 12.

There are a lot of layers to the anger and hurt surrounding Clover’s death. And while my emotional reaction is still very much there, I really do want to take the time to do this so that people can better understand at least one of those layers. I won’t be getting too much into the shipping aspect in this post or even the queer coding that I personally perceived in Clover’s character. Rather, I’m going to be analyzing the writing decisions and offering my personal suggestions for how CRWBY could have tweaked things to make the events in episode 12, as they happened, far more feasible (i.e. foreshadow Clover’s behavior and remove the flirting, primarily).

Note: This is a critique. I’m not going for negativity here but rather for constructive criticism, where I’ll be acknowledging what CRWBY did well alongside what they could have done better. If you read to the end of part 4 of this series, you’ll find that even after everything, a part of me still very much wants to give CRWBY the benefit of the doubt.

So, without further ado, here we go.

Episode 1 - Clover’s Introduction

I made a whole post breaking down and analyzing Clover’s introductory scenes in episode 1 where I focused pretty heavily on the animation and the framing. You can read it here if you’d like, but to summarize, the way these scenes play out makes it very clear that Qrow and Clover are going to be linked somehow. These scenes worked, and even in light of the events in episode 12, they still work because things are left pretty open. We have no idea if Qrow and Clover are going to like one another, much less get along to any degree. We just know that we, the audience, are meant to connect them. These scenes, in fact, were done incredibly well.

As far as writing goes, they don’t say a whole lot to one another. In fact, Clover doesn’t speak to Qrow directly at all and the only thing Qrow says is:

“Hey, pal, I’m a licensed Huntsman. Just helped save everyone?”

So... pretty par for the course there. Nothing that really needs to be addressed. This is totally something we expect Qrow to say.

So let’s take a look at Clover’s dialogue. I don’t want to quote every single line, at least not in this particular scene, so I’ll just pull out a few that I think do a great job of setting up his character.

In response to Dr. Polendina asking what the Ace Ops are doing in Mantle:

“Well, we heard a report of an unauthorized ship making an unauthorized landing, followed by an unauthorized use of weapons by non-licensed Huntsmen.”

In response to Dr. Polendina wanting to talk it out:

“They’ll be able to talk this out once they get up to Atlas.”

This is a fantastic bit of writing because it establishes several things at once.

1) Clover is lawful good. The reasons he lists for being there, and the way he emphasizes the “unauthorized” nature of it all, makes it pretty clear that he’s there to do his job. He doesn’t respond to Qrow or even check him for a license, and he rebuffs Dr. Polendina’s desire to talk things out right there. Clover arrests the teams because in his eyes they were breaking the law, and that’s all he really needs to know.

2) It sets him up as Qrow’s opposite in ideology, which is a great way to mirror the opposite Semblance reveal later.

3) It also introduces the possibility of negative tension between him and Qrow. The problem with this is that this tension is never once realized throughout the rest of the volume. In fact, the complete opposite happens and they get along very well. My biggest critique here is that CRWBY absolutely put themselves in a position where episode 12 could have made more sense but then never took it anywhere. Instead, they focused on building up their relationship as a positive thing.

Problem Tally For This Episode: 0.5. There’s really nothing I would have changed about this particular scene because I think it was very nicely done. Things are introduced and set up but left ambiguous enough that we have no idea how things between Qrow and Clover are going to go. The 0.5 is an acknowledgment of the potential set up for the episode 12 conflict that went unused.

Suggested Changes Tally For This Episode: 0

Episode 2 - Making Amends

(^^ I had to go with this screenshot, Clover’s expression is way too good XD)

The end of episode 2 is the first time we see Clover and the other Ace Ops since they arrested the main cast down in Mantle. And... this is where things start to go wrong. Or, perhaps it would be better to say, this is where things could have gone differently. While Clover and Qrow don’t interact in this episode, there are still some key decisions made in regards to Clover’s character.

I’ll pull out the relevant lines and analyze them as we go, then offer up my suggestions for changes.

When the Teams come down the stairs after their meeting with James, Clover approaches them and says:

“I’d like to sincerely apologize for the miscommunication down in Mantle. We didn’t intend to-”

We never learn what it was they “didn’t intend” to do because Elm cuts him off when she practically body-checks him out of the way 😆 But the wording of this line immediately shifts our perspective on Clover a little. He’s no longer behaving like the stringent, unapologetic law enforcer, but is instead acknowledging that he and his team probably messed up a little by not listening/talking to the Teams. It’s a small thing, but it’s our first hint that while he is lawful good, he is by no means unreasonable or unreachable. Contrast him with Cordovin in volume 6 who listens to absolutely nothing, doesn’t apologize, and never budges in her determination to stop the Teams until she has no other choice.

Now, because writing often relies on the tension between various characters’ lines, and because characters are often defined by those around them as much as by what they themselves say, I think it’s important to have a transcript of the following exchange between Ruby, Weiss, Elm, Marrow, and Clover:

Elm: I feel so bad, honestly! If we had known who you were, we’d be laughing over a hot meal right now and--

Ruby: I understand. You were just following orders.

Weiss: I mean, you could have asked us some questions first.

Marrow: Questions are for the weak, but we’re all on the same team now. Not that I’m happy about it.

Clover: We just wanted to say we’re sorry, and that we’re looking forward to working with you on our next mission. You might be students, but you’ve been fighting just as hard as we have, if not harder.

There’s quite a bit to tease out here. Some of it good, some of it not so great in terms of the larger picture and the events in episode 12.

First of all, Elm apologizes. This functions as a reflection on Clover. Good writers find ways to define and build character through the people around them as much as from the character’s own actions and behavior. As the team leader, you expect Clover’s teammates to have picked up on some of his more prominent characteristics and ways of thinking. The fact that Elm not only apologizes but insinuates that knowing who the Teams were would have changed the decisions made in Mantle, suggests a certain level of flexibility. It can also be argued that this foreshadows the fact that at least one of them will go through a change thanks to their association with the Teams. On a deep writing level, that foreshadowing is there, and I’ll make an argument in just a second for why Clover is set up to be that changed character.

But first, let’s look at Ruby and Weiss’s lines, which both serve well to introduce the fundamental difference between themselves and the Ace Ops: “make it up as we go” RWBY, JNOR, and Qrow as opposed to “arrest now ask questions later” Ace Ops. This is good. This works well as the first hint that conflict between them is possible. I have no complaints here.

And then we get to Marrow’s line. This is where things get a little murky but maybe that was the intent. He’s definitely posturing for his team, which is behavior that he exhibits throughout the volume. As the youngest member and the only Faunus on the Ace Ops, this line does a good job of exhibiting that he really wants to fit in with the others, and as such it also doubles as a second peek into the “ask questions later” ideology that the Ace Ops hold as a group. Which is probably something that trickles down from Clover himself, considering he’s the leader. This, also, is fine and works well.

But then....

Clover apologizes again. He doesn’t correct Marrow but doesn’t agree with him either. He doesn’t acknowledge Marrow’s assertions at all. He apologizes to the Teams and this simple act works to reinforce the shift in our perception that he’s possibly more flexible and open to admitting his own mistakes than we might have thought in his episode 1 introduction. And this is the very beginning of the dissonance so many of us felt in his behavior in episode 12.

Suggested Change #1:

My first suggested fix is to change the way that Clover’s second apology is framed by changing his initial apology. Even though he gets cut off by Elm, his first instinct is to apologize for the miscommunication in Mantle. Not only does this tie in so well with one of the primary themes of the volume (miscommunication in all its manifestations), it also indicates that Clover’s character itself is tied to that theme. But his acknowledgment that they probably should have asked some questions immediately frames him as a character who is going to change in terms of that theme. The “we didn’t intend to--” part only adds weight to this hint.

So how could they have fixed this? There are a multitude of possibilities but here is the best I came up with:

>>“I’d like to sincerely apologize for what happened earlier. We were only--”

Do you see the big differences here? Two major things change by altering only a few words. First, in this line, Clover does not acknowledge that he and the Ace Ops made a mistake by not asking questions. He’s still be apologizing for what happened but he's not admitting any fault on his or his team’s part. This would have reaffirmed our initial impression of him as a rigid rule follower, rather than dismantling it a little. Second, the “we were only” would have indicated that, despite his apology, he planned to justify their actions. Again, this would have worked very well to maintain the strict lawful good vibe we get from him initially. These minor alterations would have been subtle enough but strong enough to continue building up to the conflict between him and Qrow in episode 12.

Suggested Change #2:

If you don’t want to change that initial apology, change what he says after Marrow speaks. Have him acknowledge Marrow’s assertions that questions aren’t their thing. You could even have done this through animation with a slight nod or a laugh, but since we’re talking about writing, here is one suggestion:

>>“In our line of work, taking the time to ask questions can sometimes be dangerous. I’m sure you can relate. Regardless, we just wanted to say we’re sorry.”

Again, do you see the difference between this and what we got? What we got brings out the possibility that Clover is somewhat malleable. This, on the other hand, effectively but subtly reinforces his “by the books” mentality, which is exactly what CRWBY needed in order to justify his behavior towards Qrow in episode 12.

I have no suggestions for changes to the lines of the other characters. I think those lines function well in pushing against each other and maintaining a level of tension all around, and they’re necessary for building up to the RWBY vs. Ace Ops conflict. But two very minor and simple changes to Clover’s lines would have continued that initial setup for the episode 12 conflict that was established in episode 1. Instead, CRWBY starts to dissolve it from the get-go.

Problem Tally for this Episode: 1 The biggest problem in this episode is really that Clover’s character immediately starts to shift from “strict inflexible rule follower” to someone who can admit he made a mistake and should probably behave a little differently in the future.

Suggested Changes Tally for this Episode: 2

Episode 3 - Aaaaaand Here We Go

This section is going to be loooong. Not only do we get a lot of Clover in this episode, but we get a ton of him and Qrow together. In other words, we get the first beats of their relationship (again, I won’t be arguing for the shipping aspects, because I’ve done that in other posts and you all know where I stand on that, but their relationship, regardless of its nature, is vital to this analysis).

The first scenes we get in this episode are of Clover briefing Qrow, Jaune, and Ruby about the mission. A lot of it is pretty basic and does a good job of establishing him as an organized, efficient military leader. He’s clearly smart and knowledgable with his strategy.

The first line that really stood out to me in this sequence is the one where he is talking about the Geist:

“But recon has identified a powerful Geist that’s managed to evade destruction and take several lives.”

And this pretty much just serves to establish that lost life is a concern for him. A very good thing to know. It adds a little depth to his character.

After this, we get:

“General Ironwood says you’ve seen your fair share of combat. I trust that man with my life, so tomorrow, I’ll be trusting you all too.”

This is actually a great line for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, it establishes his trust in and bond with Ironwood. It’s a line that gets a lot of emphasis both in delivery and in terms of placement (it comes at the end of his monologue), and it’s one that returns in episode 12 as a sort-of justification for Clover’s actions. This particular line also suggests that his trust in the Teams and Qrow, as of this moment, is dependent upon Ironwood’s opinion of them. He trusts them because Ironwood has vouched for them and not because he has any reasons of his own to do so. This actually works really well and I wouldn’t suggest a change.

The problem in the narrative again comes from what happens outside of this line. The tension suggested here is never carried forward or built upon. In light of this, and because of the direction his relationship with Qrow takes, this line doesn’t work well as a foreshadowing of his actions in episode 12. Rather, its narrative function falls more in line with hinting at the potential for change that was introduced in episode 2. It does do a good job of setting up Clover as the one who is going to have to make a choice between his absolute trust in Ironwood and something else (whether that’s his own judgment or his trust in Qrow or whatever), but because of the writing outside of this line, it completely fails to build up to the events in episode 12 in a way that is convincing. In fact, it does the complete opposite. Because of this line and the way Clover is written in the rest of the volume, we are set up to expect an internal struggle from him in episode 12, not blind obedience.

Moving on to the scene where he and Qrow have their first one-on-one interactions. As you can probably predict, here is where things start to go to absolute shit. Up to this point, CRWBY still had what they needed to pull off episode 12 without it feeling ridiculously contrived. Sure, they played around with Clover’s character a little, gave us enough nuance in his narrative to potentially pique our curiosity, but they hadn’t passed the point of no return yet. Here, however, is where they start to.

Because of that, I’m going to quote large chunks of the script between Qrow and Clover, and pull it apart as best I can. Here is their very first conversation of the entire volume:

Qrow: Gotta say, I’m still not really used to working with other Huntsmen in the field.

Clover: But you were on a team before, weren’t you?

Qrow: (sighs) Long time ago. I just found working alone tends to be for the best.

Clover: Well, I think that’s a shame.

[Qrow slips and nearly falls before Clover catches him.]

So there are actually quite a few things going on here and they all contribute to the overall problem with the writing in this volume.

First of all, despite Qrow’s previously established dislike for the Atlas military in earlier volumes, and despite being arrested by Clover in episode 1, there is zero animosity or negative tension here. He seems more than willing to work with Clover and is even comfortable enough to initiate conversation and open up a bit. There is nothing of plot relevance in this scene. It is solely and specifically meant to give us the first hint of what their relationship is going to be like.

The major problem I have with this, in terms of the overall story that pans out between these two, is that CRWBY already had an inbuilt way to introduce a little negative tension. They could have easily called back to Qrow’s not-so-great opinions about Atlas military huntsmen, even if not overtly, and that would have worked really well as a stepping stone to the episode 12 conflict. But that’s not what we get.

Instead, Qrow opens up about something personal (being alone) and Clover is shown to be sympathetic. Clover’s sympathy here is another major mistake made by CRWBY when we take into account one of Clover’s lines in episode 12. I’m not going to watch it right now to get the exact wording, but it’s something along the lines of “There’s that cynicism of yours”. It’s a line that comes across as cruel and impatient, and it comes out of absolutely nowhere thanks in particular to the exchange above, their interactions later in this episode, and the episode 5 truck scene.

Right here is where CRWBY had the opportunity to at least partially rectify that very specific problem, but it doesn’t happen. We are given no indication that Clover thinks any less of Qrow for this reveal, and are instead given a glimpse at the patience and kindness that he is capable of.

Suggested Change #3:

The easiest way to fix this would have been to remove Clover’s sympathy, or at least insert a little condescension into it. This could have been done without making him an outright ass, and therefore CRWBY would have been able to keep us invested in at least wondering where this is going to go between them while simultaneously giving us one of the hints needed to make episode 12 believable. All it would have taken was altering Clover’s final line in that exchange.

Here are a few possibilities:

>> “Hmm” - delivered in a way that communicates his judgment or at least something noncommital

>> “That doesn’t seem like a good idea.” - critical

>> “That’s a bit much, isn’t it?” - dismissive, condescending

>> “I have a hard time believing that.” - dismissive

>> “Is that right.” - dismissive, condescending

>> He says nothing and it’s up to the animators to communicate his judgment.

Suggested Change #4:

The slightly more difficult change they could have made here would have been utilizing Qrow’s established distaste for authority and the Atlas military in general. Here is one potential way that could have gone:

>> Qrow: Gotta say, I’m still not really used to working with other Huntsmen in the field.

Clover: But you were on a team before, weren’t you?

Qrow: Long time ago. Playing with others isn’t really my thing. I found working alone tends to be for the best.

Clover: Well, I think that’s a shame.

In this case, you could keep Clover’s last line because instead of Qrow opening up and being vulnerable, he’s actually being a bit more antagonistic, which would have been plausible given his behavior towards Winter and James in volume 3. Clover’s line, in this context, becomes much more ambiguous and open to interpretation, which would have fed well into the episode 12 build-up.

Moving on again to their next interaction in the mines right after the Geist escapes:

Clover: Thaks for the call-out. That could have been bad.

Qrow: (sighs) I wouldn’t thank me. My Semblance brings misfortune. Sometimes I can’t keep it under control.

Clover: That so? Well, hey, don’t beat yourself up about it. My Semblance is good fortune. Lucky you, huh?

Again, there is quite a bit going on, not only in these lines but in the lead-up as well, so in order to maintain perspective, I’m going to backtrack just a bit to when Clover caught Qrow after he slipped on the ice. The next major beat in their relationship after that event is Qrow warning Clover to prevent him from getting crushed by a falling beam.

These two things paired so closely together suggest that real trust is starting to develop between them. It’s not trust vouched for by someone else, but the trust that comes from being in a dangerous situation together and coming through for one another. At the bare minimum, the foundation for trust is laid here and with nothing to undermine it (because of the writing thus far), there is no reason for the audience to doubt that it will continue to develop and strengthen.

Then we have the lines above.

Again, Qrow opens up about something deeply personal here. He is showing unusual levels of vulnerability for him, which suggests that even if the audience doesn’t quite understand it, Qrow has found a reason to want to open up to Clover. It points towards an immediate level of comfort that we have never seen from Qrow before and that is something that can’t be ignored.

As for Clover, I suppose we could argue about the nature of his response to Qrow’s vulnerability. I know some saw it as Clover being dismissive of Qrow’s pain, and if that had been how the lines were delivered, this might have worked very well in building up to a conflict between them. This is one instance where we need to step outside the words themselves and take into consideration the aspects surrounding the words: the animation and Chris Wehkamp’s line delivery in particular (which I assume were directions written into the script).

One of the biggest problems here is that this was yet another opportunity for Clover’s impatience with Qrow’s cynicism to be established. And yet again, that’s not what we get. Instead, Clover takes Qrow’s Semblance in stride, reassures him that it’s not something he needs to worry about, and then offers up a comparable piece of information about himself: his Semblance is good fortune. There is no indication in the writing, line delivery, or animation that he finds Qrow’s attitude distasteful or annoying, and there could have been.

The other major problem with this is, again, the nature of Clover’s final line. I promised that I wouldn’t get into the shipping aspect and I won’t, but at the very least I think everyone can agree that the “Lucky you, huh?” quip at the end is intended to be friendly. This is the first time we learn something personal about Clover and it’s also the first time that his behavior towards Qrow shifts from being purely professional to something else. This shift is maintained and built upon throughout the volume and I’ll comment more about it in just a bit.

None of this builds up to what happens in episode 12. CRWBY lays the foundation for a healthy and functional relationship between these two, hints at the beginnings of real trust between them, and completely foregoes all opportunities to insert some of the negative tension that was sorely needed for episode 12 to make sense.

Before making some suggestions for changes, I’d like to take a second to really emphasize this point: prior to these two scenes, the audience has little to no reason to believe that these two are going to get along. Clover is elite Atlas military and Qrow is... well, Qrow. We already knew everything we needed to know about them to make the inclusion of that necessary negative tension ridiculously easy. All CRWBY had to do was play them off one another in a way that leaned on this prior knowledge. This is not only sloppy writing in light of episode 12, but this is also the active and intentional subversion of our expectations where these two characters are concerned. This puts us into a bit of a quandary, really, because how can something be both careless and yet so intentionally done? It’s not a question I’m going to try to answer here but I think it’s one worth keeping in mind as we move forward.

Suggested Change #5:

Remove the friendly/flirty nature of Clover’s final lines and instead write them in such a way that he seems a little more callous and irritated with Qrow’s attitude. Again, he doesn’t need to be such a jerk that we hate him off the bat, but including a little hint of negative emotion would not have been difficult here.

For instance:

>> Clover: That so? Well, don’t worry about it. Luckily, my Semblance is good fortune.

See how different that is? Dismissive, potentially irritated, and it brings the focus on to Clover and his Semblance rather than putting the focus on Qrow and what a good fortune Semblance might mean to him, which is how the original script functions. The very last line that I suggest also serves to put Qrow down a bit in a very subtle way rather than having Clover flirt with/be friendly towards him. It’s basically a “whatever, things will be fine despite the fact you’re here”.

Moving on from this, we get the following:

Clover: Charlie, Bravo, you should be able to cut off the target at the heart of the mine. Qrow and I won’t be far behind.

Again, this line is a relatively small thing all on its own, but in context with the scenes that precede it, there is actually a lot more going on here than might appear at first.

I didn’t quote it, but when Qrow and Clover first land at their assigned mine entrance, Clover refers to himself and Qrow as “Alpha Squad”. Here, that changes to “Qrow and I”.

Not only does this support and reinforce the change in Clover’s attitude toward Qrow with the “Lucky you, huh?” line (going from professional to something else), but Qrow is specifically named. There is not only an inherent intimacy that comes with using a person’s first name, but it’s a very subtle and effective way of framing Clover and Qrow together as a pair. This further feeds into that set-up I was talking about in episode 2 where Clover is presented as the most likely character to change as a result of his association with the Teams/Qrow, particularly in the absence of negative tension and the efforts by the writers to subvert our expectations in that regard.

Do you see where things are starting to stack up in the completely wrong direction? It gets worse in just a minute but first...

How do you fix this? Again, it’s easy. Considering Clover is military and codenames are a thing heavily used, it would have made more sense for him to at least refer to the two of them as “we” or even revert to “alpha squad”.

Suggested Change #6:

Make a slight alteration to Clover’s line so that he reverts to pure military professionalism.

>> Clover: We won’t be far behind.

>> Clover: Alpha squad won’t be far behind.

Pretty simple. Either change works. Even though the shift that comes with “Lucky you, huh” would still have thrown us off a bit, Clover’s return to his norm would have signaled to the audience that the perceived change was fragile at best, and possibly even a complete fluke of Clover’s personality. It also maintains a level of emotional distance between Clover and Qrow that we really did need for episode 12 to work. Instead, CRWBY made the choice to close that distance. Significantly.

Now it gets worse. We go into the scene in the main chamber where Clover and the Ace Ops take down the Geist. The obvious bit of dialogue here that merits attention is Clover’s following line after catching the piece of Dust in reference to the other Ace Ops:

Clover: What would you guys do without me?

I think this line might be one of the most disappointing because it could so easily have foreshadowed Clover’s death. But instead, due to what came just before and what comes after, this line sets up an entirely different conflict. In fact, it does a beautiful job of pretty much cementing Clover as the character who will change the most because of Qrow and the Teams, and who will have to choose between Ironwood and his own moral code. Do I suggest that from here on out, him choosing Qrow over Ironwood was absolutely set in stone? Not at all. In fact, that wouldn’t have made sense for the narrative or Clover’s character. However, Clover’s unflinching blind obedience and immediate willingness to arrest Qrow in episode 12 are completely undermined by this set-up. We expect to see him struggle with that decision, regardless of the ultimate outcome, not turn into a drone who does exactly what he’s told.

Additionally, thanks to the set-up we get throughout the volume for the RWBY vs Ace Ops fight, this line feeds into that tension in particular. The problem here is that the second we see the Ace Ops act to arrest RWBY without hesitation, this tension is resolved and we have our answer. We know exactly what they do without him and all that’s left to see is the unspoken second half of this question: What would Clover do without them?

If I could include an illustration of how far CRWBY was leaning away from foreshadowing Clover’s death and callousness in episode 12 up to this point, we’d have ourselves a goddamn Tower of Pisa.

There is no specific fix here because the problem isn’t with this line itself. It certainly could have functioned to foreshadow Clover’s death, but again, because of the rest of the narrative, that’s not what it ends up doing.

I want to step away from the dialogue for just a moment. I know I said I wouldn’t be focusing on animation, but considering animators take their directions from the script and storyboards, it does technically qualify as writing even if I can’t give you word-for-word what those directions were. There is something in the animation in this particular scene that we can’t ignore.

Clover’s behavior directly following the line above (he tosses the Dust to Qrow, gives him a loose and playful salute, and backward swan dives off the cliff into the pit where the Geist is) is a massive, screaming augmentation of Clover’s shift towards Qrow specifically (i.e. away from strictly professional and towards something else). The “lucky you, huh” line and the use of Qrow’s name right before this pulls us very nicely into this new dynamic.... But this dynamic is exactly the thing that makes episode 12 so outlandishly out of place.

Moving on to the final Qrow/Clover interaction for this episode. After the Geist has been defeated and Ruby makes the day-saving catch, we get this:

Qrow: Lucky catch, huh?

Clover: Hm, no. I’d chalk that one up to talent.

One of my issues with these lines is that they serve to once more highlight the shift that has occurred between Qrow and Clover, particularly because it gives us some invaluable insight on Qrow’s feelings towards Clover’s Semblance. Here is another area where the light-hearted delivery Jason Liebrecht (Qrow’s VA) gave factors in a bit. A lot of us had no idea how Qrow was going to react to learning that someone else had a Semblance opposite to his own. He could very easily have been upset or resentful or even self-effacing, but instead, he absorbs the information, takes it in stride, and proceeds to joke about it in a way that I just realized mirrors Clover’s “Lucky you, huh?” line. This is basically Qrow shifting seamlessly into their new dynamic and accepting it.

The other major problem here is, once again, Clover’s characterization. This has all been building up pretty badly to episode 12, as I hope I’ve illustrated, but this final exchange is really the last good chance CRWBY had to pull things back on track a bit. Only they don’t take it. They could have had Clover display a bit of arrogance or dismissiveness in this scene. It would have worked well to at least let us know that the personality he has displayed so far might be more of a front than anything, and if done right, his coldness toward Qrow in episode 12 wouldn’t have been totally unexpected. Instead, we get to see a man who gives credit where it’s due and absolutely believes that his Semblance is not everything. In other words, we get a Clover who is drastically different from the person depicted in episode 12.

Suggested Change #7:

Change Clover’s final line to clue the audience into the fact that he is not what he seems and hint at a darker personality lurking under the surface. Here are a couple of options

>> Clover: It was.

>> Clover: That’s one way to put it.

Problem Tally for this Episode: 14

Further set-up (at least 2 major instances) for Clover to be the one who changes or at least struggles with having to choose between Ironwood and Qrow/disobeying orders. Multiple instances (3 significant by my count) where Clover’s characterization fails to match what we get in episode 12. A failure to lean into the pre-established negative tension between Clover and Qrow by virtue of who they are. An active subversion of the expectations that could have easily supported that negative tension. The shift in Qrow and Clover’s relationship which is never recanted in any way, followed by no less than 4 instances of reinforcement. The beginning of the closing emotional distance between Clover and Qrow. A line that could potentially have acted as foreshadowing undermined by what comes before and after it.

Suggested Changes Tally for this Episode: 5

Total Problems so Far: 15.5

Total Suggested Changes: 7

Do you see where all the little, tiny things are starting to add up? And do you also see where only a few small changes could have been implemented to make episode 12 something that didn’t hit the audience like a freight train? The thing is, not all of these changes would have been necessary. A few of them would have sufficed.

I hope this has been helpful in shedding some light on a portion of the reason why people are so upset by what happened in episode 12. I’m going to continue this analysis as soon as I can, with the next part covering episodes 4-6. With school and everything I’m not certain how soon it will be out, but look for it sometime over the weekend or at the beginning of next week.

#clover deserved better #fair game #clover ebi #qrow branwen #rwby #rwby7 #rwby critique #what went wrong in the writing #blog series

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totaldramaonline · 4 years

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Thank you for 220!!!

As promised I am making a proper post about it. Thank you all so much for following and supporting this blog!! I never could have expected it to get this many followers this quickly, or that so many people would enjoy my little AU, its amazing!! This post might be a bit of a long one but stick around because we are gonna vote on what to do to celebrate! I'm also gonna talk a bit about me and why this blog makes me so happy if anyone cares lmao

ok so item number one: the celebration

I have a couple ideas on what we could do so here they are (im also going to do a get 2 know OP sorta thing but that comes l8r)

Season one watch party

I would set up some sort of virtual chatroom/watch party thing and we all get to hang out and binge watch season 1 (as much as we can get through)

if this is the option ill probably have to do a second poll for what program bc Netflix Party requires everyone 2 have Netflix, Kast means everyone has to have Kast, etc.

Total Drama Commissions

So I like to think I've gotten decent at drawing in the style, I drew some of the photos in the posts as well as my own pfp so the idea is that I can draw whoever you want (yourself/OC/character) in the style for cheap. Deadass like 5 bucks idk.

Ask box slumber party

for this one to work yall are gonna have to participate but basically, we would all hang out for the night in my ask box! ill answer questions all night as fast as i can as they come in! ill probably post a few question starters and stuff

(personally this is my favourite option but it's up to you guys)

Voting is now closed (9/31/2020)

item number 2 on today's agenda goes under the cut bc it consists of me getting kinda sappy and rambling for a while

welcome to hell. I don't know when to stop talking to strap in.

Having this many people follow me in under 2 months is so fucking crazy. I never thought you all would be so excited about my little au, I made it for fun because I half rewatched the show with my sister and wanted them all to be friends, and I guess that's what you all wanted too! and then I realized there was sort’ve a fanbase and I was just amazed. This show is such a nostalgic show for me, it was one of the cartoons that my dad loved to watch with me and my siblings. (he's not dead I just realized how that sounds) I was probably 10 when they re-aired all three seasons on cable and we would get into it like it was a survivor and they were real people. I have 6 siblings, and all of us over the age of 10 were obsessed with this show at one point or another.

They don't make cartoons like this anymore. (i say, sounding old as shit and actually not knowing bc I don't have cable) But this show and 6teen are my favourite shows to rewatch now that I'm not a kid because there's so much hilarious shit I missed as a kid. No wonder my dad liked the show alone with us lol. But yeah, none of this really matters to the whole 200 followers thing, but I'm just so excited to see that so many people like the show as much as I did and do now ya know? so yeah, thank you for being here?

I really will try and keep up with this blog properly, it's just gonna be hard. As of right now, I have ELEVEN blogs, 5 of which I am actively creating content for, and I am starting a new job on Monday so that's gonna start eating my time. But that's why the queue is great! I try and fill it every few days, and ill do my best to keep that up (but bets are off when school starts back up, it'll probably have to be cut down to a few times a week)

anyways, if you have read this far, I'm sorry for all that and thank you?? you're amazing?? I'm gonna plug my other blogs for a second

@what-is-fanart-even is my main. Go here to see what I'm up to. I also do my art here, have my redbubble here, my main commissions, etc

@skyrim-said-that is the blog I'm probably most active on but unless you're into Skyrim it'll be boring lmao. I'm really only listing it so yall can see where I'm spending my time.

This is my Kofi if you wanted to uh support me? no push lmao I'm just putting it here bc I have it

I also have blogs for Outlast, Farcry 5, Red Dead Redemption, sitcoms(Gilmore girls, friends), IT (2017), and Fallout. ill drop URLs in the comments if anyone asks lmao.

and if you actually read this far you're the real fans, and I love you SO much. have an AMAZING rest of the month/year and i hope you're doing great!! Bye!!! ask box is open all the time if anyone wants to talk!! i love you all!!!!

#WHEW THIS BITCH IS LONG IM SORRY #im just excited ok #thats why im literally posting it at 2 am #ill rb in the morning #total drama #social media au #is my head too big? perhaps #like im aware 200 isnt a lot but also I LOVE YOU ALL #total drama social media au #total drama island #total drama action #total drama world tour #total drama au #poll

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 2nd Season Ep24 [”Here You Are“]:

Even though this wasn’t as comedy-focused as last week’s episode, things continue to be relatively chill and relaxed.

Just because there’s still one more episode left of this season and we’re almost exactly two thirds of the way into the overall story doesn’t mean things won’t suddenly and drastically change next week, right? :)))

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

I mentioned this last week since the next episode preview confirmed it, but they really did skip the whole Kyoko backstory arc, in order to jump straight ahead and adapt chapters 94 and 95 in this episode.

I still think this will work out fine in the end, though. It’s pretty obvious at this point how they’re going to end season 2, and it’ll be appropriately climactic. They’ll probably just revisit Kyoko’s backstory later on when it comes up again, which will hopefully flow nicely and not feel too much like a lengthy detour in the story or anything.

Either way, this episode continues the recent focus on Yuki and Yuki-related plot points by being about Machi, and then the New Years stuff.

In spite of the fact that I’m really not a fan of the Yuki/Machi ship, I honestly still really like Machi as a character, and the first half of this episode where we get our first proper look into her thoughts and her life really go to show why. My whole family and upbringing situation was very different to hers, but her whole depressed mood and how it impacts her self-perception and how she carries herself in general is one of the more relatable parts of the whole series. The art and cinematography in her scenes was also really good at getting across the whole mood of the scene.

But ultimately I still feel like as a character she suffers too much from coming into focus way too late in the story, at almost the exact same time that other plot stuff starts kicking into high gear and there’s no time to really focus on her anymore, so she gets a handful of very concentrated, heavy moments to establish her entire character arc and her relationship with Yuki, and compared to the more long-form storytelling that the rest of the series displays, it just ends up feeling kinda artificial. And even though I do really like her as a character, and I do relate a lot to her, her and Kakeru’s whole backstory almost feels like a parody of Fruits Basket as a whole, and the fact that it’s delivered so quickly and barely delved into doesn’t really help that impression. Like I said last time, Kakeru at least benefits a lot from having been woven into the story a lot since a fair while ago, whereas for a variety of reasons Machi has largely been kept in the background until this episode.

I wasn’t really planning to go into full detail just yet about why I don’t like Yuki and Machi’s relationship [which is a more or less separate issue to Machi’s character in and of itself and how she’s handled in the story], but I think this episode alone pretty much summed it all up, especially going by how people are already reacting to it.

Basically I just really don’t like how aggressively the story wants you to realize how Yuki and Machi’s whole relationship is basically just a parallel to Tohru and Yuki’s relationship. It’s so heavy-handed that it just takes me out of the story, and the fact that they’re intentionally drawing that comparison feels like it actively goes against a big part of what Yuki’s recent development has been about.

When Yuki was opening up to Kakeru about all his feelings toward Tohru, he made it clear that he actively disliked the idea of that sort of dynamic developing into a romance, because it was so fundamentally unbalanced and one-sided that it would make him feel even more lonely. He didn’t want to be on the receiving end of a mostly one-sided flow of emotional support, so I just can’t help but dislike how it feels like his relationship with Machi is almost exactly the same thing, but this time it’s Yuki who’s providing the support.

It’s not like Machi doesn’t provide anything for Yuki emotionally, but it’s also not like Yuki didn’t provide anything emotionally for Tohru either. It was just a *mostly* one-sided and unbalanced dynamic, and I feel like the same thing applies here.

I just feel like, going by his own whole speech about his feelings and what type of relationship he wants, I’d want him to get a romantic partner who he feels more ‘equal’ with, in a sense. Someone who doesn’t just receive his support, or who just treats him normally, but someone who pushes him to be a better person, and forces him outside of his comfort zone in a way that helps him grow.

Basically this is just an elaborate way of me saying that I ship him and Kakeru, lol.

And honestly I don’t even dislike the core concept of Yuki and Machi’s relationship, I just don’t like that it goes in a romantic direction, since it feels like it happens with the exact same reasoning as why Yuki said he didn’t want a romantic relationship with Tohru. I really do like the idea of him being able to grow enough as a person to help someone else [even if the story really isn’t subtle about how Machi is almost exactly like how Yuki used to be, lol], but I’d just prefer that to play out in a more platonic way.

Plus, from a slightly different angle, I also don’t really like the idea of Machi getting into a romantic relationship where it feels like she’s mostly just on the receiving end of emotional support, for basically the same reasons why Yuki said he didn’t want that for himself. I think she also deserves better than that.

But to be honest an unavoidable part of the whole problem is also just that we barely even get to see what their relationship is actually like in practice, and we pretty much just see the part where it’s like ‘wow, they’re JUST LIKE how Tohru and Yuki used to be!’, and we just have to kinda guess at how things play out for them after that. Which is yet another reason why I think she really suffers from being focused on so late into the story, lol. It’s entirely possible that if we actually got to see how their relationship evolved I’d be more on board with it, but we only see a fairly small portion of it in the end, so that’s what I’m basing all my thoughts on.

[Also there’s the whole separate but related topic of how I still think it’s disappointing how Yuki’s whole struggle about feeling unable to love Tohru romantically, and feeling socially obligated to perform normative heterosexuality with her is just followed up by him finding a different girl to have as a love interest, but I could make another whole post about that so whatever]

ANYWAY, that was a whole bunch of opinions I’ve been sitting on for a long time now, lol. Even though I kinda don’t care much about Yuki as a character in a vacuum, I feel very strongly about the way his character arc plays out, and all the writing surrounding him.

That aside, the rest of the episode was just about the New Years banquet and getting some glimpses at most of the zodiac members to start setting the scene for the final third of the story. The transition between the two halves of the episode felt super abrupt and jarring, and you could really tell that it was jumping from one chapter of the manga to the next, but still, I liked the second half a lot.

There’s a lot of different moments with different characters, but I really liked seeing more of Tohru and Kyo. By this point it’s really obvious how they’re settling into a comfortable groove with each other, even if they aren’t exactly open about their feelings yet. I think it’s really neat to see how their relationship has slowly but surely been changing and progressing across the course of this season, without them even being entirely aware of it. This season as a whole might have been largely Yuki-focused, but Tohru and Kyo have come a long way with their relationship since the end of season 1.

Also, I think this is literally the only time we’re gonna see Ritsu in season 2 outside of the OP/EDs, which is kinda depressing, lol. I really hope they can come up with some original content in season 3 to give him some screen-time, but at this point I’m not getting my hopes up.

And even though this episode is mostly pretty laid back, the scene with Yuki and Akito really does set up for the next episode, and how things in general are about to come to a head and fall apart.

I’m curious to see exactly where they end the next episode, since they might decide to end it only partway into chapter 97, instead of going all the way to the end. But at this point I think they’re probably gonna go all the way up to that big cliffhanger, and we’re all just gonna have to wait like 6+ months for the anime to continue from that, lol. If they go that far with the next episode, then I’m definitely curious to see how anime-only people react to it, for better or worse.

#murasaki rambles #fruits basket #I really need to stop writing these at like 5am

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crashdevlin · 4 years

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Civil Warriors 6- Africa

Civil Warriors Masterlist

Author’s Note: Originally posted to ao3 (This is an edited and improved version) Part Three of the Red Queen Chronicles!

Summary: The three super soldiers start their trek toward Wakanda.

Word Count: 4665

Pairing(s): Clint Barton x OFC, Bucky Barnes x OFC

Chapter Warnings: mentions of torture, mentions of brainwashing, mentions of murder, Bucky Barnes being suave

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Are you sure that you’re okay to walk this whole way?” Bucky asked as the sun started to go down on the second day of their trek across Africa. None of them had slept and it was evident in their attitudes.

“Barnes, don’t ask again,” Cassie snapped. “I’m just as genetically gifted as you and Steve are. Just because I’m a woman-”

“Hey, it’s not about that!” Bucky interrupted, blue eyes going wide. “I’m just...guess I just don’t know much about your abilities, so…”

“How about we make camp?” Steve suggested, hefting his bag off of his shoulder and dropping it to the ground. “We could use the rest.”

“I’ll get a fire going,” Bucky volunteered.

“And I can regale you with my back story while I set up the tent. Ya know, the stuff after Hydra lost me.” Cassie dropped her bag to the ground at her feet and grabbed the tent. “See, Fury stormed Der Spielplatz with fifty men and grabbed everyone on base. I think it was called Operation Playtime Distortion. It was a rescue operation for Agent Mackenzie. They found my files before they found me. I remember the look on Fury’s face when he walked into my cell on the sublevel and found me, sitting on my bed...confused. Confused, brainless, without a single memory to work from.”

She sighed and licked her lips, avoiding the gaze of the blue-eyed men with her. “He took me and cuffed me and put me on a plane to the Fridge.” She looked at Bucky for a sign of recognition of the name, but she didn’t find any so she continued. “Fridge was a place where SHIELD put dangerous people, dangerous items. I was there for ten years, basically grew up in that cell...all that I remembered of my life was in the Fridge for a long time. Fury didn’t want to release me into the world. For good reason...he read the file. He knew what was buried in my head.”

She bit the inside of her lip and cleared her throat. “Ten years in captivity, though, and I never showed it. When I was eighteen, I started a relationship with an agent...one of Fury’s right hand men...he convinced Fury to...got him to consider letting me out, but it took two more years of Fury considering before he eventually let me out.”

Cassie rolled the tent out and grabbed the poles. “I mean, I really thought I was normal. I mean, I obviously knew I was Red Skull’s daughter, but I thought of it more as…” She shrugged. “Johann Schmidt was just the sperm donor, you know? I wasn’t a Nazi. I was just a girl. I couldn’t remember the Hydra labs at all by the time I was eighteen and I hadn’t ever shown any abnormal physiology. Except the lack of a belly button, I was just like everyone else. I thought maybe I was really lucky and Red Skull’s enhancements couldn’t be passed down. Maybe it just wasn’t in me and I was okay with that. It meant I could focus on the goals I had for after I got out of the Fridge.”

Cassie pushed the first set of poles through the tent and grabbed the second set. “I wanted to get out, get a degree, get a job, get married, have a baby. I was halfway to a degree by the time I got out of the Fridge. My boyfriend got me started on the baby. He didn’t know that. I didn’t tell him. Would’ve just been...complicated. Things with Phil were over by then and it was easier for me to just...drop out of college and move to New York, just in time for Loki to rain down a storm of aliens on our heads. I was lucky, didn’t have to deal with the Chitauris, though. No, I got to contend with the Asgardian prince himself,” she said bitterly. “When he pulled me out from under the lab table where I was hiding and used his scepter to put me in a trance. Somehow, he used that thing to unlock what was in me. He unlocked my genetics. I was...suddenly strong, agile, an Olympic-level athlete.”

“So, Loki made you a super soldier?” Bucky asked as the fire started.

“Not really. I wasn’t a soldier. I was a super lab tech. Super...rape victim. Super broken.” She smiled sadly. “Super alcoholic. I spent almost all of my money on booze that year. Takes a lot to get me drunk. I assume you guys have a similar issue.”

“Haven’t tried. I was afraid of what might...happen,” Bucky answered, quietly.

“I tried...in ‘44 when Bucky fell off the train. Only drank one bottle, though. Might’ve worked if I drank more,” Steve said.

Cassie nodded. “Gotta drink fast. I’ve found that two bottles of strong, cheap whiskey are enough to get me drunk...for about an hour and a half. Which was usually enough to get me to sleep for a while.” She licked her lips as she pushed the second set of poles through the tent. “I fell into a deep spiral for a year. Loki, he killed my daughter, raped me, carved his name into my chest...it didn’t seem like there was very much good in life.”

“Been there,” Bucky muttered, pulling food out of his bag.

“Anyway, uh, Clint showed up after about a year of me...bottling everything up in whiskey. He was nice. He saw the potential in me, knew my damage...or at least the damage Loki caused...but he tried to help me find myself anyway.” She scoffed derisively. “Unfortunately, Loki noticed. He didn’t like that I was spending time with another man. He doesn’t ever like when I spend time with other men. He’s not exactly thrilled that I’m out here with you.”

“You think he’s watching us?” Steve asked, standing straight and looking around.

“He’s watching me. He’s always watching me. The psycho thinks I’m his queen, he’s gonna have an eye on me...as often as possible, anyway,” she said as she started pushing stakes into the ground one by one. “Loki showed up with the scepter again and put me in a trance. Steve was there for this part. Loki made me ‘Joanna’. Now, when I came back to myself after a couple weeks of following Loki around as Joanna, I thought I was evil. I thought Joanna was evil because of how I followed that jerk around, but she wasn’t. She just didn’t have all of my hang-ups. I talked to a shrink and he clarified some stuff. I realized that Joanna was just me without my inhibitions. But at first, I was convinced I was evil. I ran away...to Austria. I spe-”

“She left the base in a hospital gown. No shoes, nothing,” Steve said, his tone proud. “We were in the Alps, Buck, but she survived, made it down the mountain without even a hint of frostbite.”

“Didn’t know you were so impressed by that,” she mumbled.

“Of course I was. We thought you were dead after we went a few days without finding you...but then Clint found you.”

“Only after Loki found me first.” Cassie sighed as she looked at the tent. It was undoubtedly going to be a very tight fit for three supersoldiers. “Anyway, I lived the simple life in Austria for a few months. I worked at this little diner and relearned German, ‘cause when Fury steamrolled my Hydra indoctrination, he felt the need to rid me of my Mother Tongue.” She cleared her throat to deal with the bitterness. “Anyway, horrible nightmares, spiral of depression and sadness, found God but that wasn’t hard since I was sleeping in the closet of the local mission. Loki found me again, had his way with me again, disguised as the priest who kept me from trying to kill myself for two months. He didn’t have his scepter that time thought so I fought back and I fought back hard and then I ran...straight into Clint, who brought me back.”

She laughed quietly. “Blah blah blah, identity issues. Blah blah, my ex sent me to a shrink, I realized I wasn’t evil and that I could make up for my family legacy through being a superhero. Became an Avenger, Clint started teaching me Ops stuff and...I started remembering.” She turned to look at the soldiers. Bucky’s eyes were focused on her, but Steve was looking at the ground. “Muscle memory kicked in first. The way I field-stripped my pistol, how well I moved during sparring sessions. I held off the actual memories as long as possible, tried to focus on the ‘now’, but...when I told Pietro Maximoff that I’d never killed anyone, I got the first flash of…” She took a deep breath and swallowed. “Agent Mackenzie. It wasn’t much but it made me see that, if I kept letting myself remember then there was no way I was going to be the woman I thought I was when I was in the Fridge. If I remembered, I’d become more of this...other person. The ‘worse than Joanna’ person that Fury knew I was. So, I left the Avengers, went back to school.”

“Until I called you into this,” Steve said, guiltily.

“I was still remembering anyway, Steve. Remember Christmas? I wasn’t sleeping, freaked out when I was cutting the ham. It wasn’t being an Avenger that was doing it...it was everything. It was living my life.”

Steve nodded, standing straight, but maintaining an air of guilt. “Hey, Bucky, you wanna come with me, do a perimeter check?” he asked. Bucky followed without a word.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, how’d you end up with the archer?” Bucky asked, eating his MRE spaghetti. “I know how you met, but how’d he get you to date him?”

“Hey, don’t say it like that. Archery’s sexy,” she defended, eating a large cracker. “Um...I don’t know, really. He’s nice and charismatic...attractive. Blue eyes get to me...and he’s a relentless flirt. He was workin’ me from the moment I met him.” She looked down and picked up a packet of peanut butter. “I think...in all seriousness, I think when I started to get confused about who I was, I needed someone who knew the real me. Clint used to surveil me for Fury...off and on for about two years, he watched me. So, he knew the woman I was with Phil. He knew all about me. He got to witness the happy optimist with the flair for science. I need that. I-I liked his bluntness and he wanted to fix me.”

“That’s the basis of your relationship?” Bucky asked, licking his spork. “Doesn’t seem very strong to me.”

“Well, sex is a factor,” Cassie responded flippantly, eliciting a deep blush to break out across Steve’s face.

Bucky reached out and hit his shoulder. “Come on, Steve. People are gonna think you’re a virgin if you act like that,” he teased.

“He’s not one?” Cassie asked.

“Buck…” Steve warned, glaring across the fire at his friend.

“Nah, I got him laid during the war,” Bucky answered, ignoring the look. “See, he had his heart set on Agent Carter, but his loins were just fine with this pretty French girl.”

Cassie chuckled as she ripped open the peanut butter. “Well, Clint and Tony owe me ten bucks.”

“You bet on whether I was a virgin?” Steve asked, eyes wide. Cassie just shrugged and Steve looked down at his knees. “Sophie was a very nice girl. I would’ve written her but...ya know, frozen in a block of ice.”

“A nice girl? I thought nice girls waited ‘til marriage back in your day.”

“She was French,” Bucky said, like it was the only explanation needed.

“Much more liberal in France back then,” Steve explained.

“Okay, then,” Cassie said, laughing. “So, wait...just the one, Steve?”

“Why does it matter?” Steve asked, running his fingers through his hair. “I mean, one is more than you guys thought, right?”

“Actually, I assumed you’d had several just since you thawed out,” Cassie responded before gesturing at him. “I mean, look at you. In today’s society, you being amazingly handsome and heroic...I figured you might have been talked into a couple one night stands.” The blush on his cheeks seemed to take Steve’s whole face, spreading like wildfire.

“Even I’ve gotten laid since you’ve been thawed out,” Bucky added.

Cassie looked playfully offended. “Oh, so the thing about not having a woman in your arms since the forties, that was just a line?”

“I said a ‘beautiful woman’,” Bucky corrected. “Ludmilla was a troll.”

Cassie laughed. “Really? You needed to get some so bad that you had sex with a troll named ‘Ludmilla’?”

Bucky smiled. “You sleep with Clint,” he reminded before tucking his hair behind his ears. “In my defense, I was breaking a seventy year abstinence.”

She smirked as she turned to look at Steve. “What about you? Have you broken that ‘frozen in a block of ice’ abstinence yet?”

“I-I really don’t think this is an appropriate-”

“Romanoff?” Cassie interrupted. “CIA Agent Carter?”

Steve sighed and looked away. “There was a SHIELD agent. She asked me to coffee, then we went to dinner...afterwards, she got a little...needful.”

Cassie turned to Bucky. “‘Needful’ equals ‘horny’, right?” Bucky nodded.

“That was a few months before SHIELD fell. Haven’t seen her since,” Steve finished quickly.

“You okay, Steve?” Bucky asked.

“Um...I just realized that she might have been Hydra,” he responded, rubbing at his temple and looking like he was questioning every decision he had ever made.

“I’m sure she wasn’t-” Cassie started, but Bucky interrupted.

“Might’ve been.”

“Well, she didn’t kill you in your sleep so you can probably count on her not being Hydra,” Cassie rationalized.

“Well, I didn’t...sleep.”

“You dog, you,” Cassie teased.

“All right, all right. Finish up your food and we’ll bed down.” Steve turned away, looking completely embarrassed as the other laughed at him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cassie lay on her side with her back to Bucky and Steve. The tent was small. They’d only been expecting to need room for two and she wasn’t large, but her two companions were. She tried to make herself even smaller, but her feet kept touching Bucky’s legs, her ass kept brushing against him every time she wiggled a bit to chase comfort. Or maybe it was the other way. Maybe he was touching her.

A few minutes after Steve’s breathing deepened and slowed, Cassie felt Bucky shift. He turned over to lie on his left side, facing her. “You smell good,” he whispered, tentatively moving his hand over to rest on her hand. “Which is so crazy since we’ve been sweating for two days.”

“There are pheromones in the natural scent of a person,” she whispered back, unsure of what to say. “But I...I have been wearing an antiperspirant. Just...saying.” She swallowed heavily as his hand began to drift up, his fingertips playing with the hem of her tank top.

“Steve told me to back off,” he whispered, his breath cascading over her ear and cheek. “I get why. How we were raised...back then, it was more than just a low move to make a pass at another man’s girl, ‘specially if he put a ring on her finger.” His hand slipped under her shirt and rested heavily above the thick circular scar she gave herself to represent a navel when she was eighteen. “But you’re not like any woman I’ve ever met. You’re nothing like the women from the forties but you...you’re not meant for 2016 either. I’ve lived through so many decades and...here you are. Here’s this beautiful woman who sees what little good is left in me.”

“I saw the good fifteen years ago, when you brought the CSF to the Playground. You were so cold and emotionless when you walked in. So strong and stoic, but when you saw me strapped down to that table in a fetal position so they could inject the CSF, you literally flinched.” She took a deep breath and sighed it out. “You refused to give them the vial. They had to call in your handler.”

“I just couldn’t believe they were experimenting on you. You were so young. I knew they were going to break you. I wish I could have stopped them.”

“It’s not your fault, Sergeant. I know you would have stopped them if you could have.” She turned over to face him, forcing his fingers to slide over her hip and settle in the small of her back. “You are absolutely a good man, Bucky.”

He shook his head a little, his tair tickling her forehead as it moved. “A good man wouldn’t have spent the last two days wanting another man’s fiancée.”

She scoffed a little. “And a good woman wouldn’t be so damn excited to hear that. I guess neither of us are perfect.”

Bucky smiled softly. “To me, you are. As close to perfect as a man can touch.” He brought his hand up to pull a lock of sweaty hair from her forehead and tuck it back with the rest of her hair. So much care in a single action.

“Bucky...I meant what I said in Germany, ya know. If there was a man who might take me from Clint, it’d be you,” she whispered, part of her wondering exactly why she was telling the man.

His eyes went just a little wide. “I...we better turn back over.” His hand returned to the small of her back, though. “If Steve sees this, he’ll start a fight and I’m a bit disadvantaged at the moment.”

Cassie smiled. “I’d protect you, soldier.”

“No doubt about that,” Bucky whispered, smiling as he rubbed a circle into the small of her back with his thumb. “But we’ve got two weeks ‘til Wakanda. Plenty of time to piss off Captain America.” He licked his lips before pulling his hand back and rolling over to his back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As they were walking the next day, Cassie’s bag began to ring. “You brought a phone?” Steve asked as she dropped the pack to the ground and started to dig through it.

“Cool your jets, Rogers. I’m not an idiot,” she snapped, pulling out an old Nokia cell phone with a thick antenna.

“Whoa. Even I know that’s ancient tech,” Bucky said as he looked at it.

“Ancient, yes, but functional. Not working on the same systems as the new stuff. No GPS. If I keep the call short, they won’t even be able to ping the mobile towers,” she said, proudly. “Had to steal it from a museum, but it’s tactically sound.” She hit the button and held the cell to her ear. “Moshi moshi?”

“Cassie?” a familiar voice asked.

“Phil? Wh-what’s going on? How’d you know I have this-”

“I was wondering if I could use you on something...kinda world-ending important. Mack says he can’t get a location on your cell. Where are you?”

“Phil, it’s a...it’s a long story, but, uh...I’ll get back to you,” she said, moving to hang up.

“No! Don’t hang up! I wouldn’t be calling if I didn’t need-” Phil started.

“Is that Coulson?” Steve asked as Bucky looked between the other two.

“Is that Captain America?” Phil asked.

“Yeah, it is,” she answered both of them at the same time. “Look, I can’t stay on the phone. I know you’re running traces and you’re gonna have a location for me any minute now. I can’t let you find me. I’m actually pretty damn busy.”

“I have an Inhuman parasite in the body of a man I killed working to destroy the world. He’s infected Daisy and taken control of her, I think this is a little more important than whatever you’re doing in North Africa, Cassie.”

“Thanks for letting me know the trace is working,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I will call you back later. This is important, too.”

“Ya know, I thought you signed the Accords as a ruse to get out of the Raft, but if you’re not willing to help me with this just because it’s off the books-”

“Mein Gott, Philip! This has nothing to do with that! I am helping Cap and Bucky make it somewhere safe so that we can mount an offensive on the Raft and help the other Avengers escape captivity! If you really need help with Inhuman, we can help you after the jailbreak. I will call you back then! Goodbye, Phil!” Cassie snapped, turning off the phone and shoving it back into her bag. She looked up at the soldiers who were both looking down at her questioningly. “He was talking too much. I had to cut him off before they got a location,” she explained calmly.

“Who’s Coulson?” Bucky asked, offering his hand as she went to stand. She took it and slung her backpack over her shoulder.

“I told you I had an ex who’s a big fan of Cap and the Commandos?” she reminded him. “Phil Coulson, Director of SHIELD.”

“You dated the director of SHIELD?” Bucky asked.

“Well, he wasn’t Director when I dated him,” she said, smiling.

“He’s a good man,” Steve said, thinking of Coulson dead at Loki’s hand.

“That’s a recurrent theme with your boyfriends, isn’t it?” Bucky asked as Cassie adjusted the straps of her bag. “A good man, just couldn’t keep you.”

Cassie looked at her feet as she started to walk away from them. “Phil didn’t want to keep me. He found a pretty little cellist in Portland. He decided on her.”

“What an idiot,” Bucky commented, following her.

“And Clint hasn’t lost me yet,” she finished.

Bucky nodded once and moved past her to take point. “Where’s your ring?” he whispered as he passed her. Cassie looked down at her left hand, shocked to see that her engagement ring was gone. “Pocket.”

“How’d it get there, Barnes?” she asked, patting her pants.

“Don’t want people seeing it,” he said, turning his head to look at her. “Might think you’re worth stealing or something.”

“I’m definitely worth stealing. My wit alone is enough to make me worth the effort.”

“And that body of yours is just icing,” Bucky shot back with a smirk.

“On a very intelligent cake. Don’t objectify me, Sergeant,” she said with a smile.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart. You and I have both been objects.”

“Do you have to do that?” Steve snapped from behind her.

“You’re right, Steve. Let’s just pretend we don’t have a gorgeous woman traveling with us,” Bucky said.

Steve rolled his eyes. “You don’t need to pretend anything, but you shouldn’t be so shameless with-”

“A grown-ass woman who’s giving as good as she’s getting?” Cassie interrupted. “I’m not married, Steve.”

“Your fiance is sitting in a cell right now because of me. The least I can do is make sure that my best friend doesn’t break up his engagement while he’s stuck in there.”

“Glad you think so highly of me, Steve,” Bucky mumbled.

“I think the world of you, both of you,” Steve said, seriously. “That’s why I don’t want you to do something damaging to-”

“Steve, stop. If I chose to break off my engagement to Barton, it would be because I chose to. Not because of Bucky or you. Maybe I’m…” She shook her head. “...not really sure I want to be married. Maybe I don’t know who I am so how could I possibly make a good addition to someone else? Maybe I can’t marry him because I’ve been hiding the unsavory parts of myself from him. The worst thing he knows about me is Joanna.”

“Clint would love you anyway,” Steve said, matter-of-factly.

Cassie scoffed. “If he wanted an assassin for a bride, he’d have asked Natasha a long time ago.”

“You aren’t an assassin, Cassie,” Steve said, grabbing her hand to stop her.

She smirked sardonically as she turned and looked up at him. “We don’t know that, do we? What we do know is that at least one of the names on SHIELD’s Walls of Valor was on there because of me. I’ve killed. A good man, a good agent, one that Fury liked enough to go on a search for.” She shook her head and forced out a sharp breath of air. “Were there more? Was it a whole group of agents that I murdered? I don’t know. You don’t know. But just one is enough to make me question myself forever. And it’ll be enough for Clint to stop seeing me as his pristine Red Queen.”

Steve’s eyebrows came together. “He doesn’t love you because you’re… ‘pristine’.”

“He wouldn’t love me if he knew I was a monster, Steve,” she argued.

“I don’t agree,” Steve said as Bucky stopped and turned to them. “And you aren’t a monster.”

“You don’t have to agree. I know him. I know Clint. He sees me as this beautiful, broken thing, a little bit scarred but otherwise beautiful. The biggest scar on me is supposed to be the one Loki carved into my chest. He thinks that I’m...getting better, but I’m just getting better at hiding it. I shouldn’t have to hide anything from him though and I do. I have to hide. You think it won’t change how he sees me when he finds out I murdered someone? You can’t say that, Cap, because it’s changed how you look at me.” Steve opened his mouth to argue, but Cassie continued before he could. “You look at me and Bucky like Clint looks at fuckin’ rescue dogs. ‘Oh sure, this one has scars from being forced into dog fights but we can rehabilitate him!” she said in a mock of Clint’s voice before her face fell.

“Except we didn’t get the Pit Bull with the clipped ears and the scars, Steve. We got the Golden Retriever with the waggly tail who eats pizza.” She stepped toward Bucky and adjusted her bag on her back. “I don’t mind being the Pit Bull so much but Clint thinks I’m the Retriever...and it’s gonna hurt our relationship when he realizes I’m not.”

Steve shook his head sadly. “When did you decide your relationship was over?” he asked, quietly.

She looked between Steve and Bucky, then shrugged. “Probably when I saw how he looked at Bucky.”

“Was that before or after you told him that Bucky could take you from him?” Steve asked, pointedly.

“Back when we were still stateside, Steve. When we were watching the news about the bombing in Vienna,” Cassie answered before she started walking again. “He looked at Bucky like he was a rabid dog.”

“I’m not excited about all these dog metaphors,” Bucky spoke up as he followed her.

“I just don’t think you should write off your whole engagement until you know how Clint feels about...your past.”

“My past. Like it’s that simple.” She rolled her eyes. “This isn’t like you finding out I was pregnant with Phil’s kid or that I wanted so badly to be a mother that I was willing to let Loki’s child destroy me from the inside. This is worse. This is murder.”

“But ‘murder’ implies you did it on purpose, Cassie. You were forced-” Steve started.

“No, I wasn’t forced. I was given an order and I didn’t even try to resist. I murdered that agent and...memories are vague, but I think I liked it. I am a murderer, Steve. Clint is not.”

“We’ve all done regrettable things,” Steve said.

“Not like this. Only Bucky can understand this.” She swallowed thickly. “Look, drop it. I’m not who he thinks I am and I never will be,” she said before walking away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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