#its more fun to see him suffer | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

slocumjoe · 1 year

Note

hey uhhh i went thru ur oc post history and u said gus set himself on fire?? pls context

I love this character because whenever someone asks about him I always have to take a deep breath and get comfortable and suck a breath in through my teeth. I treat him so poorly

More Gus lore, because that specific event is actually tied to the very first event that would fuck him up forever, so I can't really talk about it without going in depth.

This is explaining the core tenent of Augustijn's story, which is guilt and its dangers. Basically, where that constant guilt came from, and how it...turned out for him...

It turns out okay. Just...takes 200+ years, an apocalypse, a divorce, and his son dying! 🥳Yay🥳

Tw; Religious trauma, child abuse, suicide, drug use, cannibalism, mental illnesses, and yet another suicide attempt.

So, some background, Gus's mom, Emma, was a fanatic catholic and generally Bat Shit about religion. As you might imagine, this is the Direct Source of both Gus' questionable worldviews, traumas, and his biological inclination to uuuhhh bad Head Times.

Emma was raised mildly religious, but she...took to it too hard? Her family was not the cause of her obsession, Gus's grandparents and uncles/aunts over there actually cut her off at one point, because she was starting to worry them but reaching out led to her lashing out. So, they just...backed off. Emma herself was a simple, homebody woman, who wanted to be at home raising her kids, and tending her garden. She would have been this way even without the religious thing.

But Emma and her side of the family were prone to addiction, see? And religion became her point of fixation and obsession. This could have still been okay, if not for the church she went into. A catholic church in the Hague that was known by all for being kind of fucking out there, even by other hardcore Catholics. This was one she went into, and even her grandchild 240+ years later would feel the ripple of this decision.

Emma goes into church and gets gnarly ideas about how life works. Its a woman's duty to have kids and raise them, to be good to her husband and her house, to listen and obey her men. Sin is inevitable and everyone does it, only those that admit and accept punishment can get another chance at Paradise. God knows every action you take and he does not care for the context, he only cares about the action. There is no "well, but" under the Lord.

Emma has mental illness, some kind of depression and anxiety, so this Big Brother Watching And Judging fucked her up. Especially since her church, in particular, was physically abusive if you did not confess to anything during confession. They thought if you had nothing to confess, you were lying.

At this point, she's met and engaged to Theodore Reinier, a rich heir to a European manufacturing company. He's pretty, a gentleman, and best of all, rich, so she can have as big and luxurious a garden as she wants. She likes him. She does not love him. She's in her twenties and unmarried with no kids, and her poor family needs to be taken care of. So she marries him. Theodore is smart enough to see this for what it is, and kind enough to allow it. He lets his wife do her own thing and treats her as a friend, rather than a lover. She hates this, she wants to be a wife (she doesnt). She wants kids, he gives her one. Augustijn. This birth goes rough, and she's told no more children.

Theodore makes one rule; August goes to a different church, or he does not go at all. Theo really didn't like Emma's church and he certainly wasn't exposing his kid to that shit.

Emma pretends to agree and takes Gus to That Church. Theo doesn't attend, so he doesn't know this is happening until much later. Gus gets all the same nasty shit Emma does. Theo learns of this when he sees Gus covered in bruises from confession beatings. This puts a huge rift between him and Emma, and he pulls all the strings he can to have her church shut down.

Emma grows to resent and hate Theo and Augustijn for not being the perfect husband and child she deserves as a good, God fearing house wife. Augustijn is left to his nannies, Emma hides away in her private garden, fuming. Theodore tries to bond with his son, but Emma's poisoned that well.

Emma tells Augustijn about demons, to fear them. She specifically tells him about church grims, demons that hunt around churches in the form of a dog to drag sinners to hell. She says this as she's admiring her new obsidian dog statues for her garden.

Eventually, Emma goes yellow wallpaper and loses her mind, and is sent to therapy and put on medications. Augustijn loathes his father for his mother's state. Theodore just wants his friend and son okay. But Emma, as she's out in town, coming back from therapy, she stops at a friend's house while the friend isn't there, and hooks up with the woman's husband. Friend's husband was stern, strict with his wife, God fearing, and generally an obnoxious 50s ideal shithead husband. Everything Emma wanted. This wasn't out of nowhere, it was brewing in the background. She knew both of them from her old church.

Emma goes home, and finally having a reason for the guilt that's always plagued her, elects to acknowledge her sin. She drowns herself in the pond of her garden, stared down by three dark, ruby-eyed dogs, overseeing her passage into the afterlife. Her young son comes into the garden to meet his mother, after she's been gone all day, only to find her in a red pool. He looks up into the eyes of the dogs. He remembers nothing of this incident, blocking it out and having been too young to understand.

Years pass, and Augustijn turns to drugs as well, though his come from the darkest parts of the Hague, rather than a doctor. He turns to sex, to crime, to anything he thinks will either corrupt him so much he doesn't care, or will finally make his guilt feel justified. He wears his mother's cross necklace through it all, and sees her beloved dog with every sin.

Augustijn goes to America for college, to Harvard, studying to become a pastor himself. (This is maybe the most terrifying part of him, the fact that he almost got it). But he doesn't feel satisfied with it, has a moment of clarity and realizes he isn't fit to preach anything. The grim certainly doesn't think so. He instead follows his only friend, Isadora, into the military. The US government allowing their soldiers to do chems means his failed drug tests don't matter.

Augustijn becomes a sniper. He has always hurt people, excelled in it, but taking life frightens him, because he knows he has no right to decide who lives or dies, not like this. But he's in China, and he's told to kill. He does, and he's very good at it. His teammates marvel at just how scrappy and determined he is, like a weed, a mold.

The Biandukou Pass Incident occurs. He eats his entire team, trapped in a Chinese mountain range during a blizzard.

Delirious from almost two months of surviving on nothing but psycho and human flesh, Augustijn is let loose back into Boston, honorably discharged. His lingering hallucinations from his Daytripper addiction, mixed with psycho withdrawal, trauma, guilt, shame, the fear of God—everything culminates. He looks up and sees the figure that has haunted him since that one, awful day; the church grim, staring expectantly.

His mother drowned herself, so he thought it fitting if he set himself ablaze.

#ss; alter #I hate to put a word to his specific illness because you always get people like 'this isnt what i think this is like so pls die'#but i imagine he'd be diagnosed with hppd #hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. basically lingering effects of hallucinogenics after use #the point of emma is that she did not ever see past the shit #Augustijn gradually learns how to reject his guilt and view himself objectively #and comes to see how he was hurt and how he hurt others. and accepts that he has a right to feel hurt but an obligation to be better #emma doesnt. she never would have even if she survived her attempt #its like. you only feel guilt because its a concept put into you #and emma taught him guilt. always feel dirty and shameful.#but. she didnt feel guilty. not really. she was confident in all of her actions and never once hesistated #she thought it was guilt just because she knew how it would look to other people. thats not guilt thats awareness.#she wasnt guilty she feared repercussions.#meanwhile her son grew up always ashamed and horrified at himself and was desperate for any kind of comeuppance #not to make it okay because he knew it wouldn't. but because he deserved it #accountability and justice are also big concepts in gus' character. the idea that someone becoming better and earnestly doing it #is better and more worthwhile than them suffering for their actions. this comes up with the Institute and Isadora #anyway if any of you come at me bitching about portaying a woman as abusive im biting #'joe no one does fhat' they literally do. its happened to me before. yall say you support womens wrongs until theyre abusive moms #anyway. fun fact; being beaten during confessions is why gus cant admit when hes done wrong for like 30 years. its a trauma/trigger #gus really is just. 'how do i process what happened to me without losing my mind'#and he lost his mind. but he does everything he can to find it again. because he doesnt want to feel this way anymore

10 notes · View notes

sirenofthegreenbanks · 9 months

Note

hiiii really enjoyed your chenglingposting i was thinking about how sometimes the kids in adult stories function as a sort of barometer for optimism about the future in their views and options in life... obviously the alliance wants to continue the cycle of antagonizing and vengeance and conflict with the veneer of "honor" but. zcl gets to choose not to. its been a while since I either read or watched, do you know if zcl was ever onboard with actually wanting vengeance or if that was just being pushed on him? Obv its not super in line w his personality but grief could be a factor. i just thought it'd make a lot of sense if he changed his mind on that due to the influence of wenzhou and how they prioritize enjoying life w your people and following your own path over expectations. priest really took one more chance to emphasize breaking cycles/"if it sucks hit the bricks"

hi!! omg!!! thank you and im glad you enjoyed it! honestly this is a question i have been thinking about since at least two rereads ago. the show and the novel are handling this issue of zcl picking up his legacy / giving in to external expectations / finding out what he really wants in life a little differently, i think, as befitting of what they both focus on. ive said in my chenglingpost that the show is about legacy and inheritance in my eyes, while the novel is about martial arts and freedom of choice. obvs freedom of choice is a high priority in word of honor as well, but word of honor seems to have an overarching look, kind of focusing on the big picture and what a generation / a community needs rather than a few individuals, while the novel focuses exclusively on wenzhou and their little group and seems to handle the rest of the themes in priest's usual style. the show is about something "grand", the novel is about the mundane, almost boring human experience. martial arts play a bigger role in the latter too because they are a stand-in for many things that are hard to grasp, like autonomy. in chengling's context, martial arts are irrevocably linked with seeking revenge. i think that is specifically in the novel the case, not so much in the show. in the show seeking revenge is pushed onto him by others as well as inheriting his sect's legacy and becoming worthy of being his father's son. in the novel, the idea of seeking revenge is first presented to him by gu xiang, and it is actually this huge contrast to how others treat him because others "generously" offer to take revenge for him, while gu xiang tells him he can do that himself. we see with wen kexing that getting revenge does not make u happy. it gives u closure but it does not make u happy. i think that is something chengling learns during the novel. he gets closure in the end but it does not look the way he had imagined it would. i think he imagined himself to get super strong and then single-handedly slay his foes. yknow, as u often see in wuxia and as wen kexing literally does. then he starts learning martial arts and realizes getting super strong is actually not that easy, and this chasm between what he expects of himself and what he is able to achieve gets wider and wider and he falls into depression spirals, because to chengling, seeking revenge was taking ownership of his life and his trauma, and what use does he have when he cant even do that? that is the path wen kexing walks and it hollowed him out and it would have him kill himself if he hadnt met zhou zishu; wen kexing viewed himself as an instrument for a very long time rather than as someone deserving of having his own life. so obvs, that path is rubbish by itself (wkx gets his revenge and his closure and his life, good for him!) and its far too much for a kid. and i think, that is what chengling learns here: he only needs to do as much as he can, only bite off what he can chew, and the rest should not be his concern. and there really turns out to be a way to get everything he needs without walking the same path as wen kexing, as the novel proves, because wen kexing had nobody when he was in the same situation while trying to survive the valley, while chengling has wenzhou who guide him and shield him and love him. (crying myself into a huddle over wen kexing and chengling and them being foils of each other.) so in that sense youre already putting it into words. chengling seems to have changed his mind over the course of the novel, he doesnt have that same outlook on vengeance as he as in the start. i think thats different for the show. in the show, there is this weighing of the concept of revenge against the concept of getting justice, and what both these things do and require of a person and what they can offer u as an individual, but also u as a collective, in the long run. they are seen as two different things and are explored and qestioned individually. i think that can be seen in the conflict with chengling and all these expectations everyone has of him and how he handles that.

#i cant say much more regarding the show rn. but i think it does something very similar to the novel #re: wen kexing and chengling getting their closure parallel to each other and being foils of each other #one walking a path the other doesnt have to or doesnt get to #chengling is kinda symbolically getting the kind of justice wkx would have deserved to and gets now through chengling #but for the show #their closure is not just holding the big bad accountable. its also the community effort of forging a better future together #aa this went off track. but i cant get into more detail re: chengling and vengeance for the show. still in my rewatch!#i hope this answers your question anyway!!!!#thank you for sending it to me i had a lot of fun!#i have a lot more to say but tumblr seems to impose a word limit on answering asks! >:(#something something martial arts are zzs's way of communication and he uses that rather than his words to give chengling what he needs #something something practising martial arts helps chengling discover the boundaries of his own body and reverts him back into a child #rather than the orphaned failure of a son who needs revenge to give himself meaning. like a tool.#something something martial arts is both chengling's cause of suffering and his tool of freeing himself #something something zzs knows for pretty much most of the novel that zcl has this grand potential inside him and simply ignores it #something something chengling's shifu (he has a shifu in the novel before zzs!) is an idiot who doesnt even see his disciple's potential #who blames chengling instead of reflecting upon himself (and how thats kinda like schools blaming neurodivergent and other kids for failing #and how zzs notices chengling's inert dormant potential / difficulty practically immediately and is probs uniquely qualified to teach him #drawing from his own experience with harsh teaching methods and surviving impossible tasks and breaking through body limits and difficultie #paired with being bamf at martial arts and probs having this vast pool of knowledge #something something zzs acting nasty but doing good (and nobody knows) and chengling turning out happier and more stable in the end #inbox #geneticcatalyst #tian ya ke #faraway wanderers #word of honor #meta #zhang chengling #zhou zishu #wen kexing

3 notes · View notes