#lost stability and the universe has been an overall piece of shit and really i do not have it in me to deal with this anymore

[bloodgulchblog]

I know it's kind of a meme, but I genuinely don't think book Master Chief and video game Master Chief are drastically different characters.

It really comes down to differences of format, writer style, and circumstances. Like yeah, there are differences, but I think they are different for out-of-universe reasons and not actual changes.

The game writers have been generally good at one-liners and working in crunch-time story-hell in a format where you don't get anything explicitly stating what's going on in that character's head (with later entries adding more dialogue to try to help), while the novelists tend to not be particularly good with jokes and write him a bit more formally, but also they have opportunities to have the character in calmer situations and to say exactly what they think he's thinking.

There's historically been friction between different writers in the Halo sandbox not strictly being all-in fans of everything each other has done, but overall I think Chief's about as cohesive as any other time you see multiple writers working with the same character with different instructions at different times. You'll get stray bits here and there, because this character has been around for twenty years across multiple teams at this point, but for the most part the core ideas remain unchanged and work okay when you look at the whole.

The Master Chief is a grown-up child soldier who has a lot he can worry about, has lost so much, and struggles to fit pieces together sometimes. He's also brave, stubborn, stoic in the face of crisis, selfless, and occasionally kind of a little shit. He supports the people around him by being a pillar of stability, and he does that by being quiet and steady and sometimes cracking wise in the face of strain so he can play that nothing's fazing him. A lot of how Chief acts and reads depends on if he's with a character who knows him well (Cortana, Johnson, his Spartans) or with strangers (The Arbiter, Del Rio, Halo Infinite gang). Cortana's death hits him so hard he can't hide all his emotions under that shell no matter how hard he tries.

I don't know, it all holds together for me? A character who does worry and does have fears and unhealed trauma can also be a funny hypercompetent walking tank and pretty bullet-proof from the outside. He's all those things.

[that-one-violist]

o .  o

i am growing increasingly and ever consistently uneasy by the SECOND and i wish to no longer perceive anything ever more again however due to the circumstances the ‘no longer perceive’ button is broken and cannot / will not be pushed as itll cause a plethora of problems in many a ppls lives whom i do not wish to cause problem and annoyance and so to accomodate for this i will simply be

a mess

[addictedtostorytelling]

Part 1- Hi! (Feel free to ignore I don’t want to bother you) your lost answer to anon got me thinking about an old headcanon I could never get str8 (Jate’s my lost otp & I love suliet to pieces). In “LaFleur”, sawyer says Kate’s face is gone from his memory, 3y’s enough to get over someone. But as soon as she’s back, he keeps glancing @ her as to figure out if he believes his own words. Except from the obvious writers’ ambiguous trick to keep the “square” alive for a bit longer,

Part 2- I thought it was some sort of leftover tenderness they shared toward each other (that Jack/Juliet didn’t get) cause despite their incompatibility, I believe they genuinely loved each other. So my question really is: do you think, post “the end” S & K find à way to accept that they care about each other, help each other get over their losses, learn to belong even if it’s just in each other’s lives (as friends or more) ? Sorry for this novel and thanks.

hey @clarissemcc!

so my headcanon for how things turn out with kate and sawyer post-island is definitely on the angsty side.

i’ll tuck it after the “keep reading,” just to be safe.

___________

as the final on-screen events of the original timeline in the series finale take place, jack has made the decision to remain behind on the island (where he soon dies), and juliet is already dead, meaning that both kate and sawyer return to civilization faced with the prospect of going through the rest of their lives bereft of their respective soulmates.

both of them undoubtedly mourn.

both of them undoubtedly suffer. 

but, ultimately, kate is better equipped to cope with her loss than sawyer is his.

that’s not to say that things are easy for kate, of course.

when she is finally reunited with jack in the flash-sideways universe, the sheer yearning in her “i’ve missed you so much” admission implies that she has likely spent years on years---a full lifetime---in the ot grieving him. 

losing jack after just having reconciled with him for the first time since their falling out in the wake of their broken engagement and after everything that they had been through together both on and off of the island most certainly leaves her heartbroken and reeling. 

she probably never really gets over mourning him and wondering “what if---?”

i honestly don’t see her ever getting in another long-term relationship or marrying after him; if she was going to “settle down” in that way, he was the one person she was going to do so with.

that said, i do think that, overall, she is able to face that grief (however long she has to) because she has a sense of purpose in leaving the island. 

she’s going to help claire raise aaron.

and i tend to believe that having someplace to go and something important to do helps her endure a life without jack.

that’s where she encounters whatever healing is available to her and “learns to belong,” like you talk about.

before crashing on the island, she is a fugitive runaway with nothing good or lasting in her life, but afterward she has two people who are looking to her to provide stability for them; she has a family, a home, and, most significantly, a reason to stick around.

not so with sawyer.

before the island, he is placeless---a traveling con man, in and out of prison, lacking a solid identity, much less a sense of purpose.

on the island, and particularly during the 70s in dharmaville, he finally gains grounding, becoming a super competent leader under the guise of jim lafleur and finding a partner---in every sense of the word---in juliet.

and had he been able to leave the island with juliet and marry her, as per his plan, i think he would have continued in the upward trajectory we see from him in s5 and s6. he would have listened to his better angels.

but in the wake of losing juliet, i’m not sure he can---and not just because she’s gone but because he blames himself for her death.

for as gut-wrenching as leaving jack behind on the island is for kate---and particularly knowing that he is badly wounded and possibly close to death---she can at least take solace in the fact that jack makes a choice for himself, and she can honor his willing sacrifice by taking care of his sister and nephew.

sawyer knows no such comfort.

he blames himself for juliet’s death on multiple levels: because he asked juliet to stay with him on the island for “two weeks” which turned into three years (see episode 05x08 “lafleur”); because his behavior around kate after she returned to the island eventually prompted juliet to sign on for jack’s plan to blow up the jughead (see episode 05x16 “the incident” pt. i); and because he literally couldn’t hold onto juliet and dropped her down the shaft (see episode 05x17 “the incident” pt. ii). 

though one could try to argue with him that juliet exercised personal agency both in remaining on the island with him AND detonating the bomb, his guilt and self-loathing would never accept such appeals.

in his mind, he killed the only person he ever truly loved.

and without her, not only does he have nowhere to go and nothing to do post-island, but he also carries with him the sense that he doesn’t deserve to get to go anywhere or do anything.

he doesn’t want to carry on in her absence.

he wants to suffer for his sins.

he wants to experience every moment of agony rightly owed him for his actions.

filled with guilt, pain, and the impulse to self-castigate, i just can’t imagine him faring well.

though kate might try to convince him to not give up, i don’t think he’d listen to her or accept any attempts by her to take care of him---and particularly not because he knows that part of what persuaded juliet to blow up the warhead was her assumption, however erroneous, that he would eventually choose kate over her (“i changed my mind when i saw you look at her”).

even just being around kate as a friend would trigger his guilt in the extreme.

and while he wouldn’t blame kate---as he says he doesn’t, per the scene on the pier---he would still blame himself.

he would always blame himself.

hate himself, even.

and a self-hating sawyer is a dangerous one.

i mean, self-hatred is what underlies his jerky, bullying, posturing behavior during the early seasons of the show, right? and, by comparison, that self-hatred is of a more “garden variety,” rooted in his sense that he has become someone despicable, rather than an extremely personal sense of loss (and fault).

so much more extreme will be his bent over juliet---and so much the worse his self-sabotaging behavior as a consequence.

the pre-show sawyer is an outlaw who lives dangerously, but he ultimately possesses a self-preservative instinct; he is a consummate survivor.

that’s part of what makes him and kate so similar.

and him and juliet, for that matter.  

but this sawyer---the one who feels responsible for getting the woman he loves killed---won’t care what happens to him anymore.

so he won’t do himself in all at once---not when he has a very strong sense that he deserves to suffer for what he has done for as long as possible---but he will drink and smoke himself sick and pick barfights with guys twice his size and run cons where he’s almost sure to get caught and then pull his gun on the cops who show up to arrest him; he’ll be a fucking mess, the likes of which would make even bearded, pill-popping, oceanic-six, los angeles jack go, “oh shit.”

and without any sense of grander purpose, i don’t know that sawyer would be able to pull himself out of the spiral.

kate might try to argue that he has an obligation to take care of himself if not for his own sake than for clementine’s, but he’d probably say that his daughter’s only interaction with him being by way of the trust fund he left for her is for the best.

honestly, i don’t think his story in the ot has any kind of happy ending.

and i don’t think he lasts as long as kate does.

just based on the way i understand his character, i doubt that sawyer allows himself to find any sort of refuge with kate post-island in the ot, either friendly or romantic, even if she tries to offer it to him. he also probably eschews company of any kind from anyone, including their other friends from the island. 

for my money, there is just too much hurt and guilt in him, for which he cannot permit himself any sort of peace, so he strikes out on his own (“some of us are meant to be alone”) to disastrous effect.

while kate undoubtedly worries about him, i think that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, she makes the conscious decision to focus her energies on claire and aaron, resigning herself to the fact that sawyer doesn’t want to be saved, and particularly not by her. 

ultimately, i think their paths diverge.

she learns to live again after the island, and he doesn’t.

all of this postulation given, i’m certainly not harshing on your headcanon! it’s way happier than mine and, frankly, a whole lot nicer to think about.

lest i end on a super negative note here, i’ll finish up by saying that i find it highly significant that in the flash-sideways, kate once again finds purpose in helping claire with aaron, while sawyer is searching---not only as a detective for his parents’ killer but literally walking around with a big, yellow sunflower (his bloom of choice for juliet), trying to find where (or rather to whom) he belongs, hopeful for the life he has always wanted to lead with her. 

though he doesn’t get any kind of happy ending in the ot, at least by my estimation, he does eventually find what he’s looking for in the flash-sideways, and that reunion with juliet is so healing for him. 

anyway, i’m rambling here.

thanks for the question! feel welcome to send another any time.