#the trauma starts here

[wreywrites]

Tiger Shark

Part 2: The Sea

Chapter 9

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

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

“Was already gettin’ light,” Elsie says.

“How long ago was that?”

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

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

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

The others wake before long.

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

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

“About time,” Mako snorts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Please,” Mako says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~                               ~~~                               ~~~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Run! Run!” Zalea is shouting.

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

There is another scream.

“Elsie!” Merritt shouts.

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

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

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

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

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

I crawl back down the hill to Mako.

“Any idea?” he says quietly.

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

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

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

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

The cannon stops him short.

We sit in silence for a long time.

~~~                               ~~~                               ~~~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

****

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[mynnthia]

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

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

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

[akanemnon]

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

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

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

[inkskinned]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Council of lovefools.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[suntails]

totals ur drama

[threestripeslider]

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

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

[milquetoad]

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

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

[realbeefman]

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

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

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[hadesoftheladies]

went on the twitter radfem space and it was full of the most obscene racism and violent language. tiktok is absurd, too. and now radblr is just near constant in-fighting and bullying. there's just no room for black radical feminists on the internet. i think i've gotten all i was ever going to get from this place. i think it's time i just move out of here and focus on reading theory and building irl community and maybe focus on the youtube channel. any mutuals that want to keep in touch, y'all can message me and we can figure out how to stay in touch elsewhere! (like discord maybe!) those who want to follow the channel can subscribe and stay subscribed until i upload. i may just create a website specifically for blogging and my thoughts after compiling the posts i've kept on this account. not deactivating immediately, since i still have loads to figure out and arrange, but i don't think i'm helping anyone on here and i'm tired of the hostility. i don't need anymore in my life. i'd rather just curate in my own space and accumulate a volume of work that i can use for other things and not have my blog polluted by racism, homophobia and anti intellectualism. i'm tired of trying to convince the unwilling. i'd rather just be a proper essayist and have people fight about me rather than with me XD.

[crimeronan]

i've rewatched the whole of toh season 3 like three times over the past few weeks and having done so..... i Do have to say. there's this one popular gripe about how the writers "stopped caring about" or "completely shafted" luz and hunter's relationship in the finale, and i think it is..... so silly.

like. by all means be a little sad that they didnt have a one-on-one interaction animated in said finale, but. like.

their arc finished in thanks to them. like, their arc was completed in thanks to them. there are two arc-finishing moments in that episode: the first is luz's "you're family now," establishing a permanent commitment to each other; the second is hunter's "that's what belos does, he tricks people" -- finally acknowledging that neither he NOR luz were to blame for what happened. and shedding the codependent guilt-ridden self-isolating secret-keeping they'd been doing for months.

like. thanks to them establishes that they are In It Forever, and it solves the interpersonal issues that had been plaguing them since hollow mind. it's a brilliant episode that finally gets them to a healthy place and absolutely nothing in the subsequent episodes even HINTS at ANYTHING undoing that.

their relationship is Rock. they are Family.

season 3 is essentially a two-hour movie where the first 40 minutes are spent on luz and hunter working out their issues. having established that, the next 80 minutes need to be spent on things that.... aren't stuff the animators have already spent 40 minutes on. you feel me?? any repetition and dialogue they had in the finale would likely have meant taking away a different detail about the surrounding cast.

again: be sad they didnt high five in the epilogue or whatever, that is Fine. (i'm not, but i Am eternally sad darius and gus didn't get to do more plotwise, so i get it.)

but for Goodness Sake you guys.... you cannae ascribe malice and/or bad writing to one of the best television arcs ever written.... you will hurt my feelings :(((

luz and hunter's canon relationship is so fucking good. they love each other in the finale and have been canonically hanging out being family for years, regardless of whether they're noogieing each other onscreen or not.

Everything Is Okay.

[lucky-slice]

low key i think to deny Riko's trauma is to deny his narrative importance in the story.

like Riko's trauma related to his father parallels neil's. His concept of brotherhood adds complexity to Andrew and Aaron's relationship. He acts not just as an antagonist but as a foil to other character's relationship to trauma and violence.

to solely view riko through the lense of his actions is to miss the point. He is a character in a story, not a real breathing human being.

[honeycombclaire]

You know what I need? I need the Marvel time-travel trope, but everyone goes back to the 40s.

(I say everyone, I mean the Avengers pre-Infinity War.)

Because everyone says Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are men out of time (and they’re not technically wrong). But I want to see the Avengers (sans Steve and Bucky) getting sent back in time by some wizard or a freak Asgardian lightning storm or something, and poof, they’re back in the 40s, right smack in the middle of the war.

I want the Avengers to witness what life was like during the war, hiding in bomb shelters and seeing the after effects of the world crawling out of the Great Depression and hurtling into the second World War in twenty years.

Life when Steve really was the weirdest thing science ever created. When he was desperately needed and internationally adored. Because all of the Avengers have PTSD, but Steve and Bucky went through World War II and got spit back out into the 20th and 21st centuries, and that’s a whole different category of PTSD and trauma.

I want the Avengers to actually meet the survivors of Azzano, when Steve marched into the massive Nazi base and saved hundreds of soldiers, part because he could and part because he was desperate to save his best friend, and didn’t think twice about it.

I want the Avengers to see Steve and Bucky thrive. I want them to witness Steve and Bucky with the Howling Commandos. Steve’s first team. I want them to see how Steve and Bucky lived, what life was like, because it was drastically different than the modern world.

I want the Avengers to witness firsthand life on a military base. I want Tony to have to look his father in the eye and pretend he doesn’t know who he is, but get to see all the good his father did because all he remembers is his father being an asshole. How much Steve really did care about Howard (and that Bucky did, too, because Howard made weapons to keep Steve safe).

I want Natasha to see that just because she’s an assassin doesn’t mean she’s a bad person, because there were hundreds of military assassins and spies during the war that did bad things to get information.

I want them to hear about the Tesseract and learn that sometimes Steve’s intelligence should be taken seriously, because he has experience and knowledge that none of the other Avengers will ever have. (“You should have left it in the water.” “This is the guy my dad never shut up about?”)

I want them to see how much Steve loved Peggy, how she and Bucky were the only ones who saw him for who he really was, and realize how awful it must have been for him to come back and work for the organization she created after his death and have to live without her.

I want them to hide and watch as Past Steve screams as Past Bucky falls from the train. I want them to see Past Steve realize he can’t get drunk, and the only way he can cope is to kill the Red Skull and end HYDRA. To avenge his friend. I want them to realize that not only did Past Steve crash the plane for nothing, but that Steve knows, has to live with that knowledge for the rest of his life.

I want them to listen with Peggy as Past Steve realizes he’s going to have to crash the plane. I want them to hear the slight tremble in Past Steve’s voice as he talks about dancing with Peggy, believing he’ll never get the chance, and that he’s going to die alone in the freezing cold ocean. I want them to not get the change to promise him that he’ll survive. I want them to hear the sudden static that cuts off Past Steve’s voice, and the heavy silence that comes after it.

I want them to see the world mourn for Captain America, who died just months before the war ended.

And then I want them to come back to the 21st century and see. I want them to see the way Steve’s eyes linger on pictures of Peggy and Howard, see the rows of records from the 30s and 40s in a whole new light, see rows of 30s-style clothes in his closet that he hardly ever wears because a lot of people will make jabs about it, see the way he always keeps Bucky in his sight, hugs him just a little bit tighter than he hugs everyone else.

I want them to see the bags under his and Bucky’s eyes when they have nightmares. I want Sam to quietly show them Steve’s list, and see that every line on every page is filled because he missed so much. I want them to find two more little books filled up just as much. I want them to realize how lost Steve still is despite how much he’s adapted.

I want them to see the subtle military training still ingrained in Steve’s bones, because any and every war was horrible, but World War II was something else entirely, and so was desperation that existed within the soldiers and the people. I want them to see Steve’s recklessness of jumping out of planes without a parachute, the way his eyes always scan the area when he enters a room, watching ever little detail and listening for any sound that might indicate danger. How he is always, always, on alert, even when he seems relaxed.

I want them to understand why Steve was so against the Sokovia Accords. It wasn’t because he wanted the power to do what he thought was best; it was because he was afraid of the consequences of having too many restrictions. Because even with international laws and the damn Geneva Convention, the Nazis still destroyed half the world, and decades later Nazi HYDRA was still carrying out their mission that Steve sacrificed his life for. Steve was a human experiment. The Serum was a biochemical weapon. The military broke the rules to protect the greater good, and Steve knew that. The war would have gone very differently without him.

Whether he was right or wrong about the Accords, after what Steve experienced, I want the Avengers finally understand where he was coming from. Why he was so afraid of strict regulations.

I want Tony to finally fully understand the significance of Steve giving up his shield in Siberia.

Why he was so determined to protect Bucky from the world. Not just because he was his best friend, or because it was the right thing to do. But also because Bucky was the only thing Steve physically had left of his life before the crash, save for his dog tags, and he was scared of what that would mean if Steve lost him.

Steve Rogers has so much trauma that Marvel completely ignored. They focused on Tony’s and Bucky’s and Natasha’s trauma; and that’s great, that’s important; but so much of Steve’s moral character doesn’t get explained because it gets glossed over with the excuse that he’s “Mr Good and Righteous.” And that’s true, but that’s just scratching the surface.

He’s Mr. Good and Righteous for a reason, and it doesn’t get talked about enough.

[wickmitz]

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

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

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

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

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

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

source : q&a with tracy .

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

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

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

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

[sorllyne]

saw a post by @/cariocake saying smth along the lines of "i hope Bucky's adventuring party is patient with him"

and like!! fuckin please,,,

i hope Bucky's party sees him for the kid he really is

devout (ish?) follower of Helio, yes. crossing a line with the whole "conversion" talk, definitely.

but up to his neck in a religion cult that prioritizes lofty ideals over the individual, religious trauma he's yet to unpack, and experiencing a community completely different from the one he grew up with for the very first time (and supposedly "straying" according to one buddy dawn)

I hope they can see Bucky as the Bad Kids saw Kristen in freshman year. Fucked up, annoying, but with a good heart. And I hope that his party members help him overcome the parts of his childhood that he may discover he doesn't like. You can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends.