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I think it's a desservice to the story to say they didnt love each other. Richard Gadd himself spent countless hours in front of the camera saying they did love each other to the point it bordelined on hate with their inability to be truthful to each other and this constant need to be each other. It doesn't matter if it's not "pure" or "pretty", it's still love. Thats what make them coming back again and again

I'm not saying they didn't love each other. Obviously they loved each other: it's in the text, even if we don't rely on word-of-god interview information. That doesn't say much about the relationship itself. You can love a person and not even truly know them, because love is internal.

"This is why they keep coming back" -- hey now. After Ruben left prison for the first time he really tried to get his life together, and he didn't want to go to Niall at all. The reason they had the confrontation was because Niall couldn't handle Ruben being successful when Niall himself wasn't. Niall tried to tear him back fown to his own level. He's deeply envious and incensed that someone like Ruben, who went to prison, is better off than him, who was set up for success. It's ego!

The reason they reunited at the wedding was because Niall hurt Ruben in such a way that Ruben's own ego, his sense of self, hinged on righting that wrong by killing him.

If any of their significant actions towards each other was motivated by love instead of selfishness, i'd be speaking differently!

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Can't go into the half man tag because the romantic lens specific to tumblr is pissing me off. 'The most important person, brother, lover, everything', like, no!!! The POINT is that their relationship is a facsimile of a deep and genuine bond. Their moments of connection are few and far between. A lot of the time they don't like each other. They interact with a version of the other that is formed in their head by their own insecurity.

Like there is nothing genuine. There is nothing to fix. There is no trust that wasn't broken, no vulnerability that went unpunished. For it to become something they have to become other people, which they are categorically incapable of doing.

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I'm aware that this is an unpopular opinion, but I'm still bitter about s1 of true detective.

While being obviously tightly and intentionally written from the start, it introduces SUCH a compelling character conflict with the two main characters and then drops the ball on cashing it in all the way through. The second half of it is buddy cop movie, when the first part was almost entirely character driven, and then that throughline gets dropped. While it's still very much good television, it loses the thing that made it so uniquely great in my opinion. Maybe it's the consequence of pacing it out in such a way that the plot goes on and finishes neatly, but it really did feel unsatisfying to me.

Because it's such a good and plainly enjoyable show, i think the immediate response is to defend it and its writing against any accusation. That's my immediate response too: it's characterization is addicting to watch, and it's just a good fucking season that is a standalone show in itself. Consequently, a lot of things can be argued in its defence: that this criticism is invalid because the culmination of their conflict happened back in 2002 and getting together in the end is its resolution; that the finale is the general hopeful re-definition of rust's central philosophy. I'd argue that the execution does not support the character arc. It turns from drama to a detective action story, and briefly touches on the drama at the end, which feels jarring to me.

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A fic idea that's been chasing me for a couple of years: s4-s5 Jon dies and semi-accidentally goes back in time to haunt the still alive Gerard Keay as a ghost.

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Average ghost <- Idc anymore, I want to move on and be done with the suffering

Jon <- fate-worse-than-death experience georg with a guilt complex that trumps death

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A fic idea that's been chasing me for a couple of years: s4-s5 Jon dies and semi-accidentally goes back in time to haunt the still alive Gerard Keay as a ghost

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What i dont really care about: my most popular fic

My true passion: an unwritten oc/maedhros fic in which the oc can't speak except for a very specific and convoluted way of communication, and explores how the bare bones of sign language can be established between two people where only one person can understand the other, and only one person can speak freely, with no prior knowledge of existing sign language to stand on and thirty years of being each other's only chosen company.

[itscassiberry]

I want to eat this concept so it lives inside me forever

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YOU get it. Especially on this

However, I'm sorry to say that I gravely misrepresented the concept. At its core, my non-existing fic is a cringe si/oc for which the other half of the concept I'm too much of a coward to pitch.

So this:

And this:

Are very good. Crazy pull, kudos to you. What you thought of is perhaps a more dignified sibling to my weird one.

[itscassiberry]

Ok first of all Maedhros/oc presumably lovey dovey romance is awesome especially in this instance and only enhances possible psychological and communication fuckery!!! But instead of just being entirely fucked up it’s The Best They Can Do and Getting Better Every Day, and they can heal and be in love and understand each other all the way through to the bones, in the way that they become part of each others souls, I am you your words and you are my thoughts. At what point are you no longer simply yourself but a merged being, like a male angler fish that attached itself to the female and becomes absorbed into her. Are they absorbed into each other? How much of Them is visible to the outside, and how much is buried deep within the myriads of tunnels and caverns that they carved out together as one, over long years of trying to escape, to hide, what worlds are inside them? And how do they let themselves stop hiding inside each other and start living beside each other? To become whole in and of themselves again, but to make The Choice to live within each other, without hiding or escaping. I suck at writing romance but this could be so utterly indulgent and loving, and I love it as a concept oh my godddd

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I'd argue that the horrific context makes it better! I think a lot of the cathartis in fiction comes from taking an idea to its extreme safely

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What i dont really care about: my most popular fic

My true passion: an unwritten oc/maedhros fic in which the oc can't speak except for a very specific and convoluted way of communication, and explores how the bare bones of sign language can be established between two people where only one person can understand the other, and only one person can speak freely, with no prior knowledge of existing sign language to stand on and thirty years of being each other's only chosen company.

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Yes, it does, and YES, it does!

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What i dont really care about: my most popular fic

My true passion: an unwritten oc/maedhros fic in which the oc can't speak except for a very specific and convoluted way of communication, and explores how the bare bones of sign language can be established between two people where only one person can understand the other, and only one person can speak freely, with no prior knowledge of existing sign language to stand on and thirty years of being each other's only chosen company.

[itscassiberry]

I want to eat this concept so it lives inside me forever

[fish-emotion]

YOU get it. Especially on this

However, I'm sorry to say that I gravely misrepresented the concept. At its core, my non-existing fic is a cringe si/oc for which the other half of the concept I'm too much of a coward to pitch.

So this:

And this:

Are very good. Crazy pull, kudos to you. What you thought of is perhaps a more dignified sibling to my weird one.

[fish-emotion]

What i dont really care about: my most popular fic

My true passion: an unwritten oc/maedhros fic in which the oc can't speak except for a very specific and convoluted way of communication, and explores how the bare bones of sign language can be established between two people where only one person can understand the other, and only one person can speak freely, with no prior knowledge of existing sign language to stand on and thirty years of being each other's only chosen company.

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It should be obvious, but writing a fic with two background characters who never interacted in canon and without any fic of them interacting is challenging in new and unexpected ways. It's not that I have no idea of how this should go, it's that I have too many ideas of how it could go and end up writing fifty drafts of the same scene trying to pin down The Sause

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I'm finding out that writing for a popular fandom is not as fun. Straight up might just close the comments because half of them are annoying me

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an average ao3 experience

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and another thing about writing the pitt characters i have a gripe with: when robby is written to be worse off than the other characters, like he's inept at taking care of himself while the other characters are better at it. THE ENTIRE POINT the pitt is making is THAT NO ONE IS OKAY. Dana's thinking about quitting. Samira is having a breakdown in the bathroom. Whitaker has his first death on his first day. Langdon is hiding an addiction. And jack fucking abbot, who people are writing as having a good handle on himself because he goes to therapy, is introduced to us with the scene where he's standing on the edge of the roof, talking about suicide, and revealing he's been there before. And then we find out he's listening to police radio on his days off, constantly on alert. Of course he fucking goes to therapy, if that's his baseline.

And of course Robby has a fucking breakdown. This is, specifically, his worst say imaginable. Is robby bad at coping? Yes! Is he uniquely bad at coping? No. When he reaches his breaking point, he finally reaches out for help (abbot, talk about therapy). He's not okay, but he only seems to be handling it worse because he's put through the grinder in s1 the way other characters aren't. He would have it on lock otherwise.

I want to reiterate: robby's coping mechanism is shoving everything down. It's not sustainable. But he's not as irresponsible with himself as people are writing him: he didn't work on the day of his mentor's day for four years. He's not biting off more than he can chew; it's just that once he's in a crisis no one could gave predicted, he has to handle it. He doesn't have a choice to tap out. People are depending on him in life-or death situations. Which is enabling his bad coping mechanisms, true. But he's a dependable, responsible attending! At the very least! That's the point!!!

[sionnualanicheallachain]

I think I agree with at least parts of this, but I want to complicate/push back on a couple of things, as someone who has experience with both the Robby approach to dealing with things and the Abbot approach to dealing with things.

I agree that Robby isn't uniquely bad at coping, and that he is having a uniquely stressful day and is under unique pressure to push through it due to his position. Everything about the day he's had up until the MCI has been one PTSD trigger after another on top of an already stressful job, and then he has a uniquely traumatizing experience during the MCI with Leah. (I think the character whose day is actually the most similar, up until the MCI, is Heather — also dealing with loss, also dealing with a workplace that's constantly reminding her of her loss, also having this day's losses bring up past losses and feelings of guilt. But she also doesn't snap at people over it and is the one person to take Robby up on his offer to go home early and take care of herself.) The fact that he holds up as well as he does is impressive.

But the only tool in his emotional toolbox is bottling things up. That is absolutely a tool that can get you through a lot! I got through most of high school and a good chunk of college that way. But it's exhausting, and it just gets more exhausting as you go on, and eventually it fails, which is what we see by the end of the day. And he doesn't reach out to Abbot — Abbot comes and finds him and jokes and assesses and argues Robby into turning around, into making eye contact, into walking out with him. It's Abbot who offers to put Robby in touch with his therapist, and Robby's reaction is to ask if it helps.

The one character we actually see, on screen, recognizing when they're struggling and employing techniques to manage that? Is Mel. Consistently throughout the day. Taking breaks. Using a wide range of sensory tools. Crying. By the end of the day she's exhausted, and she was clearly deeply affected by several of her cases, but she's able to rally and be present for her sister. Do I think her day was as hard as Robby's? No. Do I think her tools and skills would've been up to a day like Robby's? Not necessarily. But I don't think she would've ended up on the edge of the roof. She's the one person I can picture going to Kiara and asking for help if she hit that point.

Which brings me to Abbot. Abbot didn't actually say anything about suicide during the first roof scene — Robby joked about suicidal tendencies, and Abbot laughed and smiled slightly. The things Abbot actually said about the veteran who died and not knowing why he comes back didn't sound to me like someone in crisis. They sounded like someone who's sad, and frustrated, and thinking about quitting their job. He's on the edge of the roof, yes, but his body language doesn't read to me like he's thinking about jumping, it feels more like poking an old bruise to see whether it still hurts. Getting some perspective. And both Dana and Robby seem concerned, but they don't seem Concerned. Abbot doesn't take much convincing to come back to the right side of the railing, and all he really needs to feel better about his job again is a renewed sense of purpose.

But I think the big thing I want to push back on re: Abbot — and the big thing I want to contrast between him and Robby — is that Abbot having a handle on himself and Abbot standing on the edge of the roof/listening to the police scanner/being hypervigilant are not mutually exclusive. (I mean, at least not based on the little we see in season 1 — I realize season 2 could change things as we learn more about his character.) Abbot is not having as bad a specific day as Robby, but he clearly has plenty of grief and trauma of his own as a baseline, and as far as we know he manages it consistently. I'm sure he has moments when he breaks down, but I'm gonna guess that, like Mel, he has a range of tools and skills that he's learned, and if nothing else the fact that he's seeing a therapist and recommending it to others suggests he's proactive about seeking and accepting help. We know he has at least one support to turn to in crisis.

I spent a lot of high school and college being super not okay and getting through by bottling things up and by hiding how much I was struggling. I was a lot like Robby, and it got me through a lot of years, but I also felt a deep certainty through a lot of that time that I would continue on that way until I couldn't anymore, and that at some point there would be a catastrophic failure — it was just a question of how long I could make it before it hit.

These days, after a couple decades of actively working on figuring out better ways to handle things and eventually finding a therapist, I have really good coping skills. I can recognize when I'm struggling and take steps to do something about it. And when I recently hit a point where things were truly not sustainable, it took a little while but I did decide it was worth seeing a meds provider to find out if that might be helpful. At the end of our conversation, the provider said I must have very good skills for managing my anxiety, because based on our conversation she would've expected me to be having a lot more panic attacks, and she diagnosed me with OCD as well as anxiety.

So like Jack (at least the way I read him), my baseline is not healthy/normal/whatever, and how easy/difficult that is to manage fluctuates, but I'm not worried about a catastrophic failure the way I was in high school. I'm not relying solely on bottling things up until I explode — I have a lot of different tools, and a lot of supports, and the ability to recognize when I need to ask for help, and now I have medication that makes a whole lot of things a whole lot easier, and sometimes that's what having a good handle on yourself looks like.

I think if we saw Jack on a day that was his equivalent of the day Robby had in season 1, there'd probably be a point where he broke down, but there'd also be a whole lot of things he did leading up to and during and after that point to take care of himself that Robby doesn't know how to do and has been actively resisting learning. And I think that's the contrast that's interesting, and the balance I see in their friendship — I'm guessing Jack leans on Robby a little more when it comes to handling his baseline, but Robby ends up leaning hard on Jack when he's in crisis.

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That's fair. I think my wording was imperfect as well. I genuinely don't and didn't think that abbott can't have a handle on his mental health - what i was getting at is that the pitt draws a very clear parallel between him and robby with the rooftop scenes, making a deliberate point. I often see people writing robby make the difference between him and the other characters strongly pronounced, either making his suffering somehow special or making his coping especially poor in everyday life, so that it's contrasted with other characters (like jack, whose mental health can get exaggeratedly good, in this case, or his problems way less defined, more like set dressing: something mentioned, but not felt as a part of his life), who are doing better. It may very well be that other characters are doing better; I don't believe that it would be in this obvious, visible way (at least, no to the people he's not close with), and i think making out robby's problems as unique goes against the spirit of the show.

I think it's just a common pifall: he was the main character of s1, we saw the texture of it, not so much with other characters, as you've said.

Again, obviously, repressing everything is not sustainable (as i've said in the original post), and obviously, there's going to be some sort of fallout. I did skip over a lot of the nuance and made a broad statement, which is, i admit, ironic, given what i'm criticizing here.

Anyway, what you said👆 (and it sucks you had to deal with that).

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and another thing about writing the pitt characters i have a gripe with: when robby is written to be worse off than the other characters, like he's inept at taking care of himself while the other characters are better at it. THE ENTIRE POINT the pitt is making is THAT NO ONE IS OKAY. Dana's thinking about quitting. Samira is having a breakdown in the bathroom. Whitaker has his first death on his first day. Langdon is hiding an addiction. And jack fucking abbot, who people are writing as having a good handle on himself because he goes to therapy, is introduced to us with the scene where he's standing on the edge of the roof, talking about suicide, and revealing he's been there before. And then we find out he's listening to police radio on his days off, constantly on alert. Of course he fucking goes to therapy, if that's his baseline.

And of course Robby has a fucking breakdown. This is, specifically, his worst say imaginable. Is robby bad at coping? Yes! Is he uniquely bad at coping? No. When he reaches his breaking point, he finally reaches out for help (abbot, talk about therapy). He's not okay, but he only seems to be handling it worse because he's put through the grinder in s1 the way other characters aren't. He would have it on lock otherwise.

I want to reiterate: robby's coping mechanism is shoving everything down. It's not sustainable. But he's not as irresponsible with himself as people are writing him: he didn't work on the day of his mentor's day for four years. He's not biting off more than he can chew; it's just that once he's in a crisis no one could gave predicted, he has to handle it. He doesn't have a choice to tap out. People are depending on him in life-or death situations. Which is enabling his bad coping mechanisms, true. But he's a dependable, responsible attending! At the very least! That's the point!!!

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another thing about writing robby is that he would not have commitment issues. He would most certainly have availability issues in a relationship, but it can't be commitment!

He has a deep relationship with his ex. He and Collins still care about each other a lot. He's treating his other ex's son as his own stepson, and we're shown that that relationship was secure prior to the pittfest. Really, the only person that doubts his relationship with robby is langdon. He may not be open with people in his life (to different degrees; his friendship with jack seems to be a very close one), but he's never, not in one scene outside of that throwaway line where langdon asks if they're friends, withholds his care. Care is something he shows and talks about openly.

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Since i'm on a roll, also posting the beginning to a shen jiu/? fic that i also think could've been good if it was real:

When Shen Jiu feels the hot splatter of his teacher's blood on his cheek, his mouth, he doesn't even spit, even though that's how you get disease from which only strong cultivators can recover. What he feels is an overwhelming, disgusting relief. At least now he knows now; knows that he'd made the wrong choices, that he'd been living like this for nothing, that he's not going to survive it.

Wu Yanzi's upper half has landed before him. He kicks it away with some viciousness, but mostly because it's in the way. Wu Yanzi doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't matter. Shen Jiu is glad that Wu Yanzi has finally stopped mattering.

But he can't stop stating at the body where it rolled away, at the slack, ruined face of a dead man. Shen Jiu can't help but think, that's it? That's really it? even though he knows that it is. Death is common, inconsequential, final. Only those who raise above it begin to matter. But Shen Jiu still can't catch up. All that he had taken under Wu Yanzi's hand: years, suddenly receeding into the past, irrelevant. Now nothing more than the whims of a dead man, when just a minute ago there was power. Shen Jiu had let Wu Yanzi change his body, change his actions and his future. After years of fighting himself to give away that and more, Shen Jiu knows that he'd rather break than try to bend again. He knew there was no future ahead like this, but he kept at it, because there was nothing else to do, because he kept waiting for something to give.

At least i outlived you, he thinks, almost neutral, and spits the blood at the corpse. He raises his sword. He's knows he's going to die. He always knew he was going to die soon. He's not going to die. He'll chew through the throat of the beast his drunk teacher couldn't kill. He's not going to fucking die here, not now that Wu Yanzi is finally dead and has stopped feeding him poisonous hope. He can finally break free. He'd been weak. He's not going to put his hope in someone again, so just this once, he's got to survive.

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And a little more of that wierd xie lian and wei ying thing👇

They go up the mountain. On the way, Yiling Laozu takes out one of his seals and begins explaining in long, rambling sentences, gradually getting more exited. He starts swallowing his words about an incense stick in. Xie Lian listens carefully, avidly. It's not his area of expertise at all! He has to pay attention if he wants to tell San Lang later!

Still, even though Xie Lian doesn't know much, from what he understands it seems ingenious. Adding a little twist and flipping the whole array. It could certainly save many lives, if used with purpose.

Xie Lian says as much, and Yiling Laozu briefly falls silent. He speaks again a short time later, walking ahead and facing away from Xie Lian. "That's what i've been thinking. Even if it's just one person... Unnecessary deaths are really... Just, the worst."

Xie Lian nods quickly, with feeling, before realizing the man can't see him. "En," he says simply, empathetically.

Yiling Laozu glances back at him, then purposefully strides forward before Xie Lian has time to see his expression.

"So! Daozhang, do you really not know who the Wens are? How did you manage to live so long, ayah!" he laments. He sounds cheerful, loud.

Xie Lian scratches his cheek. "You could say i've been living in seclusion. I was either sitting around doing nothing or gatering garbage to earn a living, hahaha! I really missed out on a lot of things in the cultivation world."

Yiling Laozu stops and turns to look at him. "But what about cultiviating? Wasn't daozhang trying to atone?"

Xie Lian smiles. "I was. But, you see... I wasn't trying to atone through cultivation."

Yiling Laozu's gaze sharpens. He hums and strares at Xie Lian for a few seconds before turning back arorund.

Xie Lian finds that he's still unwilling to lie through his teeth, even though that would be helpful about now. Instead, he's being vague and suspicious. But he likes Yiling Laozu, is the thing.

"Seems like it might be a cruel punishment."

Is that what Laozu is thinking? Well, he's not wrong. But he's not right either. In the end, Xie Lian has nothing to say to that.

As they continue their trek, they encounter more and more people who all greet Yiling Laozu familiarly. He seems friendly with all of them. A picture starts to form in Xie Lian's mind of what Yiling Laozu did that was so offensive. Every one of these willagers has the name Wen.

They don't seem to have a lot of resources, but they don't seem to have none. Xie Lian privately thinks it's not too bad.

Yiling Laozu introduces him as a guest to everyone, and everyone is friendly enough. Eventually, they run into a boy sticking out a garden bed like a peculiar plant. The child looks extremely content to be where he is. There's a pale adult hovering near. They seem to both be reluctant to stop the boy's game and leave them in the ground; truly, a difficult position to be in!

"Ah!! My little radish!"

Yiling Laozu runs to the patch, getting the boy out. "A-Yuan will catch a cold like this, he ground is cold," he lectures, trying to clean him of dirt. While the man is busy, Xie Lian approaches the nervous adult.

It's only when he gets close that he realises that the man is not pale because of nervousness. At first, he seems like a ghost, but that's not quite right. He almost looks... Like a fierce corpse? That can't be right. Xie Lian doesn't know enough about ghosts to claim this man isn't one, so he shouldn't make assumptions!

Xie Lian bows hastily, realising he's been straing. "Ah, excuse me! This one is Xie Lian, i'm lucky to be a guest of Yiling Laozu's!"

The ghost becomes even more flustered, bowing two times. "This one is Wen Qiongl- ah... W-wen Ning, p-please be welcome!

Xie Lian realizes that he didn't give a courtesy name, which in turn forced Wen Ning to introduce his given name. How rude of him!!

Xie Lian quickly bows three times. "This one apoligizes. This one wasn't given a courtesy name by his parents, so really, calling him Xie Lian is preferrable. Ah... Wen... Gongzi? Shouldn't be adressed so faliliarly by a stranger, so, please, could Gongzi give his courtesy name?"

Wen Gongzi seems to blanch even more, which is a feat. He nods, then bows, then nods again. "It's fine, it's fine, everyone here calls me Wen Ning anyway!"

"No, ah, really!.."

Xie Lian doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. What a ridiculous situation...

He realizes there are muffled giggles coming from Yiling Laozu, which soon turn into fool belly laughs. A-Yuan starts giggling too, even though he probably doesn't understand why they're laughing.

Xie Lian can only smile helplessly. Wen Ning starts smiling too, though his smile is still a bit nervous.

"But why is daozhang getting friendly with everyone but me?" 'Everyone' seems generous if it's just one person, Laozu... "I'm jealous! Xie Lian should call me Wei Ying too. Laozu this, Laozu that, it's so tiresome!"

Xie Lian doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. "As Wei Ying wishes," he says simply, in the end. It's not like he's going to make Wei Ying uncomfortable.

And, he was never called by his name in his life, he doesn't think. The name of a crown prince was precious; then, there was always some title or other. Even San Lang doesn't call him by his name. That is fine. He and San Lang have special names for each other.

Still, being called Xie Lian gives him a thrill.

Wei Ying looks briefly surprised at the easy agreement, but almost immediately grins, mischievous and triumphant.