Partaylir Review kind of
Okay so this isn't a review per say but an extension of a comment I left on the second chapter of @calamity-aims fic "Partaylir"
Is this pretentious? Yes
Do I think anyone will read this? No
Am I sending smoke signals purely for myself at this point? Yes.
Here we go
"“Yes,” said Thorn. “Of course he did.” "
OF! COURSE! HE! DID! I used the phrase "of course" 13 times in my [first comment on this fic] (I went back and counted) and it's important!!!!! Because this is a fic about choices and the lack of them. This is a story about what you do when you run out of choices and how certain stubborn, loving, fierce clones make their own choices out of nothing but the intangible love for their brothers.
There are no choices to be made in this fic. Fox makes them anyways.
It's interesting how this story opens with Thorn coming up with ways to get Fox out of this and now we're having Thorn subconsciously defending Fox's choice.
There were never really any other options and I think that Thorn knew that but what's very Fox about the whole thing is that Fox knew there were no other choices to be made. Not for him.
So what he did was he took the choice out of Thorn's (and everyone's hands). He went "No, I'm choosing this. This isn't a decision you are making for me. I don't want any of you to feel like you are failing me." He may be letting them cling to the idea that something else could have worked but he quietly saw through the holes and the fact that anything else would never have worked and framed it so that he made the choice himself.
He looked at his brothers and he, as always, put it all on himself.
He was given the illusions of choice and yes, he made the only one that there really was to make, but in doing so he chose to take the responsibility off of his brothers. At the end of the day, everyone can say that Fox chose to go and none of the vode made him.
And now Thorn is defending that choice. Even though he is the one we see offering up other options, he's sort of accepting now that they never would have worked but REGARDLESS of that, Fox made the choice and Thorn is going to back it.
It's interesting how Thorn never acknowledges that he started coming up with other plans, even in his own head. Obviously from a writing perspective, it would have gotten a little bit lengthy and this story is only two chapters long so the audience doesn't need to be reminded that other options were explored. But from a character perspective, even in his own head Thorn is not going to blame Fox.
Blah blah "don't blame the victim" blah YES I HEAR YOU but it would be totally valid for Thorn to harbor some angst over the fact that he tried to give Fox options and Fox chose Kamino anyways.
But he doesn't.
He 100% backs Fox's initial choice. Yes, he's trying to fix that now but that's different. Even in his own mind he isn't entertaining the idea that there was even a slight chance of other options. It's his mind. He doesn't need to (and he doesn't) say any of this to anyone. He doesn't need to back Fox here. But he does.
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"The naked hope on Thorn's face was hard to look at . He could say no, and never run the risk of going back to the reconditioning rooms. It would be the end of it. He would be fixed. He would be better. He would be safe
Fox said, "Mostly," and any regret vanished at the light in Thorn's eyes and the grin on his face"
Because when faced with impossible choices, Fox will always choose what's best for his brothers. Because of course he will. Of course.
Fox will do anything for his brothers and they will do anything for him, even though he doesn't quite like to look at and acknowledge that yet.
Coming back to what I said about this story being about a total lack of choices and how the Corries are making choices anyways. I think I'm a little bit wrong there. It's a story about the choices we make, even when it seems like there are none.
Fox really had no choice but to go to Kamino. But he makes the choice to make it seem like his decision and take that potential guilt just a little bit off of the others
Thorn, Thire and the other Commanders had the choice to stay safe and leave Fox as he was. Instead, they made the choice to risk their own reconditioning and try to get Fox back.
Fox could have chosen to lie and pretend that he was still gone but even though it was objectively the worst choice he chose to tell the truth and come back.
This is really wonderfully written and I love the theme of choices here. At the end of the day everything that Fox does is make choices in the face of impossible choices, even if that means making his own. This is a cool dive into that and the premise of what a character does when their character is ripped away is fascinating.
I was (kind of) joking about love, stubbornness and a healthy fear of medics being just a part of how Fox is and that nothing could remove that but a huge aspect of this fic is that Fox never really left so how could anything of him ever really be removed?
So much of what makes Fox a "good clone" or a "good soldier" is derived from what makes him "bad".
His cleverness comes from his stubbornness. He looks at the world and he makes it work for him. He is not going to let anyone hurt his brothers so he finds workarounds. Even when that means he gets hurt instead. Of course, he's playing a game different to the one he thinks he's playing and the field was never level so people get hurt anyways but he's smart because he has to be in order to accommodate his stubbornness.
He's loyal because he's opinionated. He sees things; actions, words, expressions, etc. and he makes educated opinions off of them. The clones deserve his loyalty. The Chancellor does not. But the trick is that to be loyal to the clones he needs to be loyal to the Chancellor to protect them. He knows which senators to keep the shinies away from because he's made opinions on them. He's decided who gets his loyalty and how much and that translates to him often appearing loyal when he has to be. Which is good enough.
He's tactical because he's emotional. This seems exclusive but he's so efficient exactly because he cares. He needs to protect the max amount of people in the least amount of time. He cares about certain people. Therefore he needs to protect them. Therefore he's got to make smart decisions and make them quickly. It doesn't matter if he feels that he has to shove his own emotions aside to make decisions. That in and of itself is an emotional decision. You can't remove that which you don't have. I doubt that there are any acceptable losses in Fox's mind but there likely are less bad scenarios.
And it comes back to choice.
This terrible senator needs guards. No workaround there. But you can change who you send.
Following this logic then, you can't remove CC-1010 from Fox because all of CC-1010's decisions are fueled by Fox. Everything that makes him an ideal clone trooper stems from that which does not. All of his non-essential functions, his "emotions, feelings, opinions." drive what he does.
