Faith [Quest Finale Reaction]
Dec 8, 2020 2:29:53 GMT -5
Post by marguerite harvard d2a (zori) on Dec 8, 2020 2:29:53 GMT -5
I thought I had my shit together, you know?
One minute I’m scratching out Piper’s name on the chalk board and telling the bums to pay up, lighting a cigar and giving free rounds, and the next, I’m practically out of breath from thinking about how he’s all alone in there, that fucking stupid noodle headed kid is all alone and he’s going to get himself killed (again).
Last time I saw him wasn’t even that long ago.
We were at Fiona’s wedding and yeah, I got so drunk I could barely string two words together at the reception, but we’d still gotten to see each other. And that idiot didn’t say much anyway. And we didn’t need much. He still sucked but he sucked a whole lot less than most of the other assholes I’d come across in my life. We danced the whole night, or at least, that’s what I imagined the next morning. I’d woken up in a hotel bathtub with a hangover that lasted the next two days, so I took some creative liberties.
He could handle himself now. I told my therapist that, even if he was on his last two brain cells, he’d still managed to pick an ally that was about as good as any in terms of attracting the wrath of everyone else. You know the type. Hero by his own name, talking about how he was going to change the world, rah-rah, we need to start a rebellion, etcetera. Granted, he wasn’t wrong – people do just sit around on their asses most of the time hoping things just don’t get worse – but no one likes to hear that.
Makes them feel ashamed that they’re being selfish. And if there’s one thing districters don’t like feeling, it’s that whatever fairy tale they’ve built for themselves is inherently selfish. You know, because kids are literally being sacrificed and you aren’t. Sort of how the victors go around marrying and fucking and crying about how hard it is to send kids to get slaughtered every year. As someone who’s been through it and come back and got none of that fanfare, let me play them the smallest fucking violin.
I mean, look at what they did to us. Look at how we all turned out, huh? One of the kids already offed himself and from what I’ve heard another is missing – I mean, if I could remember their names it would be a whole lot more unsettling.
But the fact is that we were all still kids when we died.
Getting a second chance doesn’t always turn out the way you think it would.
If it weren’t for my brother Ether, I’d have just kept raging out against the world like it owed me something. You should’ve seen me when we were first setting up the bar. Every day I found something else not to like about him. Whether it was because a tile on the floor was dirty or a dish was out of place, I found a way to take it out on him. And he finally told me it was enough; if I wanted to treat him as bad as the rest of the world then he was going to pack his shit and move somewhere else.
We’d already gone through that with our parents, and he didn’t need that from me, again.
But how many other people are going to sit through therapy and work through their problems until they realize that half the reason they’re angry at the world is for things that are outside of their control, and the other half for people that weren’t going to ever matter to us unless we let them. Oh yeah it sounds like a bunch of greeting card bullshit, doesn’t it?
Life boiled down tends to sound like that, you know? Simple and elegant, so you can’t believe it, because when you look in the mirror it’s all curves and edges. Nothing smoothed out, not so long as you’re alive.
It took me a long time to realize that I kept fighting back against people because I thought I was fighting for a piece of the action. That by inserting myself into their world, in playing their game, that I was going to be someone. But the thing about it is, you spend all that time fighting for a piece of the pie when they just want you to go hungry.
He deserves better than this.
The lighting in this shot is terrible.
I am surprised they haven’t caught him yanking it on television though. I told the people who came around for a top eight interview that I really expected him to be the type to just yank it out on day six and get that out of the way. I mean, he’d cuddled with Delroy and they seemed like they were on the verge of a shadow handshake with each other, but you know – straight guys.
I don’t think that bit made his review. In fact I don’t think they paid much attention to Shy at all. It was all Delroy and a bit of Piper with a splash of Andy. Shy doesn’t have much flavor when you compared them, but that’s their fucking problem.
The kid came back to life. He didn’t need to prove a damn thing to anyone.
I wish I’d spent more time with him at Fiona’s wedding. I really wish, I don’t know, I’d written him some sort of letter or something so that if he dies he could at least know I thought he was pretty all right. Then again I half imagine his last thoughts to be ‘oh god I think I’m dying’ and not whether or not I thought of him as a person.
Ether had already made me two Gibson’s by the time the finale started.
I had spent the day cleaning the whole bar. The usual, wiping down the chairs, mopping the floors, refusing to clean the bathroom and making Ether do it, and reorganizing the glassware. So I ran out of things to do by the time they decided it was time for this whole shitshow to be over.
He’s kind of like a flightless bird, isn’t he? Something about boys like him where his wingspan is too much for his upper body but he’s balanced out by a set of too-long legs.
He misses on his first swing, and I already know that it’s bad.
He shouldn’t have to be there facing down someone who at least seemed to be on the same terrestrial plane and not have her head up in the clouds. Not that I knew much about her – Shy and her had that same sort of, in the background vibe that hadn’t built up the same sort of climax some of the others did. Which was good for business, considering how much people had lost putting money down on Delroy and Iris.
But she starts cutting into him and I –
I can’t.
“I can’t watch this.” I told Ether from behind the bar, and he has to crane his ear to hear me, because the shouting from the bar is so loud as they watch them go at it. “I CAN’T!”
But another cheer went up when Shy brought his knife across her flank, and it’s all lost to the din.
There’s got to be another universe where we’re speeding down a highway in one of those hovercrafts, blasting tunes and laughing our asses off. There’s got to be something outside of this.
She cuts him again and he misses, because of course. Of course he can’t keep his eye on the target. What did I even bother teaching him all those years ago about watching his elbow? You’d think six years of career training would’ve at least brought his last two brain cells together.
Another roar as he almost guts her again and I can feel the fire on my face, I can think –
Is Fiona watching? Does she know that he’s going to die, that he’s going to die and I haven’t fucking said a single word to him. Or Carmen. Or anyone of them, are they all standing there, watching the television in their bars hanging off the wall, showing two fucking kids try to knife each other to death?
He misses, again.
As though he’ll ever have another chance, as though the blow isn’t moments away. As though he’s not bleeding out down his shirt and motherfucking Shy so help me god I will astral project through the television and strangle your ghost before it leaves this earth if you don’t do this.
Fuck being a bigger person and not wanting one or the other to die. I want Shy to win and I want his ass to come to district six so I can tell him that he’s not a fucking failure, and that I’m going to dry his ass out until he’s not a walking zombie. That he’s not stronger because of the trauma they put on his body. That the world doesn’t have his back, but there’s at least some of us that do. That the Shy I knew is in there somewhere and this tough guy routine ain’t going to fly with me.
“GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!” I shout at the television as though maybe, whatever god is above, she can hear me and send the message across the universe and punch him square in the face with it.
Just this once –
Let him live, again.
One minute I’m scratching out Piper’s name on the chalk board and telling the bums to pay up, lighting a cigar and giving free rounds, and the next, I’m practically out of breath from thinking about how he’s all alone in there, that fucking stupid noodle headed kid is all alone and he’s going to get himself killed (again).
Last time I saw him wasn’t even that long ago.
We were at Fiona’s wedding and yeah, I got so drunk I could barely string two words together at the reception, but we’d still gotten to see each other. And that idiot didn’t say much anyway. And we didn’t need much. He still sucked but he sucked a whole lot less than most of the other assholes I’d come across in my life. We danced the whole night, or at least, that’s what I imagined the next morning. I’d woken up in a hotel bathtub with a hangover that lasted the next two days, so I took some creative liberties.
He could handle himself now. I told my therapist that, even if he was on his last two brain cells, he’d still managed to pick an ally that was about as good as any in terms of attracting the wrath of everyone else. You know the type. Hero by his own name, talking about how he was going to change the world, rah-rah, we need to start a rebellion, etcetera. Granted, he wasn’t wrong – people do just sit around on their asses most of the time hoping things just don’t get worse – but no one likes to hear that.
Makes them feel ashamed that they’re being selfish. And if there’s one thing districters don’t like feeling, it’s that whatever fairy tale they’ve built for themselves is inherently selfish. You know, because kids are literally being sacrificed and you aren’t. Sort of how the victors go around marrying and fucking and crying about how hard it is to send kids to get slaughtered every year. As someone who’s been through it and come back and got none of that fanfare, let me play them the smallest fucking violin.
I mean, look at what they did to us. Look at how we all turned out, huh? One of the kids already offed himself and from what I’ve heard another is missing – I mean, if I could remember their names it would be a whole lot more unsettling.
But the fact is that we were all still kids when we died.
Getting a second chance doesn’t always turn out the way you think it would.
If it weren’t for my brother Ether, I’d have just kept raging out against the world like it owed me something. You should’ve seen me when we were first setting up the bar. Every day I found something else not to like about him. Whether it was because a tile on the floor was dirty or a dish was out of place, I found a way to take it out on him. And he finally told me it was enough; if I wanted to treat him as bad as the rest of the world then he was going to pack his shit and move somewhere else.
We’d already gone through that with our parents, and he didn’t need that from me, again.
But how many other people are going to sit through therapy and work through their problems until they realize that half the reason they’re angry at the world is for things that are outside of their control, and the other half for people that weren’t going to ever matter to us unless we let them. Oh yeah it sounds like a bunch of greeting card bullshit, doesn’t it?
Life boiled down tends to sound like that, you know? Simple and elegant, so you can’t believe it, because when you look in the mirror it’s all curves and edges. Nothing smoothed out, not so long as you’re alive.
It took me a long time to realize that I kept fighting back against people because I thought I was fighting for a piece of the action. That by inserting myself into their world, in playing their game, that I was going to be someone. But the thing about it is, you spend all that time fighting for a piece of the pie when they just want you to go hungry.
He deserves better than this.
The lighting in this shot is terrible.
I am surprised they haven’t caught him yanking it on television though. I told the people who came around for a top eight interview that I really expected him to be the type to just yank it out on day six and get that out of the way. I mean, he’d cuddled with Delroy and they seemed like they were on the verge of a shadow handshake with each other, but you know – straight guys.
I don’t think that bit made his review. In fact I don’t think they paid much attention to Shy at all. It was all Delroy and a bit of Piper with a splash of Andy. Shy doesn’t have much flavor when you compared them, but that’s their fucking problem.
The kid came back to life. He didn’t need to prove a damn thing to anyone.
I wish I’d spent more time with him at Fiona’s wedding. I really wish, I don’t know, I’d written him some sort of letter or something so that if he dies he could at least know I thought he was pretty all right. Then again I half imagine his last thoughts to be ‘oh god I think I’m dying’ and not whether or not I thought of him as a person.
Ether had already made me two Gibson’s by the time the finale started.
I had spent the day cleaning the whole bar. The usual, wiping down the chairs, mopping the floors, refusing to clean the bathroom and making Ether do it, and reorganizing the glassware. So I ran out of things to do by the time they decided it was time for this whole shitshow to be over.
He’s kind of like a flightless bird, isn’t he? Something about boys like him where his wingspan is too much for his upper body but he’s balanced out by a set of too-long legs.
He misses on his first swing, and I already know that it’s bad.
He shouldn’t have to be there facing down someone who at least seemed to be on the same terrestrial plane and not have her head up in the clouds. Not that I knew much about her – Shy and her had that same sort of, in the background vibe that hadn’t built up the same sort of climax some of the others did. Which was good for business, considering how much people had lost putting money down on Delroy and Iris.
But she starts cutting into him and I –
I can’t.
“I can’t watch this.” I told Ether from behind the bar, and he has to crane his ear to hear me, because the shouting from the bar is so loud as they watch them go at it. “I CAN’T!”
But another cheer went up when Shy brought his knife across her flank, and it’s all lost to the din.
There’s got to be another universe where we’re speeding down a highway in one of those hovercrafts, blasting tunes and laughing our asses off. There’s got to be something outside of this.
She cuts him again and he misses, because of course. Of course he can’t keep his eye on the target. What did I even bother teaching him all those years ago about watching his elbow? You’d think six years of career training would’ve at least brought his last two brain cells together.
Another roar as he almost guts her again and I can feel the fire on my face, I can think –
Is Fiona watching? Does she know that he’s going to die, that he’s going to die and I haven’t fucking said a single word to him. Or Carmen. Or anyone of them, are they all standing there, watching the television in their bars hanging off the wall, showing two fucking kids try to knife each other to death?
He misses, again.
As though he’ll ever have another chance, as though the blow isn’t moments away. As though he’s not bleeding out down his shirt and motherfucking Shy so help me god I will astral project through the television and strangle your ghost before it leaves this earth if you don’t do this.
Fuck being a bigger person and not wanting one or the other to die. I want Shy to win and I want his ass to come to district six so I can tell him that he’s not a fucking failure, and that I’m going to dry his ass out until he’s not a walking zombie. That he’s not stronger because of the trauma they put on his body. That the world doesn’t have his back, but there’s at least some of us that do. That the Shy I knew is in there somewhere and this tough guy routine ain’t going to fly with me.
“GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!” I shout at the television as though maybe, whatever god is above, she can hear me and send the message across the universe and punch him square in the face with it.
Just this once –
Let him live, again.
