Ramona V. Flowers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_ex_in_xp) wrote2013-07-25 07:33 pm
the_ex_in_xp) wrote2013-07-25 07:33 pm
Hiatus and meme
So I've been sporadic in the past week or so because life has generally been full of things, and it probably won't clear up until the end of the first week of August. Or later, depending on how moving and internet transferring works out... So I'm going to be on hiatus until that's over.
However, I still want to engage in some kind of CFUD related stuff, which means question meme time! Ask me about relationships, future plans for CR, anything you want and I'll ask you stuff in return. If you don't have anything to ask still comment! Because I may need distractions and I WILL GIVE YOU A SURPRISE. I don't know what it is even, that is why it would be an awesome surprise...
However, I still want to engage in some kind of CFUD related stuff, which means question meme time! Ask me about relationships, future plans for CR, anything you want and I'll ask you stuff in return. If you don't have anything to ask still comment! Because I may need distractions and I WILL GIVE YOU A SURPRISE. I don't know what it is even, that is why it would be an awesome surprise...
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And I guess this is a good lead in to mention how Ramona is still in that "yeah things are fine...unless they aren't? 8\a" with Hanna since. He knows a lot more about her stupid shit but he's not being confrontational for the... whole evil league of exes and everything. She is both grateful to him not digging into that and kind of wincing because his chronic not talking about problems ever makes her wonder if she isn't accidentally being a huge bitch by not bringing it up or leaving it without trying to explain. Our mutual shiftiness is both a blessing and a curse!
Currently, she's mollified by Wendy's "nah it's cool, it's how Hanna Hannas" talk earlier but that niggling worry that Camp might bring more stuff out is always in the back of her mind. WHICH SHOULD BE REMEDIES BY LOTS OF DUMB THINGS IN BETWEEN. Annnnnd she's trying to get into a bigger training mode so she'd probably be interested in poking him about the rune things more than the casual manner before in exchange for idk rock skipping lessons and general hanging out. August has Elvis Week, for example.
Uh question would be what if anything you'd like to do for Hanna and Ramona things or just a general how is Hanna doing re: the herd of elephants of things they never talk about.
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He wants to impress her and for her to think he's cool and if she asked about runes he'd be on that in a second. 8>
There's another soiree party thing coming up and that would be an excellent time for Hanna to make an ass of himself.
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sorry my internet refused to work a week after moving like a boss
Soooo Ramona has sort of accidentally positioned herself to having her back against the wall in regards to dealing with what's waiting for her at home. Part of it is Roxie, part of it is Breeze, part of it is that part of her conscience that tries to remind her not to suck as a person when it's not suspiciously quiet, but essentially she's gotten to the point where has to think about dealing with camp and also dealing with the stuff after camp. Which she doesn't want to do! Because sucky circumstances! Gideon is the final boss! Extensive self-awareness issues that need confronting!
Essentially Brianna asking to stay with her is making Ramona realize she needs to do that unfortunate confronting of issues. Because before when she was telling Brianna "yeah I wouldn't leave my world, there's stuff there" and Roxie asked her to leave, Ramona said no to leaving but not exactly yes to going back to her world and dealing with things. There was always the option to welch out and leave. And she knows that, but even though she told Brianna no about coming back with her, the part where she said "I can make you change your mind" was a sign that made Ramona sigh and realize maybe she'd have to stand firm in going back to her world. She's still not exactly jumping up for Brianna to stay because, uh, awful role model who can't take care of anybody?? But even when she's not saying yes she's still kind of making mental notes to find some fold out couch on Craigslist or food stuff and NO THAT DOESN'T MEAN YES OKAY JUST :/
Ironically, even though Brianna's really making her try to be sure about going back to her world, Roxie is the one making it difficult. Because if Ramona happened to tell Brianna "so you can stay with my world but how would you feel about living on the lam and skipping around to lots of places, fun huh?" Brianna's reaction would probably be a lot more positive to doing it than Roxie. Because Roxie is all "blah blah running away disapproving faces blah" and the hardest thing isn't going back, but going back...to deal with Gideon. Because Roxie basically gave an ultimatum of if they go back she fights Gideon. And Ramona doesn't want that because she's afraid Gideon might not just kill her but has the ability wipe out everything that Roxie became in camp, someone Ramona fell in love with, and into someone who hates Ramona, since that happened in camp with movie!Roxy so she doesn't want a repeat. And, yeah, okay secondly she's afraid Gideon might kill her.
So Ramona said she'd fight Gideon. And she really doesn't want to. At all. 1) she's 95% sure she's not capable of beating him. 2) she really doesn't want to fight him because she's still kind of in love with him and not proud of it but feelings shut up 3) if she loses it's going to be probably going to be some weird unwanted cryogenic freezing because Gideon has a Thing about keeping all his toys intact 4) even if she wins that doesn't mean life gets easier. 5) training is hard :<
This isn't changing her reaction much in regards to everything, but she is training more even though it feels more like a hollow gesture than really leveling up. That was why she was willing to try and smack Breeze with a bat/get smacked by her in a sparring match before, not only because of training but also because this is making her a little bit more prone to fighting and surliness than being patient and letting it go. She's probably going to slip more into bad habits she usually kept in check, sort of a pay off for training more and buckling down, but for the most part she's trying her best to seem totally normal and fine and hoping nobody will notice it. Which is why she's going to try and hang out with Brianna more since her girlfriend leaving sucks and she wants to reaffirm the reasons why she's going through all this shit to be responsible and whatever.
WHICH TOTALLY MEANS we should do a camping and/or subspace spying post sometime, and you should tell me what Brianna did/is doing in the meantime because I missed a lot but I saw you and Red Arrow talking so I know there's more shenanigans afoot.
IT'S COOL moving is the worst o9"
She wasn't going to go to the soiree thing because of Mindy being gone, but then Jade was like "no, you should go!" so she ended up going despite herself and ended up dancing with Jack and basically being an asshole to him and they haven't talked since then. :( She also fought with Jade about God or something, but at least that argument was based on an actual reason and not just Breeze being like "My girlfriend left! Validate me by being my rebound makeout partner!" #breezelife
She did talk to Red Arrow and told him she died, and he mentioned that he knew Ramona was counseling her in June, so Breeze is kind of like "lol I know she was bitching about that," but she's not really mad about it or anything because she would bitch about having to counsel herself too. :I So it's probably not something she'd pursue talking about with Ramona.
UHH what else mostly she's been hanging around Irene, which is awful, but she doesn't know it's awful, because Irene is always validating her feelings and making her feel good about herself. They made a secret plan to have Breeze fight off a monster in front of people so she'll seem important! Irene told Breeze that killing herself in Camp is a great experiment!! And Irene sneakily made Breeze feel like crap about the whole "I ASKED IF I COULD GO TO SOMEONE'S WORLD AND SHE SAID NO" thing by flat out saying that Ramona doesn't care about her, whoops, while at the same time she nudged Breeze further away from going to Fringeverse by saying that Breeze needs more freedom than that world could give her. ... SO UH yeah that relationship is a thing/trainwreck waiting to happen.
But yes! I'd love to do a post sometime. :> THINGS SHOULD HAPPEN.
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But especially about Ramona & Roy.
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But, right, especially that. So a lot of previously mentioned stuff has persistently stuck with Ramona in spite of upheaval and logic to the contrary, such as: monogamy is important, somebody's been cloned and brainwashed into being a weapon, somebody else is a terrible influence... being three/five. Ramona has long made peace with being the worst in her record of attraction, that last one is still most awkward. And after those conversations things have mostly settled in they know where they stand, but he'll say something disarming and she'll go "...aw fuck, stop that HE IS JUST BEING FRIENDLY AND DEBONAIR, BRAIN" and brush it off. She's still trying to be careful of her own flirting and mostly succeeding in not being shameless? She hopes? It might be a 70% success rate.
Recently, she's been trying to push the "socialize and have fun!" angle to see how he's been coping. Obviously, learning that your life was a lie is kind of hard to get you out and partying but she is trying to see if he's in a place where she needs to pay attention to anything he's keeping stoically quiet about or not. And selfishly she wants to have fun with him because her life has suddenly gotten more stressful now that she's being pushed into confronting her future and fighting Gideon, so of course her reaction of coping is escapism when she doesn't have to do the required thinking about it.
She's also hoping she can just train with him more because she actually can use the excuse "maybe I just want to for no good reason but to better myself" since that's really why she started archery, and training with him is less about "be responsible and confront your past" and simply "try this thing for the sake of enjoying a new thing." Knowing he's going back to his world and he never even questioned it is a kind of anchor she needs since practically everyone else is making her feel cornered in the "where are you going after Camp?" decision. Breeze by needing a home, Roxie by wanting to run away but then making her deal with the league business when they return, she's not bringing it up to other friends due to sad feelings and shifty avoidance of it... basically
So when she was telling him about that whole fight with Brianna it was such a matter of fact way he was saying this hard decision was the right thing, something he said with such certainty, that it calmed her a little. Still felt like shit for it, but not as run away prone! Even though she kind of wanted to ask "so...if I sort of ran away from everything and showed up in your world you'd only judge me a little?" comment. Which she didn't say! Ha! Progress!
But right now she's feeling like she has to be better than she is, which is stressful! And probably why she really wants him to be okay and enjoying other things. A lot of it is selfishly tied up in her own problems; she wants an excuse to do not serious things under the guise of helping out a poor pop culture deprived guy, she wants him to be not traumatized forever because if he can be okay she should be able to be okay, she just wants to hang out with him when other things get frustrating. And not shit all over his feelings, that too.
So essentially sorry if you might somehow be the most stable influence in her life right now, she'll try not to drag you with her. Also all the training.
Can I ask for a reverse? Or just a SOTU for Red Arrow.
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Okay, so partial reverse, partial SOTU. Roy's main focus (and I still think of him as Roy even if he doesn't) is on getting back home and finding the "real" Roy Harper. All other concerns are secondary. The thing is, he's pragmatic about it--he knows that, stuck in Camp, there's nothing he can do about it right now. At most, he can keep training and keep himself in good condition so as to be ready to go first thing as soon as he gets home. But until then, he's mostly just in a holding pattern (unless I update, which is unlikely at this point)--he'll still help people and do the hero thing because it's the right thing to do and he's not that big of a jerk, but he'll rationalize that as staying sharp. Socializing, making new friends? Well, since it's not going to help him when he gets home, he doesn't see the point.
Except--and unless (more on this in a second)--where Ramona's concerned. I've mentioned this before, but--odd as it sounds--Ramona has really been his anchor ever since he had those unpleasant revelations earlier. Of the people he knew before he found out about the whole Manchurian clone thing, Ramona is the one he's currently closest to, so their relationship going on much as it always has has been a seriously important touchstone for him--the last bit of normalcy he's holding on to. It's incredibly important to him not to lose that bond, because without it he thinks he has... well, nothing, really. That's why in their current conversation, he' got something of a rose-colored nostalgia glasses perspective--"No, no, we were always friends, right from the start, because I need us to have been friends, to be friends now, and to always stay friends going forward, or else I really am nothing but a programmed weapon." Socializing with Ramona convinces him he's really human, and if they do that by training, so much the better.
Which is also why it's important that she's pushing the whole "socialize and have fun" thing--this is the "unless" I mentioned earlier. He's not willing to admit it right this moment, but if Ramona keeps pushing him to really go out and make friends despite his apathy, he'll see that she's right, that it's important to cope that way, too, and--again, from his overly pragmatic perspective--that making friends now that he knows his history would be more proof that he's more than someone else's puppet.
It's funny, too, that a lot of Ramona's motivation is coming from her conflict over whether to confront Gideon or to run away again. Roy will want to know that's why she has a new dedication to training, because again, he's inherently enough of a hero to want to help her, and especially because she's so important to him. Pragmatically--there's that word again--he will think that she'd be better off confronting Gideon and beating him and moving past all of her baggage, however difficult and painful that might be. But selfishly...? Oh, that's a new, different feeling that could prompt a revelation about him being more than a puppet, too--because selfishness, having desires, well, that's part of being human, too. So selfishly, if she had asked him "so... if I sort of ran away from everything and showed up in your world you'd only judge me a little?", his answer would be very interesting.
... possibly something along the lines of, "If you showed up in my world, I would jump you even if the whole Justice League was watching."
Because she is so important to him, it's not a huge step further to love, really. He hasn't made that step--he knows neither of them have made that step, and he knows that extra step is still there, still needs to be taken (if at all), and still has plenty of obstacles in the way of successful stepping. But her showing up in the YJ-verse would go a long way toward eliminating those obstacles, in his mind--unless, of course, Roxie was with her. She's the major obstacle, and Roy doesn't want to do anything to break them up, or to encourage Ramona to do anything to break them up. I'm just saying that if it were to happen, he wouldn't waste any time in submitting his resume and references as a replacement candidate, you know? He's okay if nothing comes of it, because pragmatically (take a shot!) he knows that "that might be fun, but technically it's not mission critical, either." But he wonders sometimes, is all.
... does that make anything remotely resembling sense?
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And the reason it took me so long to respond was we didn't have internet for a while as well as spending more time on this thing than it looks like I did. So, uh, SURPRISE?
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Which leads in well to the whole relationship stuff that Wendy is still the person Ramona respects the most! Go you! I feel like even if there isn't as much threading (because of said hiatus terribleness but I will always harass you) they still would hang out off because omg you introduced Sharknado to Camp and this means we need to find a torrent in some alternate world where this happened:
REVERSE FOR IRENE? Does Ramona make any impression at all and how is she finding Camp?
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Society Song
Tuesday night down at the monster's ball
I've got dirty laundry on them all
And I'd crack the whip and burn down this house of cards
But my inner-Cinderella calls
Destroy Everything You Touch
Everything you touch you don't feel
Do not know what you steal
Shakes your hand
Takes your gun
Walks you out of the sun
Purple Yellow Red and Blue
All I
Wanna do is
Live in ectascy
I know what's best for me
I can't help it
It's this hopeless itch
The King is Dead
Thin December air is like the dry ice smoke
You will come to your senses or inhale and choke
My IQ allows me to brush you aside
You are zeros and ones, you're wrong when I'm right
If you were a criminal mastermind you'd know what song this is
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And, honestly, that's true? Mostly. As it is, their relationship is good. She loves Roxie, she wants to be with her...
The part that's a little untrue is how Ramona has been forced to deal with not only how things are between them now (which sometimes are dicey anyway), but the obstacles that will be an inevitable part of the future. Basically, the dynamic before that big conversation about confronting Gideon was like the honeymoon stage of the relationship. Or freshman year. It was very in the moment and as they come, an adventure to explore, and really the best way Ramona deals with relationships. It's why she wasn't in any rush to move in together or plan things aside from short term vacations.
Now it's something different, with obligations and training regimes and trying to brace herself for these looming problems that she's not sure she can overcome. And in her insistence of getting Roxie not to fight Gideon has kind of pushed her into this corner where she has to fight Gideon and she really, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally doesn't want to. Not only that, but she's pretty sure she can't beat him. It's not a matter of training or strength, it's the fact that she can't make herself want to fight him for her own sake. Even in volume 6 she was there for Scott instead of Gideon, and only fought once Scott pushed back against all his psycho douchebaggery. And the way things are now she's not in a position to admit all of that to Roxie. So trying to improve her training is more an empty gesture of improvement than anything else, which she's trying through effort to turn into a genuine motivation.
On its own it's not too terrible or fatalistically dramatic, but it is probably like when Ramona tried quitting smoking in college. Generally okay, but little unrelated setbacks would suddenly be more problematic than they used to be, where she'd show off her frustration in little ways. To compensate right now she's trying to be affectionate and sidestep any serious important things, but she's hiding more of herself. And when she basically said "I will fight him" she wanted to hear about what they would do after, even if she was 95% sure that's not possible, it was a nice kind of happy ending.
That said, there might be ways to bring it up or deal with any upcoming issues. Especially if training leads to her being a little more honest in her dealings re: her lack of conviction and baggage with Gideon. But so far she doesn't feel like it will help or do anything but frustrate Roxie more and she has no idea how to make things better.
So...reverse? HOW IS ROXIE REALLY DOING?
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I'd say a very sizable chunk of Roxie's thought processes re: Ramona just boil down to "don't fuck up" because it's Roxie and she always always thinks there's a sizable chance she's going to fuck something up because... there is realistically always a chance that she's going to fuck something up. That is a thing. So she's trying to minimize the odds of it as much as possible with Ramona because, and I'm sure I've said this in these before, Roxie genuinely sees this as her last shot and if she blows this everything is over and she's just going to shut herself in a loft somewhere painting forever. Which is of course a totally unreasonable expectation to place on a relationship but... yeah. She feels like that.
(Unfortunately, this focus on not fucking things up with Ramona has probably increased her probability of fucking up elsewhere, hence her relationships with both Breeze and Jennifer being pretty strained right now. D'oh.)
She wants to give Ramona space on the fighting Gideon thing because it wasn't a thing Roxie was expecting Ramona to say and it's... it probably wouldn't be right to say that she believes it as much as it would be to say that she really really wants to believe it. Because realistically Roxie thinks that it should be Ramona standing up to Gideon and fighting him and beating him because she's the one whose life he's really fucked up with the League and everything, but she still wants to punch him in the face forever until he dies really really bad and she is training with the possibility that that's what's going to need to happen in mind.
So probably the fact that Roxie is so deadset on trying to be what she thinks is the best possible version of herself at all times and try to not bring important stuff up for a while until she can't avoid it anymore is going to be what maybe takes a while for another serious talk to happen, but at the same time there's also the knowledge that she does have to initiate those serious talks because otherwise they just... probably won't happen. Which is frustrating! And Roxie hates being frustrated too and she hates frustrating Ramona in turn, but at the same time it has to happen because Roxie didn't go through all that shit and self-doubt and working up the courage to do the stuff she's done just for the relationship to end when camp decides it's time for the relationship to end.
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO END THIS. Roxie loves Ramona and wants to be with her too WHY ISN'T THIS SIMPLE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SIMPLE. Can't we just drop a nuke on every Chaos Theater or something?
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And, no, we can't go nuking every popular night club associated with Gideon there are hundreds of people that go there who are probably innocent and besides neither of us know nuclear physicists :|