#steph rambles

(Disclaimer: Ming/Joe is an incredibly toxic relationship; I fully realize and acknowledge that, but Poom makes a critical distinction in Joe's reasoning, and I think it's interesting to dissect. Also, this is fiction.)

It's been some time since I've written any meta, but I can't stop thinking about the video @poomphuripan shared of Poom making the distinction that Joe isn't giving in to Ming, but rather, his heart is melting for him.

It makes so much sense that Joe would melt at the littlest semblance of 'love.' He was so alone for so long. His parents have been dead for longer than he had them, he has no siblings, and his extended relatives don't care about him. I forget if it's mentioned in the show, but in the novel, Joe had a pretty big crush on Sol, and Sol rejected him quite brutally. Even without meaning to be, Joe is always alone at the end of the day.

Yes, Joe has friends, and yes, Joe made his own found family. But at the end of the day, Joe would return to an unlit, empty home. Everyone else would return to their wives or families, while Joe could only return to the pictures of his parents. Meanwhile, for all of Ming's bs and frightening behavior, he was the only one that made his dream come true.

For the first time, with Ming around, Joe would come home and be greeted by the warmth of another living, breathing person. Joe craved to have a human bond, and Ming was the one who was willing (albeit for his own interest) to give it to him. And he cooked for him. He took up space in his home! He remembered the very things Joe had told him he longed for. They had a lot of good times, a lot of good memories, and a pretty set routine that really integrated Ming into Joe's life. But then they fight, his blissful reality breaks, and Joe dies.

But Joe wakes up from what feels like a day's nap when, in actuality, two years have passed. And what does he find? Ming has cared for his apartment since his death and is unwilling to change anything just in case Joe returns. Ming continues to fulfill Joe's dream of returning to a warm home. So he turns on the lights, and he cooks the same dinner that they used to share for two years. And even in his rightful anger of wanting Ming to leave him alone, he's still seeing that. In the two years since his disappearance, someone still thought about him and hadn't fully grieved him. Ming's brother only confirms that.

Giving in would mean that Joe wanted to end the fight with Ming, when no feelings had changed. It'd be him emotionally surrendering himself, compromising his feelings of being just a double for Tong, and fully conceding himself when he still thought that Ming only saw him as a replacement. While Joe might have given Ming access to his body to pay his new mom's debts, he was still blocking Ming out as much as he could. But that's not why Joe forgives Ming; it's not for a superficial reason to stop the feud. There's a visible shift in how he perceives Ming, the guy who waited two years for him, who protected and filled his home with warmth, just in case he wasn't really gone. His motivation was rooted in the slivers of positive feelings he had for Ming, which allowed him to move past the anger that he held for him.

A quote that I've seen floating around the internet for years comes to mind. "And when nobody wakes you up in the morning and when nobody waits for you at night and when you do whatever you want. What do you call it? Freedom or loneliness?" Joe has had that freedom for the majority of his whole life. It's no longer freedom for him. But even his found family isn't fully aware of the loneliness that would wash over him when he would return to an empty home.

After all is said and done, he sees that only one person knows him intimately enough to understand and learn even the most mundane of his desires. Ming, even with all the toxic shit he has pulled, stood by his word of not letting Joe return to an empty home. For Joe, that was enough. It changes how he sees and understands Ming.

It's also why Sol and Joe would have never worked out.

As Poom said, ultimately, it's not that he gives in to Ming but rather he lets his heart melt when he sees exactly what Ming has done for him in his absence.

I rewatched 1x2 and 1x3 and so the only logical thing is to do is to go on a tangent about something that has nothing to do with the second episode and is only fractionally linked to the third episode :D [Look, there is no consistency or logic to my yapping okay. It's just whatever comes to my brain]

"I'm angry at myself. We don't leave our own behind."

Did this line send me down a rabbit hole? Yes. Yes it did. And honestly, the more I think about what happens later on in the show, the more depressing it gets. Hunter already feels a lot of guilt about leaving Crosshair behind because, at the end of the day, loyalty is incredibly important to the clones and it feels, to Hunter, like he's broken some form of oath. They never leave their brothers and yet they left one of their own on Kamino. Now, admittedly, it was the right thing to do in the moment: Crosshair was trying to kill them and it would not have been safe to try and take him with them. That doesn't mean that anything that happened was Cross' fault, but it simply wasn't a scenario where the Batch would have been able to take him too. And this likely makes things worse for Hunter. At this point in time, they believe that Cross is under the influence of the chip (with a little scepticism from Tech) and, therefore, they left a vulnerable brother behind because of something he was unable to control. Hunter would be beating himself up over this.

It gets even worse when we get to the S1 finale and Crosshair chooses to stay with the Empire with no influence of the chip. Cross has felt betrayed by what the squad did and while it was no-ones fault (and a shitty set of circumstances), Cross can't help but feel like his place is with the Empire and not with his brothers (there are other layers to this as well that I'll likely get to when I get to those episodes). Hunter is left in a position where, realistically, they can't take Crosshair with them. Disrespecting his choices is the last thing they should be doing, but that means leaving him behind again. Part of Hunter is going to wonder how things would have been different if they had never left Crosshair on Kamino in the first place. And on top of all that, it would get worse again when they find out what Cross went through at the hands of the Empire. Hunter feels like he has consistently abandoned his brother and that what has happened to him is his own fault. He left Cross on Kamino and Crosshair decided that staying with the Empire was better than coming back to his squad, so Hunter left him behind again and Cross was subsequently tortured. Hunter isn't just the squad's brother, he's their leader, and it has been his responsibility to look after them. He's going to feel fucking dreadful.

And I want to go on a separate tangent for a moment about Crosshair and his view on the loyalty of clones because it got me thinking about Echo's rescue in TCW S7.

"I would have left him for dead too. Besides, he's just another reg."

Crosshair is saying this because he's being a dick, but I think it's interesting to look at this line in the context of The Bad Batch. Cross chooses these words because he knows how much it will hurt Rex. He knows how strongly clones feel about loyalty, because he feels that same loyalty to his own batchmates. Clones never leave their own behind, and so he knows how painful it would be to be accused of willingly leaving a brother. He's not saying it because he means it, he's saying it because he wants to specifically strike Rex where it is going to hurt. So knowing how painful that would be, it would tear Crosshair apart to be left on Kamino by his brothers. He felt like they had abandoned them, and that was one of the most hurtful acts of betrayal they could have done (once again, they had no choice, but it doesn't make it any easier on Cross in the moment). "I would have left him for dead." And Crosshair felt like they had.

Side tangent over, I want to go back to Hunter because if the guilt of leaving Crosshair behind wasn't bad enough, they then lose Tech. While Tech sacrificed himself, they never went back to look for his body because they couldn't. While they didn't have a choice, Hunter has to carry on knowing that they, once again, left a brother behind. Knowing that his brother's body was at the bottom of a mountain somewhere, he likely felt the same as Fives and Rex did after The Citadel: his brother would never get a proper goodbye because they never went back for him. It gives him another layer of understanding as to why Rex fought so desperately to get Echo back. And the thing is, in some ways, never seeing the body is worse because that still leaves room for denial that maybe there is a chance that they are still alive. Especially, since the squad has Echo. I always wondered if Hunter looked and Echo and thought that maybe, maybe, there was a chance that Tech made it out, that if Echo could survive what he went through, then Tech could too. (I guess there is also another thing to explore about whether there may have been a subtle, underlying anger, not necessarily targeted at Echo specifically, but just about the fact that he was able to survive and Tech wasn't. Hmmm, I might have to think about that).

Hunter likely blames himself for a lot of what happened to his brothers, and resents himself for making the decision to leave them behind. But the thing is, in none of these scenarios is it ever his fault, and that arguably makes it worse. He couldn't take Crosshair off Kamino because it was a safety risk, he couldn't take him after the collapse of Tipoca City because going against Crosshair's choice would damage their relationship even further, and it was Tech that sacrificed himself on Eriadu. Hunter never had an option and yet feels like it was his fault that it all happened. His job as a brother and as a team leader was to protect his family, and he failed.

[Okay yap over. Love how this is technically a ramble for 1x2 and 1x3 but covers one line of dialogue from 1x3 and a bunch of waffle about any episode apart from those two. And of course it's angsty :D]

Haay guys ☺️

It’s been a long time of silence here — life kinda swept me away for a while. I’ve been focusing on my health and taking care of myself, which meant stepping back from a lot of things I loved, including Sims and this little corner of the internet.

But lately I’ve felt the itch to come back, to create again, to share pretty pixels, silly stories with you all and maybe also share some new stuff with you i will make in the future ~ ❤️ So here I am, slowly updating my game, fixing mods, and breathing life back into my Sims save file.

Also helloo again from Ashina andd Aidan 😘 It's taking a bit -because you know... new GShade preset, 5000+ mods, the usual chaos, but I’m planning to slowly ease back into posting.

I’ve really missed sharing my screenshots, my sims, cc and just being part of this little bubble again.

and can I just say, holy shit, this series is amazing. The lore is so intricate and it turned out to have one of my favorite combinations ever: a light-hearted appearing series that actually has serious and dark tones underneath (such as the chiikawas turning into monsters when they're lonely)

I am desperately awaiting more of the anime to be translated so I can binge it all