xx || relationship meme!!

[rebells]

For Swift and Cynthia Davies. You will get DOTS and also RAMBLES because I like both dots and rambles.

Experience has taught me that I can't keep up a proper questions meme, but if you want to ask me other stuff go right ahead!

Comments

[rebells]

HA HA . . . HA :'D

Down temporarily--that last conversation did not win him any points--but I expect it to rise a bit as long as he backs off the memory issue. Pitch is . . . primarily unlucky, I think, in when and how he came into Aather; if he'd been on Jasper from the start, or on another team, or even if he'd been the first new arrival, they would probably have a more straightforwardly positive relationship, full of tsundere and protectiveness. AS IT IS Swift is packing a lot of team-related frustration and resentment, and this affects the way he reacts to Pitch a lot.

is this going to be a Jasper essay I guess this is going to be a Jasper essay. Most of Swift's Jasper problems are fallout from the team's first booking, which was kind of a ridiculous emotions-running-high point--it came right on the heels of Three's elevator game and all the teamfeels that inspired and Swift emotionally dumping Erika because she is Not Trustworthy. He was already predisposed to be upset! (Especially since he was pretty close to the teammate who was booked.) And then the new arrival was this weird dude who took Swift's mean girling REALLY BADLY and scuffed his pride in the process, and (IIRC) insulted Jasper to top it off. FIRST BOOKINGS ARE PRETTY IMPORTANT EVENTS, and Swift came away from the whole thing with (fairly or unfairly) the impression that This Dude Cannot Be Trusted, I Do Not Want Him In My Mental Team, which plus the whole Erika situation was kind of the death knell for Jasper as any place of security for Swift. His conception of team could take one person he couldn't really trust or think of as team! But not two.

It swung him pretty hard towards the "teams are random and meaningless, just because someone is on your team doesn't mean you automatically have any kind of special relationship with them" camp. Swift . . . does have teamfeels! But they aren't for Jasper as a continuous unit consisting of everyone who has or will ever wear that red-orange color, and I don't know if they ever will be; they're reserved for the original six members of Jasper minus Erika. He won't let his conception of team grow to accommodate more people, at least not easily, and he outright rejects the idea that he owes a stranger anything just because they drop into the ring wearing a certain color. It's why he went /RAGEQUIT THREAD in Raenef's intro--he just had this moment of nope nope nope I don't owe this random person who replaced someone I care about anything. And it governs basically everything he's done in the latest memory-taking/fallout threads.

Swift is . . . trying to fake TEAMSENSE pretty hard right now. He realizes that even if he doesn't feel obligated to Pitch, other people on the team--people he cares about--do, and by Not Dealing, he is basically shoving the responsibility of taking care of Pitch onto those people. He's not actually that much of a cad, so he will at least act like a teammate. He is being nice! And helpful! And not a jerk! What Pitch gets is actually Swift biting back his tsun and frustration and mean-girl a lot--normally he will rib and insult Pitch-types a lot more. And then he gets irritated that he has to do this, which results in more biting back >:E!!! . . . it's a vicious cycle. Everything involving Pitch gets parsed as a kind of obligation, and not one he took on wholly of his own free will--it's unfair, but he feels like Pitch's entire existence is a demand on him: to care, to protect (although the protectiveness is pretty much genuine at this point), to be nice. He doesn't want to do any of those things! He's been burned, and he doesn't want a relationship with nuJasper. But he's committed himself to this.

WHAT HE'S COMMITTED HIMSELF TO is essentially a caretaker role; most of Jasper are kids or naive, emotional people who have to be looked after and protected. He is willing to do that, first to maintain the integrity of the team and second because oh my god Pitch you are so stupid you are going to get yourself into so many problems if I am not there!!!! However! He wants it to stop there. Swift has zero desire for an intimate or emotional relationship with Pitch or any hypothetical nuJasper; zero desire for a friendship or familial bond; zero desire for anything except "I will look out for you as long as you prioritize the team, because that's what 'Jasper' is and what 'Jasper' wants." Swift isn't looking for those things inside the team anymore, and any attempts to start something like that are going to be taken as an imposition. (He flipped off the handle when Prince so much as implied that Swift should be nice to him because they were teammates.) He is someone who keeps a lot of secrets and a lot of walls, and he lets people in . . . very slowly. Very carefully. You have to get to a certain S-Link level before he will tell you a lot of mundane things, much less sensitive and emotional stuff, and . . . you cannot brute-force Swift's dating sim. Not without being at a very high level.

I mention this because Swift feels, with varying levels of justifiability, that Pitch keeps demanding things he doesn't have the right to. Tell me about your Mitsuki sadfeels! (When Pitch wanted to know Y U MAD.) Tell me about your friends! (When Swift is loathe to call people he cares about 'friends.') Tell me about your memory, tell me why you're upset, like me, I worry about you!! The memory fiasco was basically a long series of Swift putting up barriers and Pitch trying to knock them down, which did not make him feel good at all--grabbing his hand/trying to pull him back, inquiring into something Swift very much did not want to talk about, following him when (he thinks) it was very clear he wanted to be alone, continuing to ask after his mental state, which--Swift does not talk about his feelings. And he especially does not admit to vulnerability. I think there were three people in Aather who could have/did get him to so much as cryptically reference the fact that he'd taken a bad memory and was upset about it. He was really uncomfortable during both threads--I'm actually surprised he didn't yell at any point--by this person he didn't have any kind of intimate relationship trying to make him display/talk about something that scared and upset him a lot. More than that, since Swift lets things slip progressively to people he is closer to, asking after something Swift would normally only mention to very close friends parsed as trying to insinuate himself into that kind of relationship with Swift, something he never takes well under any circumstances. That goes double when, as a nuJasper, Pitch has the specter of "you should like me/be nice to me/tell me things because we're teammates!" which, as I said above, is still a sore spot. So by the time we got to "I'll still worry about you," which under different circumstances might actually have earned Pitch derepoints, it was just another unwanted demand (I have feelings about you! You should have feelings about me!) for a relationship he hadn't earned. Swift saying "don't bother" was actually not him tsunning or being self-effacing about whether he's "worth" worrying about; it was his attempt to reset boundaries and restore their relationship to something more acceptable to him without flying off the handle. You don't get feelings, okay, you just get grumpy protectiveness. :T

HONESTLY, at this point I don't think there's anything Pitch (or subsequent Jaspers) can do to improve his relationship with Swift except . . . just go totally hands off and not try to engage more than superficially and let Swift work his way up. He engages his own feelings accidentally all the time . . . .

reverse . . . you don't . . . have to use this many words though . . . (sob)

[ademoelord]

Swift... is probably the one person on Jasper that Pitch want approval from most. He is definitely running high to the orphan/outcast feelings right now, and his last memory kind of underscored that ("If you don't like being a thief, then stop." / "I can't. I'm an orphan. I joined the Guild to survive."). It's kind of running that road, only he doesn't dislike being on Jasper anymore than he disliked the Guild members -- but he knows Swift is angry at him showing up and he doesn't have any other place to go.

He figured out the rage quit when he first arrived, and that pretty much sealed it for needing Swift to approve him. If Swift, who turned his back and walked away without even speaking to him, could accept him, then he'd be more than just an unwanted replacement.

For a while, he was hopeful, I guess. Things seemed to be going better for the most part. Right now though, he's... worried and scared and uncertain of his existence as a member of Jasper and a person. If teammates don't even want him, what's the point. He doesn't even know how to try at this point.


What does Swift think about Wonderland?