Loss of Control Reflection

Where to even start with this one… 

Isadora and Ledger

Now I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Isadora and Ledger are foils of one another, but they are cut from the same cloth. Outcasts who were used, abused, and thrown away by those they had put their trust in, now choosing to trust someone who’s only reason given that they can be trusted is blunt honesty. Part of that may be a not-so-private hope of mine for life itself, where I will be able to trust others more when exposed to blunt honesty that mirrors my own, or it may just be what the world needs more of. 

We spend so much time tip-toeing around things that we’ve gotten to a point in society where it almost seems better to lie to others and spare their feelings than be honest with them. The only people who seem to use honesty are those who are cruel and stupid. In reality, they’re calling the terrible things they’re saying “honest” to avoid consequences to what they’re saying. “I don’t understand why you’re getting so mad at me. I’m just being honest.”

No, you’re not. You’re being an asshole and everyone can tell. 

The reason I think that Grey’s honesty resonates with both Ledger and Isadora in this scene (and even with Diego in others) is that his honesty is both blunt and self-depricating. He doesn’t once act as though he’s above his own honesty, admitting to his own flaws as well as pointing out others’. Now, this is not something I can claim to be able to do for myself. I lie to myself about myself all the time, and I know this, so I’m trying to improve on this shortcoming, however, it’s a work in progress. When someone is being “honest” about others, but refuses to be honest about themselves, they’re probably just a narcissist who shouldn’t be trusted anyway. 

Ledger sees Isadora as a means to save Grey and get the outcome he wants most, but upon seeing her as a kindred spirit (ha ha, now we move on from the pun), he does feel a pang of connection to her, something he hasn’t felt in a very long time. Connection isn’t something most Kindred get to experience once they start getting older. The young neonates are still so connected to their human life that they can hold onto that feeling, even if it's an illusion. To be offered that connection as an older, and in this case dead, Kindred, no longer valuable because you’ve nothing left to offer, it affected him, and it shows how much of Isadora is being unlocked by the trust that she’s given to Grey, and the trust he’s put in her. 

Isadora and Sorrow

These two are interesting to me because of how the dynamic between these two creatures in WoD lore goes. The Kindred should be the physically weaker one, while the Garou is definitely more deeply connected to the spirits of the land, not the spirits of the dead. They stepped into each other's worlds and flipped the whole encounter around in the story. One of my favorite parts in writing this whole chapter was the scene where Isadora kills Sorrow. She doesn’t have much in the way of physical strength, so to have her using her slight frame and low strength in order to crush the life out of a Garou is somewhat unheard of, but once he was stripped of the power holding him together, it was inevitable. 

Beyond that, I loved that she was able to withstand all the mutterings and madness of the creature because unlike Grey, she wasn’t trying to understand the philosophy of the monster she was facing, rather she accepted that it was a broken mind and a lost soul that could not be saved. Tremere, and people like me, are always trying to understand the “why” of a situation. Knowing why a person acts how they act can oftentimes help us empathize with them and see them as more than the cretin we have been taught to believe they were. Empathy can be one of the strongest human gifts imaginable, especially given our tribal nature. However, Isadora is wise enough to know that this creature has abandoned its tribal roots and has rejected anything human left in it. It takes the form of the wolf, and holds it, never once reverting to its hominid form. It rejected its humanity, making it little more than a wight in its own rights, and thus, needed to be destroyed. 

Isadora’s Sacrifice

Knowing full well that something that lacked humanity needed to be destroyed, Isadora also knew that using the power of the mask would mean she would be sacrificing her remaining humanity, becoming a wight herself, though being locked in stasis (torpor for those that saw the word in the story and didn’t know what it meant, the kind of death like stasis a vampire enters when they get staked or loses too much vitae is called the state of torpor). Her connection to Grey, dare I say the love she feels for him, makes her willing to sacrifice herself for him just like he was willing to sacrifice himself for her. Anyone who’s watched Supernatural and is yelling that constantly dying for one another is a terrible love language, you’re correct. 

Doesn’t mean their relationship is healthy. At least, not yet. Their relationship can’t be completely healthy until they address their own mental health issues. And they have eternity to put that shit off. 

I think the best part of this sacrifice to me was the fact that she still believed that he would accept her fate, respect her choices, and let her die in his arms. While for most things, he and I would both be willing to accept a choice like that, there is a stubbornness that rises up in us that cannot be slaked by anything short of open defiance to an injustice we can do something to stop. Grey didn’t see her death as necessary, and so he wouldn’t let it happen. You could say he doesn’t listen and didn’t respect her wishes… and you’d be right, but in his defense… he’s probably as scared of losing her as she is of losing him. (Write that down, it comes back later). 

Grey’s Claim

Now, he was mirroring her words from earlier in the chapter: “The Witch/Warlock is mine, and I will not be denied.” Honestly, I thought it was a badass line, but then I thought a bit deeper into it. 

I’m imagining all the things that these two had been denied in their lifetimes, as well in their deaths. The lost loves, the lost families, the lost connections, and the lost futures they’d both been hoping for. After all that loss, they finally found something they were willing to put their faith and trust in. There is a blatant selfishness to this love, but far too often we think of selfishness as a bad or evil thing. I used to tell my students that every sentence that starts with “I want” or “I don’t want” is, inherently, selfish. I followed that up with the fact that being selfish is only bad if it's the only thing you are. Self care is, in it of itself, a selfish act, but it is an act that is encouraged. Treating yourself is selfish, chasing your dreams is selfish, and even working to support someone else’s dream because you want to see them succeed is selfish. You’re doing it for you as much as for them. 

But that’s not inherently bad. 

Grey is blatantly going against Isadora’s wishes here. She made a decision on allowing herself to die to save the man she cares about. But in the wise words of Nick Fury: “I recognize that the council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I’ve elected to ignore it.” In his mind, one only has to accept death when death has occurred. He will not try to bring her back if she has already met the final death, and to him that’s respecting her choice to let dead things stay dead.

However. 

She isn’t dead yet. 

And thus, he’s still within his rights to try and save her. 

Is he twisting words and bending rules? Most definitely. 

Does he care? Certainly not. 

I love these two, and not just because he’s my self-insert and she’s a spooky goth girl, though those attributes go a long way to endearing them both to me. No, the reason I love them so much is because of how flawed and broken they are. And not only are they flawed and broken, they both think that they can break themselves just a little bit more, and give the pieces that fall off to the other to allow them to fix themselves enough to find reason enough to stay in a world that so desperately wants to see them shuffle off it. They are, piece by piece, Ship of Theseus-ing each other, and even I as the author don’t know at what point the pieces are going to balance out.