A Gentlemanly Offer

Despite her complete lack of relevant adventuring experience, Marigold Sashenstar longs for a chance to prove that she can be the helpfully heroic type—and after helping Cal and Lia bypass the checkpoint, she’s determined to get other refugees safely into the Lower City.

There’s not a chance in the Hells that Rolan is letting a silly little rich girl drag his siblings down with her. If that means supervising her efforts, that’s what he’s going to do, whether she wants him to or not.

(Complete! Updates Monday!)

oh my god okay the journey it took me to post this! Three drafts and all these meandering interim projects and SO MANY attempts to procrastinate actually letting Marigold out into the world in finished project form!!! There was a draft where she was dating Gale!!! I have some of those fics up!!!! They are all sort of bad lol!!!!

I wanted to draw pictures to accompany the chapters and that is still going to happen :’) but I finished this way back in May and my move is killing me and I don’t wanna wait to post this thing any longer.

If you leave a comment I love you personally. Mari and Rolan are so dear to me and I hope they will be dear to you too!

also a lot of love to @yoursummerfrost who has known Mari since the beginning and has been the world’s most incredible cheerleader for this draft as well as many others, @bibutterflies for always understanding most intimately the incredible value of one (1) driven little redhead who loves when men are moderately tormented, and obviously @thecubspeaks because Majra is hers and the shape that Marigold has now taken would not exist without her

fandomlife-universe:

Who’s rescuing you?

Caitvi is perfect btw that’s my other takeaway

I think that’s my takeaway from Arcane S1. Sevika should get to kill everybody here for real. Give Sevika more shimmer and whatever weird guns we have and just let her kill everybody here. She deserves it. If I stabbed my boss in the face to throw my weight behind a guy who I thought would raise the Undercity to greater heights and he then proceeded to give some teenager the keys to his car and let her start running over people and made me clean up all the bodies she ran over and then when asked what his future plans were wrt her was just like “this is fine, fuck you,” I’d have killed him way before Sevika and she didn’t even do it

Also sorry maybe I’m not done but how crazy is it that Jinx spent multiple years as Silco’s “right-hand man” and somehow still did not retain enough information about politics to realize that she is seriously fucking over the undercity by blowing up Piltover. It is so clear that the moment is framed as her big grand gesture to try and honor Silco but girly has NO idea what is going on. I think so much of this highlights that Silco really was just letting an extremely traumatized and clearly unstable high schooler play with nuclear weapons without ever actually explaining to her what he was trying to accomplish beyond “Piltover fucking sucks.” Sevika should get to kill everybody for real. I can’t believe she’s gonna have to deal with this too now

wizardissues:

For real man I 100 percent understand why Jinx did all that. that’s not the problem. I just don’t like it. Everything is filtered through whether or not people want to take care of her and love her. Which makes sense! She had a crazy unstable upbringing and grew up AS the baby that was taken care of and has really never left that behind! But it is truly physically painful to watch next to her older sister who clawed through hell to get her back and who is subsequently told that her love isn’t right and isn’t good enough because she cares about other things outside of Jinx. Like. My god. I can sort of see the shape of why other people might really enjoy and resonate with this character but I think I’m calling it. She is absolutely not for me

And it’s so clear that Jinx’s insecurities are talking. We could get into the weeds about Vi being really fixated on the baby she knew etc but what Vi wants more than anything is her sister. She is literally sitting in Jinx’s torture kidnap dungeon tearfully asserting that she’s on Jinx’s side and begging Caitlyn not to kill this person who has kidnapped and killed so many different people. Vi is ride or die. Jinx is so fixated on this specific narrative of being abandoned and in some ways so convinced she is undeserving of Vi’s forgiveness that she is just totally unwilling to accept her sister’s very real love. Which, again, I GET IT, it’s just fucking skin crawling to watch Jinx, who has always wanted to be cherished and protected, look Vi in the eyes and tell Vi, who has always wanted to love and protect other people, that her love isn’t good enough to fix it.

For real man I 100 percent understand why Jinx did all that. that’s not the problem. I just don’t like it. Everything is filtered through whether or not people want to take care of her and love her. Which makes sense! She had a crazy unstable upbringing and grew up AS the baby that was taken care of and has really never left that behind! But it is truly physically painful to watch next to her older sister who clawed through hell to get her back and who is subsequently told that her love isn’t right and isn’t good enough because she cares about other things outside of Jinx. Like. My god. I can sort of see the shape of why other people might really enjoy and resonate with this character but I think I’m calling it. She is absolutely not for me

wizardissues:

GOD okay finally starting to feel the pull towards Jinx again it’s just she is soooo saturated in the past!!! I want to see her grow!!! I feel like the second season will be really good for that, this season it’s been pretty much impossible for her to establish herself as an individual. It’s all about the tension between Powder and Jinx

I made this post and then two seconds later she blew everything up on purpose right as it was going to be fine. Girl,

GOD okay finally starting to feel the pull towards Jinx again it’s just she is soooo saturated in the past!!! I want to see her grow!!! I feel like the second season will be really good for that, this season it’s been pretty much impossible for her to establish herself as an individual. It’s all about the tension between Powder and Jinx

Watching the kidnapping scene is just like god okay Jinx wants somebody to need her in the same way that she desperately needs other people. I get that. But like. Jinx’s pain stems from the fact that Vi has a life outside her and a person who might ostensibly be prioritized over her. Vi’s pain stems from the fact that Jinx is digging the knife into Vi’s oldest wound, deliberately trying to make Vi hurt to prove that she is loved, because what matters most to her, so much more than caring about other people, is being validated and being wanted. It’s an energy I enjoyed in characters for a while there but I don’t have as much fun with it these days and it’s painful to watch next to Vi who is so loving by nature

wizardissues:

I am sure at some point I’ll enjoy jinx

Head in my hands