And yes, that realization was partially brought on by the MLP:FiM joke I made in the post before it. So if the Undersiders were all to represent the Elements of Harmony, who would be what?
I doubt this is going to fit all that well, but I’m going to try. 😛
And now the others had forgiven her? So easily? She could see them fawning over the little traitor. And there was nothing she could do about it. They liked Taylor more.
Honestly, this is fair. Rachel has every right to not have forgiven Taylor, even without her lonely past and doggified brain.
They would keep Taylor on the team and make Bitch leave if it came down to it. She knew it in her gut.
It really does seem that way at this point.
So she’d done something stupid. She’d tried to get rid of her teammate, and she’d done it in a way that haunted her. More than anything, more than all of the people she’d hurt, the people she’d accidentally killed, or the days she’d scrounged in the trash for food when she’d been homeless, wandering the cities on her own, she hated herself for what she’d done to Taylor.
Yeeeah. That was low.
So what did you think of Taylor’s spiel afterwards?
She had acted like the people who haunted her memories, using what should have been a position of trust to try to hurt someone.
Yep.
In retrospect, even besides the lonely past, I find it rather appropriate that Rachel was the one most hurt by Taylor’s betrayal, the least willing to forgive her, and the one who is now feeling awful about betraying Taylor in turn, even if it was just a taste of Taylor’s own medicine.
After all, which trait is most responsible for the dog’s title of “Man’s Best Friend”?
Loyalty.
Then Taylor had made overtures at friendship. Taylor had invited herself into that place, that void, and had stayed when Bitch fucked up.
…oh yeah, I suppose she did.
Despite the last we saw of the two together (though we know more meetings between them have happened since) being Taylor chewing out Rachel for betrayal, Taylor was still pretty clear about wanting to stay as friendly as was possible between them, and I suppose she does remain the closest thing Rachel actually has to a human friend.
Taylor’s efforts are starting to pay off.
The scrawny kid had stood her ground instead of running when Bitch called her out on something.
And she called Rachel out on something herself and still indicated wanting to stay.
And maybe, just a little, in some small way, Bitch had gotten a glimpse at what she’d been missing out on.
…in a sense.
Their relationship isn’t exactly something to write home to Princess Celestia about just yet, but it’s more than Rachel has had with anyone in a long, long time. If ever.
Only to find out it was a ploy. An act, so that Taylor could get the group’s confidence.
Oh for f–
…oh.
Ohhh.
So that’s why she was so much more pissed about the whole thing than anyone else.
Bitch knew that she wasn’t a lone wolf by choice the way that Alec was.
Could’ve fooled me up to this point. But ultimately, dogs are pack animals too.
There was a void there, some part of her that craved that human connection because she was a human and that’s what humans needed.
She is, in a sense, worse off than if she had been fully doggified, one could argue. Her doggification makes it hard for her to socialize with humans, but there’s still a human side to her that needs it.
Maybe this is why she was ultimately willing to accept Taylor’s deal back in Buzz.
The way things had played out, things she had no control over, she’d never had a chance to figure out how to deal with people, how to invite them in to fill that void.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this chapter drew in some Rachel fans. This seems like something a lot of people would relate to.
Poor Rachel.
Friendships and family, conversations and jokes, being close to others and knowing when to speak up and when to stay quiet? They were treacherous things, littered with complicated nuances, bad associations and worse memories.
Yeeah.
Even if she somehow got something right, she always managed to fuck it up sooner than later. Easier to leave it alone, easier to stay back and not try.
Ouch.
As I was saying. This seems like it would hit close to home for some people and cause them to sympathize heavily with Rachel.
And if they got in her face, if they challenged her and didn’t let her keep them at arm’s length? It was easier to fall back on what worked and what she knew than it was to try to guess how to respond. Violence. Threats. It earned her respect, if nothing else.
No wonder she was so ready to punch Taylor back in Buzz.
Her breath hitched as she drew in a breath. She shook her head violently, to shake away the tears. She had stopped screaming, but her dogs were making up for it as their voices had joined hers and continued long after she’d stopped, almost drowning out Angelica’s howls.
Awoo.
So many bad memories. Memories she wished she could purge from herself, scour from her brain with fire and bleach and steel bristled brushes.
Maybe there’s a cape out there somewhere who could help you with that.
She was unhappy because humans were pack animals, she decided.
Heh. That’s the most doggish way she could possibly come to the same conclusion I did when she first raised the question.
Though maybe she’s come to a slightly different conclusion that’s still covered by the topic of social interaction, so let’s have her elaborate.
Taylor and Lisa and Brian could smile and laugh because they had their pack, they had their family members and they had each other. Alec was more of a loner, but he could still joke and laugh with Brian. They had their pack, their dynamic. She wasn’t really a part of it.
That is true. There have been plenty of occasions with all of them except Rachel together, and when she has been present, she has often been remarkably distant from the rest. I’ve even ended up using the word “teammate” instead of “friend” to describe her relation to Brian.
Also, I notice she didn’t really consider Aisha here. I suppose she doesn’t quite see her as part of the team yet.
She’s still running, isn’t she.
She’d woken to her power in that moment of panic. Fed by her power, Rollo had grown enough to tear through the cover.
YES! Called it!
He’d then torn through her foster mother.
Ah, yes. I hadn’t forgotten that the trigger event led to the dog killing people.
Honestly…
This punishment is both matching AND proportionate.
The shrill screaming of her foster siblings indoors had drawn his attention, and he went after them too, pouncing on them like any excitable dog might do with a mouse or rabbit.
These ones don’t deserve it, though. At least as far as I know, they’re just fellow victims.
He’d torn through door frames and walls, and an entire section of the house and collapsed in on her foster family. In one fell swoop, she lost the closest things she had to a home and family.
Oh, right. That’s a problem.
It hadn’t been perfect, it had been nightmarish at times, but she’d had so little for so long, she found herself clinging to the scraps she did have. She ran, then, and she kept running for a long time after that.
With the caseworker she had, being homeless might be better than wherever they’d place her next, especially after this.
Then the plastic cover of the pool began to slide closed. When Rachel had looked to the house, she’d seen her foster-mother standing on the other side of the sliding glass door that opened into the backyard, her finger on the switch.
OH FUCK YOU
To be fair, maybe she doesn’t see Rollo from there and thinks Rachel just decided to have a random bath while fully dressed, but I kind of doubt that.
Slowly, gradually, despite her screams and banging on the locked door, the cover had slid over Rollo’s head, trapping him. For nearly a minute, there was the bulge beneath the cover of Rollo’s head as he swam in tight circles, his sounds of distress muffled.
…
And when that “nearly a minute” expired…?
Her foster-mother’s punishments always matched the crimes. There could be no doubt Rachel knew the dog from her pleading and shouts, and having a dog was against the rules. Or maybe it wasn’t even that. Maybe it was the fact that she was making a disturbance at five in the morning, or the realization that the barking that had plagued her foster mother for so long was Rachel’s fault.
Either way, killing the dog is not a proportionate punishment. Matching, maybe, but by no means proportionate.
Whatever the reason, the dog was to be disposed of, much in the same way as a plate of dinner was thrown out for holding a fork the wrong way or sitting at the table with her legs too far apart.
UUUUGH.
But a dog couldn’t be chained to a tree, not for twenty-two hours out of every day. She’d seen him grow increasingly agitated and unhappy, to the point that she couldn’t play with him without him hurting her.
Ouch.
So she’d untied him to take him for a walk. He’d slipped free and headed for the house. Her blood running cold, she’d chased after him.
Is almost losing Rollo going to be her trigger event?
When she caught up to him, she found him in the pool; she couldn’t swim, and he couldn’t climb out.
At least he can’t at his current size.
If this is in fact her trigger event, then I think that might support the idea that the Dandelions are trying to help but don’t really understand humanity. Giving Hana weapons to fight back, giving Brian a way to hide from his mother’s boyfriend after the fight, giving Taylor company and awareness of something outside her confined space, etcetera.
Maybe it makes complete sense to them to give a girl who is afraid of her puppy drowning the power to turn her puppy into a huge dog monster that can easily get out of the water.
She’d pleaded with Rollo to come out of the pool, tried to run around the pool’s edge to get to him so she could pull him free, but he’d been scared, and swam away from her.
Aww.
But Rachel hadn’t been equipped for these things, would never be equipped for school or manners or piano. She fought back, challenged her foster-mother’s authority at every turn, and when she was punished for this, she fought back twice as hard.
Yeah, that sounds more like the Rachel we know.
She might have gone insane if it wasn’t for Rollo.
Ooh, Rollo… first dog, right? I seem to recall Rollo being brought up before. Blog search isn’t helping, though.
She’d stumbled onto the mangy, hostile puppy in an alley between her after-school classes and home. After earning his trust with scraps of her lunch over the course of days and weeks, she brought him home and chained him up at the very back of the expansive backyard, out of sight of the house.
Nice! 😀
She had stayed quiet when her foster-mother complained about the neighbor dog’s barking, feeling a confused mixture of smugness and terror every time it came up.
Hehe. Sure! Those damn neighbors, am I right?
Her lunch money went towards buying the dog scraps of food, guessing at what he needed, and this sacrifice of her lunches coupled with the frequent lack of dinner left her getting headaches and her stomach growling constantly during school.
Ah shit. I’m all for you taking care of the doggo, but you gotta take care of yourself too.
She would wake up at four in the morning to visit him and play with him, and the lack of sleep left her so tired she would drift asleep in the middle of class.
Yeeah, no lunch and little sleep isn’t a good combination for education. Which… I guess she would end up having to catch up on through the after-school make-up classes? Which may or may not cause her foster mother to find out.
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