If it's helpful, I'll go on record as thinking you're entitled to differentiate yourself. One might say Bella's inimitable. Frees you to go your own way.
Significant that it bothers you to think you might be taken as sharing that characteristic.
I don't believe you do.
When you say she's heartless, I think you mean that your mother lacks personal attachments, fondness, love, compassion, empathy, and I agree she wouldn't deny it, though she doesn't view their absence as a lack.
It's partly the work, and partly the depth of her commitment to Our Lord. Those things have shaped her. She wasn't always what she is now. But... the seeds of it have been there as long as I've known her. If anything I'd say she's become more herself with time. Attributes that were always part of her have intensified.
Maybe that sounds ominous, but you're not your mother. You were raised by her, and that shaped you, but you're not destined to be identical, any more than she's identical to her mother (whom I can't claim to know well, but have met and observed) or a duplicate of her father (whom I did meet and remember vividly). Any more than I'm like my own father. Partly it's that your father also shaped you, and partly it's that you have your own rather vigorous ideas about what you want and want to be.
Let's stick with something I've observed directly. You fight differently than she does, and one of the ways in which your fighting differs is that while she reads her opponents' emotions and is quite canny about manipulating them, she doesn't understand most of those emotions and her attention to them is strictly to find weakness. Like a colour blind person who sees only certain shades on a map, she recognises and exploits pride and fear. (Not saying that's not effective. It certainly is.)
You, however, seem to glean more nuance in your opponents, and you use the information differently--yes for an opening, and yes for pressure points you can exploit, but I've watched you find anxieties, irritations, and sentiments that you've been able to play to advantage.
I watched you disarm an opponent in Sherwood by widening your eyes and affecting a childish look--you told me that you'd seen that you reminded him of a girl he had some attachment to (you thought a niece).
The point is that you're not heartless. The heartless cannot parse such things or make that appeal to emotions that your foe couldn't reconcile. And so you had him. Absolutely. Your mother would have had him, too, mind you, but it would have gone quite differently.
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no subject
2015-02-27 02:24 (UTC)If it's helpful, I'll go on record as thinking you're entitled to differentiate yourself. One might say Bella's inimitable. Frees you to go your own way.
no subject
2015-02-27 02:51 (UTC)But, I don't think she is capable of being anything else.
Apparently, according to some, I can be the same way. In my own fashion.
It wasn't intended as a compliment.
no subject
2015-02-27 04:17 (UTC)I don't believe you do.
When you say she's heartless, I think you mean that your mother lacks personal attachments, fondness, love, compassion, empathy, and I agree she wouldn't deny it, though she doesn't view their absence as a lack.
It's partly the work, and partly the depth of her commitment to Our Lord. Those things have shaped her. She wasn't always what she is now. But... the seeds of it have been there as long as I've known her. If anything I'd say she's become more herself with time. Attributes that were always part of her have intensified.
Maybe that sounds ominous, but you're not your mother. You were raised by her, and that shaped you, but you're not destined to be identical, any more than she's identical to her mother (whom I can't claim to know well, but have met and observed) or a duplicate of her father (whom I did meet and remember vividly). Any more than I'm like my own father. Partly it's that your father also shaped you, and partly it's that you have your own rather vigorous ideas about what you want and want to be.
Let's stick with something I've observed directly. You fight differently than she does, and one of the ways in which your fighting differs is that while she reads her opponents' emotions and is quite canny about manipulating them, she doesn't understand most of those emotions and her attention to them is strictly to find weakness. Like a colour blind person who sees only certain shades on a map, she recognises and exploits pride and fear. (Not saying that's not effective. It certainly is.)
You, however, seem to glean more nuance in your opponents, and you use the information differently--yes for an opening, and yes for pressure points you can exploit, but I've watched you find anxieties, irritations, and sentiments that you've been able to play to advantage.
I watched you disarm an opponent in Sherwood by widening your eyes and affecting a childish look--you told me that you'd seen that you reminded him of a girl he had some attachment to (you thought a niece).
The point is that you're not heartless. The heartless cannot parse such things or make that appeal to emotions that your foe couldn't reconcile. And so you had him. Absolutely. Your mother would have had him, too, mind you, but it would have gone quite differently.
no subject
2015-02-27 04:27 (UTC)I want to become more myself, too. Once I know what that is, exactly.
no subject
2015-02-27 04:52 (UTC)No one wants you to be a duplicate of your mother. Except, possibly, your mother, herself.
I'd suggest, however, that were she to consider the prospect dispassionately, she wouldn't much care for your becoming a second Bellatrix.
Our job's to find out what you are. Who.
no subject
2015-02-27 04:57 (UTC)So you don't want me to be a duplicate of you, either?
Because I'm prettier than you and I'd rather like to keep it that way.
no subject
2015-02-27 05:04 (UTC)And for that as well as other reasons, the world can well do without a second of me.
Don't you think?
no subject
2015-02-27 05:08 (UTC)no subject
2015-02-27 05:08 (UTC)Think you're ready to manage that?
no subject
2015-02-27 05:11 (UTC)Straight after supper?
no subject
2015-02-27 05:13 (UTC)Will see you then.