fannish brain: powered by spite

cross-posting this ramble from my tumblr so i can find it again because despite that i had this thought nearly a month ago i bubbled back up in my brain last night and when i went looking for fic i only found like, two, and i really don't want to have to do something about that but i might have to do something about that, because i liked them but they didn't quite hit the spot.

further proof that my fannish brain is at least partially powered by spite / things i didn’t really like in the source material no matter how low my investment in that source material is: still having thoughts about terminator dark fates the morning after watching it because carl clearly thinks he’s doing a good thing, giving sarah purpose, by sending her after newly arriving terminators, but i feel like he’s probably just continuously re-traumatizing her by setting her up to see her son’s murderer over and over and over, with the added on trauma of continually putting her in life-threatening situations and in essence turning her into a terminator, just one that hunts machines.

idk i really don’t want to be spending brain space on this, but as a non-mental health professional, it seems to me that this is all exposure and no therapy, especially since sarah clearly has been disbelieved numerous times before and possibly institutionalized against her will. maybe she is getting catharsis, but there’s clearly not a lot of healing going on. every time she thinks she’s saved the world, she gets another text telling her it’s ending again and she doesn’t seem to have much of a support system other than the one air force dude, so that’s more potential proof that no one up the chain really believes her. anyways if anyone knows a fic where carl comes to a realization that he’s not helping and decides to become the one who stops the other terminators himself, feel free to point me at it because to me it’s fucked up that that’s still sarah’s job.(also some realizations on both their parts that while carl is the one who killed john, he’s really just the weapon, and they can’t just fight individual terminators forever, and they team up to figure out who built skynet and stop it at the root, and if there’s some background hilarity where carl doesn’t age because why would a terminator show age except as an excuse to cast arnold)

and then my tags from tumblr: i can't believe i'm thinking about terminator the next day also i'm probably very much dating myself by being much more interested in carl and sarah than the hot young women altho they were very cute anyway these are just thoughts that fic better exist already because it seems like a very good premise and i can't imagine i'm the first to think these things and i don't want to write it myself okay imma stop thinking about this now (no i'm not)