MAKO HATES EVERYTHING ABOUT THE GAME. I also wrote about this in my plurk, but Mako's pissed. He hates the games where there's no choice: someone will die. This has only happened twice in Aather, and both times traumatized the hell out of him. There was CFUW where his best efforts to minimize the number of people killed failed. Badly. And blew up in his face in a way that he wasn't emotionally prepared for, that he still has a lot of anger and guilt left over.
This time, he doesn't have as much to be guilty over, but he's angry. He's angry that there was really nothing they could do, and he's angry that pretty much all the knights were left to die. And that the fact that they were left to die wasn't even about them. And he wants to be angry at the people who made that choice! But he knows how much it sucks having that anger directed at you when. You really don't want it to be. So. There's that.
There's also that Mako hates dying. This. Was a traumatizing death! No lie. But it was also not burning to death, losing your dead father's scarf in the fire, and having horrific flashbacks to your parents' deaths. So while not being healed fully, and realizing you were about split in half is a hard thing to think about, Mako can keep that part separate from "But I died." And the "But I died" part is as freaky and unsettling to him as anything about the death. This death just has less horrific, specific to Mako, trauma buttons so he can't get completely overwhelmed like he did with CFUW.
Then, finally... this game makes him think of CFUW.
That is enough to make him want to shut down, which Bolin ran smack into. Bolin has the problem that Mako does want to protect him, and therefor was never completely honest about what happened in CFUW. So when Bolin got angry, justifiably, at Mako for hiding his death again, Mako couldn't do much more than. Yell at him to get out and then shut down.
no subject
This time, he doesn't have as much to be guilty over, but he's angry. He's angry that there was really nothing they could do, and he's angry that pretty much all the knights were left to die. And that the fact that they were left to die wasn't even about them. And he wants to be angry at the people who made that choice! But he knows how much it sucks having that anger directed at you when. You really don't want it to be. So. There's that.
There's also that Mako hates dying. This. Was a traumatizing death! No lie. But it was also not burning to death, losing your dead father's scarf in the fire, and having horrific flashbacks to your parents' deaths. So while not being healed fully, and realizing you were about split in half is a hard thing to think about, Mako can keep that part separate from "But I died." And the "But I died" part is as freaky and unsettling to him as anything about the death. This death just has less horrific, specific to Mako, trauma buttons so he can't get completely overwhelmed like he did with CFUW.
Then, finally... this game makes him think of CFUW.
That is enough to make him want to shut down, which Bolin ran smack into. Bolin has the problem that Mako does want to protect him, and therefor was never completely honest about what happened in CFUW. So when Bolin got angry, justifiably, at Mako for hiding his death again, Mako couldn't do much more than. Yell at him to get out and then shut down.
It's. Not going well for him.
Sol's opinions on Mako and John?