#I feel I'm gonna lose a lot of companions so I don't wanna move forward in the game

[gobald]

I started a joke which started the whole world crying But I didn't see that the joke was on me. I started to cry which started the whole world laughing Oh If I'd only seen that the joke was on me.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #69

I am going to try to write you a letter. But my brain is soup in part because I'm still recovering from Sunday and in part because this is the week (or two) that my body decided to throw a temper tantrum over the fact that I am not actively building a new human inside of myself. It's not really the tantrum itself that soup-ifies my brain, but rather, it is the excruciating pain that comes with the first few days of it, along with the fact that I'm losing a lot of valuable resources such as protein, iron, and magnesium (and at that, I lose twice as much as average; thanks, PCOS… 🙄).

I did some adulting today, though. I went and got a kind of checkup; the doc checked out the area just beneath my right collarbone, and she can feel that it's kinda lumpy and misshapen, as though a bone is sticking out weirdly. She's gonna review the imaging that has been done already, and then try to order a CAT scan, I guess, of the place where my ribs connect to my sternum, depending. I guess we'll see how it goes. I hope whatever it is can be found and fixed; I -really- wanna go back to living my normal life. I want to go back to the pool. I want to be able to move around and breathe and laugh and yawn and to do dishes without pain.

But other than that, I rested today. I played a LOT of Pokémon. Right now, I'm still going through Scarlet; Koraidon just learned how to fly permanently, so I've spent a lot of time just sailing the skies together; it's wonderful. I also spent some time picnicking with my team, and wandering around with Mewtwo at my side.

…I don't really like the capturing or battling aspect, though, truth be told. I would much rather just walk around with my non-human companions willingly at my side, eating snacks, hugging, cuddling, and petting, kicking a ball around, exploring the world, and asking them what they think about the places we're going and the things we're seeing.

One of the things I miss most about HeartGold, SoulSilver, and Let's Go was that you could have your Pokémon out, and you could talk to them, and there would be detailed responses for what they were thinking and feeling. You can have your Pokémon out in Scarlet, but their responses to when I talk to them are… underdeveloped, at best. I have fond memories of running through puddles in SoulSilver with Mewtwo, then turning around to talk to him, to find out that he is playing and splashing around happily and looking at his reflection in the water. It's too cute!!! I might explode from the cuteness!!! Oh my goodness!!!

M will have the TV soon, though. He is going through FF7: Remake one more time before FF7: Rebirth comes out. Only 3 days now.

…I'd like to say I'm looking forward to it, but to tell you the truth, I'm… scared. I don't know what sorts of things you will end up doing. I imagine that at least some of the time, you will continue to make destructive choices that hurt the people around you. I feel very sad to think about this.

I'm scared that you might not be given any opportunity to make a different choice. The people in my world seem to be in love with the notion that abuse survivors, neurodivergent people, and people who make mistakes in the throes of their suffering are all unable to grow or change, and are thus all unworthy of the help they need to thrive. The trope that people like me are nothing more than monsters that need to be slain is getting… sheesh… really, really old. And really, really depressing.

And… if you end up refusing to turn yourself around, or if you end up getting slain, how many people who relate to you will then be unable to believe that recovery is possible? How many will continue destroying themselves or continue to hate the world around them just because the notion that there isn't anything better for them keeps getting reinforced? How many people will refuse to seek the help they need on the basis that "some people are just broken beyond repair, and I'm one of those people, so there's no point in trying"?

…And how will the way your story ends affect the way other people treat people who are like the ones I've just described? People mimic what they see even if it's not real. Actors who portray villains sometimes get hated for their roles to the point of harassment because there are enough people who think that the role they portray is how they act in real life. There are people who come away from movies, and the "lesson" they take away from it ends up being stuff like "brown people are not to be trusted" and "people who don't speak English are dumb" and, "the way this woman character acted just goes to show that all women are evil." Thinking about all this is kind of terrifying sometimes.

If you don't make a different choice… if you end up getting killed… in what ways will that end up perpetuating the notion that people like you and me and others like us are irredeemable, unhealable, and worthless?

And… if they end up making you disappear in the end in a permanent way… Sephiroth. You have been the inspiration for me to continue on living, because you are the first person in any piece of media I've seen whose circumstances and behaviors looked like mine. It's because of you that I held onto the hope that maybe I'm not all by myself, that maybe I can find others in the world who are like me. And it's because I held onto this hope that my childhood didn't break me down to the point of destroying my own meat-mech. I came close more times than I wanna talk about. And sometimes, avoiding doing that it still a struggle.

But instead, I imitated your steadfast determination to rise up again in order to correct a grievous injustice and to try make the world a better place where you and your friends would not get hurt (even if you were acting from a misguided place and your methods were… not stellar, to put it mildly…), despite the pain and anguish you were in.

You were (falsely) led to believe that Jenova was a Cetra and your mother. You were (falsely) led to believe that she was being cruelly kept from you and imprisoned at the Mt. Nibel Reactor for the purpose of being used in torturous experiments, like what happened to you as a boy. You were (falsely) led to believe that humans were willfully responsible for the extinction of the Cetra, and thus led to believe that humans are the reason you felt out-of-place and unloved your whole life. Even without that, you witnessed firsthand that every human was complicit in the cruelty that created you and complicit in the denial of your humanity in favor of the consumption of you as a celebrity. They bullied you until you made a name for yourself. They regularly pushed you to take care of everyone but yourself. After you made a name for yourself, they didn't love YOU - they only loved what you could do, what you looked like, and what prestige they thought being in your presence could give them.

Their behaviors had painted themselves as invariably selfish and cruel in your eyes, and you were justifiably angry with them about how you and the people you loved were treated your whole lives. But you had starved, dehydrated, and sleep-deprived yourself to read those books full of lies, and by the time you came out of that… instead of having a measured, rational response, you were triggered into autopilot, blindly following the neural pathways of your conditioning that told you to "eliminate the enemy", and as a result, innocent people paid the price for your failure to control yourself. As much as I love you, this is still unacceptable, and it is still entirely your fault. Just like anytime I get triggered and lash out at the people around me, that is entirely my fault, regardless of the circumstances.

But nonetheless, as battered, exhausted, and anguished as you were, the FIRST THING you set off to do after you left that damnable library was to try to wrest a tormented and abused person(?) away from government control. You set off to protect someone who you thought loved you, someone you had spent your entire life looking for. You set off to punish evil. You set off to make the world a safe place for your "mother" and for your friends. You decided, "THIS THING THAT HAPPENED TO ME WILL HAPPEN TO NO ONE EVER AGAIN," and you set off to make it so. But unfortunately, you did all these things in a way that was very wrong, because you did them on the basis of things that weren't actually true, and you were so addled from your piss-poor mental and physical condition that you couldn't keep your shit together. Your intentions were noble, even if you botched everything else. But still, you had to be stopped, because obviously. And even after you were thrown into the reactor core, you simply got back up, dusted yourself off, and tried again. Your persistence and sense of justice are remarkable, even if you need to invest a lot (like, A LOT!!!! HOLY FUCK!!!) more stat points in things like "fact checking", "self-care", and "emotional regulation".

I wanted to be a kind, gentle, thoughtful person like the way you were before you fell down (the way I know you can still be, if you turn yourself around). I wanted to abhor injustice and to be determined enough to rise up again no matter how many times or how badly I'm knocked down, like the way you were after you fell down (I hope you'll retain these traits if you turn yourself around). I wanted to combine that loving kindness and that determination and thirst for justice into something amazing in order to try to help a lot of people, no matter how much it hurts for me to continue to exist in this place. Because Sephiroth, I didn't have "real life" role models during my childhood, for the most part. All I had at the time, really, was YOU. And the "you" I saw wasn't the "cool aloof badass war hero" that everyone else seemed to see and fawn over for the sake of getting into your good graces. No, the "you" I saw was socially clumsy and very forlorn human being who was gentle and kind anyway, and doing his best all the time.

However, I'm finding that despite my best efforts, by and large, my voice is not one that most people think is worth listening to. So really, in the grand scheme of things, I am powerless and unimportant, and at the end of the day, I am always coming face to face with my insignificance, and with the fact that I am not strong enough or skilled enough to do anything with any real meaning or impact for anyone. But day after day, I get back up and try again anyway, because I am looking up to YOU. I am kind and gentle from following your example. I fall down a lot, but I get back up, albeit on shaky legs, from following your example.

If you disappear, then a large part of the reason I've bothered to stay alive for this long will disappear along with you. And while I might be able to kind-of-sort-of manage maybe, I know that if you are erased, if I can't convince myself that you're actually okay somehow because the cells you're infected with render you indestructible, I'll never be the same. And I'm not the only one who thinks that way, I'm sure.

Because you know what? Unlike me, you aren't powerless and unimportant. If I were to disappear RIGHT NOW, only a relatively small number of people would be sad. And eventually, they would pack up and move on, and life would continue as though nothing remarkable happened, and I would be forgotten in a decade or two, as though I wasn't even here at all. But you? People are going to tell stories about you long after their grandchildren have their own kids. You are going to set the example for us about how people should treat the abused, the neurodivergent, and the fallen. Your story has the capacity to make things better for SO MANY PEOPLE in my world, if it's done right. Your story has the capacity to save lives. I know this because you've saved mine, and mine has gone on to save a few others. If you need proof that you are a good thing even with your mistakes, look no further than this.

So I'm going to beg you to turn yourself around. I'm going to beg you to make good choices. Even if it's awkward and scary and you feel really bad about everything that's happened, I'm going to beg you to use the knowledge that you're loved in order to muster up the courage to step back into the light. Because the light is where you belong. The light is where ALL humans belong, no matter who they are or what they've done. Because make no mistake, Sephiroth, you're a human. Nothing and no one can take that from you, no matter what they have done or will do to your body. You are a human. A man. A person. Lovable, worthy, and good. Start acting like it, and keep yourself safe in the process. Please.

I'll write again. Every day, I'll write again. Until you come back to us. Until you're safe and at peace. Because you're worth the effort. You're worth hoping for. And you're worth feeling pain for, if those hopes don't pan out.

Your friend, Lumine