#am I someone who’s trusted? as Vessare

[skinnytrips]

Should’nt I be real? You deserve to be here and to be alive. I know it’s stressful on you right now, I promise living on your own it should be less stressful and much easier to work on some things. It’s wrong for Alex to call his friend (who you know to be very biased towards loving sex) to see if you’re unreasonable, that’s not really fair. Everything learns stuff from their experiences and you shouldn’t hate yourself for what you’ve had to go through. He doesn’t want to live with Me He isn’t worth your time or pain. You deserve to be happier. I’m not worth his time or his pin But that’s his own fault for refusing to acknowledge that maybe, for us, he’d have to change something. We’ve changed a lot for him (even though he doesn’t see it, which is another fucked thing, I see that you try and I understand the blocks of why you struggle) What if I have to change? You can’t really get rid of what you’re uncomfortable with, that’s very unhealthy for you without trying to work through it in a more natural, safe environment. That home is too stressful to process anything. I don’t belong in this world, so many people are so affectionate and I can’t really be okay with it. You belong in this world, there’s lots of people uncomfortable with affection and sex in video games, shows, and all. With the discomfort. Some people would agree with us and some wirh him, but it’s important to be on your own side. Leaving everything won’t help you feel any better, but know that leaving where you’re comfortable would help. But I still see your side Does that mean anything? What if you only see my side because you’re stuck with me, wouldn’t you think I’m crazy too? Or over reactive? Ridiculous? No, I see your side to understand. I know if I don’t understand, I need to, because there’s always a logical, reasonable reason for stuff like this. You really don’t deserve this trauma or the fighting. Nobody pities you Sometimes people don’t understand, someone would feel bad for us, I do know that. It doesn’t matter if nobody around us feels bad for us ◦ Are we required the empathy/sympathy to feel like pain isn’t going to be abrupt, interruptive, or as if the dizzying of derealization and the blur of time, is reliant on our actions that isn’t able to be as clear? ◦ Do you feel I’ve failed my exteriors? As SEVEN display, I didn’t want to be a perceptive receptive problematic sum, due to disliking the heartache, the emotional pressure, the feeelong of being watched ◦ Or am I bloody? Is it all makeup at this point? Meaning in particular, do I sound minuscule, or is this something relative, related, or understood in ways I don’t quite understand? Vae

[blorbologist]

I just got slapped hard over the head with Thoughts about Elaina.

Elaina, no last name, a seamstress in Byroden who raised twin half-elves alone.

Vex and Vax never mention anyone else, from Byroden. No cousins, no neighbors, no grandparents, nothing - which is odd, for a rural community, when historically the families were large and the village helped raise the kids.

(Now, it's likely a symptom of First Character Tragic Backstory, nothing more, but I am *choosing* to read into this for Depth.)

We don't know her last name, we don’t, the twins go by Vessar even though they loathe Syldor, even though he only took them at age ten. Did she even have a last name? Even Fjord and Ashton, orphans, have ones given to them by the orphanage. Caleb and Imogen and Scanlan are all from peasant backgrounds too - they have last names. (The only one who doesn't is Laudna, Laudna who might not *want* to remember her family, who it might pain to do so.) So where is it? Why don't the twins use it - surely they wouldn't abandon part of their names, their ties to their mother, at his insistence?

Unless... she didn't have one.

Maybe Elaina was disowned - for having these kids out of wedlock, or maybe the problem was that they came out with pointed ears. Or maybe Byroden was not her birth town - perhaps she had moved there, leaving behind her support network in pursuit of a better life, of independence. (Maybe Syldor deliberately preyed on an isolated young woman)

As far as we know, she raised these kids alone. A single mother in a fantasy setting raising *twins* on a seamstress' income. I hope she had someone, anyone she could trust. To watch over them, to help her make ends meet, to give her a moment's peace. Or just more time to work, to earn enough to support herself and her children. I hope, I hope, but whoever they were the twins clearly don't bring them up. Maybe they left, maybe they died, maybe they weren't ever there and she just did this alone.

I hope this is just part and parcel of Vex and Vax being conceived of as simple characters for a oneshot, a holdover before they grew, and that I'm wrong. I hope Elaina had her parents, her relatives, her neighbors and friends there for her, for her children. I hope they grew up on lullabies from half a dozen different voices. I hope they slept in hand-me-down cribs under watchful eyes while Elaina worked or took a nap or went to the market. I hope Vex got to learn to hunt from an aunt and her wife, I hope Vax learned sleight of hand from a cheerful babysitter's card tricks. I hope they got to run rampant through Byroden in the company of other kids who would take a stick to anyone who looked at them wrong. I hope this community held Elaina as she cried when Syldor took them away - to a better life, maybe, but *took them*. I hope they put the fear of gods into that elf, that if he ever hurt those kids or touched Elaina again they'd make him disappear.

I hope - but also I don't, because if this is true, Thordak burned them, too.