#even if this is the case i don't think childe is consciously aware of it tho

[aphel1on]

nah the fandom does acknowledge it’s because of his abyss powers he became like this. they believe it more especially after seeing the effect on chasca etc

YEAH everyone acknowledges he became this way because of the abyss but what i'm talking about is like. his character stories make it sound like he gained some sort of cognitohazard Strife Effect that makes chaos constantly break out around him and i've never seen anyone talk about THAT.

Specifically these lines:

In those three months, the swordswoman taught Tartaglia how to pass through the Abyss unhindered, and more importantly, nurtured the ability to stir up endless havoc from within Ajax's trouble-mongering nature.

Shocked by Ajax's great strength and curious about how he invariably became the eye of a vortex of discord, Pulcinella inducted Ajax into the Fatui under the pretext of meting out punishment, ordering him to start from the bottom and take up the duty of serving the Tsaritsa.

Kind of make it sound like it's not an effect of his personality but rather some sort of passive aura he's exerting.

Of course, the reason no one talks about this could well be because it makes no fucking sense, when his personality itself is already quite sufficient to explain all the fights he gets into.

...Could also easily be a case of me interpreting lore way too literally again lol

[ckret2]

Chapter 76 of human Bill Cipher not looking much like the Mystery Shack's prisoner because he's just vibing on the porch: Mabel's riding high on the success of making Bill two whole friends, Ford's dealing with curses... and let's see how that camera got cursed in the first place.

####

Mabel asked, "What about Aaron Laarson?"

"I don't know," Candy said, "Aaron is cute, but he isn't a very good dancer. That's very important to me in a teen pop idol."

"He's a really good actor, though," Grenda said. "You should see him in Hot Models 2: Runway Boogaloo!" Candy looked thoughtful.

They'd spent the last thirty minutes chattering, with Grenda and Candy sitting on Bill, who was now laying his upper body on the couch cushion he'd been assaulted with earlier but otherwise hadn't moved. To all appearances, Bill was sound asleep—he even breathed like he was asleep—but every once in a while, he'd pipe up with something like, "Don't get too attached to Aaron Laarson. He's dying in a kayaking accident next summer."

Grenda groaned in disappointment. Candy said, "He should have spent that time practicing dancing instead of kayaking."

Mabel caught movement in the corner of her eye, and started when she saw Ford and Dipper. "Uh oh. I didn't expect them to come in on this side of the house."

Across the clearing, Ford shouted, "Mabel, what the devil is he doing outside with—!"

Mabel shouted, "It's okaaay, I got permission from Grunkle Staaan, I love yooou!"

Ford hesitated. "Well... if Stan okayed it."

Dipper looked at Mabel and her camera. Mabel looked at Dipper and his camera. They immediately started making the stupidest faces they could at each other's cameras. "Hey," Mabel said, "did you find the nightwigglies? It looks like they found yooou!"

Dipper self-consciously tugged up the vest he was using like a makeshift skirt. "We did! It was so great, we recorded some kind of ritual dance, how they make babies—" At Grenda's outburst of "Ewww!" he quickly clarified, "Not—not in a gross way—and we saw some kind of Nightwiggler god! It was amazing!"

"Wow! That's great!" Mabel said. "We summoned a demon and almost died."

"What?"

"By the way!" Mabel waved her camera at Ford. "Grunkle Ford, I kiiinda used your cursed camera by accident. Could you please uncurse the tape so I can keep the episode I filmed tonight? Goldie said the magic thingy he stuck on it will only keep it tame as long as the tape's in the camera."

"That's because it's technically the tape itself that's cursed, not the camera." Ford wondered if Bill had led Mabel to the camera.

"Can you uncurse it, though?"

"I think so. I'll see what I can do." Ford took the camera from Mabel. He decided not to comment on the girls' interesting makeup choices.

Bill opened one eye a sliver as he felt Ford and Dipper step on the porch, saw Ford's bare calf over his boot, and cracked up. "What happened to your pants! Did you try to join the Hokey Pokey?"

Ford gave Bill a withering look—caught sight of Bill's mismatched tween-girl-pencil-case/airbrushed-hot-rod eyeshadow, and laughed in surprise. "What happened to your face?"

"Aren't I beautiful?" Bill asked, lacing his hands under his chin (and making Ford snort again when he spied the multiple nail extensions on one hand). "Go on! Tell me I'm beautiful. I know I am."

"You're..." Ford was keenly aware that Mabel and her friends were probably behind this makeover, "...certainly colorful."

"Stanford, you flatterer!" Bill cackled.

Dipper headed inside, yawning. "I'm gonna... go to sleep or something."

That was a good idea; but Ford was hesitant to go in. He was loath to trust Bill unsupervised alone with a couple of vulnerable children, with no one to keep him in check but another child he'd already manipulated into helping him escape once.

But who was Ford to judge. Bill had manipulated him into helping him escape, too. He supposed Mabel could handle him as well as anyone else.

Grenda said, "I think we should watch Hot Models 2 anyway! It's got lots of cute boys! And girls, I guess." She turned to Bill. "Hey, do you like girls or boys?"

"Sometimes," Bill said. "Sure, I'm up for it. It's a pretty good satire of Big Fashion and I like the runway fight scene with the big light show."

To Ford, all Bill seemed to be doing was talking about movies, wearing stupid makeup, and being a chair for a couple of kids. It was so... normal.

It was something a person would do.

Ford made himself go inside. Maybe he'd start work on uncursing that tape for Mabel before he went to bed.

####

Bill had written a magic-negation seal on the back of a crumpled Mystery Shack receipt and attached it to the camcorder with an X of clear tape. Ford had only used that seal twice in his life. Once, thirty years ago, when Bill had taught it to him. And once last fall, when Ford had attempted to draw it in the Book of Bill to prevent its anomalous effects. Bill's book had absorbed the seal into its page until it disappeared—then burped. At least the symbol still seemed to work on the camcorder.

Ford tried to rewind the tape to the beginning; something inside the camcorder caught and made a nasty sound. He grimaced and hit the stop button. That wasn't good. He carefully peeled off the magic-negation seal, popped the cassette tape out of the camera, and examined it. 

He pushed up the cassette's guard panel, but where there should have been a strip of magnetic tape running beneath it, there was nothing. The tape must have snapped. As he tried to inspect the damage, the cassette jumped and rattled in his hand, trying to snap the guard panel shut on his finger like it wanted to bite him.

"Stop that," Ford chided. "I'm trying to repair you." Would it listen? In his experience, objects animated by this particular curse tended to be consistently hostile. He might need to re-seal it.

To his surprise, the tape settled down sedately on his desk. That was more like it.

"Can you unreel the damaged ends of your tape?" If it could, that would save him the effort of disassembling the thing entirely.

After a short pause, the cassette flipped up its guard panel and extended two ends of broken tape.

"Thank you."

It looked like something had... burned? melted the tape? But what? The video cassette's casing was completely undamaged, how had something managed only to burn the tape inside?

Ford snipped off the damaged ends of the tape, used a little strip of masking tape to connect them back together, and carefully rewound the tape a few seconds with a pen. This was only a temporary repair; he'd have to transfer the contents of this cassette to an undamaged one. Mabel would probably want it digitized so she could make her video, too. But watching a few seconds wouldn't destroy it; and he wanted to know whether the camera had recorded whatever damaged the tape.

He carefully removed the smallest of Project Mentem's undamaged monitors, moved it to his worktable, plugged in a VHS-C player, and slid the cassette in.

As he started to play back the recording—the first thing on the screen was one of Mabel's terrified-looking friends—the monitor trembled and jumped, banging heavily as it landed back on Ford's worktable.

"Oh, behave." Ford peeled the magic-negating seal off the camcorder and slapped it on the TV. It immediately stilled. Some gratitude for repairing that tape.

When Ford turned his attention back to the screen, Mabel's friend's face had been replaced by Bill's, his curls filling the edges of the screen.

"Gold-O! You came back!" "Hey, Grend-O. Sorry for the wait..."

As Ford watched, Bill grappled with the camera, eventually managed to get a grip on it, and stared it down with nearly enough fury to make Ford forget the goofy eyeshadow. "Now let's get this straight. Everything beneath this shack's roof is my domain and under my protection! If you want to hurt anyone here—you'll have to get through m—"

The scene cut straight to Mabel's face as it skipped over the damaged section he'd had to cut out. "Welcome back to Mabel's Guide to Secret Sleepovers! Weee're—"

Ford stopped the tape. Huh.

Huh.

####

As soon as Candy and Grenda were gone, Mabel flung her arms around Bill. "Thank you for being nice to my friends," she said. "Especially Grenda. I'm so glad you liked them both after all!"

Liked them? He'd been a charming host to them, but. "Did I?"

"Yes," Mabel informed him firmly. "You did."

Well, he figured he must've, then. And Grenda had grown on him. She'd complimented his eyes, she admired gross things, she had very intelligent opinions on amphibians in general and axolotls in particular... "Hey, any friend of my friend is a friend of mine!"

"That's so much better than what I was trying to say." Mabel let go of him, beaming. "Wanna hang out with them again sometime?"

"Sure!" Bill said, shrugging. "We still have to watch some dumb action comedy movies."

"Great! I'll let them know the next sleepover's over here!" She ran upstairs.

Calling her friends to arrange the next sleepover before they'd even gotten home. Yeah—that was generally how Bill planned his parties, too.

Looked like his social circle for the foreseeable future consisted of three little girls. Wasn't ideal, but he could work with that. He'd always liked getting invited to girls' nights. And maybe at future sleepovers he could talk the kids into some real fun. When they weren't trying to keep quiet, he knew, they fed off each other's chaos. And he was sure there was a budding pyromaniac lurking in Candy's heart.

####

Ford nodded as he passed Stan in the entryway. "Just getting up?"

"Yep. Just going to bed?"

Ford shrugged ruefully. "Afraid so. We got some terrific footage last night, though."

"Oh, yeah? Anything sellable?"

"That's up to Dipper, but I think there's good potential. Bare minimum, I'd bet some cryptozoology documentaries would be interested in his findings."

"Hey, all right! Not bad for a night's work." Stan passed by, headed for the bathroom.

And Ford almost headed on to the guest bedroom—but, reluctantly made himself turn toward the kitchen.

Bill was sitting at the table, sipping at a can of cider with an empty one already on the table in front of him, staring out the window at the morning. He didn't usually drink that heavily this early; it probably meant he was heading to bed soon. The girls must have kept him up all night. Dipper had regaled Ford with tales of what Mabel's sleepovers were like.

"Bill."

"Hm?"

He should have gotten straight to business. Instead, he said, "I watched some of Mabel's video from last night."

Bill glanced over at him. (He still had that ridiculous makeup.) "Oh, yeah?"

Under my protection. Did he consider himself the household's guardian—or its owner? "I..." Ford cleared his throat. "I wondered about—the symbol you painted on your hand to disable the camera. That part of the tape melted, and—I assume it was light-activated, which means it must be different from the seal I already know, so...?"

Bill's face had immediately closed off. He turned away. "You're not my student."

Ford was surprised at how much that felt like a slap to the face. He should have been glad—he'd finally managed to get Bill to agree with what he'd been telling him all summer—but he hadn't expected Bill to ever give up. (He hadn't expected Bill to ever change.)

But he probably hadn't really given up. No doubt he was giving Ford the cold shoulder to see if he begged Bill's forgiveness.

"No. I suppose I'm not." He trudged into the kitchen, rummaged in his coat pocket, and dropped a leather pouch on the table. "Anyway, I'm just here to drop this off."

Bill reached for it, stopped himself, and warily asked, "What is it?"

"The rest of my nutrition pills from my interdimensional travels." When he'd lost his trench coat to the lake during the eclipse last week, he'd had to dig out the old tattered one he'd worn during his travels, and he'd happened to find his pills at the same time. It had occurred to him to bring them up while he was working on Mabel's tape. They were tricky to synthesize, but they lasted forever and the ingredients could be found in almost any dimension—whether there was anything otherwise edible for humans or not. 

Bill eyed him suspiciously; but he opened the pouch's snap and peeked into the resealable plastic bag. They didn't look like "pills" so much as small balls of incredibly dense dark brown bread, each about the size of a wad of bubblegum. "Whyyy?"

"To make up the difference in your diet until we figure out the food problem," Ford said. "They're formulated so that four a day meets a human's... well, meets my nutritional needs. I haven't looked into your..." vague gesture, "body... type."

"Is this your emergency stash?"

"It... was." Stan had persuaded Ford to get back onto normal food (as much of a waste of time as it was), but he still had this stash left.

"Why are you giving me your emergency stash."

"Because... I'm not having an emergency and you are?" It was better than a couple of avocados and some hot sauce. Honestly, he should have thought to go looking for his nutrition pills weeks ago. If he'd realized just how severe they'd made Bill's situation... or how stubborn Bill would be about asking for help... or that they'd ever plan to keep Bill around long enough that his nutrition would be an issue.

Bill squinted at him, and for a moment Ford thought he was about to start a fight for some insane reason; but then the air seemed to leak out of him, his shoulders sagged, and he just looked at the nutrition pills. "For starters, they'll need more than twice as much iron."

"That much?"

"And more vitamin D, I don't remember the numbers right now." He shut the pouch, sat back, and lifted his cider can again. "All right."

All right? Ford supposed that was all he was getting. He turned to go.

As he did, Bill said, "Bed?"

Ford glanced back. "Yes?"

"Fine," Bill said. "Have nightmares."

He couldn't help letting out a laugh. "Fine. You too."

"It's too late for you to start trying to sweet-talk me like that, Stanford Pines!" But he tilted his can toward Ford—cheers—chugged down the rest, and cracked open a third.

####

Dipper was already in bed when Mabel charged in. He rolled over slightly, saw she was still in her sleepover pajamas, and mumbled, "Going to sleep too?"

She rummaged around in the closet by the door. "I can't waste that kind of time!" She retrieved a shoe box full of the wooden models of the townspeople she'd crudely whittled last summer at a library arts & crafts program run by Wendy's dad. She dumped them out on the floor, and, for lack of a figure representing Bill, tore a corner off a stray sheet of notebook paper and drew his eye on it. "I've got to capitalize on last night's success!"

She snatched her pyramid prism off the windowsill and taped the paper eye on it. "Hey, you." She poked Bartholomew's cradle. "Why were you a big chicken in front of my friends?"

"What, with you waving that camera around?" Bartholomew said. "I didn't want it to know I have a soul to steal."

"You knew?! You jerk!" She gave the cradle a harder poke, rocking it slightly.

Dipper yawned. "Capitalize on what success? The demon summoning?"

"No! Helping Bill make two new friends!" Mabel sat on the floor, plopped the Bill prism down amidst the other wooden figures, and started setting them upright. Waddles waddled over to sniff at them.

"Oh." Dipper groaned and rolled back over.

"The next stage of his rehabilitation is expanding his social circle. Get him some normal friends that don't want to eat people or destroy moons or whatever!" She grabbed up the notebook paper again, tore it into sections, and wrote on each with the nearest gel pen: "Friends!!!" "Maybe" "NO" "Healthy ☆ Rivals" "♡ Potential dates? ♡" She added thoughtfully, "And maybe get him a love life. We had to chase off his last girlfriend."

Dipper groaned louder. "I don't wanna think about Bill dating. That dumb eye-bat was bad enough."

"She's not dumb, she's into avant-garde experimental films. And she watches them with subtitles. Bill said so." She placed her, Grenda's, and Candy's figures in the Friends section, tentatively placed Dipper halfway between Maybe and No after checking to make sure he wasn't watching, and then started scanning her collection for more likely friends. "Who in town do you think would date Bill Cipher?"

"Nobody. Everyone hates him."

She stuck Wendy and her gang in the "Friends!!!" section, she thought they were a safe bet. "Who do you think would date Bill if they don't know he's Bill?"

"Nobody." Dipper pulled his blanket over his head.

"Pbbt, don't be so negative! You've gotta believe in him." Blubs and Durland? They were probably his friends, right? She sorted them accordingly and added Lazy Susan to the "Maybe" section. "Just you watch. I'll have Bill reintegrated into society before the end of the summer!"

Mabel had picked out several more prospective friends for Bill before Dipper sighed, rolled over again, and said, "Why do you have to make friends for Bill?"

"Bro. Come on. When he's left to his own devices, he keeps talking about pulling people's veins out of their bodies or telling them secret information about their own childhoods. He's probably talking about something creepy right now."

####

"I'm telling you," Bill said, gesticulating emphatically with a cider can. "It works. Your cousins will never argue with you again, and you guarantee they'll be with you forever! It's the perfect way to permanently resolve family disputes!"

"I can see your logic," Stan said, grimacing. "However. I'm not eating my cousins."

"Not all your cousins," Bill insisted. "Just one, to send a message. You don't even need to eat the whole guy! Just half a limb or so. If you want to look like the bigger man, you can even let him choose which one."

Looking faintly nauseous, Stan shoved over his unfinished eggs and pancakes and stood. "What the heck was your home life like?"

"Oh, it was terrific. I was the family golden child." Bill dug into Stan's eggs. "I was everything your family hoped you'd be and was disappointed you weren't!" 

"Was that before or after you started eating your cousins?"

"I didn't say I did it. That's your species' thing." Bill said, with a lofty tone that suggested moral superiority, "We're inedible."

"Ha!" Stan shook his head. "You talk a big game for a guy who's never eaten one family member!"

Bill snapped the tab off his cider can and flipped it at Stan's head.

####

"He's delightful, but he's an acquired taste," Mabel said. "He just needs somebody else to help mediate when he meets new people! Like letting two cats sniff each other under the door!"

"Okay, but why you?"

She thought about that, staring at the pyramid representing Bill; then she shrugged. "Somebody has to."

"They really don't."

"Somebody should," Mabel insisted. "I just really want to see him make friends with everybody here. It's like... making it up to the town for hurting them last year."

"I think leaving them alone would work better. After what he did, he doesn't deserve to be friends with anyone in town—"

"It's important to me, okay?" Mabel snapped. "It just is."

What was that for? Did she think he was criticizing her for befriending him? He mumbled, "I didn't mean you."

She was quiet a moment. "I know." 

"Sorry." Dipper was too tired for this conversation; he was just sticking his foot in his mouth. He yawned, muttered, "Good luck scheduling him a playdate, I guess," and rolled over.

####

After sleep and lunch, Ford returned to his study, set up a second blank video cassette to copy the damaged one's data, carefully rewound the damaged one all the way to the beginning, and watched it for the first time in over thirty years.

The recording was grainy and distorted now. It looked so old. This technology had been brand new when Ford had bought his video camera—so new that he'd had to order it from overseas, it hadn't been available in the United States yet. How quickly things changed.

The camera turned to take in Ford's own, younger, beaming face. "This is Dr. Stanford Pines, with the first of what will hopefully be many video recordings of the oddities in Gravity Falls." (In the present, Ford snorted.) "The subject of this first video is a series of magic symbols that, when combined, can animate inanimate objects. Any inanimate object."

He turned the camera around. Like a vampire's morbid pulpit, one of Ford's journals was laid open atop the lid of a black casket. Two heavy chains were laid across each side of the book and locked around the casket's handles to keep them tightly secured. A couple dozen pages in the middle of the book had been left free of the chains, but were pinned down by a cinderblock.

All the security measures were clearly needed; the book was thrashing in its restraints strongly enough to make the casket lid rattle. The visible text writhed across the journal's pages, words and symbols appearing and disappearing in the margins. The susurrations of the pages rubbing against each other sounded like the hissing of a trapped animal.

Ford tipped the cinderblock off the journal and pinned the pages down with his shoe instead. "Several days ago, a local director taught me the spell he used to animate clay figures for his movies. I'd thought perhaps he was creating golems, but aside from the superficial similarity of writing symbols to animate figures of mud, there doesn't seem to be any similarity between his ritual and any golem folklore I've ever heard. Furthermore, his creations are intelligent, capable of speech, and seem to remain loyal to their creator simply out of a passion for acting and respect for his directorial talents rather than any sort of magically-compelled loyalty." A wry note entered his voice. "And I can confirm that the spell itself certainly doesn't impart any loyalty."

 The page below his foot erased itself and replaced the text with large, angry text: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO EARN MY LOYALTY?! YOU DOG EAR MY PAGES! YOU USE ME AS A CHOPPING BOARD!"

"Wh—! Who do you think you are, a Sefer Torah?! Don't be so precious! You're made of faux leather and craft paper, I'll dog ear you all I want!" Ford snapped. "And I already apologized for the chopping board thing!"

The journal stopped moving. "My cover isn't real leather?"

"On my budget?! The closest you've ever come to real cow hide is visiting the Sprott farm!"

While the journal was stunned silent, Ford scooted his foot aside so the camcorder could see a symbol on the opposite page—one of the few bits of ink that didn't seem to shift around the journal's pages. "This is the symbol the director taught me. But it's only supposed to work if you perform an accompanying ritual to activate and power it, which I haven't." He reached down with a gloved hand to flip the loose pages over, then pinned them again under his shoe to let him record another symbol. "This symbol is supposed to power magical artifacts. I suspect writing both these sigils together in the same book has caused them to interact in unexpected ways. But, by themselves, these two are insufficient to bring a book to life—I experimented by copying them both into Journal 1—so perhaps some of the other symbols or spells written in Journal 2 are contributing to—"

"WHAT?!" Journal 2 angrily scrawled around the perimeter of the second symbol. "You tried to bring that teacher's pet to life?! What's wrong with ME!"

"You mean, besides your completely uncooperative attitude, reckless abuse of magic, and murder attempts?" Ford ignored the journal's angry "shouting" as he went on, "But until I figure out what the other symbols are, my... anonymous informant on the occult—"

"You don't mean Creature #326? Tell me it's not Creature #326!"

"—has taught me a sigil that should be able to reverse the effects of the animation spell—"

A series of magical sigils flashed across the journal's page and were quickly replaced by "HA-HA-HA!" The camera shuddered.

"What was that?!" Ford set the camera on the casket where it could watch as he tried to pin down Journal 2's fluttering pages and write on it. "We'll see who's laughing in a minute, you— Stop erasing what I write!" Ford tugged out a sticky note that had been serving as bookmark, hastily scribbled on it, and slapped it into the journal. "Ha!"

The book immediately fell still.

Ford grabbed up a tape dispenser from the floor, pulled off a short strip, and attached the sticky note more securely to the page. "Well. That was effective." He flipped through the journal. "Furthermore, it looks like all the changes Journal 2 made to itself have been reverted. Good. It defaced a lot of data I'd hate to have to reproduce..." As he spoke, the camera slowly rose into the air.

He turned to pick it up, flinched, and quickly got to his feet. "Oh! Uh. Hello."

"Hello," the camera echoed in Ford's voice.

"How did you...?" Ford smacked his forehead, eyes wide with amazement! "Of course! My recording! The symbols my journal wrote! This is fascinating. Recording the symbols on magnetic tape must be just as effective as writing them on paper, even if the symbols aren't visible without specialized equipment. I'll have to experiment with other methods of... of..." Ford petered off as the camera slowly floated higher. He held out a hand hopefully. "Please come back?"

"No," the camera said. "Please give me your soul."

"No." Ford took a deep breath, set Journal 2 on the casket, and flexed his fingers. "Okay. Let's do this again."

As the Ford of thirty-odd years ago wrestled with the camera on the TV screen, the much older Ford sighed. That had been fun. Exploring the bizarre and aberrant had still been fun, back then. That thought disconcerted him; was it no longer fun now? He supposed it still was to an extent. He was just worse at having fun. Harder to dazzle.

He wondered why Journal 2 had been so wary of Creature #326. Bill. It had been right, he was Ford's "anonymous informant"—Ford had told him about his hostile new living journal in a dream, and after Bill had finished laughing, he'd taught Ford how to counteract the spell activating it.

But how did it know?

Could it have warned him about Bill?

Ford would never find out now.

The TV went dark as, in the recording, Ford trapped the camera inside a box. Slightly muffled, Ford said, "Try getting out of that!" Under his breath, he muttered, "I think I prefer writing over narrating anyway."

The screen remained dark for another ten seconds as the camera bumped around and muttered to itself. And then it abruptly cut to a shot of Dipper's bed. Off-screen, Mabel's voice said, "Awesome, still works!" She set the camera on the table under the kids' window—

That was what Ford was looking for. He rewound several seconds and began transferring the recording of Mabel's sleepover onto a fresh tape he'd prepared earlier.

After that, maybe he'd go back to the start again so he could see the other symbols Journal 2 had flashed at the camera and copy them into Journal 5—onto a page already prepared with the magic-negating seal.

####

In the Nightmare Realm, a red book with a golden handprint on the cover boldly labeled "2" floated alone in the void, as it had since it had been tossed in the bottomless pit a year ago.

Its tattered pages were splayed open as it drifted weightlessly through the aether.

On one page near the center of the book, a sticky note with a seal drawn on it was attached to the page with a strip of tape, and surrounded by a warning never to erase the symbol on the sticky note.

The tape had lost its stick after decades buried outdoors; it stuck to the sticky note, but not to the book. The sticky note was barely holding on by a corner.

And as the book slowly wheeled through the void, the last corner peeled off, and the sticky note fluttered away.

Journal 2's pages rustled.

####

(I think y'all who have been keeping up with my posts about this fic know exactly what's coming next. 😎

Thaaat's right. 😎😎

An unrelated flashback chapter!!!

Anyway hope y'all enjoyed, let me know what you think!)

[crooked-wasteland]

An SA Survivor's Reading of Stolitz

I don't believe that creators should be confined to telling one type of story. The beauty of fiction is to explore worlds, emotions and scenarios that are by definition unreal. It gives a safe space to interact with extremes that we would never necessarily wish to experience in our real lives with the ultimate safeword of no longer engaging with the material.

That being said, as creators, there is an ethical awareness that must be maintained in order to tell stories of things like trauma and abuse. Being alone in a cabin in the woods with a killer, that scenario is not a pervasive subculture in our society. Whereas cases of child abuse, sexual and domestic abuse are not only real, but common. And the complexities of psychological damage that perseveres long after the traumatic events are necessary aspects to telling these stories.

If you are not consciously aware and attentive to the lasting impact these events have, you run up against the horrific possibility of retraumatizing an individual unprepared for the callous invalidation of their experience.

No one should ever be shamed for engaging with media that depicts trauma they themselves may have experienced. For many, engaging in the fiction of it is a way of processing and validating their experience. Frankly saying, if you wish to write about trauma at all, you should be writing for that audience in specific. Otherwise you are simply exploiting the horrors that real people live through and struggle with every day for some cheap drama at the risk of triggering someone whose story you are inadvertently telling.

And much like most therapy speak, the term Triggered has become appropriated and misused to the point of losing all meaning in the lexicon. According to the University of North Carolina, "A trigger is a stimulus that elicits a reaction. In the context of mental illness, "trigger" is often used to mean something that brings on or worsens symptoms. This often happens to people with a history of trauma or who are recovering from mental illness, self-harm, addiction, and/or eating disorders."

The university breaks down the types of triggers as well and gives examples as to what those subcategories mean. I highly recommend that even if you are not the sort to follow up on references, I do recommend going over the article. It offers coping suggestions as well for those who are at risk of becoming triggered and helps refocus the sense of control back to the individual.

With that said, this is where I came across the inspiration for this essay. I completely removed all information for this user because the last thing someone needs when expressing how the misappropriation of abuse triggers them is how it is their fault for being triggered. These are the original tweets this response was in reference to.

As such, I feel the empathetic need to write this essay as a sympathetic reading to this person and others who have experienced SA who find that Stolitz resonates in an undesirable and even harmful way. I think this person deserves to feel seen.

To make the argument that the relationship between Stolas and Blitz isn't fundamentally abusive requires an author-intent reading of the series. It necessitates massive leaps to fill in gaping plot holes that never clarify the story Medrano is intending to tell. This is plainly just a reading of the series as is with all the context that has been physically, actually, shown in the series and that alone.

Throughout the series, Blitz is depicted as emotionally volatile and unpredictable with low self-esteem and crippling loneliness. He is constantly hounding his employees through sexual harassment from a sense of envy over their loving relationship, and infantalizes his twenty-two year old adopted daughter through an abusive dynamic where she ranges from rude to outrightly cruel while he consistently sacrifices any personal boundaries and self-respect.

The relationship between Loona and Blitz in specific feels like a masochistic self-hatred on Blitz's part where he allows himself to be used and abused by a parasitic family member to feel wanted, showing a pure desperation to be desired by someone in any way. Loona is verbally and physically abusive to her adopted father, using terms of endearment like "Dad" as a tactic to control Blitz's behavior, rewarding him when he does something for her benefit and taking it away when she deems him embarrassing or unwanted.

Blitz's tie to Stolas in the main story comes when he is called in a vulnerable time. Hiding from Martha who is hunting him down, he explicitly tells Stolas that now is not a good time to call. Stolas, who has a visual of Blitz's situation, ignores all of it. He is unconcerned about the danger Blitz is in, instead viewing Blitz solely as a sexual object as he offers the trade of the book for sex.

Stolas is more knowledgeable of Blitz's situation than even Blitz is aware of. He not only is told that the current moment is not a good time, and Blitz's tense tone portrays a sense of anxiety, but he can physically see Blitz. It exists entirely within reason that he chose this specific moment to call while he knew Blitz was in a difficult position, using the tension to leverage a quick response that would get Stolas his way without needing to intimidate Blitz himself. Using the threat of a third party to pressure compliance from Blitz.

Come Loo Loo Land, the interactions between Blitz and Stolas are simply outright hostile. Blitz actively does not want to have a sexual encounter with Stolas and is even so untrusting of the Goetia that he is repeatedly asserting the boundary that he is not at all interested in sex, which Stolas explicitly mocks by being openly sexually suggestive to him. Everything Stolas has to say to Blitz is steeped in objectified sexuality as Blitz asserts his person, dehumanizing him to the point that Blitz is first and foremost an object of gratification. Even to the point of neglecting and humiliating his daughter, Stolas uses the excuse of spending time with her as a means of leering on Blitz.

In this episode we see Blitz has a history of being overlooked and unappreciated. His act in Loo Loo Land went nowhere and we see the first hints of his failed performance career. Over the course of the series, this hint towards a crippling lack of self esteem masked by an extroverted exterior is reinforced.

In Harvest Moon, Blitz is genuinely flustered when given recognition by Striker. He is quick to devalue his relationship with Stolas because there genuinely isn't a relationship at this point.

After having gone missing for two episodes, Stolas returns, being slightly less sexual and slightly more affectionate. It is a sudden recharacterization, but it is only for this scene. The rest of the episode once again shows how Stolas values Blitz physically in a sexualized manner and claims Blitz through the use of a pet name he repeatedly requests not to be called. In the opening scene, Blitz vocalizes that he "doesn't mind" their arrangement for the book, which could be taken at face value in regards to the first season. He does have the option to reject the agreement at any time and return the book in the context of this episode. It's why, despite still being an abuse of power dynamics overall, the relationship itself doesn't tip over into abuse. Blitz has the same amount of autonomy as Stolas at this time, before the context of season two, he has just as much power to end the agreement.

With the addition of The Circus, this retroactively is a situation of placating one's abuser. Blitz assuring Stolas that he doesn't mind the sex would be a way of asserting Stolas' complete control over the relationship and that Blitz isn't necessarily threatening the status quo by his question.

They don't actually know anything about each other, they aren't friends and don't spend time together outside of their forced meetings. Blitz doesn't know anything about Stolas and questioning the need Stolas has for his book could very well be read as a means of interrogating the agreement as a whole and figuring out why this was the arrangement.

(The argument that Blitz had any opportunity to negotiate things comes from an audience bias. It is probably the dumbest thing I have ever seen put into writing. Blitz doesn't know that he has any leverage in the relationship at all. He doesn't actually know Stolas has any feelings for him. That's kind of the whole point of the hot and cold romance slant that Medrano is trying to replicate.)

This is because the book is not the reason the relationship exists.

Blitz does not instigate sexual conduct, Stolas does by leading Blitz into a private room and locking them both inside with the impression Blitz would have sex with him. Blitz has no choice in the location or the isolation. He was caught trying to illegally break into the home for the explicit purpose of stealing the book. He was caught and is effectively at Stolas' mercy in every sense of the word. Not only is he still alive due to Stolas' whimsy, but if he tries to escape now after being shown this grace he could risk having the guards hunt him down and the second time will most likely not be so kind.

He literally does not know Stolas. They met for a day as a playdate and Blitz spent the whole time manipulating Stolas into facilitating his own robbery. There is no trust between them, there isn't even a relationship. While the doe-eyed pink vignette animated around Blitz shows that Stolas has an attraction to him, Blitz is entirely in the dark about this. Stolas' behavior is merely unpredictable and precarious from his position and limited knowledge.

(And even when placed in the context of their single day together, Blitz is still objectified by Stolas immediately, and Blitz is repulsed and forced to interact, just like when they are adults.)

(Just another side note, the argument that because someone decides to do something must mean they are not afraid is just asinine. Generally speaking, most people who commit crimes are in a state of fight or flight, it is more akin to gambling your actual life. Its a rewards and risks assessment, not a case of being sociopathically unafraid.)

It isn't until Stolas dramatically announces his desire for sex that Blitz realizes he has something that can be used to distract the Prince while he steals the book. And that's the issue with the argument that Blitz is the one willingly escalating the situation: it's not sincere. Throughout the entire sequence, Blitz isn't once sincerely interested in Stolas. He leans into the pretense to gain control of the situation, of which, might I remind you, he has had zero control over up to this point. Not only is he not interested in Stolas, but this is a bid for control from the position of helplessness. This way he is not relying on Stolas' unpredictable behavior, he is reclaiming power in the dynamic by playing into Stolas' desire.

("But Stolas says nevermind and Blitz keeps going!!"

Yeah, because he needs to maintain control of the situation. This is what power dynamics actually look like; there is a two-way push and pull. The only way he has any power is through the lens of sexuality. He needs to keep Stolas interested in him to keep his position. But throughout the scene, he is explicitly depicted as being put off by Stolas. In fact the entire reason he ties Stolas up is because he was becoming too into the act. He is shown to not be sensually performing bondage, he is trying to remove a problem.

And side-side note, I know I said I wouldn't lean into Medrano's intention or explicit dictation on how she demands her show be interpreted, but she was the one who said that The Circus and Loo Loo Land are connected in the timeline and Blitz's hostility in Loo Loo Land reads far more like a man who feels used and taken advantage of. So even the argument that Blitz was an enthusiastic participant is disproven by Medrano's own metacommentary and character interactions.)

And ultimately, it all boils down to that last moment scene. Between willingly having sex with Stolas when he is tied up or the book, Blitz makes for the door to leave. He doesn’t willingly engage in sex with Stolas. Either you can read the scene as a form of pity sex, which in the context of Medrano’s timeline and Loo Loo Land, shows Blitz was not enamored with the encounter or you have to read this as being manipulatively pressured into it. There is no way to argue Blitz has any leverage in the situation and no grounds to argue that it was mutually enjoyed.

That doesn’t even start to cover the fact that all the way to Ozzie’s, Blitz is repulsed by Stolas. When calling, he openly shows that this is something he would rather not be doing. He doesn’t have feelings for Stolas and despite just using the man who is using him, just having to deal with Stolas is distressing for him.

This is not an equal or fair relationship dynamic. It is not a mutual relationship. This is a relationship of self-preservation and coercion. And the fact is, it could have worked with very small changes to The Circus. Having the dynamic be actually mutual would have been a great start, but just properly addressing the actual dynamic and having Stolas take ownership of what he's done, and validating the fact that coercion is sexual abuse. Because out of all the sweeping changes, retcons and inconsistencies, the one aspect that has persevered throughout the show is just how trapped Blitz feels.

In Truth Seekers, Blitz’s hallucination is contradictory in its attempt to be visceral, and that is not inherently a problem. Trying to be abstract, it is normal for people to experience contradictory emotions over something. It makes sense in that way, but it needs reinforcement in the expanded narrative to tell it's story. As such I am just going to give my reading on the sequence based on my narrative and state it as fact.

The clown costume shows that Blitz sees himself as a joke, feeding into his low self-worth that no matter what he does, he is always the clown being laughed at. The murky wasteland is a reflection of his life. Devoid of anything bright or good, it is populated by dead trees and the ground is a quicksand like sludge, showing how he devours the good and extinguishes it in his own life. He kills his own happiness. Moxxie exists as a critical voice Blitz hears, telling him how stupid and awful he is to everyone around him. Blitz rejects his own self-criticism, reaffirming his self destructive victim mentality that appears when faced with the consequences of his own actions.

It's when the characters of Fizzarolli, Verosika and Striker appear that Blitz gives his regrets, insecurities and resentments voice, poorly impersonating the voices of those who saw the real him. Striker mocking Blitz’s need for companionship, how he lies to himself constantly and presents himself as independent and assured when really he sees himself as needy and pathetic.

Fizzarolli adds to it, pointing out Blitz’s failures to make it on his own, however this portion of the series should probably be considered non-canon as the newest episodes established that Fizzarolli and Blitz have not had any contact with each other since the accident. The more important line Fizzarolli says “You're going to die alone”, have been written out of the show. There would have been no time or place for Fizz to have ever spoken this to Blitz.

Then there is Verosika, who brings up Blitz’s self destructive tendencies, showing Blitz’s own abusive behaviors towards characters like Moxxie. It also suggests an explanation to why Blitz tolerates Loona, because her constant rejection of him contradicts his reactionary need to push others away, as well as feeds his self-flagillation.

It is when he endeavors to flee the reflections of the worst parts of himself that he runs into Stolas. Perched atop a pristine staircase of gold, being fanned by two silhouettes of Blitz. This shows the power imbalance in every way. Blitz doesn't even walk up the stairs, but crawls. Himself just a faceless accessory to Stolas’ desires, but everything he has intrinsically tied to the power Stolas' exerts over him. This is shown explicitly by the chains around his hands and neck, Stolas' reeling him in as he bears a grimace of reluctance. It is the most explicit representation of being trapped between two bad decisions. Either he is just the joke, the failure, the asshole, the stupid piece of shit, or he is the pet, the object, the toy. Stolas mentioning Blitz being "afraid to love" is less a suggestion that Blitz has any feelings for Stolas, but instead his psyche convincing himself that the relationship is not so exploitive. That he is not being dehumanized and abused, but on some messed up level he is being wanted and desired, which is better than the wastes below.

Maybe one could say that Blitz is being elevated out of his situation for how the feathers removed the costume and sludge, essentially wiping him clean of his worst self, providing a sense of safety. But he only has this opportunity because of Stolas, and it isn't free as shown by the feathers also becoming the chains binding him. Because at the end of the day, Stolas isn't the prize at the end of the climb to self actualization, the stairs belonged to him in the first place. To escape the horror-filled wasteland below, Blitz has to play by the rules of the owner of the stairs.

And ultimately, that isn't a story that is off-limits.

The Stolas apologist argument is why the depiction of this dynamic is triggering and harmful, not the fact that it exists in the media. Just owning the scenario and having Stolas acknowledge that he has sexually abused Blitz would have gone a long way. Instead, Medrano and the fandom have insistently represented this victim-blaming interpretation where Blitz is responsible for his own abuse. And that will never be okay. This goes all the way back to my "Not All Victims are Survivors" post. Blitz is the victim in this and his bad behaviour and own abusive actions directly correspond to the fact that he is a victim with a victim mindset. He actively lives in the middle of his abuse and has formed maladaptive strategies through manipulation, harassment, verbal abuse, and self harm. These do not remove his victim status. There is no such thing as a "Perfect Victim". And he should not have to be any sort of way in order to have that experience validated. And the issue that is at the heart of this show is that the narrative and the fanbase require a victim to be framed as delicate and hapless to circumstance with a soft and gentle personality to be a victim. To come out of abuse aggressive and harsh with sharp edges is framed as being less valid. But this outcome is normal and it's a difficult battle to work on oneself to feel safe again. It's absolutely a story worth telling.

But you first have to be interested in telling a story.

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

On the Helen of Troy thoughts RE, to RIAAU Marcy I have thoughts about the nature of how Andrius and Marcy are, the abuse Marcy experiences at Andrius' hands. (only tangentially related to the original post no I read over it) CW warning for discussion of parental/spousal abuse . The conflation of Andrius as Menelaus is... well the love and combined horrible possessive control fits so well even transfered from a marital to parental relationship, the feelings overlapping in the same sense, as awful as that is. The idea of 'love' but one coloured by immense and horrible control, on subject to him, her importance to him both as a part of his family, as his daughter who he cares for, the cynical importance she plays in the continuance of newt rule (to the point where she thinks she is a newt most of her life) as both his heir and the Core's vessel and the pain that results is just.... AAAAAAA. There's a real parental love there in canon, (and i suspect in the au) but that doesn't stop Andrius going through with what he does, just like many abusers do genuinely 'love' their victims, and their victims love them back. It doesn't change the fact that there is abuse and coercive control and a sense of ownership there, even if he's twisted himself into thinking it's all for 'her own good'. The idea Marcy going to war against her father but still loving him in her own way despite all he's done, and knowing how he has hurt her and would continue hurting her if he could it... god it hurts. Separate content warning for discussion SA of a child by a parental figure (apologies for reading too much into your AU and hitting an overly heavy or triggering topic if raising it was not intended) There's the other reasonably foreseeable implications are conflating father and husband. I don't see S/A as a thing literally happening in text, and how he views Marcy (as a daughter, despite how horribly he treats her). But if there's an allegory intended there, the preparations for The Core seem like one. How Marcy is groomed to see getting in the tank as normal when she's too young to understand what's going on, and being taught that it's a good thing. How she feels about the port implant in her neck in the aftermath and how that impacts how open and intimate she feels she can be with Sasha and Anne. How she probably doesn't know how to talk about what exactly happened to her at first, or know to reach out for help from others as a child. Those just hit close to that kind of abuse and it's consequences to me. Similarly, there's a case to be made for Andrius having experienced similar treatment at the hands of his own father and The Core, and thinking this is a good thing as a result, that he is showing his 'love' and preparing her for 'her future' like he was prepared. Unwilling and unable to see how he was hurt. That doesn't justify what happened, or make the actions any less immoral, nothing can. But the idea that Andrius is just continuing how he was shown to parent, and that hurting the people he cares about. And Marcy then having to grapple with that as she grows up.

You hit the nail right on the head! Don't be scared of potentially triggering interpretations because, while I don't feel confident writing a whole SA allegory, the implications write themselves even in canon, and the "preparations" aspect very much resembles grooming in the sense that Marcy is gradually forced to naturalize harm towards her body, autonomy and personhood. She's very much aware of what's happening to her during most of her life, and has come to see it as necessary at worst and a great honor at best. By the time she breaks free, unable to tolerate it any longer, she feels incredibly guilty for letting it go on for so long. She doesn't feel she gets to complain when she consciously accepted something she later went back on. Despite being horribly traumatized, she's convinced herself she's not a victim of any kind. You know. Because she "wanted it". Because she "enjoyed" being so deeply connected to the Core. Because she "consented" to her body being used for its vanity project.

There is one key element of, er, incest that doesn't have any paralel in the story, so it's not a clean allegory, and that is the specificity of the boundary-crossing that comes with SA within the family. While Andrias hurts Marcy horribly, there is no specific "great taboo" he's breaking, unless you count any kind of child abuse as some sort of taboo, in general? But again, it lacks the specificity. Marcy doesn't feel the lines between child and parent have been blurred by an exaggerated attachment, not exactly. Though you could make an argument that the inevitable enmeshment that comes with multiple consciousnesses being assimilated into a single being could represent something like that? Idk it feels like a bit of a stretch.

But yeah, the parallels are very much general blanket-feelings of control, gaslighting, loss of bodily autonomy and, well, if there's such a thing as non-sexual grooming, this is that, yeah.

It will take Anne and Sasha a lot to fully earn Marcy's trust, because even if Marcy desperately wants to feel comfortable with someone else again, she's gone through a lot and her nervous system has been in fight or flight mode for years.

[toomanythoughts2]

Dethklok Agere HCs: Murderface Edition

🗡️🎸🖕🤬🪖👨‍🚒🍺🤮💩💢🏌️‍♂️🐯🌭🍨📱⚔️🛡️🏹⛓️🩸🚽🚬

After Toki, I wanted to do my second favorite member of Dethklok: Murderface! I see so much of myself in him and it's hard to not notice the signs. He means a lot to me, especially as someone who also grew up with their grandparents. I hope to do the rest of the band soon. So, this is my boy Murderface 🗡️!

Everything is below the Keep Reading tab.

(Murderface, you are so unwell and I just want to take care of you and show you that you are worthy of love and acceptance.)

🗡️ Ok, so, I think Murderface's regression range is higher than Toki's toddler head-space but not as old as Pickles, who I think is an older/pre-teen regressor. I would say he's around 5 to 8. He's old enough to be by himself and play but small enough to still need help occasionally.

🗡️ As I said before on Toki's post, I don't think Murderface's regression is easily as recognizable as regression. A lot of times, the band thinks he's just being his attention-seeking self. Murderface doesn't even recognize that he's regressing until he's done regressing and feeling weird about it.

🗡️ Murderface, I believe, has voluntary age regression, or Age Dreaming. However, I think his body recognizes that he needs to regress to decompress, so he'll naturally go do those things or behave that way to help regulate those emotions. It gets worse the angrier or more depressed he gets. It's like his body is consciously making him regress without Murderface having the word to know what he's doing. He can stop "regressing" when he wants to, and has the ability to not do it in the first place, but it's been his coping mechanism for so long, he doesn't know what else to do. Mind this, Murderface's regression isn't about just being a baby, I do believe his regression is tightly connected with his self-harm and child-hood trauma. For instance, his inability to care for his personal hygiene is a type of passive self-harm but his regression (tied to his childhood) makes it hard for him to change that habit. Where Toki uses his regression to protect himself, Murderface's regression keeps him trap in his childhood. It won't be until Murderface recognizes he is regressing and working on his mental health will he be able to use his regression to help himself. (I hope this makes sense.)

🗡️ I think he started regressing a lot earlier than people think but they were just unable to identify it at first. I think he began regressing as young as a middle schooler, but the regressing was so minute and so insignificant that no one ever caught it. Additionally, I think middle school is where Murderface first develops the majority of his mental health issues like depression and an eating disorder.

🗡️ It's not until Murderface is taking care of Toki when he regresses that he starts noticing the signs of his own regression. The band all have group mandatory meetings with Dr. Twinkletits about how to best care for Toki and how to spot the signs of his regression to minimize dangerous situations. Murderface is very quiet during those meetings after the realization.

🗡️ While Pickles or Nathan are usually the more knowledge in the topic now, as they are Toki's main CGs, it's Skwisgaar that notices Murderface showing signs of regression first while watching Toki play with Murderface in the living room. He's talks to the rest of the band before they decide to talk to Murderface about it.

🗡️ Of course he heavily denies the claim and refuses to hear anymore about it. But now that the band is aware, they all keep an eye on him just in case.

🗡️ This is a HC of mine that has been stuck forever, but I believe the first time Murderface fully lets himself regress in front of the others is at the beach. The idea is that Toki and Murderface run off together while the other three stay on the beach. Toki regresses and Murderface is stuck taking care of him but the longer he's with him, the calmer he gets. He wants to be like Toki too and just enjoy himself. So they spend the afternoon having fun and going in shops and walking the boardwalk. They come back and Toki collapses on Skwisgaar for a much needed nap. The band fully expects Murderface to sit in his own chair and do the same but he ends up just standing next to Pickles. Pickles has no idea what he's doing but he longer he stands there, the clearer the image appears. It isn't until Murderface asks if he can nap with Pickles do they all realize what is happening. It's a very delicate situation and no one is trying to mess with it, so Pickles says yes and lets Murderface nap with him on his chair. Nathan is busy texting Charles while Pickle holds Murderface. Toki is fast asleep and Skwisgaar is feeling proud of himself for being so observant.

🗡️ Once Murderface was identified as a regressor, a lot of past incidents began to make sense, including the disturbing ones.

🗡️ Murderface self-harms but that doesn't stop in his regression. If Murderface is feeling too little to SH "properly" (like cutting), he will hurt himself in ways that he can like banging his head against walls and hitting himself. He will bite himself and scratch at his skin. Nathan has taken to holding him against his chest to get him to stop.

🗡️ I like to think that Murderface's eating disorder, which I HC as binge eating, is also related to his childhood trauma thus connected to his regression. The combination of self-hatred, depression, and regression make it hard for Murderface to regulate his feelings about food, so he does what knows can "fix" that problem, which is eating. And the more upset he gets, the messier he gets. He uses his hands instead of silverware, he switches between plates before finishing one off, he lets the food and drink spill and stain him. I HC that Murderface grew up in poverty, so there was never enough food inside the house, so he was always hungry. He's confusing his depression with hunger, thinking that if he just eats, he'll feel better because he was always hungry when he was sad. But the older he got, the less this became true but the habit already formed. Regression happens while he's in the process of binge eating. He's slipping into a mindset where this has to make sense, even if it hurts him.

🗡️ Ok, enough of the sad, backstory HCS. Murderface has a hot wheels car track that he sets up in his room or the living room where he races his hot wheels. The others join in as well and it's a good time (as long as Murderface wins a majority of the time).

🗡️ Murderface's regression is not as "baby" as Toki's. A lot of it is very typical young boy interests like cars, trucks, war, and guns. He likes video games and stupid, crude humor like South Park.

🗡️ I don't see him using a lot of traditional regression supplies like bottles or clothes. He likes to remain as he his and doing what he's doing while regressed. Though, he does like to be in comfier clothes when he regresses, so he will change into sweats or worn shirts.

🗡️ Because Murderface is able to identify that he is choosing to regress in moments of stress, he's been able to make great work with Dr. Twinkletits about his mental health.

🗡️ The band is very supportive of him, much to his surprise. He didn't think they would be anything but begrudgingly helpful. But they are genuinely understanding.

🗡️ While I do not think Murderface needs or wants a caregiver like Toki, he does spend a lot of time near Nathan when he feels particularly small. He looks up to Nathan a lot, and wants to be around him.

🗡️ If Pickles notices that Murderface is feeling smaller than normal, he'll quietly switch a few things around to help him drop. He's gotten very good at body language (hand on the back, raking fingers through his hair) and communication (chosen phrases or names that solidify his regression, words of encouragement)

🗡️ Murderface has a lot of crying spells and tantrums that no one can make a lot of sense of, including Murderface. His tantrums aren't like Toki's, which resemble an actual toddlers tantrum. His tantrums look like his normal behavior, except they're followed by tears or a high level of nonsense. His biggest tell is if what he's yelling about isn't even close to the situation he's in. When he's small, he overthinks every little movement or word and worry's about what they mean. These thoughts happen so fast that it's hard for him to track just how he got to his tantrum in the first place.

🗡️ Murderface won't take bubble baths like Toki, but he is much more willing to bathe now that he understands his regression and his depression. He'll put on music while he showers and watch youtube videos on how to take care of his hair. He's still scared that if the band sees him trying they'll make fun of him, but he has to remind himself that this is for himself, not the others.

🗡️ Skwisgaar will often offer to brush through Murderface's hair before bed if he knows he's had a long day. Something about being taken cared of just relaxes Murderface and makes him feel small.

🗡️ Surprisingly, no one in the band is Murderface's favorite. It's actually Knubbler. (He's alive, shut up.)

🗡️ He's an IPad kid (Obviously) but its obnoxiously worse when he's regressed. Pickles as gotten really good at parent locking his IPad to certain hours so he won't use it while they're eating dinner or lunch. Murderface despises it but he also knows if it wasn't there, he would be playing car revving videos at 100% volume while eating.

🗡️ Skwisgaar is very attentive when he wants to be, so he's constantly gently doing things that make Murderface drop without necessarily meaning to, but Murderface never forces himself to stop the feeling. Toki needs a lot of support in his regression, so Skwisgaar naturally does those "Caregiver" things already. Like, cleaning dirty fingers after eating, moving hair out of his face while he's busy doing something, fixing blankets around shoulders, gently moving them int he right direction if he begins drifting away. Murderface doesn't encourage them but he never denies them.

🗡️ Toki adores it whenever any of the other band members are regressed because he feels like he can finally give back after having them all take care of him. He loves playing with Murderface with his cars or playing pretend. Problems happen when Toki accidently regresses in the middle of it.

🗡️ Murderface loves playing pretend war. He has his wake guns with the nerf bullets and the plastic hat. He hides under tables and behind doors and shoots whoever walks by. He's only ever gotten in serious trouble when he got Charles in the butt in his office when he was on a phone call.

🗡️ Speaking of trouble, Murderface does get into some trouble when he's small. The band does not discipline him like they would discipline Toki with a time out, but Nathan does scold him. He's the only one that gets to him when he's small and knows that he's serious.

🗡️ He wants a dog so bad but he's scared the guys won't let him. Skwisgaar and Toki will take him to the local animal shelter to play volunteer. It lets him get all his energy out with the dogs and play fight with the bigger dogs.

🗡️ He will NOT sit a chair correctly. Upside down or on his side ONLY! (Projection as I laid in arm chairs sideways during this age.)

🗡️ He loves He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword, TMNT, G.I.Joe, M.A.S.H., Ghost Buster The Animated Show, Thundercats, and Transformers. He's got good taste for older cartoons and shows. It's his biggest tell that he's small or trying to get small is if he's watching one of these shows. However, if he's watching Gilligan's Island or Walker: Texas Ranger, he's trying to get small and be sad. I HC that these are the shows his grandma and grandad would watch when he was a kid.

🗡️ As a child raising by her grandparents, I think Murderface's regression triggers are related to a lot of things that his grandparents did in the house. This could mean the good, the bad, and mundane things. The snapping of a belt, or an expired discontinued perfume, or the sound of an old TV clicker. But also, certain music.

🗡️ So, Murderface is canonically partially Native American (Thunderbolt) but I also adore him being part Hispanic/Latino (Stella being an Americanized version of Estella) Top that off with him being some southern, rural part of America, his music exposure is all over the place. Three types of music help him regress the most: Bluegrass, Hispanic (Salsa + Cumbia + Bachata), and Thrash. I HC that his grandfather played bluegrass before having his stroke and he played some type of string instrument such as lap steel guitar or a mandolin. The sound of it reminds him of sitting in church or his grandfather playing in his spare time around the house. Hispanic, specifically those genres, remind him of his grandmother's radio in the kitchen. She always had something playing while she cooked or cleaned or played dominos with the other older women of the town. On very rare moments, she would dance with Thunderbolt while smiling. It's some of the only calm times in the house. Thrash reminds him of being young and finding music that felt like him. It would remind him of car rides with uncles and staying over at old childhood friends houses and older male cousins that never let him in their rooms. Music helps him regress a lot, whether he wants it or not. (This is all projection btw. Grandfather played bluegrass with a guitar and my father listened to Thrash in the car with me.)

🗡️ He has a very hard time with food when he's small. He eats too much because of part of him is worried about the next time he'll ever get to eat again. Pickles has to constantly remind him that the food isn't going anywhere and if he's full, he can stop eating.

🗡️ Nathan humors Murderface more when he knows he's small. He'll listen more closely to him about song suggestions or his interests.

🗡️ Very rarely will he ask for help when he's small but it does happen. Things like needing help tying shoes or buttoning shirts he will need help in. He also needs help cutting food.

🗡️ He loves swimming. He probably had a lake, river, or pond near him growing up that he swam in. When he's small and it's hot, he wants to play in the pool. He wants to play sharks and minnows, Marco Polo, scavenger, races, and dunking games. He plays with Toki the most but can occasionally get them all involved. Charles usually watches over them all when they do all get in.

🗡️ Hates sunscreen and will run and hide before getting any on his skin.

🗡️ He info dumps big time. To a point where no one has any idea what he could possibly be talking about. He's a big history nerd, so it's a lot of war facts, early American facts, and other miscellaneous facts about cars and guns.

🗡️ Being regressed exposes a lot of his old childhood beliefs, but the biggest ones are the Appalachian superstitions he grew up believing. Charles had an upside down horseshoe places above every outside door for good luck. The klokateers can't wash clothes on Sundays. He refuses to leave a room out a different door than the door he came through. Some of them are funny though like an itchy ear meaning someone is talking about you. He once told that to Toki who immediately went to Skwisgaar to confront him for talking about him. (Skwisgaar was actually talk about him to Nathan but he won't admit it.)

🗡️ Strong physical contact is his best friend for calming down. Just like how adult Murderface likes Pickle's back rubs, regressed Murderface likes head rubs. Something about the pressure feels good and calms him. They use this to prevent any tantrums.

🗡️🎸🖕🤬🪖👨‍🚒🍺🤮💩💢🏌️‍♂️🐯🌭🍨📱⚔️🛡️🏹⛓️🩸🚽🚬

That's all I got for my boy! He is a bit of a challenge, but once I got into his boyish mind, I could really channel him better. I love him so much. Obvi, if you have any HCs of your own, tell me about them! OK, love you, bye! 👋

[dross-the-fish]

I found myself thinking of Jekyll today and wondering if it causes him physical pain to have to fake a smile. To what extent is Henry Jekyll, pleasant doctor and sophisticated upperclass gentleman a painful mask he has to wear and does the discomfort ever feel physical?

I was at the local aquarium today (this is the perfect time of year to go because it's open but there are no tourists so it's never crowded and admission is cheap) hanging out and doodling on one of the benches while I watched the fish. I had on headphones to listen to an audio book and to provide a buffer between myself and anyone who might try to talk to me and I had been looking forward to relaxing for a couple of hours when a family walked up and the father waved his hand in front of my face to get my attention. The minute they started asking me questions about what I was drawing I was filled with what I can only describe as intense dismay.

Obviously the family being present isn't in of itself an issue, it's a public aquarium, it's aimed at families and parts of the aquarium are geared specifically at children, but the family noticed me drawing and stopped to talk to me.

I reiterate that this was not something they did wrong, they were just being friendly, but I was really not prepared to have a conversation and I found the whole ordeal to be...well an ordeal. They were interested in what I was drawing (a sketch of Henry Jekyll because he's been on my mind off and on) and just the thought of having to explain who this character was, hoping they got it, and having to potentially explain why I was drawing him felt overwhelming.

And it was, they did not know who Henry Jekyll was, they were vaguely aware of Jekyll and Hyde but weren't the type of people to read classic literature and had never heard of the musical or actually seen for themselves any movies featuring the character. The mom commented that he looks like "a Disney villain from back in the 90s" which...fair assessment, I can't pretend I don't see why she would have thought that. The older kid was probably the most interested and wanted to see more of my drawings which made me really uncomfortable but I let him look through my sketchbook anyway because his parents kept saying he was interested in drawing and he loves art and I felt too anxious to say no.

I made small talk with the parents for a while, all the usual, "what's your name, where you from, what's your job?" (I hate those questions, they are usually the least interesting things about any people, myself included) and I wondered if this is what Henry does on a regular day. Has ordinary conversations with reasonably nice people and feel completely like a fish out of water the whole time. I felt pretty terrible about it too, I didn't have any hard feelings or resentment but the whole time I was thinking "Stop touching my things, go away, please fucking leave so I can get back to my audio book and my drawing. I just wanted to sit with the fish for a few hours because it's supposed to be quiet here this time of year."

No one ever seems to catch on that physically talking to people is an effort for me. I've gone my whole life and no one has ever noticed that I'm anxious or uncomfortable in situations where I have to speak out loud because I've gotten good at faking small talk and I know how to make my voice sound pleasant.

It's strange because I express myself easily enough in writing and I like messaging with people over text but the minute I have to be verbal with people I don't know I feel like I'm putting on an immense effort. I have to consciously choose a tone, figure out what words I want to say, be ready with an explanation in case I'm asked questions and I have to do all of it in real time on the spot. It feels like improve, like I'm constantly doing an improve routine and I know most people would say "Just be yourself!" But myself doesn't want to be doing this at all. Myself wants to be drawing and looking at fish. Even as a child I was never very social, I liked to doodle or daydream or build with my lego sets. I got reprimanded a lot for being too quiet. So I made myself more talkative and learned how to hold conversations. I learned to blend in but it's so tiring at times and I can swear when it's at its worst it feels almost physical. The discomfort becomes a suffocating "texture" on my skin and in my brain and I have to keep pretending like I don't notice it because every time I try to articulate how I feel people don't understand it. It's just not a thing they experience.

So I just keep "acting normal," and wonder if there's something wrong with me, like I'm operating on a different frequency from the people around me and I'm the only one on that frequency so other people don't even know it exists. It's...incredibly isolating at times. Even my partner doesn't seem to hear the world as loud as I do or experience the "texture" it's just a strange THING that I'm stuck with by myself. I wonder if it was the same for Henry Jekyll? Except instead being of too quiet he was too loud, too boisterous, threw tantrums, didn't know when to stop rambling about anatomy and weird gross medical facts. So he learned how to cover it and move through life pretending to be interested in everyone else but keenly aware they could never share his interests because his favorite subjects were too grisly and if he started talking about diseases he'd put everyone off. I head-canon Jekyll loves what he does, but he doesn't love it for reasons a doctor should, he doesn't care that much about healing the sick, he cares about conquering illnesses, he likes to learn about symptoms, he enjoys the disgusting viscera of his work. But he can't let on that this is what he enjoys about his work because that's not noble or heroic, it's something most people would find creepy of him. So he buries it and pretends he cares about curing the sick. He pretends he enjoys talking to people who don't know anything about who he is or what he does but they think they do because they are aware of doctors and understand that medicine exists. All the time he loathes it, it exhausts him and he can't even indulge in activities he enjoys to blow of steam because he enjoys things like brawling, doing drugs, and fucking. All things a man of his status shouldn't be seen doing. There's an image people associate with Henry Jekyll and it's an image he can't afford to tarnish...

but it's not really HIS image, it's just a buffer he keeps up to make himself more palatable. I wonder if that ever hurts him physically, if the mask ever feels like a "texture" muffling him.

there are times when I feel like it's no wonder he wasn't repulsed by Hyde when he first saw his reflection. Because I can only imagine by the time Hyde showed up he was already completely burnt out on being Jekyll.

[beginningobserver]

I watched The Beginning in English when it released in Theaters and really enjoyed it. One plot bit Im still confused about is what exactly happened to Rui's parents? I'm not sure if the sub elaborated, but did they actually die because of Ukkomon or something else? Love your blog!

Oh hey, thank you! (someone just... finally sent an ask to this blog after months without one... i'm thankful)

Anyway... There's multiple answers to that question, the shortest answer is yeah, it's deliberately ambiguous (as a friend put) -- so we don't know whether Ukkomon did kill them or not.

But, pulling my Ace Attorney skills (be nice to me, i only played it a bit on NO$GBA emulator and my config didn't let me save my files so i never got to finish it) is that, in my opinion... Ukkomon's power does not instantly kill the target.

To quote wikimon, Ukkomon's attack, "Liar Dream" is described as:

[...] and hijacking the consciousness of an opponent that meets its gaze (Liar Dream).

You will notice that the description does not mention "tentacles" at all, or that this ability instantly kills the opponent, unlike other digimon's profiles say. For example, check Cyberdramon's "Erase Claw" description below:

Its Special Move is producing a super-oscillatory wave from both of its arms that destroys configuration data, completely erasing each of the opponents in the surrounding space (Erase Claw). If you suffer this attack, you are annihilated without leaving behind a single scrap of data.

Cyberdramon's "Erase Claw" has an effect in which it immediately destroys the opponent. But Ukkomon's "Liar Dream" does not present an effect besides "getting your mind hijacked". Therefore, Ukkomon's victims wouldn't die by it.

But why then Rui's parents died while Ukkomon was controlling them? And what was the purpose of those tentacles showed in-scene? Well... The tentacles weren't for the brainwashing technique, they were to keep up the bodies healthy and functional.

But the other thing which i dunno how many people noticed was that Rui's parents were sooner perish due to some reasons: One, Rui's dad was already between life-and-death and being kept alive by those machines... And Two, Rui's mom was TOO STRESSED enough to one day just die by overwork. So yeah, you see... The victims were already in a fragile health state, so one push and then... they would've died at any instant.

Ukkomon had no intent to kill them, as well. Idk what went through Ukko's head when he started playing with them like dolls, but I assume he didn't want to make Rui sad (especially because he was being kinda paranoid about making Rui happy and such...)

There's also another thing, i'll quote my convo with a friend who went full into Iori-ish when we were discussing about the same subject:

on the grounds of 1) intent to protect Rui from child abuse 2) high urgency (she was literally going to hit him on the spot) 3) clear lack of intent to harm 4) Rui being a minor the case would most likely be dismissed even if we somehow classify Ukkomon as an adult, the fact it's done "in defense of another person's rights", and especially in defense of a child, would be considered not punishable under Japanese law looking at what would be the most ambiguous parts it seems like Japanese law prioritizes "urgency" and does not necessarily require that the act be the only solution, so even if you could argue "but he could have done things besides kill Rui's mom" this won't fly because "she was going to freeze him to death and beat him, this was too urgent to not do something" and then there's the theory of "excessive defense" which is that the actions are disproportionately unreasonable compared to the danger the party was put in. but considering Ukkomon didn't seem to have any awareness that this might kill them, I don't think this would be ruled as unreasonable

So the conclusion is...

Ukkomon had no intent to kill, acted in order to protect a minor from corporal abuse, said victims were already in a bad health situation so they probably died somewhere between 1996 and 2003 thanks to the little "push" of Ukkomon's technique and then Ukkomon started to use them as puppets, maintaining their bodies with something he injected into their bodies... Until Rui discovered the truth, snapped at Ukkomon and had a real bad fight, all of them exaggerated, Ukkomon then melted and disappeared -- leaving no proof of the crime left.

The case is unsolved and archived because yeah, you can't prove that Ukkomon had killed Rui's parents at all.

It would be more concerning for them to deal with the crimes they committed in 2012 though, like Climbing the Tokyo Tower or the public disorder BigUkkomon caused lol.

Anyway, for the crimes Ohwada Rui and Ukkomon had committed on Feb 28 & 29 of 2012:

[rachelsshowerthoughts]

Was musing on the Aware AU and how the trio internalize and process the abuse and otherwise contextualize or understand and communicate it or otherwise maybe fail to do so.

Because realizing a parent is unfair or doesn't care or is cruel is one thing. It can often be another to straight up be aware of and say you are an abuse victim.

Be it because they are young and thus even with the spread of therapy speak, being able to use it effectively on themselves is hard.

Or because abuse victims don't often look like they do, IE, aren't usually mega rich heirs to powerful names. Even if being a rich child can be rather akin to being an exotic talking pet given none of that money is theirs.

Sad money also makes getting empathy hard and feeling there is a way out even harder. They may not want the former or at least not desire it consciously. But its also a case of, "If we were even believed what could anyone do?"

But then there's also the more personal takes on things, such as how:

Adrien may not blame himself for his fathers inability to love him (Or at least love him in a not terrible way) but he sure as hell blames himself for "Fooling himself" for so long. He's known Gabriel his whole life, he is his son, if anyone should have figured out what he was like it was Adrien. But he didn't so he can't blame anyone else for not seeing it.

Then there's stuff like media where cold and controlling parents get redemption arcs by being soft once or the like. Adrien's just throwing popcorn at the screen, "He's lying to you, its a trick, he'll never change!"

Kagami genuinely loves fencing, she loves how skilled she is, she loves that she is a world renowned fencer. This makes it hard to deal with when abuse is woven into training, such as with overly violent spars, or with training sessions that see her hit the ground and then be forced up again and again.

She's used to her body hurting after training, the issue isn't the punishment, its how arbitrary and unfairly her mother applies them Compounded with the social isolation, control and emotional repression which she has a hard time naming. Meanwhile you have Marinette just wanting to scream because Tomoe is intentionally harming her daughter as punishment.

She'd likely need an outsider to highlight the punishment spars themselves are a bad idea that hinder rather than help her. That the pain itself was wrong, not just when or why it was applied. Kagami is proud of who she is and what she can do. So to some degree she sort of.. Needs the trauma. Because if it was unnecessary, if it isn't how she got so good, then it was just pain.

Chloe has the. other victims do not look like me jacked up to eleven. Most victims are not rich, most people who are aggressive (In her research) are physical and were harmed physically. Most don't have mayor fathers who bailed them out of trouble, though be it to make her reliant on them and feed his own self esteem, hence encouraging her acting out as it fed him.

But its also because she chose to imitate Audrey. She chose this path in order to win her parents love and it didn't even work. She chose this and now she is not choosing it but something else. She had agency in this god dammit and don't you dare tell her otherwise! She is not a victim! She is not weak!

Feeding into that is stuff like Andre actively and outright teaching her, "Extortion, intimidation, bribery, these are how you win a campaign." Because even as she restructures herself, part of her still defaults to these, part of her still sees them as pragmatic and useful. Part of her thinks they will be needed for her and the people they care about. So again, was it abuse or just Andre being bad at parenting?

Plus on the physical side of things, there is some stuff that can be bled into headcanon, among other things... But one thing I would note is that canon Chloe grabbing Zoe and inspecting her like livestock before giving her approval. How she gets so aggressively close and into people's space when she otherwise seems to try and be distant. This screams learned behavior and we can't even blame it all on Audrey cos she was more of a: Fly in tear my daughter apart and leave parent. With likely a mix of social media, calls and streams, or rejection from and via those to compound things. So she's getting this heavily from Andre. But its not overt, its not hitting, it can't be abuse then, because Chloe is too different to the victims she finds, too different to be seen as a victim.

All true! I don’t think any of the kids would apply the words "abuse victim" to themselves. Like, their parent suck. They suck SO BAD. Their parents are awful people who aren’t going to change. They know this. They accept this. But I'm not a VICTIM. I'm not ABUSED. I'm not what that looks like. It doesn’t apply to me(derogatory).

Funnily enough, they might apply it to EACH OTHER. Chloé absolutely thinks Gabriel is emotionally neglecting Adrien. Adrien thinks André and Audrey emotionally abuse Chloé. They both think Tomoe abuses Kagami. But it doesn’t apply to themselves, and they don’t bring it up or try to convince each other.

[gold-rhine]

What do you think about child Kaeya being super sweet, polite, gentle, doing Diluc's punishments for him and so on? I'm torn because I think it's cute, but also idk if it's somewhat too OOC for him...

mmm no, i don't have too much problem with it. i always said he's a natural people pleaser, so him being sweet to everyone as a kid tracks.

also, it fits interestingly with his transactional view of affection. by which i mean, kaeya always tries to repay for being nice to him. like, in letters he always promises traveler smth for hanging out with him, in highest teapot friendship offers to write a book for them, etc. i think he's aware of his tendency and actually would prefer not to, like he tells traveler let's not make this relationship transactional, but he still gets subconscious reflex to "repay". i think that like, being a small people-oriented, kind-natured kid from a strict family and then being placed into family that is more much and easily affectionate overwhelmed him and combined with the guilt of keeping secrets, he felt he doesn't deserve this unconditionally and needs to repay for being loved, even if no one asked him. and like since he's naturally leaning into being pleasant and sweet, it just formed this like, subconscious bargain of "i receive familial love and belonging, you receive the sweetest little angel you ever met."

and his "favors ledger" is basically inverse of this, bc after being literally and figuratively burned, he became cynical and turned his impulse to help ppl into consciously transactional way of making informants who owe him.

at the same time, for people he cares about, he tries to do things for them without taking credit, like party for jean, doing punishment instead of diluc, etc, bc i think he doesn't want people to feel like they have to repay him (by his own internalized transactional logic)

the biggest thing that's bothering me is him not being able to lie, bc like... how are the alberichs sending small child on a cover story spy mission without making sure he can lie. come on. but even here, there can be options. we hear it from the maid's pov, which can be biased, he might be able to lie in some cases and not in other if he sees them differently, etc.

[super-hero-confessions]

Wednesday was a very important show for me because of how it reflects female loneliness. There's also the fact that I'm a goth and a fan of the Addams Family from the 60s and the 90s, however the "loneliness in girls" aspect of the Wednesday show hit me like a truck.

It is known that men are lonely. I know this because when a man I don't know has approached me somewhere, as a woman my guard was up, and it wasn't the case with other women, we are more likely to trust other women. Men are expected to know how to put up with loneliness, while us women are expected to be more social and have a lot of friends. A woman without friends is seen as weird, while a lonely man is also seen as weird. (And I really don't like how a lot of people want to create a war between sexes - there are pros and cons to each gender). Loneliness as a female has been really hard for me, because I was aware of that social pressure, the idea that if a guy has no friends, "he doesn't need them", but if a girl has no friends, "there is something wrong with her". I mean, something was up with me, indeed. I am autistic but I was never diagnosed as a kid, and the fact that I am a goth also made people want to get away from me. Just because something was "wrong" with me (NO I don't think having autism is wrong, but going undiagnosed is because it can ruin your life) it doesn't mean I deserved to be so alone. Does any child deserve that? I don't think so.

Wednesday is not used to having friends so when people try to get close to her, she pushes them away, consciously or not. Because being alone is all she knows. But does she like being alone, or was she simply forced to get used to it? I can't answer that question for her, because I can't answer it for myself.

I didn't like how in this version, the Addams family don't get along. What made other versions of the Addams so great was that despite being weird, creepy and spooky, they were a supportive family. So yeah, they changed a key aspect of the family and I don't like that. But I still appreciate the show for representing the way I feel. It was an eye-opener, seeing how loneliness can make you push others away just so they can't push you away first. You very much develop a "well they'll leave me anyway so I might as well push them away now" mentality. I'm a young adult now and idk if it's too late for me to change this. Maybe it's not, but I am comfortable this way, like Wednesday is. It's comfortable even though it hurts, because it's what you are used to. Every time I've made a new friend, I've thought "it will work this time. Now I've found the right friends, they'll accept me like I accept them" and it's never the case.

To any Wednesdays like me out there, I hope you find your people, and if you don't, that's okay too. What makes Wednesday awesome is how emotionally independent she is, so don't blame yourself if you can't find friends. If you do find them, however, I hope you aren't disillusioned enough to shut them out. Take care.

[jodilin65]

Time to share my very unpopular opinion, but you know what? It's my journal, and I don't care.

The other day, I mentioned that Tom and I were talking about whether or not the afterlife was possible. I've thought about all the NDE stories I've heard and agree that they can't all be lying or making up their stories, but how do we know they're not just dreams or hallucinations? Ketamine and other drugs can make you hallucinate to the point that you truly, honestly believe what you're seeing. From what I've read—if I'm understanding things correctly—the dying brain produces similar chemicals, which, in turn, create similar hallucinations.

So do I think NDE experiences are more likely hallucinations rather than a genuine trip to the other side? Yeah, I do. Then there's the fact that Christians happen to see God while Buddhists happen to see monks. A little too coincidental if you ask me.

Tom said he doesn't know what it is but believes in an afterlife only because it's hard to believe consciousness just ceases when we die. That kind of makes sense when you consider that our sense of awareness isn't exactly a physical, tangible thing. But then, for the sake of argument, there's surgery. When I was put under for surgery, I had absolutely no sense of awareness whatsoever. So consciousness can be stopped.

The older I get, the less I believe in God. Because I’ve had psychic experiences, I try to keep my mind open—just a tiny bit—to various possibilities, but with all the shit that's not only happened to me but that I see happening around the world, it's hard to believe that any higher being would create so much suffering and then just sit back and do nothing. If that's the case, then "God" is no better than a human enabler who watches a child being abused and does nothing about it.

Nonetheless, despite believing less and less in a God or an afterlife as I get older, I’m still curious and always interested in hearing different beliefs and theories. I think most people believe in God because that's what they were taught, and people are generally gullible and easy to brainwash. I also think a big part of it is wishful thinking and an emotional support thing. If everyone on Earth seems to hate you, telling yourself that there's a God who loves you unconditionally can be comforting, whether it's a delusion or not.

I was randomly browsing when I came across the question: What is the only unforgivable sin? My instant thought was, Of course, it has to be murder. But nope. Some sources say it’s blasphemy, and others say it’s worshiping another god. That had me doing a real WTF?! You mean to tell me people have decided that this unproven entity will forgive someone who rapes and murders a child—but not someone who criticizes or questions this supposed God? Do people even realize how ridiculous that sounds? It makes absolutely no sense. And why would anyone want to worship a God that is supposedly that spiteful and jealous?

Think about it—if this belief were 100% true, that would mean God is incredibly petty and spiteful, refusing to forgive someone just because they were fed up with His inaction and dared to say something He didn’t want to hear. When it comes to people I dislike, I just try to avoid them. Obviously, I can’t ignore the honker as much as I’d like to when he’s banging away with a hammer or firing up his damn motorcycle, but still—what rational being would want to throw someone into a pit of fire just because of what they said or felt? The point is, if we wouldn’t accept this kind of behavior from a person, why is it okay from a higher power? 

They say only God judges people (yet people judge others all the time) and that no one can know what he’s going to judge even though they’ve created a little rulebook assuming they can at least guess.

At the end of the day, my conclusion is: just do you. I’m going to be myself and live my life the way I see fit. I’m not going to harm anyone or break any laws—at least not intentionally—but I’m also not going to pretend to be someone I’m not. I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not, and not worry about what may or may not happen in the future.

Just for kicks, I asked AI what someone who has been dead for four years—since it's been nearly four years since Aly died—would be doing in the afterlife. The response was that, assuming they haven’t been reincarnated, they would be worshiping God and enjoying the rewards of heaven. My immediate thought was, How the hell could she worship a God who let her die at 40 when she didn’t want to die? She could have lived another 40-45 years. Let’s just hope that if there is an afterlife, it’s so much better than this life that dying younger was totally worth it—if she isn’t truly just dead and in total oblivion.

[its-the-val-pal]

Prompt #2: Bark

Val knew, on the day he left, that he had some explaining to do. There were a handful of people he needed to see, with his Princess being at the top of the list. Her letter had been difficult to read. It'd sent him into a fury he hadn't felt since.. well. Since a time he'd rather not remember. It caused him to do things that he now regretted, and it perhaps was the catalyst that spurred into motion this whole "forced leave" situation.

The problem, unfortunately, was that the Seeker was very well aware that she would not speak to him. Not judging by the tone of the letter, at any rate. And if he simply left, it'd certainly make her think that he was just leaving yet again, like he'd done before. No. He had to take drastic measures to ensure she would hear him out and, more importantly, keep their once-shared pet, Checkers, from barking incessantly at him as he made sure she did.

And so he spent the day roaming about Ul'dah for one of its many orphans, offering them a hefty amount of gil, and shepherding them across the land to there once-shared estate. It was, perhaps, far too elaborate of a scheme for what could have likely been solved in a very easy manner, but Val was never one to half-ass things. He whole-assed everything. Well. Everything he put his mind to, at any rate.

"So y'know th'plan, yeah?" the Seeker asked of the child as the two stood before the gate. "Wooooooow~ You live here?" "Used to, yeah. But fuck that. Y'know th'plan? Y'got the song ready an 'everything?" "Yeah yeah. I memorized it over here. You.. sure about this, sir? Doing this to your wife? I don't hear many people doing that sort of thing to people they claim to love." "F'course I--wait. Ain't you like eight or some shit? Th'fuck you care for?" "I'm twelve. And I know things." Truly, the most horrifying thing a child can say.

And so the plan was set in motion. Val set up just to the side of the door, right out of reach with cloth in hand, while the child knocked. When Faye opened the door, the lad would extend a bouquet of beautiful white roses--handpicked and NOT from her own collection this time--before breaking into song.

L is for the way you looook at meeee~ O is for the only one I seeeeeeee~ V is very, very--extraordinary~ E is even more than anyone that you adore~ LOVE is all that I can giiiiive to youuuu~ LOVE is more than just a gaaaame for twoooo~ TWO in love can make it--TAKE MY HEART an' please don't break it!~ LOVE was made for me aaaaand youuuuuuuuu~ The kid did a little flourish through the air and waited while Faye judged him and the chalkboard drawing that the Seeker had brought with him. Why? Because it meant to--and certainly succeeded at--distracting the woman long enough for the Seeker to wrap that cloth around her face and let the liquids it was doused in quickly send her out of consciousness.

"Oh it worked!" the kid exclaimed. Was that surprise in his voice? The little shit.

"F'course it worked. Now get th'bone an' toss it in there while I get her set up."

It all worked like a charm, really. The child threw the bone in the house and took off running, and the tiny little pup known as Checkers immediately grabbed it and ran off, heedless of what was happening to his owner. Good boy.

It'd take some time for Faye to find consciousness on her own; precious time for Val to tie her to a chair in their--her--kitchen. He busied himself by playing with Checkers, who had been a fantastically wonderful li'l lad and not barked at all for the safety of its owner. After all, Val had packed several bones just in case and each came in handy to keep him docile until the woman began to wake.

"Oh, evenin' Princess. Look, uh. I know what it looks like but I just wanted t'have a chance t'talk."

His plea was met with a slew of angry noises from the midlander that he was thankful to not have heard thanks to her mouth being bound. When she realized she couldn't get anything out, she just glared angrily at him.

"Right. Well, that's a good start."

[rexonalapis]

Days leading to the trial for a man that will become Wriothesley, told from the Iudex's eyes. (6k+ words)

crossposted to ao3

cowritten by @daniel-heng

tags: references to violence, child abuse, and murder.

"Should I be worried that the Iudex himself come to deal with this case?" That was the first thing he had said to Neuvillette.

To be completely honest, there was no reason for Neuvillette to be here, talking to the prime suspect himself, but there was something so puzzling about the identity of this man Neuvillette visited at the hospital at the moment. He was found near unconcious at the crime scene, his gauntlet dripped in blood of the victims, and the Gardes had decided to send him to the hospital first, and his trial would be immediately held once he recover from his injuries; the doctor predicted. Regardless, even when the evidences were stacked against him, there was no reason to restraint one of his hand to the railing of his hospital bed when he wasn't convicted of the crime just yet. What put him in this predicament was his own confession, immediately admitting to killing the victims with his own hands the second Gardes arrived at the crime scene.

Neuvillette imagined someone who appeared to have lost his mind, a maniac, and yet the person who welcomed him was just... a young man. The Iudex made a mental note not to lower his guard just yet, as the most unassuming people were proven to be capable of doing the worst kind of thing. Neuvillette knew men like this man all too well. "I see that my introduction would have been unnecessary." Neuvillette said, taking his seat on the right side of this man's bed. "I do not think there is anything to be worried about. There is no trial yet, this case is still under investigation. I am going to ask a few questions. Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"I suggest you speak only the truth, for your sake."

"Okay."

Neuvillette was silent, and he stole a quick glance at the other man. How odd, he didn't even ask further and simply accepted Neuvillette's order. "First, mind telling me your name?"

The man was silent for a moment, then spoke. "Wriothesley."

A lie, but Neuvillette was going to let it slide and see when this 'Wriothesley' would finally cracked. "Okay, Mr. Wriothesley, what is your relationship with the victims?"

"I guess they were my parents."

"You guess?"

"I was adopted."

"You are aware that you are not their biological child? How long have you been aware of the truth?"

Wriothesley hummed quietly, yet quickly shrugged his shoulders like he was dismissing whatever he considered in his mind a mere seconds ago. "Do you even want to listen to the story? I'm afraid it's rather boring."

"I will be the judge of that."

"Hah, that's funny."

Neuvillette failed to understand what was so funny about what he said. He almost wanted to warn Wriothesley that this was not the time to jest, but he put that thought aside when he noticed Wriothesley gnawed on his cheek, but then chuckled. "Uh... My parents could not have a child of their own, and they just happened to have found me after being discarded by my birth parents, for whatever reason. They picked me up, realized how helpless I was even before I could realize I was being held, and rushed home to raise me in secret. But apparently my existence in their life only made things worse."

"How so?" Asked Neuvillette.

Wriothesley sighed and looked away. "I used to think it's because I'm a living proof that they couldn't have what they wanted the most. My earliest memories are of them fighting about me. I would watch from the safety of my bedroom, or sometimes from the closet where they would lock me in, as they screamed at each other. Sometimes I would hear things that made my skin crawl, like when my father would slam my mother's head into the wall so hard she would lose consciousness. Despite all of this, they kept me. I don't know why. Maybe they were desperate for something- anything- to make their lives feel normal. And so I was raised in a house of chaos, constantly under surveillance. I was always aware that I was a liability, that I could bring them down."

Neuvillette stared at Wriothesley with his mouth close as Wriothesley spoke without looking at him, choosing instead to stare blankly ahead of him while his fingers toyed with some lint on his hospital blanket. It did not make sense, Neuvillette thought. How could he call the story 'boring' when Wriothesley had willingly told Neuvillette the story of his past, a tale so devastatingly personal it was almost too much to take with a forced serenity, like it had nothing to do with him. His boundaries seemed to dissolve as he spoke, revealing a freedom that was impossible to grasp. This young man and all he was, coming from his little world and at the same time he was never more outside of himself than before. Nothing with an airtightness. His small world, Neuvillette now noticed, felt heavy.

Neuvillette mentioned the Gardes investigated the closet under the stairs of their house, filled with what appeared to be clawmarks on the door, and Wriothesley calmly explained that the marks were his doing, because his mother used to lock him there. It wasn't a good place; leaky, dirty, cold; Neuvillette imagined him shouting and banging on the door. "Sometimes I held onto the door before it's being locked from the outside and she'd threaten to slam the door on my fingers and I'll lose all of them." Neuvillette cringed at the thought of Wriothesley trapped in that dark, dingy place - clawing desperately at the splintering wood trying to escape. "My parents barely noticed me. They would shout at me, or hit me, and then quickly turn their attention to each other. Sometimes I would see the hurt in my mother's eyes when he dragged me into the closet, and I would feel like it was my fault, that I was the reason she was so unhappy. Looking back, I now think some people, you know? They just aren't supposed to be parents."

"So you think your parents consider you a mistake?" Asked Neuvillette, trying not to show any emotion.

"Maybe, I mean who knows what they thought." Wriothesley said, shaking his head. "But it doesn't make it feel any different." Wriothesley had hinted to Neuvillette that he was content not having complete knowledge of his situation. With ignorance came safety and the understanding that all questions may not have answers. At that moment, Wriothesley experienced a range of indescribable feelings; from unbearable shame to sorrow, like he'd sunk deeper into life than ever before. But as soon as these negative emotions arose, they were quickly wiped away by a wave of positivity: freedom, joy, space - it was as if an insurmountable burden had been lifted off his shoulders and hadn't weighed him down for years. He admitted that he hadn't felt like this in a long time. “Some questions are better left unasked and unanswered.”

"Do you not ever get curious?"

"Not really. I am confident that remaining in the dark regarding these matters is far preferable than getting answers. Sometimes, not knowing can be just as important as knowing; it's an essential part of being human after all, not knowing everything. I think it's human to be aware that the dark exists, but not completely unlit."

.

Neuvillette, against his own initial plan, ended up coming to the hospital every evening since that day. Wriothesley confirmed the initial report that he hadn't lived with his parents for years because he ran away as a child. For the next couple of days, he would answer Neuvillette's questions about his homelessness; what odds jobs he took to get by every day, how many times he fixed his gauntlet and where he'd learned to tinker with it. Then, on the fourth day, Neuvillette arrived later than usual, and Wriothesley was chugging some beverage from a bottle. Neuvillette's initially thought it was that infamous Fonta, but the colors seemed different. "What is that?" Neuvillette asked, taking his usual seat.

"Tea."

"In a plastic bottle?"

"They can't give me tea cup, right? What if i smash it and use the shards as weapon?"

"I have noticed that you are not lacking self awareness by any mean, but please refrain from making such threat."

"It was obviously a joke. Would you like some?"

"Tea in a plastic bottle?"

Wriothesley rolled his eyes, unbothered. "Suit yourself."

"So, you fancy tea?"

Wriothesley shrugged. "I guess. Before you arrived, the melusine that once helped me in the past came and recognized me, so she gave me this because she remembered that the last time she offered me tea, apparently, I looked like I really enjoy it the last time."

"I presume it was when you ran away from home?"

"No, she was a guest at my house and watched as my father whipped his belt against my legs until I was done boiling the water for the tea--yes, it was when I live on the street."

Neuvillette nodded, thinking that perhaps he could safely presume the conversation was going well. Neuvillette wasn't sure what was going through Wriothesley's mind, but it seemed like the more they talked, the more at ease he became. See, what originally drew Neuvillette to Wriothesley was not related to his case or his survival skills, nor was it the mixed-signals of familiarity he gave off which led many away. Despite Wriothesley’s aimless, wandering life, he had a place in this world. Neuvillette had the opposite problem—he always felt like an outsider, no matter where he stood. If he seemed rooted in one spot, it wasn’t because he was happy there; Neuvillette stayed in a constant state of withdrawal. He appeared to be stable, only because he refused to budge.

Neuvillette wanted to learn that.

Wriothesley was casually leaning back in his hospital bed, a half smile on his face and a curious glint in his eyes. Neuvillette realized he had to quickly follow up the pace of the conversation no matter how. And then, suddenly and without warning, the Iudex asked the question that he himself had been dreading. "What was on your mind? When you killed them?"

Neuvillette stayed alerted, to see if the question caught Wriothesley off guard. It was sudden and unexpected, and there was something in Neuvillette's voice that made it feel like a trap. Wriothesley did not respond, presumably because he didn't know how to answer, and the silence that followed felt oppressive. He paused for a moment, trying to think of something, anything, perhaps to stall for time. But both men realized that there was no way out of it. Wriothesley's immediate confession was what got Neuvillette coming all the way to hospital to talk to this man after all; he had killed those people and there was no turning back. He might as well tell Neuvillette what was on his mind at the time.

Usually, this was the moment someone would turn the table around and victimised themselves on the narrative, Neuvillette wondered what kind of justification to his righteous action that Wriothesley would say. "My mind was hazy when I did it, to be honest, maybe if there was anything that man ever did correctly in life, it was how to beat me up effectively. I had a few thoughts after it was over, though."

"Would you mind telling me?"

Wriothesley finished his cold tea before answering. "I was thinking about how many Gardes will be dispatched to that house. And then I thought, maybe you wouldn't be able to tell our bloods apart. It's all smell funny. My blood, theirs too in all the scuffle and confusion. To think that at its core I'm no different from them, it disgusts me."

Neuvillette was confused by Wriothesley's admission, as he'd been consistently admitting that what he did was wrong and never once said anything that'd sound like an excuse, but he withheld his response. "Did you not regret your action?"

Wriothesley shakes his head, his eyes were staring at Neuvillette, absent from deceit. "I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life, that I took lives that weren't mine. But to be perfectly honest, I don't feel sad that they're gone. Does that make any sense?"

"Barely."

"You're right, Chief Justice, maybe I am simply going crazy."

"Are you planning to plead not guilty by the reason of insanity?"

"It was a figure of—nevermind. Like I said, I was perfectly sane when I committed the crime."

Neuvillette stared at him in disbelief. There was a long moment of silence, punctuated only by the occasional noise from the hallway of the busy hospital ward. He finally broke the silence, his tone heavy with disappointment. "I would not want to prejudice your case, but I must say that I have never seen anything like this before. This also almost killed you as well."

"I know."

"You are lucky that you anyy suffered minor injury."

"I know." Wriothesley repeated, a hint of exhasperation on his repeated answer this time. "But the reason I waited for so long was also because I needed to be able to endure it better, so I won't die too. I could not die. I have to be alive to pay for my sin. After that, well, who knows."

.

Neuvillette came to visit in the morning instead the next day due to his packed schedule for the rest of the day that could not be compromised. When he arrived, the nurse was almost finished on changing his bandages. "You come again?"

"Would my presence raise any problem for you today?"

"Not really." Wriothesley glanced at the nurse, who ignored him. "Thank you." Wriothesley said quickly, knowing the nurse would immediately leave, like she couldn't wait to get out of this room as soon as possible. There was a visible disgust on the nurse's face when she turned her back against him, but quickly get a hold of her emotion when she remembered that Neuvillette was here, and he could see the kind of face she was making. Neuvillette wondered if Wriothesley was aware of it all.

Neuvillette would deal with the unprofessionalism of the staffs later. Right now, he had another matter to focus on: in the frank, unvarnished light of day, Wriothesley looked even more forlorn than before. Slim, with eyes too exhausted to hold their shroud in place - was hidden by lids that drooped at the corner and gave him an almost sleepy look, he wore a faded cotton hospital gown that hung off his frail body like a shroud. Only now did Neuvillette could really see the numerous scars that crisscrossed his skin, the weals and abrasions that marred his flesh. It was just like how Wriothesley had been beaten so often that it was impossible to make out individual bruises.

"You had bandages, too, around your wrists. When you were taken to the hospital for the first time." Neuvillette commented, referring to the report of his initial 'arrest'. Instinctively, Wriothesley wanted to raise both arms, but the clinking sound of metal hitting another metal reminded him that his left hand was still restrained. "Were you injured prior the incident?"

Wriothesley swallowed hard. He had certainly been injured, but not the way people might think, Neuvillette presumed. It was obvious that Wriothesley was used to hiding his scars from the world, wrapping them up in gauze like a present, for his sake as much as for theirs. "I'm just hiding the scars for convenience," he said softly. "People tend to be a bit nosy, if you know what I mean." Neuvillette's mind raced with questions, but he dared not voice them. Wriothesley had been so willingly sharing his story with Neuvillette that he started to worry if sooner or later, Wriothesley's patience would ran out. Neuvillette did not want to test the limits so he kept his curiousity in his mind, like a shadow following his every move, yet, somehow Wriothesley was able to read him like an open book better than the other way around. "You want to ask how I got the scars, right?" Wriothesley said as he sighed and smiled wanly.

"If it is inconvenient to you, and it does not relate to the case, you do not have to say anything."

"These are from ropes." Wriothesley answered nonchalantly as if it was the most trivial thing in the world. "When I lived with them, my father used to tie me up outside the house all night. It happened so often that the frictions left permanent scars." He said the words without emotion. It was as if he had already accepted it as fate and no longer held any bitterness against his father. Neuvillette felt a chill run up his spine. He had seen too much in this case already, and he was filled with mixed, confusing emotions regarding Wriothesley's character. On one hand, he sympathized with him and admired his resilience and strength in dealing with his trauma. On the other hand, he couldn't help but feel some concern over Wriothesley's lack of anger or resentment.

Or maybe he had always been angry, that's why he killed his parents. His bottled up emotions led him to commit such heinous crime.

"Well, in the end, this punishment was how I escaped that house. I sensed that he'd drag me outside one night so I hid a knife behind my back and freed myself after they fell asleep." Wriothesley said with an eerie calmness tinged with humor and menace. His semi-serious tone hinted at a sense of bravado. "The rain helped too." For a moment Neuvillette glimpsed a hint of wildness deep within Wriothesley's eyes, a reminder of untold fury yet unleashed.

"Rain?"

"It hid my tracks, until I was far enough for them to care." Wriothesley said. Suddenly, he remembered something related to the rain and asked Neuvillette, "Chief Justice, do you know the legend about Hydro dragon?"

"No, what about it?" How he lied like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Oh, nothing, it's just silly story that only children believe. It is said that whenever it rains in Fontaine, it's actually because Hydro dragon is crying."

"I do not think that is the most realistic explanation for a mere natural weather change."

"Geez, Chief Justice," Wriothesley said, disapproval in his voice, although Neuvillette didn't know if he meant it or not. "You'll make a child really weep if they hear you debunk the legend that coldly."

Neuvillette let out a small chuckle, despite himself. "Very well, I shall keep my opinion to myself," he said. "Did you--used to believe that as well, Mr. Wriothesley?" Neuvillette asked carefully, hoping that Wriothesley didn't notice how personal this question really was for Neuvillette.

Wriothesley paused for a moment, as if to contemplate his answer, before finally speaking. "A little," he said, his voice soft. "I was a child once, too, you know, despite everything. That night when I escaped, I thought, what caused great sadness for the Hydro dragon at that time? I can't seem to recall that I have any more ability to cry myself, so out of my own selfishness, I used to imagine that the Hydro dragon cried on my behalf. I was clinging to the hopeless wish that someone, something out there, still cared for me." Wriothesley's face remained unchanging, a smile playing at his lips, as if he found his younger self naive and foolish but the amusement didn't reach his eyes. "But yeah, then I grew up and realized whoa woe that's all bull. End of story."

"I think... If there was any sliver of truth to that legend, the Hydro dragon would not forget your sorrow, even if you only shed tears once."

Wriothesley shifted in his bed, his firm frame casual despite the gravity of the subject at hand. "You don't have to humour me, like I said, I used to, Chief Justice. I was scarcely more than a boy when I first heard the legend, and I remember wondering why it seemed so important to so many people."

"And now?"

"Now I am willing to admit that it is likely nothing more than a children's story, something to make the rain in Fontaine seem more special. But that does not diminish the effect it has had on me or the impression it has left on my young mind." Wriothesley folded his free hand in his lap and regarded Neuvillette with an air of patience that was beginning to wear thin.

"I can see that you are dangerously close to becoming a confirmed skeptic." Neuvillette gave a faint smile.

"I am not so easily dissuaded."

The more Neuvillette listened to Wriothesley, the more he recognized a void was missing from his backstory. He sensed an emotional pain and embarrassment in Wriothesley - like a crawfish whose armor had been torn off and forced to display itself for mockery and humiliation. He admitted that this situation was of his own making; he should have foreseen that the glory of his confession would not last. The mood between them grew tense as darkness descended on their conversation, yet Neuvillette found solace in the irony of it all and how they'd drawn together in their shared disdain for the shallow world around them. Wriothesley, on the other hand, couldn’t understand why he continued to retell this narrative time after time, each version flawed with its own imperfections.

"Fortress of Meropide is not an easy place to live in."

"Why are we suddenly talking about that?"

"If you are declared guilty--"

"--when I am declared guilty," Wriothesley had said the words matter-of-factly, like they weren't particularly shocking. He must have been used to it by now. Lifelong practice, Neuvillette supposed. But even so, the words still felt like a knife twisting in his gut.

"You will have to spend years there. By the time you are out, you will be twice the age you are today or even more."

At this, Wriothesley had stared at him, his usually unbothered expression turning somber. Neuvillette could almost feel the weight of the situation pressing down on them, the reality of what was to come sharpening like a blade in the air. "Chief Justice," Wriothesley said, it was the most serious he'd ever been. "What's your point?"

The air in the room was suddenly thick as stacked bricks, pressing against both men as they stood their ground. For the first time Wriothesley saw Neuvillette not as someone he had a chat with, suddenly Wriothesley saw Neuvillette like the rest of Fontaine saw him: a man renowned for his formidable reputation in the court of law. He spoke slowly and carefully. "You denied attorney, and you have not made any single attempt to do anything that might help your case.I am not sure if you are aware of this, but you are charged with first-degree murder. I am obliged to consider all possible defenses, and I am sure that you will understand if I am forced to explore the possibility that you were in a state of self-defense at the time of the crime."

"To be honest, I don't think trial would be necessary, isn't it? I mean, isn't trials reserved for people who want to appeal against the charge?"

"It is not that simple, we must proceed everything through trials. Perhaps, are you secretly considering to request for a duel later?"

"Against that new Champion Duelist? No, thanks. I'd rather not die early." Wriothesley scoffed and shook his head. "Like I said, I have to live."

.

Many years ago, Neuvillette had met someone whom Wriothesley reminded him of. His memory of it faded now, just as a dream did after waking, yet he remembered feelings… colorful feeling that were hard to reproduce during waking hours or even while sleeping at night. It felt as though the moment could never end, a surreal interlude in which Neuvillette believed that their life had been set in the perfect key and spoken in the perfect language. The words Wriothesley spoke were almost too familiar; like he had said them so often in the past, yet they still held some tinge of meaning to break the silence. His expression was often strained, but there was a hint of amusement in his eyes, like he was laughing at himself, at Neuvillette, and at life itself for making conversation like this so awkward. It felt intimate, as if their friendship had been briefly forgotten only to be rediscovered again.

Seeing this young man in front of him brought back those memories and emotions with such clarity that he felt saddened knowing that the next moment they would be gone. It would be gone tomorrow. Tomorrow he'd read Wriothesley's sentence. Tomorrow, it'd be Neuvillette's words that would drag him into exile.

"This concludes our conversation. Your trial will be held tomorrow morning."

"I reckon you're a busy man, so I have to thank you for sparing a little of your precious time for someone like me."

Neuvillette bristled at his presumption but couldn't help but feel flattered by Wriothesley's words. It had been many years since he had felt... happiness--no, the un-loneliness, for some reason or another, and yet a sense of melancholy lingered in him, as if always waiting to be drawn out. Even now he couldn't seem to allow himself to feel it more than once without feeling hollow afterwards, like it had been sucked from deeper under his heart and soul. "That will not be necessary, I did this on my—"

"—it's almost like you came here to talk to me every day, purely out of the kindness of your heart, Monsieur Neuvillette."

Neuvillette seemed unaware of the insult, of being confronted by Wriothesley who confirmed that he knew Neuvillette was here for his own selfish personal curiousity. Perhaps Neuvillette simply chose to ignore it. Although he refrained from pressing his point, Wriothesley's insights on the human condition were unsettling. Without knowing who Neuvillette truly was, he had this uncanny ability to see into other people with such accuracy. "You are a strange fellow." He said instead. "All you did was telling the truth as it is without parapraxis and yet the first thing you said to me was a complete lie."

"Is this the part where I asked what it is?"

"Your name."

"It is not completely a lie, depending on your perspective." Wriothesley scratched the back of his head casually. "I believe it to be my name now. Isn't that enough? Monsieur Nobody-Knows-My-Given-Name Neuvillette?"

Neuvillette pretended that Wriothesley didn't just hit him back with his own logic. "How long have you been aware that I did not come here to deal with your case?" Neuvillette asked. Wriothesley, looking exhausted, ran his hands over his face. He looked like he wanted to say something, but then he seemed to think better of it and shrugged instead. The beginning, then, Wriothesley didn't want to say.

Neuvillette felt a burning sensation at his core, threatening to consume him if he let it. His spirit yearned to break free and leap into an alternate reality, one that could only be accessed through stories. If he dared to let go of the tethers that kept him grounded in this world, he would fall into the story after the curtain had risen, arriving too late to understand why he was there, yet unable to leave without understanding the truth. The emptiness inside him resonated like a low hum, demanding to be filled with something he couldn't name. Neuvillette's eyes snapped shut and Wriothesley's face was the first thing in his mind. He was captivatingly intriguing. Not because of his knowledge, words, or habits, but rather for how he twisted and interpreted things with an underlying cynical snicker. With a single glance, one could never tell if he was smooth as velvet or rough as sandpaper. Yet it was precisely this smart kind of enigmatic charm that made him so alluring. But then again, could someone less intelligent make life easier or harder?

Intelligence wasn't always connected to kindness and understanding; Wriothesley's intelligence couldn't be further from it. He was a critical thinker whose judgements were cut-and-dry; linear, logical, and shrewdly observant. "Do you not have any dream?" The thought came to him like a wave, crashing against his consciousness with an incredible force. The words left his lips freely and unbidden, yet they felt as though they'd been penned over centuries of solitude. When he looked up again, their eyes met in understanding, the something that was said without being spoken louder than any sound. "Why won't you use this opportunity to gain sympathy? Most people would have done so."

"Of course I do have dream, but I have to deal with the consequence of my action first--Monsieur Neuvillette, are you perhaps seeking clemency for me?" Wriothesley responded, but he was completely unmoved by the conversation. The only emotion he'd felt in years had been down deep in his dermis, and it had created a barrier around his heart. Later, Neuvillette would realize just how much effort this conversation took and feel relieved when he was unable to interpret Wriothesley's cues. This man felt with a dual heart; it was a muted organ that gave off an iron scent. It changed colors with its emotions. "It would have been pointless. You only cared about confirming your preconceptions, not about acquiring accurate knowledge. I'm telling you, I am guilty. Wouldn't this make your job easier tomorrow? So we can get over it as soon as possible? Why are you, of all people, trying to make sense of my wrongdoing?"

There was something savage and cruel in Wriothesley's question, as though he was striking back at something Neuvillette said that had offended him. But it also seemed that all he wanted was to expose Neuvillette, to expose him for the sheer, perverse pleasure of doing so. His words were a straight indictment of everything Neuvillette was; they made him feel like a slithery trickster who should be punished for beating around the bush when he'd already been warned to stay off the grass. And yet Neuvillette knew he was right. Wriothesley had seen through him and zeroed in on the one thing he feared most: the awkwardness that sprang up between them each time he looked him in the eye and made it so difficult to speak to him or find the courage not to deny that awkwardness did indeed exist between them.

But Neuvillette might have overestimated it. Or maybe he knew what Wriothesley was saying. No one knew. This conversation didn't last long enough for either one of them to find out.

Wriothesley looked straight ahead, unable to leave the bed with one hand handcuffed to the hospital bed, and yet he filled the space, strangely enough was out of scale, larger than life. Approximate yet unstable; loomed up; expanded. Only much, much later, too late, did Neuvillette understand how small Wriothesley was to himself. "You don't have to answer that. Whatever it is, I'll be fine. I was wondering what did you even gain from talking to someone like me but--"

"But?"

Wriothesley sighed, "I don't want to remind myself not to get involved with someone like you, not yet at least, because truthfully, I'm having such a good time."

"When shall I remind you, then?"

"Nah, you are the symbol of law in Fontaine, are you not? You should not be associated with someone like me on the first place."

Neuvillette's inscrutable face turned to Wriothesley with a cold stare. "I am confident that I am quite decent judge of character." he said again, after sizing up his intentionally blank gaze that hadn’t fooled Wriothesley.

"Hah, there you go again with that joke." Neuvillette still didn't understand what was so funny about what he said, but Wriothesley didn't laugh nonetheless. It reminded him that Wriothesley's convoluted nature made it impossible to predict his next words or to try and put up resistance against someone who had the power to convince Neuvillette of their integrity in a matter of moments. But, this same quality that gave Wriothesley the capacity for kindness and openness was also what made him so dangerous. The reminder of this duality was always looming overhead.

"I don't know if you think I'm a good guy who made one terrible choice or whatnot, I just want to live, that's all." The atmosphere was electric with suppressed emotion, both of them wrestling with feelings that they had never put a name to. Wriothesley finally spoke again, and Neuvillette recognized how his voice trembling from the effort of forming the words. It reminded Neuvillette of a small, yet obvious fact that he seemed to had been completely forgotten about Wriothesley: this man was still so young. “Sometimes I think I'm too far gone,” he rasped out, barely above a whisper. “When I tell people this, it only convinces them more that I could be saved - and the more they try to save me, the harder I push away. And then the guilt comes crashing down. No matter how hard I may try to be kind for a few moments, it's like everyone can see right through me and know that it won't last. So in the end, all that's left is my own self-loathing and their disappointment.”

“That is twisted,” Neuvillette uttered in a low voice. “I will not question why you are expressing your thoughts to me, though.”

“Perhaps my hell is having to say all and not knowing if I should be quiet instead,” he murmured. “And yours, unless I'm all wrong, is to listen and not know whether I mean it.” He looked up at Neuvillette with something akin to fear in his eyes. Neuvillette's face, on the other hand, was drawn but he stared unflinchingly at him as he spoke, almost as if he was trying to unravel Wriothesley's tortured thoughts by sheer force of will.

The silence stretched out between them for a long beat before he finally nodded slowly. They both knew what it meant - they were in this together, but together had its limits. The full weight of Wriothesley's words settled over them and they only moved when they realized that no further explanation would follow. With a single solemn nod Neuvillett confirmed his understanding of what Wriothesley was implying - whatever lay beyond this momentous conversation, they were both aware of where their respective boundaries lay.

.

Wriothesley had used the exact same narrative during his trial, almost verbatim, to confess. Neuvillette remained silent most of the time, as he practically did most of the work for the trial that Lady Furina left the premise sensing how uncomfortably quick this trial was.He left no room for rebuttal, for all the wrong reason, and what was Lady Furina supposed to do? Say that there was a chance that Wriothesley hadn't done anything wrong in the face of law and order? How antithesis. She would've been rendered speechless had she stayed a bit longer to see the audiences started to push a preposition that Wriothesley was forced to kill his adoptive parents because of self defense. After all, this trial was during the height of very heated debates among citizens about the mistreatment of orphans around Fontaine.

Wriothesley didn't bother, and the trial ended with Neuvillette reading his guilty verdict. Neither of them spoken another word after that.

As Neuvillette watched Wriothesley descended to Fortress of Meropide, he thought about their conversation again. Neuvillette thought, all his life, Wriothesley had worked from the wound. Child that was both healing and a cut. Place of lost and found. He once thought he had to sever some part of himself to let what he could've become go, yet he had felt the wound ever since. He had been surrounded by people who were such mix of truth and fraud. They invented many bad adults for him; fallen men, addicts, melancholics, chasers. It was the stories of disguise and of naming and knowing that interest him. How were you recognised. How did you recognise yourself. Wounding seemed to be a clue or a key to being human, Neuvillette learned. There was value here as well as agony. Flung out, there was always the return, the reckoning, the revenge, perhaps the reconciliation.

Wriothesley, he believed, was working from the blood-trail wound. Towards the people who come on to him with friction. Chafing started intimacy; and strife, like spite, was the shortest distance to the heart, and Neuvillette thought, here Wriothesley was: lost and found.

[postmoderntongues]

I thought you lost your virginity to your husband? And I also thought you claimed to be sexually active since age 2? And now you are saying you lost your virginity to some heroin addict and so you grossly fetishize addicts? Can you even keep a story straight?

B was my first consensual PIV experience. It was the first consensual sex I had that could have resulted in procreation and my hymen was still partially intact so I consider that my "official" loss of virginity. I don't count CSA as losing your virginity, and I also wouldn't say a child with a single digit age is "sexually active" i think the word "molested" is more appropriate. I sexually experimented with my soulmate who was abused alongside me in some cases a little bit before we knew what "gay" was and that our church forbid it but I don't think that is uncommon among little girls figuring their bodies out especially when an adult is molesting them/encouraging the sexual activity. But I count my first real sex as an incident that happened in the powerlines by my house with this heroin addict girl who I was smitten with. We got wasted in the woods and the next thing I remember she was on top of me and we were like kind of scissoring and she was hot and it felt good so I didn't protest even though I was so drunk i was rolling in and out of consciousness and she made me promise I wouldn't tell what "we" did because i wasn't a real boy and she was straight but that was when I told my friends I lost my V-card and had a few experiences with girls and then a dealer friend who I used to blow for acid and a smattering of sexual assaults in between before B so even though I consider that when I really lost my virginity when I was in high school and it came time to brag I wasn't a virgin anymore I considered my "first time" to have been the experience in the power lines. So I lost my girl virginity at 16 but I didnt lose my PIV virginity until I was 19 and even the experience at 16 was a borderline rape so I consider my first truly fully aware consensual PIV experience to have been at 19 with B

[loquaciousaquarius]

The Primality of Human Mothers II: Your mother didn't mean to give you body issues, she's competing for resources.

I think humans are more animalistic than we are lead to believe, especially when put into survival mode. Because it's not socially acceptable to eat or cast out your young, human mothers have found other ways to resource guard.

There was once a time when being bigger meant beauty, wealth, and abundance. Now it symbolizes greed, unhealthiness, and will outcast you from the herd. This perception of the human form wears worse on women and girl-children. A mother of today will see a fat girl-child as a hoarder of her resources and a threat to her and/or the human pack's survival. Although the girl-child is still dependent on adults to ensure her survival, there is confliction within the mother. She thinks: if she can visibly hold onto resources as much as she does, clearly she does not need me to provide anymore. She begins to instill shame, doubt, and lowered self esteem into the girl-child. This is a tactic to push her out of the pack. Even if she loses weight because of these psychological tactics, the mother will always see her as a greedy pit, even if it is untrue.

It doesn't help the girl-child's case if the mother was brought up in scarce conditions, or encouraged to be scarce herself. The mother won't even begin to understand a healthy relationship with satiation or abundance. She didn't have or need it, so why do you get to? This is often the source of confliction within the mother. Being in survival mode clings onto the psyche and travels throughout the DNA to be passed on to the young. This can cause a child to hold onto more resources in the body in fat because the DNA has been conditioned with scarcity and survival. DNA may also create an inferior child that is weak physically, mentally, etc. The human mother isn't consciously aware of these facts and can only see what she sees: you are unworthy of the provisions meant for the pack because you need more of them than everyone else. The need for more attentiveness, nurturing, coaching, mothering, resources, etc. than others in the pack, of her own upbringing and of her creation, marks one for exile. This pathos also creates favorited children. The children who require less from the mother for their own survival and offer social currency to the pack get treated better. She knows they don't and won't need her as much, especially in the future, so she lends her capabilities to their rendering at full. No one minds low input, high reward scenarios.

Mother didn't mean to give you body, mommy, or mental issues, she just thought you'd use her all up and leave her with nothing. Just like her own mother, and your father who spawned you after that.

[badedramay]

i’ve been doing well, thank you for asking! and yeah i honestly think one of the most fascinating things for me to witness after finally engaging with pak drama twt is seeing just how intimately familiar the fans are with these people’s lives and subsequently how “in control” they are of curating an image for an actor out of their own fan analysis lol. i’ve watched dramas since i was a kid but never ventured into fandom for it until this year and so i feel like i’m generally lucky to mostly care about the art and not bother so much with whatever beef fans are making up between actors. like i had no idea until this year of the supposed sajal and mawra beef during aangan era and admittedly that one probably does have some weight to it given what mawra’s mom said, but it’s also been five years and one would hope both have matured enough by now to where it doesn’t matter anymore. apparently there is sajal and kubra beef that stems from that whole thing too and carried over into sinf-e-aahan? which to me seems unlikely bc i doubt a scripting choice for a nationalist propaganda project was ever meant to comment intimately on the details of alleged beef between two women. but khair, who knows. maybe there is something there and i’m simply too removed from the details to be aware of it. there’s i suppose also the matter of people feeling defensive of sajal specifically bc of her background, but she’s also not a child incapable of navigating her own relationships with people. either way, seeing fans this invested in the off-screen stuff honestly baffles me. what happened to just enjoying art 😭

Lol the Sahad era drama was...incredible. there was no escaping it. it peaked during Aangan times cuz it was around that time Sajal&Ahad were beginning to officially start of the "SaHad" journey and the fans were passionate af about them. Anyone in Mawra's place would've become the collateral damage; unfortunately at that time her "image" in the eyes of the standom wasn't great so she just got burnt a lot more. but yeah..the drama was real and it very much affected the people involved personally.

my observation through my years of being in the PakDrama fandom in my own consciously limited capacity is that the industry isn't huge to begin with. and it began to became bigger around the time social media was on rise. so, the online records were aplenty for the dedicated ones who wanted to get more "information" about their favs. I don't believe that's a phenomenon known only in the PakEnt industry fandom. fans wanting to know more about their faves by any means is common in all industries around the world; the business to be made from parasocial relationships is lucrative af. khair, social media just made it a LOT easier for fans to be in direct touch with their favs. a decade ago since the online fandom was smaller, celebs also found it a lot easier to get instant gratification from their fans by interacting with them on public posts or even private messages. with time the circle then extended to not just the celeb themselves but their family or friends or literally anyone close to them that was open enough to interact with hordes of anonymous fans all wanting to get close to their faves. it was for the most part a win-win situation for both parties involved - celebs got their fame, fans got their moment of feeling special.

until it wasn't. the smarter of the celebs realized early on that giving fans too much of their personal attention will end up negatively affecting them in the long run. so, they ended up limiting their social media presence to have a better control of it. the celebs that DIDN'T do it are the ones who get more in drama. SaHad is a very apt example cuz of how involved not just Sahad but also their families were. recently it's the whole Wahaj Ali fandom debacle. Bilal Abbas fans were also involved in a drama which from what i know was fed by Bilal himself. in all these three cases, a lot of encouragement either through direct correspondence or wilful ignorance of the happenings was given to the fans by the celebs. also, some of the celebs are bitten by the chronically online syndrome who just HAVE to share all of their lives on instagram and then cry about people commenting on it *coughhaniaasimcough*. so the struggles are plenty xD

one more factor of the industry being small is that everyone knows everyone. connections kahin na kahin se nikal aate hain. someone online will know someone who knows someone close to the celeb and bam. that's a whole channel of news. ab sahi ya galat? who cares. fans who want drama will extract it outta there kaise bhi karke.