#this did however ruin my mood today LMFAO i gotta go find guy or something. christ.

[milogreer]

i would like to go to bat for cutie real quick, not to excuse anything they did because it was consistently fucked up, but because i love them and how imperfect they are. geordi was so correct for pushing them towards therapy because they seriously needed to work their shit out. having their powers manifest in (presumably) their teens really fucked them up to the point that telepathy is a compulsion. you can feel it in 'asks for your trust' at the end when there's that long pause between geordi saying goodnight and cutie listening in - like they were wrestling with that decision before ultimately making the wrong choice because they just had to know. and hell, even geordi says multiple times that this is a deep-seated issue.

"Not knowing hurts you, because you've gotten used to knowing."

"[T]he thought of not knowing what someone thinks all the time pushes you to this place where you just—"

"I know you’re hurting, I know you’re not trying to hurt me, I know this doesn’t come out of nowhere. I see how much you struggle with this[.]"

"I know you’re not comfortable at the thought of opening up about any of this stuff, you barely even talk to me about it[.]"

"Because what was coming out was coming from somewhere within, and I know you had a lot of hurt[.]"

like, it's a compulsion. sometimes thoughtless, sometimes all-consuming. it's not just something they're doing for the fun of it. they're in unfamiliar waters and something (likely their unempowered childhood around empowered family) led to them being so weird about having to know everything. personally i also think they've developed a habit of molding themself to fit the expectations and wants of whoever they're with and not being able to track that all the time with geordi makes them act out, but i digress. i couldn't even finish this audio because i had to get up and walk it off and now i've forgotten my original point. sorry for rambling about cutie again i just have a lot of feelings and thoughts about them that i don't know how to put into words