Interlude

[sangreine]

Who: ​☆ZRAEL and guests
Where: what is says on the tin
When: cute girl o'clock (Day 473 through post-next games-ish)

[ Some girls bopping around and/or recovering from... hmm, idk the future, but maybe zombies?! ]

Comments

[glidinglight]

They haven't seemed all that extreme to me.

[sangreine]

Just wait. You'll see. Or ask Venti, he knows all about it. I'm better than I was when I first hatched, so maybe it's not as obvious now.

[glidinglight]

Mm... maybe. But if you ask me, it seems like you have a lot of friends.

[ And a fair number of lovers too apparently. ]

I don't think you'd have so many people who like you so much if you were really terrible to be around.

[sangreine]

[ She finds the lovers part much less mystifying ]

People here are very generous, that's all.

[glidinglight]

Or maybe the people you know from back home are just unusually terrible.

[sangreine]

They have every reason to be afraid of me. I don't blame them for it.

[glidinglight]

Being afraid of someone isn't license for mistreating them.

[ this is. an interesting comment that will someday be something she has to reflect on in terms of what does give a person a right to mistreat them with regards to how she treats others, but,,,,

she does mean it. ]

[sangreine]

I guess. I still don't judge them for it. I can be very dangerous to humans sometimes.

[glidinglight]

I guess that can't be helped. But I'd bet you're not trying to be.

[sangreine]

When I'm in my right mind, sure. But I don't know what puts me in... not my right mind yet, so I'm still working on that. When you have a long life, it takes a long time to buy back that many memories to fill in all the blanks.

[glidinglight]

[ A fact that she will no doubt learn herself eventually. ]

Has it happened here? Outside of maybe something in a game.

[sangreine]

Uh... it sort of depends on how you look at it. I haven't hurt anyone in the same way outside of a game [ yet ] but sometimes the predatory side of me isn't the easiest thing to control. Especially if someone I care about is hurt.

[glidinglight]

Right, but the way you talk about it, that's still a lot more in control than how it was for you sometimes back where you came from. Right?

[sangreine]

Yeah. I guess it would be more comforting if I knew how I went from a person with rational thoughts to someone who can't think at all. It's clearly not just horrible things happening to me or the people important to me, because that's our bread and butter here.

[glidinglight]

In that case, there must be some key trigger to it that doesn't exist here--or you just haven't stumbled upon.

[sangreine]

Mm. I'm both trying to find out what it is and trying not to think about it at all, you know?

/2

[glidinglight]

Yeah. It's definitely not a fun thing to think about.

[glidinglight]

On the up side, though, if you do figure it out, that might give you more power to get control over it.

[sangreine]

That's what I was thinking. And why I kept buying memories until I just needed a break. We had a game where we had to get a bunch at once in front of our unit and I think I overloaded a little.

[ If there was any bit of joy or even normal, boring day to day life to break up the traumatic slog, she'd have kept her pace up. But so far, there's none of that. Not a speck of real affection untouched by some machination or mind games at best, captivity and implications of torture at worst. Her past was making her hate herself even more, so she stopped. ]

[glidinglight]

They forced you to take a bunch of them in front of everyone?

[ Just the thought of that makes her skin squirm. ]

I'm sorry, that really sucks. No wonder you'd be burnt out.

[sangreine]

Yeah. And it was right after a game where we had to be emotionally chained together and mix drinks that messed with our feelings, take more memories...

I was super done after that. At least for a while.

[glidinglight]

[ Emotionally chained together? As in... emotionally vulnerable and totally transparent? ]

Yikes. That's just too much.

[sangreine]

[ Finally someone on this unit who gets her ]

Yep. -- Don't mind my smiling, it was awful, I'm just glad you agree with me. I thought I was the only one who was furious about the whole thing until right this minute.

[glidinglight]

Everybody else was okay with that?

[ she shakes her head ]

I can't understand that. Not that I don't like you and Aradia--I just think some things are supposed to be private unless you choose to share them.

[ Thoughts and feelings especially. ]

[sangreine]

No one seemed to be making a big stink the way I was. [ Except for Viola when she lost a fight and acted like it was the worst thing anyone has ever experienced because that's just how she is. Or was. ]

I couldn't agree more. I might not choose to hide things all that often, but that's different than not giving me the choice at all. And people should be able to do the opposite if they want to.

[ If people hide too much and it makes other people uncomfortable, well, that's a choice too, and possibly a valid one, but the point is that removing their control over the matter is not only unfair, but cruel. ]