deernet | Video | UN: aweful

Video | UN: aweful

[She’s been here for over a week now. Time to get the lay of the land. The video opens up to a particularly tall blonde woman with a golden skeletal arm and a smirk. She's here to cause problems on purpose.]

Greetings, hello, salutations. My name is Ianthe Naberius. I’m new in town, twenty two, a princess of Ida, unfortunately single and dreadfully bored!

Now, I come to you today, not only to introduce myself, but to ask something of all of you.

Who do you hate most in Trench and why? I’m trying to meet people, network, but it’s so hard and overwhelmingly positive! So consider this an open invitation. Warn me about that dangerous scoundrel who kicked your puppy, seethe about how much you despise me for whatever reason, tell me about your parasocial hateful fixation on one of the local divinity. It can be a minor slight you want to complain about, a friend of yours who owes you two perfectly intact human skulls, or it can be an actual danger to this lovely little community of ours.

Now, before you try to say “this is childish and stupid!” You’re absolutely right, but it is a necessary part of self care to allow oneself to be an absolute cunt once in a while. [Or all the time, if your name is Ianthe.] So let’s not make any grand claims to being above something like this, mm?

Feel free to use the anonymity feature. Or the privacy feature, I guess, if you’re shy or worried about being fileted like a fish.

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I would. You're a whiny fuck, Maul.

He really is, huh?
Dishes it out but can't take it, smh

[tfw u deanon to +1 your own post, we're in peak petty hours today.]

And you're not? Take a look in the mirror before you start spouting off words.

Nah. I haven't gone off about my awful fucking childhood or how I used to be or the way that I was treated for every little mistake I made or how I was intentionally corrupted by the only father I ever had and I haven't whined that I deserve more respect for not acting like a rabid dog. That's all true for me too, but you don't know about it, because I don't hide behind it like I used to when I was a teenager.

Everything I did in July was my doing. Not John's, not Willow's, not even the big angry vindictive bitch with the sword. I wanted to kill you, even though I owed you. And I don't blame you for hating me for it. I told you I'd kill you if you touched Willow and would you look at that? I did. My choice, for better or worse. Just like how you've made yours.

See how easy that was?

Edited 2022-12-22 08:20 (UTC)

I started taking responsibility for what I did after I killed Willow and have continued to do so. I just refuse to feel bad for anything I did before or will do in the future. Why? Because it got me what I wanted at the time and that's always been more important to me than anything else.

[You that self-centered attitude kids about ages 5-12 have where they do just about anything to get what they want like lie, steal, or cheat and damn the consequences? Yeah, Maul never left that phase.]

I won't apologize for my basic personality. What I do want is people to stop blaming me for things I haven't done for over a year or even longer. But as soon as something goes wrong in this place that's Sleeper-based, all eyes turn in my direction.

I know the house burning down wasn't your fault and I've never blamed you for that, for the record. You just don't win any friends by gloating about it to someone who's done absolutely nothing to you.

Nowadays all eyes turn to John anyway. You're the one with a whole persecution complex that can't let things go. People don't like you and they aren't going to trust you. That's how it works. I've been in that situation too.

You don't get to decide how other people react to your actions, even if you were sorry, they wouldn't forgive you. Welcome to redemption, that's how it works.

Yes, I've gotten this talk from Usagi before, and just as bluntly put by her as by you.

[Contrary to what people think, Usagi doesn't use kid gloves much on Maul at all. She just knows the proper praise/criticize/yell ratio for him.]

I try to work things out by talking....or typing in this case. But insulting me is still a bad idea for people to do. That's just the way it is. On the list of things I need to work on myself, that's down at the bottom, right there next to learning proper manners at the dinner table.

[Then he privates the conversation. He's actually calmed down a lot. Faith and he tend to mirror one another to an uncomfortable degree sometimes, so he's curious about something..]

I'm going to ask you something personal but you don't have to answer if you don't want to. I was asked not too long ago what personal boundaries I wanted for myself now that I'm learning to respect those of others. But the thing is I wasn't allowed to have any growing up. What I wanted didn't matter. So I don't really know what to ask for. Since you've been where I am at, I was wonderign what yours are.

Sounds like Usagi. Willow said it to me when we were both still teenagers. She was a lot nastier though. In fairness, I was about to kill her.

[It's what made her see Willow past the timid bookworm exterior that she thinks even in Trench people struggle with. The fact that she's adorable doesn't make her any less terrifying.]

It's a bad idea to insult anyone by that logic. I've killed people over saying less than what you just said about me and Will, and I'm sure you've done the same. I still gotta make the active decision to not just rage out on people for that kind of shit.

[The talk about boundaries is... it feels like something she shouldn't relate to but her concept of boundaries has admittedly always been pretty similar. If someone's stronger than you, what you want from them doesn't matter, because they'll just take it. When she became stronger than any regular human in the world, she delighted in subjecting that same powerlessness in others, especially when she could close her eyes and pretend that the ones screaming were the ones who'd hurt her.

It's a confusing question. And it's making her think.]

...You mean my boundaries or the way I was in your shoes?

Edited 2022-12-22 13:38 (UTC)

Yes, she has some sharp teeth when she wants to show them.

[Maul knew that well enough after tangling with the witch more than once. You'd think he would have learned by now......well, at least he wasn't actively antagonizing her anymore.]

I'm still working through that. It's not so easy to respond otherwise when you weren't taught coping mechanisms beyond 'leave them a cooling corpse before they can get another word out'.

[Perhaps if Sidious had taught Maul more about how to function among normal people, he could have learned to swallow insults and disappointments the way his master did in public, but he hadn't. So here Maul was, a half-feral adult that still didn't know a better way to do things.]

Your boundaries. I don't really have another person to compare myself to in terms of not having boundaries besides perhaps my brother and he's a different sort of case.

[Many of Savage's had been erased thanks to the spell of loyalty and devotion that their mother had cast on him, so while it was similar to Maul having his own erased growing up, it also was an artificial construct and therefore wasn't nearly the same thing.]

It's why pissing her off is no better an idea than pissing you off. She's just calmer than either of us, most of the time.

Anger management helps. I got it in prison, mandatory therapy and all that shit. Kind of the closest thing to peace that I was ever allowed. Still nearly threw it away to put some people in the dirt.

[It's another uncomfortable point of familiarity. Hers weren't so... well, insidious and calculated. It's just that nobody in her life ever actually respected her or her right to privacy. She was gutter trash born from a junky mother that didn't even want her and tossed her to the side to be punished by the relatives that created her and her demons. Her teachers said to her face that everything that ever happens to her is her fault, because there's something evil in her.

And that was before she was placed in the role of the Slayer. A soldier with no autonomy beyond killing. It was the most thrilling experience in the world, to have that much power over someone, and they still thought they could control her. After she killed their mercenaries and tortured their own, they started realizing they were never the ones in control at least.]

I don't know, man. Not like I had those either. Growing up, it's always felt like things like boundaries or respect or whatever, they're just things you only get if you're strong enough to set them. I get now that that's all fucked, but I don't really have anything to compare it to.

I've been taught some of those anger management techniques, though I don't truly UNDERSTAND most of them. I think they were made for the type of person that didn't function on a day-to-day basis by using anger as their base emotion.

[He was still trying to become introspective enough to really understand what that meant for him instead of just running on pure instinct as he'd done for so long in his life.]

Exactly! [He hoped the excited tone came through. It was hard to manage tone through text, part of the reason Maul preferred video. But he was glad Faith got it to some extent.] My master made it clear that I didn't get the chance to set any of my own, that I wasn't WORTHY of them. That if I reached a point where I was just a little bit stronger, faster, more powerful, just BETTER overall then he'd allow me to have some. That never happened.

Now I don't know what to do. Usagi asked me what boundaries I would like to have now that I can set them and I honestly didn't have much of an answer for her. I don't KNOW where to set limits with people most of the time until it's already too late.

They're not super intuitive to me either. But they help.

For me, even if my mom really cared about what I wanted she was also too weak to really do anything about it. So adults all around me would just do whatever they thought was needed without asking, or just took what they wanted without asking. When you're just a kid there's not much you can do.

Then one day I had superpowers and a whole destiny, and if anyone pissed me off I could kill them with my bare hands. I didn't realize until I'd lost it on this kid who used to bully me and my friend, and apparently I broke his back and he needed to be hospitalized. People still try to control you when you've got power though, cuz they think they have a right to you cuz they decide what you use your power for. But the trick I learned is that they can't actually enforce that shit unless they're as strong as you.

But I feel like setting boundaries is supposed to be like, replacing what would make you kick the shit out of someone to just asking them not to do it beforehand? Which feels ridiculous 'cuz then it's just inviting people to do it anyway if they know it bothers you.

But I guess some people trust easier than I do.

That is the problem. Healthy boundaries are for people who actually understand them. And the type of people you and I associate with much of the time aren't usually the type to respect them to begin with, so it feel very much like what's the point? Why try to think in such a manner when people just condemn you outright and walk all over you anyway?

There's a few here I know would do what I asked if I told them 'No' or 'Stop it' but not everyone. And there's the problem. Trust doesn't come easily with me and I'm not interested in giving people a second chance when they've already wasted the first making up their minds about me.

> "I just refuse to feel bad for anything I did before or will do in the future. Why? Because it got me what I wanted at the time and that's always been more important to me than anything else."

> "What will it take for people to realize I've changed?"

a comedy in two acts

Edited 2022-12-22 08:58 (UTC)

[All that is sent in response to this is a picture of Maul flipping off the camera.]

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