deernet | un: timaeusTestified | text

...Oh... Oh. Oh right.
I guess that is kind of how we all got stuck in a bizarre dream world last time around, isn't it?

It could go better this time.

Edited 2021-12-03 17:48 (UTC)

Well, yes.

'Could' doesn't mean a guarantee it would be better this time. And I'm not quite sure if I'd like to really find out, to be honest. Probably for the best that people just... don't go around trying to have sex with Pthumerians.

That's fair-
It should probably be done with a little caution I don't deny.
But... I don't think it's something we should be afraid of as much either.
Because that's really where a lot of things with Julia went wrong in the first place.

...I mean I admit I'm not eager to help out and I don't really think of any Pthumerian's like that in the first place.

But I think when the time comes we do owe it to Julia to try and make the next time around better.

I guess.

It's complicated-

It would be so much easier if I could just be grossed out by the guy hitting on a big bird monster.

It's really a question of whether it's possible for it to be different if it were to happen again. But I just... don't feel like it could be. Even as much as Cynthia loved Julia, she couldn't help her.

Being kind to another half-Pthumerian like Julia of course means a great deal, and I do believe Sleepers will continue to try and help as much as we did with Julia should another come along. But she was still a little girl who wasn't able to control her powers and the reality of that is that it did unfortunately go wrong. And that's not fair on the half-Pthumerian themselves, I don't think.

... But yes, it's very complicated.

[ Oh, she's sad now. ]

Ah. I brought the mood down, didn't I? I made it all awkward and serious.

I apologize for interjecting where I may not be wanted, but noticed the discussion of Julia's fate. And the fates of others like her.

[His conversation from last month with Fern is still on his mind.]

This is something I've made a particular study of, among the Disciples. The Pthumerians themselves, some of them, haven't given up on their Queen's dream of a bridge between their world and humanity.

There are other half-Pthumerians in Trench, but most would call them only monsters.

Oh, no that's fine. That's... quite worrying. Considering Moon Presence's authority here, I'm also not surprised that plenty of Pthumerians are still in support of her mother's ideas.

I suppose it must be normal for half-Pthumerians to not be able to contain their forms. Julia was never able to keep a form that was truly humanoid. Sometimes she would appear as something vaguely human-shaped but not always.

They're not monsters, but I'm not even sure how we could even truly help them. Julia still died, we couldn't save her.

From all my study, it's exactly as you've said. Nature doesn't give them the right instincts from either parent. Humans never need learn to contain their form and Pthumerians never need learn to contain their powers.

[He suddenly wonders what would happen to a shrike-blooded Pthumerian child. His kind, at least, were accustomed to having more of themselves in more dimensions than humans occupied. And if the rules held--doubtful in this case, but just pretend--she would be full Pthumerian.

...Probably a good thing he's too dead for any interested god to test out. He thinks.]

I'd heard that, too. That she died despite all your efforts.

I am very sorry.

If it is not too much to ask, I have a question about your own choices at the end of the Nightmare. I've had the eggs explained to me. [And he has a working theory he wants more data for.]

The cruelty of their situation does seem that no one can help them, not even their Pthumerian parents. It may be one of our purposes as Sleepers is to try.

Or to ease their passing. [Which felt much like enabling their mothers, but so did doing nothing, and Disciple lore had few examples of anyone successfully persuading a Pthumerian to change her attitude toward anything.

They were Chernabog. As fruitful as asking a windstorm not to destroy your house as it was blowing it down.]

That... explains a great deal, actually. That's awful for them.

[ No wonder Sodder barely stood a chance, nor how Cynthia could truly help her daughter. She couldn't teach Julia something she just knew herself as simply as breathing. ]

I'm sorry, too. She deserved so much more. Cynthia deserved so much more.

[ She takes comfort in knowing she was at least able to help give Cynthia that, to allow her to be reborn as the Moon Presence. To be given a life outside the confines of motherhood. She loves Cynthia, very much. ]

Oh, you mean what I did with my eggs? Well, I kept and nurtured the Dog Keeper's so he could be awakened. He was nice, always tried to help us. He just wanted to go home. The rest I buried, including my own. I didn't like the idea of smashing them.

Cynthia wanted to be killed, and I felt there wasn't anything to be done with Julia to save her so I considered that killing her would be a mercy, like with her mother. They'd both suffered a great deal considering the design of their fate. The Mayor... I didn't want him to be without his family, so that maybe putting the Sodders to rest as a family would be better. Ramona didn't want to be awakened. I felt a great deal of sympathy for her, and I didn't think awakening her would be kind after everything. I think she deserved an end.

[ Which unfortunately, she didn't get. Luna feels awful about that. ]

The exception is Mother Superior's, which I left alone. I did nothing with it. She expected us to punish her, I didn't. But I didn't give her mercy, either.

I suppose in a way that's why Sleepers were brought to Deerington. We were there to try and help Julia.

It is awful. Moreso that the Pthumerians seem at a loss for helping them, when they care to.

Both deserved better.

[Yet they don't stop creating them. No; he doesn't say that, as much as it itches at him. Has been itching at him.

It may be his place one day to judge and rebuke the Divine for that particular perceived injustice, but he doesn't know enough yet to call it injustice. Inviting a mob to share his incomplete judgment wouldn't somehow make it right.

He listens to Luna's description of how she handled her eggs, noting with interest that at least this one Sleeper had made it more than a binary of keep or destroy. Which is no real surprise, but did highlight the--particularly black-and-white way of thinking employed by his original source on the eggs. (White gods bless the kid, truly.)

It does also put a potential wrinkle in his assumptions: If Mother Superior had demanded punishment, and smashing her egg could be seen as doing that, how many would've paradoxically chosen to spare it out of spite?

Did it explain her incomplete transformation into the False Patron?]

You have a kind heart and thoughtful mind. They do you credit.

Thank you for sharing this with me. It explains a great deal, though it also raises more questions.

How much were you told about what your treatment of the eggs would mean? And do you have any guesses on what the majority of your fellow Sleepers did with each egg?

In some way, I can hardly blame them for now knowing what to do. But then again, it is their own doing.

[ A sentiment they share. Pthumerians at a loss of how to help is sad, but then they keep trying to bring more half-Pthumerians into the world. As if they keep thinking next time might be different. ]

Thank you. I suppose I just... did what I thought was right.

We weren't really told what our actions with the eggs would explicitly mean, it felt... largely down to interpretation. We found out that our choices weren't so straight forward.

[ Cynthia was sacrificed but was reborn. Julia was sacrificed but died. ]

I suppose the fates of each person corresponded with what the majority chose to do with the eggs. I had... dreams, or maybe not quite dreams about them. It's hard to explain. But Julia, Cynthia, the Mayor and Mother Superior were all sacrificed. The Dog Keeper and Ramona and the Sleepers were awakened.

Edited 2021-12-09 00:19 (UTC)

It is their own doing. What drives them to it is something I'm still learning.

[Though by analogy to the gods, it might be folly to try understanding. It may be so completely within their nature that judgment didn't apply.

But let that go for now.]

Given this was a matter of the spirits and dreams it's not at all surprising. Metaphor and relation are the strongest rules there.

So I've learned anyway. I'm not the authority others are.

[Ah, now, that is something. He experiences a moment of intellectual satisfaction to hear his guesses vindicated in nearly every detail.]

Thank you. That lines up very well with what I'd guessed based on who they all are here.

How do you interpret the Sleepers being awakened? I know you had a choice to depart for your homes or continue on to a new world, but that wasn't made by how you treated your egg?

If I should like to take a guess: Power. Some people will always want power. [ A particular song she's quite familiar with. In this world, in her own — there will always be those who want power. Julia, at the end of the day, was still an incredibly powerful being. ]

In all honesty, I believed Sleepers choosing to nurture their own eggs and be awakened would mean we would have to go back home. If sacrificing Cynthia's egg would mean she could be reborn into the new world, it felt possible it would mean the same for us.

But it turned out Sleepers awakening meant would could see clearly about what our next actions would be. It would give us clarity. Cynthia assured us that we could choose to leave behind our own worlds and things would be fine.

I'd been so worried about my choice, uncertain I was doing the right thing in refusing to return home. But when all was said and done and the votes cast, I felt... lighter, certain. Even if it hadn't been the outcome of my initial choice. I think if Sleepers on the whole had chosen to sacrifice themselves, they would still be reborn but perhaps things would be different in some way.

It is certainly possible. Some hybrids might outstrip both their parents in strength. A half-Pthumerian in full possession of her faculties and powers could be a truly formidable being.

Though I wonder. The ones devoted to having these children speak of a "bridge" between the two kinds. As if it's understanding they're seeking. [He's no stranger to the lust for power and all it might do to mortals--or immortals--who sought it; some of the Pthumerians seemed as base, by their natures, to want that.

But others seemed to take a higher meaning from following their dead Queen's vision.]

I may well have assumed the same in your situation. It made a certain kind of sense.

I suspect, also, that you're right that the Sleepers would have returned in a different form. Moon Presence and Koz are no longer bound by who they were. Even by memory, in Koz's case. Mother Mercy's transformation is less understandable to me without more study.

[On the surface she seemed truly penitent for having tormented the Sleepers, but she was also pretending to a place that wasn't hers. Which spoke to a capacity for greater deception.]

Might I ask why you chose to stay?

That was the Pthumerian Queen's vision, I believe. Joining Humans and Pthumerians could create something far greater than possible. Humans can do things Pthumerians can't, after all.

Mother Superior [ Or Mother Mercy, in this case. ] was always a difficult one to understand. There was a fight, between Moon Presence and Mother Superior. A friend and joined in to assist Moon Presence. When all was said and done, Moon Presence told her that is was time she did ask for forgiveness for what she'd done. I think Moon Presence did have a part in helping her become reborn, perhaps much like with her husband.

[ Cynthia had asked for The Mayor's soul, and she could create life. Perhaps she was behind these new reincarnations.

There's a long pause at his question, and she considers it for a long time. It's not something she openly discusses. Peter's the only one who really knows, Diarmuid too — but now he's gone. It's a difficult thing to answer; in some ways it seems selfish that she did choose to leave her world behind. But then leaving those in Deerington to return home didn't feel like the right choice either.

She opts to lock down the conversation from here: ]

My immediate future if I returned home was uncertain. It's quite likely I would not live past the next couple of days.

I chose to remain here in hope of having a future. There's people here from Deerington I care about deeply, I couldn't leave them behind.

Edited (oh my god i'm sorry for the edits.......) 2021-12-16 16:47 (UTC)

[He absorbs everything she's got to tell him and tucks it away with the rest of what he's gleaned on the Pthumerians. Some of this, the other Disciples had pieces of--in their oral histories, in their visions and their dreams--but it did not compare to the direct and personal experience of Deerington's Sleepers. Trench could but research her own history; these had lived it.

He's lived long enough to make histories that became warped beyond recognition in the telling. It makes him far prefer a primary source.

It is little surprise to him that his question requires some thought before an answer--or a denial--and he waits for her full reply before he begins composing his own. When it arrives locked--ah. He sets aside his other questions on the Pthumerians, for now. This is both more interesting and requiring of more of his attention.]

That would make the choice easier. Even so I don't imagine it was truly easy. It does gladden me to know you have people here with you.

Forgive me if this is forward or goes into things you'd rather not say. But I've heard it mentioned that Sleepers sometimes learn of what's happened in their lives after the point they left them.

Do you know what happened to the self you were?

[No motivated reasoning in that question, whatever.]

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creidim - 2021-12-28 18:33 (UTC) - Expand

That's fine. I think both of us are ...Okay to talk about it.

That kind of tracks with something we were told not long before the dream collapsed. That Julia wasn't the only half-Pthumerian and that she might not have even been the first of them. She just seems to have been the most visible of them. I suppose.

...Well that kind of takes the wind of my sails for hoping they could end up living a better life than Julia had.

I know I'm not the only one who feels like we let Julia down in the end. I wouldn't mind taking a chance to see if we could find any more people like her and see if- See if we can't shift the perspective on them.

It wasn't an unreasonable hope. Trench took other lessons from the Nightmare and the Watchers. Improved treatment of half-Pthumerians might have been one of them.

But it is difficult when you live on a razor's edge the way they do to make room for children who can't help the destruction they cause.

That was my hope in mentioning it. Many of you who survived the Nightmare carry that guilt and this might be a way to assuage it. A chance to make a tangible difference.

Though it I think it must be more than just changing perspective. They really are dangerous but more out of fear and ignorance than malice.

Yeah. I'm not going to deny that Julia was dangerous. I think she was willing to admit that much herself. She just... Didn't have chance to be anything more than that. Her father denied half of her identity and her sort of aunt treated her like a pariah. There was only so many options she had in a world that already saw her as a monster.

And yeah- There is a lot of guilt over how things ended with the dream. I... Think that we sort of got the best we could ask for. But if anyone got the short end of the stick it was Julia.

I do want to find a way to make it up to her and the people like her.

Of course. Her case would not have been so tragic as it was if the people around her had understood what she would be and been prepared for her. What can be done to repair the prejudices and ignorance among Trench's population is admirable.

But I caution it must go hand in hand with teaching the half-Pthumerians what nature does not give them, that they don't learn on their own. How to contain their forms and their powers. Not even their Pthumerian mothers seem able to do that.

Julia did deserve better. It would be good to make a tangible difference in her honor.

No, no. Don't feel bad about it, Luna.
It's an important conversation to have.

But aside from the people around town. Her dad and family outside of Cynthia weren't there to giver her the support she needed too.
Both her and Cynthia were set up for failure in their own ways by the Mayor, Mother Superior and Julia's grandmother.

I don't know if it's something we can change. ...We have similar problems in my own world and I don't think it's something we can just by wanting it too. But we do have to do something and work toward it.

It is an important conversation to have, I agree. But part of me feels bad about taking the humour away from you. :(

[ You know, it's just nice to cringe at something like joking about having sex with Pthumerians. Even if it's hardly her cup of tea in terms of comedy. ]

It's just a case of working out what we have to even do, really. If there is anything to be done at all, that is. What was happening in your world, what was being done in that case?

How dare you.
You're lucky you're as awesome as you are or it might be hard to forgive you.
Don't worry about. We'll have plenty of time for other jokes.

...So along with humans there's another race of people. The Faunus. They have the traits of animals and I guess as long as history has been recorded they've been persecuted. ...There are things being worked on but it always feels like a step forward and a step back or vice versa kind of thing. I don't think issues like that really have an easy answer.

Like I'm sure this one doesn't either. But I guess we can learn how they are treated here. Try and share what we've learned about Julia- and see if there are any improvements we can help foster or work toward.

I think that's all we really can do. It might not be much- But I guess awareness is the closest to something we can get.

Well, that's nice I have that in my favour.

That's awful for them. I'm sorry it's such a difficult position for them to be in, and that they're treated so unkindly. But you're right, it doesn't seem like something with an easy answer at all. There's plenty of kinds in my own world that face similar prejudices and persecution, like Werewolves.

I think that's a good idea. Sometimes even what feel like the smallest of things can be very meaningful. And just having someone on their side is important, you know?

I'd say so. :D

It definitely sucks. I've had to see a lot of friends get bullied over something that's just a part of who they are. It's a shame that kind of hate seems to exist no matter what world we get sucked up into. You're going to have to tell me more about Werewolves at some point.

Yeah. Change isn't going to happen overnight but any difference we can make will hopefully ripple out and create more. And it's always better to have a friend than an enemy.

That's horrible, I can... kind of understand that. [ Not for being a different race, perhaps. But certainly for being different. ] I can definitely do that. I was even taught by one, once. He was really nice, but then the mysterious absences every month certainly made sense after it was found out who he was. Still, an excellent teacher! :)

You're quite right! It's leading by example! And that's very true. I know when Sodder tried her best to help us, it did mean a great deal. I know she wasn't always in control of herself, but she really did try.

un: timaeusTestified | text | Birthday Boy

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@quibbler @ClickClickBloom, text; un: givemeyourown

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> locked

locked ∞; and pfff no worries!! i'm an edit champ myself

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