#and avarice needs to be a little less angry just. in general.

[overclockedroulette]

I don’t think I’ve ever made a proper post about Vega, have I?  If I have, so sorry, I guess you’re getting it again because. Vega Mochizuki my beloved.

So, first things first, he was born and raised in what is essentially a cult commune going by the Church of the Yawning Star: a group of people who worship the sea and everything in it, but don’t believe it should be, or even can be, controlled by a singular deity.  He wasn’t exactly against the more religious side of things - it was more just a regular process for him - so nothing really seemed out of the ordinary (he didn’t really have anything to compare it to).

A few years into his life, his sister, Delta, is born.  Delta is - for all intents and purposes - literally a living god.  More precisely, a physical manifestation of everything they worshipped (she’s referred to in one in-lore text as ‘the essence of the roiling sea’), so, naturally, Delta is doted on and payed attention to and - essentially - worshipped.  And Vega is... kind of left behind.  His father, Antari, barely pays him any heed in favour of his sister, and he’s not allowed to talk to her unless he’s deemed ‘worthy’ and ‘safe’ for her to interact with.  

(It’s not actually much better for Delta - I’ll make another post about her at some point, probably - but he’s still insanely jealous.)

Now, this experience - being the big brother of the literal messiah - messes Vega up a little.  He ends up desperate to come across as unique, or special, or anything other than just second-best - to the point that he lets some of the more innovation-minded members of the Church kind of experiment on him (and even that’s mostly due to his relation to Delta, but he tries not to think about that), which is how he ends up with blue blood.  (His skin also turns a pale blue when it comes into contact with water, but that one’s natural.)

And eventually, he just... has enough.  He figures that nobody would even notice him gone, and if they did, this would get their attention enough to at least make them stop ignoring him, and tries to throw himself off a cliff-side and into the ocean.

He fails.  A winged elf named Iliad sees him falling and catches him, brings him in, and nurses him back to health with the rest of her little group (The Empyrian Sect - Sage, Manifold, Camilla, Michelle, and Soots.  Never talked about them on here since they’re barely developed, but those are the names).  

He doesn’t join, though. They offer, but at this point he so desperately wants to do something big that he feels he has to try something more.  So, he joins Polaris as a researcher, figuring he can make some big scientific or magical discovery and be remembered for that (plus, he likes insects - specifically butterflies - and being able to study them is a bonus).  And, eventually, that leads to him being hired by Fabrica Kiriatta alongside a certain, significantly more homicidal scientist to assist her with the... issue, in Redglass.  He doesn’t agree with the concept, obviously - much less the methods that Avarice insists on using - but the man has the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair, so of course, he agrees nonetheless.  

He’s also deathly afraid of thunderstorms.  Ever since he left the Church, he’s felt that he’s betrayed his deity, and every thunderstorm he just can’t shake the feeling that this is divine punishment, and he’s going to be struck down for being a traitor.  For a similar reason, despite his... opinions on the deity that defined the large majority of his life, he never audibly speaks ill of it, and in fact often reflexively says a small prayer whenever drinking water (Avarice hates that, obviously), because he feels that letting himself think those thoughts - nevermind saying them out loud - is blasphemy, and he’s going to be punished for it.

#cult tw #tw religious trauma #suicide tw #tw attempted suicide #vega mochizuki #him and avarice are such a good duo #since he should probably be more angry about what happened to him #and avarice needs to be a little less angry just. in general. #plus they help each other out with the religious side of things #neither of these fucks know what they're doing. #but damn if avarice doesn't find himself flipping off the sea when he's nearby #or if vega doesn't find himself glaring at the moon ocassionally #they both think the other is a total jackass. but that doesn't impede the fact that they feel SO protective of each other. #oc #d&d oc #oc writing #changeling oc

[anautisticdragon-blog]

On Conversing with the Unusual

In my last post I talked about how much I liked the McElroys, and why (which is important to read before this), but I'd like to expand on that with why this whole thing bothered me so much. As I said, as a person who endures an invisible prejudice, I've become very sensitive to all kinds of prejudice.

I know it might sound absurd to think that mentally disabled people really do experience so much hatred, but we do. The thing is? There's no skin colour to unify us, no gender, no obvious physical marks of our supposed deficiencies; so we're not a homogenised factor. When you add in the oddly individualistic personalities autistic people can have, and how different two autistic people can be fro one another (far more so than I've observed in neurotypicals)? This all adds up to something ugly.

Usually people need something simple they can grasp to grab ahold of in order to understand the injustices a person is suffering. As I said, this will so often come down to reductivism -- their skin is black, they're old, they're in a wheelchair, et cetera. In fact, people are so used to having that criticism levelled at them that they'll often snap back at anyone whom they think is being reductivist. I remember on the Battleborn community I mentioned how pleased I was with the treatment of a character who had a notable disability. I got a very angry response.

You see, it was assumed I was talking about Kleese. It was reductivist to say that because he had full use of his body and faculties, so his chair was instead more of an old person's aesthetic, the lazy chair, rather than something required for his mobility. This would be a fine argument, of course, were I even actually talking about Kleese. I was, instead, referring to Benedict. When I pointed this out, it actually took a good number of people a while to wrap their brains around this, as to why I viewed Benedict as a disabled character. Not much introspection in the world, these days.

Thumbs up to you if you've already figured this out. If you hadn't rushed off to look up pictures of Benedict, I'll give you this: He lost part of a wing, it's relevant to his character and origin story. It's been replaced by cybernetics, but it doesn't work nearly as well as his original. He can hover and glide, but no longer fly. Yes, he still has the use of all of the limbs a human would consider to be important, but what of his wings? I suspect of those reading, more will have twigged on now to where I'm going with this. Yeah?

Consider a world where flight is an everyday occurrence. Just imagine it. Would it be likely for there to be stairs, lifts (elevators), escalators, and so on? If everyone can fly, the living space would likely be much more vertical with an emphasis on building things in higher places. Birds do this as an instinctive factor, there's less danger above than there is on the ground, so I'd imagine that much as how we've adopted instincts from our simian ancestry, they adopted factors from their avian heritage.

And what if a person in such a world could no longer fly? Certainly, there would be the equivalent of ramps (lifts for disabled people), but it would be seen as something they have to grudgingly use because they've no other choice. Others might look at them funny, start treating them differently, since they're no longer "the same" as the rest of society. It's always the case that neurotypical society rewards homogeneity, the status quo, and an earnest effort to uphold the Zeitgeist.

Often, neurodiverse people are told that in order to survive in a world "owned by neurotypicals," they have to behave, act, and fit in as them. They have to assimilate into neurotypical culture. When your nature is as contrary to homogeneity as an autistic person's is, however? That can be really bloody tricky. And even for those who even care to make that effort in the first place, the body language and smalltalk are so irritatingly tricky to emulate that cracks in the facade will shine through. Which is why many will simply choose to not bother -- opting to be a hermit or merely accepting the inevitable, that they're always going to stand out no matter what.

I noticed that Benedict, that Battleborn character, was unduly obsessed with both flight and his wings. This can happen with someone who finds theirself newly disabled, or discover that they have a disability. There can, for a time, be an unhealthy fixation upon this fact as it separates them from the rest of humanity. They haven't yet come to accept that they're different and that there really isn't a lot they can do about it, so they haven't come to terms with who they are and that perhaps there's nothing they need to do about it in the first place. Some, possibly due to a lack of introspection and self-awareness, may never arrive at this point.

So consider my reaction to a fantasy world.

I like insects. I like snakes. I mean, of course I do. I love wolves. It's probably quite obvious that I like dragons. So, that lich... Is it really a malignant evil or simply a downtrodden individual chased from society for having no choice other than to exist outside of the norm? I mean, consider this. It's a little jovial and facetious because that's my nature when I'm trying to help people understand something, but it's what I want you to think about. It's a very Pratchett-esque perspective. More people should read Discworld.

Anyway... A townsperson spots a gathering of undead, accompanied by moaning, shambling, and strange, fel lights that seem to ebb, flow, and bob around with wanton abandon. The immediate assumption is that this is an undead invasion! The reality, however, is that the spirits of the dead were feeling restless and pestering a nearby lich to raise them so that they could have something of a party. They wanted him to throw together a shindig, since it's nice to get out of one's grave every now and then.

The lich resisted, initially. "You know how they'll react," he bemoans, listlessly. "It'sss alwayss the saaame with them. It'sss an undead horde! It'ss an invaaasion! They're going to eeat our braaainss. Have you ever tassted brains? They're grossss... I don't know of aaany undead that even eeat brainsss. Do you? Didn't think ssso. They'll sssee the lightss, hear all of you chuckleheadsss yukking it up and I'll have another paaarty of blasssted adventurersss on my hands again."

It's an empathetic lich though. It's not nice to be stuck in the ground all the time, especially when you really don't want to be. So he rises the dead, puts together this wild party for them, and everyone's having a great old time. Then the adventurers turn up and what do you think happens next?

Perhaps if this were The Adventure Zone, maybe good things! Sadly, most people aren't like that. And most tales told aren't, either. It's really quite the depressing state of affairs, quite sordid and unfortunate, that we can't envision something that's inhuman as anything other than evil. When I say "we" I do of course mean neurotypicals. I don't have that problem. They seem to have it Universally, though.

"It's aesthetically displeasing. It's evil! KILL IT WITH FIRE!"

And they never really question it, do they? They never stop to think about it. Like I said, there's just a general lack of self-awareness and introspection amongst neurotypicals. Not a whole lot of Theory of Mind to go around, there, I feel. They are sorely, sorely lacking in that department.

So, these gnolls have amassed a small pile of gold by hunting, tanning, and preparing hides to sell to traders who'll then sell them in human cities. "They came from a nomadic group of noble savages, humans, of course. No gnoll merchandise here!"

Then one of the merchants gets a little bit clever, he cooks up a cockamamie cock-and-bull story about how these gnolls jumped him, killed his guards, and robbed his caravan blind. His last stop was at an opulent port city with riches to spare, says he, and his wagons were overflowing with gold. "Oh, I just knew I shouldn't have passed through the fallow glades, but I was trying to make good time to get here before the market! You know how it is..."

A witless, hapless troupe of murderers under the job description of ‘Adventurer’ decide to... investigate this terrible crime. They find a small encampment of gnolls with a marginally sizeable pile of gold. What do you think happens next? Isn't it depressing? And how often do you think you're lied to by quest-givers in video games, had you considered with ho much regularity you could be being manipulated by bandits, thieves, and excessively avarice-laden, filthy rich autocrats?

How often is it that these "monsters" are simply acting in self-defence. Indeed, how often does an adventurer charge in slashing their blades before so much as a by-your-leave. Not even a how-do-you-do? No, you were given a quest by a human and the antagonists of this narrative aren't humans so naturally they're the evil ones, here. No need to even bother with an investigation, why even bother conversing? What use is reason?

And it just feels grotesque.

I mean, it's just another expression of prejudice, isn't it? A normalisation thereof. If a right wing mendicant can't be permitted to slag off real world groups, they can commit murder and genocide against fantasy creatures for the mere sin of what they were born as. I don't like that. I'm sorry, I really don't like that at all. I think that's awful. I think that a good narrative should always dictate good or evil based upon one's personality and what drove a given soul to be who they are and do what they do by that point. It's inexcusable laziness (and worse) to put it down to a species.

And maybe I would like to have a chat with these liches, these dragons, and these gnolls. Whatever sorts of creatures regularly blunder in on and slay without ever really thinking aobut it, honestly. I might find like-minds. It might just be that these creatures consider themselves an abused underclass, seen as sub-people, troglodytes who're just there for "glorious humankind" to besto its "infallible justices" upon.

That dragon stole your prize bull? Did he? Are you sure? See, I bothered to investigate and I found out that actually it was one of your competitors who did the deed before the next farm show. You're apparently edging them out of all their fields and cutting into their profit margins so they wanted to humiliate you a little. It was the "perfect crime," kidnap your bovine under the cover of darkness and then spread rumours of the local dragon having a taste for domesticated beef. Your negligence might've cost that dragon his life. There's always someone out there who'd be happy to have just about any excuse to slay a dragon and steal his hoard.

I don't know. I just find that I empathise and connect with these creatures who constantly seem to be the targets of never-ending persecution. Is there that much of a difference between Jews and fantasy gnolls? Whilst that might sound offensive, it's because it really is. Fantasy racism is just another analogue for what happens in the real world, and I find it... I don't know. I find it oddly distasteful. I don't like it. I don't like neurotypicals, I guess.

And the thing is? That's the norm. I can cite exceptions, anyone can, but they're so few and far between that they're the exceptions that prove the rule. For example: Phantasy Star had an option where you could try and converse with the creatures you'd encounter. And I thought that was incredibly nifty! I could glean useful information from these friendly, giant spiders just by being genial and polite to them. Imagine that! How many games offer that as an option, though?

How many games can you think of that actually give you the chance to converse with inhuman creatures as opposed to just slaying them? I bet you can't go beyond just your fingers with the examples you can actually come up with. I know I can't, and I have a very extensive knowledge of video games, I've played the vast majority of them over the course of the decades I've spent on this planet.

And that's why people like me are fit for derision, because this is an uncomfortable truth about the ugliness of people. An ugliness that I don't possess. As I said in a prior post, I'm quite the quasimodo so I've ugliness to spare, but this particular flavour of it isn't my own. And with this bizarrely homogeneous, almost hive-like way that neurotypicals look at themselves, this reflects badly on every last one of them. So they have to defend despicable actions rather than owning them, which is the "norm."

And another day's lesson on why I don't like neurotypicals very much, nor am I all that fond of the video games made obviously for them. If they were made for me? Empathetic discourse, with a basis in reason, would be a way to solve most problems. I mean, there was New Vegas and that was lovely, but sadly not a huge amount of non-human life in that one. I guess that reason is only okay when it's human and beautiful, right?

You know, those oh so desirable qualities. White... Beautiful... Straight.. Healthy...

Point made? Yeah. I'd hoped so.

So, as I said in my last post? I'm happy that Travis wanted to converse with the voidfish. That's a very non-neurotypical thing to want. I admire that.

#the mcelroy brothers #the mcelroys #the adventure zone #thezonecast #thoughts