Following up with the "Shadow Sickness" post imma jot down Shadow Sickness headcanons for my own main OC Holly Steelcry. y'know if anyone cares (solemnly and bashfully kicks at the ground with dirty sneakers /j)
"Shadow Sickness" headcanons for The Thing™
The progression of Shadow Sickness (regular state of mind -> corruption of mind and soul -> complete madness and/or eventual death) varies from person to person, for any reason. Holly's state of Shadow Sickness could be considered Halted (still suffering from symptoms but no longer actually "sick") due to how slooooow the progression is. They're in a "gray area" state where she's not developing new symptoms but her existing ones are gradually worsening
Holly first became "infected" when they learned Shadow Magic for the first time, but their symptoms started IMMEDIATELY, which is extremely uncommon. The first symptom Holly displayed was a Tulpa, a physical manifestation of their survivor's guilt of the destruction of Azteca. This would eventually lead to their second symptom of the Shadow Sickness, the physical scarring in which the survivor's guilt manifested - darkened streaks curled around their shoulders and down her back, appearing to resemble blackened, burnt feathers. This would be the first scar of three. (This particular scar brings feelings of shoulder and back discomfort: involuntary back and shoulder twitching, tiny muscle spasms, slight pain, and an occasional burning sensation).
Since then no more Tulpas would manifest, but more physical scarring would appear over time. The second scar resembles a clawed, skeletal hand curling around the front of Holly's throat. The "fingers" are long and crooked and wrap around her jugular and close snugly across her entire neck (this scar causes a sensation of asphyxiation; the tightness/closing of the throat and a loss of oxygen. Rarely it will cause a sore throat and when these feelings flare up, Holly will either go silent completely, repeatedly and audibly gulps, or pauses to take deep open-mouthed breaths of air). This scar starts to appear by the end of Khrysalis and fully manifests by the end of Mirage. It represents the helpless feelings of being forever bound to Shadow combined with the subconscious fear of fully succumbing to its temptations and madness until there is nothing of reason left.
The third (and final thus far) scar to appear is a swath of darkness that stretches across Holly's face and covers both eyes and the bridge of her nose, which appears to look like an eye mask, or the face of a raccoon (this scar is what caused Holly's eyesight to go bad, so much so that without them, Holly can only see light. They cannot distinguish any colors or shapes. This scar also causes intermittent exotropia [the occasional wandering of their right eye, facing outward], and headaches). This scar first started to appear in Karamelle and was fully manifested by the end of Novus. This scar represents the full embrace of the "false" identity Holly adopted of being Bartleby's Scion, and the deep-rooted belief of being inhuman and therefore better or superior than normal humans. It is when Holly accepts the dehumanization of her from everyone around them. (But hey, at least it covers their constant eyebags! ✌🏾)
Other symptoms would include the temporary loss of body control and mild hallucinations. Since Holly's Shadow Sickness is not yet in the most severe stage, she is fully conscious and sound of mind when these episodes happen.
The most common physical episode is when Holly's entire body suddenly goes rigid in a state of paralysis. Stiff like a board and can only move when someone moves them, but will involuntarily snap right back into position. It's spooky to see someone look so tense and frightened but their expression is nonchalant and a bit tired. "Yeah, it happens." This usually lasts for around a minute or two.
Other physical episodes include jumping straight up into the air, suddenly dropping and rolling, the tensing and flexing of their hands like retractable claws, and suddenly switches languages (English to Shadow Language) mid sentence. These are not repeated in a row and only last for seconds before Holly is able to control their movements again and gets back up to resume what she was doing before.
Holly's hallucinations are mild and few and far in between and almost never cause distress. The most common are visions of Shadow Shrikes wandering in the wild and disappearing behind trees, poles, buildings, etc. The only interaction these hallucinations have with Holly is that sometimes they will look up to glance at them before moving on.
The more severe and distressing hallucinations are even rarer. An auditory hallucination of a distant, long whistle above their head, a sound akin to something falling. This usually startles Holly into a physical episode of losing body control to jump up or drop down and roll. They never see anything in the sky when their head snaps up to look, though.
The second is a visual and auditory hallucination of a parliament of owls or an unkindness of ravens stalking Holly from a distance that appears to get closer with every glance. Upon closer inspection their faces and beaks are warped in uncanny, human expressions of anger and judgement. These hallucinations never seem to be violent but give off feelings of unease and malaise.
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do u have an opinion on . yakumond re: bugs
my mind is in factions, warring . edmond brave, yakumo baby. BUT
yakumo farm boy. edmond city kid.
yakumo destroying farm pests with his bare hands? out of habit? it's on SIGHT??
but nothing scares vice captain, right? so what if yakumond just turns my trope upside down and NEITHER of them are scared of bugs. what then. what do i do
I spent a while thinking how to reply to this ask. And. OK. Bear with me.
I honestly don't see either of them being afraid of bugs. I can see them not liking them, with Edmond being a more indiscriminate "bugs have no place in this house and should be squashed" compared to Yakumo's "will remorselessly kill pests but not harmless insects."
That being said... I kinda like the idea of Edmond having a very specific weakness to just one (1) bug and being utterly fucking embarrassed about it, and Yakumo (being the anxious baby he is) somewhat mirroring Edmond's response to it despite usually remaining very calm. They can be a disaster together. They've got that potential.
In fact, I liked the idea enough that I have this deleted short scene from a fic that I'm working on and that I will be releasing it into the wild now. Mind you, it's a draft so it's way more functional that it is polished.
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“Sir Edmond, why don’t you go to sleep right away? It's already very late.”
Edmond looked up from the blank paper. At the lack of a desk, a small wooden crate he'd found here in the hayloft would work just fine. Until he saw that he'd finished writing the letter, he was not going to be able to calm his nerves enough to sleep. It didn't matter that it could be done the next morning. Why leave it for later if it could be done now?
“I’ll be finished in a few more paragraphs, don't worry,” he said, dipping the pen in the inkwell. "You shouldn't stay up longer than necessary, either. Is something holding you up?"
"Ah, well..." Yakumo looked at the lamp on the crate. It would be rather difficult to sleep with it still on, and he couldn't ask it be turned off if Edmond was still writing. "It's fine. I can wait a little longer. I'll make sure the tent is properly set up."
"Haven't you already done that twice?"
There wasn't much else left to do here. Maybe he could go outside or look around the barn for things that might be useful next morning? His eyes tried to look around. It would be rather difficult to do this in the dark... Besides, he didn't want to do anything that would be too distracting. Edmond was very particular about this letter.
As Yakumo looked around from where he was sitting, he could see something scuttling up one of the sides of the crate. He frowned at the presence of the insect. People commonly referred to those as "claw traps." They had a crab claw-like pincer and a nasty habit of biting people in their sleep and hiding in boots. What if there were more around? Thankfully, he'd had the foresight to bring some repellant.
Yakumo crawled closer to the tent, where he'd left his belongings. He rummaged around his bag for the repellent and something to kill the insect with. However, Edmond was so absorbed in writing his letter that he hadn't noticed yet. It was probably better to warn him before he got bitten.
"Sir Edmond, there's a claw trap going up your desk."
At the mention of the bug Edmond haphazardly grabbed all his things and scrambled backward in panic, spilling black ink on the wooden floor, splashing some of it on his shirt.
Yakumo's heart made a jump. He dropped his bag and reacted without thinking.
Squish, crack. He immediately squashed the bug with his bare hand.
For a moment, there was silence. He stared at his hand, at Edmond, who looked way too tense over a single bug. When Yakumo realized what he had done, a shudder ran up his spine. He lifted his hand. It was wet and crunchy, and he probably just stuck the claw into his palm because it hurt. He looked at it. Yes. There it was. Like a massive splinter.
He was more worried about how Edmond hadn't taken a single breath ever since he'd killed this thing, though.
"S-Sir Edmond, is everything alright?" He asked as he shook the remains of the claw trap off his hand.
Snapping out of his panicked state, Edmond nervously cleared his throat, his cheeks burning red. He looked aside and took a deep breath with an angry expression on his face.
"Y-Yes... I... Oh, how embarrassing... I need a moment."
With a nod of acknowledgment, Yakumo rushed to wash his hands in the basin, just the get the gooey and feeling off his palm. Now he was going to have to go back into the house to change the water. He was not about to wash his face with cold insect soup when he woke up in the morning.
The act of cleaning and removing the pincer from his palm helped him calm down and think about what just happened. He turned around to look at Edmond, who examined the stained sleeve of his shirt with an air of inconvenienced embarrassment. That ink stain was not coming out, and he probably knew that.
"Umm... Do you have something in particular against these insects? I've never seen you react like that to any others before..."
For sure, they'd been toiling in the fields for most of the day, and this wasn't the first time they'd dealt with a bug problem before. Usually speaking, Edmond didn't hesitate. He looked at the offending creature with disgust and slammed the first hard thing he could find against them, making it abundantly clear that, while he didn't like them, he could handle them perfectly fine on his own. While claw traps were unpleasant, this seemed a bit excessive.
Looking tired all of a sudden, Edmond took a long breath and let out a deep sigh.
"I don't like those."
"Ah... Well, yes? It's... not hard to see that at all..." He waited for Edmond to continue, and he was about to nervously change the topic and run away to change the water when Edmond cleared his throat.
"We saw a lot of them back when I was still in training. There was one summer when they were everywhere, wherever we set camp. They barely let us sleep. I've had an... aversion to them ever since. But I can handle them on my own next time. I just need a second or two to calm down."
The last part was a quick attempt to save face, but Yakumo wouldn't have minded it at all if he had to get rid of one of these pests again. He merely hoped Edmond's panic was a little less contagious next time.
Hoping to help Edmond retain some of his dignity for now, Yakumo tried to make the atmosphere a little less stilted by subtly shifting the subject away from how Edmond felt about these insects.
"You must have stayed within the Light Territory that summer then?"
Edmond gave Yakumo a surprised look.
"How do you know that?"
"Claw traps can only really survive there. The Water and Wood territories are too humid for them."
Hold on... Yakumo's brow furrowed deeply once he realized what he'd just said.
"How did it get here, then?" Edmond asked. And he was right. They were right in the middle of the Water territory, weren't they? But Yakumo didn't really have an explanation.
"M-Maybe they're mutating...?"
"No."
Edmond snapped at the suggestion. Yakumo reflexively lowered his head in response.
"Um..."
"Don't make me even entertain that idea." He stood up, slightly agitated. "I'm going the search the hayloft in case there are more. I won't be able to sleep otherwise."
"W-We have repellent myrrh. We can burn some inside the tent. It doesn't smell bad or anything..."
His voice was barely a whisper, but the night was already silent in the village and the fields. Edmond had no problem picking up what he was saying, or the tone in which it was said.
"... I apologize. My tone was too harsh."
Yakumo had never heard Edmond talk to him like that before. There was no doubt that these bugs were a touchy subject. He chuckled nervously.
"It's... fine. Don't worry. I understand."
With his cheeks turning red once again, Edmond let out some unintelligible noise that maybe, in some corner of his mind, had been words at some point. Eventually, he gave up, huffing in frustration.
"Tha-Thank you for handling it..."
"Oh. I... could do it again if we find another one."
Not enthused by the idea of seeing more of them, but still looking somewhat relieved, Edmond's voice and face softened just a little.
"I seriously wish we didn't... But I'd be quite grateful if you could."
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