We Walk Like Humans Do, Chapter 2
The Transcendence has been, on the whole, a good thing for magical creatures... for the ones that walked on two legs and fit in doorways, at least. Lacie has other problems to overcome before she can live in the big city.
Thanks to @feferipeixes for help editing this chapter! Go check out their awesome stuff!
See most updated version on Archive of Our Own.
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Oh, my stars. Alcor hasn’t laughed this hard in lifetimes.
Chapter 2 of Wizard Animago’s Not-So-Secret Spellbook - Everything You Already Knew About Transfiguration and Literally Nothing Else
Hi, I’m 18Lacie5 and I wrote another chapter for you humans. Everyone was really confused on my last post and seemed to think it was a joke, so I’ll start out by answering the five most common questions you had.
1 - Yes, I am a basilisk.
2 - No, I am not the basilisk from Harry Potter.
3 - No, I do not live in the Chamber of Secrets from Harry Potter.
4 - No, I am not the horcrux snake from Harry Potter.
5 - No, I am not in any way related to Harry Potter.
Are we all on the same page now? Good, because holy shit some of you really missed the point here. I got a visit from one of you with a replica of Gryffindor’s sword, and that was so annoying I didn’t even feel bad killing him - like dude, all that tells me is I KNOW you read my post about not coming down here, and then decided to come down here anyway ‘cause fuck me, right?
(The sword wasn’t even that good. It was made of cheap plastic, snapped like a spine.)
Anyway, despite all this the last post was fun to write, so I’m doing it again. Also it seems like the number of visits from treasure hunters has gone down since I posted, though it’s hard to tell. There’s not really a consistent number from year to year, and the day I start keeping a deathcount is the day I give up on life and buy a mirror to see if I can kill myself with my own reflection.
For science, you know?
Alcor’s read the entire blog by now and it’s just perfect. The snark, the sarcasm, the casual disregard towards human lives that could only have been written by an ancient and powerful being - it’s hilarious! And the spell entries… man, he could listen to Lacie tear apart someone’s Latin any day of the decade. If only she could come to some of his summons; she’d have so much material to work with there.
With a chuckle, Alcor looks up and glances around the darkness of the Mindscape. He needs to show this to someone. But who? Mizar? She’s only a year into the current reincarnation… hmm, she might be a little too young to understand it. Lucy Ann’s somewhere around; he probes for her, and finds her - dammit - during naptime at some kindergarten in Portland.
Anyone else?
…
No one else.
There’s absolutely no one else in his life right now. That’s… that’s a fun reminder.
He sighs, and sits back on the fabric of reality. Maybe some cultists’ll summon him; he could read them a blog post, see if they laugh. That’d be fun, right?
Al narrows his eyes at the great nothingness before him. It’d be something, at least.
...You know, he can feel a little tug now.
A weak one, just one summoner, and no circle. That confuses him at first - even the real amateurs usually manage to scribble out some sort of rounded shape - and when he looks closer, he sees it’s holding one of his summoning cards, holding it in its… hand?
No, not quite a hand, and Alcor jolts right up as he realises shit that’s Lacie trying to call him, shit he didn’t think she’d call him back so soon! How long did he keep her waiting? It’s been a couple hours - shit!
Alcor tessers over to her in an instant, his mouth already open and spilling apologies: “Oh my stars Lacie, I am so sorry for the delay! I got distracted and I didn’t think you’d call back so soon so I wasn’t watching as closely as I-”
A deep, rumbling growl cuts him off. It’s a deafening sound, coming from a creature lounging on a pile of bones and gold with teeth the size of Alcor’s entire body; he can’t help but cringe at that. He takes a deep breath, remind himself that he’s an all-powerful demon who definitely doesn’t need to be scared of some mere mortal… even if she is pretty scary for a mortal.
You know, relatively speaking. He isn’t scared, he just thinks she’s scarier than, like, a human. Like a human from that pile of human skeletons she’s smashed into the wall. Yeah, that’s not scary at all. That wouldn’t kill him… looks like it would hurt, though.
He double checked he isn’t standing near that spellbook she’s bound to, right?
Just as he’s thinking this, Lacie lets out another even louder growl, and he jumps back with an undignified yelp.
“Hey, whoa, Lacie!” Alcor watches her head shift to the side. “Lacie? Hello?”
She doesn’t reply, and he looks to her face for an answer. He sees one of her eyes now: it’s closed?
Closed.
The realisation washes over him as she lets out another slow, rumbling snore.
“Oh. You’re… you’re just sleeping, aren’t you. Duh.” He straightens, and casts a glance around the room as he fixes his tie and straightens his hat. “Glad no one noticed that… Lacie?”
She doesn’t stir, and Alcor makes a face. He’s never turned up to a summons and had the summoner fall asleep; would she want him to wake her up? Her dreams feel pretty peaceful to him, and even though that thing - is that a giant laptop? - she’s using as a pillow doesn’t look particularly comfy, it doesn’t seem to bother her in the slightest.
Yeah, it looks like he should just let her call him back… but there is something. Embedded in her sluggish thoughts, he can feel a sort of drive, a sort of desperation, and that makes him hesitate. He looks for her tail, and spots it still wrapped around his summoning card, still squeezing it in a death grip.
Alcor frowns. He watches her snore one more time, then makes up his mind. With a deep breath, he reaches out and prods at her thoughts; they immediately begin to stir. He prods again, and Lacie lets out a grunt. Her eyelid cracks open, and she drags a sleepy glare across the room.
Her gaze meets his, and he feels pain, pain in his soul, his soul feels like it’s being pushed out through his ears ow ow OW- and he recoils, unable to bear it for a second longer.
Wow, he thinks, that really is potent. What on earth makes it so powerful?
Before he can wonder about that, there’s a noise. Gold coins clink against each other as Lacie jerks up, blinking hard, panic flashing in her aura. Alcor holds up his hands.
“Hey, hey, it’s just me!” He looks down as she fixes her eyes on him. “Sorry if you, uh, didn’t want to be woken up, I just thought… you know, you called me, and… what are you doing?”
She’s cast the summoning card aside and is now wiggling the touchpad on her laptop. He cocks his head.
“Whoa, I’ve never seen a laptop that big. Where on Earth did you buy that?”
Lacie doesn’t acknowledge his question. She starts typing something, and he floats closer to see her login screen.
“18Lacie5. Heh, I like your username.” He watches her click on the password box and slowly, painstakingly jab each key with her tail. “E… Y… E… What? Why are you looking at me like- oh. Oh, I’m so sorry!”
There’s a faint snort from Lacie as he turns away. His cheeks redden.
“Sorry, I forget hu- uh, mortals? Mortals tend to like their privacy on stuff… it’s kind of useless since Al-V can hack into pretty much any computer on earth - um, the Alcor Virus, that’s Alvie.” He hears the typing stop, and suddenly wishes he’d chosen literally any other topic in the world. “Um, not that I would make him hack into your computer! I’m just saying he could, and he probably has already… um, I just made him to get rid of Twin Souls though, you’re fine! O-or you should be fine - you don’t, by any chance, happen to like Twin Souls, do you? It’s, um, this book - well it’s a movie now but it was a book - and Mizar - who is my sister by the way - well, that’s why I hate it, because it has my sister and I, umm…ugh, sorry, it’s gross, my sister and I, we’re- huh?”
A low hiss makes him look back, and he sees Lacie - ow - staring right at him. She gestures to the screen, which has a word document open on it with big, bold letters.
“Oh, you want me to read that?” He floats closer, and frowns as he reads the first line:
Im pretending 2 type rite now 2 see how long u wil ramble 4 wtf youre still going and now twin souls no nono why r u explaning i actually cant take the awkwardnes i got 2 stop u
Alcor blinks, then shoots her a dirty look. The noise coming out of her now sounds an awful lot like snickering.
“Wha- I was just-! I just wanted to clarify the hacking thing I said, I-!” The snickering gets louder, and he rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I guess I’m a little rusty at small talk, very funny. I’d like to see how awkward you’d be if the only practice you could get is on a bunch of cultists in basements. They’re not exactly social butterflies either, you know!”
Lacie just keeps laughing, and Alcor… well, he puts on a show of crossing his arms and heaving a long-suffering sigh, but he’s fighting a smile.
It’s strangely nice, being here. Lacie’s strangely nice to be around; she already feels - and he has to remind himself he’s only met her twice - almost like a friend? Maybe he just has a low bar these days, but he hears her laughter, and… it’s just very, very nice. Nice in a way that’s hard to describe.
Nice in a way he hasn’t felt for a while.
The feeling lingers even after Lacie’s chuckling dies off, and he’s still smiling as he watches her reach for the laptop again. She jabs the down arrow a couple times, and some more, better punctuated text comes into view.
I have revised the terms of our deal, it starts, and Alcor clears his throat, squares his shoulders, tries to get himself back into business mode. He reads on: and I would like to exchange the human bones that are currently in my room for a human disguise I am capable of putting on and taking off at will.
He raises an eyebrow as he reaches the end. This is not the deal he was expecting to make. A human disguise… he can tell she’s no demonologist, that’s for sure; there’s so many interpretations of that, so many wonderful ways to tw͏is͡t her̡ ̵w̢or̵d̸s ͏a͟g̢ai͘n̸st͠ ̢h͝er-
No. He shakes his head to clear it of his worst instincts, but they won’t leave, not in the presence of such an enticing deal. Suddenly, he’s glad he doesn’t have to look her in the eyes right now; he trains them on the ground instead, and starts to speak.
“So, um… when you’re saying a ‘human disguise’, what do you mean by that?” He can’t see her face, but he can see a bolt of frustration flash across her aura. “Huh? What’s- oh right, can’t talk, uh… well, do you want me to make an actual, convincing disguise? You know, instead of, like, a wig and some sunglasses?”
Lacie nods vigourously. He watches her tap the caps key and add ‘CONVINCING’ before the human disguise bit. A part of him screams at all the opportunities he’s giving up - willingly! - but he forces a smile and nods.
“Cool, I can do that. I’ve made a few humans before- human bodies, that is, not… um.” Alcor coughs. “Anyway, I can give you a convincing human form for those bones of yours. How does that sound?”
She taps the screen.
“What…? Oh, yes, I’ll make it so you can switch back and forth at will. Good catch. Now, do we have a d̕e͇̪͍̜̻̪͘a̙̻̬̦͔ͅl̲̝͓͔?”
He doesn’t extend a hand to shake, but blue sparks spurt from his fingertips as he watches Lacie mull it over. Her aura fizzles with nervous energy, but it only takes a couple seconds for her to tamp it down and give him a firm nod. The rush of a newly made deal makes his grin go wide; he tries not to let it go too wide as he claps his hands together.
“Alrighty, then,” he says, rubbing them until those sparks turn into a full-blown fire. “One meatsuit coming right up!”
He extends a hand to the pile of bones in the corner of the room, and with a flick of the wrist he rips the energy from them all and absorbs it. The sacrifice warms him like a good meal, and he turns back to Lacie, ready to put that newly-gained power to use.
He steps back and sizes her up with his hands, a gesture that makes her aura simmer with uncertainty. She makes a low, nervous sound, and he waves her away.
“It’s alright, I just… need to remember how big a human is, how much I need to squish you down... Got it!!” Alcor readies his fingers to snap. “Okay, I’ve only done this on myself before, so there might be some kinks I haven’t thought of! Don’t worry, though, I’ll probably be able to fix them!”
Before Lacie could respond, he snaps his fingers, and his magic rushes around her like a cloud. Skin forms over scales, hair grows over horns, and the figure that remains when it disperses is unmistakably human.
It’s also falling to the ground from the height of Lacie’s head, and oh shit catch her catch her catch her - he freezes her momentum a couple inches from the ground then lets her plop, safely but definitely not gracefully, into a puddle.
“Oh, my stars! Are you okay?” Heart pounding in his chest, he dashes over. “I am so sorry about that fall, how are you- ow, okay , I’m gonna need to get you some sunglasses or something - how are you feeling? Here, let me help you up!”
He extends a hand, and Lacie… just stares at it.
Just stares at him, not moving, and he can feel panic flaring up in her aura as she can’t move, oh stars she’s so tiny right now and she can’t move oh fuck-
Alcor blinks. “Oh, right. Um, don’t panic-”
Don’t panic??? DON’T PANIC??? FUCK THIS SHE’S LIKE FIVE INCHES TALL RIGHT NOW AND SHE CAN’T FUCKING MOVE OH MY STARS WHY DID SHE DO THIS TO HERSELF THIS IS THE STUPIDEST FUCKING IDEA SHE’S EVER HAD IN HER LIFE-
“Lacie? Take a deep breath… Lacie? Lacie!” He cringes when Lacie’s eyes fix on him again. “Okay, um, I can see this is… a little stressful for you?”
She nods vigourously.
“Alright, um… don’t worry, I made it easy for you to change back! You just, y’know, gotta think of yourself being a basilisk again - or is it pronounced ‘battle-isk’? ‘Bas-til-isk’? Heh, that’s a weird word, I’ve only ever seen it written down-”
Lacie ditches her human disguise as fast as she could, shooting back out to her original form and cutting Alcor off mid-tangent. He jumps back, watching relief flood through her aura as she could move again, thank the stars she could actually move and everything’s normal sized again… fuck, everything’s normal sized again. She wasted her deal!
The relief’s spiking up into another panic, and Alcor clears his throat. “Alright, so that deal didn’t go to plan. No worries! I can’t exactly do refunds, but you’ve still got plenty of good stuff to sacrifice in here! Doesn’t bother me if this takes a few tries, heh.”
But that doesn’t calm Lacie in the slightest, because now she has to think of another deal, her mind’s blank, she’s got nothing! But she’ll fall asleep if she makes Alcor leave again… maybe she will have to go for that deal.
It’s hard to read her thoughts when they go quiet, but Alcor definitely picks up something about that deal as they’re retreating into a murky bubble of disappointment. He sees how she hangs her head at the idea, then lugs her laptop over to her, begins to peck away at the keys.
He sees that, and frowns. “Hey, uh,” he starts, and right away her eyes dart over to him. “If you don’t want to make a new deal, I’m sure we could make this one work?”
Lacie cocks her head.
“I mean, I’ve been… I know a thing or two about being in a human body. It’s been a while, but maybe I could… y’know, show you the ropes?”
She doesn’t say a word. The silence stretches, and Alcor laughs nervously.
“I-if you want. I mean, it’s been a while, but maybe I could show you enough to get around? I did technically promise your disguise would be ‘convincing’, so a couple human lessons should be easy enough to fit in, without… without another deal... um, I don’t know if you like this idea or you want me to stop talking? If you do that’s fine, I can do another deal, just give me a-”
There’s a sort of fwoomp sound, and the coils and coils of Lacie’s body seem to twist out of existence. At the same time, a human takes shape where her head was, and falls right into Alcor’s arms before he has time to blink.
“-a sign?” He finishes, and stares down at her. She stares right back, and he’d admire the steely resolve, the carefully-controlled fear in her gaze a whole lot longer if it didn’t make his soul want to push itself out through his ears.
“Oh, Okay. Wow, you’re, um… diving right in, huh?”
Lacie gives her closest approximation to a human smile, and Alcor’s caught off guard by how quickly he finds himself grinning back. An actual, genuine grin stretches across his face for the first time in too long, and he chuckles.
“Alright, Lacie, I like your gumption!” He summons a pair of sunglasses, and sticks them over her eyes. “Let’s get humaning!”
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Humaning. Lacie had taught herself many human things over the years; she’d taught herself to read, to type, to write - heck, she’d even managed to summon a demon (and in proper human tradition, had made a poorly thought-out deal with it.) She was no novice in learning how to human.
Maybe that’s why she thought the whole human form was a good idea. She was great at humaning! She’d taught herself so many of their skills, educated herself on so many of their customs, she was able to pass as one of them online… sometimes, it really didn’t feel like she was all that different from them.
After all, if she could read like a human and write like a human and think like a human, how hard could it be to walk around like one, too?
…
As it turns out, hard.
Very, very hard.
Duh.
Everything, everything is different in a human body. Sure, she thought having arms and legs would take some getting used to, but how about all this hair? How about her cramped little mouth and her stubby tongue? How about her skin? Her skin is stupidly sensitive without scales; when she was lying on the stone, she could feel every little bump in it, could feel water soaking her, making her shiver - and shivering, ugh! What an awful sensation! Even though Alcor’s got her propped her up in a chair now, her skin won’t stop whining to her that, gasp, the fabric’s a little itchy!
Whoop de fucking do, skin. Hopefully she grows a thicker one soon enough, because this is driving her crazy. She’s laughing at the Lacie of a couple hours ago who thought she’d just be able to stand up and walk out of the sewers, and oh, speaking of walking ?
Hah! Try moving them at all!
Lacie’s been without these strange appendages all her life, and moving them would be like a human trying to nod with a second head they’ve just sprouted - sometimes she’ll get lucky and hit upon whatever bundle of nerves is controlling each of these limbs, and after two hours of Alcor’s patient coaching she can make them twitch on a somewhat consistent basis, but she’s not getting anywhere fast with them any time soon.
She can only lie here, with her blunt teeth, with her papery skin, with her useless limbs…
Helpless.
Absolutely helpless.
Alcor looms over her whenever he stands up… and that scares her more than she thought it would. Everything looms over her in this form; the - she called it little - pile of treasure she sleeps on now seems like a great mountain, the ceiling she often bangs her head on is higher still, impossibly high. She sees her spellbook resting on its lecturn, and it’s about the same size as her now; she remembers how tiny it once seemed, and- OH FUCK WHAT’S GOING- oh, she’s shivering again.
Lacie frowns at that, and she lets out a noise that’s weirdly squeaky in this throat, and Alcor taps her shoulder.
(And she feels that, holy shit skin it’s literally just a hand)
“...need to take a break?” He’s asking. Frowning. “Lacie?”
She nods, quickly, and he takes the sunglasses off her face before scooting back. Closing her eyes, she thinks of being a basilisk again, and all these alien sensations fall away with a flood of relief. Lacie is herself again; she takes a long moment to savour it, to lounge across her sleeping pile, to listen to her scales scratch against the stone floor, to open an eye and see Alcor as a tiny figure in her field of vision.
“That looks comfy.” He says. He’s grinning, but she can barely make that out. “Darn, I should’ve moved the chair, too.”
The chair? She lifts her body, and finds the chair she’d been sitting on, crushed beneath the weight of her coils. With a little chuckle, she sweeps it out from under her, marvelling at how tiny it is - how tiny she was.
Alcor laughs, too. “Sheesh, you flattened it. I think it’ll be easier to make a new chair.”
Laying her head on the ground, she lets out a lazy snort.
“…um, when you’re ready, I mean.” He adds. “Or we can stop, if you’re tired? I can-”
She heaves herself up. Ugh, she is tired - it creeps up on her. She can’t sleep though, not when she’s so close, so fucking close to getting out of here.
“Oh, okay… are you sure? We’ve been at this a while, I really don’t mind taking a break…”
Lacie tugs at that mental link in the back of her mind, and feels herself switch back into human form again. Unlike switching the other way, this form greets her not with a flood of relief, but with a host of silly little complaints: her back hurts, the stone’s not comfy on her face, it’s cold, she’s wet, on and on and on and she just wants it all to shut up… but, she will admit, there is one thing she likes.
Alcor hoists her up on one of those tiny little chairs she’d been laughing at just a second ago, and she stares at him, and she feels awake.
Completely awake.
She can’t remember the last time her head’s felt this clear, and it’s a pity she has to spend half her human time fidgeting in a seat because otherwise it’d be amazing. Is this really how bad the energy situation had gotten down here? Wow, she really needed to get out of here, and fast.
“Hey, Lacie?” Alcor’s saying something, and she looks over at him. “So I know you said - or, uh, indicated, anyway - that you didn’t want a break…”
He pauses expectantly, and then, seeming to realise she isn’t going to follow it up with a ‘Yes?’ clears his throat.
“Right. Well, I kind of would. Like a break. If that’s okay with you.”
Lacie blinks.
“You know, we’ve been doing this for a while, and I’m thinking maybe we could do something else? You know, it could be something fun! It could be something like, um, like… oh, do you play Scrabble?”
She shakes her head.
“No? Oh, I guess that was a longshot… how bout chess? I know there’s like, online chess… no?” He frowns at her continued head-shaking. “Alright, well… What do you do for fun down here?”
Lacie thinks on that for a moment, then turns her head towards the laptop.
“Oh, your laptop? Nice, nice.” He grins at her. “I love your blog.”
Wait, her blog? He’s read that? He likes that? The surprise must be showing on her face, because Alcor starts laughing.
“Yeah, it’s hilarious! I was actually so caught up reading it, I didn’t realise you were summoning me! I love just how sarcastic it is! It’s amazing!”
Lacie blinks. Is he… gushing? Is Alcor the Dreambender gushing about her blog?
Is this her life?
“Man,” he rambles on. “that joke about a killcount, that was great. I just don’t get why it’s not more popular! Humans, they just don’t have any taste… they’re, heh, they’re too busy reading Harry Potter, amirite?”
He nudges her like he’s made some kind of clever reference, and she snorts at him. Okay, wow, demon or not, this guy really is an absolute plonker. She loves it.
“Haha, yeah! They’ve been, uh, playing Quidditch too much to read your stuff! Yeah! Or they’ve been, um… making swords? Making- I should stop now, shouldn’t I.”
With a big dumb grin on her face, she nods.
“Yep, that was getting out of hand.” Alcor rubs his neck. “I just wanted to say I really liked it a lot. It was funny.”
Lacie’s grin got even bigger.
“So, uh, you really have been down here all your life, huh? Dealing with treasure hunters-” He chuckles when she rolls her eyes. “Hah, I can imagine that’s not fun! Yeah... so, uh, have you ever been outside?”
She shakes her head. Maybe before she was old enough to remember, but that was a long, long time ago. Alcor makes a face at that.
“Yeah, yeesh. No wonder you want to get out of here, no wonder…”
He trails off, and Lacie watches his eyes go distant for a second before a thought seems to strike him; he blinks, frowns, then, slowly, he starts to grin. He turns to her again, and she raises an eyebrow at the shine in his eyes.
“Hey, Lacie,” He says. “Want me to take you on a little tour?”
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that comic is big hueg mood and i value it a lot.
mental illness really isn’t about “oh just be thankful for what you CAN do!”
it’s sometimes (always?) about “i know i’m capable of doing Even Better, if i just had some help! i’m not well! i’m thankful every day that i’m not worse, but it fucking burns me to know how much better i COULD be doing with more support!!”
and if you appear to be high-functioning, even if that level is like, abysmal compared to what you know your mind and body would actually be capable of in better circumstances, you sort of get... abandoned? like, “oh, that one is doing well enough.” and seeking out the necessary support to improve your functioning level requires SO much time and energy that it is literally killing people.
like i have so many suicide attempts i can’t count them under my belt. i’ve got self harm scars on every limb and they number, like... well, it’s in the hundreds, for sure. i’ve got no IRL social network. a lot of my daily energy goes on regulating emotions and processing trauma. i can’t drive, i can assemble some food sometimes but can’t reliably cook, etc etc.
and because i’m in university - still there by sheer force of will, because this is the ONLY thing that might land me in reasonable comfort in the future - and not in trouble with the school, i’ve been written off again and again by mental health services. it’s always, “come back in six months,” or “here’s a referral for a 12-week group, in two years’ time,” and “oh, has it been two months? i’m sorry, we haven’t got around to allocating you a community psychiatric nurse yet”
i’m here like, what... the fuck? i feel like, it’s been assumed i’m a person of average ability, with minor problems, and i can just Get On With It. when actually, i’m well aware i’m a person of exceptional academic ability, with really quite significant social, emotional, and mental health problems, particularly like... in terms of trust. and it makes me fucking furious, and at times ashamed, that i’m coming up to 22 years old, my secondary school peers are graduating, and i’m only just going into second year. i was ahead of my peers for So Long. i should still be there. but because nobody believes i need fucking help, i’m getting delayed more and fucking more!!! it burns me!!!!!
like, of course i can fucking Get On With It. that’s all i CAN do, it’s my Priority, My Degree Is My Life This Secures A Future I Could Accept. i can learn semantic information without ever fucking touching my trust/interpersonal issues. and i don’t think anybody just skimming my case notes can grasp how much this fucking course means to me, how much sheer fucking aggression i’ve had to channel to get here, to stay here.
like they don’t see how i haul myself out of my apartment when i’m fucking suicidal to show to the lectures. how I take notes from the lecture recordings for every. single. lecture. i miss because i’m too exhausted or overwhelmed to make it to the hall. how i never chat in the lab because i’m scared as hell and have to get into a mindset that goes I’m Here To Fucking Learn Not To Make Friends, although i’d really like to make friends. how exam revision takes priority to the exclusion of eating and sleeping, how I have to set myself timers and force myself to eat and sleep, how my walls get covered in webs and webs of colourful revision post-it notes and i spend hours and hours arranging them Perfectly so i can remember the whole thing as a 3D spatial map inside my brain. how i give myself eyestrain and migraines from staring at books and screens for so long, how i don’t fucking wash myself, or clean my apartment, or say a word to anyone but myself for days or weeks. how i’m so fucking hurt that it took me two years to do first year, how i’m having to go part time for second year. like, this is not healthy learning. this is, I’m Going To Die If I Don’t Cling The FUCK On To This Opportunity, This Lucky Fucking Break That Is Going To Save My Life. and i’m NOT fucking giving it up.
they don’t seem to see that AT THE SAME TIME i’ve been off on my fucking own learning and practicing DBT skills, how i taught myself to meditate when my mind is still screaming Kill Yourself Kill Yourself Kill Yourself, how i’ve been seeing a private counsellor who i can’t afford from the wallet but who i have to afford so i don’t try to kill myself even more fucking often. how i’ve been looking around to try and find like, a faith that might give me more reason to keep fighting, how i do all that shit like taking walks in nature and working out and maintaining a good sleep schedule, and yet, i’m Still Not Well.
like here i am with the SAME trauma spinning around my head and the SAME terror of social situations and the SAME goddamn increasing fear every time i push myself to “just join a group!! just talk to people!! it gets easier the more you do it!!!”
that’s the FUCKING PROBLEM! i’m DOING all the easy shit, all the “just make lifestyle changes! :) x”!!!!!!! there is still shit that gets HARDER the more i do it!!!!!!! i get MORE anxious and MORE scared and MORE defensive and MORE avoidant the more i push myself to Just Talk To People and the better somebody knows me, because the more they know, the more they have to use as a fucking weapon! this is why I shut down and say “Oh you know I’m okay :)” in my fucking appointments!!!! because they send me to SO MANY different people, who BARELY skim my case notes, and i have no opportunity to develop enough trust with them to tell them the whole truth! which is, “dude, i feel like shit. i’m behind where i Should be given my age and ability. i have no friends, i’m terrified of people who start to get to know me. i’m constantly trying to process trauma, but it’s always the same pain, and then i remember something else painful, and it’s all more fucked up the older i get, and there’s a limit to what i can do about this alone, and i’m overwhelmed. i’m used to it, because i’ve been living this way for so fucking long, but i’m furious, because you people should have KEPT me from getting used to living like this. and i Don’t. Want. To Live. This. Way. Forever.”
they haven’t even given me the fucking opportunity to build ANY significant, long-term therapeutic relationship with ANY NHS mental health practitioner. i haven’t seen anybody for more than like, three appointments, except my goddamn private counsellor, who is a blessing and lets me pay him in artwork when the cash runs out. and he always looks so angry and disappointed that the NHS are doing so fucking little for me, but never that way in me, which i have seen from so-called mental health “professionals,” including crisis team workers, on the NHS.
like, the last time i saw a psychiatrist, he had a face on him like NBC’s Hannibal fucking Lecter and he said word-for-word “I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you.” what kind of fucking health professional comes out with shit like THAT? and shortly after that appt I got increasingly unstable, went psychotic, trashed my apartment, tried to commit suicide again, then spent all my fucking money running all over the country and ended up here, in a flat in halls my uni are paying for while i bit-by-bit clean up my apartment, alone because i don’t trust anybody else to touch MY THINGS, until it’s livable again.
i think i’m gonna print a lot of these recent text posts and take them to my case review. i’ve always been too ashamed to take anything significant that i write to Brain Appointments, because, like... well. mother is to blame for that. “melodramatic/theatrical/overemotional/I think you’re just tired/making things up/imagining things” and so on. and the fact that when it was found out by my school i was self harming and they told her, shit got so much worse at home. like, that pretty effectively taught me Hide Everything Or You’ll Be Punished, Even By People Who Say They’re Just Trying To Help You.
man, seriously, fuck this shit. fuck this shit. fuck how hard i’m having to fight for this. fuck all this terror and aggression, sure I can pilot the ship on fear and fury, but i wanna pilot it just like, gently, with love and enthusiasm. i’ve been finding ways to start doing that, alone. but this whole, social stuff? i can’t do that alone. the social space inside my head is healthier, i’m not screaming and fighting with the voices, or constantly blocking them out with music and drugs and trances, but Other Bodies? i need help with Other Bodies.
ok im getting a headache so it’s time to call this post Done
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im gonnaaaa revise and post my very dirk centric analysis of the epilogues here as well
also in case it needs stating, spoilers abound!
i read through both of the epilogues simultaneously yesterday, consuming both at the same time rather than one and then the other, and i feel like while it may not have been the most “satisfying” approach from a character-centric perspective, i have a more complete understanding of the stories than those who read them separately. if you’ve read through both and have the stomach to do it again for some reason, i suggest doing it in parallel, m1 c1 m2 c2 etc.
i will warn you though, i ended up having two nightmares at the same time in my dreams last night. like, simultaneously, two separate threads of terror unraveling in my subconscious. i woke up this morning already knee deep into an analysis of the homestuck epilogues, and it was less like “waking up” and more “becoming aware that i was conscious”
anyway, without further ado!
dirk killing himself in candy 14 is the scene that resonates with us as being “dirk” because it is. that’s all dirk, our dirk, the one from homestuck. he Has to do that in order for candy to continue being candy, and part of me believes that he knew that on a conscious level—hence his death being just. he knew he wouldn’t get a nice fluffy outcome in the candy timeline because him, all of him, not just this one instance, was fated to be meat dirk.
—and speaking of, the concept of Ultimate Selves pretty much squares away meat dirk. he doesn’t read like our dirk, the one from homestuck canon, because the narrative explicitly states he’s Not anymore. he’s become all of him, all of him from across paradox space, including notable players bro, doc scratch, and lord english. dirk’s Ultimate Self is a culmination of every possible him taken to the highest intensity. it reads like one of his personal nightmares because it WAS his personal nightmare—the personal nightmare of our dirk. he’s a prince of heart. the ascension to his Ultimate Self resulted in the complete destruction of the barriers between his splinters. the more i think about it, the more brilliant it is. he seems out of character as the dirk we know and love because he isn’t.
i feel like i finally Get it, but i’m still not looking forward to seeing people who dislike dirk using this to discredit the progress he made on his personal journey (ie “see he was evil the whole time!”) nor am i looking forward to all of the “dirk would never do this! it’s ooc writing!” from people who seem to have missed the part of homestuck where what scared dirk about himself most was the undeniable truth in it. there’s more than one example of “bad dirk and/or dirk byproducts” out there in paradox space. it’s more than feeling like you “might” be bad, it’s… being afraid of what you would be if you weren’t so afraid of being it, it’s seeing things that were a result of You-but-not-you and having to stare down the fact that even if you weren’t bad, even if you didn’t, you could have, would have, did. dirk’s Ultimate Self being a nightmare scenario is ..almost a recursive throwback to his fears about his ultimate self (note capitals)
him taking control of the narrative was epic though. it honestly did not catch me off guard? it makes sense. it is a 100% dirk strider move. if you haven’t read it by now for some reason, go read detective pony. i am diagnosing you with read detective pony by sonnetstuck. it’s terminal.
the only two people aside from hussie to have controlled the narrative in homestuck canon are the cherubs. and i did make the point somewhere up there that dirk absorbed lord english, and by extension, caliborn. that’s WHY he got that ability. not because he’s a prince of heart. dirk controlling the narrative makes sense from the perspective of dirk controlling the external narrative as well, ie, the whole thing is on a piece of paper that he wrote as some form of bizarre cathartic self punishment for his existence, but in the grander scheme of things and truth of homestuck dirk controlling the narrative makes sense as the puppetmaster-turned-puppet we see him become in several of his iterations, because caliborn literally becomes part of him.
everything is so skewed by the narrators. yes, both of them, because the whole point of the epilogues is that both of them suck and muse calliope is just as shitty as “impartial” “narrator” as Ultimate Self dirk is. it actually makes the whole thing a lot greyer in morality than it comes across at first. US dirk does a lot of Bad Shit as narrator, yeah, but even as passive as she is, calliope’s narration has its flaws (see: everything relating to trickster mode)
the epilogues are less about the characters themselves and more about a grander conflict between the two cherubs, using dirk and jade as their puppets—and yes, muse calliope is using jade as a puppet LITERALLY, which upsets me on so many levels i can’t even get into it here. let jade be fucking relevant and happy hussie or so help me i will write myself into your narrative and do some renovation of my own. but dirk is equally deprived of his agency in this scenario. i’m not going to debate with anyone about the inherent goodness/badness of dirk strider because that’s an entirely different essay, but in canon, dirk’s entire arc is about NOT becoming exactly what he becomes in the epilogues. the dirk we know didn’t choose to become his “Ultimate Self,” the dirk we know doesn’t get a choice between meat and candy, the dirk we know is at the mercy of the narrative even as he pretends to control it.
and that’s not something new to dirk strider, in any variation of himself. i’m specifically going back to thinking about the term “puppetmaster-turned-puppet” here, because i like it. in canon, we see dirk get out-puppeted by hal. it’s implied that bro is being controlled at least in part by lil cal, who is in turn.. a splinter of dirk indirectly via hal via arquiussprite. i’m getting a little lost in all the splinters. why is dirk’s worst enemy consistently himself? don’t answer that. uhh also it should be mentioned that makes lil cal a puppetmaster-turned-puppet-turned-puppetmaster, both literally and metaphorically. i fucking hate andrew hussie.
anyway, both of the epilogues do all that shit to to drive home the point that both of them (and i mean muse calliope and LE here when i say both, because this has officially stopped being about the dirk we know) are removed from human concepts like “good” and “evil” and represent duality in an alien manner that to a casual observer could be mistaken for some objective statement about morality, but they’re both wrong to us from our perspective as humans with human morals. the choice of candy and meat from the beginning was a cherub one. that’s not a balanced meal! that’s not even a reasonable dichotomy for humans! meat is not more real or “canon” than candy was, both of them are very flawed stories being manned at the helm by omnipotent green aliens.
okay we’re ALMOST done here, i just want to touch on the actual authors of the narrative rather than the ones the narrative insists are its narrators. by which i mean the actual real life human beings who wrote the epilogue. the point i was making above about how dirk doesn’t have any agency? the point of these epilogues were that none of the characters have any agency in their stories. every work is a reflection of its author, even when aforementioned authors are hiding behind pseudoauthors on a narrative level.
the homestuck epilogues feel very meanspirited to me. they punish their readers for not understanding their intentionally heavyhanded meta. homestuck was always very meta, but it was also fun. this, on the other hand, wasn’t fun. i haven’t seen anyone claim that the epilogues were a “fun” read, even those who enjoyed them enjoy them on the basis that “tragedy is a valid form of art,” and,,, ........and their opinions are. valid. and they can have them. sure.
but for those of us who read stories in order to enjoy them, which i am safely assuming makes up the majority of those who read homestuck, the homestuck epilogues are like a final kick in the teeth as a send off to a fandom with barely any teeth left to lose. we’re already having people who refuse to read them, and god i wish that were me, but it’s also.,, you can’t criticize something properly if you haven’t read it. we’re going to see a lot of very bad takes in the coming days about all kinds of things from information proliferating through the grapevine, and personally, i am not looking forward to it. i really hope this is the end, that homestuck is finally fucking over, and the epilogues are done with and we can all live our lives unmarred by strange orange men with typewriters. i’m going to hole up with my cool and new webcomic music albums and all of the good novel-length dirk-centric fic i’ve bookmarked over the years and wait this one out. i invite you to do the same.
cool and new webcomic bandcamp | cool and new greatest hits | my personal favorite album by them
detective pony by sonnetstuck (seriously please read this it watered my crops and cured my lead poisoning)
literally anything by callmearcturus but this is my personal favorite (chamomile, rosewater, and other unlikely intoxicants)
this long winded discworld joke by oxfordroulette that inflicted me with a terminal case of loving jake english despite it being a dirkjohn fic (vanitas vanitatum) also if you finish reading this one and also succumbed to loving jake english, i’m not going to link it but they have another fic that’ll scratch that itch for you. that’s all i’ll say on that matter.
this fic said nonverbal autistic dirk rights and thank god (we were made for another world by princex_n)
thanks for reading
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