listen, cocomelon creampuff, just because you don't believe in the gods doesn't mean they don't believe in you; if you want to make war on them instead, you might wanna pick the term 'antitheist' instead, because otherwise you're talking about a term that means you don't believe gods exist, and in a place like this it's kind of ... a sad look, okay. sorry.
if you don't want to call him god and you don't want to call him teacher, i'd suggest "necrolord", seeing as how that's also one of his titles, or you could default to a polite-and-nondescript "sir" any time you're talking to him in person, at least.
my name is alfred; i'm the first martyr who made the first saint. i know he's got his flaws, kiddo. i also know that it was my personal choice when, where, and how i died, and to what purpose, and i don't actually regret making it, but that's also because i actually have all the context for everything that was actually going on back then, and it's not like it was the first time i'd died anyway.
i know him better than anyone here except my brother, i think; i know a lot about his habits; i know what i've heard about what happened in the wake of paul's party, too, but i don't know you, and i don't know what you actually did.
i do know that he has always believed in allowing people free will, and also that he believes people learn best from their own mistakes, and also that a locked door is a locked door is a locked door, even if the lock is easy to break or pick; the first lock, which should be the hardest to break at all, is the one inside the mind of the person testing the door, you see. that's where you could respond to the post-it note on the door that says "this door is locked" by respecting that, and not even testing the knob.
i know he caught a lot of flak for having some relatively nasty wards on some quite private materials, inside his private study, where the door had been locked, after people broke into his locked study and stole his personal, private materials, and violated those wards. i'm guessing you were one of them?
(those weren't the nasty wards. those were pretty basic.)
as far as paul is concerned — unless he volunteers to be your responsibility, and tells you that he is going to abdicate taking care of himself or making his own choices in favor of having you do that instead, it is his right to make whatever mistakes he wants to make — along with being his right to decide if he considers them to be mistakes, or perfectly reasonable choices.
the smart thing to do is to calmly and compassionately tell someone why you think they're making a mistake, and it usually works best if you say something like 'hey, i think you might be making a mistake, and i don't want you to, because i care about you; can we talk about that? i'd like to tell you what i see, and why it looks like a mistake to me, along with what looks like the best route to get away from it' — that nonspecifically — and then let them make the choice to decide whether or not they want to entertain the conv
I know I'm being jumpy. But-- that Witch I mentioned has messed up the lives of everyone I know, and she's no peach to deal with in person. That kinda thing isn't always easy to deal with.
[What was therapy? What did it look like? Was there even therapy for a society geared towards action instead of introspection, towards focusing in on the practical matters instead of even looking at the frustration, sorrow, and pain that lurks underneath everything?
How do you work through being tortured? Through the existential dread that-- perhaps, there is no way to escape fate. No matter how far he runs.]
I've been calling him Sasha, because that's what my boyfriend's uncle calls him. I think it gets my point across.
[The point being that, though he's anxious and jumpy, he's also got nerves so steely that he is willing to potentially anger a god instead of faking deference.
Just because he was good at lying didn't mean that he liked it. ]
I don't know much about martyrs and saints, Mr. Alfred. Words like that aren't normally used in my home, because organized religion isn't that common. It was, once. A long time ago.
But, gathering info on my own is just... something we've had to do. There were so many people around us that we didn't know who to trust with the actual truth. It had been hidden for so long that it sounded like a lie.
I wanted something tangible... because I wanted people to believe me.
...And, I wanted to make a choice to help someone on my own, not because of some destiny or responsibility. It was nothing like that.
[ Where most of this conversation — aside from the lengthy pause before it began — has been bopping back and forth at a pretty rapid-fire pace, there is a pause of days before Alfred replies again.
A snake-with-no-limbs can't exactly skulk back in with his tail between his legs, and yet... ]
"help" is something you can offer. it isn't something you can force on someone.
if someone is drowning at sea, if they're choking and falling unconscious, okay, sure, implied consent, 'please prevent me from actively dying, right here, in this exact moment — but if they're awake and choking, did you know you're still supposed to ask if they want you to help them, before you start trying to get whatever-it-is out of their throat, with a squeeze-the-stuffing-out move or otherwise?
if someone is doing something you don't understand, even if it looks like they're putting themselves wildly at risk, even if they're literally killing themselves — you still need to find out why before you assume that you've got the right to decide what's best for them.
maybe they think they don't have a choice, and if you come in with a new option, they'll seize it gratefully.
maybe they think they're making a conscious and informed choice, and their death is going to serve a purpose that's a lot greater than they are alone, and will be worth every ounce of pain and grief, no matter how awful.
if you just go charging in to interfere, you could fuck everything up irreparably, ruining your relationship with whoever that is — whether or not you already had one.
i would really like to have a sense that you are actually understanding what i mean when i say that, kiddo, before we try to keep going with anything more specific about your case.
[It took Oscar a while to respond as well. Coming from a situation and a world where so much was out of everyone's hands-- including the man who had manipulated the whole of his world's history-- this concept was almost foreign to him in so many ways.
Very little had been done by anyone's choice. Even if they had chosen, they didn't understand the full consequences of that choice.
Not even Ozma, upon taking the option to return from the dead and see his beloved again, fully understood what he was getting into.
The reply came a few hours later-- rather terse, because he didn't know what to say to a snake that could potentially tell everything to the black eyed man that called himself a God: ]
I understand what you're saying.
None of this would have happened if we were allowed such rights back in my home.
It's not something that's regularly offered. I don't know what it is supposed to look like.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(cw: discussion of self-sacrificial death)
listen, cocomelon creampuff, just because you don't believe in the gods doesn't mean they don't believe in you; if you want to make war on them instead, you might wanna pick the term 'antitheist' instead, because otherwise you're talking about a term that means you don't believe gods exist, and in a place like this it's kind of ... a sad look, okay. sorry.
if you don't want to call him god and you don't want to call him teacher, i'd suggest "necrolord", seeing as how that's also one of his titles, or you could default to a polite-and-nondescript "sir" any time you're talking to him in person, at least.
my name is alfred; i'm the first martyr who made the first saint. i know he's got his flaws, kiddo. i also know that it was my personal choice when, where, and how i died, and to what purpose, and i don't actually regret making it, but that's also because i actually have all the context for everything that was actually going on back then, and it's not like it was the first time i'd died anyway.
i know him better than anyone here except my brother, i think; i know a lot about his habits; i know what i've heard about what happened in the wake of paul's party, too, but i don't know you, and i don't know what you actually did.
i do know that he has always believed in allowing people free will, and also that he believes people learn best from their own mistakes, and also that a locked door is a locked door is a locked door, even if the lock is easy to break or pick; the first lock, which should be the hardest to break at all, is the one inside the mind of the person testing the door, you see. that's where you could respond to the post-it note on the door that says "this door is locked" by respecting that, and not even testing the knob.
i know he caught a lot of flak for having some relatively nasty wards on some quite private materials, inside his private study, where the door had been locked, after people broke into his locked study and stole his personal, private materials, and violated those wards. i'm guessing you were one of them?
(those weren't the nasty wards. those were pretty basic.)
as far as paul is concerned — unless he volunteers to be your responsibility, and tells you that he is going to abdicate taking care of himself or making his own choices in favor of having you do that instead, it is his right to make whatever mistakes he wants to make — along with being his right to decide if he considers them to be mistakes, or perfectly reasonable choices.
the smart thing to do is to calmly and compassionately tell someone why you think they're making a mistake, and it usually works best if you say something like 'hey, i think you might be making a mistake, and i don't want you to, because i care about you; can we talk about that? i'd like to tell you what i see, and why it looks like a mistake to me, along with what looks like the best route to get away from it' — that nonspecifically — and then let them make the choice to decide whether or not they want to entertain the conv
[ Oops, took too long again. ]
no subject
I know I'm being jumpy. But-- that Witch I mentioned has messed up the lives of everyone I know, and she's no peach to deal with in person. That kinda thing isn't always easy to deal with.
[What was therapy? What did it look like? Was there even therapy for a society geared towards action instead of introspection, towards focusing in on the practical matters instead of even looking at the frustration, sorrow, and pain that lurks underneath everything?
How do you work through being tortured? Through the existential dread that-- perhaps, there is no way to escape fate. No matter how far he runs.]
I've been calling him Sasha, because that's what my boyfriend's uncle calls him. I think it gets my point across.
[The point being that, though he's anxious and jumpy, he's also got nerves so steely that he is willing to potentially anger a god instead of faking deference.
Just because he was good at lying didn't mean that he liked it. ]
I don't know much about martyrs and saints, Mr. Alfred. Words like that aren't normally used in my home, because organized religion isn't that common. It was, once. A long time ago.
But, gathering info on my own is just... something we've had to do. There were so many people around us that we didn't know who to trust with the actual truth. It had been hidden for so long that it sounded like a lie.
I wanted something tangible... because I wanted people to believe me.
...And, I wanted to make a choice to help someone on my own, not because of some destiny or responsibility. It was nothing like that.
I've had too much of that.
no subject
A snake-with-no-limbs can't exactly skulk back in with his tail between his legs, and yet... ]
"help" is something you can offer. it isn't something you can force on someone.
if someone is drowning at sea, if they're choking and falling unconscious, okay, sure, implied consent, 'please prevent me from actively dying, right here, in this exact moment — but if they're awake and choking, did you know you're still supposed to ask if they want you to help them, before you start trying to get whatever-it-is out of their throat, with a squeeze-the-stuffing-out move or otherwise?
if someone is doing something you don't understand, even if it looks like they're putting themselves wildly at risk, even if they're literally killing themselves — you still need to find out why before you assume that you've got the right to decide what's best for them.
maybe they think they don't have a choice, and if you come in with a new option, they'll seize it gratefully.
maybe they think they're making a conscious and informed choice, and their death is going to serve a purpose that's a lot greater than they are alone, and will be worth every ounce of pain and grief, no matter how awful.
if you just go charging in to interfere, you could fuck everything up irreparably, ruining your relationship with whoever that is — whether or not you already had one.
i would really like to have a sense that you are actually understanding what i mean when i say that, kiddo, before we try to keep going with anything more specific about your case.
no subject
Very little had been done by anyone's choice. Even if they had chosen, they didn't understand the full consequences of that choice.
Not even Ozma, upon taking the option to return from the dead and see his beloved again, fully understood what he was getting into.
The reply came a few hours later-- rather terse, because he didn't know what to say to a snake that could potentially tell everything to the black eyed man that called himself a God: ]
I understand what you're saying.
None of this would have happened if we were allowed such rights back in my home.
It's not something that's regularly offered. I don't know what it is supposed to look like.