what would personality swap/circumstances swap look like with Zeta and Psi?
REALLY FUN QUESTION. This answer got both long and dark, so bear with me.
So, first some background information on how they were each raised
The founders of Seventh Temple, who received Zetaâs egg and raised him, were much more permissive than the founders of Amber Bell Temple, who raised Psi.
The Seventh Temple founders approached the rearing of Zeta with a fundamental flaw, a deeply ingrained contradiction. When he hatched, they treated him for a long time like a particularly rowdy dog, a mischievous pet. At the same time, their task was to raise him into a civilized and intelligent creature, one who could, if not lead, then at least protect and manage the population of their Temple, since without direction, Chamber Angels become mindless (they arenât, they donât speak itâs true, but it's more a matter of hyper-solipsism than lack of inner life). The people tasked with this job didnât really know quite how to go about this, and ended up frustrated and ambivalent to him acting out or being disruptive, not really sure how to raise a little lizard-thing into a proper person.
When Zeta grew the eye in his stomach, he started using it to talk to people and ask about the world in a way he couldnât do vocally before. The founders took this as a sign to try and tighten up how they were dealing with him, not letting him get away with as much stuff, (also starting to realize that things that were really cute when he was the size of a golden retriever could quickly become much less cute as he continued to get bigger), but the way they handled the change was really jarring to Zeta. Discipline was applied pretty suddenly, and a lot of the behaviors that got cracked down on, running around, biting, stealing and hiding things, were things that were completely tolerated before. They also started educating him on academic knowledge and decorum. All of this was applied to the stomach-eye, since it was his speaking-part, while the rest of his body was largely still treated like a pet.
As Zeta started getting older and larger, his relationship with the Seventh Temple Acolytes started to change. That undercurrent of reverence and worship was always a thing since he was an egg, and always colored how people interacted with him, but he started to become much more aware of it. From this point his Host starts looking more human-like, and increasingly he starts to make it look âprettyâ, slender and effeminate, to better respond to the affections of his acolytes. Zeta likes how he looks a lot, but he likes it because he likes being praised and feeling desired. Mind you this started happening pretty early on, from around the time the appendage was a comparable size to an adult human. The thing that happened to Zeta isnât actually that different than like, when an 11 year old girl grows boobs and starts getting heaped with attention and expectations for what sheâs going to be doing with her body.
Zetaâs host is very sexualized in large part because of how his acolytes interacted with him when he was younger and less imminently dangerous to be around. Itâs not like anyone ever really thought of him as an actual child at any point, he was a little creature, and then he was kind of a person, and now heâs some kind of strange hungry god. As he currently exists, Zeta maintains his Host as a social, flirtatious focal-point, it is an object that absorbs attention and can be used to control the direction of interactions. The ârestâ of Zetaâs body continues to act more like an animal, though it isnât âstupiderâ or not âsapientâ. Neither side is fake, but the emotions and desires expressed by the big head are more visceral and deeply felt than those expressed by the Host-head, which are more âintellectualâ, if not more intelligent. It thinks more about his relationships, about things that are expected of him, about abstract and long-term goals. It holds petty grievances and measured admiration. There isnât really a split between these ends so much as a gradient.
The people who raised Psi were very aware that it is possible to fuck up raising a Prince if it is not done correctly. They consider Zeta (as well as other, undesigned Princes) stark examples of failures to properly manage the education and rearing of a Chamber Angel into a âTrue Personâ. This was also, obviously, very misguided. At the heart of it, a Chamber Angel isnât like a human being, no matter how human-like they can become. They are fundamentally creatures designed to do a single task (remove foreign matter from the void that creates them), and lack any native architecture to accomplish directives separate from this. That Chamber Princes invariably seem to become self-obsessed, that they never possess a true sense of empathy (though they do seem to be able to express sympathy in a sincere way), that they are always hostile to their own kind, that they are always covetous of the people and places given to them, are ultimately byproducts of the decision to turn the kind of thing they are into the kind of thing a Prince is.
Nevertheless, the people who raised Psi were determined to get it right. When Psi was hatched they treated him like a human baby. They were extremely protective of him, they spent a lot of time with him, they protected him from everything and everyone in order to limit possible corrupting influences on him. They spent uncountable hours instilling the doctrines of the Temple into him, and punished him for doing anything out of line, well before he could fully grasp what he was doing wrong. From a very early age, Psi was a seemingly very nervous and fragile Prince that was very dependent on the Amber Bell Founders for pretty much everything, seemingly incapable of confidently making choices on his own out of a deep anxiety of being punished for doing something wrong.
Psi also had much more interaction with other Princes from a much younger age, which is not at all common. The Amber Bell Founders thought this would be important for socializing him, making him better at dealing with his own kind in a comfortable, civilized way. This usually didnât go very well. A lot of other Princes were not very nice to the new baby of the roster. The ones that didnât try to eat him (Hi Zeta) were still usually antagonistic, and if they werenât antagonistic, they were indifferent or annoyed. The only one he ever got along with was Alpha, who is a bit different, and Iâll design him one day lol.
Psi grew a third eye after being attacked by an older Prince, and that is how he started speaking. The third eyeâs voice was petulant and âbrattyâ. It would often refuse to do things that were asked of him when the rest of him didnât feel capable of drawing such lines. Sometimes the boundaries were reasonable, sometimes they were contrarian, regardless of legitimacy they usually didnât go very well and just resulted in more restrictions and discipline, since it was seen as childish acting out that needed to be reigned in.
As Psi got older, he did not experience the same sexualization as Zeta did, but that doesnât mean his acolytes treated him as an equal. Psi was always treated like a FabergĂŠ egg that increasingly seemed determined to break itself. A lot of Psiâs, or specifically the third eyeâs, aggressive or attention-seeking behavior (breaking things, screaming) was disciplined by isolation or imposed periods of non-interaction, which were unfortunately very effective considering he was ultimately very very dependent on the support of other people to feel comfortable or assured that anything he was doing was correct, since he wasnât unable to trust that the things he wanted to do were always the ârightâ thing.
Psi grew a fourth eye mostly to talk to himself. The fourth eye was mostly very good at telling him things that made him feel better, and became very good at telling the Acolytes in charge of raising him things that made them feel satisfied that he was behaving correctly. As Psi got older, the two eyes he was born with were moved to the inside of his body, since he was increasingly using the fourth eye to navigate social interactions. Psiâs two original eyes are housed on the face called âIia,â, though none of Psiâs individual faces would get distinct names for a long time after they were generated. The names Pax, Suu, and Iia, are used by the faces to refer to each other. Individually, they only ever call themselves âPsiâ.Â
Psiâs third eye, would become âPaxâ, though that face has undergone the most change since it was created. Paxâs eyes are technically just one eye that has been split into three, but in practice they still function as a single eye, if you consider that a Chamber Angelâs eyes are the closest thing they have to a brain (not a perfect comparison because you, dear reader, canât grow a new brain if your head gets cut off, but still.)
So, now that Iâve written an essay describing eldritch entities experiencing child abuse, what would happen if Psi had been raised like Zeta, and Zeta like Psi? What degree of their personalities is innate, and how much is the result of their upbringings? Naturally Zeta will always be a little Zeta-like, and Psi a little Psi-like, regardless of how differently theyâd been brought up (Iâm choosing to do a circumstance swap bc itâs a bit more fun/a nice little brain teaser).
Starting with Zeta. If Zeta had been sheltered to the extreme degree Psi was, he would almost certainly act much less confident and âarrogantâ than he does as is. Zetaâs outer body would have still been hatched with a single eye, and I still think he would have dealt with needing to speak/socialize by growing a second, inner eye that he shaped into a person-like puppet over time. I think Zeta is simply a naturally much bolder creature than Psi, and while he still would have developed an intense feeling of being dependent on his caretakers, I donât think his mischievous nature would have been easily overcome. I think the way Psi was raised would have mostly taught Zeta to get very, very, very good at lying and acting, in a way he absolutely isnât as is. Canon Zeta is lazy, hedonistic, and takes as many liberties as he wants with his cultists, barely concealing any of his desires or intents, since he feels like they just expect him to act this way, and it's everyone elseâs problem to manage picking carefully around the edges of that particular black hole.
As Prince Amber Bells Temple, Zeta would outwardly appear much better behaved, and probably be much less overtly threatening to interact with. I think they would have turned him into a better politician, but not managed to make him a better âpersonâ. Everything predatory about his personality is still there, and just shouting at him or abandoning him when he expressed any sort of desire to take things (or people) didnât really teach him how to deal with that, it only made him duplicitous. Amber Bells Zeta is a nasty little master of Soft Power Play with much more developed concepts of transaction and reputation.
Psi, as the Prince Seventh Temple, would have turned out quite different. Like Zeta, Psi was also a playful hatchling, just a more nervous one who needed a lot more time to warm up to people. With the Seventh Temple Acolytes treating Psi as a funny new pet, they would have been much more patient with him, treating him kind of like a cat that you need to get to trust you before itâll play with you, but being so delighted by that trust that itâs coveted and flaunted by those who manage to earn it.Â
Psiâs less rambunctious nature would have made him much easier to educate, because Psi values praise in a different way than Zeta. Zeta gets much more out of physical affection, but doesnât actually care about being scolded or told off or told heâs being good or bad if thereâs no element of physical reward. Psi, on the other hand, absolutely loves being told heâs a good boy and getting handed a cookie, this does wonders for him. Psi is much more of a teacherâs pet type creature and would have thrived with the sort of attempted education that Zeta found very confusing and uninteresting. Psi would have still grown a third eye to communicate, but that eye would have reacted much differently to this set of circumstances. He probably would have never grown a fourth eye, and the third eye probably would have never fractured.
Psi would have had to deal with the same early sexualization that Zeta experienced, however. I think Psi is naturally very rigid in a way that Zeta is not. Zeta is, or at least was, very flexible with his sense of self, and, at least when he was younger, very capable of changing to conform to expectations placed on him in a way that Psi is not. I think Zeta was much more immediately uncomfortable with what was happening than Psi would have been in his shoes, but it also became a much deeper part of Zetaâs identity than it would have with Psi. Psi, experiencing sexual advances from his cultists/caregivers, would have accepted them as a sort of strange extension of other kinds of praise, whereas to Zeta it was just a further demand that he felt he was being put up to satisfying against his will. Zeta is naturally skeptical and defiant, and was much more aware of feeling used or being a tool in a way that Psi kind of struggles to ever grasp. Psi doesnât think that people treat him like a tool because Psi never naturally comes to the conclusion that anyone is trying to hurt him or would intentionally treat him badly, and invariably thinks of attention as positive. If it feels good, then it simply MUST be good.Â
Seventh Temple Psi has similar struggles with boundaries that Zeta does, but goes is much less aggressive than Zeta. Zeta Seventh Temple likes to outright hunt people, but Psi Seventh Temple is just extraordinarily clingy and struggles to accept any rejection without feeling hurt/sad/insulted. He will get extremely upset/anxious about it and sulk and beg for reassurance.
I donât know if either of these outcomes are actually better than how they canonically are, but it was certainly interesting to think about. Thank you for a really meaty question, I had fun (fun?) chewing on this one.
