#baeradalor

[dismanibus]

What kind of landscapes or views do you find most appealing? The gardens, the sea, the Colosseum maybe?

I seem particularly drawn to the sea. I find it calming. Which seems to be common enough, but I never knew that I felt this way before. It's only become apparent the past... I'd even say half a year. Maybe it started from actually seeing the sea, but maybe not. It has a lot to it - there's the side of opportunity and adventure, which I'm sure has always spoken to my people. Finding new land and challenge. But I'm far from immune to the other side, which feels prevalent in the modern era in particular, that... feeling of solitude and insignificance, which is a quiet of its own kind, an abandon that feels particularly good to me after having so much on my shoulders for so long. It seems like an opportunity to believe in my own smallness, like an impossible to ignore reminder that while I certainly do feel as if everything depends on me, I am nothing in the big picture of everything. No matter how big of a name I might make for myself - or might have - or even could have, it doesn't mean anything. Only select few people will ever hear of me. In their absence, no one will. The sea doesn't hear nor does it care. It's been here for far longer than I have, far longer than any of the mountains that I've seen my whole life have been there, too. It's constant and uncaring. I appreciate that.

I have difficulty convincing myself that I'm not the centre of the universe and I mean this in the least desirable way possible.

The Colosseum. For the grandeur of it. (Is that how you spell that word I'm not looking it up. Using capital letters doesn't translate to me spellchecking.)

I actually hate the picture of isolation Geta's painting above. I don't like it. I hate the silence and I hate that exact feeling of smallness that he claims to be craving, I hate all of it. I want to be surrounded by people and I want to feel the centre of everything and I don't want that illusion shattered by some big reminder of my cosmic insignificance or whatever. I hate all of that. Fuck that.

The modern Colosseum is a bit of a downer, too, but picture this: heyday and the games are on, it's summertime, some big reason like a war won or a bountiful harvest because the gods are favourable, any huge scale event rather than just mandatory appeasement of (me, and) the people. The dust isn't swirling because it's windy, it's swirling because 50 000 people are stomping their feet and shouting, the combined tremor shakes the whole thing up, the dust never settles. There's the smell of food in the air mixing with horse manure and sweat and perfume and mud and blood, you have all the important people in their own little containers, all the common folk and the less important important people over the rest of the seats. There's hunts of whatever kind of creature you've never seen or always wanted to see more of, with spoils being thrown back and forth between the arena and the audience. There's elephants having lunch like they're people, picking up cups with their trunks. There's sweaty dudes going three to three and one to one at it on the sands with whatever people invented to kill each other with and they're trained it's all like a dance. And the half-time of just killing people for the sake of killing people. You've never seen it like that. It's funny how people deny it's "human" but it's the most human thing in history - if it wasn't who we are we wouldn't keep fucking doing it. We wouldn't have websites dedicated to trading videos of people dying. We wouldn't have dark web murder rooms. We wouldn't have mass executions and genocide. It's just what we do as people. And the thing about the Colosseum and any proper arena showing executions mass scale is that we don't sugarcoat that to act like we're better than that. It's entertainment. I love entertainment. And it's fucking funny, too. Dress a guy up as Icarus and make him fall to his death. That's, I'm sorry, that's hilarious. Because it isn't. Because it is. Life is meaningless and I think that's probably my biggest difference with the above - Geta forgets this and I don't. Nobody and nothing means anything in the bigger picture. The only thing that matters is if you survive it or not. Watching others die is a celebration of your own survival.

Would you consider acting civilised? Even just for the appearances.

Again, nothing more civilised than this. But now that you mention that, also nothing more uncivilised. Cats play with their food, too. All kinds of shit is out there hunting solely for the joy of killing other shit. And again you and everyone pretending that isn't the case, that weasels and mice are natural best friends, and we close our eyes to where the meat on our plates comes from. Is denial civilisation? I don't partake.

To the contrary, I know that you partake in a lot of denial. And spend a not insignificant amount of your life trying to dull your senses so you can forget about everything you knew and saw before that moment, so you can feel - (things that I'm apparently not allowed to spell out so openly).

Forget the above. He does like the noise and the crowd, though. All the way until he very much doesn't anymore. His noise hangovers can last for days; he won't tolerate light, or touch, or anything else for as long as it takes to shed the celebrations.

I don't deal with it much better myself.

[dismanibus]

Do you feel comfortable in your own bodies? Does that change when you're being perceived by someone else compared to when youre on your own?

On another note, does criticism affect you more when it targets your physical appearance or abilities, or your intellectual abilities?

I guess that depends largely on what body we're talking about. in our current situation I'm not sure either of us is really comfortable with it but we mostly don't think of it because it's pointless to. it's not how we see ourselves anyway.

in our own, the way we see ourselves and the way we existed before is... I guess it'd be complicated for anyone? but there's good things and bad things for us both about it. for me I've never really been happy about how I look or have been because being sickly most of my childhood left me weaker in ways that are really obvious to other people. and for whatever reason that doesn't really sit well with me. I don't like how all my life I've been underestimated because of either how I look or how my mind works and treated in a way that honestly sometimes feels like people have seen me less than human, more like an animal, than their peers. like... I've never been seen as a full man. nobody has ever thought of me as equal to my twin or my father. never. not once. and I don't know how that affected me or anything but it definitely didn't make me happy about how I am. but on the other hand I also feel like I've done much better in my own skin than Geta ever managed which is funny considering that Geta's body has never really been an issue for him in any obvious way? but that's his problem to talk about.

for me I don't know if there's ever been a clear separation between physical and mental ability. people just largely underestimated both and then the ones who didn't outright judge me by them tended to just view those things from a different angle that was equally bad, like, instead of pathetic I was maybe cute to them. or instead of stupid I was "simple". either way I fucking hated it and I didn't like any of that happening. I really don't like it when people get into all of that. even if they pretend it's positive it usually isn't or it's just. what's the word. infantilising.

on my own I never really thought about how I look or anything like that. it bothered me mostly when I wanted to do something I couldn't, like I spent months trying to figure out how to scale a wall that other youth had no issue getting up. and I'd still land rough from it so that it knocked the breath out of me every time for ages, or I'd fall off my feet coming down and scrape my knees. I've never really felt, I guess sufficient for any of that stuff. like I'm always fighting some obstacle other people don't have to deal with or even think about. and growing up with Geta made that worse in a lot of ways because Geta would always forget the things that he can do but I can't and act all confused if I couldn't follow him and be like "why" well why the fuck do you think

I have always been very good at forgetting myself - including how I look, and how my body is - which is a strange contrast to how I have never managed to be at ease with any of it. In many ways I've felt that my body is alien to me, a poorly-designed vessel that I'm trying to control from somewhere very far away from it. I was always clumsy from an early age, but in comparison to my twin, I feel that people overlooked it and I came out looking relatively normal when I really wasn't. I've always felt that in some ways my limbs are too long and I have no real idea how to move them in unison, or what to do with the rest of myself when I'm moving them. I'd imagine that makes no sense to someone else, but I feel like... a pile of parts that are strung together, rather than one complete body.

And I think that I've also spent a lot of time and energy trying to hide that about myself, so that people would not notice that I might even be a worse disaster than my brother is, when it comes to movement. Caracalla has a gift of being able to disregard his clumsiness and pick himself up without a second thought, but I've always felt that if I fall, I cannot figure out how to get back up. So I must simply never fall, and as a result, I'm sure my movements became stilted and I was moving myself "wrong" in every sense: that I did the things that other people don't think about with too much thought, and perfected them in a fashion that to others began to look off because they were perfected, when no one else paid any attention to how they did those things. Caracalla would move like water, and sometimes his movements would dislodge a rock that fell and the water splashed everywhere in his wake, but I was more like... a newborn horse with bent legs. Something that you can tell instantly is not right in its movements, and cannot learn to do better, because the problem is innate.

Outwardly of course, like my brother already said, there's never been anything wrong with me. My legs are not bent, or nearly as long as I perceive them to be, and my arms and hands are fine, and my neck, and my spine for all I know. I should more or less look the way a body should look - and Calla is making sure to sneer at this description and call me arrogant for downplaying it, but I don't see myself that way, even though I know that to many, my body looks the way an artist might depict the ideal body. I can't see it, because all I see is these misaligned parts that don't fit together well. All I think of is, how am I supposed to move in this? To look natural? How straight is too straight when you're sitting or standing, how do you make an expression that fits the reaction others expect you to have, how do you make people feel - any of the ways you might want them to feel; comfortable, threatened, content, in awe? How do I stop myself from feeling like I'm always an inch away from some embarrassment - a fall, a hiccup, saliva sent down in the lungs with a drag of air, a flail of hand that hits someone or something I wasn't aware was to my side, or so close by?

I mostly chose not to move, so that left me... that intelligence for people to note and comment on. I've been called slow and unintelligent. It hurts, maybe because I know it's true, and I don't know how to conceal that. I might be able to stop people from noticing an awkward movement by not making one to begin with, but people's minds are always working, and they expect you to be as fast, to have a comeback ready for anything, to know things about everything they speak to you about, and they sneer when you don't. There's no hiding that, that you don't know or that you can't follow.

I don't know. I must hate what I can't hide much more than what I could, so I would say that I despise the comments on my intelligence much more than on my body. After all, most people did seem to think that I had a decent body, even if I did not agree, and therefore did not so much comment on that. They wouldn't have known how I felt about it: that all is nothing to them. And most people are insecure in some way about their bodies, but I don't think my issues were that. I think there's something else wrong with it, or me, that I don't really have the words for. But that was between me and the gods, not for the whole world to see. I suppose being pretty is a blessing.

Alone, it all mattered less, but I think I've only ever felt truly content or carefree with my twin. Calla has a way of making me forget about all of that. He moves too quickly for me to have time to mind my own clumsiness, and the way we communicate with each other has never lacked in fluency or speed or expression. I've never had to worry about those things with him. Or if I've had, it's been much less than with others, anyway.