Ok, I have a question for you, and you don't have to answer if you don't want not right now, so there's no need to rush. Is there going to be another torture nexus for pomni in Healing Ragdoll AU, like torture pomni, by dealing with guilt and/or remorse instead of fear and traumatizing adventures? Like I said, there's no need to rush. Your story You'll be my warmth, I'll be your safety bonus chapter got me think about of that question. Just curious.
So I've sat on this one for a bit while figuring out where the AU is going, particularly with Jax's story and how it feeds in to Pomni's, but tldr: Pomni's going to have serious issues with guilt down the line
Spoilers for future stories of Healing Rag Doll:
During Healing Rag Doll's version of They All Get Guns Pomni and Jax end up the last two combatants (this time on opposing teams rather than teammates) and Pomni tries to take this as an opportunity to have a heart to heart with Jax to try and save their friendship. During their conversation Pomni brings up the fact that Jax kissed her, and that if he truly didn't care about her why would he have done that. This is when Jax finally reveals that he was using his and Pomni's friendship to hurt Ragatha, that the only reason he kissed her was because he saw Ragatha watching them, and that the only reason he approached Pomni in the first place was to make Ragatha jealous.
As Pomni tries to deny all of this he tells her that after Ragatha broke her promise he just wanted hurt her as much as he possibly could, and that Pomni being Little Miss Savior wanting to be friends with both of them and trying to help mend Jax and Ragatha's friendship just made it really easy (someone actually commented on chapter 8 calling Pomni out on this, and good on them for spotting that).
Pomni still belives that Jax does care about her and wants to be friends with her (he does, he'll just never admit it), but feeling hurt and betrayed at him using her to hurt the love of her life like this, Pomni finally gives up and lets Jax have his way.
When Pomni thinks back to all her time spent with Jax and how much she let him get away with, and how unwilling she was to do anything until the situation was at its worst, she starts to feel immense guilt over not doing anything sooner. From then on she resolves to never let Jax hurt Ragatha again and for a long while actually starts to become overprotective, doing whatever she can to ensure Ragatha is never in the same space as Jax alone, and would even be quick to violence if Jax indicates he's gonna do something to hurt her.
Mind you, Pomni still wishes she could be close to Jax again, and that they could be friends. But she's incredibly bitter about being used, and is prioritizing Ragatha's safety above everything.
And then comes the day Jax finally abstracts.
And now suddenly Pomni is reeling with even more guilt for being unable to help Jax heal, and even partly believes she may have contributed to him killing himself. So for awhile Pomni's stuck with a lot of conflicting, if not contradictory, feelings about how she failed Jax, but that she also needed to protect Ragatha from Jax, but at the same she knew how much Jax was lonely and suffering on the inside but was too stubborn to open up and if she had just maybe handled the situation with a more level head and had been more empathetic to him and yadda yadda yadda.
She's gonna be in a very messy and bleak headspace for awhile. It's gonna take a lot of support from Ragatha and the others, as well as needing to take the time to understand that it's not her job to save someone as abusive and self destructive as Jax for her to start healing from and letting go of all this shame and regret.
Pomni does the best she can with the cards that she's constantly being dealt, and even when it's not enough, all she can do is pick herself up and keep trying. There is no guilt in being unable to save someone who doesn't want to be saved, and at the end of the day she still loves and cherishes the people she has with all her heart.
Imagining Pomni getting jealous of everyone getting so much physical affection from Ragatha when she has to ask for it most of the time. She nearly kills Evil Pomni when she sees her doppelganger get a hug and head pat without saying anything. When Ragatha asks about it, Pomni gets mad and yells at Ragatha, which causes its own issues.
so someone gave me a suggestion a while ago of Annabelle, post Ragatha abstraction, just kinda being locked in a hell of herself. She can’t talk to anyone, because she would have to hear her voice. She can’t let herself cry for the same reason. She can’t even look at or hold herself.
She just has to find a corner to quietly exist in, because every way to deal with this would all be a reminder of her
I’m not going to kill off Rags in the story (spoilers), but goddamn that is some brutal suffering that fits with her whole “nothing is mine” narrative. And I keep thinking about it
The section in DigiChiaki's video about how all of the important aspects of other character's backstories (Ragatha's mother, Zooble's gender identity, Kinger's dead wife, etc.) are just foreshadowing for Jax and his issues...I'm gonna be sick...
Tadc fans are always like “omg I hate the toxic side of the fandom!!” And the toxic side in question is like “I don’t think the writing in this part was that good also you shouldn’t be racist.”
