Hey, hi, I'm Persis, and this is my blog. Occasionally my headmate Celelune and a few others post here as well. She's kind of a chuuni so if you see chuuniposting. Well. Yeah, probably her. Anyway, I talk about system stuff and medical research and maybe eventually will post some art and poetry along those themes when I'm not busy with my current large scale art projects that will probably take up most of my time for the rest of the year.
we all got that one friend who keeps saying "maybe if i do something different this time i can defy fate and find a way to survive" 😭😭🤣🤣🤣🤣 oooookay buddy you keep doing that im sure itll work out this time lol. see you next loop 😂
There's nothing like having zero financial or bodily autonomy and being on the verge of homelessness that makes me want to get back to writing my book... 😃 nothing like 3 severely abused trans teens trying to fight systemic oppression
i would like a hug…. JUST KIDDING! i would like TWO hugs. (suddenly becomes cold and standoffish) i don’t need anything or anyone and i don’t want to talk about it.
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
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I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
Realizing more of that friend-loss related meltdown was more L feelings than I realized at the time. Maybe it's because I've never been someone's *person* like he has, but the concept of friends hurting my feelings in mundane ways and not having time for me and not prioritizing me feels... normal? I think this, well, is normal for most people. It's not like you meet your platonic soulmate everyday. Also not everyone is gonna be the person you have a weird shitty-but-irreplaceable codependent queerplatonic relationship with...? Maybe I want more and different, but the mes of the past wished as hard they could for the best they could imagine and I think my best friends are the result of that? I wished for a friend who was more 'selfish' (highly specific and personal meaning of the word) and I got that. I wished for friends who are extremely passionate and driven and who are actively pursuing their goals in life (un/Fortunately results in very Employed friends lmao). So now I have 'selfish' friends who care very much about their friends and goals instead of just spending their energy on people pleasing randos/losers like the best friend I had before. They also for almost everything have responded pretty well to criticism and made changes where they can (particularly 2/3, kinda harder with the other one cuz it's hard getting on each other's thinking maps). Because of them being able to be selfish in how they interact it's given me a lot of space to practice being selfish and taking up space and also sometimes resolving conflict successfully. I think, however, even if i don't particularly care about the whole being someone's priority thing, I do feel the same hole the other alters seem to feel, even if I moreso feel the shape of what's missing than the ache of the wound.... We just really don't have the level of social support that a person, especially a disabled person, needs to live a decent life. And of course some of us are gonna freak the fuck out sometimes over social/emotional needs when we aren't getting even basic needs met. We're being forced into sleep deprivation, 10/10 pain, and chronic starvation (with bouts of more severe starvation), + being screamed at for hours regularly and almost killed sometimes. Kind of makes everything else feel similarly dire. Idk. What can ya do 🤷♂️
After years of the 'main' alters getting rebuilt via the process of mass fragment cannibalisation L is finally more than just a husk built to survive 15/10 pain and gets to experience actual emotions again too. Which is awesome bc he gets to be more of a person but also. Unintended consequence of him switching in after I spent all day bawling my eyes out and taking on the emotional/physical hangover effect of that. Sorry man...
I do not judge you on purely moral or ethical grounds I judge you by how putrid the content of your soul is. If your aura is wrong you are evil to me. If you have the wrong arua you are worth less than a speck of dirt. If your aura is dark you will go to hell and you will deserve it. DNI individuals with malevolent auras.
