I'd ask 'and then what', but if it's not here, it's irrelevant. But its idea of games is pretty fucked up.
( then, eventually— )
I encountered (what had wong called it—? ) an abomination of space-time that took the form of a house a while ago. The House of Shadows. It was banished time and time again, but kept coming back.
It's honestly hard to tell if it was malicious? It got really upset when it thought I might have any kind of positive feelings toward anyone but it, especially Eliot
I've parented a toddler and this thing's emotional sophistication was below that of a three-year-old
In the scene we sort of reenacted it didn't have to hold me down, I knew I couldn't do anything to get away. We were on a boat, that didn't help, but it could find me anywhere I went
I basically sat there and was quiet until the guy died and then the monster weighed the body down with rocks and dropped it in the ocean
It was jealous. Guess that's one side of 'wanting' down pat.
( there are asides he could add in — things about khonshu, about how he missed his daughter's toddler years, and how he's missed more-or-less every other fucking year too.
remarks about how unpleasant that sounds, how marc knows what it's like to feel like you can't escape a being, an anything you're desperate to break free from. but he doesn't know how to say any of that, so—. )
Now? Sometimes. A little. In a PTSD kind of way. It's not that bad anymore
I died locking it away again
I did that thing where sometimes people go into a coma and get memories from home. I got memories of this time, with the monster, and came back to Duplicity in really bad shape. Both physically and emotionally. I had injuries, I was sleep deprived and malnourished because the monster doesn't understand that people need those things, not just want them, and I'd spent months living the type of shit you saw with that memory almost every day. It lied to me and said Eliot was dead because it thought that if I believed that I'd start loving it instead of him, but then Eliot managed to get out for a minute and tell me he was alive in there, he said something that wouldn't mean anything to anyone but us
Steven Grant was the only person who managed to make me feel safe for a long time after I got back.
[aaaaaand there it is. Quentin mentioned the whole autism thing as a bonding element, and while that's somewhat true, what's a lot truer is that while he was in the absolute fucking grips of PTSD -- hypervigilance, nightmares, flashbacks, the whole 9 -- Steven was the only person who managed to make it go away for a minute. Steven was the person who, without really understanding what he was doing or grasping the gravity of it, picked up the shattered pieces Quentin was in and started putting them back together.]
( there had been a whole other place marc had been planning on going with that question, but then quentin mentions ptsd (that's fine); then, he mentions dying (better, marc can handle conversations about dying, it's just ONE OF THOSE THINGS that happens (to him) and he comes back, it's not exactly a big deal—); but then there's the rest of it.
if asked — immediately and without any real time to think about the answer, marc would state that it's oversharing, he doesn't need to know any of that. it's the sort of THIS IS HOW I FEEL conversation that he'd avoided time and time again with marlene, the sort of openness that makes marc intrinsically, inherently uncomfortable. there are aspects he can relate to, details that he could take and carve out something from, a back-and-forth that isn't whatever their previous conversations had held the shape of.
but then he mentions steven, and he knows it's not steven in the sense of steven, but it's still—. )
I don't blame myself for latching onto whatever was making me feel okay. I don't blame him for not understanding what that...really was, to me, at that point
I know you don't like to talk about it so I'm not going to ask any questions but just, FYI, the Marc who was here before, Steven wasn't, like, a NEW development but him being out long enough to have his own whole life going on was. I actually thought Steven was...like, the original owner for awhile.
So he had no experience with any of this. It was a shitty situation for everyone
( it's A WHILE before marc's reply comes through, because — that's weird? it's a nugget of information that sits all at once as an 'oh!' but also an 'oh?'.
it sits weirdly — no, uncomfortably — because it's an awkward reminder of what life had been like with marlene in the earlyish days, the ones where none of them had spoken about what was going on with marc-slash-steven-slash-jake; where they had all pretended that each one was a disguise to be shrugged on and off at will as circumstances dictated. that steven was the one with the life worth living — the job, the girlfriend, the house, the riches, the everything. jake had his uses, his friends, his ear to the ground; and marc—
—marc was a ghost. moon knight, occasionally, and nothing more.
steven had had it all, and he'd still been terrible at it — the relationship, that is. listening to marlene, recognising when she needed hearing and support and everything else that's supposed to go into a partnership. marc had been even worse. )
You thought he was the 'original owner' or you wanted him to be?
( perhaps not a fair question given quentin has just acknowledged marc's lack of comfort in talking about any of it. a concession of sorts, then— )
Should I have not said anything? Let you go around not knowing? Would that have been better?
[It's a genuine question. He wonders if it would have been better to just shut up. He has no idea what that would have looked like, he doesn't think he'd have been able to stay away entirely. But it's hard to imagine it going worse.]
[It helps to know that the alternative was worse. That he did the best he could in the situation he was in.]
I was raised never to tell people I was autistic. Not to ever lean on it or let it...control me, I guess? I don't even know, really. But that's not realistic, it's not some other thing I can separate from me
I don't really know where I'm going with this, I guess I'll just say thanks for answering and not acting like I'm weird for needing to ask
( it's a guess, really — marc's never been all that cognizant of his moods beyond a vague acknowledgement here and there that he tends towards being SHITTY. but he's pretty sure, given the way the city is so fond of making sure they all know each other in some form, thanks to the network posts and everything else, that there'd have been a 'why didn't you fucking say' buried somewhere in there if quentin had waited.
for all else, it'd have probably been the same. )
My behavior caused a lot of issues and tension. ( and by 'my' he means 'marc'. it wasn't the DID, it wasn't jake and steven that caused problems, not really — sure, elias had tried to understand, hadn't really known how to cope or what to do, but marc had been the problem. marc had been kicked out, marc had punched his dad, marc had forced the estrangement. ) I'm used to questions that amount to 'what are you doing, Marc?'
And I'd be a hypocrite if I called anyone else weird.
( and sure, he is a hypocrite, but generally not about that. )
[Quentin isn't one hundred percent sure whether to take that as a direct response, but yeah, he can see how something like DID would actually feel like a thing separate from you, a thing you should (or at least would like to) be able to just ignore. Not necessarily the same as a pervasive difference in how the brain fundamentally works.]
You don't have to call me weird out loud to be obviously thinking it. Sometimes you don't even really have to be thinking it to make me feel it
That's bullying. That's not 'being weird'. You can be weird and not experience bullying. You can be a normal kid and be bullied just because some other kid doesn't like your haircut or your name or the street you grow up on. Or because you're from a different ethnic background, or because his dad doesn't like your dad.
Weird's got nothing to do with it. You can either accept you're weird or different or however you want to call it, and turn it into something advantageous for you, or you can believe it's the weakness that some other insecure dick is trying to make it out to be.
[This all still boils down to "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent," which just...isn't true. At least not in Quentin's experience. And yeah, it's true that you can get bullied for anything, but that does kind of ignore the way you get bullied when you're the weird kid. The way people who don't know each other, people in totally different schools, will bully you in the same ways for the same reasons. It really does have this uncanny ability to convince you it's all your fault.]
[No need to get that deep, though. Jesus.]
Well, I'm just not that sanguine about my brain being broken. Sorry.
Not just from autism, to be clear. From depression and anxiety. Like "72 hour hold" depression and anxiety
[The memory doesn't have anything to do with why he's disclosing this now, but he does remember how the old Marc had picked up immediately on what "hospitalized for depression" means, and Steven hadn't. He's curious to see what happens here.]
( it's not, strictly speaking, that marc's lacking in empathy. it's more that his experiences with being bullied had the response of him pushing back, quite explicitly, with violence. that was how he'd chosen to deal with it all, much to his father's disappointment. teenage years full of fights, detentions, suspensions. and then it'd been that he'd never stopped, that had been his response to anything, everything, long before the marines, long before becoming a mercenary, long before vigilantism.
and though, now, it's not a response he's necessarily proud of, it's still the one that gets the better of him. it's still part of the reason why he talks about "turning weaknesses into strengths", about deciding what to do with what's been done to him, about understanding how he's been broken and using that to "destroy his enemies". it's not that he's unsympathetic, it's that he has no other frame of reference.
(and he wouldn't want it, because without everything he's chosen to believe, he'd have nothing—.)
he gets what quentin's referring to, of course he does. he's spent enough time in and out of psychiatric care that he'd have to be deliberately ignoring the point to not get.
the question is though, how does he reply to that? it's the sort of thing that's a bit beyond an 'I'm sorry' or a 'that sucks'. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
I'd ask 'and then what', but if it's not here, it's irrelevant.
But its idea of games is pretty fucked up.
( then, eventually— )
I encountered ( what had wong called it—? ) an abomination of space-time that took the form of a house a while ago. The House of Shadows. It was banished time and time again, but kept coming back.
It ate people.
Turns out it just wanted to be an actual house.
Non-human entities can be weird to comprehend.
no subject
It's honestly hard to tell if it was malicious? It got really upset when it thought I might have any kind of positive feelings toward anyone but it, especially Eliot
I've parented a toddler and this thing's emotional sophistication was below that of a three-year-old
In the scene we sort of reenacted it didn't have to hold me down, I knew I couldn't do anything to get away. We were on a boat, that didn't help, but it could find me anywhere I went
I basically sat there and was quiet until the guy died and then the monster weighed the body down with rocks and dropped it in the ocean
no subject
Guess that's one side of 'wanting' down pat.
( there are asides he could add in — things about khonshu, about how he missed his daughter's toddler years, and how he's missed more-or-less every other fucking year too.
remarks about how unpleasant that sounds, how marc knows what it's like to feel like you can't escape a being, an anything you're desperate to break free from. but he doesn't know how to say any of that, so—. )
Does it weigh on you?
no subject
I died locking it away again
I did that thing where sometimes people go into a coma and get memories from home. I got memories of this time, with the monster, and came back to Duplicity in really bad shape. Both physically and emotionally. I had injuries, I was sleep deprived and malnourished because the monster doesn't understand that people need those things, not just want them, and I'd spent months living the type of shit you saw with that memory almost every day. It lied to me and said Eliot was dead because it thought that if I believed that I'd start loving it instead of him, but then Eliot managed to get out for a minute and tell me he was alive in there, he said something that wouldn't mean anything to anyone but us
Steven Grant was the only person who managed to make me feel safe for a long time after I got back.
[aaaaaand there it is. Quentin mentioned the whole autism thing as a bonding element, and while that's somewhat true, what's a lot truer is that while he was in the absolute fucking grips of PTSD -- hypervigilance, nightmares, flashbacks, the whole 9 -- Steven was the only person who managed to make it go away for a minute. Steven was the person who, without really understanding what he was doing or grasping the gravity of it, picked up the shattered pieces Quentin was in and started putting them back together.]
no subject
if asked — immediately and without any real time to think about the answer, marc would state that it's oversharing, he doesn't need to know any of that. it's the sort of THIS IS HOW I FEEL conversation that he'd avoided time and time again with marlene, the sort of openness that makes marc intrinsically, inherently uncomfortable. there are aspects he can relate to, details that he could take and carve out something from, a back-and-forth that isn't whatever their previous conversations had held the shape of.
but then he mentions steven, and he knows it's not steven in the sense of steven, but it's still—. )
I'm sorry.
no subject
I don't blame myself for latching onto whatever was making me feel okay. I don't blame him for not understanding what that...really was, to me, at that point
I know you don't like to talk about it so I'm not going to ask any questions but just, FYI, the Marc who was here before, Steven wasn't, like, a NEW development but him being out long enough to have his own whole life going on was. I actually thought Steven was...like, the original owner for awhile.
So he had no experience with any of this. It was a shitty situation for everyone
no subject
it sits weirdly — no, uncomfortably — because it's an awkward reminder of what life had been like with marlene in the earlyish days, the ones where none of them had spoken about what was going on with marc-slash-steven-slash-jake; where they had all pretended that each one was a disguise to be shrugged on and off at will as circumstances dictated. that steven was the one with the life worth living — the job, the girlfriend, the house, the riches, the everything. jake had his uses, his friends, his ear to the ground; and marc—
—marc was a ghost. moon knight, occasionally, and nothing more.
steven had had it all, and he'd still been terrible at it — the relationship, that is. listening to marlene, recognising when she needed hearing and support and everything else that's supposed to go into a partnership. marc had been even worse. )
You thought he was the 'original owner' or you wanted him to be?
( perhaps not a fair question given quentin has just acknowledged marc's lack of comfort in talking about any of it. a concession of sorts, then— )
Or did Marc?
no subject
Marc wanted to protect him.
1/2
let him just ignore that last part of the reply. )
no subject
( marc: reading what he wants to read into that response. )
no subject
The other one was basically an awkward nerd like me. Also he was British
no subject
Don't undersell yourself.
no subject
I'm sorry I handled telling you poorly. I'm sorry I made it weird
no subject
Don't.
I'd never have taken it well.
no subject
[It's a genuine question. He wonders if it would have been better to just shut up. He has no idea what that would have looked like, he doesn't think he'd have been able to stay away entirely. But it's hard to imagine it going worse.]
no subject
( sent first. an easy, quick response because it's the truth. marc appreciated knowing, but that doesn't mean he liked it. )
I have a temper.
I'm unreasonable.
That's who I am.
Like I said: I'd never have taken it well.
But I'd have taken it less well if I'd found out later.
no subject
[It helps to know that the alternative was worse. That he did the best he could in the situation he was in.]
I was raised never to tell people I was autistic. Not to ever lean on it or let it...control me, I guess? I don't even know, really. But that's not realistic, it's not some other thing I can separate from me
I don't really know where I'm going with this, I guess I'll just say thanks for answering and not acting like I'm weird for needing to ask
no subject
for all else, it'd have probably been the same. )
My behavior caused a lot of issues and tension. ( and by 'my' he means 'marc'. it wasn't the DID, it wasn't jake and steven that caused problems, not really — sure, elias had tried to understand, hadn't really known how to cope or what to do, but marc had been the problem. marc had been kicked out, marc had punched his dad, marc had forced the estrangement. ) I'm used to questions that amount to 'what are you doing, Marc?'
And I'd be a hypocrite if I called anyone else weird.
( and sure, he is a hypocrite, but generally not about that. )
no subject
You don't have to call me weird out loud to be obviously thinking it. Sometimes you don't even really have to be thinking it to make me feel it
no subject
no subject
no subject
Weird's got nothing to do with it.
You can either accept you're weird or different or however you want to call it, and turn it into something advantageous for you, or you can believe it's the weakness that some other insecure dick is trying to make it out to be.
cw: oblique references to suicide
[No need to get that deep, though. Jesus.]
Well, I'm just not that sanguine about my brain being broken. Sorry.
Not just from autism, to be clear. From depression and anxiety. Like "72 hour hold" depression and anxiety
[The memory doesn't have anything to do with why he's disclosing this now, but he does remember how the old Marc had picked up immediately on what "hospitalized for depression" means, and Steven hadn't. He's curious to see what happens here.]
1/2 ( cw: mostly vague references to DID, anti-semitism, institutionalisation )
and though, now, it's not a response he's necessarily proud of, it's still the one that gets the better of him. it's still part of the reason why he talks about "turning weaknesses into strengths", about deciding what to do with what's been done to him, about understanding how he's been broken and using that to "destroy his enemies". it's not that he's unsympathetic, it's that he has no other frame of reference.
(and he wouldn't want it, because without everything he's chosen to believe, he'd have nothing—.)
he gets what quentin's referring to, of course he does. he's spent enough time in and out of psychiatric care that he'd have to be deliberately ignoring the point to not get.
the question is though, how does he reply to that? it's the sort of thing that's a bit beyond an 'I'm sorry' or a 'that sucks'. )
no subject
cw: less oblique references/discussion of suicide, low self-esteem/negative self-talk
cw: second verse same as the first, talk of death + dying, passive suicidalism
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)