parodeity | subnautica ic inbox 2.0;

Okay. Okay, just...give me a minute.

[ to deal with having it said and having to hear it and name it and adjust. it's not the same sense of sick relief when rose had said abuse because at least that word he'd known was coming. dave's not sure specifically what he feels except "too much" and after a second he scoots forward on the branch and drops his head onto dirk's shoulder so he can just not for a second, blocking his range of vision.

hang on. ]

Are you actually worried about a Dave's brother sweepstakes? Me picking a different splinter of you. Or was that a misrepresentation?

[ he needs a timestall to regroup and he's been wondering for a while but hadn't asked. ]

[Dirk's surprised by the movement but he doesn't stop it and he doesn't object to Dave needing a minute. Dave says he needs time and Dirk will give it to him, realizing that he made a mistake, that he let his own intellectualizing habits lose him a strong vision of present emotion. But Dave asked for time, and that's better than Dave totally running away.

Dirk lets him rest, and he turns his hand over in his lap, palm up. Dave can take it if he wants or ignore it if he can't deal with that right now either.

Oh it's question time for Dirk now. Uh.]

I'm... not sure what you're referring to. I'm not denying I have a bit of a thing about my splinters and which one of us is most real or the best one, that's definitely a thing. But I don't know what possible misrepresentation you're talking about.

Your dream shades. Second message was more or less "hey pick me blah blah blah". Also "blah blah blah am I less real blah his personality blah".

[ a highly accurate transcription of what he remembers reading? yes.

he's aware of dirk's hand even if he doesn't see it but leaves it be for a second. ]

I figured you were probably really worried about it since it was a dream projection you were running base on your own mental...whatever, uh, subconscious? But you're a weird case because of how you operate. [ splinters. ] So I wasn't sure if it was a thing or not.

[The second Dave says it's his shades, there's a small groan that Dave can just. Feel right there because goddammit.]

It's awesome how the auto-responder can make things annoying for me even when I'm just projecting him. I am never going to stop being haunted by that mistake.

[Dave asked a question but Dirk just needs to GRIPE about the damned auto-responder for a second. It always drives him up the wall. But. Okay. Focus. Question.]

The way I project him is always uncontrolled. Even when I get a handle on Squarewave and Sawtooth, he's the one element that I can't predict or manage. That was always the case with him and it looks like my subconscious can't imagine him as anything else. When I project him, I create him as I knew him, which means jealous, intrusive, petty, superior, and constantly trying to sabotage my relationships by thinking he knows what's best for them.

The thing is, though, that in the end he is me. Yes, he's a projection here, but even the real AR is my own personality at age thirteen, amplified by the highest processing speed I could get my hands on. It isn't necessarily that I feel everything that he does and he chooses to express it. But an iteration of me can and does think like that because I also have that potential in me.

[Blah blah blah, theory. Dirk knows he's dodging the question. He knows he needs to get to it.]

I'm—not worried about you picking him. As an entity, he doesn't even really exist the same way anymore. Dream Ghost Dirk is restricted to being in Jake's head, my dream self is part of me now, and Brobot ripped out its heart and blew up. So I'm covered against you choosing most other splinters of me anyway.

But... yeah. I'm worried about losing the Dave's brother sweepstakes. I'm worried that your Bro is the real me, what I truly, most essentially am across all splinters. [His eyes move away. His voice gets quieter.] And.. it scares me that maybe for you, 'brother' will always mean him.

I give him a 1 out of 10.

[ which him, dave. bro? ar? someone else entirely? ]

For sabotage efforts. [ ar, then, apparently. he's not quite mumbling into dirk's shoulder because mostly it's his forehead resting there as he slumps and tries to process the ptsd thing rapidfire. this topic, at least, was chosen solely because it didn't worry dave; his voice is even and he doesn't seem too surprised by the answer, although the last part he hadn't expected. ] Either that was softball, he didn't get time to warm up, or you were holdin' yourself back.

[ only one line had really hurt, and even that he'd been prepared to argue without any real ire raised. ]

I worry about that bein' true of yours, so it ain't like I don't get that. But I think you've forgotten somethin' here. "Brother" never meant anything good before I met you. The dictionary definition is entirely different now. It's a new edition.

Edited 2017-01-13 04:38 (UTC)

He'd be microprocessor-broken to hear you say that.

[He probably would not. Oh well. Dirk measures out his breathing to restore it to what it should be, and he decides to close his eyes.]

That... is a thing I know. You said that about our last name too. But it worries me that I'm going to look more like him one day. It worries... It scares me that I might never get out of the shadow of that last dictionary.

[ again, it resonates. dave's worried forever that he won't be able to hold onto dirk because he's not the right dave and his counterpart doesn't suck and dead isn't dead in their universe. or there's every single doomed dave, and davesprite - he's pretty sure most of him have not been taken out of the running. it's weirder to consider that dirk feels bro is his biggest competition, but he...gets it.

kind of. ]

You're goin' to, yeah. And when it happens there might be a day, or days, when I'm not thinkin' about it and I move the wrong way. [ he's jumped because of dirk before, and frozen up. it wasn't uncommon during the getting-used-to-flashstepping montage that got undone thanks to This Entire Month, And Also Last Month.

dave flips his own hand up and just rests it on his knee, near dirk's. ]

Does it...worry you less if when that happens we just...give me a minute and then discuss it. That's enough to remind both of us you are wrong, I think. About who you truly essentially are and whatever poetic rambling you want to insert here.

You and your sister both need to stop calling me out.

[People pleaser, poetic rambling. Why this trashtalking.

Dirk doesn't move his hand over Dave's, but he extends his fingers. Not quite touching, but a little bit of a reach. Slowly, so Dave can pull away if he needs.]

That... would probably help a lot. [There's a moment, and then another breath, something that very few people would understand as pained laughter.] It's pretty stupid. I keep hoping that if we stick together, and if I grow into it slowly, them maybe eventually you'll be able to see me first and him only second.

Stop bein' so easy to call out, then.

[ dave doesn't move his hand while dirk does his reach thing, doesn't pull back. he does turn his head so he's looking at dirk's profile rather than the fabric of his shirt, though. ]

I'd...like it if you were, but even if that is the case - you don't look as much like him now as you will do. You're already you first. But sometimes - I'm off guard? It's not always when I'm off guard. It's just...genetics. How many tics do I have that you've seen in interviews, Dirk? Does it happen to you, too? Just movement, and it doesn't always register but then sometimes it does. You don't really share it most of the time, just - sometimes, once in a blue moon.

[ ... ]

Anyway. I meant to tell you that I'm terminally not interested in any of your splinters. Sorry. You can set up a Sweepstakes for someone else. Rose?

It's completely bizarre to me that you both have the same accent. People in Houston did not talk like that.

[That's answering the question in part, but not really. He continues.]

It's easier for me, I think, because I never really knew mu Bro. The inability to answer a question and a certain manner of holding a smile, yeah, it's familiar. At the same time, he was always an empty space that I filled in with my imagination. Not a lot disorients me because there isn't anything there to throw me off. Your physical presence most of all.

[He doesn't bridge that last movement. He'll stay and rest and wait a little more.]

Rose could easily go for AR over me. He's a pretty fascinating objective of psychological study.

[a pause]

Thanks.

Sure they did. I'm a person from Houston. I admittedly didn't fuckin' talk to people on the regular irl, but I still count, don't I? As to Rose: yeah. You might lose those sweepstakes if she could go toe to toe with someone who deliberately likes to shove fishbowls off of cabinets. I'd place my money on Rose winnin' that, by the way.

[ dave stretches his own fingers but still doesn't close the gap. ]

I'm scared of causin' you specifically trouble because while the whys of Bro's shit don't and didn't matter, they suddenly kinda do if the random hate was caused by anythin' I did, and I do it to you.

Fuck. He was a cat. He was my thirteen year old self as a supercomputer, as a cat.

[That is so stupid why is this so true.

A pause.]

Do you. Want to see a thing I said to Rose? Basically about that.

Do you. Want me to see a thing you said to Rose?

[ THIS IS SO STUPID ]

And yeah, you'd lose to a cat you in a heartbeat with Lalonde. Sorry, dude.

Tragic. I'll just have to resign myself to that.

[There's a pause. And then Dirk sends Dave this, starting from Yes, I see what you mean. A Brobot certainly sounds, well, Bro-ish. and ending with you're welcome..]

I made the mistake, or wise decision, of opening myself up to her pspychoanalytic lens.

[ it's only fair since dirk has read - two? three? did he read the komaeda one in full? - conversations of dave's today but it requires dave to shift a little, drawing his communicator up while still not moving his hand from his knee or really leaning away from dirk.

dirk's said before he'd find it impossible to hate dave. even so, dave has always found it more a miracle he doesn't. ]

I'm pretty sure you'd get a lot of arguments on the me bein' charmin' thing if you asked around.

I didn't say you were exclusively charmin', just that you must've been a damn cute baby.

[So there. Dirk should probably find three conversations to give Dave, but he has quite a number of his in person. He glances over at him.]

I wanted to share because... we're scared of the same thing, but we assume opposite causes. You worry there's something about you that could make me hate you. I'm pretty sure there is something fundamentally wrong with me if I'm capable of failing to love you when the universe hands you to me on a horse-corpse platter.

"He can pretty much still do it now." You literally said I was charmin' and it's current?

[ LITERALLY YOU SENT IT TO DAVE IN TEXT, DIRK, WHAT NOW? even though dave is like "haha sounds fake though". ]

The only thing fundamentally wrong with you is your fashion sense.

Okay, I'm going to need you to delete that off of your communicator.

[you BRAT says dirk, constantly adoring and loving dave. pathetic.]

My fashion sense is awesome.

It's mine, you gave it to me, even if it is wrong.

[ dave says, like he can't actually turn on charm when he tries. USUALLY WITH KIDS OR HOMURA THESE DAYS. ]

So, you think I have PTSD. [ no. try again. a breath. he curls his fingertips up just enough to brush dirk's. ] I...have PTSD.

[ saying either phrase is impossible to do in the annoyingly joking tone he'd been using earlier about the charm thing, but even so dave shoots for light and unbothered. it'd pass if anyone else were the judge, but it sounds slightly manic to anyone who actually knows what he sounds like when - well, when he sounds slightly manic. the list is pretty damn small. ]

[There it comes. Dirk hears the breath and feels the touch. He measures his own breath, stays calm. Tries to give that calm back to Dave as best as he can.]

I can't diagnose it or anything. I'm not a psychiatric professional, and I have a ten minute dissertation on mental health labelling and 21st century pathologizing that I'm not going to dump on you right now, unless you want to hear it, in which case we can talk about the history of the DSM and how homosexuality was considered a mental disorder by it up until the 1970s.

[pause. so much for calm.]

Sorry. Does... it help to think about it like that? To put a name to the things you sometimes experience and feel.

I don't know.

[ it's not a dodge. or it isn't meant to be one. ]

I never used to try to name things. Even the whole...not 100% straight thing I didn't really try to, like, label for a long time. Let alone anything bigger. I'll let you know when I figure it out? [ ... ] What's the dissertation's main points?

Pathologizing is a way of containing and controlling deviations from the norm, which means that anything that seems like a problem to a contemporary society is considered either crime or disease. That's how homosexuality ended up in there. It was deemed harmful to society and the person who had it. In this case, and in others, it is a way to identify, contain, and then punish those who don't obey social conventions.

Diagnoses and labels from the DSM control and regulate what is or isn't worthy of treatment. There was, for example, a major controversy about gender dysphoria being in the DSM because it indicates that gender non-conformity is illness, but takin' it out meant that insurance companies wouldn't relegate funding to people who wanted hormone therapy or reassignment surgery. Its decisions on these things therefore make determinations on resource allocation.

The DSM rigidly defines mental problems as binary, on-or-off. You meet a certain number of symptoms, therefore you have the disease. You don't, so you're fine. Individual details get lost under the broadness and rigidity of labelling and people slip through the cracks or get categorized and treated in ways that don't help them. This is resource allocation again, as well as errors in methodology.

Treating this sort of thing as a question of mental illness, which is to say disease, is in some respects metaphorical. That is, in common language, disease and illness are considered problems of a biological nature with the body which need to be treated to restore the body to a fully functioning state. It doesn't refer to the mind which is sometimes a matter of a chemical unbalance, yes, but sometimes it's environmental damage, sometimes it is not following the standard demonstration of things, sometimes it's habits and behaviors, sometimes it's a state of being that you'd like to get surgery to fix. Pulling all of that together under the concept of disease turns those which are not biological problems into metaphors of biology. It makes pathology out of things that aren't from literal pathogens.

[The main points are not brief. Sorry, Dave. He pauses, then.]

One of the reasons I don't like to term myself 'gay' is because I don't like the idea of being part of a culture that limits and defines me by my sexuality. At the same time, I understand how important it was to identify that way for people in the past. It gave them an identity to form communities with, a way to find each other and to organize for political action. For some people, saying it made it real or helped them understand themselves better. When it came to labelling my sexuality, I've always felt false and caged in, in the manner of needing to live up to certain expectations and requirements. So it isn't a thing that helps me, and it bothers me when others apply that label to me.

I think all the same things about labels in sexuality carry through over. It can be damaging and limiting, and you can lose yourself under generalities and expectations. But. [Dirk looks down. It's still hard to say, and his words slow over it.] It helped when you said I was suicidal? It made it feel more like a valid thing I could ask for help with, instead of just a thing that was fundamentally broken about me because I am in every possible way a failure at being a human being.

Edited 2017-01-13 06:39 (UTC)

[ like dirk did when dave brought up hal, dave kind of groans but then just. lets the dissertation he asked for happen. it helps, but not because of the information. he's been known to ask rose to ramble at him to distract him, and that was halfway why he asked dirk what it was he wanted to say on the topic.

he won't interrupt. he can actually listen when he tries to. but at the end dave will sit up straight. ish. which means he pulls his head off of dirk's shoulder. he doesn't stop the really quite frankly pathetic barely finger touching thing that is happening or scoot backwards, though? so this situation is just kind of dumb directly in dirk's space but making contact only very strangely. ]

Do you ever listen to yourself speak? You even said it earlier. Is that...is that how you think about it now? That you're not broken or a failure or anything else. You're just a kid adapting to a new not so hot situation after thirteen years of a crap one and three more of a sucky one?

[ does it help to think about it like that? ]

No. It doesn't help, exactly, not...always. I don't like thinkin' about...illnesses or diseases like you said. Rose callin' it what it was at the volcano...helped. Because I didn't want to have to say what it was to her, so I just explained it, and let her name it. Sometimes - sometimes I think calling it by name helps. But mostly - mostly what helps, when I'm not disbelievin' it, is you tellin' me it's okay not to be okay.

[ and out of a sense of fairness: ]

I don't mind the label of bisexual, exactly, but I don't really like the expectation that I have to be one way or the other and that I have to actually say either?

[There's a moment of panic when Dave sits up straight and then Dirk parses what he means and. Oh. Right.]

You're calling me a hypocrite again. You must really like reaching that level of metahypocrisy.

[HE IS SAYING. He has to say it. But, you know, the listening thing. He will follow along.]

I'm trying to think of it like that more. It's on and off. But... the thing that it's okay not to be okay. That's really all I was trying to say. Whether or not you've got a label for what's going on is irrelevant to the fact that it's okay for you not to be okay.

[beat]

My research into the 21st century indicated American culture was really idiotic about bisexuality.

Fun family bondin' activity. You call me a hypocrite while you're bein' a hypocrite and I call you a hypocrite about that and then it all starts all over again. Or well it ain't fun exactly, but this is apparently the dumbass paradox cycle we're lockin' ourselves into here.

[ metahypocrisy: the saga. ]

I'll...work on tryin' to believe you about it. [ it had been a relief to believe it for a few minutes here and there? dave gestures to dirk's communicator with his free non fingertips touching hand why is that still a thing ] Things like that make me think - it isn't. But if you try, I'll try.

[ there's another out to take here rather than discussing that, though, so ]

21st century American culture was idiotic about a lot of things, but yeah in general when it existed in the media it was like, you know. Weird in a lot of ways. Did the whole you liking x y z is a phase because you also like a, and that's easier, or...whatnot? I honestly did not spend much time thinkin' about sexuality like at all as a kid. I mean, I regurgitated whatever I absorbed through the media, but I never sat down and thought about it. It straight up did not matter to me at the time. And most of the macho bullshit I spewed was because I thought it'd, you know, be what Bro wanted and also just to hide insecurity central. So.

Edited 2017-01-13 07:07 (UTC)

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