S72 | mental link

[sistershoggoth]

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

TELEPATHY PERMISSIONS

Annie is a lot of things. She is not entirely just a human, her consciousness is also the consciousness of an alien planet: where she is life and death, growth and decay, all of nature and the ocean and all of the things that survive in those places. She's every rock down to its individual atoms. A casual observer is unlikely to get that far in their understanding of her, but those who get closest to her and end up sharing dreams with her will have a chance to understand this granularity of her other-ness. At a further distance, the inside of Annie feels very expansive, a large and lightless space which observes. There is always a sense like she is getting closer to you, a subtle invasion of privacy, space, autonomy. She doesn't do this on purpose, it's just what's in her. There's definitely a sense that she could swallow or drown you, in herself. The big black emptiness she feels inside is rarely in line with what she's presenting externally, it's very dissonant. It's worse when she's actively analyzing you. Better when she's totally dismissive of your existence. This is what lurks in the depths of Annie, but her human side is there. Her humanity is strained by the enormity of what she is secondarily aware of. She's not entirely sane, nor stable. Her mind is extremely active, and her imagination particularly vivid. She comes with a great deal of noise and color, which is a total smokescreen for keeping the more otherworldly aspects of herself in the periphery. This only kind of works, her other nature tends to expose itself regardless and her mental voice is not merely one voice, but all those voices coming together, which gives them a warbling, underwater like quality. She's a recovering, and often relapsed, addict and alcoholic. She is always trying not to feel something, and always wishing to not really be herself. The noise and color also tries to cover up this, she is always trying to ignore her own strain: pain, anxiety, sorrow. When she is drinking, much of the sensory onslaught of her is muted, a way of clouding herself: a murky swamp that she wallows in. When she is using... everything is amplified and she is particularly sprawling and out of control.

Comments

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

[ She blinks at him. Popular? She contemplates that. ]

Nobody was fuckin' popular at the academy. We had to outdo each other, all the fuckin' time. I was a bully and a drunk. Maybe popular with the other fucked up girls, but everybody's funny when you're high.

[ She tilts her head at him, giving him a look of 'better topic than the sex, huh?' ]

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[...No. Maybe not a better subject than the sex. But they're here now.]

That sounds... awful.

[He breaks off of a piece of his candy, awkwardly offering the little square to her.] Sorry for bringing it up.

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

[ She takes the piece of candy and shoves it in her mouth. ]

Better or worse than the lonely prince?

[ She's just making fun of him again. ]

So, long story short, lonely misspent youths.

[ So that they could grow up and sacrifice their lives for their worlds. Delightful. ]

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[She might be making fun of him, and he certainly feels no offense (it's been so long since those days), but Noctis still wants to clarify.] It wasn't as bad as it sounds. I eventually made a friend. And the people who took care of me -- who trained me and tutored me -- ended up being like family too.

[He shrugs though. He can't complain about his youth. He doesn't want to; his father did his best with what he could work with.]

If it ever got lonely, I just told myself it could always be worse.

[The part about growing up and sacrificing themselves for their worlds, though? Yeah, there's no getting around that part.]

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

Oh my god, Noctis.

[ She complains noisily, flopping backwards, with a wuff. ]

Don't be so fuckin' good all the time, it's annoying.

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[At first he just blinks in confusion, caught between being offended or being amused. He ends up settling somewhere in-between.]

What's that supposed to mean?

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

Ugh, just whine about how unfair it is, so I'm not the only one whining.

[ C'mon bro, let's whine together. ]

Or go back to complaining about how the very thought of my snatch gives you nightmares. Anything but your cute silver lining bullshit.

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[Please don't talk about your snatch that way, Annie. Noctis is 100 percent unsure how to respond to that, so he chooses not to.]

Fine. My mom died when I was still a baby, and my father was too busy juggling a war to really have time to spend with me. Is that better?

(frozen comment) cw: kind of body horror?????

[sistershoggoth]

Definitely.

[ She kicks her feet, more than happy to play 21 miseries. ]

Urban legend has it I ripped my way out of my mom. Got kidnapped by alien bitch asap, she raised us to take over the planet 'til she got in this shitty fight with another alien and just trashed the place instead.

[ It's his turn again. ]

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[He's not sure he can "win" this game, but he can certainly try.]

The man who could possibly be my great-great-great-times-a-hundred grandfather, or uncle, or something, manipulated me and my friends, killed my fiance, blinded my chamberlain, put me in a Crystal for ten years, and then tried to kill me.

[What a happy family!]

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

You were saving it for her!

[ A gasp of feigned shock. But no, there is a much more important question: ]

The fuck were you doing in a crystal for ten years?

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

Shut up.

[Embarrassing. He's more than eager to move on to the next question, but only after nibbling on the candy a bit more.]

Talking to one of our gods. Absorbing the Crystal's power. I... needed it to defeat the aforementioned angry ancestor. He was immortal, otherwise.

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

[ She's grinning at him from where she's sprawled on his bed. She reaches, fingers wiggling for another piece of the candy. ]

So you're like actually a soon to be dead teenage baby god, slash king. Slash lonely school boy.

[ Slash Virgin :) ]

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[ >:[ ]

I guess that's one way to put it.

[She's not wrong, per se. He is legitimately all of those things, though his power is substantially less potent here on the station.

He reaches over to just hand her the rest of the candy. There's a little bit left, so she can have the rest.]

Since we're asking questions, too, tell me about this... "alien bitch" that kidnapped you.

(frozen comment) cw: mention o'suicide

[sistershoggoth]

[ She rolls onto her back, happily stuffing the last of that candy into her face. She does not care about talking with her mouth full, her answers starts out a bit muffled. ]

Sparrows. Dressed up like a human, but I don't know, she was freaky. Stared at you like a crazy person, smiled like a crazy person, always made these weird flappy motions with her hands. She started the Academy, raised like the first few rounds of bitches herself. There was like... this one group, stepford bitches just all fuckin' immaculately beautiful and these fuckin' cold smiles...

[ The faces filter in. Sparrows: unnaturally pale with bright red hair, intense eyes, toothy white grin. The stepford bitches: perfect silky hair, perfect red lips, conservative dresses, an air of threat, authority. ]

We were supposed to be like them. Fuckin' beautiful and perfect, at everything. Sparrows didn't take second best for anything. Fuck up too much and they'd take care of you. Or you'd take care of yourself, she didn't give a shit which way it went. Anyone who killed themselves was just too weak. You either believed that or you died.

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[The faces flashing before him are eerie and strange. Surreal, uncanny valley kind of strange. They make him frown, but he lets her finish speaking before dumping even more questions on her.]

So raising a personal army for the sake of taking over the world? Guess aliens can't mind their own business. [He can't imagine what it would have been like to live in that kind of environment, and fittingly, his mind recalls words he had spoken just minutes earlier. It could always be worse. Annie definitely had it worse.] Why only females? Were there no men?

(frozen comment) cw: people farming 8')

[sistershoggoth]

There were guys. She just didn't want them. We can breed.

[ A shudder. Things had started to get to that stage, before Daylight had come. One of the stepford bitches had been the first. The last time Annie saw Fallon Pinset she was a shell of herself, shackled to that half-breed daughter of hers, and the cult that worshipped her... ]

(frozen comment) annie is a walking cw

[somnifacient]

[Noctis furrows a brow, his surprise clearly visible. He leans back, palms pressing into the mattress, looking expectantly at Annie for an explanation.]

What? How?

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

Ugh.

[ She throws an arm over her face. ]

Look-- Let's-- Just not talk about alien insemination. I thought you didn't want to talk about sex? Can we talk about my shower scene instead if we're gonna talk about this?

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[...oh.

Now Noctis looks equal parts horrified and embarrassed, and tries to distract from this by rubbing at the back of his neck.]

No, listen, I don't want to talk about that at all, okay? [He says as he talks about it regardless, dropping his hand.] I mean, why Nyx anyway? Was he hitting on you or something?

[He doesn't know Nyx's personality well enough to guess at that, even if he is a broodmate and a Glaive.]

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

[ Was he-- Hitting on her? Ah... ahah. Annie starts laughing. She slaps him on the back, friendly but condescending. ]

Look, Noct. I've been sleeping around since before I shoulda been. It takes my mind off things. It short circuits my stupid fucked up universe brain and I don't have to feel anything for a little bit. That's what I do, I try not to feel shit. He was down to not feel some shit for a little bit too. He's not gonna be bringing me fuckin' flowers later. It's just sex.

[ She could see having this conversation with the girls, she's maybe surprised to be having it with him. Not that she minds, and just for good measure, she adds: ]

And don't blame his dumb ass, I was on that from the minute I saw it.

[ Not literally the first minute. More like when he'd told her: Sometimes I'm good at talking and looking pretty. ]

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[He jostles forward with the slap on his back, huffing out a noise of indignation. He mostly hears condescension, which only makes it appear like she's illuminating his naiveté. (Probably because she is.)]

I guess. [To the "it's just sex" bit. Noctis understands what she's getting at, but he grew up living a sheltered life, and the idea of casually sleeping around with no strings attached is so far beyond something he'd ever consider. It's a foreign notion, something that other people did, not him.]

But to swing back around to my original point... you're going to have to work on the whole "mental barrier" thing if this is a habit of yours.

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

It's hard and I suck at it.

[ He had bitched about jogging, she's bitching about trying to control her ridiculous sprawling monster brain. ]

(frozen comment)

[somnifacient]

[He might have bitched about jogging, but one way or another, Noctis would still commit to it. He'll just whine the whole time.]

Lame excuse. That's what practice is for, isn't it?

(frozen comment)

[sistershoggoth]

Okay, so like. I know I got up Murphy's ass about like. The exact same thing, so I say this with full fuckin' awareness of my own hypocrisy.

[ A sigh, eyes closing. ]

I just want to leave shit alone sometimes. Like, I just want to be an old dog that doesn't have to learn any more tricks. I feel like a whole fuckin' circus sometimes as it is.

And sometimes, I get all wound up and I think fuck it, I can do fucking anything--

[ And then she ends up wild, spiraling out of bounds, loud and creepy-crawly. She's not trying to make excuses, she's trying to articulate an emotion that makes her shy from trying to reinvent herself all over again... What does a Annie in control look like. ]