longestnight | Fandom's Come Knocking

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Fandom's Come Knocking

Okay, did you guys know people in this world make stuff of some of us? Apparently the yetis make toys of us on their own if none exist but also imitate ones that do exist if kids want them.

[Branch is hopping along a table of merch that is meant to mimic exactly the merch of him in stores. A lot of it is actually bigger than he is. He shows off the dolls with his tiny little wrist comm. They look even weirder at that perspective.]

Now that I know they're not ritual effigies, the toy thing is kind of funny. Weird, but funny.

Look at this. Look.

[He holds up his comm so the camera picks up some absolutely hideous toys.]

Like, who is this guy? I wouldn't even know who this was if it wasn't labeled with my name. Like, some random guy from the village maybe. I've never dressed like that in my life.

[He points the camera at another.]

This one is the closest to actually looking like me and it still has the random skull symbol hair thing. What's up with that? [A pause as his face comes back in view. It screws up in thought.] ...Okay, actually I don't hate it.

[Because even though he's a much happier person than he once was, he's still slightly an edgelord. Just slightly.]

[He looks upward and similar skull designs suddenly appear in his own hair, thanks to his ability to change its color. Maybe that explains why some of the dolls have black hair and some have blue (if manufacturing inconsistencies aren't to blame).]

[(It's actually not but he's not about to explain the subtleties of troll coloration when it comes to emotional state.)]

Seriously, you should check it out, and see if the yetis made stuff based on you. It's hilarious.

[ooc: If none exists IRL, people can make up imaginary merch, though all merch at the Pole would be for kids or teens. The stuff made purely by the yetis would largely be decent-looking and accurate, uglier stuff would be based on designs existing in the game world because well, that's what the kid pointed at in the store. Googling themselves would produce other merch for other demographics, as well as let people find out about any internet fandom. People can feel free to thread hop a lot because the point of this is probably going to be a lot of pointing and laughing.]

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Okay, what is with your life?

[He says after asking Miguel the same question.]

Why would you think a doll would have a bomb in it?

[Does he have more reasons to be concerned beyond Tim's nonchalance about kidnapping and how nice Branch's was?]

I’m beginning to appreciate that my life is inexplicable to people who aren’t used to a world of vigilantes and supervillains.

[ He squeezes the belly of the bear and turns it over in his hands. ]

I can think of six people who would preferentially put a bomb in a stuffed animal, and at least 3 more who would do it at an opportunity. And a plushie that looks like Robin? Even worse. I don't even know if I'd approach it at home. I'd just blow it up.

Edited 2023-10-07 16:25 (UTC)

[There has to be some kind of insane context he's missing here.]

What's a vigilante? And a supervillain?

[He searches those.]

Oh, that all has to do with crime stuff, doesn't it? My people don't have that. The Bergens do, but we don't.

You don’t have crime?

[ Really straining to contain the incredulity. He’s not saying it’s impossible; it’s just impossible. ]

I know every universe doesn’t have the sort of chronic large scale crime with a heavy dependence on a stylized M.O. crime doesn’t have to mean supervillains. Mugging, embezzling, assault. Normal people are capable of terrible things.

I know assault as a word because you know, gotta have words for bodily harm when outside people do that. To you.

But I don't know what an embezzling is. Or mugging? I'm looking those up.

[He googles those.]

Oh, that has to do with stuff ownership and this...money thing? We don't have money - which I don't don't really get? To be honest? Like pieces of paper in exchange for things? What?

My village just has communal stuff. People know not to touch each other's sentimental things in their pods, like photos, but for less obvious stuff, we store the stuff we really don't want anyone else to take in our hair. Everyone knows everything else is shareable. If someone takes too much and isn't fair about it, everyone will tell them they're not being nice and they'll feel bad and replace some of it.

We learned about "stealing" from the Bergens, after we stopped being enemies. A friend of mine took food and didn't realize they don't also have communal stuff. They apparently shove people in cages over it? Su-per weird, if you ask me, but hey, shoving people in cages is kind of their thing.

People know they’re not supposed to take other people’s things in my world, too. A minority just don’t care. They want more, or they want other people to have less. Or worse rationale that this isn’t really the place to discuss.

[ He has a sense of place, and Santa’s workshop seems so inappropriate to delve into a Ted Talk about how some people want to hurt others. Branch isn’t the audience for it. ]

You’re from a functioning socialist society?

[ Color him interested. He might be the son and adopted son of capitalists, no matter how philanthropic they were, but he does think that capitalism is borked and that socialism has advantages. Tim has a dim view of human nature, though, and so he doesn’t think it could work in practice without a radical shift in societal norms. ]

What do they do if they can’t replace it? How do you handle when they don’t respect the rules if there’s no jail?

[ Because it can’t be possible that no one’s committed a heinous crime. Statistical wonder. Branch is naive if he does. ]

I don't know what "socialism" is but it helps that it's a really small village and we don't value stuff that much, so it's not hard to replace some stuff with something just as good. If you can't, usually the other troll will forgive you if you're genuinely sorry. So we don't need some special...punishment place.

Also, if you did something really bad, the whole village would be mad at you. I'm probably the only one in the village that could deal with that kind of rejection but I used to be the town crank. I'm the weird one.

[Social pressure is a pressure. Nobody wants the entire village to be mad at them.]

Everyone shares because we have to take care of each other to get by. I didn't for years but...again, town crank. Resources are pretty good where we are, but we're small, everything else is still out to get us.

I don't know what else to tell you. My people are extremely trusting. Too trusting, honestly. [Which absolutely is clearly not the case for him, given his reaction upon showing up.] We mostly tell the truth, we don't hurt each other, everyone hugs once an hour, and hurting someone else's feelings is something everyone freaks out if they realize they've done.

Well, everyone else. Yet again. [He points to himself.] Town crank.

[He sits down on a wooden block and shrugs a shoulder.]

But it kind of makes sense that they're the way they are. I don't think we could've survived everything if hurting each other wasn't the most awful thing we could think of. You don't tunnel your way through a tree, go on the run, and rebuild a society if that's not the case.

Really hurting each other in a way we can't take back would be a pretty Bergen thing to do.

[It's a combination of being a small community where social pressure has power, being an inherently naive, kind, community-oriented, frolicking woodland critter people...]

[And, well, the fact they're ostensibly refugees from a bad situation that only survived mentally, socially, and physically intact by valuing each other aggressively to counterbalance how disposable they were.]

Edited 2023-10-07 18:12 (UTC)

If you are a misfit in your own place, then you are in good company. I would not be surprised if we are overall more misfits than model members of our societies.

The solidarity is nice. I can tell some people here, I don't know, come from similar places? [He thinks of Dan and Stacia and how they were able to easily understand why he was freaking out and what he needed to calm down.]

[He does like that it's a group of people where maybe a lot of them can understand each other.]

Buuut I'm also the only troll that'd show up in a place like this, freak out, and take a hostage. And it's not like I wound up this way for good reasons.

I'm trying to work my way out of this eventually.

[He's self-aware enough to realize his "misfit"ness isn't a situation where he's odd because the village is rejecting him or something. They've welcomed him back with open arms and while they don't always understand his neuroses and idiosyncrasies they understand they're just a part of their friend. They even try their best to work around them or help him feel safe when he's freaking out over something.]

[No, he knows that in a lot of ways he's different because he's not exactly mentally healthy and he wants to be.]

[Being healthy may never make him as happy-go-lucky and carefree as the others but he can still get in his own version of a better place.]

Many of us have our traumas. Some have done things we regret over them.

If you are truly the only troll who would have reacted as you did, then they must have no tools for dealing with your trauma. Such a situation is only harmful to everyone. Groups with more experience with trauma may not be able to fix you, but... someone here might have what you need.

[Boy, that instantly makes him look shifty. It's one thing to obliquely hint at turning out this way for bad reasons, it's another to just call it out as what it is: trauma.]

[Even though it was 100% plain for everyone to see, what with freaking out in a bout of extreme paranoia, booby-trapping the place, and kidnapping someone.]

It's, you know. They've been plenty supportive, after I stopped hiding and pushing everyone away.

[General support, however, isn't the same as someone knowing what they're doing.]

I've been figuring it out and working through it. I don't really need help with it.

[That would involve talking to someone other than Poppy and his friends about any of it.]

[Never mind that, again, it was still bad enough that he freaked out and took a hostage.]

That is more than my people would do for me. Ah, correction, my former people. Though they would also not do as much for anyone other than their most beloved icon.

[Yeah, he has a lot of baggage about how Asgard puts others into boxes of "flawed but fixable" and "irredeemable monster". And that as soon as he could be written off as not one of them, he was.]

Figuring it out yourself... We are never the best judges of our own health. If you do not involve others, you may start making mistakes, that build upon each other.

I'm sorry your people are like that. I'm kind of starting to get the sense mine are pretty special. I know I'm lucky. I never expected, after years of pushing them away, that they'd welcome me back the way they did.

[Really, between Loki's situation and Tim's "I can't imagine a world without crime where people hurt each other and prisons" thing...yikes. His people really are exceptionally kind, and he does feel a lot of sympathy for these people and their worlds where maybe they don't get to live with the kindness they should.]

But.

[He gestures with his open palm for emphasis, tilting his head.]

Look, I just met all of you guys, okay? It's one thing to talk to my people. They know what I've dealt with. They knew me growing up. And they've dealt with a lot of the same things.

Maybe we dealt with it differently but they at least get it. And they still had to learn to deal with it.

[Hugtime was instituted for a reason. Out of relief they were all alive and free. As a way of comforting each other. An affirmation of life and that the people around them finally wouldn't be stolen away anymore.]

[Their refusal to give up singing was another coping mechanism, too, an insistence on joy. They'd even kept doing it while trapped in the troll tree, before they were free.]

[They're different coping mechanism than the ones he used but they were coping mechanisms nonetheless. Because they'd still had to cope.]

Maybe some of you could understand a little but not perfectly. Not the way they can. So any talking about feelings and stuff can wait until I get home.

Especially since I'm not really getting the sense that a lot of you have to worry about the same things. I mean even aside from the Bergens and what happened in the past, there's constant potential predation. I can't even walk outside without having to worry about being carried off by a bird.

How many of you guys have to be on guard like that? All the time? Every single day of your lives?

Edited 2023-10-10 10:15 (UTC)

You may not have the option of waiting until you return home to address your issues. If something else averse happens here...

I am not saying you should trust any and all of us. But do consider talking to someone, if you are having issues and they seem to understand. Mortal therapists have rarely personally experienced everything they help their patients with, but they are trained in understanding even what they have not lived through. Mortals in general are very good at imagining situations they have not experienced and empathizing with those who might have.

Including the life of predation you are used to. I would suggest reading Watership Down, to see a human put his mind into that of a rabbit, who fears death from every corner.

[He says it slowly and carefully.]

I don't know what a therapist even is, but I'll be fine.

[He absolutely wants this to get dropped.]

Especially now that I know the people immediately around me aren't trying to kill me. With a method I've been terrified to die from since I hatched.

And I'm not going to read books about the unpleasant bits from home. I don't see any point in dwelling. I was just pointing out that in a talking-about-feelings situation I've got different stuff going on.

Edited 2023-10-11 11:47 (UTC)

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bestbrotherever - 2023-10-13 02:54 (UTC) - Expand

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branchifer - 2023-10-13 03:22 (UTC) - Expand

I'll never claim its to the same extent, but I know how wearing it is to keep up that level of hypervigilance. Don't worry - I'm not trying to talk about feelings.

You don’t have to tell me anything, but I appreciate the honesty.

Your people sound nice. Maybe it’s a population density issue; Gotham City has a population of nearly 10 million. I don’t know if I’d know what to make of a town like that. I’d probably be worse than the town crank.

But I’m not a Bergen. I just have a hard time envisioning a world where a jail isn’t necessary. I wish I could.

It might be a population thing but I also think it's a troll thing. My people are just, I don't know...

Kind of innocent.

[He's just a rare troll that thinks differently, that reacted to the trauma of the Bergens differently, that has a lot more anger.]

[But wow, the idea that Tim can't even imagine a society where a jail isn't necessary? That is intensely sad.]

I'm sorry that your world is like that, though. Where you can't really imagine it.

That sounds like it must be rough sometimes.

It's how it is. It's okay - I can't miss something I can't grasp as more than a fleeting concept.

I understand the principle of having a people so inherently nice that they wouldn't need one. It's placing that concept in my world where it falls apart. I know too many statistics and too much psychology. Sounds nice, though.

[Boba feels the need to give his nuanced take on the subject.]

prison is stupid

I’m not debating criminal justice practices.

good. because prison is stupid it's boring and the food sucks

[It feels nice to be able to complain about it to other people.]

[Pure. Horror.]

Someone put you in a jail?

[Panic! He has to quickly think of a good lie!]

no.

You just said jail is boring and the food sucks. You wouldn't know that unless you were in one.

[He thinks about why Boba might be denying it. Branch is a cranky person but definitely not incapable of empathizing and putting himself in someone else's shoes, thinking about their fears.]

If you're worried that finding out makes me think you should be put back in one, it doesn't. I don't think you should've been put in one in the first place.

Edited 2023-10-11 09:27 (UTC)

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