Okay.
I know some of you might be holding your noses at this, but unfortunately, this is something that HAS to be dealt with. We cannot function as a writing group if we continue without an intimate understanding of how me, and my on-screen persona, metaphorically tick. Otherwise, misunderstandings like this one are simply going to continue and compound in each other until this project grinds to a halt.
I apologize, but I'm about to rip the bandaid off.
I've had time to meditate on this. Special thanks to the band, Our Lady Peace, for letting me find my center so I can figure this out.
Brent, Rob nailed it, and I'll break it down for you. Just bear with me, here.
Think of my brain as a machine running on some horrific chimera of a coding job. In order to make sense of it, you need to par everything back to the original coding.
Unfortunately, that original coding has been tampered with in a very hard to fix way. It's not easily fixed, and in the case of a machine, you'd probably want to start all over again, carefully taking the bits that work like they're supposed to, and completely rewriting everything else so the program will work as intended.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depends on how you look at it), we don't have the ability to do that to people just yet. There's no way to decompile the program, fix it, and apply the fixes. All you can do is make small, incremental patches in an effort to reverse engineer the program and make it work. It's a long, tedious, and messy process, but it's the only thing that will work.
That's basically what psychiatric therapy is - digging into how the program works, then slowly making incremental changes that can take YEARS to get through. (And this isn't even getting into how my laundry list of mental disorders fundamentally alters how I perceive reality as opposed to a neurotypical.)
And as I said, Rob nailed it. The treatment I got growing up programmed me to be so afraid of making mistakes that eventually my brain came to the decision that when there wasn't enough data available, then indecision is the best choice.
No, it's not correct. But that's the programming I've been given to work with. I can alter it, sure. But it's going to take a very long time for me to do so, and a lot of help from other people - especially people who've not grown up in the same environment, so they know what behaviors are undesirable, and can constructively coach and influence. Just like a group of programmers debugging some horrifically flawed piece of software, having to put thousands of man hours into the job. It requires a certain degree of dedication and love for the job.
That brings us to our hypothetical situation: Ben blurts out something inappropriate, emberrasses himself and the party who is subject to what Ben said.
With the information provided above, we know that if Ben thinks that he lacks the information he needs in order to say something, then he won't bother with it. (Which is actually the correct choice in these situations - if you don't know what you're talking about, then don't talk about it.)
In order to set it up, this needs to be something not commonly known - a true metaphor for the term 'conversational landmine' - you don't know it's there until you've stepped on it, and what happens next depends on the type of landmine, how it's set, and if it can be defused or disarmed.
So this would have to be something that Ben has no inkling of - that he cannot possibly know that it's a bad thing to say in public.
Now, Urd is supposed to be the target subject here. We know from source materials that, so long as a person is not under an active contract with a Goddess, said Goddess can read, at the very least, surface thoughts and emotional states. This applies in the case of Benjamin and Urd - he's made no wish yet, and so there's no contract barring Urd from reading his thoughts.
The moment Ben realizes he's messed up, his brain is going to go into panic mode. Yes, it will show somewhat in his facial and verbal expressions, but only Urd is going to have a true idea of what's Ben is going through.
What is he going through?
Look at what Rob said.
The active thoughts are going to be, "ohnoohnoohnoImessedup!ohnoohnoohnoImessedup!ohnoohnoohnoImessedup!"
But the emotional state? That's the real shit show.
The emotional state is going to be, "PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!"
Ben may not be actively thinking it. But his programming will dictate that he prepare himself for what he thinks is the worst case scenario. Benjamin is suddenly eight years old and trying not to flinch because if he does flinch, then it's going to be worse. Try not to flinch if he moves suddenly. Try not to flinch even if he does hit you, because flinching means you're avoiding him, and avoiding him is disobedience, and disobedience is rewarded with even more punishment.
That is his mental state. You'll never be able to tell without being able to read his mind. And while everyone recoils and calls him out, he'll be a terrified child, trying not to move even a millimeter, absorbing his punishment like a good little boy, and internalizing it as an utter failure to function as a human being and not worthy of continued existence.
How do you think Urd is going to react to that?
This is a bad situation no matter how you slice it. For Ben, he'll have regressed and will likely stay that way for at least several hours, probably locked up inside his apartment, and even then he'll be dealing with issues of self-worth for the next day or so.
Urd needs to defuse this bomb. But she has to say and do the right things in the right order, or else she's only going to do even more damage than there would have been if she had done nothing at all.
WARNING: THIS IS NOT SOMETHING SHE CAN JUST LAUGH OFF. Laughing it off will translate into an utter dismissal of Benjamin and his perceived value to those around him.
Now, if you want, we can go ahead and do this. However, depending on whether or not Urd is going to be able to defuse the situation, we will probably have to make some drastic changes to the Halloween story where there's suddenly an entire subplot where people try to coax Ben out of his apartment, and probably to no real avail.
This is why I (and, for that matter, my on-screen persona) try so hard not to mess up - why I am excruciatingly polite and charming to others. There is still a part of me, at the very core of my being, that fears that someone is going to destroy me, physically and/or emotionally if I commit even the slightest social faux pas.
Usagi MIGHT try using her Moon Healing on him, but Belldandy is gonna hard-veto that - as stated elsewhere, so much of his life has been emotional hurt that it might lobotomize him for all practical purposes.
Even if, in some loose interpretation of the events, it could be considered a good thing for Ben, it's bad for everyone else. Most obvious of all, he will not be able to perform his job as an Apartment Manager.
But even more importantly, everyone present will have varying degrees of trauma seeing a grown man, even though already a broken person, suddenly become mentally four years old. It's one thing when it's an act. But when it's the real deal? It can induce brick-shitting horror for many people. You just witnessed someone being utterly unmade right before your eyes, and the realization that the same thing can happen to you is completely and totally soul-sucking terrifying.
And that is all.
There is nothing more I can say on the matter.
If you really want to, we can do this, but it's not going to be pretty, and it will likely utterly ruin the party because, given the personalities present (e.g.: Usagi and Belldandy), the anguish Ben is going through is gonna be tangible. I know you want some drama in here, but this may be a lot more than what you want.
Unfortunately, I'm running with this as a hard SI. All of my faults and failings. And nothing to pad the sharp, jagged edges of my damage.
I part here for the night with one last phrase, stated openly without sarcasm or rancor:
Handle with care.
I know some of you might be holding your noses at this, but unfortunately, this is something that HAS to be dealt with. We cannot function as a writing group if we continue without an intimate understanding of how me, and my on-screen persona, metaphorically tick. Otherwise, misunderstandings like this one are simply going to continue and compound in each other until this project grinds to a halt.
I apologize, but I'm about to rip the bandaid off.
I've had time to meditate on this. Special thanks to the band, Our Lady Peace, for letting me find my center so I can figure this out.
Brent, Rob nailed it, and I'll break it down for you. Just bear with me, here.
Think of my brain as a machine running on some horrific chimera of a coding job. In order to make sense of it, you need to par everything back to the original coding.
Unfortunately, that original coding has been tampered with in a very hard to fix way. It's not easily fixed, and in the case of a machine, you'd probably want to start all over again, carefully taking the bits that work like they're supposed to, and completely rewriting everything else so the program will work as intended.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depends on how you look at it), we don't have the ability to do that to people just yet. There's no way to decompile the program, fix it, and apply the fixes. All you can do is make small, incremental patches in an effort to reverse engineer the program and make it work. It's a long, tedious, and messy process, but it's the only thing that will work.
That's basically what psychiatric therapy is - digging into how the program works, then slowly making incremental changes that can take YEARS to get through. (And this isn't even getting into how my laundry list of mental disorders fundamentally alters how I perceive reality as opposed to a neurotypical.)
And as I said, Rob nailed it. The treatment I got growing up programmed me to be so afraid of making mistakes that eventually my brain came to the decision that when there wasn't enough data available, then indecision is the best choice.
No, it's not correct. But that's the programming I've been given to work with. I can alter it, sure. But it's going to take a very long time for me to do so, and a lot of help from other people - especially people who've not grown up in the same environment, so they know what behaviors are undesirable, and can constructively coach and influence. Just like a group of programmers debugging some horrifically flawed piece of software, having to put thousands of man hours into the job. It requires a certain degree of dedication and love for the job.
That brings us to our hypothetical situation: Ben blurts out something inappropriate, emberrasses himself and the party who is subject to what Ben said.
With the information provided above, we know that if Ben thinks that he lacks the information he needs in order to say something, then he won't bother with it. (Which is actually the correct choice in these situations - if you don't know what you're talking about, then don't talk about it.)
In order to set it up, this needs to be something not commonly known - a true metaphor for the term 'conversational landmine' - you don't know it's there until you've stepped on it, and what happens next depends on the type of landmine, how it's set, and if it can be defused or disarmed.
So this would have to be something that Ben has no inkling of - that he cannot possibly know that it's a bad thing to say in public.
Now, Urd is supposed to be the target subject here. We know from source materials that, so long as a person is not under an active contract with a Goddess, said Goddess can read, at the very least, surface thoughts and emotional states. This applies in the case of Benjamin and Urd - he's made no wish yet, and so there's no contract barring Urd from reading his thoughts.
The moment Ben realizes he's messed up, his brain is going to go into panic mode. Yes, it will show somewhat in his facial and verbal expressions, but only Urd is going to have a true idea of what's Ben is going through.
What is he going through?
Look at what Rob said.
The active thoughts are going to be, "ohnoohnoohnoImessedup!ohnoohnoohnoImessedup!ohnoohnoohnoImessedup!"
But the emotional state? That's the real shit show.
The emotional state is going to be, "PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!"
Ben may not be actively thinking it. But his programming will dictate that he prepare himself for what he thinks is the worst case scenario. Benjamin is suddenly eight years old and trying not to flinch because if he does flinch, then it's going to be worse. Try not to flinch if he moves suddenly. Try not to flinch even if he does hit you, because flinching means you're avoiding him, and avoiding him is disobedience, and disobedience is rewarded with even more punishment.
That is his mental state. You'll never be able to tell without being able to read his mind. And while everyone recoils and calls him out, he'll be a terrified child, trying not to move even a millimeter, absorbing his punishment like a good little boy, and internalizing it as an utter failure to function as a human being and not worthy of continued existence.
How do you think Urd is going to react to that?
This is a bad situation no matter how you slice it. For Ben, he'll have regressed and will likely stay that way for at least several hours, probably locked up inside his apartment, and even then he'll be dealing with issues of self-worth for the next day or so.
Urd needs to defuse this bomb. But she has to say and do the right things in the right order, or else she's only going to do even more damage than there would have been if she had done nothing at all.
WARNING: THIS IS NOT SOMETHING SHE CAN JUST LAUGH OFF. Laughing it off will translate into an utter dismissal of Benjamin and his perceived value to those around him.
Now, if you want, we can go ahead and do this. However, depending on whether or not Urd is going to be able to defuse the situation, we will probably have to make some drastic changes to the Halloween story where there's suddenly an entire subplot where people try to coax Ben out of his apartment, and probably to no real avail.
This is why I (and, for that matter, my on-screen persona) try so hard not to mess up - why I am excruciatingly polite and charming to others. There is still a part of me, at the very core of my being, that fears that someone is going to destroy me, physically and/or emotionally if I commit even the slightest social faux pas.
Usagi MIGHT try using her Moon Healing on him, but Belldandy is gonna hard-veto that - as stated elsewhere, so much of his life has been emotional hurt that it might lobotomize him for all practical purposes.
Even if, in some loose interpretation of the events, it could be considered a good thing for Ben, it's bad for everyone else. Most obvious of all, he will not be able to perform his job as an Apartment Manager.
But even more importantly, everyone present will have varying degrees of trauma seeing a grown man, even though already a broken person, suddenly become mentally four years old. It's one thing when it's an act. But when it's the real deal? It can induce brick-shitting horror for many people. You just witnessed someone being utterly unmade right before your eyes, and the realization that the same thing can happen to you is completely and totally soul-sucking terrifying.
And that is all.
There is nothing more I can say on the matter.
If you really want to, we can do this, but it's not going to be pretty, and it will likely utterly ruin the party because, given the personalities present (e.g.: Usagi and Belldandy), the anguish Ben is going through is gonna be tangible. I know you want some drama in here, but this may be a lot more than what you want.
Unfortunately, I'm running with this as a hard SI. All of my faults and failings. And nothing to pad the sharp, jagged edges of my damage.
I part here for the night with one last phrase, stated openly without sarcasm or rancor:
Handle with care.