No More Secrets Meme

[fieldpromoted]

Good evening meatship, I bring you your Friday meme!

No More Secrets

1. All of your character's darkest and most embarrassing secrets, the ones that they have been holding back from the crew, are now common knowledge.

2. Since not everyone knows everyone's canon, comment with your character and a bulleted list of the things they have been holding back from the crew. These can be funny things (that time I ran around with my underwear outside my pants), embarrassing things (Little Black Book-type secrets) or the dark things they never wanted anyone to know.

3. Other characters react to these sudden revelations about your character. Will it change the way people feel about each other?

IMPORTANT: PLEASE POST WARNINGS IN THE SUBJECT LINE IF SOMETHING IN THE COMMENT IS TRIGGERY. This meme has the potential to be a lot more dramatic than our usual fare, and I want to make sure everyone is comfortable.

Muns, have fun! Characters... well, I'm not sure "fun" applies.

Comments

[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

When you're using your power to threaten them and toss them around the room, yes, they're afraid, just like they're afraid of someone who runs around and swings their axe with wild abandon, or points one of those gun things at people all the time.

People are afraid of things that can kill them. That's called having sense. When they try not to be afraid of things that can kill them, and stand up to someone for, say, being a jerk over something stupid like knocking over some books, and said jerk tosses them into bookcase, it tends to make that caution and fear just ever so slightly justified.

If you don't want people to be afraid of you, don't act so scary.

[Gods, Thom, logic. Logic. Dragon training tactics work remarkably well on people, you know? Drop your weapon, make yourself seem very gentle, slow movements, a soft voice, and most people won't think you're a threat.]

[gifthasacold]

I was right. You don't understand. You can't understand because you can't know-

Before I even arrived at Court they had already made their assumptions. Lord Master Thom, the most powerful sorcerer in the Eastern Lands, whose sister was the unnatural Lady Knight, whose sister slew Duke Roger, the only one who could challenge him.

What kind of conclusions would you draw? Probably the same as they did. Lord Master Thom the usurper, aiding and abetting his sister's quest for knighthood, besmirching the kingdom's name, shaming His Majesty.

It would not have mattered if I apologized to every Lord and Lady in the castle on bended knee. They would have hated me regardless.

[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

You keep missing the part where you're where you are now. Sometimes people won't accept you, and nothing--nothing you do can make them like you. No matter how many times you try, no matter how clever you are, it always blows up in your face.

[Funny, he seems to be almost talking from personal experience here.]

That's when you stop caring about whether or not those people like you, and care more about other things that are important. Like the people that--that maybe give you more of a chance, and when they look at you, they don't see what all those other people see.

[Maybe sometimes they aren't even human-people, and they look at you with big yellow-green adoring eyes like you're best thing ever to exist.]

Or caring about fixing mistakes, or caring about--about making something wrong right. Eventually all the rest tends to fall into place.

You're not back home, you're on a ship stuffed full of powerful people and people who are used to being hopelessly outclassed by powerful people but generally don't care about it as long as they don't get murdered in their sleep. You're right that I can't know exactly what it was like for you. I don't know anything about being the strongest--I only know what it's like to be the weakest. But I do know that when I was mocked and teased and treated like an outcast for that, pushing everyone away, assuming they'd just hate me, too, wouldn't have gotten me anywhere.

You're not special here. But that also means you won't be automatically hated either. You'll only be hated if you're a jerk, just like anybody else who's a jerk.

[Logic logic logic, Thom. Logic!]

[gifthasacold]

It's too dangerous to start doing that-

Why do you care?

[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

Several reasons.

One, I don't want to see you lose your temper and magically explode someone, for their sake.

Two, I don't want to see you lose your temper and magically explode someone, for your own sake.

(And if you're wondering why I feel that way, both one and two are the marks of what is commonly know as "compassion.")

Three, most important of all, I know a little something about what it feels like to have everyone hate who you are for things you can't really help, and as someone who's mostly through all that, watching you do this preemptive "slam people into walls so they never get a chance to hate me on their own" thing is almost painful. It's like watching someone repeatedly run into a wall themselves. Very self-destructive.

That pesky compassion thing again. Unsightly in a Viking, but there it is.

[gifthasacold]

[At first, Thom seems like he is at a loss for words. Like something Hiccup is saying might actually get through to him. Then his jaw clenches.]

You pity me. How quaint.

I do not want or need your - your concern.

[He spits that word like it offends him.]

Once I have determined how to bleed away this taint, your first two points will be irrelevant anyway. If I could be left in peace to do so it would go so much the faster.

[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

No no no no, maybe it's a translation problem, but where I come from, compassion and pity are two very different things.

Pity is when you feel bad for someone else, but do it with slight contempt. Compassion is when you feel bad for someone else, but because you recognize they're a complex individual, that probably has some value as a person, and the part of you that just generally cares about other people pipes up and makes you see something of yourself inside them and something of them inside you.

Admittedly, it's not something my people are great at, in general, but I'm not really like the rest of my people.

But you go ahead and keep on misinterpreting every single thing I say in an attempt to scare me away from trying to be friendly at you if it makes you feel more at ease.

[gifthasacold]

It is - just - leave me alone.

[He can't allow himself to be friends with anyone. Sooner or later they will find a reason to hate him. It always happens. Better to never let it happen.]

[governorkang]

Hiccup's got a point, you know. Several of them.

[gifthasacold]

I do not recall soliciting your opinion.