[To Ford, he was just venting, rolling his eyes about Betelgeuse being difficult. This guy, right? He has had unfortunate things socialized into him thanks to being raised by Filbrick Pines in the 50s and 60s, so when she, rightly, is concerned, he bristles and reads it as an insult, like he can't handle himself. Defensive now:]
Nothing happened that I couldn't handle. I told you, I've dealt with someone similar.
[Here's a way in which Hange is shitty: a forced kiss or a stray grab or even a tongue in an ear, which she experienced from Betelgeuse in interaction number one, does not make that much of a ripple for her. Things have changed a lot but for most of her life her world was a hard, mean, bleak one, where people with means could often take what they wanted from people without. Getting away with just that is getting away easily. Ford doesn't seem injured; he was momentarily made uncomfortable.
Boundaries are something she's aware Betelgeuse will need to work on, but if no one was seriously hurt Hange is prepared to let the matter drop.]
Well, as long as you weren't injured. Feel free to push back on him when he pulls that shit. Betelgeuse needs to experience some consequences for those things.
[Ford, being who he is, is just glad she isn't making a big deal of it. It was a misunderstanding. She thought it was more serious than it was, and that's Ford's garbage social skills at work again. Yay!]
If I didn't have it under control, I wouldn't be letting him sleep in my living room.
He's disgusting and he reeks, which I'm sure he knows and uses, but I have over twenty years of experience on the battlefield and I can't express to you how much worse that is when it comes to stink and shock value. I'm not intimidated by his vulgarities or by what of his abilities I've seen. So far, I've found myself able to work out situations with him without, generally, turning to physical violence. He doesn't offend me and hasn't been able to rile me up. [Which seems really important with Betelgeuse.] We'll see how the month goes, but I think I could work with him.
And the rest of the ship? I understand that his personality is difficult, and he brings a lot of trouble on himself. But plenty of people on this boat -- and the wardens are no exception -- seem to think that just because they don't like somebody, they can treat them however they want.
And besides that, he's --
-- I lost my temper with him. Said something that was out of line, on the night of the 13th. I tried to apologize, but he thought it was a trick -- that I was going to hurt him the minute he let his guard down, so that I could laugh at his suffering.
What I mean is, it's going to be difficult keeping others from making matters worse.
I'm saying that the rest of the ship will complicate this. It's hard being an intermediary between someone who hates most of the ship and a ship full of people who hate them back.
[at least Bill was smart enough to pick his battles, mostly. Bill is surprisingly well behaved compared to Betelgeuse. Civilized. Calculating. BJ is a loose cannon. Bill is--was?--a time bomb.]
[Hange takes a gulp of her tea, then turns and looks at the sea. Sunset is just beginning to burn in the sky and the water reflects an incredible shade of pink.]
They will, you're right. He already had an altercation with someone where they beat him up so badly that he got a punctured lung, and then undressed him and scrubbed him down and, apparently, left him to wake up. I don't understand why anyone would pair those things. At least if you beat someone up like that, call for their friends to tend to them afterward.
I'm prepared to stand by him. I'm sure it'll be a balancing act between supporting him and pointing out where consequences are warranted after all.
There's a limit to what I can do. I can't bring him to heel too hard - this isn't about crushing the personality out of him. When you were an inmate, would you have listened to any warden demanding you do such a thing?
[There's a hissed, under his breath shit when he hears what someone did. He's appalled but not disbelieving.
And he's angry. That wasn't for Betelgeuse, that was for whoever did it. Just like this ship isn't for inmates, it's for the Authority.]
No, I think you're right.
Just, if you really intend to take responsibility for him -- be prepared for situations where there's no right choice. And to take the blame for it when it goes wrong.
They won't get mad at him, not really, because they weren't expecting anything else. But they'll be furious with you.
[Like they were with Luke, but that was partly Ford's fault, too. And like they were with Ford. He lost several friends and made a lot of enemies.
Then, Ford straightens up, leans back a few degrees, lets his manner and his shoulders get less heavy.]
...ah, who knows. It might not come to that. I have no idea what's going to happen!
Anyway, I'm willing to give him a safe place to sleep until the next flood hits, or he finds somewhere else to stay, whichever comes first.
[It doesn't surprise her. Well, Hange has spent years upon years being very unpopular, regarded as insane and wasting her time in her work. It's a bit shocking how friendly people on the Barge are to her, and how charming they seem to find her. Hange appreciates it, but charm isn't really what it's all about.
This talk is going well. Stanford seems to have relaxed some.]
Who were you referring to, when you said you'd worked closely with someone who shared a lot of his qualities?
[She has a guess. She'd be surprised if she were wrong. But Hange likes to ask.]
[WHY WOULD YOU SAY IT THAT WAY IN YOUR POST THEN, FORD.
OK. Bill also claimed to not be trying to escape, they were trying to get to the Authority, instead. This is a good thing, because Bill has killed so many planets he's developed ways he likes doing it, and he has to graduate, or he has to die, no third option.
These two aren't reliable regarding their own activities though. Trusting their word on this blindly would be like asking Hange if she were trying to overthrow the king, when she was trying to overthrow the king. "Oh, no, of course not! I'm not up to anything rebellious or seditious! I'm a loyal subject of his royal highness, protector of humanity!"
Still, she wants to hear Ford's accounting of it.]
That would depend on how they were controlling us.
You see, I made several mistakes during the formulation of this plan. One of them was assuming that physical trauma was the only thing that needed to be prevented, and that everyone could control their imaginations. Another was not bringing my warden in on the plan from the beginning. But the most fundamental mistake I made, the one that doomed the operation from the beginning, was allowing Bill to convince me that his creator and the Authority were in the same world, exercising the same kind of control over us.
Bill isn't usually wrong. In my world, he was always right! He knew everything, saw everything, understood the principles that held the universe together. He didn't just know that mass has gravity, he knew why.
He'd met the guy who wrote him. And there were a lot of things about the Barge that his reasoning explained. So, I believed him.
But when all this succeeded, what came next? When I heard about this, I wondered if you didn't know how dangerous he is, or if you knew and didn't care. That doesn't seem to follow with how you're behaving here. Even so, how could you risk turning him loose on the universe?
I knew that getting to his creator, and to anyone else who tried to control him, was Bill's ultimate goal. He'd wait as long as it took to get into that universe, and he's very old, and very patient. As long as Bill didn't disappear from the ship, he could wait millennia, until all the inmates and wardens who remembered he was an evil mastermind were gone, and try again when the time was right.
And I believed he would get to that world, with or without my help. If he made it there, without anyone to stop him, it would be a massacre.
So, when I found the wormhole he'd been keeping in his cabin and he asked me to be his partner, I had to make a choice. If I reported him to the wardens and confiscated his materials and calculations, he'd only try again after I was gone. But if I escaped with him, either he would still be under the control of the Admiral, in which case the inmate power cap would still be in effect, or he would be outside of the Barge's influence, and free of the resurrection mechanic. I was reasonably sure I could get close enough, and I'd built a weapon that could do it months before. I could control him or kill him, and either way, he'd lose.
It was a stupid plan. I never succeed when I try to go it alone. I was risking a world on getting the chance to get a shot, and deep down I knew it. But I didn't see another way.
Until, of course, Bill told me the second half of his plan. A few weeks before the portal was ready, he explained to me that he needed me to cast a spell: one that would create a dome, hundreds of miles across, that would make anything that anyone imagined inside of it real.
Of course, I could imagine immediately the kind of chaos this could cause. I'd seen it already in my own world! People would be murdered by their own nightmares. I didn't want to do it.
But here I had a choice again. Go to the wardens, stop this plan, and wait for Bill to strike again, this time without being involved. Or, I could take the teeth out of the plan he had, get us both to the Authority's dimension, and free the Barge from their control without any bloodshed.
It meant I wasn't gambling on my own ability to kill Bill Cipher, something I'd been trying and failing to do for thirty years.
[No. Really. He gets how dumb that was.]
So, here's what I did. I agreed to cast the spell on two conditions: one, that Bill swore not to harm anyone, inside or outside the bubble, who wasn't his creator or the Authority, and two, that we modified the spell so that no one inside of it would experience physical harm.
[Ford's quiet a moment.]
It wasn't a perfect solution, but I did my best with what I had. I still believe, to this day, that if I had reported him, he would have made it to that world and thousands of people would be dead. I also still think the Authority has a lot of things to answer for, and one day, I'd like to meet them on their level and give them a piece of my mind.
[Is the flashback over yet? Shame you can't program the Enclosure so that your monologue is a voiceover.]
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Nothing happened that I couldn't handle. I told you, I've dealt with someone similar.
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Tell me so I know what he's doing. If something happened, I probably have to address it with him.
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[...he goes to sit down. Harder to bristle while sitting down and being offered tea.
Uuuuugh he doesn't want to talk about this.]
He's just--
[Ford waves a hand vaguely, grimacing.]
--handsy.
very flippant sexual harassment ref
Hange pushes the cream and honey towards him when he sits.]
Ohhh. [Dawning realization.] He grabbed a handful or something, huh?
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That's not what I'm here to talk about.
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Boundaries are something she's aware Betelgeuse will need to work on, but if no one was seriously hurt Hange is prepared to let the matter drop.]
Well, as long as you weren't injured. Feel free to push back on him when he pulls that shit. Betelgeuse needs to experience some consequences for those things.
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If I didn't have it under control, I wouldn't be letting him sleep in my living room.
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[Hange sips her tea.]
What did you want to talk about, regarding Betelgeuse?
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Oh, just -- well. He's...
[Huff. Sip the tea, slow the heart rate, u are the master of your own social anxiety even if the scenario went more nightmarish than anticipated.
Be straightforward.]
Do you think you can handle him?
[He's not doubting. He's asking.]
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[She's calm about it.]
He's disgusting and he reeks, which I'm sure he knows and uses, but I have over twenty years of experience on the battlefield and I can't express to you how much worse that is when it comes to stink and shock value. I'm not intimidated by his vulgarities or by what of his abilities I've seen. So far, I've found myself able to work out situations with him without, generally, turning to physical violence. He doesn't offend me and hasn't been able to rile me up. [Which seems really important with Betelgeuse.] We'll see how the month goes, but I think I could work with him.
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And the rest of the ship? I understand that his personality is difficult, and he brings a lot of trouble on himself. But plenty of people on this boat -- and the wardens are no exception -- seem to think that just because they don't like somebody, they can treat them however they want.
And besides that, he's --
-- I lost my temper with him. Said something that was out of line, on the night of the 13th. I tried to apologize, but he thought it was a trick -- that I was going to hurt him the minute he let his guard down, so that I could laugh at his suffering.
What I mean is, it's going to be difficult keeping others from making matters worse.
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Are you asking if the rest of the ship can handle him, or if I can handle him for them? Or them for him?
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[at least Bill was smart enough to pick his battles, mostly. Bill is surprisingly well behaved compared to Betelgeuse. Civilized. Calculating. BJ is a loose cannon. Bill is--was?--a time bomb.]
...I'm concerned for him.
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They will, you're right. He already had an altercation with someone where they beat him up so badly that he got a punctured lung, and then undressed him and scrubbed him down and, apparently, left him to wake up. I don't understand why anyone would pair those things. At least if you beat someone up like that, call for their friends to tend to them afterward.
I'm prepared to stand by him. I'm sure it'll be a balancing act between supporting him and pointing out where consequences are warranted after all.
There's a limit to what I can do. I can't bring him to heel too hard - this isn't about crushing the personality out of him. When you were an inmate, would you have listened to any warden demanding you do such a thing?
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And he's angry. That wasn't for Betelgeuse, that was for whoever did it. Just like this ship isn't for inmates, it's for the Authority.]
No, I think you're right.
Just, if you really intend to take responsibility for him -- be prepared for situations where there's no right choice. And to take the blame for it when it goes wrong.
They won't get mad at him, not really, because they weren't expecting anything else. But they'll be furious with you.
[Like they were with Luke, but that was partly Ford's fault, too. And like they were with Ford. He lost several friends and made a lot of enemies.
Then, Ford straightens up, leans back a few degrees, lets his manner and his shoulders get less heavy.]
...ah, who knows. It might not come to that. I have no idea what's going to happen!
Anyway, I'm willing to give him a safe place to sleep until the next flood hits, or he finds somewhere else to stay, whichever comes first.
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[It doesn't surprise her. Well, Hange has spent years upon years being very unpopular, regarded as insane and wasting her time in her work. It's a bit shocking how friendly people on the Barge are to her, and how charming they seem to find her. Hange appreciates it, but charm isn't really what it's all about.
This talk is going well. Stanford seems to have relaxed some.]
Who were you referring to, when you said you'd worked closely with someone who shared a lot of his qualities?
[She has a guess. She'd be surprised if she were wrong. But Hange likes to ask.]
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Bill Cipher.
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You launched an escape attempt with him.
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OK. Bill also claimed to not be trying to escape, they were trying to get to the Authority, instead. This is a good thing, because Bill has killed so many planets he's developed ways he likes doing it, and he has to graduate, or he has to die, no third option.
These two aren't reliable regarding their own activities though. Trusting their word on this blindly would be like asking Hange if she were trying to overthrow the king, when she was trying to overthrow the king. "Oh, no, of course not! I'm not up to anything rebellious or seditious! I'm a loyal subject of his royal highness, protector of humanity!"
Still, she wants to hear Ford's accounting of it.]
What was?
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And then what?
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You see, I made several mistakes during the formulation of this plan. One of them was assuming that physical trauma was the only thing that needed to be prevented, and that everyone could control their imaginations. Another was not bringing my warden in on the plan from the beginning. But the most fundamental mistake I made, the one that doomed the operation from the beginning, was allowing Bill to convince me that his creator and the Authority were in the same world, exercising the same kind of control over us.
Bill isn't usually wrong. In my world, he was always right! He knew everything, saw everything, understood the principles that held the universe together. He didn't just know that mass has gravity, he knew why.
He'd met the guy who wrote him. And there were a lot of things about the Barge that his reasoning explained. So, I believed him.
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Here's the situation as I saw it.
I knew that getting to his creator, and to anyone else who tried to control him, was Bill's ultimate goal. He'd wait as long as it took to get into that universe, and he's very old, and very patient. As long as Bill didn't disappear from the ship, he could wait millennia, until all the inmates and wardens who remembered he was an evil mastermind were gone, and try again when the time was right.
And I believed he would get to that world, with or without my help. If he made it there, without anyone to stop him, it would be a massacre.
So, when I found the wormhole he'd been keeping in his cabin and he asked me to be his partner, I had to make a choice. If I reported him to the wardens and confiscated his materials and calculations, he'd only try again after I was gone. But if I escaped with him, either he would still be under the control of the Admiral, in which case the inmate power cap would still be in effect, or he would be outside of the Barge's influence, and free of the resurrection mechanic. I was reasonably sure I could get close enough, and I'd built a weapon that could do it months before. I could control him or kill him, and either way, he'd lose.
It was a stupid plan. I never succeed when I try to go it alone. I was risking a world on getting the chance to get a shot, and deep down I knew it. But I didn't see another way.
Until, of course, Bill told me the second half of his plan. A few weeks before the portal was ready, he explained to me that he needed me to cast a spell: one that would create a dome, hundreds of miles across, that would make anything that anyone imagined inside of it real.
Of course, I could imagine immediately the kind of chaos this could cause. I'd seen it already in my own world! People would be murdered by their own nightmares. I didn't want to do it.
But here I had a choice again. Go to the wardens, stop this plan, and wait for Bill to strike again, this time without being involved. Or, I could take the teeth out of the plan he had, get us both to the Authority's dimension, and free the Barge from their control without any bloodshed.
It meant I wasn't gambling on my own ability to kill Bill Cipher, something I'd been trying and failing to do for thirty years.
[No. Really. He gets how dumb that was.]
So, here's what I did. I agreed to cast the spell on two conditions: one, that Bill swore not to harm anyone, inside or outside the bubble, who wasn't his creator or the Authority, and two, that we modified the spell so that no one inside of it would experience physical harm.
[Ford's quiet a moment.]
It wasn't a perfect solution, but I did my best with what I had. I still believe, to this day, that if I had reported him, he would have made it to that world and thousands of people would be dead. I also still think the Authority has a lot of things to answer for, and one day, I'd like to meet them on their level and give them a piece of my mind.
[Is the flashback over yet? Shame you can't program the Enclosure so that your monologue is a voiceover.]
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