14thcommander: (keep 'em in fighting trim)
hellscape she-beast ([personal profile] 14thcommander) wrote2025-07-18 05:59 pm
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ic contact

It's Hange, Hange, Hange! Were you looking for me? I'll get back to you posthaste. Or when it's convenient.

[ communicator & actionspam it's all good ]
mothmansplaining: (I believe in ya)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-04 09:48 pm (UTC)(link)
[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.
mothmansplaining: (with eyes of red)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-04 10:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Nothing happened. Nothing is ever going to happen.

[...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.
mothmansplaining: (pic#12770765)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-04 10:13 pm (UTC)(link)
[Way to make it extra embarrassing, Hange.]

That's not what I'm here to talk about.

mothmansplaining: (moooothman descend and tell me)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-04 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)
[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.
mothmansplaining: (let me tell you)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-04 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)
[Okay. Deep breath, shake off the embarrassment, go back to being Serious Ford, not Humiliated and Flustered Ford.]

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.]
mothmansplaining: (I believe in ya)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-04 11:43 pm (UTC)(link)
[He listens.]

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.
mothmansplaining: (you will end up dead)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-05 12:00 am (UTC)(link)
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.]

...I'm concerned for him.
mothmansplaining: (you think I should know)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-05 12:52 am (UTC)(link)
[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.
mothmansplaining: (pic#12770761)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-05 01:02 am (UTC)(link)
Who else?

Bill Cipher.
mothmansplaining: (Default)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-05 01:12 am (UTC)(link)
That wasn't the primary purpose. Though it sure did look that way.
Edited 2019-11-05 01:12 (UTC)
mothmansplaining: (Default)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-05 01:19 am (UTC)(link)
For me, it was trying to reach the beings I believe are controlling the ship. For Bill, it was that and killing his creator.
mothmansplaining: (let me tell you)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-05 01:49 am (UTC)(link)
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.
mothmansplaining: (pic#12770761)

[personal profile] mothmansplaining 2019-11-05 02:45 am (UTC)(link)
Believe me, I'd considered that.

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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