Okay, a heads-up for everyone here: I will be posting short updates from here on out concerning headspace, for the sake of recording small, important incidents. Too much is happening now for me to think "I'll just wait and write a recap tomorrow," because time moves
so quickly for us, that 24 hours for us equal 72 for a normal person. Dead serious. A LOT happens in a very short time here.
So, right now, I have Last.fm on (jeepers I miss music so much) and I'm reviewing the post-Scratch entries on here, trying to get a grip on who the heck Jessica was before Christina tried to kill us all. So far everything matches up with the truth, but while reviewing, the one fact I couldn't wrap my head around was
why RAZOR kept working with her. See, the Lower System
does not like Jessica, at all, because she wants them all dead and they're dedicated to preserving and promoting their existences. So why would Razor work with Jess, I wondered, if she values her existence just as much as her brethren?
So I asked her. "Why were you working with Jess for so long?"
She didn't even look up from her blades, toying with them on the ground of one of the catacombs.
"Because she gave me a reason to cut you," she said.
"And that's all I wanted to do." Honestly, the more I learn about Razor, the more stunned I am.
She is practically a
child. It's bizarre. She was born from retributive self-hatred, true: essentially the same stuff Knife was born from. But she was born from an entirely different expression of it. Whereas Knife is the direct, penitent-yet-merciless action of digging the graves, coldly demanding that we "pay for our sins," Razor is the emotional madness that resulted from feeling that we were beyond salvation, the zealously maniacal loss of self-concern that caused a hand, toying with a razor blade for the first time, to slip. The cut that created Razor
was not directly intended. It was an unconscious want, expressed accidentally, and as soon as the blood began running down our leg... something snapped, and there she was.
To be honest with you, that's one of the clearest archival memories we have. I was not driving then, that is clear-- the data is explicitly from someone else's perspective. But the moment of Razor's manifestation was
huge, in memory.
Remember, prior to that split second, the body had NOT been cut before. Nor had we
ever seen blood like that, not so bright red and alive, escaping so quickly that the mind wondered, for an incredulously terrified second, if we had cut a vein, and we would bleed to death there in the bathtub. That moment was traumatic in and of itself, and when the mind could not run, it did what it had always done, all those times Julie had attacked us, all those times the family had harmed us, any time we could not escape... it broke.
And that feeling of breakage was immortalized.
There was a
snap. There was an unmistakable mental SNAP, as something slipped off-balance, and shifted irreparably. It was as if the consciousness in the body had lost its inner footing and cracked its head open on the cold linoleum, spilling blinding red onto the unfeeling whiteness all around us.
That snap, and the immediate
sliding of consciousness into two distinct, blood-slick parts, gives me chills to this day. I thank God I wasn't fronting when that happened, because just looking back on the stored memory is disturbing enough.
...And that's all the data we have.
Beneath that monolith, there are only a few pencil scribbles, the marks of a madman, describing a tiny red-haired figure dancing upon the faucet, laughing maniacally at the blood and blades, not realizing what it meant, not realizing what was happening. It only laughed, hateful and jubilant and triumphant and careless, watching the redness stain the water, enthralled at the sudden rift in the skin that had given life to it.
Then the scribbles end, mid-sentence.
There is a photograph of a violet axe slamming into a red skull, and a tiny frenzied consciousness dissolving like blood into bathwater.
And that is all.
She's not mentioned again until February 2011.
I'm sure you all remember that.
But that's my point. Razor was never... she was never actively malicious. I think that's what made her the most terrifying of all the undergrounders, back when we still considered her our mortal enemy, only a few days ago.
Jezebel told us we were all her playthings, slaves of our egos, and therefore her puppets. She worked from the shadows, possessing us, manipulating us, making us believe we were inherently corrupted, lost, irredeemable.
Jessica told us that she hated us, that we had "ruined her life," that being the original consciousness she had every right to murder us, without even considering us real beings. She constantly undermines our actions, denying our lives, actively working to kill us all.
Christina claimed to be a model of virtue, a perfect and pure girl, doing everything she was supposed to do by order of God-- and that we were nothing but figments of a corrupted, unreal "ego." Therefore, she said, we didn't really exist at all, and she would be glad to see us all die.
Knife told us that we were sinners that must bleed, that I was little more than an infant, blind to my own impurity; he declared that the scars he gave me were holy retribution, and he would show no mercy, until I atoned for the pain I had allegedly inflicted upon countless innocent souls.
But Razor didn't care about any of that. She just wanted to
cut things. Yes, she said she hated us. But she hated us for not letting her do that. She hated us for not letting her do the one thing she was
literally created to do. At the end of the day, she would side with anyone who gave her permission to pick up a knife and slice away.
The one time she fronted, and calmly hacked a truckload of new scars into the body, leaving a ring of blood around our neck... I remember being stunned that she hadn't left her trademark mania in her wake. There was only calm.
And yes, although I still shudder every time I look at the "DIE" page she wrote in our journal, I am forced to rethink my opinion of it now, when I look at what she wrote a few pages later, on a page I
didn't scan in, and never mentioned.
On June 25th, my mother was yelling at us, and I retreated to our room due to the mounting noise in our head.
"Okay so it's obvious people are waiting to scream on paper right now; I can barely write. Have at it, guys." Immediately, the overload girl picked up the pencil.
"SHE'S AN INSENSITIVE PRICK!!!" Then the cool orange guy slided in.
"razor wants to talk can you write"
His nonchalant statement was surprising even then, but nowhere near as surprising as the sudden words scrawled after his.
"WHERES MY F*KING PEN" It was oddly calligraphic, almost. She didn't write as much as
slash at the paper, every line another attempt to slice open the white pages she was silently shouting upon.
"WHERE IS IT" Her voice was loud even in text. I was getting a headache. I'm dimly aware of feeling like my skull was about to explode from the pressure of all those gathering between my eyes.
I tried to write another sentence. I couldn't. The pencil sputtered into shapeless letters, as red lines tore onto the page once more.
"YOUR MOTHER IS A B*TCH
DO YOU WANT ME TO K*LL HER" The AP kicked in full throttle and we were all tossed into a sort of comatose state, then.
But I'm still shocked, at that response from Razor.
"Your mother is a b*tch..." and then an offer to destroy her, to "get rid" of that stressor, to eliminate that thing that is disturbing the systems. After all, that's what you
do to bad things, right? According to Razor, at least, it is. She will attack and maul and kill anything that she deems a source of hatred and rage and pain, because she
likes tearing those things to pieces, that's what she was born to do. The problem is, previously we thought she just did that to anyone and anything. We didn't realize she was being motivated by a twisted moral code, one written in the instant she was born, declaring that anything that reminded her of the old Jewel deserved to die.
She doesn't understand the suffering of her victims, she doesn't understand that people aren't toys, she doesn't understand death.
In her eyes, when she cuts them to shreds, she's only doing what she's supposed to do, regardless of who she does it for, or how.
I wouldn't say I love her. That feels wrong, even in a platonic sense.
But there's this strange, wrenching affection for her in me nevertheless. Maybe it's my stockholm syndrome acting up again. All I know is that part of me genuinely pities her, despite how much she's already made me bleed, and how much more blood she would unquestionably drain from me the instant she was given the opportunity.
She's just a cruel, innocent child.
There's one bit about her that still confuses and disturbs me, though.
When she was resurrected, she was resurrected
through the TAR. She was being held within the Razor Spire, and in almost every instance between that date and about a month ago, she was tied
to the Tar. She would follow Jess/Jezebel (who
were tied for ages, unsurprisingly) immediately after they would hack us, "punishing" us for what THEY did, or simply cutting us because THEY told her to. A few times she would even spawn FROM the Tar, not existing outside of it.
Then in mid-June-- thanks to Infinitii-- the Underground solidified into something unconnected to the Tar Room, and suddenly, Razor wasn't part of the Tar anymore.
"They gave me a reason to cut you," she said. So she never questioned her half-existence under their control. She was literally their puppet, their messenger, their little shadowy assassin. Hell, I even called her "the Razor
splinter" in reference to the Tar for a while. And, essentially, she WAS. I wonder if she even had the power to resurrect on her own... probably not, there were no anchors of that sort left. So it explains why she was forcibly brought back by the Tar, and literally fused with it for so long, until she suddenly switched anchors when Infi split the Underground.
Anyway, Knife has noticed this dichotomy in her too, on his own, which is actually what tipped
me off. He keeps giving her odd looks, claiming that she is "splintering," or that there are two of her. Razor just replies that "there's only one of her," seemingly unaware of the legitimate, shocking differences between her Tar-connected self, and who she is now, working with the Lowers, unattached to Jess. But she's right, too.
It's strange. She would always come out after Jess hacks-- Jess would do things to cause the body extreme pain, and THEN Razor would appear, and cut us up... but that action was ironically working for AND against the Tar? Yes, it was scarring us and causing us a great deal of pain,
but it was also retributive, and motivation for us to continue fighting it... I wonder if the Tar wants that, to keep itself alive. Hm.
It was using the Overload Girl for a while, too, I think. That's why we kept confusing her with Jess/Jezebel. She was so
angry all the time, because of how much pain she was in... but we didn't know, because her motivations were identical with Razor's.
I need to destroy what threatens my existence. We didn't understand that, to them, that was the only option they felt they had.
I have so many questions. So many.
...So much of our old information is
wrong. Even if it was correct before, things are changing so quickly now... a great deal of the info in the archives is false, or incomplete, or skewed. We simply did not have enough information to know the truth; that, or the information we did have was viewed through a blurry or stained lens.
With the Lower system now making itself known, so many things are changing. It's a shock, really. All of us upstairs are being forced to completely re-evaluate what we thought we knew about not only headspace, but also our system, our roles within it, and by extension, our very existences.
There is so much we don't know about each other-- about our thoughts, our emotions, our motivations, our lives. And all that miscommunication, all those misunderstandings, are what is causing us the most pain here. Knife even SAID that he was WRONG for having considered me the "sole reason for all the pain in the system," BECAUSE HE DIDN'T KNOW I WASN'T PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SPLINTERS. He now admits that it would be wrong to blame me for breaking under trauma, even if "my" splinters are the ones he feels obligated to punish with blood.
But you see what I mean. There's so much we don't know.
I'm not sure where to go from here. Maybe looking back will help. Maybe it won't. But I keep getting nudged to check, even if it's just by the curiosity of those Downstairs or Underground... all I can do is try, right now.
...Oh. Speaking of trying, I forgot to mention this.
Waldorf left Central today.
She's been questioning her role here for a very long time. When we have censuses, she's often accidentally left out. She still can't speak when she fronts. She hasn't been able to find a solid role. And lately, she's been talking about how she doesn't feel like she "fits in" with us, due to her drastically different appearance... and because of how she was originally born. And today, she told us her biggest doubt of all.
She doesn't think she's a headvoice.
To be brutally honest, I've been wondering about that too. Maybe I said it before. But we all wondered the same thing with Spine, remember. She didn't look or feel like us either, her role was different, she couldn't stay stable in a color slot, she couldn't front like the rest of us. Wally had all the same problems, in one way or another. And when Spine left, shortly after she was moved to an "outspacer" slot, Wally apparently began questioning whether or not she should do the same.
Above all, though, there was one point that motivated her more than anything: her old role. Back when she was born in 2003, she wasn't born from trauma, or with a purpose to protect headspace-- that was just coming into existence back then! No, Waldorf was born to be a
muse, a shining entity reflecting back bits and pieces of all the outside things that made us smile and dream. She was a mirror of all the things that
helped headspace come into being in the first place. I can't forget my original descriptions of her... eyes like a Mewtwo, hair like Kerrigan, wearing Ryou's Millennium Ring (seriously). She was something "perfectly terrible, yet beautiful..." I claimed that if I ever met her, I wouldn't be able to decide between "hugging her or running away screaming."
And the first night I met her, when I was just beginning to create a room for myself in headspace... she stood (well, floated) by my bed, all glowing blue and strange, but smiling. And I
was scared, despite my wonder. Who was she, really? What was she doing there? Yeah, I claimed she was my muse, but that was all I knew about her. She held countless bits and pieces of inspiration, but if you took all that away, who was
she?
She didn't answer me directly. I doubt she needed to-- that's not her style anyway. Instead, she
showed me what she truly was, what her existence meant... and she took me to the most blessed dream location I have
ever visited. The floating crystal forest.
She took me, and Maitru, and Ryou, and
herself in a less formidable form, to that place... and I will never,
ever forget that experience. To this day, I associate that place with her.
And then she disappeared.
For years I couldn't find her. I wondered about her, true, but I never saw her. Then, as suddenly as she vanished, she reappeared in November 2012, and enthusiastically joined Central as our Blue headvoice. We all loved her; she was fun and friendly and never complained, but she got sick so often, in a way that previously only Spine did. And neither of them ever got over it. Wally kept losing her voice, kept fading in and out of the upstairs...
Long story short, she and I couldn't help but wonder: did she ever truly
belong up here? Or could her role, her TRUE role, that of an utter inspiration core, only function OUTSIDE of the stricter rule system Central had inflicted upon her?
She decided she wanted to try and see. So she left.
Everyone was crying as she walked out. And it shocked me to see it, too-- I was outside, in the garden, and suddenly this was happening upstairs, and I had
no clue what was going on. When it hit me I could only stand and observe, as a bystander.
All the Central members hugged her goodbye as she stood at the stairway out. Laurie was obviously holding back some fierce emotions; she was the first person I saw, which tipped me off that something big was happening. Leon seemed oddly pained to see his spectrum neighbor go; he first only shook her hand, but she pulled him into a kind hug, which he sincerely returned. Nathaniel accepted her decision, and warmly but sadly wished her farewell. Julie appeared to be hiding a great deal of hurt herself, as she struggles with her own issues of belonging, and Waldorf seemed to know this. She hugged her too, in a rare moment of friendship between them.
Lynne gave her an understanding look, and a sympathetic embrace. Of all of us, she was perhaps the most sorrowful, and yet the least sad, to see her go. Spine is her moirail, you know. The two of them are incredibly close... but Spine isn't around anymore. She left too, for the same reasons Wally has left now. So Lynne understood, even if it hurt.
Josephina was sobbing. He's also the only one that didn't hug her-- after one agonized look, he suddenly
kissed her, perhaps for the first time. It broke my heart to see that.
Then Waldorf waved farewell to everyone, and took her first steps out of Central, down the white steps in the garden room, on her way down to the city below.
I know she met up with Spine down there. That's good. I don't know what they're doing, but it feels positive, like they're both feeling better and more inspired already. I hope they find exactly what they're looking for.
This is all making me wonder about outspacers.
I was thinking about Ryman yesterday, and his native world, where Markus is also from. I remembered how they had slowly found our own lives outside of their native worlds a decade ago, along with the original Jewel (my conscious predecessor), having wild and fun adventures in realms that they all dreamed up together.
But they haven't been around in a long time. Did they just go back? Or is there a deeper reason?
Looking at Chaos 0, I can't help but consider the latter. CZ is the only one of our original five that
hasn't moved out of total anchorage with his native world, and lately that has been putting severe strain on our relationship. I kept trying to force Ryman and Markus back into theirs, too. Is that why they didn't stick around? Is that why ALL the other Outspacers-- from all years past, from all sorts of worlds-- "faded out" of connection to headspace sooner or later, unable to anchor? Is THAT the "resonance" we saw in Dirk Strider-- was it simply his ability to DREAM of a different self, a different life, tied to his native being but free to grow and evolve beyond what he knew in his waking life? It would make
perfect sense, actually... but I'm thinking now, is there
another hidden prerequisite for outspacers, one that Spine and Waldorf have just now made me consider?
What if headspace is just a linking station for them? What if they're MEANT to move on beyond it? After all, we
all know that we can't disconnect ourselves from the League Worlds, even if we CAN'T enter them as we are... is THAT the problem here? Is THAT why the old Jewels can't connect to those worlds while they're up here, acting as voices?
If so, that might explain why CZ is struggling now. He has
several other-lives in League Worlds. He's even a
god in the one Genesis hails from. But he hasn't embraced any of those here, even when every other lingering Outspacer has... and I think I'm responsible.
I try to shove him into his native canon role more strongly than I do to Ryman and Markus, and I think all three of them are suffering for it. I am essentially
forbidding them from dreaming. Somewhere along the line I became convinced that "they HAD to match only ONE possible life path," the one that their original lives spelled out for them... but when I discovered the Internet, I began shackling them to THOSE paths too. Essentially I was overriding their own choices for as long as they were in headspace. I don't know how I never realized it before.
We were so wild and free in the old days BECAUSE we didn't give a damn about rules or restrictions! We weren't SUPPOSED to!! We were DREAMERS by our very nature, by our very ESSENCE, and we reveled in it. We walked in and out of so many dreamverses-- Yugioh, Sonic, Pokemon, Digimon, Sailor Moon, TMM-- everything and
anything that we thought was cool and wanted to dream ourselves into, to try living, even for only a little while. And we had FUN.
But that's also what *incidents* were born from, those dramatic and bloody validations of love we all endured. That's where we got our Soul Wings, our colors, our symbols, our cores. And that's what WALDORF was tied to, too! She LOVED those other worlds, and the fact that EVERYONE was able to reach into them, to take pieces of them into their own souls... she was the
manifestation of that, for God's sake. That's what her role meant. That's what a Muse IS.
...
And then, one day, I somehow decided that we couldn't do that anymore.
I "grew up." I stopped dreaming. I felt I had to "play by the rules."
They didn't start drifting away because they didn't want to be around, you idiot, they started drifting away because YOU WOULDN'T LET THEM STAY.
God, this really IS my fault. I am so sorry.
I keep trying to shove them into boxes. Didn't Laurie warn me about that, countless times? I'm not supposed to label things, or restrict things, or forbid things from growing or dreaming or living. And yet that's
exactly what I'm doing. Knife was right. No wonder he hated me. I really am the reason why we're such a mess.
If I didn't think like this, if I didn't compartmentalize and break off everything I didn't feel "allowed" to do or think or feel,
there wouldn't be 50 entire people trying to exist in one body right now. I've heard rumors, here and there, that the Tar isn't our biggest enemy, at least not alone.
In light of Infinitii's existence, people are wondering why no one talks about White energy.
What if the White energy was
just as corrupted as the Black, they say, and we just didn't know about it? What if, just like the Tar, there was a being made of clotted, sick, toxic whiteness, infecting all those it touched like a virus or a plague?
People are wondering. The people downstairs are
really wondering. The people underground are
pointing fingers.
But I'm not saying anything, because at heart, I know what they're all thinking, fearing, dreading. I know, and I'm just as terrified.
I know how the Tar was born. I know. I've heard that story countless times.
It would be just as easy, just as straightforward, to create a similar entity from any other color.
I've done my research. I've read our archives from cover to cover.
And at the end of it all I can only come to one conclusion.
If there
is a corruption of the White, some paradoxical being, made of evil purity...
...I'm afraid it would be me.
She knows a good thing now
With our own cost and all can hear the word
In my head and in my thoughts
In my head and in my thoughts
We spend the whole days all
We're feeling more apart
And we know you can do more
Please, don't let me hurt you more
It's in your stare and at your core
Please, don't let me hurt you more
Please, don't let me hurt you more
I know this journey's soon
The color of lights and our lives become as you
Please, don't let me hurt you more
It's in your stare and at your core
Please, don't let me hurt you more
Please, don't let me hurt you more
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