(no subject)
So I'll do an essay on Sera's state of mind and stuff in camp right now, just because I think I finally have it all sorted out in my head to the point where it will take relatively few words to record.
I essayed on Sera's state of mind coming into camp a million years ago, and looking back at that has really given me some insight on how much she's changed. Sera's primary motivations were always directed by two things: her guilt and the people important to her. Guilt as a motivation has become a lot less important during her time at camp, mostly because of her being fuckowned repeatedly by that second motivation. Heat, Jinana, Ine, Saku, and Kharg/Darc (they give the same advice) have all been the most instrumental in the change here, and the fact Heat plays half of those characters just shows how very IC she is at all times. They're not the only ones, either! Most of the people she knows have been telling her to get away from the IT IS ALL MY FAULT living in the past sort of mindset. However, this makes her rely a lot more on the people important to her, because Sera is never going to stand purely for herself. It just won't happen, she hated herself too much for too long. What she CAN do is put the past behind her to an extent, and be happy for the sake of other people. She had been starting to do that in camp much more - it's easy to see the progression if you go back to her first threads and see how formal and stiff her language was there, compared to how she's able to be very casual and teasing now, even if self-consciously. It's been an easy transition for her, because most people at camp like her and the ones who don't seem to fixate on the demon thing - in canon, people always hated her personally, which is a lot harder to deal with. It's fine to like people without being liked back or accepted! She hadn't minded or even resented people hurting her in general, which has been the last and most significant thing to start to change. THIS IS MOSTLY BECAUSE OF KHARG, which makes me laugh forever when I think about it.
Kharg is really deeply important to Sera because he was basically the first person to tell her to go ahead and stand up for herself even if it hurt her friends. He flat-out told her to stop putting up with his racist crap if it hurt her feelings, and to tell him off for it, even if he didn't agree with what she was saying. That was HUGE. Because Sera never stands up for herself for her own sake, usually. When she does, it feeds back into standing up for her comrades, because Embryon is The Important Thing. She was actually trying to follow his advice, and try not to perpetually ignore her own negative feelings forever. Considering that this was the period where Kuhn, one of her closest camp relationships, was starting to consider leaving the cannibal book club, it was hard for her! But she was trying not to take it personally (even though she did) and to stay strong for her own sake at the same time, though it really bruised her faith that people in camp could be trusted as friends, much less as comrades. And then Kharg decided to tell her hey, let me pretend you don't exist to make myself feel better about my racism and brother issues! And that hit her like a sledgehammer. Kharg was one of her first friends in camp, one of the first people she met, and she trusted him within her own narrow non-comrade terms pretty much absolutely. She also liked him more than Kuhn, though Kuhn was much more important to her in terms of being sort-of Embryon, largely because of the stand-up-for-yourself thing. Being told that her existence was too inconvenient by him? NOT COOL. She'd told him a long time before that it didn't matter if he considered her a friend or not, because her liking him was her business, but ever since he pretty much accepted her that's been absolutely a lie. She does care. A lot. He'd become one of her important people.
Since Sera had made such a switch to relying on people rather than guilt in camp, and two of her more important ones just let her down devastatingly, this will set her back in making new friendships a lot. She'll be a lot more withdrawn to the friends she's already made - emotionally, she's retreating to the utter safety of her comrades in order to lick her wounds. She'll be a lot more apathetic about what people outside Embryon think of her, and casual racism will sting a LOT more, since that was Kharg's schtick and anything that makes her think of him right now is kind of painful. She actually freaked out on Zero briefly about how humanity wasn't worth saving, which is the most despairing she's been in camp yet. However! She can only regress so far down that road, because Embryon already did pay the ultimate price to save humanity. They're all dead at home! They died willingly! Embryon thinks humanity is worth it - proved it in the most dramatic fashion possible - and Sera defines herself by Embryon, so she can't give up on humanity. It'd be going against everything she is. Giving up on humanity as worth saving is not an option. Her options are restricted to just hurting a lot, which she'll be doing for the foreseeable future.
I essayed on Sera's state of mind coming into camp a million years ago, and looking back at that has really given me some insight on how much she's changed. Sera's primary motivations were always directed by two things: her guilt and the people important to her. Guilt as a motivation has become a lot less important during her time at camp, mostly because of her being fuckowned repeatedly by that second motivation. Heat, Jinana, Ine, Saku, and Kharg/Darc (they give the same advice) have all been the most instrumental in the change here, and the fact Heat plays half of those characters just shows how very IC she is at all times. They're not the only ones, either! Most of the people she knows have been telling her to get away from the IT IS ALL MY FAULT living in the past sort of mindset. However, this makes her rely a lot more on the people important to her, because Sera is never going to stand purely for herself. It just won't happen, she hated herself too much for too long. What she CAN do is put the past behind her to an extent, and be happy for the sake of other people. She had been starting to do that in camp much more - it's easy to see the progression if you go back to her first threads and see how formal and stiff her language was there, compared to how she's able to be very casual and teasing now, even if self-consciously. It's been an easy transition for her, because most people at camp like her and the ones who don't seem to fixate on the demon thing - in canon, people always hated her personally, which is a lot harder to deal with. It's fine to like people without being liked back or accepted! She hadn't minded or even resented people hurting her in general, which has been the last and most significant thing to start to change. THIS IS MOSTLY BECAUSE OF KHARG, which makes me laugh forever when I think about it.
Kharg is really deeply important to Sera because he was basically the first person to tell her to go ahead and stand up for herself even if it hurt her friends. He flat-out told her to stop putting up with his racist crap if it hurt her feelings, and to tell him off for it, even if he didn't agree with what she was saying. That was HUGE. Because Sera never stands up for herself for her own sake, usually. When she does, it feeds back into standing up for her comrades, because Embryon is The Important Thing. She was actually trying to follow his advice, and try not to perpetually ignore her own negative feelings forever. Considering that this was the period where Kuhn, one of her closest camp relationships, was starting to consider leaving the cannibal book club, it was hard for her! But she was trying not to take it personally (even though she did) and to stay strong for her own sake at the same time, though it really bruised her faith that people in camp could be trusted as friends, much less as comrades. And then Kharg decided to tell her hey, let me pretend you don't exist to make myself feel better about my racism and brother issues! And that hit her like a sledgehammer. Kharg was one of her first friends in camp, one of the first people she met, and she trusted him within her own narrow non-comrade terms pretty much absolutely. She also liked him more than Kuhn, though Kuhn was much more important to her in terms of being sort-of Embryon, largely because of the stand-up-for-yourself thing. Being told that her existence was too inconvenient by him? NOT COOL. She'd told him a long time before that it didn't matter if he considered her a friend or not, because her liking him was her business, but ever since he pretty much accepted her that's been absolutely a lie. She does care. A lot. He'd become one of her important people.
Since Sera had made such a switch to relying on people rather than guilt in camp, and two of her more important ones just let her down devastatingly, this will set her back in making new friendships a lot. She'll be a lot more withdrawn to the friends she's already made - emotionally, she's retreating to the utter safety of her comrades in order to lick her wounds. She'll be a lot more apathetic about what people outside Embryon think of her, and casual racism will sting a LOT more, since that was Kharg's schtick and anything that makes her think of him right now is kind of painful. She actually freaked out on Zero briefly about how humanity wasn't worth saving, which is the most despairing she's been in camp yet. However! She can only regress so far down that road, because Embryon already did pay the ultimate price to save humanity. They're all dead at home! They died willingly! Embryon thinks humanity is worth it - proved it in the most dramatic fashion possible - and Sera defines herself by Embryon, so she can't give up on humanity. It'd be going against everything she is. Giving up on humanity as worth saving is not an option. Her options are restricted to just hurting a lot, which she'll be doing for the foreseeable future.