#can't believe owengejuicetv is the reason i start maintagging posts

[erstwhilesparrow]

realizing after writing this post that i forgot! to talk about! scott's "dying of natural causes" thing! right, mind the cut, i like talking a lot.

particularly annoyed i forgot to bring this up because i do think it's another instance of [characters saying things that are more telling about their relationships and characterization than about the world itself] and i want to pick it apart a bit even if it amounts to nothing new at the end. the thing scott says specifically is, after sparrow declares himself a sculk hybrid, "are you though? like, you made yourself this, right? [...] i became a lightmancer because i died of natural causes and then came back as it [...]"

"right," i said immediately to myself when i was first watching. "the extremely natural cause of a lava trap that someone put down around fwhip's waystone. very natural."

it's kind of bullshit, right? how do you differentiate between scott's "natural cause" and being cut in half or drilled open or having your circuits flooded with water? what, if you put a cage around yourself it doesn't count anymore? i don't think there's any meaningful physical difference between the ways sparrow died and the ways other people on the server have died, and even if there's some metaphysical thing going on here about the intent one has going into their death, i don't think scott has any more a clue how this whole "die and you're a new hybrid" works than anyone else. sparrow asked, way back when they first met, how it happened, scott didn't have an answer, and he seems like the sort with better things to do than investigate or be bothered by that.

regardless, i think the question of whether scott is stating something actually true about the world is maybe the least interesting part of what he's saying here. i willing to believe that this is something he believes is true! i also believe it is way more interesting to consider this from the angle of... how it's pushing all of sparrow's Wild Insecurity buttons? sparrow has shown himself multiple times to be really touchy about how much worth he has as a person/hybrid. i don't think scott is bumping up against that stuff deliberately, but he is bumping into it, and i can imagine how it hurts.

from the moment he decides to visit scott and through that whole long and terrible journey, sparrow is clinging so tight to the belief that scott will know what to do, scott can help him, scott is his friend and will explain what's going on and make things okay. sparrow's bewildered at being a million blocks away from home, and hungry, and terrified at realizing what he might be able and willing to do to others. he's utterly alone. it sucks! he's having a bad time! and then he makes it to scott's place, propelled by the hope that his friend will help him, and there's scott, who is looking at him funny and saying things like that?

well. like i said, i don't think scott is pushing sparrow's buttons on purpose. but he's also not helping. he is in fact digging into the insecurities and fears sparrow's been struggling with this whole time, and he's removed the sculk sparrow left, and he's a whole new guy who doesn't seem to want to visit or assist or understand sparrow's situation at all. sparrow built scott up so much in his head, and now that scott's actually here and behaving, yeah, like a concerned friend, but a concerned friend who has no idea what the fuck sparrow's going through, it's so easy to feel betrayed by that, isn't it? scott, especially when he's talking about the sculk he removed, keeps saying things that sparrow interprets as, like, no one wants to visit you, you're not a real hybrid, you should just stay down in the deep dark. etc. and scott's not saying those things, if anything he's just trying to have a conversation with his friend, but you can see how things start cracking apart, right? how it's that thing that happens all the time, where people say just slightly the wrong thing and it strikes a nerve they didn't even know was there, and no one mentions it but the pressure keeps building until one person snaps at another and it becomes a whole argument that itself becomes an awful, miserable fight and then it just-- doesn't get better, after?

and it's upsetting from scott's perspective too! consider: your friend shows up on your doorstep and is visibly having a bad time. you want to help and catch up -- he is your friend. something's happening to him that he doesn't understand, and he's evidently turning to you for support; you try talking to him about it. but he's irritable too, getting worked up about things you say and do for reasons you can't quite grasp, and you'd like to try making sense of the situation with him, like, hey, i see you're struggling with this thing we have in common, here's a way we're different, maybe that's what's causing your problems, and maybe because you're confused and kind of nervous and your friend is being weirdly aggro at you and you're not actually a saint, it takes on a tinge of hey, maybe something's wrong with you, actually. why are you having this problem when i'm clearly not? why can't this problem be solvable so we can be okay again?

and then your friend pulls a knife on you, and you really don't know what to do. both of you on the back foot. the argument spirals from there.

it doesn't ultimately matter whether scott's right about the whole 'dying of natural causes' thing, i suppose. just him saying it is (1) telling about what scott's default assumptions about hybrids are and how scott understands himself, which shows you the fault along which his relationship to sparrow falls apart, and (2) really fun for making sparrow reveal how he feels about himself and his own hybrid-ness. scott can be entirely wrong about this thing and it still works. scott can be entirely wrong about this thing and it's actually maybe more interesting to me if he is! it adds interesting flavour to their relationship if this is just a belief he's been holding onto this whole time despite also simultaneously caring a good deal about sparrow, or if it's a theory he cobbles together in the moment in an effort to make sense of the directions sparrow keeps taking this conversation they're having. isn't it interesting? if this whole thing falls apart because he blurted out the wrong thing at the wrong time and it wasn't even true in the end.