Going Insane Thanks to Lack of Sleep
The Fictionkind Community's Prompt #2 - Canon: How closely is your identity aligned with canon events in your source? Completely, partially, or not at all? Do you experience multiple canons and alternative timelines concurrently? How much does the source material of your alterfictional identity influence your personality and behavior, if at all?
Very loosely. My Danny-self is very OOC compared to the canon version of him. The resemblance is there, in subtle ways, but overall they are two extremely different individuals. It is my personal opinion that OG-Danny would be genuinely creeped out by mine on some level. Maybe even get mad at him, for some reason, in an irrational teenager's way: "If you're another me, then why aren't you acting like me? And why don't we look alike?!" Orā¦something to that effect. And then I'd frown and maybe clam up, because what's the right answer here? What do I say to make this guy less stupid and yelly? If we're the same age, I guess. I always imagine it's 14yo OG-Danny meeting my 30yo self, actually, but older-me would be readier to respond, holding up placatingāhuge, claw-nailedāhands: "Hey, calm down. Alternate universes can be anything, so don't sweat itā¦" That's basically all I think I'd need to say. I'd try for a reassuring tone, but, it'll be hit-or-miss. I am not at all a comforting figure; in human form, I'm normal-ish but definitely, distinctly odd (at best people assume I am some eccentric mentally ill and-or autistic person), while in my ghostly body my entire aura is just a supernatural beacon even on a good day.
The same things that happened to OG-Danny throughout the entire 3 seasons of the show, plus the 2 graphic novels that've come out recently, have gone down for me, but only likeā¦their blueprints. Let me go back to the beginning of this whole source of mine. I started this "Primordiverse" crossover + AU fanfiction project as my own personal rewrite of canon, changing practically everything, removing/replacing details, and adding my own new stuff into it to make it have more realistic sense to me, and me alone. It sparked in middle school, picked up traction inside me in high school, got held back by mental health problems plus homelessness until I was 22, when I truly began working on it again. I am 30 now, and I've begun the 2nd draft of the first year of Danny's life, starting at age 14 for him in 2024 still. He was born September 9th, 2010 in this AU. He's a frigging baby! LOL. But anyway, either I forged this fictotype over time via simply putting so much love and effort into Danny's story that I simply became him, or I was always him, and I found a way to tap into my own memories and noemata. Will I ever know which one it is? Nope! Who cares! I am him! That's all that is relevant.
Back to the blueprints bit. The arcs that go down in canon are rewired, rehauled, reconfigured by me to best befit my AU. Some of them don't even occur in the same chronological order they did in the show. In fact, most of it happens during Danny's first 12 months as a halfa!! Can you imagine?! This kid is so bizarrely resilient and strong, and he doesn't realize it about himself. Which means I am, too! That's what amazes me most about being him, writing about him, everything. His toughness, his willpower, his ability to sit still and be fucking quiet at will for any duration of time. I can feel myself about to derail this post with this tangent, but, fuck it all, we ball. Forgive me, I didn't sleep a wink last night and am still functioning right now on sheer caffeine and ethereal spite. Goddamn.
Danny-boy in ghost form (ā¦mainly in ghost form) gets maimed, torn up, pummeled, eviscerated (Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, gore, gray-morality, vore, and death are definitely big content warnings for this AU generally, sorry-not-sorry), tortured, mindgame'd, and oh my gods, holy fucking shit, the sheer cognitive dissonance he experiences, the complete unfair bullshit this kid endures. Perservering sometimes looks like having to fight back a whole callous, violent, spectral invasion from overtaking your hometown, and then returning before 7am that same morning to get mundanely ready for the local big yellow bus to high school. It's like a miniature war, nearly every nightfall, sometimes during daylight, too; tonight, you're the only defense against it. Valerie isn't as effective as she thinks she is. Your parents' GIW employees aren't quick enough to catch that this is going on yet. So you bare your teeth and blast at every hostile, you roar at them, you barrel into them fast enough to shatter the sound barrier. To obliterate reinforced concrete.
They do fight back.
They don't hold back or pull punches just because you are five-feet, no inches, tiny and prepubescent. They do not care. Why would they? They came here to wreak havoc, and it's showing by the overturned, tossed, once-parked vehicles they've left in their wake. They are stunned for a moment, then they slash, snarl, and blast ectoplasm at you with aims to End your Core, to snuff you out. You're no martial artist, never been trained, and you haven't been doing this your whole life (why does this all feel like it's been your whole life, already? Why does it feel like You, inextricable, your deepest-down truths brought to the surface? You don't hate your human body, but fuck, your ghost one is flawlessly better; it's more honestly You) but they're obviously not experts, eitherāyet, they're competently vicious enough to get a few bullseyes in. You lose a forearm. A chunk of your abdomen gets separated from you. You dodge a sharp blast so swiftly you could've gotten whiplash, if you were made of flesh right now. In a animalistic flash of brief, logistical thought, you wonder if you'll have to eat any of these ghosts once you defeat them, to heal faster, for convenience. Wouldn't be the first time you've done it, and, well.
It's nature. Your nature.
You have indeed failed before. Badly. Lost the fight, got brutalizedā¦and ended up tardy for school, but not this time. They do fall, this time. One of them even tries to flee. You hastily rush, with one working hand, to vacuum them each up into your Spectral Containment Device. You only managed to destroy two opponents to the point their Cores gave out. Your gaze snaps to them, limply semi-dissolved on the pavement. Your arm is not regrowing itself fast enough. Your abdomen is not repairing itself fast enough. What if another attack comes upon you and you're still mangled? Not optimal. Time to devour.
Your face gets messy with their ectoplasm and it doesn't remind you of watching a documentary about predators' maws covered in blood as they eat their kills, but it should.
You return home soon, like nothing happened.
Absolutely nothing. Compartmentalization? Disassociation? Numbness, natural sociopathy? ā¦Regardless.
You stop to reflect. You don't sleep anymore. The last time you remember actually doing so was for the first few nights after the Portal accident, and then never again since. Somehow, your nonhuman biology has nullified your need for REM sleep, and it did so very quickly. (You pretend to go to bed at 9:30 PM every night, pajamas, teeth-brushing, shower, and all, then you sit on the edge of your bed after locking your bedroom shut from the inside. You turn intangible/invisble to squeeze out of the anti-ecto tech's crack in your bedroom window, the one that you yourself kinda painstakingly engineered to exist, via messing around with the technology using your ghost-powersāand once you're out into the nighttime air outside, you shift fully into ghost form to instantly shoot out like a jet into the Chicagoan suburb of Amity Park, using your ghost sense as something akin to a cold-breathy scenting mechanism. This city is your Living Dimension haunt. You are tied to it, but you aren't sure how tied it is to you in comparison. Doesn't matter. You are in your element. You are one with your Core's Purpose for Existence, it is you, you are it.)
Everything matters, except for when it's your hurt, your pain, your complaints. Then, it never matters. You bury it. Well, no. You might tell the palatable parts to your sister, and to your two best friends. You make it sound easier than it was. Maybe you reframe the time period it happened in, a little, depending on what will make them aghast less. Not even Jazzy fully understands that you literally go out every single last night for patrolling the town. She's wrapped up in her own errands daily, she can't check the news and such every waking second. Sam and Tuck have their own lives. They don't need to be perturbed by the nastier parts of yours. You want them to be happy and safe while they still can. You would take a life or an afterlife of any assailant for them, without much hesitation. These three people mean everything to you. They are the only ones you want to know even a fraction of who you really are. The fourth one that knows, Plasmius, you didn't consent to him knowing you like this in the first place. You fear that because he and you are of the same species, technically speaking, that he perhaps understands you better than any of the other three. And you hate that fact.
ā¦I think I might be done. Fucking hell.
Next thing, about the multi-canons and concurrent timelines stuff: I do indeed experience the 10 years' worth of memories (exotrauma?) of another lifetime's Danny, another me, not just because Danny fused permanently with his TUE episode's older alternate timeline self when he was 18 after becomign the Infinite Realms' Caretakerāthis AU's version of the popular Ghost King trope in the fandom (this one alternate self, by the way, who I'll call Dark Future Phantom, or DFP for short), but also because he is also me. If you think about it, he was the original me. I diverged from his path. I understand why he lost it, why he turned to slaughter, to forcing nukes to go off while he stood in the center of the blast unaffected, to carving canyons of gashes into the Earth in order to rend it uninhabitable. I don't condone it whatsoever. But I have a measure of sympathy because this monster is literally me-gone-wrong, he lost everyone he loved, he had nothing and couldn't understand that he could make new bonds, refused to understand it; and in my darkest recesses of my mind and heart, I can see the roots of how I could go so evilly mad by choice under those circumstances.
It is staring into a mirror and recognizing the terrible, unforgivable, heinous shit you are capable of, but don't want to acknowledge aloud. We were the same child once, before Clockwork's intervention. We can be one man again now, and move forward.
(The extra padding of the resulting power boost doesn't hinder, either.)
(I never said I can't be selfish.)
All of this does alter my current-self's physical offline life. Feeling Danny-DFP's resilience, like dipping my index finger into a well that grants me a burst of courage, of bravery, or simply determination by mere skin contact alone, can help me psychologically get through any given day. I think of how grim-faced he can get and it helps me steel my own nerves. This guy is me, I am this guy. I'm gonna make it, because he's made it. I'm not immortal, but my "Primordiverse" AU will persist even after I perish of old age one day, and it will inspire new and old readers alike, maybe some folks will even discover fictomeres of their own inside its pages, I hope they do, I hope it aids them. Alterhuman community, I love y'all, and my ghost will probably haunt anyone who tries to hurt you after I'm gone, like a fricking poltergeist. I am absolutely waxing poetic like a purple prosiac motherfucker right now. I have had too much caffeine and if I even think of my bed on the other side of my bedroom here from my desktop, I may faint.