"I know. I guess I just have increased trauma resistance, like apparently all demigods. Except Chris for some reason. Clarisse's boyfriend Chris, not my trauma holder. When Percy first saw him, you literally couldn't have a conversation with him, it was just incoherent rambling. And this was like a year after the trauma had taken place. I mean, it could have just been a flashback, but it would have been a highly responsive one as he was still talking. I only know what happened from Percy, so the details might be wrong, but that's not what most flashbacks I've experienced were like. I mean, I occasionally get ones where I remember a situation where I was talking, or screaming in terror, and that can leak through but usually, I'm lucky to get a whisper out. Also, the way Clarisse was taking care of him, full on with nectar, implied that that wasn't a spontaneous thing. It could of course have been a perma trigger flashback" "What the Hades is that?" "So, there's this story where some people go into a field of poppies and fall asleep because poppies are technically straight up opium. They are then stuck because in order to wake up and stay awake, they have to get away from the poppies and to go away, they need to be awake, and so they can never leave. I think it was the wizard of Oz, but I'm not sure. Now replace 'poppy' with 'trigger' and 'asleep' with 'flashback' and you get what Chris might have experienced. He was in the labyrinth after all, so dark rooms like the basement of the big house might very well be a trigger for him. So in conclusion Chris either has terrible trauma resistance or Percy just caught him in a bad moment. That was science hour with Annabeth" "We haven't had one of those in a while" "The last one was yesterday, about incest" "Right. So there's this saying 'If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best'" "I'm familiar" "I'd say Chris took that to the extreme" "So did I." "How?" "So, this was about a year ago. We had just gotten together and I was still figuring out the whole people-being-nice-to-me-thing so I had no idea what I could expect from Percy and what not. So, I wanted to apply this saying to Percy, to see how much he'd do for me" "He traveled the country for you, exploded a mountain for your safety and won a war just to get a kiss" "But all of that wasn't technically handling me at my worst, so I wanted to test that as well. To do that, I challenged him to a movie night" "How is that your worst?" "It was Star Wars" "I'd imagined that would be quite difficult to watch with you" "I was also a bit sick and had, uh, girl problems, so that probably made it even worse." "I'm assuming he passed the test" "Absolutely. He almost gave up when I spent five minutes shouting about Obi's quadamputation light saber maneuver, but he pushed through it. He shouted at me to calm the frick down at some point, that was before I taught him to just say Zeus, but at the end he gave up and sat through it." "Wait, Percy was shouting at you?" "In his defense, I can be really annoying and on that day, I was actively trying to get him angry at me. Also, ADHD sometimes makes it so you hyper fixate on an emotion and that causes you to overreact, like with the judoflip. And it wasn't even really shouting, it was just one sentence said in a raised voice. To be honest, if that hadn't happened it would have meant that Percy either has no feelings or refuses to let them show which also isn't healthy. Anyways, he got a bit clingy after that, which probably also helped him win my little game. For the remainder of the movie, we were cuddling on the couch and barely paying attention to the movie. We might have made out if that wasn't so weird and disgusting" "Do you still think that, or are you just saying what your opinion was back then?" "Mostly the latter. I am attracted to him now, but I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the idea of actually doing it. How did we end up here again? I was just talking about testing Percy's loyalty and now we're talking about this" "This time you started it. I didn't even nudge the conversation in that direction, you were talking about making out all of a sudden." "I guess I'm just trying to understand the allos more. Though in this particular instance, what I did was less of understanding and more of trying to fit in, which is unusual for me" "Why would trying to fit in be unusual?" "You might have noticed that I'm not the biggest fan of the allos" "You could say that" "So, I don't really feel like blending in with them because I feel like I'm giving up a strength" "A strength?" "To me, they seem, inferior isn't the right word, that would be insulting. A few minutes ago, you were under the impression that I was strongly affected by Martha's charm speak. You were probably thinking something like 'I'm glad I don't have such weaknesses', right" "That's approximately what I was thinking" "I feel the same way about allos. Would you try to blend in with people not immune to charm speak and not be able to live out that immunity?" "Why would I do that, outside of tactical deceit?" "Exactly, and for the same reason it's weird for me to seem allo." "Which you weren't really doing. All you did was say what an allo person would have done in that situation. That's not really the same as making yourself seem allo. By the way, have you considered whether there could be a connection between your sexual orientation and your trauma?"
"Well, I don't-" Annabeth had hesitated for a split second, so I cut her off. "If you don't want to discuss this, it's fine" "Thanks, I'd rather have a safer environment for this." "You don't have to thank me for respecting your privacy. I have no right to make you talk about things that you're uncomfortable with just because I want to know" "I feel like this isn't even about privacy versus pleasing people and more about privacy versus the need to overanalyze everything and share that knowledge with people. In fact, this has never really been a problem as my trust issues (which make me not share things) were always stronger than my treatment issues (which make me share things because I think people are entitled to that information)." "And now you're putting your different trauma based issues into a hierarchy" "Indeed. When my different issues make me want to do different things, then how could there not be a hierarchy. That would lead to a situation where I wouldn't know what to do, and I hate not knowing what to do. My mom's the goddess of strategy, so knowing exactly what to do is a relevant part of my life just as much as water is in Percy's." "You do know that you don't need a validation for that sort of thing." "But I like to. Also, you were criticizing me, so I felt the need to defend myself" "I wasn't criticizing you, I was just-" "And now you're criticizing my perception of what you said" "I only said-" "It's doesn't matter what you said or say, because I'll win" "There's a lot of things I could say to win this" "Like what" "Like a certain quote relating to a particularly bad abandonment." "But that would be really mean" "But I would win" "Fine, but you still can't win this through logic" "You're just too smart to argue with" "I know"
Even though Annabeth was really smart, her hubris, or in this case inability to see her own mistakes, sometimes caused her to get stuck on the few wrong thoughts she did have. Like just now, I didn't criticize anything, I was just curious, but Annabeth wouldn't listen. The problem was that learning to recognize mistakes was really hard for her because of how rarely they happened. "So, where were we" I asked. "You were asking me a question that I was not comfortable answering and then we discussed why I was aware of the fact that said discomfort was okay. But since I was uncomfortable answering the question, we can't really continue there. If I trace it back even further, we get to my ace pride and before that we have me watching Star Wars with Percy. I guess we can continue from there. I guess this might actually be more of a rant from me than a conversation, if that's okay" "It's fine. I'm getting a bit tired, so I don't mind just listening." "Good. I guess I can overanalyze the schist out of the situation where Percy was shouting at me. Well, maybe shouting isn't the right word, it wasn't even remotely aggressive enough to use that term, it was more like talking loudly, but it was enough. But now I at least know what I would have to do when Percy is angry at me if I were someone who uses people's trauma against them. So, you can imagine his anger like an inflated balloon with a tesla valve attached to it." "What's that?" "It's a special kind of pipe with recurving loops that greatly inhibit but not fully stop air flow, but only in one direction, in this case out of the balloon. Now, let's say you want the balloon to be empty. You could just let it go and allow the air to flow out naturally, which would take a lot of time due to the tesla valve so if the balloon already contains a lot of air, it might be faster to just keep blowing until it pops, leading to the air escaping" "So you're telling me when you make Percy more angry he eventually just gets calm again?" "Pretty much. One of his biggest fears is becoming like smelly Gabe, his abusive stepdad. So when he does get angry at me, which I honestly can't blame him for, I can be really annoying sometimes, so when we get into a fight he sometimes reminds himself of Gabe which will have two consequences. Firstly, it's a traumatic situation. It's usually not enough to cause a flashback, but he does get distressed by it, so he seeks comfort. Secondly, he wants to make sure that I know he's not going to actually hurt me. Like, I've never had an abuser in my life, so things like shouting don't scare me, they are not a sign of impending abuse to me, but Percy still makes sure I know I'm safe, which is really sweet of him if you ask me. Both of these factors, needing comfort and wanting me to feel safe, manifest in the same way: Percy giving me a hug or at least cuddling. So Percy's trauma basically creates a shortcut from angry to really affectionate. But that shortcut leads through trauma, so using it is mean and bad for his mental health, so don't do that" "wasn't planning on it"
I realized that it had gotten late, so we decided to get ready for bed. "Hey, I can finally go to sleep without having to worry about being triggered by the smoke detector." Annabeth said. "Couldn't you already do that yesterday?" "Just based on the detector itself, yes, but the person that went to sleep yesterday wasn't me, so this is the first time I have a chance to do it." "Makes sense. Wait, all that stuff you just told me about Percy, shouldn't you have asked him if you could tell people that?" "Now that you say it, probably yes. On the other hand, this isn't really information that he has confided in me with, just my interpretation of something that happened. Technically speaking, I don't even have confirmation that any of this is even true and last time I checked, sharing theories about someone doesn't require their permission." "But the theory is still based on things that are not common knowledge and that he wouldn't want to be known" "I think most people know by now about Gabe and 'he was angry, then he wasn't' isn't exactly private information either. If anything, this is a science ethics issue rather than a privacy issue." "How is that related to science?" "Psychology ends in -ology and is therefore a field of science. So a psychological analysis of someone's behavior is technically a scientific analysis, making my conclusion that he reminded himself of Gabe a scientific conclusion or at least theory. Those two terms kind of blend together sometimes. It is said that a theory can never truly be verified, only falsified. By the way, this does not mean that every theory is equally valid simply because they're all not verified. Anyways, if you do an experiment to test a theory you have, rather than to answer a question (of course these two things also blend together a bit because most questions can be phrased as a set of theories out of which none only one or multiple may be correct and a theory can also be phrased as a yes-no-question) you don't really get a positive result. You either find out that your theory is wrong or that it is likely true, more likely than before the experiment. That's why the line between theory and-" "Annabeth, you're getting completely off topic now" "I'm almost done with my little tangent, can I finish it?" "Fine" "That's why the line between theory and conclusion is not as clear as you might think. That was the science part, now to the ethics part: when a scientist comes to a conclusion, makes a discovery or creates an invention (though you could argue that a discovery is just conclusion that a specific thing does a specific thing and that an invention involves a discovery regarding a man-made object) they have to ask themselves 'can I tell the public about this, or will that cause too much harm' for example, the inventor of the poison taboon decides it was too brutal for war, so it was all dropped into the ocean. Eventually, the containers will erode and no one knows exactly where they are, but that's not relevant right now. So the question I have to ask is not 'is this information too private' because anyone could have found it out, I have to ask myself 'Is this information too dangerous?' and I wouldn't say it is, because it's just a method for making Percy calm down, it might even be that the method only works when the person he's angry at is someone he loves. Like, I've seen him get way angrier when fighting monsters, so being very angry doesn't always reset him to being affectionate, it only works with those he loves. If you think about it, he has a built in anti-abusive-feature. Like, I've never suffered domestic abuse, so the concept that my boyfriend is capable of it doesn't scare me as much as the for example him being capable of leaving or abandoning me, but it's still pretty neat. Speaking of Percy abandoning me, he also has a built in anti-abandon-feature also known as loyalty. What did I do to deserve this guy? Like, he specifically cannot do the thing I am most afraid of, he respects all of my boundaries, even if it's an inconvenience to him and don't even get me started on what he actively does to help me." "I am getting you started. Is that an appropriate response to that statement? Because usually this statement is made because- wait, stop, analysis is your job. So yeah, I am getting you started because I love hearing about Percabeth." "First of all, there's of course a lot of areas he can't help me in because I'm just way better than him at those things. I know, hubris. Though my hubris actually sometimes allows Percy to help me. Sometimes I'll take the wrong approach to a problem but because of my hubris, I will be convinced it's the correct approach and spend a lot of time trying to make it work. For example, I once had a physics question regarding how much a bubble would expand while rising from within a deep lake. I thought I could solve the problem without calculating the pressure gradient within the water, and since I am always right, I didn't consider the option that this might not be the way to do it. When I get stuck in this way, Percy often comes and breaks me out of it. But other than that, Percy can't really help me with things related to thinking and logic. Then the next big thing is of course trauma. The amount of time he's spent hugging and cuddling me, even just in the past eight weeks or so is just insane. You already know all this stuff, why are you even listening?" "Because you're starting to get really excited about how great Percy is and seeing that makes me happy." "Okay, then I guess I'll keep talking.
But I won't keep writing. Don't worry, I'm not cancelling the story, I'm just talking about this Chapter.