On Canon, Part 1 - November 4th, 2021

Note 1: This was written in response to a prompt on the Fictionkind Dreamwidth, to discuss how much we align with canon and if it influences us.
Note 2: At the time, I still ascribed my experiences to a spiritual explanation. Nowadays, I tend to abstain entirely from the origin discussion.

This entry includes descriptions of torture and gore.

To answer a couple things right off the bat... I see my fictotypes as possible past lives. They have ended, in some way or another, and exist in a past compared to here. I am not linked to another self of mine who continues living. Frankly, in this case, and the other one I wanted to cover but decided to hold off on, I think a past life would be a better deal. If a self of mine was still there, this experience would be miles worse. I also only have one set of memories from each of these selves of mine, so not multiple timelines.

So the Ivlis situation. Canon is pretty interesting, in the sense that the game I come from, The Gray Garden, comprises about a week or so (time is difficult when you’re supposed to be immortal) of my very, very long and miserable life. You get to see me try and pathetically fail to kill the Devil of another world in an effort to steal his power and free myself from some sticky situations, and instead get taken down, see my subordinates and I knocked down a few thousand pegs, and lose a chunk of the power I’d been accumulating for years. It wasn’t great. Canon isn’t fun to play because of that, really. I enjoy it to an extent, in terms of loving the artstyle and being able to walk around in my world, but the part where I get to see myself and my people destroyed is less than fun, really. Especially when it comes to my daughter, as well as the only other individual I could trust with anything. (I miss them, but I would never go back. Never, never. I would rather stay here forever than ever have to endure the inhabitants of other worlds that so loved to toy with me ever again.)

The Sun’s Curse was similar, in the sense that it only covered a small event in my life. It wasn’t a game, but a little animation like a storybook that described my origin and how I was sent into a sunspot, or the Flame World, as it was later called. How it was for questioning Siralos’ authority that I was stabbed by his spears of light, had my wings ripped from my back, and was thrown into darkness. Answered some questions, illuminated some other things.

So, to answer the question, you could say that it aligns pretty well, if we only consider the small timeframe of the pieces of polished canon we’ve received. From what I recall, there were a couple changes in The Gray Garden, such as sending Rieta to accompany Poemi in our invasion rather than Emalf. I have kept notes on things that were relevant /in addition/ to the things portrayed, but for the most part, it was fairly accurate.

My canon, however, is also what I’d jokingly call Schrodinger's-ongoing. Is it continuing? Who knows. Do we get random snippets of things that may or may not be considered canonical based on how my this-world creator feels like torturing me that day? Maybe so. Was a supposed son I supposedly had introduced into canon who I’m quite sure never existed for me, leading to some extremely awkward further canonical information? So it seems. I kind of avoid information about him like the plague. Nothing good over there. And as far as I’m concerned, the only children I ever had were born of fire, not of others.

I may have never felt so smug as to have been quite right about my dislike towards Siralos even before The Sun’s Curse came out, though. And may the sunspots creep ever further and choke out his eternal light.

Rieta was the only one to fall with me, by the way. No wonder I trusted her more than anyone else. She was always there, somehow, from the time I met her as a child, on that walk with Igls. (And may the sun’s core burn out the throat of every Devil who ever tried to take her away from me.) I hate to think of her as the only gift Siralos has given me, but... if we’re going by accuracy, she basically is.

To keep things vague and not send myself into brain hell, I don’t know how the heck He even found me, considering I barely ever left my world, but there was a certain Devil from another world who took some interest in me. And by interest, I mean prolonged physical torture. Even aside from what he’d do to me when no one was watching, he’d sometimes parade my barely-conscious body through the streets of my world, for all my subordinates to see how disgustingly pathetic I was.

I am not, was not, perhaps never will be, a gentle creature. Like heck I’d take that behavior. Sure, he was much stronger than me, older than me, had more practice and more time, ample time, enough that he was simply oozing with boredom he wanted to turn into action, but I had to do something. I didn’t crawl desperately towards proper Devilhood to be made an example of. I didn’t spend hours as a young adult crying into Rieta’s shoulders from pain and loss until I decided to harden up and make my “father” pay for what he’d done to me just to let everything go just like that. And then I got an anonymous message about a friendly little world unused to war that I could use for my own purposes. A friendly little anon, one could say. Someone supposedly sympathetic to my plight.

Who on earth wouldn’t take that offer? I was desperate. It hurt, constantly. It is very hard to kill a Devil, but we can feel pain. We can have nearly all our organs ripped out from within us and sew ourselves back up with magic until you can barely tell what happened. I couldn’t stop him; he was too strong, and played with me like I was his favorite toy. What else could I do?

To hell with their peaceful little kingdom. If they weren’t going to be using the power they held, I could. I’d use it better, even; why let power rot away inside some flimsy peace-loving world when I could take it and drive away Him, my “father”, and anyone else who ever dared to think they could hurt me, make an example of myself within the kingdom I created?

...Well, as you’d read before, that played out terribly. That much of canon is definitely right. Sure wish I was from some perfect AU where... ahem, things to not offend residents of the Garden, yes.

The rage still dances like my flames in my stomach, though, regardless of how cold I feel in this body.

From what I understand of canon, though from what I know it doesn’t say anything explicitly, the Devil I keep mentioning hadn’t found me yet during the events of The Gray Garden. I honestly don’t know when in canon he found me, and I’ve tried to keep myself at least somewhat up to date on information about myself in particular, just to see what lines up and what doesn’t. But, from what seems to be implied, in canon, I followed that anonymous letter because I wanted the power to get back at Siralos, or just to become a stronger Devil in general. Because that wasn’t the case for me, I can’t really say how I feel about it; I guess my canonical self should probably have thought a little longer on who had sent it, and their intentions, but maybe he was getting tortured by Siralos the same way I was tortured by a certain other. Maybe we were both desperate. I’ll never know until it’s stated.

...Did I go completely off topic? I tried to stay properly on it, too... Well, with that background out of the way, there’s the conflicting feelings towards my canon. Some fits too well, some comes out of nowhere; yes, I invaded the Garden, no, I didn’t have a child with that bastard. Source is usually rough and hurts to look at. Either at what I’ve lost, or gruesome images of myself being hurt. I get the feeling I’m my creator’s favorite toy as well. I fully respect their freedom to do absolutely whatever they want. I also like my own freedom to simply “nope” out of there whenever I don’t want to see another comic about my days of torture, but stick around for the times I get to see my children and other subordinates. There’s a quite adorable Father’s Day comic out there that I keep saved to look at sometimes. It isn’t bad to warm my heart with something that isn’t rage, especially in a world where now, I don’t have to worry about what I went through as much. It hurts. It hurts a lot; it was so confusing to awaken to, it scared me, I had no idea what was past and what was “past” and what was a metaphor, and what “hurt” and what hurt; now, I just want to come to peace with everything. I still deal with explosive anger, with “fire hissing from my teeth” in a much less literal way than it used to. I’m away from him, and he can’t hurt me anymore. I refuse to let go of that sentiment, when I’m confused and scared and have no idea what’s happening, because the most important thing is that he isn’t here. I am. He can’t hurt me anymore. That’s all.

For some time, I believed that me being here, right now, completely powerless compared to my past self, was because Siralos and Satanick teamed up to send me here, thought it’d be fun to make me powerless and laugh at me, watch me squirm and be unused to this world. Now, I’m not so sure. Why would they send me here, and let go of someone they liked to pick on and injure for fun? That would be much too kind of them. Uncharacteristically so. So ultimately, while I don’t believe I died, I don’t know how I got here... and to be honest, I’m not in a hurry to find out. It’s fine. I’d rather not be in this form, but this world is fine compared to that one.

So, canon affects me, when I involve myself in it. Even when it isn’t accurate to my own experiences, because of the implications of said canon on my own life even when I didn’t experience it. So, y’know. Carefully shaves the metaphorical blood off of my metaphorical ice cream and licks up the sweet drop that remains.

There’s so much I’m leaving out, but frankly I think this is long enough as is.