HONESTY MEME

[cactusy]

1) Post your characters, one per comment
2) Go around with your characters and have them ask other characters questions-- anything goes!
3) Forced honesty time! Lying is impossible because of reasons
4) ICly discuss the confessions and revelations

Comments

[cactusy]

Before. Bootcamp honed it, but I was a model recruit from the start. Turns out I was way more suited to the military than to medical school.

[in_extremis]

Based on your list, I'd think there was plenty of overlap. Maybe not the fighting part. Not a lot of ear infections to punch your way out of.

[cactusy]

Don't get me wrong, I was a damn good doctor. I just didn't fit the culture. A supervisor once told me that people would rather have a technically subpar doctor with a great bedside manner than a technically masterful one with a crappy personality, and I'm pretty sure he was right. But in the Marines and the ISA? Nobody cared about my crappy personality, as long as I knew how to follow orders and not cop an attitude.

[in_extremis]

That's the part I really don't get. Unless that's your comfort zone, being told what to do--letting people tell you how you should talk to them, that sounds like the same thing, to me.

[cactusy]

Bedside manner is all about being comforting, emotionally present, knowing how to make people feel better even on the worst day of their lives - emotional intelligence, you know? I have social awareness, but I don't have that.

[in_extremis]

You haven't had to see people on some of their worst days in the Marines?

[cactusy]

Yeah, I did. But the mood and expectations are different. You don't dig deep into palliative care and grief counseling when you're in the field - you say "That sucks, soldier", and then you get back to work.

It was refreshing.

[in_extremis]

What is it you don't want other people to care so much about?

[cactusy]

It's not that I don't want people to care. I know how important caring is. But I can't do it in the way that other people do, and I thought I could turn that into an asset in an emergency room. Turned out I was wrong, but it also turned out I wasn't wrong about being able to turn it into one on the battlefield.

It sucks, being faced with your deficiencies over and over again. Not just flaws, or skills that aren't up to snuff, but things that make you defective. Things that are considered fundamental to the human experience, but that are missing in you. I don't know if you have any idea what that's like.

[in_extremis]

I think I might.

If you think it's an asset, though, that doesn't sound like a defect to me. Just a specialized tool. Scalpel's not going to be much use to you in a sniper tower.

[cactusy]

It's a defect that I made work for me, turning it into an asset under certain circumstances. That doesn't mean that there's not something objectively wrong with me. I made peace with that a long time ago. Still sucks sometimes.

[in_extremis]

That's a pretty fundamental experience, too--this flaw in the code that you have to work around. Or, I don't know, maybe just with the people I know best. I've always thought they were extraordinary.

[cactusy]

["Flaw in the code". It makes her pause, if only just briefly.]

Yeah, well. Can't exactly do a rewrite, can I. Humans are one and done.

[in_extremis]

We started this with you saying that you're tenacious, and you're telling me you don't believe in the future? What are you hanging on for? You lose an arm, I'll make you a new one, that's going to be a whole new you.

[cactusy]

Replacing a limb isn't the same thing as fundamentally rewiring a brain. It would make me into a different person, and just because it sucks sometimes doesn't mean I want that.

[in_extremis]

Sure it is. I uploaded a virus in my brain that rebuilt my whole body. If I wasn't, you know, actively dying at the time, maybe I'd be able to fix some of those personality defects, too. It didn't seem like a priority.

You're already a different person than you were yesterday. You'll have to tell me if there's a good reason to get precious about it.

[cactusy]

I'm definitely not a different person than I was yesterday.

Reason one, just because being like I am sucks sometimes doesn't mean it wouldn't suck even more to artificially change my whole personality overnight. No thanks. Reason two, I've had enough of people poking around in my brain. Double no thanks.

[in_extremis]

You've made more of an impression than I have, then.

You qualified that, 'artificially' change. What's a natural change, and, just so you're prepared, I'm going to ask you to make the case that it's somehow more agreeable than doing it by hand.

[cactusy]

Natural change happens naturally due to life experience. It's usually subtle, or if it's not, it takes a long time. Trust me, you have no idea how much I've heard these weird-ass existential arguments before; I'm never gonna be totally convinced.

[in_extremis]

Life experience isn't natural. You did that, you made all of those choices, and the big ones that you can pinpoint, they were painful and came at you fast, and you, Miss Tenacious, didn't lay down and die.

You're going to have to give me the weird-ass short version so I'm not boring you.

[cactusy]

Who said anything about lying down and dying? I'm here, I'm alive, I'm moving forward. Got a whole new job and everything. Aliens hired me.

Weird-ass short version: I like things simple and straight-forward.

[in_extremis]

And none of that changed you?

That's on me, that's not information I was lacking, I kind of worked that one out about eight years ago. Okay, straightforward: I think the thing you're calling natural takes way too long, and I'm going to die some day so I don't have that kind of time to wait around for things to change.

[cactusy]

So do sketchy brain surgery on yourself all you want. I'll take the scenic route.

[in_extremis]

What if that doesn't get you where you want to go?

[cactusy]

I work around it. Same as I always have.