shitposting rave 4: (almost) anything goes

*He looks deeply wounded.*

this is company dress code and my bosses custodian picked it out for me.

 

Paz shrugs. "You asked. Clover, when you explode, most people just want to get away from you. The only reason that behaviour ever works is that people really want you to stop. It's scary and it hurts their ears. Most people quit doing that by the time they start school."

 

Paz sighs. "You should really get a better job."

 

How??

 

vwhy is it so hard for people to accept that i genuinely enjoy my job and vwouldnt trade it for anything in the vworld?

 

Paz thinks about this.

"Well, when I did it, they rang a bell. Which feels like being pinched really hard, so hard it makes me want to cry, except I can't. But I think most people's parents just ignore it, and don't do anything until the kid calms down. So that they learn that they have to talk to them calmly to get what they want."

She frowns. "I guess that's not how you were brought up? But you can still learn. I know there are ways to learn to control your emotions and still feel them. It's just that I'm still working on that myself."

 

...my mom didn't do anything.

 

Paz nods. "Maybe that's why it worked for you. But it's not working now." She shrugs. Sev was conditioned like she was, Valiska is no help because her instincts are all wrong, and Ford is afraid of Clover's temper, even though he tries to hide it. Jame probably doesn't know what to do or she'd have done it already. Stan would teach her to fake her emotions, but that's not the same as controlling them. "Try talking to Father Hart, maybe? Controlling your temper can't be that much different from controlling psionics."

 

I'm not talking to someone I barely know! You said it was good for parents to ignore their kids! It wasn't good for me.

 

Paz sighs. "I didn't say it was good for parents to ignore them all the time," she says. "They're supposed to respond to you when you don't throw tantrums."

 

Why would they respond then?

 

you just keep throwing bigger tantrums until they pay attention to you.

 

Paz's jaw drops, but only for a moment. "Well," she says. "Normally when I was little, I would ask servants for stuff, unless it was really important and I had to ask my parents. But most people's parents want them to be happy, so they listen and they give you what you need, they give you what they want, or at the very least they tell you why they can't give it to you. That's what my best friend's parents did. Marius can ask his parents for anything. I mean anything. Fly his girlfriend from Oregon to Austria? No problem, even though she has no money and nobody's ever heard of her family. They've been letting his girlfriend and her friend live with them for a couple of years that side, because of what happened in Gravity Falls. They're like Dr Pines that way."

 

Who has that many people who care about them?

 

"I know this is hard to believe," says Paz, "but actually, lots of people do. And so do you, now."

 

You don't care about me.

 

Paz raises an eyebrow. "I'm not as attached to you as I am to Dipper and Mabel and Sev, but I care about you. If I didn't I wouldn't try to help. Also, we're clade, and that's important to me."

 

It shouldn't be. What you really care about is Chroma, maybe, and I'm not very convinced of that, either. I'm a 'friend of a friend of a friend of a friend' at, like, the most, which basically boils down to nothing, and honestly if clade structure on Alternia was that far-reaching everyone would be clade with everyone else local to them and there wouldn't be all that fighting, yanno?

 

Like, you're not dating Chroma. You're dating Mabel and... you're friends with Dipper, obviously. Neither of... them are dating Chroma? The closest I can figure it is you're friends with Dipper who's dating Loreli who's dating Chroma who's dating me, or you're dating Mabel who's dating Oneira who's dating Chroma who's dating me. Is that supposed to make me feel included? Because it really makes me feel included when people only tolerate me due to long-ass social chains and not my own merits. You've solved my riddle of anti-social behavior!

 

Paz sighs. This is getting on her last nerve. It's a good thing she's conditioned not to blow up right now.

"Clover, did you totally tune out the part where I said I cared about you before I even mentioned the clade? I don't know if you've noticed this, but you always latch onto the least comforting part of whatever people say. I do care about you. You were one of the first people who was nice to me on Pennarion, even if I was suspicious for a little while after it seemed like you were trying to influence how I felt about people I'd also just met. I think you really want to help people, even if you do it in the worst way sometimes, like jumping into other people's fights without even watching them to see what the fight is really about. You're a good person, despite your terrible manners."

Paz takes a deep breath. "And yes. It does matter to me that you are important to people I love. The web of relationships in our household is part of what makes it great. People I care about care about you, and most of them have pretty good track records with respect to picking good friends."