Oh man, it was intense to see Kovit having to deal with the court showing all the torture footage and those really traumatizing old memories of Henry. It definitely captures the emotional hell a court situation can be, and how weird it is to have a reaction to something that you totally didn't expect. It's also neat how you explored what it might actually be like for him to try out hospital pain, and how it isn't as simple and easy a solution as one might expect. I can really get him being kinda hesitant to actually go inside and volunteer, because even though it's sort of good for his image and he can get closer to sources of pain, actually being inside puts him in a totally foreign and nerve-wracking social situation where he has to deal with his reactions being scrutinized and feeling self-conscious in ways he might not have even felt before. This seems especially scary to deal with considering part his team's legal strategy so far has been to try to discredit the idea that he's a zannie, which means he really can't let people see his reactions. As a neurodivergent person who sometimes deals with shutdowns and knows other neurodivergent people who have to deal with having meltdowns in public, his experience of having to hide away his reactions while experiencing what he's experiencing because people could perceive someone shaking and moaning for no apparent reason as really weird or suspicious hits home in a very interesting and relatable way. As someone who was, for a long time, so used to just being able to let loose and experience pain as something he created and controlled, there's probably also something that feels kind of humiliating and disempowering to him about having pain absorption and his reactions to it be something that is happening to him rather than something he's in charge of, especially in a place like a hospital.
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Ornery_Riffraff on Chapter 6 Mon 22 May 2023 07:46PM UTC
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