JJ Doe

◈ 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐒 | Κάθαρσις ◈

J̶͙̝̹͖͒̅̂̏͝͝ā̶̪̘̾̇̎̕y̷̗̦̖͊̀̑ͅ’s̵̤̪̰̓͝ ̷̮̤̋̽C̸̭͓̤͓̘̱̑̀̾͝͠ą̸̟͈̯͖͐̉͛̾̕͠t̴̩̺͆̂̓͐̕ḣ̵͉͍̣ȧ̷̫̙̞̐͘r̴̛̛͉̟̓̌̿͛s̴̛̮̞̫̝͉͆̈̀ị̸̗͓͍́͑ș̴̛͊̐̋͝t̸̞͗͐

@Stanifly@Blademusica76@silver21@Tlazolteotl

Silver Blade never answered. Floriano arrived, introductions happened, but nothing.

Which, fair. Even in a place designed for getting things off your chest, that was still her story. Jay wasn’t owed an answer. If anything, they might have overstepped. Probably had, actually.

That left Jay with no more excuses and what they’d come here to do.

And, look, Jay wasn’t going to pretend they hadn’t noticed. The chatting, the questions, the keen interest in other people’s problems. All of it had been stalling. Jay had known. It just hadn’t stopped them from doing it.

What was frustrating (and Jay wanted it noted, for whatever record was being kept, that they were fully aware it was frustrating) was that this wasn’t for lack of trying.

Outside of this place, in the version of themselves with a desk and a keyboard, Jay had been trying. Sitting down, opening a blank document, typing What happened was and then... nothing. The thought just stops forming. They tried saying it out loud instead. Opened their mouth, got the first few words out, and then the same thing happened.

And the thing was, Jay could feel themselves wanting to think it. Sitting there, document open, cursor blinking, genuinely, deliberately trying to make their brain do the thing it does every other time: think about a thing and then put it into words. And it wouldn’t. Not “wouldn’t” like refusal. “Wouldn’t” like the function just wasn’t there. Like asking your hand to close and watching it just... not.

They tried again later. And again after that. It never got easier.

There was a word for this. A clinical one that started with the letter T and rhymed with “llama.” Diagnostic criteria, a little box on a form, the whole thing. One of those words that changes everything the moment you use it.

Jay didn’t want to use that word. Because using it meant those people got to have power over them. No. Not giving them that.

“Okay. So. I’m going to try and talk about what happened. Fair warning, I’ve tried this like fifteen times now and every time my brain just…” They made a vague gesture. “Stops working. So just... bear with me on this one.”

A breath. The folding chair creaked.

“It all happened four years ago. I saw an interest check for an RP called ❀✿❁✾❁ & †‡⚔⚔⚒⛏☠. It was advertised as a historical fantasy with romance, mystery, and espionage. Romance wasn’t really my cup of tea, but the mystery and the fantasy elements caught my attention. Every PC came with a mystery to figure out, which really sold me. It had been years since I last joined a group RP, and with the pandemic messing things up, I was excited about this. Even more so because the RP wasn’t fully figured out yet, so there was a lot of potential for worldbuilding and co-storytelling.”

“And when I say it wasn’t figured out, I really mean it wasn’t fully developed. Magic was supposed to be the center of the story, but the magic system wasn’t actually in place; it was incredibly vague and had little to no rules other than the idea of equivalent exchange. Even the rough era or time period the historical fantasy was supposed to take place in was inconsistent. It ended up being kind of a patchwork of different time periods.”

“When I went to the two GMs, I gave them a list of ideas for who my character might be, leaving a lot of wiggle room so they’d fit into what was already there. The one consistent theme was ’vengeance’ against the king. One of the GMs suggested that my character actually be the descendant of the true ruling family that had been overthrown. The relatives hunted down by the current ruling family, with the history of that fact magically manipulated to be hidden and distorted. To me, this felt like a really big role to have. I was honored, honestly.”

For a second there, talking about those first months, it felt good to remember.

“There were... some things I didn’t realize at the time that would later become a huge problem.”

Jay held up a finger.

“Because a lot wasn’t decided in the beginning, the GMs would ‘officialize’ things much too late, so things that had already been established would get contradicted or retconned."

A second finger.

“The RP wasn’t the plot-driven or structured RP I thought it was. It was a sandbox. No prescribed storyline.”

A third.

“Almost everyone in the RP were already friends or had been RPing with each other before, some of them for years. Which meant they had their own way of doing things. What they considered ‘obvious’ or ‘a given’ wasn’t obvious at all if you weren’t part of this group before.”

Jay’s hand dropped back into their lap. For a moment they were quiet.

“At first, everything was good. Everyone was engaged with everyone else’s things, both IC and OOC. People talked openly about ideas, and any player could chime in if they wanted to. It also helped how open, welcoming, and friendly everyone seemed to be, and how willing they were to try anything out.”

Jay almost smiled. “I remember how elated I was when this player ‘P4r’ reached out to me with ideas for character relationships and interactions.”

Staring at something the others couldn’t see, they said, “...I miss those first six months so much... Sure, there were a couple of hiccups, but overall I thought things were good... I just... I’m not sure when things started going wrong. The RP, the friendships, all of it.”

━━━━━━ ◈ ━━━━━━

In every Catharsis where someone still perceived Jay, everything ceased to exist. From whatever filled their space to every sound, every sensation, every trace of anything at all.

Absolute nothingness.

It held until Jay’s voice found its way back.

“...Sorry, I…”

Jay pressed both hands to their face and dragged them down slowly.

━━━━━━ ◈ ━━━━━━

What is Perceived

Experienced by anyone who perceives Jay’s presence in their Catharsis: everything in their Catharsis ceases to exist. It lasts until Jay speaks again.

̸/̸̅̅ ̆̅ ̅̅ ̅̅𝙴𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽 𝚃⌖ 𝚂𝙴𝙽𝙳𝙴̸/̸̅̅ ̆̅ ̅̅ ̅̅

Mother's Little Helper

Title	☞	A politician's aide's wife, known in the parish for her potato salad and her reliability, has done something that would end her marriage, her reputation, and possibly her freedom, and will do whatever it takes to make sure no one finds out.
Name	☞	Dolores Nowak
Age	☞	30
Sex	☞	Female
Business	☞	Housewife. Her husband works as an aide to one of the city's most connected politicians, so her days are split between keeping the home in order and showing face at fundraisers, parish functions, and ward picnics. The other business came through the people she buys from. They figured out whose wife she is and realized she sees and hears plenty worth trading. So she trades it. It also helps that nobody looks twice at a respectable woman running errands. She can carry things across town that someone else couldn't.
Savvy	☞	Dolores can sew, cook, and play piano, same as any girl of her generation. She has a head for numbers, something the household budget has put to good use. Years of hosting political dinners and parish functions means she can keep twenty guests fed, seated, and talking without breaking a sweat. And her memory borders on unnerving: names, faces, conversations from months ago, things people said once and forgot they said.
Ruin	☞	Dolores Nowak, who had not been raised to complain, did not complain. Married at twenty, she had moved into a life that fit the way a good coat fits: correctly, completely, with no particular room to move. The Nowak name meant the parish and the auxiliary and the dinners where her mother-in-law sat at the head and watched, not unkindly, just watched, and Dolores sat where she was put and said what was wanted and kept her mouth closed when a closed mouth was called for, and wore her hair the way that was wanted and over time she got good at it, very good, good enough that people said so, good enough that the compliments started to feel like a life sentence. This is not a thing she said to anyone. In the mornings she made her husband's coffee and in the evenings she made dinner and on the weekends there were obligations and on Sunday nights she set out what she needed for the week ahead and stood in the kitchen after, just stood there, and this was the only moment that was hers and she could not have said what she did with it. Something got bad in the third year, and worse in the fourth, though she couldn't have named it exactly if asked. She went to Dr. Heany. He asked two or three questions and wrote her a prescription. She filled it, took the pills in the morning; they helped, which was almost worse, and she didn't think about it again. When they stopped helping she went back, he adjusted the dosage, and that helped for a time, and then it didn't. Dolores understood she had reached the end of what he could offer her, thanked him, and drove away. Someone at an auxiliary meeting had let a name drop. She called the number that week. Gerry operated out of the dry cleaner's on Clement Street and he was a small polite man who conducted business with the brisk good humor of someone who understood that everyone who came to him arrived embarrassed and that the kindest thing he could do was pretend otherwise. They reached an understanding and that was that. The errand came three weeks later. An envelope. An address on the north side. A man she'd never seen took the envelope and closed the door, and Dolores walked back to her car in the gray November afternoon and sat with her hands in her lap. Degraded was what she had expected to feel. Instead she sat in the car and felt, for the first time in longer than she could account for, entirely herself. Gerry called again. Yes came out before he finished asking. It turned out carrying envelopes was only part of it. An aide's wife hears things. What she heard she remembered, and what she remembered she passed on, and what she passed on was apparently worth something. On the drive home with the heat on and the radio off, she thought about when Gerry would call again.
Cred	☞	"Don't know her from Adam. Wife of somebody, I think." "Dolores? Oh, she's lovely. Very quiet. Always the first to offer a hand." "A respectable woman with somewhere to be. Nobody stops her, nobody asks questions. Honestly she's more appreciated here than she ever was at home." "She runs a beautiful home, she really does. I just think... well, Walter would make a wonderful father." "You ask me, she thinks she's too good for the room. Sanctimonious bitch, always has."
Ilk	☞	Real Clean, Like My Conscience Gone Faggot

◈ 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐒 | Κάθαρσις ◈

Jay’s Catharsis

@Blademusica76@Stanifly@silver21@DaftJive@Tlazolteotl

Jay shook Floriano’s hand. Nice grip. Nice watch. Nice vest. The man looked like he had his life together, or at least his wardrobe.

“The menu?” They glanced around the room as if looking for one. “Uh, let’s see. Endless venting about relationships, a side of existential dread, and I think the house special is quietly falling apart in front of strangers. No prices listed. Which probably means it’s free, or they’re selling our personal information to some data broker as we speak. Either way.”

The folding chair squeaked as they settled back.

“I only just got here, though, so hard to say what’s actually good.” A nod toward the others. “They’ve been here a while. Probably know more about how this place works than I do.”

And they would, having been here long enough to actually have something valuable to share about this place.

Jay never had much to offer that group either. Maybe that was why those people felt fine with the promises that quietly became nothing, or worse, got replaced with something else entirely; the placating replies and decisions made about Jay without Jay. Why put in the effort for someone who isn’t worth much to you?

None of it was ever big enough to point at. Each one a needle-prick, barely enough to notice. You’re overreacting. You’re reading too much into it. It’s not that deep. Maybe it wasn’t, the first time. Or the fifth. But micro-needles don’t stop being needles just because they’re small. They keep pricking. Tic, tic, tic, tic—so tiny no one else can see the marks, so frequent you stop being sure they’re real. Until you look down one day and you’re bleeding from a thousand places you can’t even name.

━━━━━━ ◈ ━━━━━━

Tic, Tic, Tic, Tic

It started small.

Tic.

A prick. Something you’d mistake for a stray thought, a muscle twitch. Nothing worth naming.

Then another.

Each one belonged to whoever felt it. Their own history of small hurts.

Tic.

A tear. Deeper than skin. Closer than bone.

Tic.

Tic.

And the insides started leaking out.

What is Perceived

Experienced by anyone who is aware of Jay’s presence in their Catharsis: each character feels small things that have hurt them in the past flashing across their mind, and every time one does, it pricks them.

◈ 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐒 | Κάθαρσις ◈

◈ 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐒 | Κάθαρσις ◈

Jay’s Catharsis

@Stanifly@silver21@DaftJive@Tlazolteotl@Blademusica76

“I’m not super close with my family. So when I was younger, my friends were my family. At least emotionally.”

Something turned over in Jay’s chest. Quiet. The click of a lock they hadn’t known was there.

Was that it?

A tribe. Friends who were present for you, and you for them. Maybe that was what they’d been grieving all this time. Not about the group. Not even about the falling out. But the family that could’ve been…

They let that thought sit for exactly one second before deciding it was way too much to unpack right now.

“Actions over words. That’s what worked for me.” Silver Blade’s words hit bone.

Because yes. That was it. That was the entire thing, stripped clean. People could say “I care” and say “you matter” and say “I feel a kinship,” and if none of that ever translated into anything you could actually see, then what had any of it been? Actions required follow-through. And follow-through was where it all fell apart.

Jay’s face crumpled into that of someone who’d been chewing on something bitter for six months and just bit through to the pit. They didn’t realize they’d been staring at the floor until they stopped.

When they looked up, the Moderator was watching them. Warmth in her eyes and patience in her posture. Like Jay could take another six months and she’d still be sitting there with that same expression.

It had been months. Literal months since Jay walked in here to unburden themselves about something that happened even more months ago. And these people—Sirpa, Silver Blade, even the quiet ones who hadn’t said a word—were still here.

Jay appreciated that more than they had the words for.

Now came the harder part. The part where Jay actually talked about themselves. Which (and they knew this was ridiculous, they knew) still felt like something that required permission. This was a venting space. That was the entire point. But knowing a thing and feeling it had always been two different countries, and Jay had never held a valid visa to the second one.

At what point did talking about yourself tip over into unsolicited? Where exactly was the line between opening up and making everything about you? Jay had never found it.

Years of “friends” who never asked about you. Never turned the question around. The conversation would just flow around you and carry on, like a current rerouting itself around a rock. After enough of that, you stopped wondering if you were part of the conversation and started wondering if anyone would notice if you weren’t. A body in the chat. Furniture that occasionally typed.

So Jay compensated. Asked about others. Listened more than they spoke. Waited for an invitation to share, which rarely came.

They didn’t want to make anyone feel that way. Replaceable. Invisible. God, they really didn’t want to be that person.

“The people I had a falling out with,” Jay said, fingers finding each other again—interlacing, pulling apart—“it came down to actions not matching their words. And that gap just... eroded everything. I kept trying to trust them. Kept giving them the benefit of the doubt.” A short, flat exhale. “Didn’t matter.”

Another breath. Then:

“Before I go on a whole monologue, I want to be really clear about something.” They looked around the circle, making sure to meet each pair of eyes. “This is my side. My point of view, and only my point of view. I don’t speak for the other people involved, and I’m not going to pretend I know what they were thinking. Whatever I say is just what I felt and the impression I got. Nothing more, nothing less. I have no doubt they’ve got their own version of how things went. So just... keep that in mind.”

There. Good. Disclaimer out of the way.

And then their brain, helpful as always, chose that exact moment to dredge something up from the past: A “friend” talking behind Jay’s back. Just decided what was going on in Jay’s head and passed it around like fact. Never once thinking to just ask. Not once.

All that talk about honesty and trust, and what did these “friends” do? Talk about someone instead of to them.

Disgust curled Jay’s lip, eyes narrowing, jaw tight before they’d made a conscious decision to feel anything at all.

The arrival of a newcomer snapped Jay back. They caught the tail end of whatever expression they’d been wearing—felt it, really, in the tightness of their muscles—and smoothed it out. Or tried to.

“Sorry about the face,” they said, forcing a smile that was maybe sixty percent convincing. “That wasn’t aimed at you. Promise. Just—”

They took a breath. Reset. “I’m Jay.” A small wave. “Welcome to... this.”

Ꭼꭲꭼꭱɴꭺꮮ Ꭲꮋꭱꮻɴꭼ

Locke

---

The girl was still talking, which suited Locke fine. It meant he didn’t have to. She was pointing at something near the stage, breathless and delighted, and he was making the right noises at the right times while his attention did what it always did in a crowd. Faces. Posture. Hands. You learn to read a room before the room reads you, or you don’t last long in his line of work.

That was when he saw the woman.

She stood in the thick of the crowd the way a nail sits in a board, fixed and out of place. Her gaze swept across the plaza with the kind of focus that, had it been steel, would have left bodies sliced open on the cobblestones. She wasn’t watching the coronation. She wasn’t marveling at the banners or the Venators or any of the hundred little spectacles the city had put on for the occasion. Whatever she was here for, it wasn’t this.

Their eyes met.

It lasted less than a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat something cold and sharp split him open from crown to navel. The same feeling that had slithered up his neck when the executioner with the twin battleaxes stepped into the daylight. Only this time it came from a silver-eyed stranger across the plaza.

So the moment she looked away, he closed his eyes and reached.

Agitation. Fear. Worry layered over doubt layered over more fear, all of it trembling like a wire pulled too tight. And underneath, almost smothered by the rest, a thin and reckless thread of hope.

His eyes shot open, and the girl from Barkrend was gone. No sound, no trace, like she’d never existed.

Locke’s head snapped left, then right.

Shit.

He turned and walked away. Fast.

◈ 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐒 | Κάθαρσις ◈

@Stanifly It's crazy how much stuff got messed up because of it...

◈ 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐒 | Κάθαρσις ◈

Jay’s Catharsis

@silver21@Stanifly@DaftJive@Tlazolteotl

Jay nodded. A lot of what Sirpa said was relatable. You can have any number of friends and loneliness doesn’t care. It’ll ambush you regardless. But what did she mean by being bothered by it? Was she comparing herself to what her social life should look like?

“Do you know why it bothers you?” Jay asked.

“For me... I get lonely because I can’t see my friends as often as I want. But... with these particular people, I’m actually confident we’re friends. Like, friends, friends.”

A new window appeared in front of them: the Discord friends list, with its green dots and idle moons and gray absences.

“I’ve felt lonelier being part of this online group than I’ve ever been physically away from my friends. Which is so weird...” Their hand lifted to scroll down the list. “They’re right here. Closer than my IRL friends ever could be.”

Jay closed the window and looked over at Silver Blade as she gave her answer.

“Sure. He tried to kill me, but we’re good now. He was just doing his job, y’know? I might’ve done the same a couple years back.” She waved a hand. “So. You know. Communication’s good.”

That made Jay’s eyes go wide. Then, after a beat, the shock rearranged itself into a smile.

“You know what? That’s a solid friendship right there. You can be blunt with each other. Fight it out. And still be friends at the end of the day.” They chuckled, though something sad lived in it. “‘Communication’s good,’ huh? … Man. Makes me jealous.”

A long sigh left them.

“How’d you… overcome your differences? Sure, you can say he was just doing his job, but you can’t really get more personal than someone trying to end your life, right? I imagine it couldn’t have been easy to become good friends from there.”

Out of the corner of their eye, Jay noticed one guy who hadn’t chimed in, but they let him be just in case he didn’t want to be part of the conversation.

◈ 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐒 | Κάθαρσις ◈

Jay’s Catharsis

@Stanifly@silver21@DaftJive@Tlazolteotl

Jay smirked at Silver Blade’s answer. Because she was right: you don’t know. You can’t know. That was the whole problem wrapped up in three words.

But then Sirpa suggested they could just ask, and the smirk dimmed.

“Does an answer like ‘asking means you don’t trust me’ count as being weird about it? Or saying they ‘feel a kinship’ instead of just… saying we’re friends?”

It used to be easier to tell. Jay had always been better at reading people in person. There were cues in the voice, in the body language, in the half-second pause before a laugh that told you whether it was real. When they were younger, they could even feel the moment it happened. A spark, a buzz. Something that lit up in the chest when you knew you were on the same wavelength.

But that was harder to do through a screen. And whatever social instincts Jay used to have had gone down the drain during the pandemic. Not that their social skills had been great before all that, but they’d been better than this. Functional, at least. Now every interaction felt like trying to read a book in a language they used to speak fluently but had half-forgotten.

“I think—” Jay paused, trying to find the shape of what they meant. “Okay, this is going to sound weird, but I think there are… levels? To friendship?”

They winced a little, already hearing how that might come across. Too late now.

Other cultures seemed to get this. Acquaintance meant one thing. Friend meant another. Americans just crammed everyone under “friend” and hoped for the best. Peach culture, they call it.

“I have plenty of people I’m friendly with, but I’d only call a handful of them actual friends. Even fewer close ones.”

Jay exhaled.

“Friendship matters to me. A lot. When I call someone a friend, I mean it. I take it seriously. It’s not just my word for ‘someone I’m not enemies with.’”

Looking around at the others, Jay asked, “Do you guys have friends?”

Ꭼꭲꭼꭱɴꭺꮮ Ꭲꮋꭱꮻɴꭼ

Locke

---

“—and I’ve never seen fabric that color, never in my life, it must have cost a fortune, do you think it cost a fortune? I think it cost a fortune. And the spices! Did you smell the spices? Back at the market? We don’t have anything like that back home—”

“Mm,” said Locke, which was approximately the seventeenth ‘mm’ he’d offered in the last quarter-hour and would almost certainly not be the last.

She clung to him like a barnacle. Her name was Vella. Or Venna. Something with a V. He’d called her ‘darling’ and ‘dearest’ and ‘my heart’ often enough that the actual name had become a technicality, a vestigial limb of a courtship that had gone precisely according to plan and was now, somehow, gnawing his leg off at the knee.

“—we’re too far back, Thomas, I can barely see anything. Let’s get closer to the stage, please? I want to see everything—”

She was on her feet, pulling at his arm. He let himself be pulled. That was the game.

“Whatever you like, darling.”

Darling. Gods, he was going to choke on the endearments before this day was done.
They left the tavern table behind and pressed into the crowd. A great seething mass of humanity engaged in the noble pursuit of watching someone else become important. She drank it all in, pointing at all the marvels that Barkrend had apparently failed to provide. Locke nodded along and wondered if his face might simply crack from smiling.

A lopsided carriage caught his eye. It leaned hard to one side, and when the door swung open, he understood why.

What emerged was more mountain than man. Black leather, red trim, a beaked mask with lenses dark as a moneylender’s heart. It stood half again as tall as anyone nearby, and the twin battleaxes across its shoulders were not ceremonial. They were tools. Well-used ones.

Something cold slithered through Locke’s gut. Not fear, exactly. A feeling. The kind that had kept him alive when smarter men had gotten themselves killed. Leave. Leave now.

The grip pulled him onward. He didn’t look back.

“Thomas, look!” Vella—Venna—whoever—pointed toward the stands near the coronation stage. A man in plate armor, white cloak billowing, flanked by two Venators in pale gold. At the moment, he also had a street urchin dangling from his gauntlet by one skinny wrist, caught in the act of reaching for somewhere profitable.

The kid kicked. Struggled. Accomplished nothing.

The man reached for his belt.

And here we go, Locke thought. Lose the hand or lose the head.

But the hand bypassed the sword entirely.

It came up with coins. Silver. Two of them, pressed into the struggling boy’s palm. Words were exchanged, too distant to hear, but Locke could read the shape of mercy in the man’s posture. He let go. The boy looked down at the coins, then vanished into the crowd.

“Oh!” exclaimed the girl whose name started with V, loud enough, no doubt, for the man in armor to hear. “Did you see that, Thomas? How kind! A true knight, just like in the stories!”