[Alright. Okay. He reads that wall of text -- honestly shorter than he thought it would be -- over several times to make sure he's got it sorted. It takes a couple of times because there's some hurdles there he has to jump, mentally. He's never considered the concept of genders that aren't male or female, and certainly he's never considered that gender and sex and sexuality are not all essentially the same thing.
But if men can like men then clearly they aren't, are they, and the rest of it follows logically enough. That's the one good thing about him: he's simply too mathematically-minded to not intuit logic when it's presented to him. It's just the equation is a lot more complicated than he thought it was, and he hasn't learned the theory behind it yet, and also this specific type of math scares him, and the metaphor is getting a little confused but that always happens to him when he's discombobulated.
Now of course the Trench corruption is making him more likely to purposefully engage with things that scare him, and for the first time that might be... good? At the very least, not immediately dangerous. Just awkward.
Which is all to say, he has this very thoughtful inner monologue but what he winds up writing is:]
Are you telling me I knew you were a queer before you did
That's not ALL I got from it but there was a lot to get, let me tackle it one bit at a time.
I've known since college. I figured it was obvious and I never asked because it wasn't my business to pry.
[And why was it obvious?]
You never brought girls back to the room, you never even talked about them. You didn't talk about ANYONE. So I figured you weren't talking because it wasn't the sort of thing you talk about in public and that was fair enough.
Also I had to sleep every night across from that poster of Carl Sagan making bedroom eyes. You cannot possibly tell me you bought that and didn't know.
Edited (how could i forget our good friend carl) 2022-08-24 03:45 (UTC)
Are all some pretty solid points that Fiddleford just made, which is the worst part. It's very hard to argue when you don't have a solid counter-argument!
There is at least one point on which he can defend himself, though. ]
I'm only asking because that isn't how it happened for me and I'm trying to suss out how much of it was me and how much of it was this place messing with my head.
I don't think it's likely to be Trench. The Pthume
[ That's as far as Ford gets before what Fiddleford says really clicks into place in his mind. In his haste to scroll back up and make sure he really read what he thinks he read he hits send.
He can't even care about that, however. There's a lot he knows about Fiddleford, but this definitely isn't one of them. ]
It wasn't just scholarly curiosity or I'd have asked you all the way back in college.
[Which... actually the alternate universe where that happened might have been real wild, huh? They might have both learned some things a lot sooner.]
Trust me, I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to have this conversation, but I'll be up at night about it otherwise.
[Which begs the question of why he didn't just erase the memories that are making him this discombobulated, which is another very unsettling data point to consider.]
The point is it didn't happen like that. I didn't have to wait for someone else to suggest it, it just sort of hit me like a truck one day.
[ Huh. This isn't remotely the direction Ford expected this conversation to go but... okay, yeah. He can roll with it. ]
Not everyone figures it out like I did. Dipper seemed to understand right away, and I believe Ruby did as well.
[ Which is, frankly, none of Fiddleford's business - but Ford knows that Dipper and Ruby are open about their his relationships with Oscar and Ange, and Fiddleford is a trusted friend. ]
I sure didn't UNDERSTAND right away or I wouldn't be talking to you about it. I don't know where it came from, that's the whole issue. I've fancied women all my life and I can't imagine what's changed except that now I'm a squid, so it has to be something that happened here.
Well sure I did, but Jane Fonda was only ever on the screen. Emma-May was real. If I'm going to settle down with someone I'm not going to do it halfway. "The one" implies ONE. Singular.
[Essentially he is the ultimate wife guy. He doesn't really fall in love with someone until he's sure they're marriage material, and once he's sure of that, he forgets about everyone else.
If anybody tried to explain being aromantic to him it would fry his brain completely.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cryptograms) wrote2021-09-04 07:34 pm
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But if men can like men then clearly they aren't, are they, and the rest of it follows logically enough. That's the one good thing about him: he's simply too mathematically-minded to not intuit logic when it's presented to him. It's just the equation is a lot more complicated than he thought it was, and he hasn't learned the theory behind it yet, and also this specific type of math scares him, and the metaphor is getting a little confused but that always happens to him when he's discombobulated.
Now of course the Trench corruption is making him more likely to purposefully engage with things that scare him, and for the first time that might be... good? At the very least, not immediately dangerous. Just awkward.
Which is all to say, he has this very thoughtful inner monologue but what he winds up writing is:]
Are you telling me I knew you were a queer before you did
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[ Fucking really, Fiddleford?
Which would Ford would like to leave it but that comment has caused a surge of his greatest weakness: curiosity. ]
When did you know? And how?
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I've known since college. I figured it was obvious and I never asked because it wasn't my business to pry.
[And why was it obvious?]
You never brought girls back to the room, you never even talked about them. You didn't talk about ANYONE. So I figured you weren't talking because it wasn't the sort of thing you talk about in public and that was fair enough.
Also I had to sleep every night across from that poster of Carl Sagan making bedroom eyes. You cannot possibly tell me you bought that and didn't know.
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Are all some pretty solid points that Fiddleford just made, which is the worst part. It's very hard to argue when you don't have a solid counter-argument!
There is at least one point on which he can defend himself, though. ]
That is not why I bought the Carl Sagan poster.
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It seems to me that that's the kind of thing a man ought to have figured out before he hits thirty-something.
[Mainly because if it isn't, that is a troubling data point in the 'you might not be as straight as you think' evidence pile.]
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Maybe, but I was focused on my work for the entirety of my 20s.
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[Which... again... is an unsettling data point.
And also does unfortunately track for Ford. He knows Ford, and he knows Ford would never make a first move.]
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I suppose that's correct. And it's the short answer to your original question: I noticed the first time another man approached me first.
HERE WE GO
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[ That's as far as Ford gets before what Fiddleford says really clicks into place in his mind. In his haste to scroll back up and make sure he really read what he thinks he read he hits send.
He can't even care about that, however. There's a lot he knows about Fiddleford, but this definitely isn't one of them. ]
That's why you asked?
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[Which... actually the alternate universe where that happened might have been real wild, huh? They might have both learned some things a lot sooner.]
Trust me, I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to have this conversation, but I'll be up at night about it otherwise.
[Which begs the question of why he didn't just erase the memories that are making him this discombobulated, which is another very unsettling data point to consider.]
The point is it didn't happen like that. I didn't have to wait for someone else to suggest it, it just sort of hit me like a truck one day.
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Not everyone figures it out like I did. Dipper seemed to understand right away, and I believe Ruby did as well.
[ Which is, frankly, none of Fiddleford's business - but Ford knows that Dipper and Ruby are open about their his relationships with Oscar and Ange, and Fiddleford is a trusted friend. ]
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once again i draw on a for real fucking conversation i have had
Don't you have to pick one eventually?
[Like... that's the whole thing. He fell in love with a woman. He thought that was the final word on it. You pick one and he picked one.]
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Why would you have to pick just one?
[ He's asking this question sincerely. Did he... did he miss something somewhere while he was out wandering the multiverse? ]
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[Uh.
Because why? Because he's just always assumed that's how it works?]
Theoretically I suppose you don't have to but once you settle down with someone that's kind of definitive, isn't it?
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[ How... exactly should he put this...? ]
After you got married did you suddenly stop caring about Jane Fonda whenever you watched Cat Ballou?
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[ Ford can't really remember how often, but often enough that he remembers it. ]
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[Essentially he is the ultimate wife guy. He doesn't really fall in love with someone until he's sure they're marriage material, and once he's sure of that, he forgets about everyone else.
If anybody tried to explain being aromantic to him it would fry his brain completely.]
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cw: discussion of mental illness
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