Boundaries and Rolls

A makeup post for yesterday's short one.

Tad woke up briefly earlier to start some work setting boundaries. I'm not sure why I logged in for it, it was just him sitting on his apartment floor whispering to himself about his plans for that. I could have just stayed on the couch and talked to myself.

He's setting boundaries for himself to follow, as well as the conditions for lifting them. He has started worrying about whether or not he's crossing the boundaries that Tessa set because they were pretty vague and he thinks he's stupid. She said "space" and she ghosted. That's it. She never defined anything. So now he's defining things for himself. Really thinking hard about it. He has to. He can't ask her for clarification. That's obviously a boundary he's crossed once and he's still desperately trying to be good so maybe she will notice and give him a second chance. In the meantime, though, he knows he needs to notice her less. Hence sitting down and talking himself through a plan of action instead of just living in some abstract fuzzy bubble of panic.

Don't worry. Tad has calmed down at the moment, but his fixation on Tessa (specifically) will never go away. The dice made sure of that when he first saw her running. Will he be relegated to her shelf of "former" stalkers to be taken down when she feels he might be useful? Will he go down a darker road and end up dead? Or will he figure out how to replace his unhealthy behaviors around the fixation with a healthier (though still probably not healthy) reciprocated connection to her? Only time will tell.

The only boundary Y'ALL get to know about right now is that, despite liking Twinkles and Sneaky and wanting to get to know them better (which he mentioned in his conversation with Saini today), he has determined that the Funhouse Clowns and CLEAR daily associates are off limits unless they approach. Just like Tessa. He knows that means Buttons and Reina. He will be lenient with himself if he doesn't know they're FHC, but once he knows, off limits. He texted Sneaky back tonight because Sneaky had texted (seemed like a keep your enemies closer sort of text, but Tad ignored that). I worded it so it seemed like maybe he was giving Sneaky a boundary, but it wasn't actually a boundary FOR Sneaky. I want to give Sneaky the chance to violate a boundary he thinks that Tad is setting up for him. Mostly that's for me though. I want to keep roleplaying with the clowns. Tad refusing to cross these new boundaries will make that hard unless the clowns continue to try to read into everything he does and intentionally cross his "boundaries" to try to make him feel unsafe (or give him a false sense of safety) in retaliation.

Tad has never felt safe in his life. No memory of that feeling. So this is really nothing different for him. Though certain actions taken by the clowns could make it harder for him to pass the rolls listed below. If he starts taking major head injuries, for instance.

Tad thinks he's going to get stalked if he isn't being stalked already. Because if he thought someone was stalking someone he considered family, he would stalk them to make sure they were being good. And if he were Sneaky, that'd, like, probably be his thing, right? Sneaky told him as much yesterday. Hell, Tad made sure Twinkles and Sneaky knew his name and phone number, knew what jobs he was most likely to do, knew who is best friend in the city is, knew what car he drives and that he's saving up for a motorbike, and (if they paid attention) had access to his state ID (which he knows they can't get from the courthouse because he doesn't have a profile yet). He even outright said that knife has his state ID on it. He provided them everything they would need to stalk him, barring his compulsion circuits. They even know when he wakes up most weekdays. He has given them the control they were very obviously looking for without giving them too much of what they don't know to look for.

There is always the chance Tad will break his own boundaries. He did it via text ("last text" followed by "no this is the last text" and "I meant this is the last text"). He did it with the tree house (before he had even guessed it was Tessa's, he wrote to her that you don't go into someone's tree uninvited). He did it with the vehicle repairs (he told Saini he had thought of that but didn't want to touch someone else's things). Anxiety spiral. Dissociative break. Compulsion (felt like something bad was going to happen if he didn't do something for her). None of which are good excuses for bad behavior. Tad gets it. That's why he's working on it. A good day of working on "it" can give him advantage on his sleep roll I mention below.

The rolls I make every day for Tad at the moment:

Sleep roll: d20. 1 is critical failure and he roles for a parasomnia. 2-5 is a failure and he rolls for hallucination. 6-10 he takes a pill and rolls for a side effect. 11-15 he takes a pill no side effect. 16-19 he sleeps without a pill, but rolls to see if it's restful or not. 20 is critical success. That's what we had earlier today.

Obsession roll: It's a 2 sider (though I use odds and evens on a d4). He either struggles with his fixation with Tessa or he doesn't. This doesn't mean that he's going to bother her. Just that he's thinking about her when he shouldn't be.

Compulsion roll: 2 dice.

One for Tessa that increases sides every day (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, 100, 100, 100, etc). He was on 4 today (rolled a 2). If he fails on any given day, it resets. He has to land on a 1 (or odds for the 2) in order to fail that roll. So every day gets easier until we hit 100. But there's always a chance we reset. And depending on how the sleep and obsession rolls go, that could be bad or not-so-bad.

One for other compulsions (like circuits). I just roll whenever I, the roleplayer, am trying to kill a little time. I determine the compulsion based on what's been happening that day.

So things could still go catastrophically. Say he rolls a 1 on sleep, then rolls dissociate, then hits a 1 on obsession, then fails a Tessa compulsion upon waking up? All it takes is a 1 on a d20, a 9 or 10 (10 is worse) on a d10, and then a d-4 to land on odds twice and suddenly Tad is abducting Tessa somewhere as easy as the apartments, food court, or hospital: three places she's likely to show up any given day. Possibly even the funhouse if I feel spicy that day. Boundaries be damned!