Email: Dr. Lecter
[E-mail to typhoidandswans in response to his question about my e-mail address and signature. queenemma gets a mention.]
To: PAT.B13290@bshci.org
From: theredqueen@yahoo.transia.de
Subject: Adventures in Wonderland
Dr. Lecter,
Certainly you may call me Wanda.
( Wanda's Adventures in Wonderland )
To: PAT.B13290@bshci.org
From: theredqueen@yahoo.transia.de
Subject: Adventures in Wonderland
Dr. Lecter,
Certainly you may call me Wanda.
( Wanda's Adventures in Wonderland )
From: theredqueen@yahoo.transia.de
Subject: Remember what the dormouse said.
My Aunt Agatha raised me and now that she is aged it is only proper I care for her. Her health is failing and her mind is addled. She sleeps most of the time. When awake she speaks in riddles, I'm not certain she understands what she's saying herself. Agatha does not feel comfortable with modern medical practitioners. She's an herbalist and some might consider her a witch. I haven't sought any physician's opinions regarding her condition because I know she wouldn't want it.
Agatha has never been particularly warm but she is my family and I miss her. Actually, she is quite like the White Queen.
>Give me specifics.
I am Romany by birth. We are rather common in these parts but it still makes a difference. I have not lived as a gypsy since the fire that killed my family but it is my heritage. My father was a doll maker and well liked by the villagers but he was uneducated and we were poor. He was jailed once or twice for stealing.
When I was a child a fire broke out in the gypsy camp. My family was killed, everything I knew burned. I was the only survivor. No record exists of how or why and I have no memory of that day. It is this event that most isolates me from my neighbors. Without explanation it is easy for superstitious people to jump to any number of conclusions. Half the village thinks I'm a mutant and the others some manner of demon. It doesn't help that since that time I was raised by a woman I've already noted was assumed by many to use witchcraft. Although I've never manifested any powers or cast any spells the fact that I survived all those years ago is enough. The villagers have a long memory.
Finally, I am unmarried and without a father, brother or uncle to watch out for me. In America it little matters but here a young woman alone is a target, someone to be taken advantage of and gossiped about. The fact that neither my aunt nor myself have found it necessary to actively seek a husband for me simply makes me appear more odd. It might be an old world concept but I believe in love and I don't wish to enter into an arrangement simply to please the small minded people in town.
I do not wish to cause mischief.
Wanda
[There is no use trying, said Alice; one can't believe impossible things.
I dare say you haven't had much practice, said the Queen.
When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.]
OOC: I'm adding Belle to her ipod playlist. :D
Reply
From: PAT.B13290@bshci.org
Subject: I personally have immense distaste for trials
Familial duty. How heartwarming. Did your aunt teach you how to live backwards as well as forwards?
Fire. The refining element. I see. What do you remember from before the fire? Were you happy?
I'm familiar with the stigma that can be attached to the survivors of a tragedy. And that of the unmarried young woman as well; how trying. Constant pressure to be one of them when they would never accept you as one of them anyways.
You don't. Why not, Wanda? You agree they are small-minded; and I should be greatly surprised if you didn't resent them for the slights and slurs they've cast upon you and your aunt, for your isolation, for their willingness to cast the blame of a tragedy on the victim. Are you being honest with me, Wanda?
And if you are, then why not? What lessons have you learned, what moral precepts, that should make you wish to abstain from mischief? Did your dead father teach you, perhaps? Your father, the doll-maker, wise in matters of the hand and heart if not the mind?
What guides you, Wanda?
Hannibal Lecter
Reply
From: theredqueen@yahoo.transia.de
Subject: Guiding Principles
>Did your aunt teach you how to live backwards as well as forwards?
Actually, my aunt avoids discussion of the past as much as possible. She never mentions my mother. I think, perhaps, she resents my mother for dying and leaving her with me. She has only ever mentioned my brother in passing, almost accidentally, as if she momentarily forgot he was dead. She speaks of my father the most but only because she greatly dislikes him. She has always discouraged me from talking of them or those times at all.
>What do you remember from before the fire? Were you happy?
I'm not sure what of what I remember is real and what is imagined. I do not remember my mother very well at all. She was kind, quiet and sad. My memories of my father are wildly varied. I remember a gentle man who preferred to let his creations speak for him. I would watch him work, wanting to play with the dolls. Usually he wouldn't let me, they were our livelihood. But every once in a while I would be allowed to choose one to dance with. I remember a man who loved us as best he could though I do not believe it came easily. He was introverted, distracted. I remember reaching for him and being turned away.
However, I also remember my father as strong and demanding, someone who would never stand down from an argument or allow the villagers to abuse him. I have flashes of fear and anger....I remember his violent temper, remember being desperate to be....to please him. I still sometimes wonder what it is about me that is not good enough or strong enough.
These two versions of my father confuse me, it's almost as if they are two different people.
Finally, my brother. We were very close. He didn't get along with the other children but it didn't matter to him. He thought he was smarter than them, better, that he deserved more than the life we led. But he was always kind to me. It was his job to protect me and he took it very seriously. He's the reason I'm alive, I'm certain of it. And that means, I'm the reason he's dead.
I don't know if I was happy. I'm not sure I know what happiness truly is.
>What guides you, Wanda?
I am being as honest as I can be. Therefore, I admit I sometimes want the townspeople to hurt as much as I do. Sometimes I want to lash out at a world that refuses to understand me, requires me to change to fit their expectations, takes away everything I love and leaves me alone and without any recourse for the life I want, the life I deserve. Sometimes I wish to strike them all down like some sort of avenging angel, to force my chaotic existence on their small ordered lives.
What stops me is a desire to be better than them. What guides me is a rather desperate desire to be better than all of them...the prejudiced villagers, my arrogant brother, my angry father, my absent mother, my distant aunt. I want there to be a reason I survived. I want to be someone worth saving.
However, honestly, I do not believe I am.
Wanda
[There is no use trying, said Alice; one can't believe impossible things.
I dare say you haven't had much practice, said the Queen.
When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.]
OOC: FYI, various peoples from Wanda's past will be visiting soon so he could get a rather frantic email at some point.
Reply
From: PAT.B13290@bshci.org
Subject: RE: Guiding Principles
>I think, perhaps, she resents my mother for dying and leaving her with me.
Well, that's only fair-- you resent your "absent mother" for dying and leaving you with her.
Your dead family family of archetypes. The model mother, the believable brother, the father who stands as both protector and threat. You say you wish to prove "better than them"-- an elusive and subjective standard to be sure, and one you associate with holding a vague moral high ground of forgiveness and kindness.
What proofs will you have of it, Wanda, when you have managed to be good enough, and strong enough, and someone worth saving? Your father is no longer here to show his approval by letting you pick a doll. How will you know it, Wanda? You admit you don't think you're there yet. And the opportunities to prove yourself are limited, in this small circumscribed life. Will you ever know it, do you think?
>I'm not sure what of what I remember is real and what is imagined.
Ah yes. This is what your therapy is supposed to be about, isn't it? You contacted me to work with you on your possible memory loss. Let us add "possible inability to distinguis reality" to that. What is about these memories that makes you doubt them, Wanda? Do they ring hollow, seem heavy-laden with sentimentality and trauma?
>I don't know if I was happy. I'm not sure I know what happiness truly is.
Those who claim childhood as a time of happiness were obviously never children.
-Hannibal Lecter
OOC: No worries. And again my apologies for the delay. *facepalm* The work-related stuff that's been keeping me busy should be over with now, barring acts of God.
Reply
From: theredqueen@yahoo.transia.de
Subject: Fight or Flight
Dr. Lecter,
Am I supposed to have answers to these questions? Or are you suggesting I should not base my sense of personal worth on what others think of me? On an intellectual level I would agree with you. However, philosophically speaking, how else am I to judge myself? Particularly when I am unclear which of my own perceptions are truth?
I have long suffered from my memory loss. What prompted me to contact you was a recent shift from memories that simply weren't there to memories that are fragmented, and quite honestly, frightening. I can trace this change to my encounter with a young man who came looking for a friend here in the mountain. We grew close but he left rather suddenly. Looking back on it I now think I might be the friend he was looking for...and he left because I'm not anymore. I don't understand it and I want to. I want to know why people think they know me and I want to know why I don't remember. However, since you require me to be entirely truthful, I also fear knowing. Something must have happened to make me forget.
I am having dinner with one of these people who thinks he knows me later today. He claims he's my brother actually. I find it hard to believe I would imagine my brother dead when he's not. I am looking forward to having company however.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Wanda
ooc: So...Wanda's plot is very involved right now (I'm going to reply with ooc hilarity in a moment) so I decided I'd have this sent the same day as this encounter with Pietro and then we'll see where future correspondence would fit in. From March 20-April 1 Wanda will be living in an alternate universe. But when that ends and everyone's mad at her again she'll need continued therapy. Also, family therapy with Magneto, Wanda, Pietro and Lorna is a pretty funny thought. :)
Reply
Dear Dr. Lecter,
It's been a hectic few days. First my dead brother and I had dinner. I think he might not be dead.
Then a big celebrity who is supposed to be in jail turned up and it turns out we were friends. Maybe even lovers, I might have made that up though. Anyway, now I remember that I tried to kill all my friends. But he said it's okay, it wasn't really my fault.
And he didn't come alone. He brought my imaginary sons who are not only not imaginary they're teenagers and also super heroes like him and, apparently, me.
And he also broght a woman who is supposed to be dead and is the most powerful mutant on the planet. Except now that I've met her I remember that I'm the most powerful mutant on the planet and a while ago I sort of decimated the mutant population because I was mad at my father. Who, by the way, I now remember is a mutant terrorist who has killed very many people. Sadly, I think that time it really was my fault. I feel kind of bad about it.
Anyway, since I'm really kind of terrified of all this I sort of tried to seduce both my possible ex-lover and the super powerful mutant (it's kind of what I do - see: Clint Barton). Only something happened and I'm not sure what and now she's in a coma. I get the idea that more people will be arriving soon to fix this.
So....I think I understand why some part of me didn't want to remember all this.
Cheers,
Wanda
:D
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