In a gunfight, I could, but definitely not in a fistfight. [Seriously. Look at him. He's a pipe cleaner with eyes and noodle arms.]
It's different for everyone, but in Samantha's case, it was brain damage. Her mother died, and her father likely began sexually abusing her around then. [You might notice a little sharpening in his eyes and a growing edge in his voice. No. He does not like Arthur Malcolm, or anyone like him.] In order to keep her quiet, he submitted her to electroshock therapy, which while a perfectly legitimate treatment for certain mental illnesses in adults, will permanently damage the brain of an adolescent. Her prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain in charge of executive function. Her ability to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, predict outcomes from certain behaviors, and moderate her social behavior were all irreparably damaged.
Her father gave her dolls as gifts, and since she didn't have friends, she was being thoroughly traumatized, and her prefrontal cortex was damaged, she became attached to those dolls in a way that most people never do--she attached part of herself to them, and they became an integral part of her identity.
Now, this would be okay--for a relative definition of 'okay'--if she could always have her dolls nearby, but her father took her dolls away. People like her, called 'Collectors', react violently, sometimes even psychotically, to their collections being threatened, and when hers was taken, she had to find a surrogate. With the damage to her brain, humans seemed like acceptable surrogates.
[If you ask for an explanation, you will get an explanation. Hopefully, you managed to pay attention to all that.]
no subject
It's different for everyone, but in Samantha's case, it was brain damage. Her mother died, and her father likely began sexually abusing her around then. [You might notice a little sharpening in his eyes and a growing edge in his voice. No. He does not like Arthur Malcolm, or anyone like him.] In order to keep her quiet, he submitted her to electroshock therapy, which while a perfectly legitimate treatment for certain mental illnesses in adults, will permanently damage the brain of an adolescent. Her prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain in charge of executive function. Her ability to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, predict outcomes from certain behaviors, and moderate her social behavior were all irreparably damaged.
Her father gave her dolls as gifts, and since she didn't have friends, she was being thoroughly traumatized, and her prefrontal cortex was damaged, she became attached to those dolls in a way that most people never do--she attached part of herself to them, and they became an integral part of her identity.
Now, this would be okay--for a relative definition of 'okay'--if she could always have her dolls nearby, but her father took her dolls away. People like her, called 'Collectors', react violently, sometimes even psychotically, to their collections being threatened, and when hers was taken, she had to find a surrogate. With the damage to her brain, humans seemed like acceptable surrogates.
[If you ask for an explanation, you will get an explanation. Hopefully, you managed to pay attention to all that.]