The Good Goblin

Sorry… getting a bit sidetracked again. What I really wanted to do in this moment was to let you in on some of the things that I have come to realise over the course of my life. So, I shall impart this information to you, then I shall say farewell and I shall go back to spending my time with the things that I love… my husband… my children… and my life.

The first thing is about dealing with your problems. I don’t mean the practical problems, like a broken sink or whatever. I mean your internal problems.

The first couple of years of my life were not ideal. They left me with a lot of issues. Issus that I thought I could deal with by pushing them to one side. I put a series of things in place so that I wouldn’t have to confront any of these issues. Such as avoiding all sexual contact with other people and not telling anybody the true extent of the things that happened to me… or the things that I did as a result of what happened to me.

I have made a lot of progress over the years. But particularly since that whole incident with Tadwick and Darling. I realised that just talking about things really helped me. Since then, I have had much deeper conversations with Kiyui about what happened in that nest. I know that I had talked to Kiyui about this stuff to some extent previously… but I didn’t hold anything back this time. Some of these conversations have caused me to hyperventilate, sometimes they have made me angry, other times it has mostly just been crying. But they were all things that I needed to feel. I needed to feel the anger, the sadness… even the anxiety. I needed to feel those things so that I could process them.

You can’t process the emotions that you won’t let yourself feel. And don’t get me wrong. These conversations were difficult for me. They were not pleasant. Dredging up those memories… the pain that they brought. But sometimes you have to feel the bad things in order to feel the good things later… if you know what I mean.

All my life… all the happiness that I have experienced… it has always been tinged with this fear… this underlying dread. This belief that I will do something horrible and ruin everything. That’s gone now. It took me far too long to get rid of it… but it is gone.

I mean… I’m still neurotic… I don’t think I’ll ever stop overthinking things. But the fear of myself has gone. I know who I am now. I’m not afraid of what I might do… because I am in control of me. I know what I want out of life. My mind isn’t going to be suddenly overrun by some innate goblin behaviour… because… and I know Kiyui has said this to me… more than once… but… being a goblin does not define me. I am my own person. And dealing with my past has helped me to come to terms with that.

My point is, running away and ignoring these problems just allows them to fester and get worse. I appreciate that just after the initial trauma, things can be too sensitive to deal with immediately. I certainly could not have communicated about it adequately when my family first rescued me. But when things settle… when things are calm and you feel safe… you need to deal with your trauma.

The second thing that I have come to realise… and well… accept, is that my issues with nudity are very much my own. Don’t get me wrong… I grew comfortable with it from those in my immediate vicinity quite a long time ago. When you are surrounded by people like Kiyui, Nomius, and Tadwick you kind of have to adjust to things. But I would be lying if I said that it didn’t bother me back then.

The thing is… I saw it as me having to compromise. I saw it as them being uncivilised and me just having to accept being uncomfortable. What I should have done was thought about why it made me uncomfortable in the first place. Because when you think about it with any degree of logic… nudity shouldn’t be shocking, upsetting or uncomfortable.

I mean… we are born naked. Nudity is our default form. Animals don’t wear clothes, unless we force them into them. And we are technically animals… why does our increased mental capacity for some reason make us ashamed of nudity?

Kiyui is right about society creating a lot of these hang ups. Which is odd… because human society is so incredibly ashamed of sex and nudity… yet within it, there are these, kind of, pockets of hypersexuality. Places you can go to watch naked people dance, to pay for sex, to pay for all manner of perversions. But I suppose that making nudity seem like such a forbidden thing drives people to want to see it more. Which in turn increases revenue within these businesses.

Damecus made the gardens clothing optional a while ago. Initially there weren’t that many people that indulged in it. It was mostly him, Verity, and various small children. But over time, more and more people started doing it. And now, during the hot weather, very few people in there are clothed. And the ones that are clothed are no longer bothered by those that aren’t. Once it became accepted that it was allowed, people got used to it quickly and ceased to care. It was only shocking initially.

So, I think my issues with nudity stem from a few different things. The first being that I was raised by a society that generally keeps clothes on. This makes it shocking when suddenly the clothes are off. It was simply fear of what I wasn’t used to.

The second reason is my issues with my own body. Even now, I dislike people outside of my immediate circle seeing me without clothes. I have come to accept my body. I am what I am. But I will never be proud of being a goblin. Which I think is why I still struggle to shake that uncomfortable feeling when other people see my body in its entirety. There is still that fear that they will just see a goblin. There are still days that I miss my cowl. Therefore, I still generally avoid situations where nudity is expected. As I said, I am fine with being naked around certain people that I trust. But nudity around strangers is still something that I avoid.

The third reason is linked to my issues around sex. I tried to avoid sex and anything sexual for the longest time… for various reasons that you are well aware of by now. And I sexualised nudity. I saw nudity and I made the mental leap to sex. Sex and nudity are not the same thing. Don’t get me wrong, sex often involves nudity. But the vast majority of the time, nudity does not involve sex. If you felt the need to orgasm every time you had no clothes on then by the gods would your genitals be sore.

That was very much me creating my own problem. I saw nudity, I made the mental leap to sex, and as a result I ended up making myself incredibly uncomfortable. Even with people that I was not even remotely attracted to… even with children… I assumed there was something sexual about the situation and that made my skin crawl.

Fortunately, this is very much something that I have now moved past. I am now perfectly capable of seeing nudity without instantly linking it to sex. Because nudity is not by default sexual. I have come to accept that other people can be naked and that has no effect on me. I don’t need to freak out about it. I can go the gardens now and not end up a neurotic mess because there are naked people.

I have also come to realise that just because other people are naked… it doesn’t mean that I need to be. I have issues with my body… if other people are happy enough with there’s to not bother hiding it, then that is fine, but it doesn’t mean that I need to follow suit.

I guess that what I am saying here, is that I have come to realise that it is okay to be naked… and that it is okay to be clothed. Do what you are comfortable with. Don’t force people to take their clothes off and don’t force people to keep their clothes on. What business is it of mine if some woman is sunbathing naked? Why should I care if the boys are swimming naked in the river? Why should I care if Damecus is gardening with nothing on? It doesn’t affect me in the slightest. I only need object if they attempt to force me to join in.

So basically, when it comes to nudity, just let people do what they feel comfortable with. If it makes you uncomfortable, then think about why it makes you uncomfortable. Just because you have issues around something, it doesn’t mean that it is wrong. It doesn’t mean that everybody else needs to stop because of your discomfort. It simply means that you have issues that you need to deal with. And at the end of the day… it is incredibly easy not to look at something. So, if seeing it makes you uncomfortable, then simply avert your eyes.

Just for the sake of clarification. There are plenty of things in this world that make people uncomfortable with good reason and absolutely should be stopped if ever witnessed. And there are still various contexts where nudity is not a good idea and should be stopped. The dead of winter for example… there are situations where clothes need to be worn. I am simply pointing out that context is important and if the only reason for you objecting to something is simply that it makes you uncomfortable, then you should focus on working out why it makes you uncomfortable rather than stopping everybody else from doing it.

Speaking of things that make people uncomfortable. I have also been doing a lot of thinking about sex. I don’t mean in a perverted way. I mean, trying to work out what my sexuality is.

I questioned this stuff a long time ago, when I was still unsure if Kiyui and I were in a relationship. Since then, we have become closer and more intimate, I have discussed these things with Kiyui (as well as some others) quite in depth, and he has filled me in on the key terms.

From what I have been able to discern, heterosexual means that you are willing to enter into a relationship with somebody who possesses a different set of genitals to you. Homosexual means that you are willing to enter into a relationship with somebody who possesses the same set of genitals as you. And Bisexual means that you are both heterosexual and homosexual… and thus anybody is fair game. And by enter into a relationship; I mean romantic or sexual or both. Which puts me in the camp of bisexuality.

It doesn’t matter that I have only ever been attracted to one man. Nor does it matter that I have never actually had sex with a woman. I am still highly attracted to women and I am still highly attracted to Kiyui. So, bisexual it is.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I am well aware that most people will simply identify me as homosexual because I have a husband and I have only ever been involved with a man sexually. Other people identifying me incorrectly doesn’t bother me in the slightest. They aren’t in my head, they don’t know what’s going on in here. I can’t expect people to be able to guess this stuff. The important thing is that I understand my own feelings and I know who I am.

Putting a label on what I am is actually rather unimportant and I don’t really care about the terminology. The reason why this investigation into myself has been so important is because for a long time I struggled to understand how I could be so attracted to women and yet still be attracted to Kiyui. I didn’t really get it. I know homosexuals, I know heterosexuals and I know bisexuals. But most bisexuals that I know have been attracted to multiple people across the sexual spectrum. The fact that Kiyui is the only male that I had ever found attractive confused me.

Talking things through with Kiyui has helped me to realise that, as I have literally just mentioned, sexuality is a spectrum. It isn’t black and white. You can be mostly attracted to men and still find some women attractive and vice versa. You can be fifty/fifty in the middle and be drawn to an equal number of each. You can also be one hundred percent heterosexual or homosexual. So, me being predominantly drawn to women does not mean that I can’t also find a man attractive. Sexuality isn’t limited like that. And I guess… that is what I was struggling to understand.

I really should have come to this conclusion a long time ago. Agaroth did tell me that story about how he had sex with a man once. Even if it was simply because he thought the guy was a woman when they started. Thinking of sexuality in such a rigid manner just caused me to be confused and attempt to reject certain things about myself because I didn’t understand how they could be possible.

I guess what I am saying here is that you shouldn’t try to rationalise attraction in your head. Initially, I tried to justify my attraction to Kiyui because I assumed that since all my previous desires were of a heterosexual nature, then there must be some strange reason that I was unaware of why I was attracted to him specifically. But when I stopped trying to work out why I was attracted to him and simply embraced that I was… it took so much pressure off and it allowed me to simply settle into the relationship and be happy.

So, my advice here is actually that you shouldn’t lock yourself into one specific group and be open to the idea that you may move into a different group at different points in your life. I was heterosexual. I am currently in the bisexual camp. Dolly told me that he was heterosexual until he was fourteen. Then something kind of clicked and he lost all interest in women and became completely homosexual. Sir Robert said that he was bisexual when he was young, but after a while his attraction to men waned and he is now fully heterosexual. I am the reverse. I was heterosexual, then I became bisexual. What you are may change from one moment to the next. So, try not to be afraid of these changes. If you learn to embrace them, then you will be much happier as a result.

That being said… I obviously still have issues with certain aspects of sex. I spoke before about dealing with your issues. Well, I think that I have worked out why sex with women terrifies me so much. Because really, given how attractive I find the female form, it doesn’t really make any sense for me to still be afraid of them in a sexual context. Especially since I came to realise that I am more than just a goblin and moved past my fears that I might lash out and hurt somebody during sexual activity.

The issue there is that I still have the memories of my time in that nest. And whilst I may no longer fear that I will perpetrate the deeds that I witnessed. I still have vivid memories of them. And being close to a woman in that way… it causes those memories to come flooding back and enter the forefront of my mind.

What I witnessed back then, what I saw being done to my mother… whilst she was still breastfeeding me… aggressively and repeatedly… it forms a kind of well in my stomach. It makes me feel… empty… like there is a great void within me. It is a truly horrid feeling, and not one that I can get past.

This is precisely why, no matter how many times that Kiyui suggests it, I just cannot bring myself to attempt sex with a woman. Even if certain parts of my body seem to want to. What my penis wants is diametrically opposed to what my trauma riddled brain can cope with.

I don’t think that this is an issue that I will ever be able to move past. But at least, on this little sexual identity quest, I have been able to work out exactly why I am like this.

Kiyui did say that if this was something that I wanted to work on, that he would happily share our bed with a woman, in order to provide me with emotional support and hopefully overcome this. But, even just thinking about it creates that void in my stomach. I know he means well, but I don’t think any amount of emotional support would help me get past this.

Besides… I don’t think polygamy is my thing. I know that sex is Kiyui’s thing. I have come to accept that. When it comes to sex, we are two very different people.

I am well aware that Kiyui is capable of having sex with no emotional attachments whatsoever. I am also well aware that he can sleep with friends and people he cares for without it changing his opinion about them or how he feels about them.

In fact, because of all we have shared and how well I know him, it doesn’t even bother me that he has sex with other people now. I remember back in the violet forest when he just went to blow Shu as a polite thank you… it made me so jealous and uncomfortable. I didn’t realise it at the time, but even just a few years later, when he was undercover at Madame Laurent’s, he was talking about how Jonty was excited about having sex with him again… and it didn’t even occur to me to be jealous.

I think that even back then I knew that him having sex with other people was absolutely no threat to our relationship. Because we have such a strong emotional connection. The difference between us is that he can completely separate that emotional connection from sexual activity. I am just not capable of that. My penis may have a mind of its own, but I just… I need to feel the right emotional bond with somebody for me to feel comfortable engaging in sex.

If Kiyui was like me in this regard… and he proceeded to have sex with somebody else, then yes, I would feel like our relationship was in great danger. But the way he is… it just isn’t an issue. I love him and I trust him. We have spoken about this stuff before and he has offered to be monogamous… but it is part of who he is… and I don’t want to force change on him. I love everything about him, and I wouldn’t change him for the world.

I guess my point here is that when it comes to sex, sexuality, monogamy, etc… people are different. He is a different person to me, things hold different meanings to him, so I shouldn’t judge him based on how I would feel if it was me doing those things. I guess I finally understand what he was talking about all those years ago about not shaming people for being sexually active.

On a less sex orientated note, I have also come to realise that our biology has less of an impact on who we are as people that I used to think. Don’t get me wrong… it obviously effects some things… and can give you predispositions towards certain behaviours. But it is largely how we are raised that effects things like our moral compass.

I was terrified for so long that deep down I was just like my birth father. I was convinced that because I was a goblin, that I was inherently evil. That because I was conceived through rape, then the desire to commit such acts must run through my veins. And it doesn’t, it simply doesn’t.

Had I been raised in that nest… I would have been like every other Grim. I would have grown into an evil creature and I would have thought nothing of it. But I was raised by good, kind, caring, loving people. And that had such a profound effect on me… it made me the man that I am today.

I have also learned that, as a result of this, I put the human race on a pedestal for a very long time. I was taken in by humans… they gave me a wonderful upbringing… they helped me through hell and out the other side. But not all humans have such caring dispositions. Something that I learned to a disgusting degree in that opium den. All beings have the capacity for both good and evil. You are not born one or the other. Who you are is moulded by those around you as you grow, and by the decisions that you ultimately end up making.

The final thing that I have come to realise over my rather turbulent life is that I am not the hero of this story. I never have been. I am and always have been a support character to the true heroes around me. My biggest accomplishments in this life have simply been me assisting others. I am not the one to run in and save the day. I am not the one who heroically holds the line. I am not the one who goes out in a deeply emotional heroic act.

The thing that I am most known for… defeating the corrupted incubus. That was simply Phoenix using me as a conduit to access the power of the sword to a diminished degree, so as to kill the creature without blowing up the entire city. The prophecy that I was going to save the city and by extension, the world… that was about Phoenix, not me.

The heroes of this world are the likes of Agaroth, who gave his life to protect his friends. Chloe, for uniting the knights with the undead and holding back the enemy hordes until their leader could be killed. Keith, for sacrificing himself to save Phoenix from that explosion. Iliya for literally everything he did to keep me alive that day. Farrow, Johnny, and the other adventurers for holding back the invading creatures to buy us time. Chlamydia, for diving on that deadly plant to save a boy that she barely even knew. Phoenix… for sacrificing her life to kill the demon that threatened the world. Gods… even Charlie for taking on that crocodile with only one arm and a dagger. These people are heroes. I was simply a glorified delivery boy.

And you know what. I am fine with not being the big hero. Everybody in this world can’t be a hero. The world is dependent on the people who lift these people up… who support them… who help them be who they need to be. The world needs people who deal with the normal world. The world needs farmers… the world needs tailors… the world needs normal people. I may not be a big glorious hero. But I have had an impact on this world. I have changed the lives of others for the better. I have fallen in love. I have given my boys a good life and a safe place to live. If I die today, then I will die safe in the knowledge that my contribution to this world has been a positive one.

At the start of this story, I made it quite clear that there are no good goblins. I can quite honestly say, that that statement was born of ignorance. Not only of the Bracken, but also of myself. I know now that many of the Bracken are good natured. I know from seeing Jacob and Tarquin that nurture has a very significant impact on who we become. Our nature may give us certain dispositions, but it is how we are raised that teaches us how to deal with those dispositions. It is the support from those around us that guides us and makes us the people that we are.

I would not have grown into the person that I am now without the support of my parents… my friends… even my children. I don’t really believe in the black and white concept of good and evil anymore. I am aware that there is a bit more nuance to things. There are good people that do bad things, there are bad people that do good things. It is a spectrum… and everybody exists within the grey areas.

But I do now firmly believe that my shade of grey is on the lighter side. I have done some horrible things in my life. I can never erase that. But I have also done a lot of good things. And for the most part, I am proud of the life that I have lived. I accept my life for what it is… for what it has been… the good, the bad and everything in-between.

When I look back on my life now… yes there have been sad times… but I would not have felt those sad moments if I had not had the happy ones. And overall, despite being a deeply neurotic overthinker… I have had much more happiness in my life than I ever thought possible.

And in this moment… as I look out onto the farm. And I see the boys going about their chores… and in the middle of it all, Kiyui… wearing those ridiculous farming dungarees that he made years ago… chewing on a strand of straw… and smiling back at me. I know… I just know… that I have never been so content.