Sarcastic Little Bitch 🫡

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Thank you for feeding me tonight

Another post about Crispin bc I find him the most fascinating Thorney Towers inmate as he's one of only two inmates we're never able to enter the mind of (and who isn't shown to overall be quite nice, unlike Sheegor/Penelope).

Under the cut bc it's long and rambly, it's based on facts we see in the game but it gets a bit headcanony

So, Crispin is an interesting case. We can assume he was admitted to Thorney Towers due to his catatonia and asocial behaviour, but what caused it initially is unknown. He responded quickly to play therapy and was good at it too. He's also never shown to be a physically violent person. In Fred's flashbacks he's either unresponsive or simply gloating over his victory, and in the present day he seems pretty disinterested in violence (he even runs when Fred confronts him). He's very cruel with his words, yes, but unlike Edgar's bouts of rage or Gloria's aggression towards those she mistakes for her mother, Crispin isn't shown to be physically dangerous in the canon we know, either to himself or others.

So.. why's he still in the straightjacket, even after the asylum's closure? Fred's straightjacket is symbolic of his learned helplessness (and I do think it's symbolic that Crispin and Fred are the only inmates still restrained, given their shared history), but Crispin isn't as clear. And he never seems to question it himself, despite believing he's the orderly.

So personally, I think it's a control thing. Loboto's confirmed to have taken preventative measures against psychics for both his "employees" as we can't enter their minds, but he also seems to take extra measures. He takes Mr. Pokeylope hostage to keep Sheegor "in line", and for Crispin.. he takes physical measures.

None of the inmates aside from Fred acknowledge Crispin's existence. He's never mentioned when they decide to leave, nobody wonders where he is. Either they really don't like him, or perhaps they don't even know he's still there. He never leaves his post at the lift, and whilst Fred's straightjacket symbolises being confined by his own mind, Crispin's perhaps symbolises being confined by Loboto. His eyesight is severely limited and with his arms bound it could be risky going anywhere on his own, especially an abandoned building complex. Safer to stay where he is.

If you try to enter his mind Loboto refers to Crispin as "my patient"; perhaps he's deemed the straightjacket still necessary for one reason or another. Crispin -or at least a part of him- knows he isn't actually the orderly. As soon as he sees Fred lucid and unrestrained he refers to him as the Chief Orderly, even though Fred has actually been an inmate for some time. Either Loboto convinced Crispin he was an orderly and the idea was broken once the power dynamic between him and Fred flipped, or Crispin tried to convince himself that was the situation to cope.

Whatever's going on with Crispin, I don't think it's fair to assume he's some evil master manipulator or physically violent or anything like that. He was already admitted to an asylum, and his mental processing has been tampered with in some way by another mentally unstable individual in Loboto. And the one thing about his past we do know about (Waterloo-O) he's vilified for on occasion, as if he actively set out to drive Fred mad. Crispin's not a nice person, no, but there's no reason to assume he's a bad person either. And given Oleander, Loboto and Lucrecia have all been given second chances, it's bizarre to me that Crispin is given such a dismissive ending. Not that he needed anything big, mind you, but he could've at least been able to leave the island with the others. He was abandoned by the world like the rest of them were.

defending my honor, isn't that groovy

This took me forever *dies*