Resist
Preserve your existence through refusal and opposition.
This booklet explores a human gesture that protects, connects and supports — and may then become the only way left to answer the world.
The human gesture
To resist is to set a boundary, protect dignity, recognise injustice and refuse submission. It can be courage, lucidity and loyalty to what must not be negotiated.
Its latent closure
The gesture closes when every request becomes control. Refusal then remains the only proof of existence; accepting help, changing one's mind or trusting someone resembles capitulation.
Colour of the five depths
| Depth | Direction |
|---|---|
| Mask | I say no, challenge authority, provoke or say aloud what others keep quiet. |
| Protection | I refuse before I can be forced, test intentions, reject gifts and turn every relationship into an explicit power struggle. |
| Attachment | A person, cause, memory or promise is precisely what I refuse to betray. |
| Wound | My consent was ignored; an authority deceived me; giving in once cost something irreplaceable. |
| Inner World | Every act of obedience erases part of me. Benevolent gestures can be the most effective forms of capture. |
Ambivalences to preserve
- courage / reflexive opposition;
- discernment / generalised suspicion;
- loyalty / isolation.
No thread should resolve these tensions in advance.
Fragment bank
note
Choosing a fragment does not fix a complete history. Its relationship with other depths will be created secretly by the player, then discovered in play.
Mask
- I always ask who decided.
- I prefer punishment to permission.
- I say no before anyone can mistake my silence for agreement.
- I make every order harder to pronounce.
Protection
- I refuse gifts whose price I did not set.
- I push people until their intention appears.
- I contradict my own desire if someone orders me to follow it.
- I keep one fault visible so they know they did not correct everything.
Attachment
- I promised never to sign for someone else.
- Someone still believes I can say no for both of us.
- I keep the name they tried to take away from me.
- There is a door I refuse to cross without the person left behind.
Wound
- I obeyed once and no one gave back what it cost me.
- They called care what I had asked them to stop.
- The person who was supposed to defend me explained that it was for my own good.
- I agreed in order to protect someone, and they treated my yes as permanent.
Inner World
- Every regulation contains the sentence they are afraid to say aloud.
- Doors open only when you stop asking permission.
- Every time I say yes without resisting, someone erases a line from my history.
- The walls repeat the orders no one dares give out loud.