deernet | Video | UN: aweful

Video | UN: aweful

[She’s been here for over a week now. Time to get the lay of the land. The video opens up to a particularly tall blonde woman with a golden skeletal arm and a smirk. She's here to cause problems on purpose.]

Greetings, hello, salutations. My name is Ianthe Naberius. I’m new in town, twenty two, a princess of Ida, unfortunately single and dreadfully bored!

Now, I come to you today, not only to introduce myself, but to ask something of all of you.

Who do you hate most in Trench and why? I’m trying to meet people, network, but it’s so hard and overwhelmingly positive! So consider this an open invitation. Warn me about that dangerous scoundrel who kicked your puppy, seethe about how much you despise me for whatever reason, tell me about your parasocial hateful fixation on one of the local divinity. It can be a minor slight you want to complain about, a friend of yours who owes you two perfectly intact human skulls, or it can be an actual danger to this lovely little community of ours.

Now, before you try to say “this is childish and stupid!” You’re absolutely right, but it is a necessary part of self care to allow oneself to be an absolute cunt once in a while. [Or all the time, if your name is Ianthe.] So let’s not make any grand claims to being above something like this, mm?

Feel free to use the anonymity feature. Or the privacy feature, I guess, if you’re shy or worried about being fileted like a fish.

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see here's the trouble with you, maul
you're a hypocrite and too far up your own ass to even see it

you keep saying nobody gives you a chance, but has YOUR house been burned down lately?
find any mobs with pitchforks and torches coming at you?
any locals or new sleepers get warned about you in advance? no?
gee, almost sounds like people have been leaving you alone, doesn't it

but it's fine for YOU to hold a grudge to the end of time
it's fine for you to bring up your every resentment at any given opportunity, and that's "venting"
even if you've already had your revenge over it, multiple times in some cases

everyone else, though, hoo boy
why haven't they all gotten over it already! how dare anyone call you out for anything, ever, on a post specifically for talking about people they hate

because only maul is ever allowed to hate people, right?
for someone who claims to be so tough, you've got the thinnest skin i've ever seen in my life
you sure don't see any of the people you called out whining about it or dragging their buttbuddies in to defend them

Venting is exactly what was called for in this post. Or do you have a pile of rocks in your head where your brain should be? It's not like I sent out that response and said at the end of it "By the way, I plan to murder all these people for twelve days leading up to Christmas." This is a much healthier alternative to anything I've done before.

And if you knew anything about me at ALL, which you clearly don't, you'd know I can hold a grudge for literal decades. So sorry, but I don't plan on changing that part of myself anytime soon. Too busy figuring out healthy alternatives to murder.

I didn't ask anyone to defend me. Sharon just cares about me a lot because we understand one another. Shocking as it must be to someone who knows absolutely nothing about me, some people actually do like me in this town. When you're loyal to someone, you'll do anything for them. But I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand that.

yeah? so what are you doing on my thread, jackass? i'm allowed to vent too

nobody gives a shit about you holding grudges
again, the problem is that you're constantly whining about other people's, because you're a hypocrite

you don't know the first thing about loyalty, actually
if i didn't give a shit about my people i would've started a war against you and yours a long time ago just to make you suffer as much as i could
but it'd come back around to mine, so i haven't
i love my people too much to risk their safety for the satisfaction of slitting your fucking throat, as much as i'd enjoy it
you, on the other hand
you've spent years making the people unfortunate enough to give a shit about you have to constantly make excuses for you and apologize for you every time you backslid
the ones that AREN'T embarrassed by your constant bullshit are the ones just as bad as you, honestly

You already know I don't take insults well. Or maybe you don't, you've already proven yourself to be quite stupid, which is narrowing down the list of possibilities this could be.

Don't you DARE question my loyalty! I've held deeper loyalty in my little finger than you'd be capable of in your entire body. I've bled for them, I've fought for them, I've been mutilated, I've had my mind torn out and put back together in pieces, I've DIED for them. Every time I have taken revenge here, it has been because my heart was shattered when someone I loved was hurt, and I cared enough about them to do something about that. You wouldn't know true loyalty if it came up and gouged your eyes out.

[Of everything Qrow has said, questioning his loyalty actually hit a deep nerve in Maul. That really hurt him. His loyalty runs bone-deep and those who have it will possess it until the end of time. It takes someone being as much a bastard as his master was for him to revoke it and even then it took Sidious abandoning Maul for him to finally turn his back on the abuse he endured.]

How long am I going to have to behave myself here for you to figure out I've changed? Another year? Five years? The end of time? You strike me as someone who will forever find fault with anything I do even if it was taking revenge on someone who killed, boiled, and ate my husband.

And I'll take that as a compliment as to the people I care about then. If you're an example of what the alternative in this place for befriending someone, no wonder I keep the company I do.

have you ever noticed how many of your sentences start with "I"?

you've fought, you've bled, you've died, you you you you you

real loyalty? the kind that's worth a singular piece of shit? it's not about you. it's about putting other people before what you want, before your grudges, making their priorities yours

real loyalty isn't just fighting and dying and taking revenge, that's just making your fucking self feel better

it's about holding back your sword and taking care of their people in the meantime, about going to their statue or to the ocean every single day, multiple times a day, so they wouldn't be alone for a second when they woke up

it's about swallowing your rage and your pain and keeping the peace because they deserve to feel safe and stable, even after you watch them suffer over and over and over again because it'd hurt them even more if anything happened to you in the process of ~getting revenge~

it's about letting go of what you want because what the other person needs is more important, without going around making grand announcements about how hard done by you are about it

but i don't think there's anyone in this world or any other that's ever been more important to you than your own feelings
you've never not been the center of your own universe
otherwise the people in your life like your best friend up there wouldn't need to tell you the same things over and over for them to stick

Edited 2022-12-22 08:49 (UTC)

How naïve of you to think there's only one real kind of loyalty in all the many universes there are. I put the needs of one person before my own for half my life, "what he wanted" and "made his priorities mine" as you put it. You know what that was? A toxic, vile, warped, twisted THING that wormed its way into every aspect of my life.

Forgive me if I look at your way and see it as sheer idiocy. What you call being loyal I call being a doormat. I'll continue on my own path and the way I've come to view loyalty. I've spent the second half of my life unlearning what I did in the first half and won't go back to it.

The comment about having a head full of rocks still stands.

[Qrow laughs. He actually laughs in real life, this nasty unhinged thing that nobody but god and Break are there to see.]

the real tragedy is that you're so fucking stupid and think you're smarter than everyone else

being loyal to someone doesn't always mean they deserve your loyalty
sometimes the people closest to you can hurt you the most
doesn't change what loyalty actually means

[Qrow, of all people, would know what it's like to deal with betrayal upon betrayal upon betrayal.]

your version of it is self-serving and ultimately meaningless
you said it in your own words: nothing will ever matter to you more than what you want
so what happens if people you're "loyal" to are in the way of what you want, someday? what happens to your loyalty then?

you're so afraid of getting hurt again you've convinced yourself that the only way to protect yourself is to hurt everyone else first, or failing that threaten them into being afraid of you
it'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic

From where I'm sitting there's only one idiot here and it's the one I'm talking to.

[These two are a pair of very mature adults, aren't they?]

Have you ever considered that what I want ARE those people I care about so much? The two desires don't conflict anymore. I stopped what I was doing because I didn't want to lose them, because I cared more about their needs and the pain I was causing them than my desire to always burn down everything around me.

I'm a Sith. Pain and fear give me strength and power. It's better than being some toothless wretch like you. "Oh look, poor me, I just sit here helpless to act while the big bad Sith Lord hurts my family. Guess I'll just wring my hands more instead of taking action." That is what is truly pathetic.

and yet, you're still doing things like this
again, just look at your best friend up there
that facepalm says a thousand words, buddy

just so we're clear, by the way, if it would've stuck? i would've killed you back in deerington the first time you made trouble for us and been done with it
hell, if you were the kind of person who'd have considered it even if i hurt you or one of yours in exchange, i'd have done it

but you're the kind of nutjob that never considers the scales even
enough that you can't let one insult slide after throwing down a torrent of them yourself

you're stupid enough to think pain and fear will keep you safe, but you're still fucking miserable, aren't you? or you wouldn't feel the need to go on these rants again and again
it's kind of like being a drunk, really
except instead of booze it's rage
you get a fix of it every couple months, then get restless and itchy as time passes and realize nobody really gives a shit about you anymore, so you dig up some old wounds to feed your persecution complex
because otherwise you'd actually have to confront the idea of starting fresh
it scares the shit out of you because you don't know if you really can, so you might as well lay a foundation to make it out like you never had a fair shot in the first place

Usagi knows me. And knows well enough that this, right here? This is me doing much better than she's ever seen me do before. I exasperate her but I also stopped hurting her and myself to the point of making her cry. I never want to see her like that again and so far I've stuck to that.

[It's too difficult for Maul to really put into words but the sight of seeing her weeping, begging him to stop what he was doing, to stop hurting himself and everyone around him, it had stirred something very deep inside Maul. Seeing her like that didn't make him want to think of just himself anymore. He wanted to make her smile again and never be the cause of her tears ever again.

Surprisingly, he starts to slightly understand what Qrow is getting at despite the rage coursing through that still makes him want to hunt down whoever is on the other end of the line and lop off both their hands with a lightsaber.]

That's the path of the Sith. Anger and hate are part of our core tenants as we use the Dark Side. Which is anathema to how everyone on the side of light operates but sometimes being selfless and compassionate and kind doesn't allow you to survive. And that's what I've done all this time. I survive. No matter what happens to me, I keep on going.

It's interesting you talk about a fair shot. Because I doubt, no matter what I do or how I change, that you're one of those people who would give me one. Like recognizes like and I see someone who's teetered on the edge of darkness themself.

sure
but even you have to recognize that the exasperation means you're doing something wrong, in her eyes
she knows doing better doesn't mean you're done, or that you can demand everyone pat you on the butt for being less awful than you could've been
go on, ask her if she disagrees, i dare you

you've got no idea what i'd do, actually
maybe stop scratching at people's scars and see what happens?
food for thought

oh, i've gone way past the edge, buddy
i killed more people than i can count, growing up, because it's the only way i knew how to survive
and that's how i also know surviving isn't the same thing as living
it's not even what matters the most in life
at some point you have to be able to let that way of thinking go, or you'll just spend the rest of your life afraid, which is no life at all

the first time i ever remember being happy was when i found people i'd willingly die for, after all those years i spent surviving

[It's not corny to love people, Emerald, he'd said once. What else is all that surviving even for?]

Edited 2022-12-22 12:09 (UTC)

Ask her yourself, you miserable wretch. I'm not going to sit here and discuss hypotheticals about what I shall or shall not do with someone I'm close to here.

Is that supposed to be a threat? Because I'm tired of all this talk from people. "I'm warning you." "You have no idea what I'm capable of." "Keep talking and see where that leads you." Clearly most are full of hot air judging by how many have actually come after me.

[Then there was a long, long, long pause before Maul responded to that next part. So long Qrow might have well set down the Omni dealing with all this drama.]

I'm not there yet. I don't know if I'll ever be. This isn't a place for peaceful actions and calm thoughts, the kind that lead to turning over a new leaf in such a manner that it leads one back to the light. Staying the way I have has allowed me to survive and protect those I care about. That's what it is important to be first and foremost. Everything else comes second.

wow
did you hurt yourself with that reach
incredible

i don't know what to tell you, man
if this isn't the place then where the hell is?
death doesn't even stick

dropping the survival goggles helps you take care of your people better, too
believe me or don't, but it's true
maybe you'll be strong enough to find out someday

The problem with acting like death doesn't mean anything is the moment you take that for granted, someone does die and won't revive. Coming back from the dead is not a guarantee.

That day is not going to be today and you're not the one to convince me. I'm not about to come to a sudden revelation from someone who is content to insult me and pass judgment. You're the LAST person I would listen to when it comes to anything about changing my ways.

says the guy content to insult and pass judgment on a post about insulting and passing judgment

you're free to stop talking to me literally any time buddy
how much is the last word worth to you

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Video | UN: aweful

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cw: gross hyperbole I am so sorry, he's terrible

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cw: flippant talk of addiction (from a former addict :B)

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