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un: timaeusTestified | text | Birthday Boy
Turning 21 has been a completely underrated experience. I was expecting the blackout and loss of time. Even the warping to a new place isn't out of the realm of estimated probability.
But being genetically altered is a plot twist. I assume it is so we can fuck the monsters.
I call dibs on the raven dude.
cw: looots of kink/fetish/nsfw jokes/conversation going on in this here post.
But being genetically altered is a plot twist. I assume it is so we can fuck the monsters.
I call dibs on the raven dude.
cw: looots of kink/fetish/nsfw jokes/conversation going on in this here post.
no subject
Yes and no. I've used a typewriter and a wireless before, and took photographs before going blind. [A very handy espionage skill.] Nothing that combined all their features like the Omni.
It would change the shape of war.
Though that's aside from the point which is yes, lessons would be helpful.
no subject
So, fairly base technology. You will be able to keep up on a lesson, I think. Once you recognize that advanced technology isn't that different from cognitive patterns, it's easy.
Yes, it would and it does. It changes the shape of a lot of things.
no subject
"Isn't that different from cognitive patterns." How so?
I'm sure you don't mean what we do when we say everything existed in the mind of Generation before it formed here. But it does sound like that.
no subject
No, it's not like that. It's pretty literal. Our minds are a complex network not that much different from the network we're communicating on right now.
no subject
But it's not an impossible analogy to grasp.]
I follow you.
I think. [Weak joke, Illarion.]
You're saying a computer takes the instructions it's given and uses it to carry out tasks with what it knows. Which is much like what a computer that's a person does if she's given a problem to solve.
But the mechanical ones don't have so much leeway, right?
no subject
Artificial intelligence exists to solve problems you give it, but also problems that you might not have thought to give them. I'll probably make a new AI and I can show you what I mean when I do. It'll be way less annoying than my old one. Theoretically.
Correct. Humanity used to have a lot of anxiety towards computers that were too smart.
no subject
I'll be interested to meet it. If that's the right word.
Was it warranted anxiety?
[Humans could be anxious about so many things, but they weren't always wrong to be.]
no subject
Yes, that's the right word, I think. If I do it right.
Probably, yeah. The dependency on technology could be debilitating since it removed people's desire to learn how to function without high tech.
cw: corporal punishment
Black gods and white! And you put up with it how long?
I'd throw it in a lake and have myself whipped for criminal stupidity.
[...Huh.]
Not surprising. Mortals rarely yield tools once they've come up with them.
But you said "used to". Do I guess the dependency became fatal? Or was it something else?
no subject
Exactly that.
The timeline and variation of earth I come from was invaded and taken over by aliens. Humans never stood a chance against an alien invasion.
no subject
An exact copy of you down to having a sense of self-preservation.
That's uncomfortable to contemplate.
So you were born in the aftermath of that war?
Or, created, I take it, if I've heard right from your conversation with Tabris.
no subject
(This is the Worst Subject Ever!)
My conception was bizarre and uncommon. I was not born. Yes, technically created and put through some bullshit time thing and wound up in a place well after all that shit happened.
Tabris?
no subject
What IS with Trench and attracting people who'd been created by weird science for dodgy reasons!!]
You have my sympathy for that. I also have more questions about it if they wouldn't be a burden on you.
Kaworu. Tabris is his use-name for the Omnis. I'm more accustomed to it.
[Dumbass bird didn't even ask for the kid's human name before straight up adopting him.]
no subject
Ah gotcha. The angel boy. He seems nice. I feel bad for him though. That kind of forced existence is torture usually. Psychologically speaking.
no subject
By the time you arrived I suppose would be most correct?
He is, and eager to learn. As you saw.
Yes. You can see the marks of it on him, though he also reasons differently from mortals.
[Or so Tabr--Kaworu said. ...Tabris said.]
no subject
Yeah, most creatures like him tend to be sponges. He will be easy to corrupt if the right people don't keep an eye on him.
Yeah, he does, which is probably a good thing.
no subject
He listens to that first part again, and sets down his Omni, and puts his face in his hands.
The fear of extinction that haunts all elves is graven so deep in him that an echo of the pattern and its similitude to the shrikes' situation hurts.]
Saints and stars. I
[...]
I realize that was all you'd ever known but I'm sorry. Inadequate as that is for the death of humanity.
[This is actually broken into two messages because it takes him a good minute to reorient on the other thread of conversation.]
I do try, as much as I can keep an eye on anything. Thankfully I'm not alone.
It may well be. Remains to be seen how he does over time.
You feel a certain kinship for him?]
no subject
And he was starved for interaction and attention. He was starved for a life he never would have had a chance to live until coming to this place.
He's never talked to this many people before. He's never been in a city full of actual humanoid beings capable of maintaining conversations and holding opinions. The consorts were cute and so were the other kingdoms, but they weren't...
It was never the same.
He forgets to respond, drifting from his mind and somewhere else to his dreams, seeing if this place had a sleeping city too. It did not, but he does coast through a dream space and finally remembers to come back down to himself.
He's glad to see only twenty minutes had passed.)
Thank you. I appreciate that. It might be all I have ever known, but I know what it should have been like.
(He wasn't going to explicitly say it bothered him, but he felt that would suffice in getting the point across.)
I do sometimes wonder what kind of person I would have been if I was raised in a normal society. I don't think I would have been a good one.
(He wasn't a good one now. And Dirk from Dave's timeline was a terrible person. He starts to drift again, but pulls himself back. This conversation was important.)
That is good.
I suppose I do. I think I yearn for masculine connections and have an affinity for brotherly bonds.
no subject
His role, here and now, is not to seek the latter; and he doesn't know this young man nearly well enough to offer the former. Not yet.]
You are welcome.
Trench may not be an ideal second home, but she's taught her people to be welcoming of exiles and the lonely. Even the newest Sleepers. [Which was to say, obliquely, they'd be there for him.]
What makes you think so?
[Illarion's long since fallen off the "good person" wagon as far as he's concerned. Whether or not that was a true and valid evaluation.]
Having been deprived of it so long, no wonder! Like a starving man set before a feast.
Though that's meant without the fangs. Hunger's natural.
cw: child abuse
But this guy was nice to talk to. He listened well and Dirk moved him to the front of his roster as far as people worth staying in touch with.)
It doesn't seem like such a bad city. Some of the fashion is cool. And I like being near the ocean. Plus, it seems like it's full of total smokeshows.
(AKA you, Illarion.)
Because I've seen other renditions of myself from other timelines such as one where I did grow up in society. I was a very abusive and callous person towards my brother.
I can't imagine abusing him now, but I look at how I have treated others, and I am not so sure I know what being non-abusive even looks like. Sometimes I'm not sure if I really even care if I'm a good person or not.
(He got used to making the ugly sacrifices no one else wanted to make, after all.)
But then sometimes being evil seems like the easy route. I don't know.
Yes, that's an apt metaphor. Unfortunately, I don't think my fangs are retractable.
no subject
Sometimes "hope" looked an awful lot like stubborn insistence on finishing what you'd started without any expectation it would work. Including helping other people.]
It's my abiding regret I can't see any of it the way it's meant to be. But the fashion definitely is "cool".
[The variety of veils on offer as much as anything.]
And I'm sure, sight unseen, you fit right in with the rest of the lookers here.
[Confidence by itself is awfully sexy.]
I'm used to advising people not to let their maybes consume them, since it's easy to think of how we could be worse. Or better.
But having seen your maybes in the flesh seems a terrible burden to bear.
Do you know how that version of yourself came to be who he was?
[Sometimes evil seems like the easy route. Too true.
Too true, also, that making the ugly sacrifices could turn into horror.]
We'd live in a very different world if good was the easy route. Too complicated and too full of pain to avoid causing more if we live thoughtlessly.
You seem anything but thoughtless. That's at least a start.
Neither are ours. You learn how to be careful with what you bite, growing up with them, but it helps to have teachers.
[Don't be too hard on yourself.]
no subject
I hope I stand out among them. Who wants to blend in.
I'm not entirely positive. I had conversations with Dave about it from time to time, and it seemed like perhaps that version of myself got off on the power he had in a weak society. I'm better suited to extreme situations rather than domestic ones. I think it was like trying to keep a feral wolf in a cozy four-bedroom home in the suburbs. That sounds dramatic and stupid, but I think it's true.
It's a theory anyway.
That's a valid point. Especially when you exist in a strange reality like this where things like monsters and corruption need to be accounted for. It makes it harder to see what is morally "Good" or "Bad" with the grey areas.
I try.
(Sincerely. He didn't like to be an idiot about anything.)
It could help to practice biting you.
(And a swing back to the seductive side of the conversation because that's waaaay easier than emotions!)
no subject
No one's ever offered to do that for me. Don't have the first idea how I'd feel about it. Mind describing yourself so I can learn?
It isn't as stupid as you think. We, my people, have seen it many many times over the years. There are women and some men who aren't suited to anything but the front lines. Can't feel alive unless they're in a battle or a crisis. We would never pull their fangs and ask them to be anything but what they are, even if we all wish it weren't necessary to have them.
Some mortal societies understand that. What to do with their born warriors. Others believe a person can be cut and beat to fit any shape that's made for her. Little wonder so many of them go wrong.
[Locusts. He remembers Locusts. She was like that, too.]
When are you most alive?
[And then a low huffing laugh escapes him. They are cutting close to bone.]
It could. I shriek very prettily if someone bites me hard enough.
cw: suicidal thoughts/depression/mental health
(They can both be on wobbly footing. He's never really described himself to anyone before. He knew that's what he had been entailing with his question but welp. Action meet consequence.)
Natural born fighters. It's actually reassuring to hear that. This place kind of freaks me out with the potential for calm. Some fucked up part of me hopes that there are as many terrible things as people say there are.
Is your society primarily run by the females of it? I am mostly asking because humanity has a tendency to generalize everyone with he/him pronouns and I have noticed you tend to use she/her pronouns. It might mean nothing, but I'm curious anyway. For humanity, it was sort of a sexist thing.
(Wow.
Okay, yeah. That's a question. How does he even...He stares blankly at a wall for a second, and something comes to mind, but he buries it back down immediately. He is not saying that.)
Never. I just exist.
(It's not true, but it's the simplest answer that didn't make him feel too raw and exposed.)
I do love a screamer :) You'll have to forgive me for being the more quiet type.
dirk.....
Your looks, alas, elude me still.
[Though he could simply ask for a picture back and have Iskierka look at it for him.
That somehow felt like either cheating or capitulating. He's not sure which yet.]
Guaranteed there are more than they say they are. The locals, the Trenchies, keep quiet about some of the threats out of respect for what might be listening. They'll tell you what to do about them, and you should do what they say, but they won't always tell you what's coming.
More's the pity.
Which is to say that is fucked up but I understand it. Much the same way myself now. [Now.]
"Run by" isn't what I'd call it. We all have a hand in running society. But women lead more often than men. They're larger than we are, quicker into fights but also steadier at judging when to fight. She who defends the nest rules the world, and all that.
I don't know quite what you mean by "sexist," but if you're thinking by analogy to human societies where women are no more than pretty baubles the men fight over, it isn't the reverse of that. I still have to do all the fighting over women WHILE being pretty. 🙁 What a treat if they fought over me. I'd ruin my makeup less that way.
To be less flip, men fight and work alongside women. We're generals and Warlords and even Princes. Though women still have the final word in bearing children and founding a line. Mothers are the best judges of that.
Most of the time. [His own is extremely excepted.
Also wound him further, Dirk, why don't you.
There isn't really a good response to that answer. Not talking at this distance.
So:]
Same.
[This is surreal, switching between the mask and the face so freely. Realizing someone else is doing the same thing and playing along with that rhythm.]
The strong, silent type? Human men wear that one so well.
sad boys club (cw: ...explicit nsfw jokes)
depression & dongs, just a normal conversation, cw: kinda tribal view of gender