deernet | 1st Ink [video

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1st Ink [video | un: inkmetal]

[Sarona's not really someone who makes a lot of declarations on the network, but it's been a wild ride since they got here and she's got her own plans to put underway.]

So, turns out to get a job spreading ink around here, you gotta have a body of work to show off and tattooing yourself ain't enough. Anyone want a free rune or two so I can use them for my portfolio? Protection runes, strength runes, tracking runes, stealth runes, soulmate bonds, you name it, I can ink it--or figure out how. It's not that hard.

No blood-ink unless requested and I'll even make it a temporary one if you're that much of a baby, but the special paper for my temp tats is limited. First come, first serve there.

And no, I don't mind a challenge.

[If she needs a portfolio for getting into Ursula's and making sure they are on legit or not, then that's what she'll get.]

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You saw the tattoo parlor too, I assume?

[Maul's got a thoughtful expression on his face, a change from the usual steady anger it possesses]

I have quite a bit of personal experience with tattooing myself. Only the red is my natural skin color. The black are all tattoos.

[As was standard for Zabrak. Some had a bit less, some a bit more, but it was customary in their culture to tat themselves up from the time they were young. Dathomirian Zabraks went for full-body ones, hence Maul's rather extreme coloration.]

[Him. The asshole who maimed Glitch. She hopes he doesn't think she'll be offering him and rune ink anytime soon--or ever.]

Tattooing your eyelids is a bit much, but whatever rolls your rocks. Do they do anything or are they just for aesthetic?

[Cosmetic tattoos can be beautiful art in her opinion, but also essentially useless to someone like her.]

Well, I didn't exactly have a whole lot of say in the matter. Dathomirians are matriarchal by nature and so the mothers decide how much they will tattoo their children early on in life. But occasionally they will ask for opinions on designs for siblings if they end up having anymore children.

[Maul, young as he was, had actually had a say in a prominent tattoo that his brother Savage still had on his chest.]

If you know how to read them right, they tell of things like lineage, what clan you come from, where you were born, and even basic personality traits.

Familial history and personality traits, huh? Guess you can't expect strict accuracy after all those years.

[For that his mother would have tattooed "I'm a child-maiming dickface" right on his forehead.]

[Maul scowls at that, sure he's being insulted on some level.]

Perhaps she had more accuracy than I know of. My mother had many mystical abilities and may have been able to see visions of the future the way I sometimes do.

Edited 2021-09-21 03:56 (UTC)

[She's not trying to hide that she's not that impressed by him.]

Visions, huh? So you're a Seer? Suddenly everything makes sense.

Only on occasion. They come and go with no say or control on my end. It's terrible trying to tell which are a definite future and which are only a possibility that might never come to pass.

....And what does that mean "Suddenly everything makes sense?"

[He may seem like an open book but Maul's got enough unpredictability in his nature to make him anything but despite what people see on the surface.]

There are two kinds of Seers. The assholes who look down on everyone else and the martyrs who can't help trying to save everyone or die trying.

[Says the hypocrite who has almost died trying to save people.]

I don't have to guess what type you think I am.

[He won't bother to correct her. People can think what they like about Maul. It makes it easier when they underestimate him, thinking him just some vicious brute.]

Who knows, maybe I totally buy you caring enough about others to want to save them instead of doing something to prove your superiority over them. Completely possible.

[She says this in such a deadpan tone, but the disbelief is dripping from it.]

Oh yes, I'm sure you know everything about me already after looking over a few network conversations and listening to a lot of idle gossip.

[He barely restrains himself from rolling his eyes. Sometimes, his reputation makes things difficult for him, especially now when he's trying to turn over a new leaf.]

Have some intelligence and don't be like so many other Sleepers in this city.

I don't need your life story to know an asshole when I see one. When someone shows you the kind of person they are, why would you not believe them?

[Adults always try that stupid bullshit as if he didn't do the very things that gave him the reputation he has. His reasons don't really matter in the face of the damage he's done.]

Yeah, yeah, "you don't have to prove yourself to me," right? But I do not owe you believing you are not an arrogant dick who maims people whenever you have a temper tantrum, either.

Are you someone who believes in second chances? Because if you are, know that it is extremely unhelpful to simply throw someone’s past in their faces time and again when they are trying to now change their ways. Just because I am not doing it the “right way” or on the timetable that some people would want doesn’t make it any less a valid attempt.

[Then his yellow eyes glow bright with intensity.]

I don’t feel bad about what I did to Glitch. I’m not going to feel bad about it no matter how many times you and every other idiot in this place keeps bringing it up. And all having supposed “good people” who think I should be forever a pariah simply for being on the same planet as him does is make me feel like going and drowning the boy in the sea despite what consequences may come.

[He pauses.]

Do you understand what I am saying? I don’t have great talent for saying what precisely what I mean in a way that people can understand.

Yeah I get it. You want us to baby you and act like all the things you did never happened because you get mad when faced with the consequences of your own actions. But second chances aren't owed. People give them out of faith, because they choose to believe in someone even when they don't deserve it. Those people are a lot kinder than I am.

[She's been burned enough by giving people who actually mattered to her a second chance, she's not going to bother with someone who all she's seen is the harm they've done and how little they give a shit about it. And if the only consequences they're allowed to give him are not blindly trusting him and reminding him he's shown himself to be a shitty person, then that's what she's got. It's petty, but she's not above being very petty.]

And if you could throw away the second chance other people have decided to give you that easily, then it just shows how stupid they were to believe in you in the first place.

[Maul laughs at Sarona's words. It is a cruel, nasty, harsh sound but still has genuine amusement in it. Finally, he stops, staring at her with his unblinking yellow eyes.]

Thank you for reminding me how utterly hypocritical most of the Sleepers here can be. The same thing will happen to you in this place if it hasn't already, I hope you know that. You'll be brainwashed or driven to madness or otherwise tainted, hurting and killing the ones you hold most dear. When that happens, I hope people treat me the exact same way that they treat me. That they see you as a monster unworthy of associating with "good people" ever again, that they think you should be condemned and locked up like some dumb rabid animal. Maybe then you'll rethink how others that are beneath you simply for being on the side of darkness should be treated....but I doubt it.

[He maybe hit even more of a sore spot than before with that remark, but not in the way he might think. Because now all she can think about is the mess she left back home and how someone else is going to have to fix what she broke. And even knowing how bad it was, what kind of end she may have brought...some people still tried to tell her it wasn't her fault.

She thinks about what she also caused here, and would have done if not for the unexpectedly fortuitous trip home she took that derailed everything.]

Do you hear yourself? All I hear are excuses and you think your hurt feelings matter more than the harm you've done. When you flat out admit you don't regret doing it.

[She grits her teeth just a bit there, because yeah, she's definitely a hypocrite about plenty of things. She's done the "do as I say, not as I do" to friends, even. But things like this...]

And even if you did feel bad about the harm you've caused, if you did regret it, or even if you didn't mean to do it...it doesn't magically undo it all. If they have to live with what you did to them, then so do you. Call me a hypocrite all you like, it doesn't change what you did or that no one has to ignore it just to make you feel better about yourself.

Regret is not a useful emotion for me to feel. What am I supposed to do? Crawl in the dirt on my belly and wail of how sorry I am for all the terrible things I have done just to make the lot of you feel better? To let you all know that you're somehow superior in your pure and untainted state? That is not me and never will be.

And that's all such actions would do because no one here is ever going to believe me when I say I am sorry for when I do terrible things. If I were to tell you right now that there was at least one death in Deerington I caused that I feel the deepest regret for, would you believe me? [He pauses, staring at Sarona before shaking his head.] No, I don't think you would. Whether I am or not is irrelevant. People want a monster to blame when things go wrong and so they find one when they look towards darkness.

[The hardest thing Maul has ever had to learn was to take responsibility for his own actions and he's still not there yet at all. It's hard enough for him to admit his family's deaths were his fault, let alone all the misery he himself has personally caused.]

Oh yeah, because the only options for showing remorse is ignoring it happened or groveling on the ground. There's no middle-ground where you take accountability and promise to do better, instead of trying to pretend like people don't have a right to not trust you.

[It's such a ridiculous argument to her, Sarona doesn't bother to even sound like she's entertaining it.]

People don't have to be looking for a monster to doubt someone else's intentions. Because you did things that made them not trust you. Changing yourself shouldn't be based on whether or not people believe you. You prove it with your actions not by saying it'll be their fault if you go back to your "evil" ways.

Because the thing about accountability is owning your own shit, not blaming other people. If you choose to hurt someone else, it's no one else's fault but yours. You made that choice.

I don't make promises I don't intend to keep. And so I will not promise to do better because backsliding is inevitable with me. Such is the way of one who learns slowly.

[It's two steps forward and one step back with Maul much of the time. At least he's highly aware of that.]

Oh? So I should just change and hope that people will still be willing to accept me at the end of it all? What is the point of changing and doing better if I am still an outcast at the end of it all, if there is no one waiting for me in the light once I am out of this dark tunnel?

I have taken accountability for what I did. [Well, as much as Maul ever claims responsibility for anything he does which isn't much. He finally sounds a little testy.] I don't claim I didn't hurt and murder people in Deerington, that I didn't hack off that little pest's arm because the opportunity presented itself. I simply don't feel bad about it, not the way people want me to, and won't ever to their satisfaction. Guilt is something I lack much of the time and there's no way to force someone to feel that no matter how righteous indignation you feel at seeing their actions.

[Not giving promises he can't keep...yeah, he does get a point in his favor for that. But it also proves exactly why she couldn't trust someone like him. Because it's all fake.]

Yeah, what is the point if you think the only feelings that matter are yours? Because that is not what "accountability" means. It's not just admitting you did something. A lot of evil people are proud of the horrible things they've done and will talk ad nauseum about them. Accountability means you admit what you did wrong matters and that it affected people. It's not about guilt, it's about saying their feelings are more important right now because you did that to them.

If you can't grasp that, there isn't ever going to be a point. It won't stick if you can't bare to put the feelings of people you don't care about before your own.

[She doesn't even know why she's still talking to him. She's not someone who can teach someone else how to be a person. She doesn't have that level of patience when all she feels is frustration. Some people have that kind of unfettered faith in people...she doesn't. She'll believe he means it when he shows it, not just because he says everyone should just get over what he did so he doesn't have to deal with consequences.]

And therein lies the heart of the matter, doesn't it? I don't care about most other people. To me, they simply do not matter. Most sentient beings can feel some sort of empathy for others, everyone from their dearest friends to perfect strangers. I only care about those I have come to know and grow fond of and that has only come within the past two years or so for me. Everyone else might as well not exist for all that what happens to them affects me. That is something that will not change.

[Maul has come to realize other people matter-- but only in a limited fashion. His friends and family matter to him, something he has only learned through much trial and error. But people in general? Much as the people helping him down the role of redemption are trying to impress upon him to learn that caring about everyone around him no matter how he feels about them is a good lesson to take in, he simply hasn't gotten it and might never. His psychopathic mind simply can't grasp the concept the way a colorblind person might not know what the color red meant.]

Wow, really? I couldn't tell how little you give a shit. [She rolls her eyes.]

There's no point in believing you or expecting anything from you. Maybe someone else is so good or naïve as to waste their time teaching a grown ass person how to care about people around them, but that's not me. I'm not gonna teach you sympathy or empathy.

You say that as if I asked you to take on the task. [Maul says, voice dripping with contempt.] You can just be one of the hypocritical types that judges me for so much as breathing wrong and daring to live on the same planet as you do. Save your energies, for I am not going anywhere, and despising me only gives me more power.

You act like you matter enough for me to care if you're breathing or not. [Yeah, couldn't look like she cared any less.]

I don't trust you, I don't want anything to do with you, and whatever you do can be somewhere I'm not. I don't have to despise you to not trust you. I won't trust you near anyone I care about, either, but I don't own them, they can make their own choices about you.

Good. At least you know you can't control me or anyone who associates with me, which is far more than some here are capable of. The obsession so many have with trying to control what I do would be amusing if it wasn't so annoying. There is nothing more to say since you clearly know everything about me after a grand total of speaking with me precisely one time.

[Maul actually rolls his eyes as he clicks off the Omni. Just another hypocritical, insufferable know-it-all in Maul's opinion who seems to think they can judge and know everything about him without ever actually getting to know him.]

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1st Ink [video | un: inkmetal]

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