network misfire 3/11

[forwantofahorse]

Moderator Dorato opened meme on private bulletin board S.S. Owens.

Dorato: psssssst
Dorato: pssssssssssssssst
Dorato: Helloooooo~
Dorato: C'mon, I'm talking to you! Don't you know it's impolite to ignore a ladyyyy?
Dorato: ...
Dorato: Ninety-nine bottles of blood on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of blood, take one down, pass it around-

jstolethepreciousthing joined the memo!

jstolethepreciousthing: sigh
jstolethepreciousthing: don't you know not to bother a retiree
Dorato: Don't be a sourpuss!
jstolethepreciousthing: that literally was in my job description
jstolethepreciousthing: *was*
jstolethepreciousthing: why are you bugging me again
jstolethepreciousthing: how did you even get this number actually there's no way you should be able to contact me here
Dorato: I'm boreeeeeeeeeeeeed!
jstolethepreciousthing: i don't care
jstolethepreciousthing: go cry about it
jstolethepreciousthing: or go think about murdering about it
jstolethepreciousthing: and that doesn't explain anything
Dortao: It's magic, biiiiitch! I don't need to explain *SHIT!*
Dorato: Anyways, that's the problem! I haven't gotten to do *anything* lately!
Dorato: Why, I'll shrivel up and die at this rate.
Dorato: Do you want that to happen to me?
jstolethepreciousthing: yes
Dorato: I know we've had our... disagreements...
jstolethepreciousthing: IS THAT WHAT YOU CALL KILLING ME IN INCREASINGLY GRUESOME WAYS
Dorato: In the past... and yes...
Dorato: But I am an ESSENTIAL part of this team!
jstolethepreciousthing: you make all of our lives uncountably harder
Dorato: I am your SENIOR!
jstolethepreciousthing: that doesn't mean i have to listen to you!
Dorato: It sure dooooeeeeeeeeeees! At least right now.
jstolethepreciousthing: ...damn it
Dorato: Sooooo, in absence of my usual partner—I swear, we should think about unionizing, that poor girl is getting worked to the bone too—I have some DELECTABLE ideas I'd like to bounce off you. To stave off the boredom.
Dorato: And also enact them if I can convince everyone else, since they are DOWNRIGHT DELIGHTFUL, and we happen to have the perfect target!
jstolethepreciousthing: why me
Dorato: You have no one to blame but yourself.
jstolethepreciousthing: ugh
jstolethepreciousthing: you got me there i suppose
Dorato: So. The old man.
jstolethepreciousthing: why are we coming back to him
jstolethepreciousthing: you are UNBELIVABLY greedy, you actually got to do your thing with him and you still want to come back for more???
jstolethepreciousthing: i swear there's a children's book about this
Dorato: Shuuuuuuuuuuuush. All those times don't really count!
jstolethepreciousthing: wait, all those times
jstolethepreciousthing: what are you on about
Dorato: Those were just practice runs!
Dorato: Now we have the chance for the real thing.
Dorato: I was CURSING his name for daring to resurrect himself before I realized that this is our CHANCE!
Dorato: We can finally get real, actual revenge!
jstolethepreciousthing: hold on a minute, i
jstolethepreciousthing: which old man are you talking about???
Dorato: The one who ruined our lives!
jstolethepreciousthing: that doesn't narrow it down much and you know it
Dorato: Hahahaha, fair, FAIR! But "his lordship," specifically.
jstolethepreciousthing: i've completely lost the thread here, he was dead before you even entered the picture
Dorato: But now he's back!
jstolethepreciousthing: i have no idea what you're
jstolethepreciousthing: wait
jstolethepreciousthing: my god you've finally snapped
Dorato: I am already perpetually snapped! That's my appeal... That and my dynamite body.
jstolethepreciousthing: no you have gone crazier than fucking normal
jstolethepreciousthing: you are SEEING things, he's dead and most importantly he's not HERE
Dorato: Well, seeing things is hardly outside the norm for us, isn't it?
jstolethepreciousthing: you know what i mean!
jstolethepreciousthing: just. take a look. please

jstolethepreciousthing uploaded It'sHimYouKook.png

jstolethepreciousthing: why am i the one doing this. this is supposed to be sister's job
Dorato: I don't see the pr... ob... lem...
Dorato: oh that's our landlord
jstolethepreciousthing: OF COURSE IT IS
jstolethepreciousthing: i knew that we were all in a bad way but this is going above and beyond even our awful normal
Dorato: Wellllll...
Dorato: Even if we can't get our revenge...
Dorato: He is STILL really annoying... and overbearing... and shifty...
jstolethepreciousthing: for once i'm in agreement
Dorato: So why don't we use my brilliant plan on him instead!
jstolethepreciousthing: wait no i immediately retract my agreement
Dorato: It's too good to waste! See, we find someone else—perhaps the boy? He's about the right build...
jstolethepreciousthing: He has *nothing* to do with this. Back off.
Dorato: Huff. Whatever, it needs to be SOMEBODY of the right height.
Dorato: Next up we chop both of their bodies into unrecognizable chunks... see, like this...

Dorato uploaded HYPERLINK BLOCKED.

jstolethepreciousthing: i'm gonna barf
jstolethepreciousthing: this is too much even for you
Dorato: And then we-

Administrator YASU joined the memo!

YASU: OH MY FUCKING GOD
jstolethepreciousthing: hey boss
jstolethepreciousthing: did you kiss the girl yet
Dorato: Shalalala~
YASU: SHUT UUUUUP! SHUT UP, ALL OF YOU! I NEED TO CONCENTRATE, FUCKING *HELL!*
YASU: AND HOW ARE YOU EVEN ALIVE???

jstolethepreciousthing uploaded spookyscaryskeletons.mp4

YASU: WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN
YASU: wait
YASU: OHHHH I AM GOING TO HAVE A *TALK* WITH HIM
YASU: if i'm not spiraling deeper into delusions that is
YASU: ANYWAYS FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK SHUT UP! BOTH OF YOU! I'M BUSY TRYING TO NOT EXIST, I DON'T NEED THIS DISTRACTION!
YASU: *YOU* TOO! I'M ALREADY LOSING MY FUCKING GRIP I DON'T NEED MORE OF THIS NONSENSE
Dorato: Gulp.
YASU: YOU TWO STAY IN TIME OUT AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE
jstolethepreciousthing: thank goodness the sweet release of oblivion
Dorato: Wait, wait, wait, wait, I swear I'm going somewhere good with thissssssssss-

Administrator YASU closed the memo.

Comments

[forwantofahorse]

That depends on who you ask.

[Sayo has to think about that question for a few moments, struggling to find a way to communicate what they were to her. For other people, she's always reduced Kanon and Beatrice to one aspect, a two-dimensional silhouette of their three-dimensional presence in Sayo's minds. But Neo might actually understand.]

Other people might call them just... me. Different faces that I put on; makeup, wigs, voices, roles to play, ways to think. Nothing but deception.

If you just look from the outside, then that's true in a way. [A bitter smile.] But that's not... all of it.

Beatrice was my only friend for years, until I took up the mantle of Rokkenjima's witch. She encouraged me, let me drift away from the monotony of my work, play with her in a fantasy of her own devising... most would call it just daydreaming, but-

But she was real. To me, at least, until I lost all my faith. She was freedom.

And Kanon is... my little brother. [Sayo's Omen stirs from her shadow, fluttering up to gently bap her on the back of her head with his wing. She laughs, shaking him off.] He's the person who was free to be angry, to be sad, to hate his life with everything he had, while sweet Shannon could continue trundling along with her fairytale romance without concern. I needed him. I... wouldn't have survived for long without him, I think.

I thought I might've been him for a while, before... [Her breath catches.] Before I knew the truth about my body. But he was never entirely me, and trying to fit myself into a life without Beatrice or Shannon just made me more miserable.

So Kanon and Beatrice kept me company. They might've started as roles to play, ways to express myself, but they still had substance in my mind. Part of me, but in part themselves too, so I couldn't be them, even though I could act the part in "reality."

[A pause in her work. Sayo sighs.] They... tormented me, toward the end. All parts of myself pulling against each other, even though they were themselves too. But they were there for me too, even when no one else was. So I can't push them away, not entirely.

Especially when my cute little brother can annoy me outside the confines of my own mind now. [The giant butterfly somehow conveys a scowl and divebombs Sayo again, although this time she expertly dodges, sticking out her tongue at him.]

...I'm sorry; that didn't make much sense, did it?

[threelayers]

[She listened. No, that made only partial sense. So, in terms of the idea of a dissociative personality with multiple personalities vying for control? She got that. One was the freedom to do whatever it wished, and another was the hurt one who experienced all the pain and reacted. That all sounded ... she 'got it' in general, but this talk of "the truth of my body" and "the witch" were a little outside of her comprehension.

She shook her head and motioned to a chair nearby. the shelves were set up enough for now. Moving to sit down, she frowned up and looked over at her friend.]

It makes a little sense, but I don't have the context.
Maybe this is the point where I ask you to tell me the story that you want me to know?
That seems like a good idea.

cw rape, incest, infertility, mutilation, i'm so sorry

[forwantofahorse]

[Neo is close, but isn't quite there yet. Sayo's personas weren't quite "multiple personalities," but not exactly simple imaginary friends either. Truthfully, the nature of Kanon, Beatrice, and even Shannon was murky on the best of days, and with the revelation that they were their own people within the Golden Land they were now downright opaque to Sayo.

She pauses in her work for almost a full minute, turning over how much she wants to tell Neo, how gently she should deliver the twisted reality of her existence.

Then, Sayo sighs. Maybe some truths could only exist between fellow liars.]

...A baby boy was conceived when my father raped my sister. She had been kept in a secret mansion her whole life, so... almost nobody knew what had happened to her, and those that did came up with a variety of excuses to justify why they didn't help.

Eventually, she ran away, leaving a bouncing baby boy a couple months old behind.

She then fell off a cliff and died.

After that, the baby was entrusted to my father-and-grandfather's daughter-in-law, who was having a difficult time conceiving.

Then she pushed him off a cliff a few days later, and he nearly died. I suppose my bloodline was never good with heights. [A humorless laugh, to hide how dead her voice sounds.]

That's how "I" was born as a girl. The damage to my lower body was too extensive to reconstruct my genitals, so. [Sayo shrugs.] I was raised an orphan without any knowledge about the truth of my origins or why my body refused to develop. I only found out on my eighteenth birthday, after I'd been coerced into giving my father absolution moments before his death. And after I'd been cultivating seeds of love for his grandchildren for years.

You can imagine what the weight of that truth did to me, especially after I'd fragmented my mind several times over to survive before then.

...it's funny, isn't it? Beatrice was the name of my mother and sister, the ghost who haunted the halls of the manor whose mantle I took up.

I guess I did have a mom, in a way.

[This is her first time telling anyone this of her own volition, without the overwhelming weight of her emotions and her guilt propelling her foreward.

Sayo looks hollow.]

[threelayers]

(OOC: HAHA, man, that's a CW list right there. Been a while since I saw one quite like that. *laughs darkly.* Never change Umineko.)

[Hooboy, now that was ... a mouthful and a half. Neopolitan stared, and she even managed to get a silent, mirthless chuckle in response to the joke about the heights, but the look on her face grew gradually more confused, and then increasingly horrified. So, her parents were sick. Two crime kingpins, each of them playing their own deadly game and one of whom wanted to turn her into a willing agent of the mafia while the other was just trying to buy his way out, all of it led to some pretty fucking shitty parenting. When they'd died? She hadn't shed a damned tear.

But this?

This was an entirely new level of fucked up. She wasn't even quite sure if Cinder was capable of this level of fucked up in torturing another person, not because she wasn't mean spirited or violent enough, but because she just lacked the creativity to go that far with the whole thing. After a moment, she finally sighed.]

So, I'm guessing you took a scorched earth approach in the end.
Fuck them all, burn them all, watch them scream as the bodies stacked up?
Not that I can fault you in the slightest because that's beyond fucked up.

But, so then. Ange was family I'm guessing?
But not one of the ones you hated?

[She was trying to put all the pieces together, to know what she was dealing with.]

[forwantofahorse]

Partly. It was more... complicated than that.

I spent my entire life hiding parts of who I was from everyone I knew. It started with small fibs, like my age to keep the madam from thinking the suspiciously young maid was the baby she threw off a cliff. But as I grew up...

[Sayo clutches her arms, tracing all the lies that she told from their very root. Six, not nine. "Shannon." Did you know, if you leave cookies with the doll in the VIP room, Beatrice-sama will favor you? Speaking ill of the witch will leave you with a terrible fate.

There's a new boy servant around, his name's Kanon. I have nothing to keep from you, George-san.]

Eventually, there was... there was no me left in the outside world, after I learned exactly how much I had to hide.

I wanted somebody to see me. To stop me. Even if it meant spending a lifetime rotting in jail, even if they killed me afterward, I wanted someone to see through all my lies and find the monster I thought I was.

[She scoffs.] It didn't work out like that, though. Of course it didn't.

...and I won't pretend revenge didn't play a part either.

[threelayers]

You live deeper in the lies than I do, I'll say that.
I can understand 'how' you do it. You get used to lying to pretty much everyone?
It ends up kind of a second nature and the truth becomes this fluid thing like a story.
And you're just the storyteller today, and people read what they want to read.
It's easy to lie to them if they're not already suspicious.

[It was a bit of commiseration there, but she was seeing where some of the similarity stopped between them. They shared the fact that their whole life was basically surrounded by lies. In her case, it was a day to day tool that kept the police off of her back, and a game that she played ever since she was a child, but it wasn't an elaborate survival mechanism. There were people she hadn't lied to, and there were parts of herself that showed through. She was never "a whole other person." So, in this sense, the person in front of her was far greater a liar than she was, though there was still commonality.]

So, they can see you now, or at least part of you anyway.
Do you still want to be stopped, or do you not want any of that right now?
Do you know what you want?

[She'd put her money on 'hell no.' She had a strong suspicion that they'd never thought past the lies for a long time, just like she hadn't thought past the desire to get revenge and die for years.]

wrap soon?

[forwantofahorse]

[Sayo knew that she and Neo were worlds apart in many different senses of the idiom... but she had a feeling that she'd understand, no matter how different they were on the surface. It's just like she'd said that one miserable night at the Snake's Den when they'd first met: there's a certain camaraderie between liars that makes it easier to understand one another's few truths.

Or something to that effect. Sayo had been pretty drunk at the time. A full smile finally breaks across her face when Neo voices her own thoughts, satisfaction at finally being seen by someone. Even if she hadn't been able to bare her entire heart, even if it was a summary that cast her life in a more brutal light that discounted the small joys Sayo had found... somebody finally understood a small part of what it really was like to be her.]

...that's exactly it, believe it or not. [A breezy chuckle.] You managed to say in a few sentences what I took hundreds of thousands of words to vaguely allude it. Maybe you should be my new editor, huh?

[Sayo pauses at Neo's question, giving it careful consideration. It's something she's pondered many times since she finally made that break and found no clean answer to, but... that little spark of hope that Neo gave her is enough to push Sayo forward into saying,]

I want to close the book on all the pain I've caused. All the pain that I've had to bear. It'll still be on the shelf, and it'll be hard not to open it again sometimes given how many people I've hurt are here, but...

I want to write a new story, now that I finally can. Figure out what to do with my pen now that I'm not obligated to just put the finishing touches on a tragedy that was written before I was even born.

...or, um. To say it in a less high-minded way. I want to finally live my own life, and figure out what that's even supposed to mean.

[threelayers]

I just have to be short with the things I say.
The benefit of learning to talk the way that I do, a little succinctness.

[Yeah, that was kind of part of it. By choosing to rely intentionally on text, she'd ended up always keeping things to short, sometimes quippy little statements. She shared only what she wanted. Just another veil and illusion. But it was also useful to keep things short, sweet.

She listened to the last bit, considered it and nodded. Yeah, for all they were worlds apart? That was something that she understood. she reached over a hand and offered a pat on the shoulder and a firm nod.]

It's what I'm doing too so I understand a little.
"What it means" is going to take both of us a lot of time.
But we've got plenty of that.

Here.

(OOC: Honestly, this is way too good a thematic point to handwave that they chat more but nothing more specific is added. So if you want to wrap here, it's a good moment for them.)