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un: eudaimonikos; video

Hello, Trench! Boy, that's a fun name for a city, isn't it? Trrrrrrench. Sounds...about like what it is, I guess.

So! [He claps his hands together.] Who's here from Deerington? Man, it must've been at least a century since I saw you guys! How's it been? Oh - oh, and look! Eleanor made it too!

[He reaches off-screen to fling his arm around the neck of what, when he pulls it over in front of the camera, proves to be an enormous dappled grey Warg. Her teeth are huge. She's still wearing her enchanted leather war-armor, which really just makes the optics here worse.]

This is my dog, Eleanor! Also, I'm Michael, for all the new folks. I was in the nightmare city before this one, and then I went home for a little bit.

So - what's everyone up to? And what's with the new phones? Are we all using weird, smoky first-generation birds as phones now?

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[ At least that gets an amused huff from her. ]

Why are you immediately turning it into some sort of horror story? Maybe I was thinking of the fun pirate kind of treasure hunt.

It could be both! Like Pirates of the Caribbean - there's zombie pirates and things in it, and it literally never ends.

[that's hell media for you]

[ ...

Give her a moment. Ange frowns, thinking.. ]

Pirates of the Caribbean? [ She wonders if it's a Michael's-world-only sort of thing, but no, it's just that Ange was born too early. And also is so not up to the date with pop culture even for her own time. ]

Wait, why were people combining zombies and pirates?

I don't know, it's fun? They do look cool...

Yes, but wouldn't that severely reduce their dialogue to.. you know.

[ Don't make her try to imitate zombie noises in public. It'd be embarrassing. ]

I don't think that would make for a very compelling movie.

Oh, no! They're great! The one pirate guy is really cool, he's like..."You best start believin' in ghost stories...yer in one."

[Actually a fairly solid Geoffrey Rush impression!]

[ Michael's career options are clearly still wide open. ]

Wait, really?

[ She sighs. ]

How come he's a zombie if he can talk like that? If that's the case, they might as well just have made them regular ghost pirates! [ ... apparently genre conventions are really important to Ange. ]

I don't know, they're cursed by evil gold.

[Or something? Look, he's seen it, but he's not exactly huge into the POTC lore.]

And they walk along the ocean floor to board other ships sometimes? When they're near their island lair. Probably be too deep otherwise.

Ah.

[ She sighs.

At least that's a familiar trope, even if it's caught in the middle of odd genre mismatching hell. ]

It's always some sort of gold curse, isn't it..

Humans do really seem to like it. Personally - I mean, the color's fine, I guess, but there's shiny rocks all over the place.

I think it's got something to do with scarcity.

[ ... though she pauses after that. It's not like Ange paid too much attention during economics classes, so like she'd know.. ]

Or it's just that some guy decided gold was valuable a long time ago, and now we've all just convinced ourselves of that idea.

Oh, I'm sure it was something like that. You all like diamonds too, and those are all over the place. Not even that hard to make.

[yo I just realized Michael could probably in theory use all of his demon powers to just crunch coal into diamonds with his bare hands and that's sick af]

[ Time to start up a business, Michael. ]

Doesn't that have something to do with wedding rings? [ Ange vaguely recalls people just loving flaunting them with huge diamonds in them. For.. some reason. She doesn't quite see the appeal herself. ]

I wonder if the people here are as obsessed with gemstones and gold.

Isn't that sort of a recent thing?

[Well, by Michael's standards, it is.]

Oh, I don't know. Some of them seem pretty flashy! Although they are also giving away a lot of stuff for free...

Michael.

[ A brief beat. ]

I'm twenty. I'm from 1998. Anything that's 'recent' to me is probably five minutes ago in your perception. [ She's still a little baby witch, Michael, let her live.. She only just escaped her teens!! ]

You're twenty?

[yep that's where we're at]

Yeah, my birthday was right before we went over to this place--

[ Ange frowns, seeming to realise something mid-sentence. ]

I can't tell if you're surprised because I'm old, or because I'm young!

[Michael lowers his voice a little.]

I thought you were a teenager! You just were though, right? Nineteen still counts?

[Really, he's thinking more of the human social definition of "teen" than anything else - it's a range smaller than what he'd normally quibble over.]

I was eighteen when I first showed up in Deerington. [ And it's been two birthdays since then, so.. even though she's not really bothered to say it out loud before now, Ange does realise she's actually twenty now.

Wow, she's getting old. ]

.. you're already considered an adult at that age in some places, you know.

Oh, sure. Used to be...younger than that, I think. People are always moving those goalposts.

[Still, he knows that's...not the case now? He even had to learn about drinking ages, that was weird.]

I don't know. I think I...just assumed after that...weird car thing we did. [Where he was her dad? It just felt right, her still being sort of a kid.]

Well, that was before my birthday..

[ So technically she had still been a teen back then. No matter Ange's insistence on this adult thing, really. ]

And being twenty.. doesn't mean I can't have parents, I guess. .. If mine still were alive. [ Wow, isn't that ever a bummer thought. Ange shakes her head, as if to shake that thought right off as well. ] Besides, you look old enough that your kid could be a twenty year old by now, you know.

[ SORRY, MICHAEL... TO HATE ON YOUR LOOKS LIKE THIS.. ]

Hmmm...

[Michael scratches his jaw idly. Normally he might inquire a little more, but dead family members usually seems to be a bit of a sticking point. Maybe he'll take the subject change.]

How old do you think I'm supposed to be? They're just randomly generated, really - not like they handed it to me like "oh, here, you're a sixty-year-old man now".

You?

[ Ange pauses. Apparently this is something to think about for her. Because even though she put Michael away as generally 'old' in her mind - in appearance, anyway, considering she knows of his true nature, though that technically just.. makes him even older.. - she didn't exactly have a specific age in mind to go along with that. ]

I guess you do kind of look like a sixty year old man. Or maybe a bit later into your sixties. [ It's only now that Ange is slowly starting to realise that.. maybe that isn't exactly a compliment. Though maybe he doesn't care? Not like Michael is human. ] But it's not like you're ugly or anything. Just old.

Oh...good?

[Michael doesn't really consider "old" to be an insult, necessarily, but "ugly"? Yeah, absolutely. But.......alright???]

That's...I don't mind looking like an old human. I am old. I think it would be a lot weirder if people looked at me and thought I was your age or something - you know? [Like, at least he's pretty much always treated as someone older with plenty of life experience, even if people don't clock just how true that is.]

.. yeah. [ There's that brief moment of consideration before the answer follows, but there's certainly no hesitation at all in the answer itself. ]

I can't imagine a teenager talking like you.

[ Not even in a bad way. It's just that Michael is so.. Michael. Trying to shove that into a teenage form would make it go in the direction of 'how do you do, fellow kids?' so quickly. ]

I mean, you said it was randomly generated, but somehow it really seems to suit you at the same time? It's weird. Maybe you just got lucky.

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eudaimonikos - 2021-09-28 23:57 (UTC) - Expand

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