crystal.

[cozen]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Bastien
RECIPIENT: Everyone
WHAT: Fursona meme?
WHEN: Nowish
NOTES: Nah

Hello, my friends. And my total strangers.

[ Those are the only two options. Enemies are for other people. Unless someone considers anyone with an Orlesian accent—and not even a particularly noble one, from the vowels—to be an enemy. Or maybe anyone who sounds too pleasant on a Sunday morning. In that case: swords at dawn. ]

I was thinking about how many popular heroes have a sobriquet. The Black Fox, now the Black Hart. The Nightingale.

Now that I am saying them aloud, they are mostly animals.

Setting aside how arrogant it would be to give one to yourself. If you could choose a pretentious epithet for the history books, or one for your friends—

It does not have to be an animal.

[ Yes it does. ]

Comments

[cozen]

[ His wince is silent, as winces usually are, but there is a pause while he gathers the strength to leave that pronunciation alone. ]

Something like a pet name, save that strangers may use it, crossed with a title, save that you have to do something to deserve it.

[rathercommon]

[ She wrinkles her nose. Probably could have guessed that one from context. Oh, well. ]

Or at least you have to have manufactured stories that give you a reputation for having deserved it.

[coquettish_trees]

Astute judgement worthy of The Recalcitrant Badger!

[rathercommon]

I - What - Badger! How am I a badger?

[coquettish_trees]

Tough, fearless, ferocious, surpassingly clever, regularly willing to attack animals far larger than itself, exceedingly good at throwing dirt in ones face...

[rathercommon]

[ ...fine. You win this round, Lexie. ]

And that other word - that means what, exactly?

[coquettish_trees]

[ amusedly: ] Headstrong and perverse, especially when confronted by authority.

[rathercommon]

Now, that's not true.

[coquettish_trees]

[ can you hear her smiling and waiting patiently for the immediate illustration to sink in? ]

[rathercommon]

[ When it becomes clear that Lexie isn't saying anything: ]

It's not. I've got no objection to authority. I just don't like things that are stupid and wrongheaded. It's not my fault that describes most people in charge.

[coquettish_trees]

Ah, my mistake!

[ she doesn't think it's a mistake in the slightest. ]

[rathercommon]

Don't smirk at me.

[coquettish_trees]

I, smirk? Perish the thought.

[ beat ]

Ladies smile nicely and raise their eyebrows. Setting that aside, what is so objectionable about being headstrong and perverse, especially if you are being stubbornly uncooperative with something you deem wrongheaded? Should you rather be described as accommodating?

[rathercommon]

No. It's -

[ A huff of breath. ]

I don't want people thinking that I'm uncooperative for the sake of being uncooperative. I go along with good ideas when I hear 'em.

[coquettish_trees]

Oh, very well. What of the Exacting Badger then?

[rathercommon]

All of these names are making me sound like some middle-aged schoolteacher.

[exequy]

[ In another tower, not heard by anyone at all because he's only listening (and suffering) without activating his own crystal, someone snorts. Like, in a booding but elegant way. ]

[cozen]

To do that properly would take so much work, I am not sure I could begrudge anyone their new name at the end of it.

[rathercommon]

Not really. It's the story of just about every famous person ever, isn't it? They do something, and they - or people who are interested in them getting power - spin it into something grander.

[cozen]

Oh, yes, of course things are embellished—the giant gets larger, or multiplies, and no one mentions that it tripped into a ravine while the hero ran away in terror. But there still is usually a dead giant somewhere on the road behind him.

To manufacture the story whole cloth, well enough for everyone to believe it and no one to emerge to say his grandmother lives in that valley and there was never a giant, or that that village the giant was meant to be terrorizing burned down a decade before it was saved—that sounds like a full-time vocation.

[rathercommon]

A full-time job, you mean? Yeah. Maybe. Lucky for folks like that they've got the money to hire people to do just that.

[cozen]

I may have missed my calling, then. How well do you think they pay?

[rathercommon]

I suppose it depends on just how dreadful a person you're willing to work for.

[cozen]

Medium dreadful.

[rathercommon]

Brilliant. Then prepare to stuff your morally-compromised pockets full.