Captain Darras Rivain (
staysail) wrote in
therookery2019-03-02 06:32 pm
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Entry tags:
- alexandrie d'asgard,
- bastien,
- byerly rutyer,
- cosima niehaus,
- darras rivain,
- gwenaëlle strange,
- isaac,
- james flint,
- nell voss,
- val de foncé,
- wysteria de foncé,
- yseult,
- { bartimaeus },
- { freddie dufort-lacapalette },
- { hugo mercier },
- { kenna carrow },
- { lakshmi bai },
- { leander },
- { luwenna coupe },
- { magni an fjorleif o talonhold },
- { marisol vivas }
let's talk anything but politics
FORM: sending crystal
SENDER: Darras Rivain
RECIPIENT: everyone
WHAT: Girl of Your Dreams, the most important game ever played
WHEN: now
WHERE: the Gallows
So for those of us that don't feel particularly moved to be adding our voices to any debates over the Divine. [Well, wait.] No, that's unfair of me. Anyone is welcome to be playing this game. It's just that you might be too busy.
Though it's quite easy. Doesn't take much attention. It's Girl of Your Dreams, and it's meant to be played when you're exceedingly bored. Every bit of this dream girl is perfect, except there's one detail, one tiny detail, that's terribly wrong. Like... "Girl of your dreams, girl of your dreams, except she's got goat's eyes." The ones with those terrible square centers, and they're half wall-eyed? And then everyone has got to say if they'd still have her or not. Which--in honesty--for that one, I would.
We could play it about the Divine, if that would strike you as more topical. "Future Divine of your dreams, Future Divine of your dreams, except she'll only eat food that you've chewed for her." Still vote for her, or not?
SENDER: Darras Rivain
RECIPIENT: everyone
WHAT: Girl of Your Dreams, the most important game ever played
WHEN: now
WHERE: the Gallows
So for those of us that don't feel particularly moved to be adding our voices to any debates over the Divine. [Well, wait.] No, that's unfair of me. Anyone is welcome to be playing this game. It's just that you might be too busy.
Though it's quite easy. Doesn't take much attention. It's Girl of Your Dreams, and it's meant to be played when you're exceedingly bored. Every bit of this dream girl is perfect, except there's one detail, one tiny detail, that's terribly wrong. Like... "Girl of your dreams, girl of your dreams, except she's got goat's eyes." The ones with those terrible square centers, and they're half wall-eyed? And then everyone has got to say if they'd still have her or not. Which--in honesty--for that one, I would.
We could play it about the Divine, if that would strike you as more topical. "Future Divine of your dreams, Future Divine of your dreams, except she'll only eat food that you've chewed for her." Still vote for her, or not?
private.
[ Kitty isn't very good with expressions of emotion; they often come out awkward. She's even less good with trying to comfort people - but that last bit sounded so significant, it doesn't seem right to let it go unaddressed. ]
You're - you're really good, though, you know.
private.
( she's pretty sure it's definitely not a trade kitty would make. )
It really doesn't factor. Let's not rehash arguments I have with my husband, he'll be put out if he has nothing to do. The point is, I don't think the end result of the civil war was worth the cost and I said so.
private.
Acting as though lives can traded and bartered and set up as equivalent like that means accepting that people are just things. Which is the sort of political arithmetic that people like her do, and what they use to justify choices like the one she made.
private.
( she bites off every word. )
I will never think that that is right.
( that, maybe, explains some things about her father's death. )
private.
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How much do you think it mattered what she wanted? Did he have to ask first, when he took a child from her and gave it to his wife? What does that decision-making process look like? I don't know. Not very romantic, I can't help but think.
( there is a painting of her mother that makes it more complicated; gwenaëlle does not look for nuance, here.
i didn't know what her voice sounded like until i was old enough to still remember how surprised i was.
anger is easier. )
private.
[ Kitty's voice is a bit small. Her first reaction is a wave of humiliation, that she'd never even thought of that. But - right, of course. It's the exploitation of the economically disadvantaged by the economically advantaged. The employer-employee relationship is inherently coercive. Of course, she's always tended to think of the servants of the powerful as complicit, really - they sign up to bow and scrape, don't they, get a wage to flatter and to coddle those who don't deserve it...But that doesn't make Gwen's queasy point any less than true. ]
Did you ever...have a chance to talk to her about it?
private.
( it still bothers her that guenievre had no last word. she was always so quiet, that gwenaëlle remembers, and then silenced entirely. )
It wasn't what we talked about.
( gwenaëlle had been, if she's honest—she's not going to be honest about this—afraid to ask. afraid of the answer, afraid of what it would feel like to finally have certainty. to hear it in truth, or to hear her mother try to spare her, to lie. )
She told me it wasn't appropriate to see Thranduil in private and she braided my hair at night. I can do it myself, but she would just sit there with the brush and look at me until I—
( there's a short delay. a silence. this isn't where she meant for this conversation to go. )
She asked Thranduil to find out what happened to her daughters. She didn't tell me what he'd said but she told me that he'd investigated. It was just before she died. That's how I know. I asked, eventually. We all knew they were dead, we knew it was in the slaughter, we just didn't know what had happened.
private.
[ What is there to say but that? - It's stupid; Kitty can't help but think of her own mum with all that talk. Would her mum have braided Kitty's hair, if Kitty hadn't kept it chopped rebelliously short? Mum had sometimes commented wistfully on that, speculating that Kitty would look lovely if she let it grow out, but Kitty never had. And Kitty had certainly heard plenty about the people she oughtn't be spending time with. But if Kitty had sisters who died...Mum would never ask to find out what happened to them. She'd just hide her head in the sand and pretend they'd never existed. Like she, no doubt, pretends now that Kitty never existed -
Stop it. Kitty takes a breath. ]
Why was there that - violence at all? I've never heard of this before.
private.
( gwenaëlle lived most of her life in the high quarter, before that, before the breach; it's startling how terribly long ago it all feels. )
There were rumors she was soft on it. That her pet elf made her soft. The Marquise, now. No one said she was too lenient with elves after she marched her chevaliers into Halamshiral and burned half the fucking city.
( a breath. )
It was old news before you arrived.
private.
[ Old news, but not old enough to make it into the books Kitty reads. Sometimes she feels like she has the most dire blind spots. ]
What was it that caused their rebellion? What had she done?
private.
a lot has changed, but it hadn't, yet. and the important parts, for her, had all come after. )
Maybe they were just tired of everyone's bullshit. The consequences of standing up were made very clear.
private.
It takes more than that. Frustration alone is never enough. It comes out of something more - a moment, something happening. Most people will much sooner live a life that's not even worth living than risk death.
private.
( it'd still be easy for her to be out of the loop now, granted, but she's standing in a different place, paying attention to different things. all the same. )
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[ Elfy. ]
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Amsel was raised in a fucking alienage and she's still an outsider. It isn't up to us. It's how it is.
( not that she's bitter, or anything. )
private.
[ She chews on her lower lip a moment. ]
I mean...Other people might tell you where you belong and who you should be. But just 'cause they say it, that doesn't make it right. [ Then, a bit exasperated - ] Also, can't you just say 'gave birth' like a normal person?
private.
Well, thank the Maker, since that list seems to have drastically shortened in recent months. ( of 'who accepts her', droll. too human for elves, too tainted by the association for her former peers. )
The fact of the matter is that physically, I am human. Any children I have will be human. As far as elves are concerned, all the elfblooded are is a dead end.
private.
But - who cares? My best friend back home, Jakob, he was Czech. Or, rather, they called him Czech. He didn't have any sort of accent, spoke English just like me, and he looked like any other Londoner, but he had search spheres after him and his family special 'cause they were considered foreigners. But he was a much better and more acceptable citizen than me, a girl as English as they come. It doesn't - It doesn't matter what they say you are. People will always try to say you're something or another. But all that matters is who you feel yourself to be.
private.
nothing good. nothing so simple as she insists on presenting it, but there's no alternative she can tease out of her own heart that isn't even uglier. the simple version is the kindest she allows herself. )
Were his family 'Czech'?
private.
[ Good old life-saving Mrs Hyrnek. - Not that that matters for this talk of identity, of course. ]
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[ She shakes her head. ]
Look, you got denied your ability to connect with that side of who you are. And I'm sorry, and that's rotten. And you haven't got the physical features that show you're that, and that's rotten too. But at the end of the day, you are who you make yourself.
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