staysail: (13)
Captain Darras Rivain ([personal profile] staysail) wrote in [community profile] therookery2019-03-02 06:32 pm

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?
rathercommon: (sad puppy)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-11 01:23 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, but -

[ 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.
elegiaque: (050)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-11 01:29 am (UTC)(link)
One spoiled human for three elves is not a trade anyone in this outpost would make.

( 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.
rathercommon: (disapproving)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-11 01:35 am (UTC)(link)
[ A little fiercely: ]

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.
elegiaque: (076)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-11 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
I don't think it's right that the only thing left of my mother is something that was done to her.

( she bites off every word. )

I will never think that that is right.



( that, maybe, explains some things about her father's death. )
rathercommon: (not sure what's happening but not good)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-11 01:44 am (UTC)(link)
That's - [ Uncertainly: ] What do you mean, something that was done to her?
elegiaque: (077)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-11 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
Well, certainly, why not let's do the math on this? Comte, lady's maid. Human, elf. Vauquelin, Baudin.

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.
)
rathercommon: (sad)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-11 01:54 am (UTC)(link)
Oh.

[ 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?
elegiaque: (103)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-11 02:10 am (UTC)(link)
She was my handmaid for a few months before she died. We didn't talk, much, and then some fucking Dalish shot her in the throat so she didn't even—

( 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.
rathercommon: (stressed)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-11 02:27 am (UTC)(link)
I'm sorry.

[ 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.
elegiaque: (007)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-11 02:33 am (UTC)(link)
Civil unrest, you know. Rebellions. Not even especially dangerous ones, or—I don't know, it isn't as if anyone would have told me if they were. Enough that my lord took us out of Halamshiral, at any rate.

( 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.
rathercommon: (attentive)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-11 02:39 am (UTC)(link)
Oh.

[ 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?
elegiaque: (037)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-11 02:44 am (UTC)(link)
I don't know. ( she could dissemble, but she doesn't; the rebellions she's talking about came at a time where ostensibly her most pressing issues were guest lists and fabric selection. picking out ribbons to match her dresses. she didn't pay attention to what elves were doing, or aspire to be so politically involved she had her finger on the pulse of how the empress angered the smallfolk—

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.
rathercommon: (pensive)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-11 02:49 am (UTC)(link)
[ She feels on steadier ground talking about this. The last three years of her life, up to coming here, had been nothing but talking of ways to spark rebellions. ]

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.
elegiaque: (044)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-17 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)
It isn't the sort of thing that I'd have been aware of, then.

( 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. )
rathercommon: (leery)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-31 03:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Even though you're...?

[ Elfy. ]
elegiaque: (055)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-31 08:21 pm (UTC)(link)
A human aristocrat, yes, I can't begin to imagine why servants wouldn't confide in me.
rathercommon: (pensive)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-31 08:29 pm (UTC)(link)
But - you're not human, are you. [ Then, considering - ] If...that's not how you think of yourself, anyway. I guess - you can sort of choose how you want to classify yourself? Perhaps? Anyway.
elegiaque: (107)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-31 08:32 pm (UTC)(link)
No. ( it's more curt. ) We don't get to choose. I am indistinguishable from a human, no matter what cunt I came out of. The only elves here who think who my mother was matters are rifters.

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. )
rathercommon: (unsure how to feel)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-31 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, who you are isn't actually just about who accepts you, you know.

[ 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?
elegiaque: (064)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-31 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
( she definitely can't and she is pretending she didn't hear kitty ask. )

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.
rathercommon: (pensive)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-31 08:49 pm (UTC)(link)
[ A shake of her head. ]

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.
elegiaque: (073)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-31 08:53 pm (UTC)(link)
( the answer to what gwenaëlle feels herself to be is—

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'?
rathercommon: (unsympathetic (maybe sympathetic))

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-31 09:00 pm (UTC)(link)
I mean - Yeah. Sort of. His mum and dad were born in England, so they didn't have accents or anything. His grandmum was - Well, she was born in Prague, I think. And she knew things.

[ Good old life-saving Mrs Hyrnek. - Not that that matters for this talk of identity, of course. ]
elegiaque: (073)

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[personal profile] elegiaque 2019-03-31 09:01 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a bit different, then.
rathercommon: (attentive)

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[personal profile] rathercommon 2019-03-31 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Why?

[ 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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