He thinks he has been quite patient, waiting this long for a voice test.

[evantuality]

You know, you're never going to be able to tell whether or not I play well with others unless you stop gadding about, daydreaming about voice tests and tag logs, and actually create something. There are places set up specifically for what you're looking to do, just go --

--ah. Okay. This will do.

So when it comes right down to it, it doesn't matter whether or not you "really have time for" me. You're writing this. You've polished up my journal and made it, ah, presentable. You're making this post. Therefore: we'll go along as we may, tagging or not, and at least now you've moved out of the purely hypothetical.

On that note, I am not in the tiniest bit interested in giving you a pep talk. Dream up someone else for that. Just play me -- preferably against someone interesting, please -- and get on with it.

While we're at this, however, one more thing: establish me a timeline already. What's in place now is this pathetic mishmash of old memes that obliquely mention me, and a vague sense of my upbringing, and then some sort of handwavey 'then he went to college and was bored of it'. It's tripe. I could do better than that and I'm an imaginary character in an imaginary computer sciences major. You say you're onboard with Dray's Memecity business -- that is a prime opportunity to figure out where I'm at now, where I will be in five years, ten years, fifty years.

Or are you just going to keep throwing me as a teenager into everything? That is going to get very awkward very fast, dear Mun, especially if you keep throwing me into the same events that you throw my mother into. Not that I have an objection to the woman, but if you're playing her post-memes and post-me... well. Sort that out, and get on with it, because I don't relish that meeting.

Comments

[woocas]

I think they need to rename this place to 'bitching at muns' because honestly everyone seems to do it.

[evantuality]

Taking a look around, I had really just assumed that was the case already. Sort of a facetious 'dear'. Oh, dear, dear mun.

[woocas]

I dunno, I kind of like mine, but that's just me.

[evantuality]

Oh, liking -- really, you can like them just fine, but it's hard to deny there's a particular power imbalance.

[He offers the next suggestion with a look of wry distaste.]

Sometimes the only way to get heard is to be a nuisance.

[woocas]

If you want to look at it that way, I guess? I mean, they did create us, it's a little different than all those other guys running around here bitching at their muns.

Does constantly getting in trouble count as being a nuisance? If so, I've got that down pat.

[evantuality]

I think that counts. In fact, I would bet it keeps things positively hopping on your end. But what's that old bit of ill-will? 'I hope you live in interesting times'?

But then, I suppose that's what I'm getting signed up for, too. Any words of wisdom for the doomed?

[woocas]

[He just shrugs. To each their own!]

The more you complain about a mun's idea the more likely they're going to go for it. So, getting dumped into an alternate universe where a giant super computer wants to torture humans for eternity? Not my idea of fun, but she went for it anyways!

[evantuality]

She put you in I have no mouth and I must scream? [he looks genuinely alarmed by the thought of it.] That seems unusually sadistic.

You must have complained especially bitterly to get put into that one, hmmm?

[woocas]

Considering AM's hanging out in one of the games I'm in? It was bound to happen...

You think!? I didn't want to go hang out with AM for God knows how long!

[restlesswings]

Maybe it's because dreams are so much more convenient. Nothing's at risk.

Mundanes can be flighty. They'll go on and on about how little time they have, but spend time fixing our journals and icons. I wonder what the point is... not that I have room to judge, really.

[evantuality]

He purses his lips considering. "I think it must come from the idea that hobbies are supposed to be, I don't know, relaxing. Low-energy." Frowns. "As if there's a certain set number of hours per day that one should feel obliged to turn their brain right off.

"And then they're all surprised and dismayed when creating a whole new fictional person takes work and energy, not even to mention the amount of trouble and strain that comes with trying to wiggle their way into a community of people so that they actually have someone to throw us against."

Evan shrugs sardonically. "But then, what do I know? I've never tried it."

[restlesswings]

"You could've fooled me," Kino replies with a smirk. "From the sound of it, you seem like you understand them very well."

After a moment, she looks thoughtfully up at the sky. "I think it's more like... maybe they feel guilty for spending time on something that benefits no one but themselves. It's selfish... doing good work is something people respect and admire, because it's a service to others. A service to one's own self, that isn't something too many people respect or admire, even if one's own 'self' is human too.

... is it because humans, as a whole, are inherently selfish?"

[evantuality]

Evan's smirk is sour, like he's run into that thought one too many times. "I think that's an oversimplification. Selfishness is a survival strategy, to be sure... but it's a flawed one for creatures that live in groups. It's the psychopath problem. Society can support a given number of truly selfish, nonempathic people before social bonds start to fray apart and people lose trust and cohesion... but that's beside the point. People who feel guilty for the way other people view their leisure time aren't the kind of people who are systemically selfish."

He leans back and considers. "You're right that the guilt comes from perceived societal pressure, though. For people who are really invested in being looked on kindly by others, it's a terrible thing to be considered selfish. It's a flawed concern, though. What we do in our leisure time directly feeds what we do in our so-called productive time.

"Did you ever have the experience, growing up, of being told that school was meant to teach discipline rather than the actual subject matter? Hobbies are like that, and when they're done right they're much more effective at it. A person chooses to work hard when they have the choice between working hard and doing nothing, and that person learns frustration tolerance, discipline, craft. How far they can push yourself when they choose to." He's kept his arms crossed as he's been talking, but over the course of the speech his bearing has grown less bitter, as well as less self-conscious.

[restlesswings]

Kino listens quietly, without interrupting. It seems he had misunderstood what she meant by what she said before, but the points he made were nonetheless interesting.

At the mention of school, something flickers in her dark eyes, vanishing in a moment. "Ah. My school never pretended to be anything else. I remember one of my last lessons..." Kino tucks her arms behind her, assuming an authoritative tone, raising her head, and puffing her chest in pompous mimicry. "'Everyone in our country must undergo the operation on their twelfth birthday. They will cut open your head and pick out the child in you. Thanks to this wonderful operation, anyone and everyone can become a perfect adult who will perform any job, even ones they hate or think are wrong, with a bright smile.'"

Kino glances back at Evan, relaxing her posture and dropping the affectation. "... but I agree with you. Humans can't go on without something to do, even if it's meaningless to anyone else. Because what we do is part of who we are, so we don't want to give it up, even if it's hard to maintain."

[evantuality]

Evan's passion for theoretical discourse was washed to the side when Kino talked about her school experience. The young man instead leaned forward, curious, his eyes widening a little. "Now where on --" he stopped himself; 'where on Earth' might not apply -- "now where are you from? 'Pick out the child in you'? I've never heard of anything quite like that." Lobotomy, maybe? She didn't seem lobotomized, or under twelve, for that matter.

[restlesswings]

Kino did not move closer nor further away, dark eyes returning the gaze calmly.

"... the Land of Adults. It's in ruin now." She reached up to casually brush the hair out of her face, speaking in the same, level tone as if the subject at hand were as plain as weather or something even less noteworthy. "Nothing left but the field of flowers I crashed my Motorrad, Hermes, after I left home." —There's a heavily-laden motorcycle resting not too far from where Kino stands, perhaps that's what she meant— "The day I left, it was my twelfth birthday, I asked what would happen if someone didn't have the operation.

My father smiled at me and brought out a butcher's knife to dispose of me, calling me things like 'trash,' 'mistake,' and 'a failure of a child.' My mother watched."

After a brief pause. "I'm a traveller now."

[evantuality]

Evan was not good at sympathy, so it was good that the other young person seemed unruffled by her singularly terrible departure from home, though he did amend his previous thought: not lobotomized, no, but remarkably -- unnaturally -- calm. Even people who liked to downplay their own tragedies usually took the track of humor, or deprecation. This person talked about being attacked by her father like one might iterate a shopping list.

"See, that's exactly what I mean." He couldn't help a brief sojourn back to his own soliloquy earlier, gesturing with a hand. "That's psychopathic, but guaranteed, he didn't think of his own actions as selfish."

But he did shake his head, adding dryly, "in any case, given your options, becoming a traveller seems a positively sterling choice. And it sounds like you dodged a bullet," unless she was the one who had precipitated it, "if the place ended up destroyed."

[aaron_agate]

You think you'd be happier if you weren't a teenager anymore?

Think about the rest of us!

Get the hell out of the nest already, Ev, you deserve some self-earned kudos and you definitely need to stop malingering over my wallet for your experiments and get a job!

[evantuality]

He seems unusually flustered by his father's impromptu appearance, but smooths his own ruffled feathers as best as a dang teenager can manage in the face of the inexorable parental!

"And what exactly did you think I was trying to do? If you're just here to harangue, you should turn around and go right back home." He's even crossed his arms in defiance! Woo, Evan, such strong body language.

[aaron_agate]

"I'm always here to harangue, my son," Agate notes the defensive body language, opens his up a little, relaxed and amused by resting his jaw on his palm. Woap, here's a deck chair and glass table, not to mention a tall glass of cola, ice-filled. Come sit with your old dad, Evan. Have a drink, enjoy the vista of vast potential! There's a whole meme city out there for an enterprising and exceptionally intelligent young man like you!

"I'm here to warn you of the dangers of talking to strangers, and if you should like to know, I'm going to keep doing it until you are older than I am, if and when I can track you down. Mostly I'm here to analyze what it is that you want. Get to the pith of the matter, shed those baby fat layers of incontinent somnolence."

He's the worst dad. He's just the worst.

[evantuality]

'Baby fat layers of incontinent --'

Ugh, what drove Evan the most crazy about his family was just how goddamn trite his parents were. At least Cassie, with all of her varying levels of crazy and crazy-making, was sincere in her bullshit more often than not. He had sometimes wondered in some of his more frustrated moments if insincerity could come back around full-circle back to a confusing sort of ironic but truthful sincerity.

This was why he was clever with computers, not with people. People had way more capacity to make his head hurt.

"Dad, we're the kind of people that parents warn their kids against talking to, not the other way around," he asserted, side-stepping his dad's more prying query; he'd have to try harder than that!

[aaron_agate]

That earned a genuine laugh, and then a sigh of contentment drawn from a good joke. "Evan, you're so wonderfully naive. Don't anyone ever tell you otherwise."

Agate settled back into his chair, lacing his fingers together and casting a hangdog grin up at his still standing son. A hidden leg pushed a chair out to the young man; more overt gestures of affection and inclusion. Evan was always a tough nut to crack, probably because Agate had spent years roasting him into a jaded rock of skepticism. Couldn't hurt to turn the tables every so often, though!

"You can pull the wool over the eyes of a lot of people in the city, but you are straight up going to meet someone who shocks you off your high horse every so often. It's a fact; sometimes its a good thing, too. You stay up there too often and you'll grow stale." Agate should know. There was a past involving his growing distance from his family once he'd gotten his heels dug in and the Orphaners were out of the equation. This was all old news to Agate, though he was uncertain where Evan's memories or priorities laid. Apparently he wasn't done speaking in cliches yet, if he ever stopped.

[evantuality]

Agate would at least get the satisfaction of Evan finally, slowly, taking the seat so blatantly offered, although as he settled in and Agate kept talking, Evan looked as if he was chewing on something sour. Being called naive was one thing; that was a simple insult. One that Agate hadn't meant to be insulting but that doubtless he knew would be taken as such, but one that Evan didn't rise to.

Instead he uncrossed his arms and frowned across the table at his dad. "I'm not so conceited that I think everyone I run across will bore me." No, that was something he was specifically aiming to avoid; he wouldn't be going out into the world if he thought all of the folks out there would be bores, or frustrating, or trite. Maybe most, but not all.

[aaron_agate]

"Kid, if that's your biggest worry, you'll be happy." Agate perked up a little, grinning to smooth away the brief show of concern that had somehow, accidentally crept over his expression. "All I'm saying is that if you are stuck, I'll be around. The toll is a mild sassing, but at least you'll get something out of it after all of these years of selfless conditioning. I don't want you to wind up like your sister, too prideful to make a call."

[evantuality]

The young man almost spoke, and then stopped himself, and tilted his head, frowning like an offended cat. How cunning of Agate, to forestall protest by invoking the negative example of Cassie; Evan did not hate his sister but he was emphatically nothing like her.

At least in no ways that he'd admit.

Finally he decided that yes, his original protest still stood despite his dad's cunning, and looking across the table levelly he asserted, "I believe I'll be able to handle myself, thank you."

The rejection wasn't personal (or it was profoundly personal; lines all got blurred around family). It was just the due of every young creature looking to differentiate from their parents.