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edenfallingback to part 25
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Trollstuck, part 26
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====>Be the villain in her lair
As you wish!
You are MEENAH PEIXES, though anemonebody who knew your wiggling name is long since dead. These sweeps you prefer to go by HER IMPERIOUS CONDESCENSION, or simply the CONDESCE for everynight use. You are currently en route to a nondescript star in a nondescript cluster, around which orbit a number of nondescript planets, one of which moray be the source of some nondescript radio chatter your sensor ships have sifted from the background garble of the universe. Your ship is the fastest in the fleet, so it makes perfect logistical sense for you to poke at the potential aliens yourself rather than sending any scouts to perform a task as delicate as first contact.
(The fact that you have been bored out of your mind for millennia has absolutely nofin to do with the way fleet assignments are arranged. Anemoneone suggesting otherwise will be culled.)
The brief frisson of meeting aliens has begun to pall lately, though. They're all unique and bizarre, shore, but after a whale even weird gets old. The past hundred sweeps you've started to toy with the idea of enslaving a few planets rather than scouring them clean. All aliens are bottom-feeding filth, but if nothing else watching your subjects' reactions to the infestation might provide a generation or two of amusement value. And you can always change your mind and krill the aliens later, shoald they start getting ideas above their place.
Right now you are alone in the watery dimness of the bridge, the three viewscreens acting like windows that show everything there is to sea around your ship. Which is basically nofin, just black, black, and more black, lightly tinted with the ugly mustard-yellow shimmer of your Helmsman's psionics. He's the best bit of chum you ever snatched from the tides of history, but damn, couldn't he think in a nicer color?
Oh well, can't have everyfin.
You lean back in your throne, close your eyes, and send a questing tentacle of thought back down the psychic current toward Alternia to check on your pet. She was all kinds of restless a few perigees ago, little bubbles of unease floating along the link to pop and fizz on the edges of your mind when you were in the middle of important (if boring) fins like putting the fear of you back into your admirals and generals for another sweep. But it looks like your current Heiress (read: fancy-blooded chump) managed to clam her down. Or maybe it was nofin in the first plaice, just indigestion or somefin equally stupid.
When you got the Magician to salmon a Horrorterror, that bitch never told you how much work it would be to keep the damn thing in line. And when you complained, she just fucking laughed, all halfway to drunk on those weird-bass alchemical brews she mixed and said, "Not like eldritch squid come pre-housebroken, it it? I mean, what'd you expect? You wanted psychic death, you got it. And if you don't wanna end up with us the only trolls left on the whole damn planet, you're the one who gets to tell the stupid wiggler to shoosh."
So you shooshed the squid. It was beyond embarrassing, but whatever, no one was there to sea and you have a giant psychic death ray to turn on anemonebody who so much as insinuates in that general direction. And okay, you kind of like the damn monster -- it's the one fin in the whale universe that's never tried to betray you -- but again, giant psychic death ray if the topic is ever breached.
You don't know why you're even thinking about this shit. It's been thousands of sweeps and you can't live in the past. Time is a current and you're a shark; gotta keep swimming or you die.
You sigh a careless string of bubbles and swim for the airlock. Might as well sea if you can prod your Helmsman into sailing a little faster.
====>Be the other villain
Sweeps in the past (but not many), you are KURLOZ MAKARA, though anyone outside your quadrants who calls you that instead of the GRAND HIGHBLOOD is going to get turned into artwork real damn quick: their blood to decorate your walls, their bones to build your furniture, their meat to whip the birds on your roof into swirling, patterned madness. Except right now you'd probably have to settle for just bashing in skulls and moving on, infuriating as that is to admit.
You may hate and despise the bitch seaqueen, but she runs a tight ship and lets you and the rest of the Circus get on with proselytizing to the heathen masses. All she asks in return is that you keep things to a dull roar and make sure the fleet conscription rates stay high.
What you are dealing with now is practically a planet-wide shriek.
What the hell is that motherfucking mutant flitterbug thinking, trying to upend the whole damn social order? There's no way in hell he can win. Even if he grabs the spaceports and gets enough of a fleet to defend the planet from orbit, the second the seabitch gets back into range, she'll drop the fucking hammer. She's got a dozen matriorbs squirreled away on that pointy scream-red ship of hers, with a dozen jadeblood custodians spending their lives in chains just in case. All she needs to do is wish, and the fucking dayspawn in the deep does its fucking thing and that's it, curtains for all, take your bows and die screaming.
It'll be artistic, sure -- that much blood boiling out of that many bodies can't be anything but an aesthetic dream -- but you're not much in the mood for dying right now.
You lever your club from the wreckage that used to be a troll and continue on your way to the traffic control tower of the Sandedge spaceport. You are going to paint yourself a messiahs-be-damned silhouette against the sky and motheringfucking dare that winged asshole to come take you out.
He has a dragon? Good for him. You are what gives dragons daymares.
You open your mind and wait for your prey to take the bait.
====>Be the villain who is actually relevant to the plot
Sweeps in the past (but not many) you are ARANEA SERKET, though you neither cared for nor made much use of that name even as a wiggler. MARQUISE SPINNERET MINDFANG is simply more interesting, not to mention more likely to make the common rabble pay attention to you for the right reasons -- those being healthy fear and respect, rather than a careless assumption that as a scion of a line noted for empaths and healers you will be a weak-willed victim like all your genetic cousins in history to date.
You are nobody's victim.
There is no point in letting other people's emotions touch you, not when it's so much easier to touch them first. If you manage the manipulation well, you scarcely even need to bother with blatant displays of power. Subtle nudges until the fools who think to use you come to honestly want whatever you decide they should want are much more amusing, not to mention often effective even on those who can resist your outright control.
Occasionally, however, it's pleasant to dispense with subtlety and any pretense of concern and let the trolls in your grip know exactly how little control they have over their lives now that you have taken an interest.
"There will be no mutiny on my ship," you say as you pace in an ever-tightening circle around the pathetic band of saboteurs, cocooned in rope and held firmly in the pincers of your mind. "But do tell me about this so-called Sufferer and his outlawed ideology. Anything that can persuade such fearful wreckage as yourselves to dream of defying the natural order of the hemospectrum might even amuse me enough to cut your bonds before tossing you into the sea."
Lightning flashes through the clouds that conceal the tyrian light of the moon, glinting off the teeth of the sharks that circle your ship, drawn by the rich tang of blood that spilled into the waves before you put the attempted uprising down.
"You know nothing about the true nature of the hemospectrum, and you aren't worthy to speak His Holy Name!" one of the mutineers cries.
You smile. You tighten your mind around his. You snap your fingers.
"Then enlighten me," you say, while the loyal members of your crew drag the other refuse to the rail and heave the screaming corpses overboard.
====>Stop misinterpreting the commands!
What, you don't appreciate all this useful exposition? I'm hurt. Truly and deeply hurt.
But I suppose I'll forgive you...
...presuming you manage to give an unambiguous command to start the next section.
Do we have a deal?
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*blinks*
That is completely and utterly NOT what I meant to write when I opened the Word document and decided to start chapter 7 tonight. Somehow I fail to be sorry. (Roxy cameo, yay!!!)
Anyway, we'll pick up with Vriska next time, shortly before Jothan trolls her.
---------------------------------------------
continue to part 27
I spent much of today unable to use my computer -- first because I'd scheduled a boot scan, then because of a completely inexplicable ten minute power outage, and then because I had to run the boot scan again -- so I did a bunch of useful chores I'd been putting off. Which basically means I took apart my box fan and cleaned it, cleaned the top of the closet where I store the fan during the winter (said closet is sort of a built-in wardrobe that occupies a corner of my bedroom; the top is so high up I had to stand on a footstool on my dresser to reach the back corners), vacuumed the whole apartment, and dusted a bunch of shelves. Also I went grocery shopping, which takes even longer on weekdays than weekends due to slightly variant bus schedules. *sigh*
My mom is currently down in DC helping Aunt Jan take reams of files and things out of cardboard boxes and put them into other storage materials, since Aunt Jan is apparently now allergic to cardboard on top of her numerous other allergies and therefore shouldn't be doing that herself despite needing it to be done. This leaves my dad home alone, still without power. As of this evening, Main St. (NJ 124) had electricity, plus a bunch of the town north of Main St. Almost nothing south of Main St. had power, though, and my parents live on the extreme south edge of town, about two blocks from where Madison runs into Chatham Township. But almost all of the downed trees have been removed, so hopefully fixing the broken wires shouldn't take more than another day or so.
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Trollstuck, part 26
---------------------------------------------
====>Be the villain in her lair
As you wish!
You are MEENAH PEIXES, though anemonebody who knew your wiggling name is long since dead. These sweeps you prefer to go by HER IMPERIOUS CONDESCENSION, or simply the CONDESCE for everynight use. You are currently en route to a nondescript star in a nondescript cluster, around which orbit a number of nondescript planets, one of which moray be the source of some nondescript radio chatter your sensor ships have sifted from the background garble of the universe. Your ship is the fastest in the fleet, so it makes perfect logistical sense for you to poke at the potential aliens yourself rather than sending any scouts to perform a task as delicate as first contact.
(The fact that you have been bored out of your mind for millennia has absolutely nofin to do with the way fleet assignments are arranged. Anemoneone suggesting otherwise will be culled.)
The brief frisson of meeting aliens has begun to pall lately, though. They're all unique and bizarre, shore, but after a whale even weird gets old. The past hundred sweeps you've started to toy with the idea of enslaving a few planets rather than scouring them clean. All aliens are bottom-feeding filth, but if nothing else watching your subjects' reactions to the infestation might provide a generation or two of amusement value. And you can always change your mind and krill the aliens later, shoald they start getting ideas above their place.
Right now you are alone in the watery dimness of the bridge, the three viewscreens acting like windows that show everything there is to sea around your ship. Which is basically nofin, just black, black, and more black, lightly tinted with the ugly mustard-yellow shimmer of your Helmsman's psionics. He's the best bit of chum you ever snatched from the tides of history, but damn, couldn't he think in a nicer color?
Oh well, can't have everyfin.
You lean back in your throne, close your eyes, and send a questing tentacle of thought back down the psychic current toward Alternia to check on your pet. She was all kinds of restless a few perigees ago, little bubbles of unease floating along the link to pop and fizz on the edges of your mind when you were in the middle of important (if boring) fins like putting the fear of you back into your admirals and generals for another sweep. But it looks like your current Heiress (read: fancy-blooded chump) managed to clam her down. Or maybe it was nofin in the first plaice, just indigestion or somefin equally stupid.
When you got the Magician to salmon a Horrorterror, that bitch never told you how much work it would be to keep the damn thing in line. And when you complained, she just fucking laughed, all halfway to drunk on those weird-bass alchemical brews she mixed and said, "Not like eldritch squid come pre-housebroken, it it? I mean, what'd you expect? You wanted psychic death, you got it. And if you don't wanna end up with us the only trolls left on the whole damn planet, you're the one who gets to tell the stupid wiggler to shoosh."
So you shooshed the squid. It was beyond embarrassing, but whatever, no one was there to sea and you have a giant psychic death ray to turn on anemonebody who so much as insinuates in that general direction. And okay, you kind of like the damn monster -- it's the one fin in the whale universe that's never tried to betray you -- but again, giant psychic death ray if the topic is ever breached.
You don't know why you're even thinking about this shit. It's been thousands of sweeps and you can't live in the past. Time is a current and you're a shark; gotta keep swimming or you die.
You sigh a careless string of bubbles and swim for the airlock. Might as well sea if you can prod your Helmsman into sailing a little faster.
====>Be the other villain
Sweeps in the past (but not many), you are KURLOZ MAKARA, though anyone outside your quadrants who calls you that instead of the GRAND HIGHBLOOD is going to get turned into artwork real damn quick: their blood to decorate your walls, their bones to build your furniture, their meat to whip the birds on your roof into swirling, patterned madness. Except right now you'd probably have to settle for just bashing in skulls and moving on, infuriating as that is to admit.
You may hate and despise the bitch seaqueen, but she runs a tight ship and lets you and the rest of the Circus get on with proselytizing to the heathen masses. All she asks in return is that you keep things to a dull roar and make sure the fleet conscription rates stay high.
What you are dealing with now is practically a planet-wide shriek.
What the hell is that motherfucking mutant flitterbug thinking, trying to upend the whole damn social order? There's no way in hell he can win. Even if he grabs the spaceports and gets enough of a fleet to defend the planet from orbit, the second the seabitch gets back into range, she'll drop the fucking hammer. She's got a dozen matriorbs squirreled away on that pointy scream-red ship of hers, with a dozen jadeblood custodians spending their lives in chains just in case. All she needs to do is wish, and the fucking dayspawn in the deep does its fucking thing and that's it, curtains for all, take your bows and die screaming.
It'll be artistic, sure -- that much blood boiling out of that many bodies can't be anything but an aesthetic dream -- but you're not much in the mood for dying right now.
You lever your club from the wreckage that used to be a troll and continue on your way to the traffic control tower of the Sandedge spaceport. You are going to paint yourself a messiahs-be-damned silhouette against the sky and motheringfucking dare that winged asshole to come take you out.
He has a dragon? Good for him. You are what gives dragons daymares.
You open your mind and wait for your prey to take the bait.
====>Be the villain who is actually relevant to the plot
Sweeps in the past (but not many) you are ARANEA SERKET, though you neither cared for nor made much use of that name even as a wiggler. MARQUISE SPINNERET MINDFANG is simply more interesting, not to mention more likely to make the common rabble pay attention to you for the right reasons -- those being healthy fear and respect, rather than a careless assumption that as a scion of a line noted for empaths and healers you will be a weak-willed victim like all your genetic cousins in history to date.
You are nobody's victim.
There is no point in letting other people's emotions touch you, not when it's so much easier to touch them first. If you manage the manipulation well, you scarcely even need to bother with blatant displays of power. Subtle nudges until the fools who think to use you come to honestly want whatever you decide they should want are much more amusing, not to mention often effective even on those who can resist your outright control.
Occasionally, however, it's pleasant to dispense with subtlety and any pretense of concern and let the trolls in your grip know exactly how little control they have over their lives now that you have taken an interest.
"There will be no mutiny on my ship," you say as you pace in an ever-tightening circle around the pathetic band of saboteurs, cocooned in rope and held firmly in the pincers of your mind. "But do tell me about this so-called Sufferer and his outlawed ideology. Anything that can persuade such fearful wreckage as yourselves to dream of defying the natural order of the hemospectrum might even amuse me enough to cut your bonds before tossing you into the sea."
Lightning flashes through the clouds that conceal the tyrian light of the moon, glinting off the teeth of the sharks that circle your ship, drawn by the rich tang of blood that spilled into the waves before you put the attempted uprising down.
"You know nothing about the true nature of the hemospectrum, and you aren't worthy to speak His Holy Name!" one of the mutineers cries.
You smile. You tighten your mind around his. You snap your fingers.
"Then enlighten me," you say, while the loyal members of your crew drag the other refuse to the rail and heave the screaming corpses overboard.
====>Stop misinterpreting the commands!
What, you don't appreciate all this useful exposition? I'm hurt. Truly and deeply hurt.
But I suppose I'll forgive you...
...presuming you manage to give an unambiguous command to start the next section.
Do we have a deal?
---------------
---------------
---------------
*blinks*
That is completely and utterly NOT what I meant to write when I opened the Word document and decided to start chapter 7 tonight. Somehow I fail to be sorry. (Roxy cameo, yay!!!)
Anyway, we'll pick up with Vriska next time, shortly before Jothan trolls her.
---------------------------------------------
continue to part 27
I spent much of today unable to use my computer -- first because I'd scheduled a boot scan, then because of a completely inexplicable ten minute power outage, and then because I had to run the boot scan again -- so I did a bunch of useful chores I'd been putting off. Which basically means I took apart my box fan and cleaned it, cleaned the top of the closet where I store the fan during the winter (said closet is sort of a built-in wardrobe that occupies a corner of my bedroom; the top is so high up I had to stand on a footstool on my dresser to reach the back corners), vacuumed the whole apartment, and dusted a bunch of shelves. Also I went grocery shopping, which takes even longer on weekdays than weekends due to slightly variant bus schedules. *sigh*
My mom is currently down in DC helping Aunt Jan take reams of files and things out of cardboard boxes and put them into other storage materials, since Aunt Jan is apparently now allergic to cardboard on top of her numerous other allergies and therefore shouldn't be doing that herself despite needing it to be done. This leaves my dad home alone, still without power. As of this evening, Main St. (NJ 124) had electricity, plus a bunch of the town north of Main St. Almost nothing south of Main St. had power, though, and my parents live on the extreme south edge of town, about two blocks from where Madison runs into Chatham Township. But almost all of the downed trees have been removed, so hopefully fixing the broken wires shouldn't take more than another day or so.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-02 11:26 am (UTC)(also lmao at the roxy cameo. XD)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-02 11:57 pm (UTC)I am starting to think that Roxy (and possibly Meenah) should cameo in every story. Whether it makes any sense for them to be there or not. Because they are just that awesome. :-D
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-02 11:18 am (UTC)XD Lovely expositions, and I'm rather curious about just what is going on with Kurloz now... but yeah, on with the plot! ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-02 11:24 pm (UTC)Kurloz's POV section is set during the Summoner's rebellion, so whatever he may be doing in the present day (if he's even still alive, which I am saying nothing about one way or the other *evil grin*), it probably doesn't directly involve spaceports.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-02 05:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-02 11:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-02 06:08 pm (UTC)We likes the Ancestor exposition, precious, yes we does...
Your Meenah voice is spot-on, taking into account that this version of her is much nastier and more ruthless than the Beforan version from canon. And it still manages to hint at how that Meenah could have become this one (constant political maneuvering and betrayals, never being able to trust anyone for fear of being used and betrayed for her influence and position, possibly even more than one "friend" who turned on her--that has a way of eroding one's better nature) and make her slightly sympathetic in the process.
And the things hinted at by Kurloz's and Aranea's scenes...iiiiinteresting.
Did Kurloz, in fact, fail to put down Rufioh's rebellion? Did the Condesce force all the adult trolls to leave Alternia--or simply kill them all and forbid the off-planet trolls from returning, using her stash of matriorbs and jade-bloods to reseed the planet?
The notion that Vriska and Mindfang are highly atypical for their bloodline is a fascinating one, and makes a lot of sense. Empath powers don't lend themselves very well to violence and sociopathy, after all--unless, as is suggested here, one overcompensates for being the world's designated victim.
And that bit about the "true nature of the hemospectrum"--was that just cultist dogma coupled with a reference to Kankri's position outside of it, or is there something more to it than that? One theory I've seen about Karkat's blood is that it's not a mutation, but rather a bloodline that was systematically exterminated for being a threat to tyrian hegemony--by serving as living proof that the hemospectrum is not a straight line with a bottom and a top that lends itself to hierarchy, but a color wheel, with no beginning or end. Are you setting up for this sort of reveal? (Not that I expect you to say; just thinking out loud here.)
tl;dr: I love your take on the Ancestors, and am having a lot of fun with all of the hints you've dropped.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-02 11:55 pm (UTC)Kurloz: All I will say here is that I tried to take the violent, paint-with-blood, kill-you-over-bad-jokes Grand Highblood and meld in Kurloz's religious fanaticism and apparent ability to maintain at least some semblance of quadrant relationships despite being a creepy, mind-controlling whackjob.
Mindfang: This is the only way I can reconcile Aranea with Mindfang. On Beforus, she was socially awkward, tried to help and manage people, and was pretty tactful about her psychic gifts. On Alternia, I suspect she was still socially awkward but looked around and realized that if she didn't take the stance that a good offense is the best defense, the world was going to trample right over her. And then she went overboard, and probably convinced herself she was justified in doing so because she could feel exactly how much people now disliked her, and translated that to "I still need to control them and/or hit them first and hardest" because otherwise she'd get lynched, not just trampled by social expectations. And she probably further justified that by telling herself that everyone else was stupid and petty and couldn't see the world clearly and dispassionately like she could, so obviously she was the better and more important person and had the right to do whatever she needed to make her life simple/easy.
Or something like that; I'm basically thinking out loud myself. :-)