Scaramouche, Scaramouche

(author’s note: this isn’t exactly canonical as such; this is more of a character piece, with me getting a feel for cassian and letting him talk to people.)

Cassian's dreams tended toward “vague as fuck” or “vivid miserable flashback”, so when he started to dream about following a big scruffy skinny black tomcat through an empty city, he kept following the cat even through dawning lucidity just for the sake of it being something new.

It wasn't a blur, and it wasn't charred ruins and the scent of something beyond ordinary death.

It was rainy foggy streets, the scent of wet asphalt, and a twinge in his left knee.

“Waow,” demanded the cat. He had a funny rough kind of voice, like he'd been yowling his little head off on a fence all night. “Wwwuuu...aow?”

“I'm coming,” Cassian griped.

“WAOW.” The cat shook water off his feet, and stared at Cassian.

“Okay, I--”

“WAOW!”

“I'm coming! You--”

“WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW.”

“Holy fuck, OKAY! You have four legs, you little shit. I only have two. Give an old guy a break.”

“Waow.” The cat gave him a smuggish slow blink and then bounced off into the drizzly rain, tail an inverted J, the tiny bell on his collar jingling.

“Little shit,” Cassian sighed again, and followed.

Down the road, out of town, out beyond the usual boundaries of the cities of his dreams.

( ... )

Profile crack for the three punkass henchpunks! Haha their birth dates elude me. This is roughed-in, by no means final XD

( a.k.a. the colour kids. )

"What's the point in hiding from the fact that we're not infallible beings?"

Thaeron looked back over his shoulder with a faint scowl.

"And who, exactly, set the rule that says we MUST be? Honestly, trying to be perfect is a fools' errand. Trying to live up to every expectation is condemning yourself to the immense desire to go bop your head against a wall. These are not goals that ANYONE can reach. Try to, and all you do is bind yourself more and more to unhappiness. Inevitable unhappiness. The harder we try to be perfect, the less we'll manage it, too. We'll keep on making mistakes - and make more and more as we keep on trying to attain this impossible goal, this shining nebulous dream..."

He snorted.

"We can never always be everything expected of us, you know. No one can. Not even the one who put us here. Not ever. All of us will, at some point in time, sneeze tea out our noses. We will fall up the stairs, lose patience with word puzzles and people, snap at those people, and sometimes be selfish - which isn't always a bad thing, but I digress." A gesture. "Look, we can be just as much blinkered by our hopes and fears as can any human, elf, fae, youma, drow or nu. And you know? The sooner we learn to go 'well, that's just how it is to be a created being - I fouled up this time and I'll make amends and avoid that situation next time' the better."

He was starting to pace a bit now and his voice rose a bit. Not in anger, but - well, when he was passionate about something, it showed.

( iha shaariputra ruupam shuunyataa shuunyataiva ruupam )

Oh hi. Welcome to episode one of Creepy Tricks What One Can Pull Off With The Dark If One Has Enough Clout With It'. I'm your host, Jan Rosencrantz, a.k.a. the artist formerly known as 'that one guy bisected by Kali-Ma'. It'd probably make more sense to get a guy who can actually DO these things to explain 'em but the naïb thinks I'm the best guy for the job, so I'm giving it a whirl. Why the hell not?

Right. So. Assuming people know what the Dark is; for those unclear I can give a more detailed description in comments. To sum up, it's one of five primal elements that make up the framework of things in general. Its complement is Light. THE DARK IS NOT EVIL. Can we clear that up, now? By extensions USERS OF THE DARK ARE NOT EVIL BY DEFAULT. Can people be idiots with it, yes they can, but painting Prince Ansem as evil on account of because he is Dark is vaaaaaastly stupid. He did idiotic things in the NAME of the Dark; the Dark did not make him do these things. THE DARK ITSELF AS AN ELEMENT DOES NOT CONTROL PEOPLE FROM WITHIN. It can be used as a means of control, but the Dark itself is not possessed of a malevolent will and nor is its Lady. I'd also like to clear up that PEOPLE WHOM THE DARK IS USED SUCCESSFULLY AGAINST ARE NOT DUPES, FOOLS OR WEAKLINGS. Perpetuate that line of crap and I'll defenestrate you for your ig'nance and for vexin' me.

Let me explain. Recollect Losstarot making me think I was waving his arm around? Right. Now consider my personality. Do I look weak-willed or wishy-washy to you? Come on, now, I make mules look like wafflers. I had one whole hell of a damaged heart, BUT I was able to ward it using the Dark myself. So why-oh-why was Losstarot able to work his eerie mojo on me?

Subtlety and strength. He has a lot more power than I and has had a great deal of time to hone his skills. Further, there was an emotion he could use to trip me up - my pride. Dark-users who can see hearts can use this skill to pinpoint the best way with which to affect their target (I won't say victim because in the case of Losstarot and Riot, the point was not to harm). In my case, pride was the point where I had blinkers on.

In the cases of Greene and Hardin it was desire - or more accurately love.

(A CAVEAT LECTOR: beyond this point I'm going to be discussing curses, illusions, and exploitation of people's hearts via unscrupulous, unethical use of the Dark. If you're squicked out or set to flailing by this (which is understandable) you prrrrrobably don't want to read on. If you do want to read on but you become squicked out or set to flailing anyhow, I'm sorry about that and I'll do my best to assuage the "OH MY FUCK, ROSENCRANTZ, YOU DOUCHE HOUND". This is not a happy fun topic, in this post. I swear I'll be discussing non-dick uses of the Dark later!)

( more of my nonsense beyond this here link. )

Ha ha ha ha MOAR MAZOKU INFO DUMP! And some about the Fae!

brought to you by the letters Q and X and the fact that Yukie is amused by Orlouge using the 'ware' pronoun.

( stuff and things )

- But this actually has an explanation.

Vicky's friend Sidonie Dumont and Jer's boyfriend Aaron MacCumhaill are in a band. Right now it has no name. (Aaron says, "I wanted to call it 'The The Band' but Zoe pelted me with Ringalos.") But it's them, Tomas Yamanaka, Asher Singh, and Zoe Daine. They play like - Gothish nerdy triphop about popculture, horror mmovies, urban legends and creepy folktakes from their respective backgrounds.

Aaron is lead guitar and actually plays classically. He's also a bit of a technomancer.

His amp is ancient and sometimes it dies.

So when that happens, usually Asher (who plays the piano absurdly well) steps in, and he'll get topics from the audience and then...start rapping.

So one time someone requested something about necromancy, and Asher did this -

( break it down, yo. )

TITLE: Der Erhängte
CHARACTERS: Jer and Lian
SUMMARY: It's hard to find someone who's gone out of his way to make himself hard to find! Least he could have done is left a note...
RATING: PG because Jer is occasionally prone to colourful phraseology.
NOTES: Learning the Tarot by Joan Bunning is my reference book for this. ^^

( i do not see the hanged man )

TITLE: There is a Light; or, Uphill Both Ways
CHARACTERS: Vicky and Jeremiah
SUMMARY: Paladins' Ordeals in bits and pieces.
RATING: To be on the safe side 14A since there'll be brawling and mindscrewiness later.
NOTES: Aaatypos! Also, Sir belongs to Drakon. ^^

( 1: NightWalk )

( 2: Up )

( 3: Open Air )

( 4: Down )

( 6: In the Dark )

( 7: Eventually )

( 8: Inside Us All Along )

TITLE: Garden of Muses
CHARACTERS: Vicky and Aurora
SUMMARY: Speculative 'maybe they first met like this?' type fiction thing! Yay. Vicky is 19 here, so it's two years before the fustercluck and before the other stuff I've written, in which she's 21.
RATING: G. Total G. I know, man.
NOTES: It will give you cavities. Also possibly typos.

( another morning )

For various things!

( KH Tenebrous )

( Kupopolis )

( Stuff about the Greenes )