paradisa | Fifty Ninth Sip

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corporal maladict

Fifty Ninth Sip

[Maladict is frustrated. It's bad enough the castle favours Earth holidays above all others, but now this...idiocy has occurred. She doesn't mind the drinks turning into alcohol, as was the case in other years, because after all, people being drunk at this time of the year on the Disc was fairly regular.

...But this was something else entirely]

Another well spent Hogswatch in this ridiculous place, then. When you people stop being idiots, you'll get your gifts from me.

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[She cocks her head to one side, confused]

A New Yera's....Baby? I thought Christmas was about a baby?

There are a lot of baby things, America is big on babies. [he takes a drag off his cigarette]. Have you heard about the one with the groundhog yet?

...Sounds a bit weird, if you ask me.

[She frowns, confused] There's something to do with a giant rodent?

He's not giant, he's ... I dunno. [he gestures about the rough size of an Earth groundhog] Yea big?

There's this urban legend that he comes up out of hibernation on a certain day every year, and if he sees his shadow, it means winter's gonna be longer. Which, honestly, it's kinda bull, because depending on where the sun is ...

[S H R U G.]

[What is wrong with Earth, seriously. She wants to know how your planet hasn't exploded from stupid yet]

But don't the seasons just...happen anyway. I know you only have four of them in one year, but they run fairly clockwork, don't they?

[he wonders that himself, sometimes. it is a m y s t e r y]

They do, yeah. People just kind of... make random shit up to explain them, instead of stuff that makes sense. I don't get half of it, either. A lot of it is stuff that used to be really old traditions from other cultures, but they've been twisted around and fucked up by people who thought they could make 'em better. ... That must not happen a lot on the Disc, yeah? I mean.... belief counts a lot more for you. And I'm starting to think that's a really good thing, the longer I'm here.

Not really, no. Different Gods have their own rules and whatever, but they all share the universe and so none can claim such and such a thing as theirs and theirs alone, unless of course they are actually directly involved in it. Like the Hogfather.

[She smiles a little wanly] I don't understand world that seem to treat belief as an option. Like it doesn't matter. It's so strange to me, that in some worlds it's just not that powerful.

Yeah ... I mean ... even if people don't believe in a God, or something like that ... [he pauses to ash his cigarette and watch the embers die at his feet, because it is the Introspective Teen thing to do. also because, well, fire is neat]

... I always figured people should believe in something, even if it's as hokey as just believing in themselves, or in a role model, or a dream.

Then they die, as mine did. [She doesn't seem all that choked up about that. Nuggan was a dick]

Exactly. It gives them something to cling onto.

Edited 2013-01-30 20:49 (UTC)

... Your god's dead? I don't think you ever told me about that one. [and then, because occasionally he has to be Master of the Obvious] You don't sound too jazzed about it, though.

[She takes a drag of her cigarette, shrugging]

Nuggan was an asshole. And insane. He kept making lists of things he wouldn't allow. Abominations, he called them. Started out with things like dwarves and chocolate, which drove away major trade in Borogravia and put everything on a decline. Eventually the abominations started to get more...erratic towards the end. Babies. The colour blue. The sort of things you couldn't actively avoid.

[She narrows her eyes a little, staring off into the distance]

He's the reason women have roughly the same amount of rights as a pet hamster in my county.

[another drag off his cigarette, as he looks out over the castle] I think he migrated over here, instead of dying, and started the Republican party.

[She looks confused for a moment, because she's still not sure how certain Earth things work. Still, that's besides the point]

Then you have my deepest sympathies.

Eh, there's another party, they're supposed to balance them out. Supposed to. There're ... varying degrees of success.

Most places in the Disc have kings or queens. Ankh Morpork has the Patrician, but he was more a calm, hostile takeover, from what I understand.

[he laughs] How the fuck do you have a calm hostile takeover?

From what I learned, the people of the city were fed up the current rulers, what with the mad kings and the even madder patricians. [She shrugs] Vetinari was in the right place at the right time, I suppose.

But that's only what I've learned on the grapevine. Ankh Morpork is a long way away, and newspapers are one of those abominations unto Nuggan. It makes learning about what else is happening on the Disc very hard.

Sounds like playing one really really long, complicated game of Telephone.

Those are the machines you can hear people speak through, right?

Yeah, they call the game "Telephone" because of how those used to work, when they were first invented. Because they were all kind of shitty.

The idea of the game is, everyone stands in a line, and the first person makes up a sentence, like "Mark has chicken pox", and whispers it in the second person's ear. Then they whisper what they heard into the next person's ear, and so on. By the time it gets to the end, usually someone somewhere couldn't hear for shit, and the last person ends up with something like "Mars has chicks with cocks".

[She chuckles here] No doubt Nikola would have an opinion on that.

Oh. So the information changes with each person's perception of what they received.

Yeah, exactly. The goal of the game is to get something really, really ridiculous by the time it gets to the other end ... it's funnier when you have a whole long line of people.

Now that would be entertaining to see.

Wonder if we could organize one somehow... find a way to get it to spread through the whole place, but without anyone using their journal ...

[great, now you've got him thinking]

Just wait until the castle locks us all in a room again and get presto.

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hard_talker - 2013-02-12 03:40 (UTC) - Expand

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mal_addict - 2013-02-12 20:26 (UTC) - Expand

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