Poem: "A Perspective, Not the Truth"
Aug. 5th, 2014 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis is the freebie for today's fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from aoifes_isle, alexseanchai, zeeth_kyrah, and LJ user My_partner_doug. It also fills the "alias" square in my 5-22-14 card for the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
origfic_bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Polychrome Heroics series.
WARNING: This poem features some intense topics. The warnings include spoilers; highlight to read. There is government intervention with disastrous results, forced transformation, child death, mental torture of a telepath whose defenses are lousy, and disturbingly self-serving interpretations of 'truth.' Please consider your tastes and headspace carefully before deciding whether you want to read or skip this.
"A Perspective, Not the Truth"
When Agent Gabrielle Greene called him into her office,
Brad Harris knew she had a new assignment for him.
"Trepan, these are Sleuthhound --" she pointed to a man
with sad brown eyes and sagging jowls, "and Cryptid."
The latter is the most ordinary-looking woman
whom Brad has ever seen, blue-gray eyes and ashy hair.
"Code names only. We have a flicker report of a girl
who may have reality warping powers. Go find her."
"No problem," said Sleuthhound. "Then what?"
"Bring her in if you can," Agent Greene ordered,
"but in any case make sure she doesn't hurt anyone."
"Yes, ma'am," Brad said. He can work with that.
"Sleuthhound, Cryptid, who's driving?"
He tries to ignore the silly code names.
"I always drive," Cryptid said in a flat voice.
"You people don't know how to blend in."
When Brad saw the car, he couldn't blame her:
it's a five-year-old Honda Accord, lightly used,
in a forgettable shade of gray with a few scratches.
"So how do we find this girl?" Brad asked.
"We don't. I do," Sleuthhound said.
He poked Cryptid in the shoulder.
"Drive toward Arlington."
Brad read the mission file on the way,
using his vidwatch to skim for keywords.
So far this ten-year-old girl had shown
transfiguration, sorcery, and timebending
but there had been months between each incident.
It was hard to get someone put on house arrest
for flickering alone, rather than manifesting
a talent that was some kind of credible threat.
Well, there were other ways to handle matters,
as the Ventral Intelligence Agency was doing now.
"You're taking this pretty well, for a new guy,"
Sleuthhound said, watching Brad study.
"Usually they wonder if the intel is really reliable."
Brad shrugged. "What's to complain about?
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."
When they reached Arlington,
they spent a while driving in circles because
Sleuthhound said the target was moving.
Finally he announced, "She's in Glencarlyn Park."
They drove through the rolling green hills
and tufts of forest streaked with silver streams.
It was a nice day and families filled the park.
Parking the car Cryptid said, "I'll take the high watch.
Trepan, you make the approach. Sleuthhound, backup."
Then she turned into a pigeon and flew away.
Sleuthhound guided Brad to the right playground,
pointing out the little brunette and her mother.
Brad stolled over and said to the daughter,
"Heard you have quite a talent there, miss.
We're from the government. We're here to help you."
Everything went to hell amazingly fast after that.
The next thing Brad knew,
the boys playing volleyball were kangaroos,
there was an elephant crushing the merry-go-round,
not to mention a talking water fountain and
a hysterical jukebox wearing the remains
of a park custodian's dark green jumpsuit.
Brad's head was killing him and
his back ached all the way down to his butt.
So he did the sensible thing and shot the girl in the head.
Dead people generally don't use superpowers.
Everyone stopped turning into things they shouldn't be,
but a lot more people started screaming and running.
Brad was glad the VIA issued him a real gun,
even if it tended to make civilians panic.
Sleuthhound was trying to comfort the distraught mother.
Cryptid had shapeshifted back to human form and
taken over crowd control near the pavilion.
Brad was just trying to keep his head from exploding
under the strain of everyone's riotous emotions.
"You murdered my daughter right in front of me,
you evil bastard," the middle-aged woman wailed.
"I know, I know," Brad said. "You're thinking very loud."
"Oh," she said, "you're a telepath."
Then she hit him with a truck.
Then she drove a tank over him.
Then she threw him out of an airplane.
Then she fed him to a ravenous dinosaur.
Then she waterboarded him until he drowned.
Then she doused him with gasoline and lit him on fire.
Then she roped him to an atomic bomb and pushed the button.
It took a week for Brad to shake off the hallucinations.
When people hate you and you can read minds,
that tends to fill your head with all kinds of suck.
Agent Greene was sitting on his bed
when he finally woke up for real.
"This is becoming a habit," Brad said.
"Superpowers often have drawbacks,"
Agent Greene acknowledged.
"Yours is worth it, though.
We don't have many telepaths."
"Sure you still want this one?"
Brad asked as he sat up with a wince.
"I'm sure," Agent Greene replied.
"You aren't angry with how I handled the situation?"
Brad said, still expecting to get fired.
"Trepan, not many people could keep their heads
in the middle of a superpowered incident,
let alone make a perfect head shot
while actively being turned into a goat."
"So that's what happened," he muttered.
"Yes, we had you tested while you were out of it,"
Agent Greene said. "You have the horn buds and tail
of a New Zealand Kiko Goat. You'll get double hazard pay
for sustaining that damage in the line of duty."
That lifted his spirits right up.
Brad ran a hand through his hair
and found the small hard nubs.
They shouldn't be too hard to hide,
though he might need to grow his hair
a little longer from its current buzzcut.
He was willing to risk anything in the line of duty,
even losing his humanity, if it gave him a chance
to save a whole parkful of innocent people
from such an unspeakable fate.
"Thank you, ma'am," Brad said.
"I guess it's a good thing I was there."
"Are you sure that's true?" Agent Greene asked.
"Most people would be having second thoughts
after a mission that cost them so much."
Brad thought hard about how many more people
might have been turned into beasts or hardware
if he hadn't been there to stop that from happening.
"It's true for me, and that's what's important," he said firmly.
Agent Greene smiled faintly and patted his shoulder.
"I knew the VIA was the right place for you," she said.
* * *
Notes:
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
-- Marcus Aurelius
Glencarlyn Park is lovely facility.
New Zealand Kiko Goats are meat goats capable of subsisting on forage. They are independent and can be more aggressive than dairy goats.
aoifes_isle, alexseanchai, zeeth_kyrah, and LJ user My_partner_doug. It also fills the "alias" square in my 5-22-14 card for the origfic_bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Polychrome Heroics series.WARNING: This poem features some intense topics. The warnings include spoilers; highlight to read. There is government intervention with disastrous results, forced transformation, child death, mental torture of a telepath whose defenses are lousy, and disturbingly self-serving interpretations of 'truth.' Please consider your tastes and headspace carefully before deciding whether you want to read or skip this.
"A Perspective, Not the Truth"
When Agent Gabrielle Greene called him into her office,
Brad Harris knew she had a new assignment for him.
"Trepan, these are Sleuthhound --" she pointed to a man
with sad brown eyes and sagging jowls, "and Cryptid."
The latter is the most ordinary-looking woman
whom Brad has ever seen, blue-gray eyes and ashy hair.
"Code names only. We have a flicker report of a girl
who may have reality warping powers. Go find her."
"No problem," said Sleuthhound. "Then what?"
"Bring her in if you can," Agent Greene ordered,
"but in any case make sure she doesn't hurt anyone."
"Yes, ma'am," Brad said. He can work with that.
"Sleuthhound, Cryptid, who's driving?"
He tries to ignore the silly code names.
"I always drive," Cryptid said in a flat voice.
"You people don't know how to blend in."
When Brad saw the car, he couldn't blame her:
it's a five-year-old Honda Accord, lightly used,
in a forgettable shade of gray with a few scratches.
"So how do we find this girl?" Brad asked.
"We don't. I do," Sleuthhound said.
He poked Cryptid in the shoulder.
"Drive toward Arlington."
Brad read the mission file on the way,
using his vidwatch to skim for keywords.
So far this ten-year-old girl had shown
transfiguration, sorcery, and timebending
but there had been months between each incident.
It was hard to get someone put on house arrest
for flickering alone, rather than manifesting
a talent that was some kind of credible threat.
Well, there were other ways to handle matters,
as the Ventral Intelligence Agency was doing now.
"You're taking this pretty well, for a new guy,"
Sleuthhound said, watching Brad study.
"Usually they wonder if the intel is really reliable."
Brad shrugged. "What's to complain about?
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."
When they reached Arlington,
they spent a while driving in circles because
Sleuthhound said the target was moving.
Finally he announced, "She's in Glencarlyn Park."
They drove through the rolling green hills
and tufts of forest streaked with silver streams.
It was a nice day and families filled the park.
Parking the car Cryptid said, "I'll take the high watch.
Trepan, you make the approach. Sleuthhound, backup."
Then she turned into a pigeon and flew away.
Sleuthhound guided Brad to the right playground,
pointing out the little brunette and her mother.
Brad stolled over and said to the daughter,
"Heard you have quite a talent there, miss.
We're from the government. We're here to help you."
Everything went to hell amazingly fast after that.
The next thing Brad knew,
the boys playing volleyball were kangaroos,
there was an elephant crushing the merry-go-round,
not to mention a talking water fountain and
a hysterical jukebox wearing the remains
of a park custodian's dark green jumpsuit.
Brad's head was killing him and
his back ached all the way down to his butt.
So he did the sensible thing and shot the girl in the head.
Dead people generally don't use superpowers.
Everyone stopped turning into things they shouldn't be,
but a lot more people started screaming and running.
Brad was glad the VIA issued him a real gun,
even if it tended to make civilians panic.
Sleuthhound was trying to comfort the distraught mother.
Cryptid had shapeshifted back to human form and
taken over crowd control near the pavilion.
Brad was just trying to keep his head from exploding
under the strain of everyone's riotous emotions.
"You murdered my daughter right in front of me,
you evil bastard," the middle-aged woman wailed.
"I know, I know," Brad said. "You're thinking very loud."
"Oh," she said, "you're a telepath."
Then she hit him with a truck.
Then she drove a tank over him.
Then she threw him out of an airplane.
Then she fed him to a ravenous dinosaur.
Then she waterboarded him until he drowned.
Then she doused him with gasoline and lit him on fire.
Then she roped him to an atomic bomb and pushed the button.
It took a week for Brad to shake off the hallucinations.
When people hate you and you can read minds,
that tends to fill your head with all kinds of suck.
Agent Greene was sitting on his bed
when he finally woke up for real.
"This is becoming a habit," Brad said.
"Superpowers often have drawbacks,"
Agent Greene acknowledged.
"Yours is worth it, though.
We don't have many telepaths."
"Sure you still want this one?"
Brad asked as he sat up with a wince.
"I'm sure," Agent Greene replied.
"You aren't angry with how I handled the situation?"
Brad said, still expecting to get fired.
"Trepan, not many people could keep their heads
in the middle of a superpowered incident,
let alone make a perfect head shot
while actively being turned into a goat."
"So that's what happened," he muttered.
"Yes, we had you tested while you were out of it,"
Agent Greene said. "You have the horn buds and tail
of a New Zealand Kiko Goat. You'll get double hazard pay
for sustaining that damage in the line of duty."
That lifted his spirits right up.
Brad ran a hand through his hair
and found the small hard nubs.
They shouldn't be too hard to hide,
though he might need to grow his hair
a little longer from its current buzzcut.
He was willing to risk anything in the line of duty,
even losing his humanity, if it gave him a chance
to save a whole parkful of innocent people
from such an unspeakable fate.
"Thank you, ma'am," Brad said.
"I guess it's a good thing I was there."
"Are you sure that's true?" Agent Greene asked.
"Most people would be having second thoughts
after a mission that cost them so much."
Brad thought hard about how many more people
might have been turned into beasts or hardware
if he hadn't been there to stop that from happening.
"It's true for me, and that's what's important," he said firmly.
Agent Greene smiled faintly and patted his shoulder.
"I knew the VIA was the right place for you," she said.
* * *
Notes:
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
-- Marcus Aurelius
Glencarlyn Park is lovely facility.
New Zealand Kiko Goats are meat goats capable of subsisting on forage. They are independent and can be more aggressive than dairy goats.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-05 11:32 pm (UTC)Yes...
Date: 2014-08-05 11:50 pm (UTC)But it could also have gone a lot better than sending out a guy who is not the kind of hero he thinks he is, and panicking a superkid into a tragedy.
Uhh....
Date: 2014-08-06 12:08 am (UTC)- Do not approach a minor who is minding her own business and obeying the law.
- Do not attempt to interfere with a parent's right to decide for their minor child IF they need to speak to Mr. Federal Agent.
- DO NOT DROP EMOTIONAL NUKES on an already fragile situation. "I'm from the government; I'm here to help," VERY RARELY gains instantaneous trust, respect or even calm. What it generally does is PROVOKE PANIC.
And this jerk thinks murdering the kid was a good solution???
HM. New prompt idea forming.
Re: Uhh....
Date: 2014-08-06 12:32 am (UTC)Yes. However ...
- They did not hire him for his sense, but for his telepathy and his willingness to follow orders.
- This particular mess could have been avoided. The matter of talent might later have been worked out with less harm done. But it might also have blown up somewhere else with nobody on the spot willing or able to stop it. Just as this tragedy happened because someone was a bit too forward, others have happened because someone hesitated or was downright unwilling to pull a trigger.
>> - Do not approach a minor who is minding her own business and obeying the law. <<
That pretty much applies to everyone all the time. Don't bug people who are being good, just in case one of them might be a Person of Mass Destruction.
>> - Do not attempt to interfere with a parent's right to decide for their minor child IF they need to speak to Mr. Federal Agent. <<
Yeah, parental rights have some stickier bits in Terramagne.
>> - DO NOT DROP EMOTIONAL NUKES on an already fragile situation. "I'm from the government; I'm here to help," VERY RARELY gains instantaneous trust, respect or even calm. What it generally does is PROVOKE PANIC. <<
Someone clearly has not seen all the training tapes he needs to.
>> And this jerk thinks murdering the kid was a good solution??? <<
In Brad's mind, "make sure she doesn't hurt anyone" is a valid order, one of at least two options, and he followed it. He thinks that stopping the girl from transforming more people into animals or objects was a day-saving action. Since most of his contact with soups has been with supervillains, he has a low opinion of them and thus doesn't count the cost as high as if he'd killed an ordinary person; but he's done that too with robbers and such, and not lost much sleep over it.
He's pretty good at telling himself he's doing the right thing, and finding some secure line from which to suspend his disbelief.
You will note that I let the mother's vengeance play out in full. The great thing about executing someone in effigy is that you don't have to stop after that first death.
>> HM. New prompt idea forming. <<
Oh, this should be fun ...
Re: Uhh....
Date: 2014-08-06 12:41 am (UTC)But part of me is actively wishing for him to get hoist on his own petard, Wylie Coyote style.
Re: Uhh....
Date: 2014-08-06 12:47 am (UTC)Re: Uhh....
Date: 2014-08-06 12:56 am (UTC)Earthquake pills... Make him babysit two bored kittens he CANNOT harm or neglect.
Y'know, HORRIBLE things.
Re: Uhh....
Date: 2014-08-28 10:18 pm (UTC)*chuckle* Beegold and Treegold, even.
EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 01:27 am (UTC)I'm also starting to hate the VIA, as well.
Re: EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 01:31 am (UTC)Brad wants to think of himself as a good guy. He tries to be a good guy.
He just kinda sucks at it.
>> I'm also starting to hate the VIA, as well. <<
All cultures have their flaws. In Terramagne, a pervasive issue falls in espionage. Any job that has lying as a job requirement is going to have trouble attracting ethical workers. Now add superpowers to that mix.
Things like the VIA are why there is no official bureau of superpowered affairs.
Re: EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 01:38 am (UTC)Y'know, I read the ENTIRE 'Monster House' series, and didn't get as many willies from that, as I got from this guy and the VIA.
He needs a good whack from a clue-by-four.
Re: EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 08:16 am (UTC)Y'know, I read the ENTIRE 'Monster House' series, and didn't get as many willies from that, as I got from this guy and the VIA. <<
I'm flattered.
Of course, Monster House is warm horror. It's what you get when you cross classic horror motifs like monsters and haunted houses with family fluff. And Frankenstein's Family is gothic fluff.
Polychrome Heroics draws its primary influence from rollicky superhero comics. But get down in the gutter and you can tell I've read stuff like The Watchmen. While much of Terramagne is beautiful, the gritty underbelly has some truly appalling grime.
*chuckle* And even Brad-the-idiot-dick would have told Zod and so-called-Superman to take their pissing contest out of the city and not mash the civilians.
>> He needs a good whack from a clue-by-four. <<
Indeed he does. There's a line of fans tapping bats and bricks against their hands. I think when y'all get through with him, Brad's going to wish he'd stayed with the mommy who was mentally running him over with trucks, because the things folks are suggesting are going to hurt a lot worse.
Re: EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 01:44 am (UTC)I want to see this man get some sense, and some remorse, knocked into him. If it's by someone on the order of Granny Whammy on the ethical/respectable scale, all the better.
Re: EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 09:11 am (UTC)Brad's sense of ethics is so bent, you could use it for a paperclip.
I think that Do Not Fuck With The Mommy is a natural law that prevails across a majority of species, and only a fool ignores it.
>> I want to see this man get some sense, and some remorse, knocked into him. If it's by someone on the order of Granny Whammy on the ethical/respectable scale, all the better. <<
That is proving to be a very popular sentiment.
*snicker* Maybe I should just take the line that's wrapping around the block, divide it in two, and make him run the gauntlet down the middle.
Re: EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 04:51 am (UTC)That makes Phil Coulson doubly amazing.. SHIELD was supposed to be an ethical organization, but they do so much on the down-low, with such questionable backers, that it has to be hard to stay that way.
With just two poems on them, I'm starting to think of the VIA as SHIELD gone wrong, actually. Who backs these guys?
Re: EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 07:50 am (UTC)Was that deliberate, Ysabet? I'm going to bet it was.
Re: EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 08:09 am (UTC)Something like that, yes. Really it's just a logical extrapolation of what happens when something isn't allowed to express itself openly; it turns in on itself.
On a different and amusing note, I finally found a supervillain organization NOT headed by a single charismatic leader. Kraken has been bicephalic since its origins in WWI, and selects for smart minions as much as they can manage.
>> I keep coming back to the V in VIA. Ventral, so says school biology and a long history of watching ER, as opposed to dorsal. Underneath, or, as my brain immediately supplied and has insisted upon since, underbelly.
Was that deliberate, Ysabet? I'm going to bet it was. <<
Why yes, yes it was.
Now think of the other meaning of "vent" in biology.
Re: EEK
Date: 2014-08-06 08:09 am (UTC)The rule is: "Power TENDS TO corrupt; absolute power TENDS TO corrupt absolutely." It's never quite 100%. You're always going to have a Sam Gamgee who tells the Ring of Doom, "But I don't want to rule the world. I'm a gardener, not a general. You're just being bloody daft."
>> SHIELD was supposed to be an ethical organization, but they do so much on the down-low, with such questionable backers, that it has to be hard to stay that way. <<
That's exactly what I wanted to explore with Brad. Most people, you put them on a slippery slope and they're gonna skate.
>> With just two poems on them, I'm starting to think of the VIA as SHIELD gone wrong, actually. <<
There are some parallels, although the VIA is American rather than clandestinely global.
>> Who backs these guys? <<
Officially, nobody. They're a shadow organization pulled together from CIA, FBI, and the rest of the alphabet soup. Plausible deniability is a thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-06 10:49 pm (UTC)Okay...
Date: 2014-08-06 10:57 pm (UTC)Then I did it right. It's meant to be ambiguous and uncomfortable.
>> On the one hand it does a good job with a more realistic understanding of superpowers <<
Thank you!
>> there's going to be regulation, unintentional endangerment, and some not very nice judgment calls intended to save lives <<
It's more like an attempt at regulation. The VIA is not altogether official, because people keep quashing efforts to establish an official agency of superpowers; and scenes like this are precisely why it gets quashed every time it comes up. But if they were official and open and well trained, that would cut down on the tendency for things like this to happen.
Compare it with SPOON which is open and organized, but not formally affiliated with the government, and sometimes too slow to pull the trigger when that's the only way to stop the casualty meter climbing.
>> but I think in this case it winds up being a little too grim and gritty for my tastes. <<
That's okay. Not everyone has to like all the poems or tones. I don't often want to write things this dark -- it's not my usual taste -- but I don't like leaving out important parts of a storyline. In a world with superpowers, some people will abuse theirs and become supervillains. But for me, the really creepy ones are those who do heinous things as a means to a theoretically laudable end, and believe they are on the side of right.
Also I realized that I had a handful of supervillains sliding toward the light, but nobody going the other direction, and frankly the road to hell is a lot wider. So I felt that needed to be addressed.
And now everyone wants to beat Brad with cluebats. Seriously. There is a line.
Re: Okay...
Date: 2014-08-07 04:25 pm (UTC)Re: Okay...
Date: 2014-08-25 11:31 pm (UTC)That's okay, and thanks for sharing.
>> So my dislike for grim and gritty here isn't just "hey, something nasty happened and I don't like having this in my spandex-punching-superscience-fantasy," but for nearly my whole life, superhero comics have been migrating through this pattern of trying to have a more "realistic" edge, especially when you throw in guns. So I'm having more of a "oh no, grimdark supers again" reaction. <<
Agreed. One thing I wanted to do with Terramagne was explore a setting a bit more sane than DC (psychotic) or Marvel (racist as fuck). As it contains people, it necessarily has its flaws, but I'm trying to show how those are exceptions in Terramagne -- and not highly thought of.
>> Which, eh, is more and more my problem the more I think about it. <<
You're not off base, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-11 04:40 pm (UTC)I wonder how many other people ended up with assorted nonnative hardware after that incident.
This is the sort of idiocy that leads to a self-perceived hero generating a string of nemeses of their very own.
Thoughts
Date: 2014-08-25 05:27 am (UTC)Yeah, Brad is Mr. Unpopular.
>> I wonder how many other people ended up with assorted nonnative hardware after that incident. <<
I'm not sure. Other people were seen reverting. They may all have reverted back to normal, or partially, or some not. My suspicion is that one or a few people might have vestigial effects -- horns, a tail, that sort of thing.
There's also the question of why Brad didn't revert. It might have been random, or because killing the caster made it permanent, or because Brad was a soup too, or because the girl had a split second to realize that he was going to kill her and permed the effect. I believe the latter two are most likely.
>> This is the sort of idiocy that leads to a self-perceived hero generating a string of nemeses of their very own. <<
True. He has already jailed at least a couple of other soups who probably resent him. Cherry Bomb isn't that much of a threat, but the Reamer is a real nutjob.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-06 03:45 am (UTC)Only one other author that I can think of can do that.
His name is Straczynski.
That's about the biggest compliment I can give an author.
One thing, though. These people have karma coming. Even if I have to commission it personally. Maybe I can't do that in the real world, [temporal adverb deleted]... but I can damn well do it in this one. *tight feral grinchy look*
Thank you!
Date: 2014-08-06 03:56 am (UTC)I'm starting to think that Brad's real superpower may be pissing people off. :D
>> Only one other author that I can think of can do that.
His name is Straczynski.
That's about the biggest compliment I can give an author. <<
*bow, flourish* I am honored.
>> One thing, though. These people have karma coming. Even if I have to commission it personally. Maybe I can't do that in the real world, [temporal adverb deleted]... but I can damn well do it in this one. <<
Yep, that is an option. Evidently there will be a line ...
>> *tight feral grinchy look* <<
Do you have a wonderful, awful idea?
Re: Thank you!
Date: 2014-08-06 05:59 pm (UTC)Heh!
Do you have a wonderful, awful idea?
LOL! I have that face as an icon over on Dreamwidth... :)
Re: Thank you!
Date: 2014-08-06 07:16 pm (UTC)LOL! I have that face as an icon over on Dreamwidth... :) <<
Thoughts
Date: 2014-08-28 10:10 pm (UTC)I'm glad it worked. This one is meant to be disturbing.
>> Only one other author that I can think of can do that.
His name is Straczynski.
That's about the biggest compliment I can give an author. <<
I am duly honored.
>> One thing, though. These people have karma coming. <<
Yeah, that line goes around the block.
>> Even if I have to commission it personally. Maybe I can't do that in the real world, [temporal adverb deleted]... but I can damn well do it in this one. *tight feral grinchy look* <<
Anyone can prompt for it during an open prompt call. Commissions jump to the head of the line, though, if you have a specific idea for whomping Brad & company.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-06 04:36 am (UTC)^ a
Man, Brad is a hero.
Thank you!
Date: 2014-08-28 09:56 pm (UTC)^ a <<
Fixed.
>> Man, Brad is a hero. <<
0_o For sufficiently loose definitions.
Re: Thank you!
Date: 2014-08-29 01:00 am (UTC)Also noticed on reread:
• Brad stolled over
→ strolled
• comfort the disdraught mother.
→ distraught
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-07 12:46 am (UTC)I nearly choked on my water at this point. This is the most terrifying pair of sentences in the world, so it's no wonder hell broke loose then.
That Brad fellow is very lucky Lyria wasn't the girl's mother. When she gets angry, she gets *creative*. A head shot... I assume brain splattered everywhere? That's one of the few things Lyria can't revive someone from. So once it was clear to her that her girl was dead beyond reviving, that Brad fellow would soon be begging for death. Tortured by someone who can keep you alive or revive you from anything short of brain damage? She could keep torturing him for years. And she knows enough mind magic to prevent him going insane from it. What's more, she knows soul magic, and knows how to inflict damage on a soul. She could destroy him utterly, soul and all, if she wanted.
Thoughts
Date: 2014-08-28 09:09 pm (UTC)I nearly choked on my water at this point. This is the most terrifying pair of sentences in the world, so it's no wonder hell broke loose then. <<
Well, yes. Brad is not the sharpest marble in the stack. He's the kind of guy who gets hired by police departments that have an upper IQ limit on hiring people.
>> That Brad fellow is very lucky Lyria wasn't the girl's mother. When she gets angry, she gets *creative*. A head shot... I assume brain splattered everywhere? That's one of the few things Lyria can't revive someone from. <<
Brains everywhere, and traumatized observers. Brad is lucky that a lot of people don't know what he's doing.
>> What's more, she knows soul magic, and knows how to inflict damage on a soul. She could destroy him utterly, soul and all, if she wanted. <<
There are a few, very few, characters with Soul Magic in this setting.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-08-29 06:41 am (UTC)BWAH HA HA HA!!! XD
He's the kind of guy who gets hired by police departments that have an upper IQ limit on hiring people.
Don't they all?
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-08-29 06:49 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-08-29 06:54 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-08-29 07:21 am (UTC)There are intelligent bullies. They are fucking dangerous. Most bullies are dumb, and most cop bullies seem to fit that pattern. But in certain places you'll find smart bullies, like in academia. They tend to break people, and they tend to get away with it because they take care not to get caught doing anything actionable.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2014-08-29 07:53 am (UTC)Spelling
Date: 2018-04-02 01:08 am (UTC)Probably you wanted "distraught"?
Re: Spelling
Date: 2018-04-02 01:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-24 10:36 am (UTC)No good interaction has ever followed this statement. Brad needs to work on his icebreakers.
Brad is taking a path towards evil, sure, but he's meandering there. He doesn't want to acknowledge what he's doing even as he wants to keep doing it. Those kinds of people never end well.