The Directors (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
productions) wrote2014-05-26 09:49 pm
productions) wrote2014-05-26 09:49 pm
Entry tags:
graveyard
You awaken in a darkened theatre.
In front of you is an enormous cinema screen. On it plays everything that's currently happening in the castle, accompanied by appropriate sound effects and background instrumentals when fitting. The seat you're sitting on is large and plush, and while there's many of them, there's enough room in the theatre for you to fully recline the seat into a comfortable bed if you wish. Under each seat is a sleeping mask and noise-cancelling headphones, in case you'd like to take a break from watching the show.
Follow the stairs up and you'll reach what should be the projection room. There are no projectors in here, however; it is simply a large and well-lit room above the main seating area, and a good place to hang out with your fellow eliminated contestants if shouting at each other across the aisles proves too much to handle.
If you leave the theatre through the door in the back, you'll find yourself in a hall. On one end is a concession stand. It's stocked with standard movie snacks - popcorn, candy and the like - but if you're feeling the urge for something else, you'll be able to find it stocked somewhere in the back. On the other end is a table with thirty wrapped bags and a placard reading 'A star for our stars! Please accept these lovely giftbags as a token of appreciation for your hard work, sponsored by [illegible smudge]'. Each bag has a tag bearing the name of someone in the mansion; you will only be able to open the bag with your name on it. As soon as you open it, any memories that have been taken from you, including those of the other people in the mansion that you may have forgotten, will be returned in their entirety. Within the bag are also objects from your home that you may want for your stay here, though you will find no weapons.
Past the hall is another door, this one wooden and seemingly decayed. If you go inside, you'll find a fairly simple, wooden room, that is empty except for a very large machine. It is difficult to tell what the machine is for; it has a touch screen that appears to be a control panel, as well as a large open space that seems to be part of the machine, but the machine is dead and won't turn on no matter what you do.
Still, at least you aren't alone here. You have your fellow players, as well as a few guests to keep you company.
Oh, and one more thing. At midnight following each execution, once all those who've died that week have woken up, a video will begin to play on screen.
no subject
Interesting. Most of your people find a more indirect way to explain they choose to protect certain individuals and will gladly do harm upon any of the rest. Though I guess technically either way it's for "Family".
[The word is more heterogenous to her speech than "Experience" was in the RPG. She looks back at Eridan as if to exchange a wry self-deprecatory glance and explain "We Dont Have That Back Home". He obviously does not return the eye contact because he is dead, along with almost literally every other troll who has ever lived, and that entire particular sense of "home" in general. Kanaya did not think through how emotional this sight would make her, like a roleplayer who signed up for the season of Murder Manor where Spain didn't survive unharmed the whole game, and her face forms a brief, intense frown, which she wipes off her face by the time she returns her gaze to Peko.]
I keep hearing this platitude justification for the supposedly ideal mass cooperation so rarely achieved in reality. "Everyone has a family." Is that how it goes? Inflicting the loss of a family member on another human being is inexcusable, and everyone is a member of a family, rendering crime in general immoral? [Obviously Peko must be operating on some other kind of moral code. What that is has yet to be seen in full.]
no subject
[It's Complicated, the notions of family Peko has. She notices the way Kanaya looks toward Eridan, but doesn't comment on it. Really, it's hard not to think that there's some relationship between these weird aliens. Kanaya, Feferi, Eridan. When everyone else seems to be some kind of human (Sebastian and Wriggle necessarily excluded), it doesn't seem like a far jump to think of these two as having known each other in the past.
She stays silent a moment longer at Kanaya's mention of that particular platitude, her arms staying crossed comfortably -- or defensively? -- as she gives it careful consideration.]
I have heard that sentiment. [There's a brief glance toward Freud, just a moment, before she forces herself to look back to Kanaya.] I am perhaps not the best person for such a discussion. I would sacrifice as many lives as necessary for the sake of my young master.
[At least... she admits it?]
no subject
[At least she admits it. There's something Kanaya really likes about Peko... it's just also worrying. The bottom falls out under a person who thinks like that in the wrong place. Literally in Murder Manor.]
I just have to ask... where... other people factor into that particular thought process. [Saying "what if Fuyuhiko dies or something else drastic changes" is too rude. She also feels like saying "it's too sad being a tool" would be useless and insensitive. If Peko should serve a specific purpose, so be it - maybe - she also deserves to have a personal life alongside that at the very least, though. "Instead of that" would be the ideal but Kanaya's not holding her breath there. Maybe hitmanhood is a decent and fulfilling career. To have nothing, to be nothing outside of that is the real tragedy for Kanaya. Peko has these flickers of sentiment for Nanami, Austria, Maribelle - so faint. For them to not exist in her heart seems worse than blindness, and her excessively technical inquiry masks just how sad and lonely that place seems, if her happy and friendly behaviors are really a mandatory imitation of how "normal people" pass the time.] Unless the avoidance of any excessive thought process at all is itself another component of the condition?
no subject
[She repeats it as if it were the first time she had ever given it thought. And in this particular context, it is, in a manner of speaking. Her priorities fall Fuyuhiko -> Fuyuhiko's orders -> the Kuzuryuu family as a whole -> everyone else.
And another pause as she thinks about how to answer, exhaling quietly through her nose before shaking her head and meeting Kanaya's eyes.]
How do you mean?
[Before she can answer, she has to know what Kanaya's looking for.]
no subject
[Really unsurprising she's never had that thought before considering how abortive all her other attempts at investment are BUT KANAYA KNOWS THE FIRST TIME SOMEONE HAS THAT THOUGHT IS A PAINFUL TIME...]
Obviously it doesn't matter to you whether they live or die. If you kill them that's all there is to it. Beyond that particular sort of interaction, what then? Do they mean anything in your world or... [she says that part more slowly, clearly letting at least a slight modicum of doubt leak in] are they in turn only waiting to present themselves as potential tools.
[still underestimating the sheer extent to which toolhood can consume a kid's consciousness]
no subject
[Peko pauses to think it over, holding her elbow and letting one finger twine around a strand of hair loose from her bangs. If anything, her expression only looks somewhat puzzled as she turns it over.]
Do not misunderstand, [she says finally, releasing her hair to let her hand rest atop her opposite elbow.] The circumstances in this castle are... different. In normal circumstances, I kill only on my young master's orders. [Killing Freud had seemed like a good idea at the time, and without orders, she only did what she could do.]
Beyond that? Ordinary people have no business in my world, unless the young master wishes them to be.
[Even Peko sounds somewhat uncertain of that, though. She can try to frame the people in the castle she likes as nothing more than the people Kuzuryuu likes, but there's more to it than that. A lot of which she really just doesn't understand.]
Most people do not go out of their way to associate with members of the yakuza.
no subject
If you could go back, would you do the same thing? [She looks at Peko intensely, without giving her any time to answer.] That's a pretty stupid question. They don't ever let your trial go that smoothly. You need someone to sway the vote.
no subject
[The acidic agreement doesn't phase her; Peko's clearly taking it as the former. And really, one only has to look at the way Kuzuryuu acts to realize why most people wouldn't want to associate with him long enough to get beneath that tsun exterior. If anything, she just looks somewhat confused again, her head tilting as she stares at Kanaya evenly.]
What do you mean, someone to sway the vote? An accomplice?
no subject
An accomplice is also under suspicion, too much scrutiny. You'd be looking for a different kind of confederate. Someone who would vouch for your character against reason - and deliberately to the direct detriment of your competition, all the while escaping any reason to expect personal involvement of a selfish variety on their part.
[She shrugs.] Impossible, without other people.
no subject
[There's a catch her to voice, a downturn to her lips that borders on a scowl before she shakes her head sharply and returns her attention to Kanaya.]
The young master has done so for me before, on the island. Based on the actions of others here after my death, it does not seem impossible to think they might do so, were I to have waited longer.
Had I remembered my circumstances before arriving here, I would not have attempted framing someone.
[Peko does shitty frame jobs, the saga continues.]
no subject
[Kanaya's entire body always has this very faint quality of potential dangerous anger, probably emanating primarily from the several literal sharp edges. This is the first time that ripples appear on the surface of that deep rage well, flaring on her luminescent face. She clearly disdains the fact that Chiaki can have this kind of hold over Fuyuhiko - and quite likely, by extension, that Fuyuhiko (albeit involuntarily if their description of the situation is to be believed) has this kind of hold over Peko.
And yet Peko herself must believe that chain is the most natural sort in the world, holding her life itself together. Kanaya smooths itself over, seizes sympathetically on the other confession:] Is the deception more distasteful than the deed itself?
no subject
The deception is not distasteful, no. [Kill Sebastian 2k14 she really doesn't regret setting him up.] But this makes twice now I have been executed due to a frame that was less than ideal.
no subject
She just thinks for a while on Peko's relative lack of concern about lynching a person. Maybe she actually could have learned a thing from her back in the day. Woah, no, get your shit together, Maryam.]
In "ordinary circumstances", do you lie?
no subject
The whole time, Peko's still been avoiding looking at Freud or the other two victims, keeping Kanaya at the forefront of her attention.]
I would lie for the young master's sake, of course. I would never lie to him, however.
[There's a bit of a leading tone to the end of her statement: why ask that question?]
no subject
[Us: Maybe members of murder manor last season, more likely fellow weird aliens. Either way, Peko is unusually similar - yet mysterious, just like any "normal" human. Why ask Peko anything? Out of an almost humiliatingly undisguised desire to know her, that only Kanaya's own evasiveness makes murky. She could become a part of Kanaya's world, whatever allegiance that currently indicates; her fixation on the notion of people being remembered is resonant and rare.
Touko and Rin have haunted Kanaya actively for thirty-six months, and Siren flits through her thoughts occasionally. Most of the others have left her alone a long time, their ghosts freshly summoned by the portraits. Yuzu, so plucky that Felicia could only compete with her genuine charm on an uneven playing field. Agent Carter, who amicably stepped aside for the sake of less mysterious guests more attached to the mortal coil. Clyde Barrow, spending his whole life approximating politeness that his death revealed was completely foreign to him. Michael Altman, already hollowed out by trauma and just strong enough to drink himself to death without actually intending to imbibe a more effective poison. Belarus, a force of nature who struck fond terror into the hearts of her Eastern European family even when they had no previous idea she existed. All innocents, who didn't even merit inclusion in the costume party - except for Bernkastel, inimitable first murderer, and what of the rival she bereaved?
Kanaya doesn't understand anywhere near enough about any of them, but she knows (hopes, that's not the same fuckin' thing, Eridan grumbles into her ear) that before long Peko will be bearing the same burden, and on some level she has a mind for it.]
no subject
You are forgetting a crucial detail if you are trying to pick apart my actions. You keep referring to me as a person. I am nothing of the sort.
[Even though she wants to be. That's one thing she's certain of, from watching Kuzuryuu on the screen, coupled with her memories from home. She doesn't want to be just a tool, anymore. But without Kuzuryuu, she can't make that leap for herself. She needs to hear, from him, that she doesn't have to be. Not in the wake of her being voted for on the island, but to her face, when she isn't about to be dragged away to be killed.]
I am just the young master's tool, to do with as he pleases. If he orders me to lie, I will lie. If he orders me to tell the truth, I will tell the truth. That is all there is to it.
no subject
[That somebody's personhood can be bound by forces beyond independent choice is merely an unfortunate aspect of reality. Verbally breaking these bonds is itself a cruel act of a very high order. In the case of the hitman, any attempt at cultural sensitivity meets the paradox of these inextricably intertwined considerations.]
I don't understand! To be a tool - under some code of conduct so deeply ingrained command translates directly into action - how is that state mutually exclusive with personhood? [Her volume shouldn't have gotten so high - but, as Peko's logic already went for entering her morbid extraterrestrial dimension, most of the others who have any energy are already far away. She tries to come back down to a lower, cooler, logical place. Her brow furrows as she's not sure she can.]
I know that term "person" can become so vague as to be useless - especially when making arbitrary comparisons of robots, aliens, demons, or clones - but I can't imagine a single sense in which it doesn't apply to you. Are people evolved or designed for certain complex actions? Does sentience or elaborate emotional experience count the most? Is "sapience" or whatever bestows intelligent thought the order of the day? You clearly have your own body and feelings and problems! If Felicia Marlow is a person, why not you? No definition of person that excludes you makes sense, unless an explanation is tacked on at the end are an exception defying all other logic. "People are people unless they aren't, because we attached to them this particular arbitrary label" - it's a complete semantic dead end.
Is it because being a tool is too much for a person to have to bear? [As soon as she asks the question Kanaya is struck by the potential cruelty of this thought - but it is what she wants to know, and she continues to look at Peko for answers.]
no subject
[Where Kanaya's voice raises, Peko's stays lower in tone. Her eyes slide closed for a moment as she exhales again, mentally composing what she wants to say in a way that, hopefully, will be easier for the alien woman to understand. Her classmates on the island hadn't understood. The only one in the castle who'd understood was Kuzuryuu, and even he had been against the practice (something which she still thinks about, even now, especially now).
She opens her eyes to meet Kanaya's as her arms uncross to hang loosely at her sides. She has nothing to hide here (so she'd like to think, so she thinks).]
There are people who are born to be people, and people who are born to be tools. I was abandoned by my parents at birth, and picked up by the Kuzuryuu family. I am not a person. I am young master Fuyuhiko's tool. Nothing more. I was not raised as he and his sister were. I was raised to be what I am now, a means to an end.
If I am not his tool, then I am nothing.
[It's subtle, it's quiet, but her voice starts to shake. Because now more than ever, she doesn't want to be his tool. She wants to stand at his side as something else. Not an equal, never an equal, but someone he can speak with and confide in, someone to comfort him and be there for him. Things she can't do, no matter how much she wants to. Even if he were here right now, she couldn't.]
So it is not that one cannot bear it. It is that a person never would have to.
no subject
[Kanaya listens to Peko's words with the intensity typically reserved for comprehending a foreign language, aggressively piecing together the puzzle inside her head. The picture is heterogenous: One of those "happy human families"... and on the outskirts, Peko? How many times did she have this drilled into her head if it's taken her almost half an hour to show the slightest doubt? Even if her toolhood is only due to a social contract, her mindset is completely real - and the enthusiasm of a few dozen near-strangers directed towards a hardened young adult is much less than an entire childhood presented as simple fact. That emotion in Peko's voice is so faint, impossible for Kanaya to distinguish more subtly as grief or despair, resentment or anger - the slightest flicker in the distance of a fire that might burn down a house.]
I guess, then, there isn't a way you could be one of those people--who possessed tools and did what they could to procure more. Because they took you into that way of life. If that's how it works, if personhood isn't inevitable - if what you are is instead a function of your circumstances, that raises some interesting questions.
What if the producers drew you back into the Iron Maiden, and every member of the Kuzuryuu family were assassinated, and you were kept alive on that stage, and invisible strings were bound to your joints, and you were made to wave your swords around for their entertainment indefinitely, no release forthcoming - would you at some point cease to be a tool, and become a puppet?
What if you tried your best to carry out the wishes of a boy everyone else had left for dead: Would you become the executioner of his will? What if you bestowed gifts upon people who would never share your views or interact with your organization: Does that make you a sympathizer with the law? What if you were the guidance of a boy who approached death with less finesse: Would that make you a friend?
What if... even though you knew there was nothing you could do for your friends from before, as death threatened them, and serving the purpose you had been hatched to was more complicated than it had ever seemed... [The incorrect verb choice suggests as heavily as anything else that Kanaya is speaking from experience.] There were still people who cared about you now, and valued your talents, and wanted to share the pain of your past, and thought you could do the right thing together? [Kanaya's hands rest in her own lap, palms up, open.] Would it make you a comrade? Maybe that's not the most important thing you could be. I think that's still something.
[Her gaze with Peko falters, and she mutters at herself, though audibly, in that same gruff diction reserved for her own kind:] Jegus, that whole elaborate pupa metaphor probably sounded really stupid. Forgive me. Jadebloods shouldn't try to understand variations on already bizarre mammalian family structures.
no subject
After that pause, she opens her mouth again, as if she would speak -- then closes it again, shaking her head as her arms cross loosely over her chest again. An inhale and an exhale, then she forces herself to meet Kanaya's eyes.]
In every circumstance you have described... you are simply giving me another label overtop of what I am. My purpose is to serve young master Fuyuhiko. Without that purpose... it would have been better had my execution been more clean, rather than leaving me as this.
[Just able to watch, helpless to do anything further to help him.]
Anything else I could potentially do would necessarily come second to serving him. Nothing else is important. I have never had friends, or comrades, or anything of the like.
[Except there's a touch of uncertainty in her voice, reflected in her eyes. And really, it could almost seem as though everything she's saying isn't necessarily meant for Kanaya, but rather a reminder for herself.]
A tool without her master is nothing.
[And her eyes flick away for a moment, landing on Freud for an instant before she closes them. Perhaps she's thinking about how much better off it would have been had she been reduced to their state. Who knows?]
no subject
And she has to calm down because she learned long ago that in life, there is no right answer, just the best one.]
Being nothing does feel pretty awful. To completely fail... [Maybe her wife should be giving the "failed as a warrior" speech. Annie probably isn't in the mood, though.] To do exactly what you were supposed to, and fail anyway - are you supposed to throw up your hands and say "I did my best" and stop? Does that even accomplish your original purpose?
You're not going to get very far thinking "I should have stayed dead" or "I deserved to die for what I did" or "I'm dead when I get back there". That isn't really what happened here, in the natural sense. We have to think about the results' implications for us rather than what they happened to look like.
[Does that make sense? Not a whole lot, she's sure. The island lifestyle of mutual killing still probably matters in Peko's mind, and Sonia's not here to ease her into the reasons she should have hope for that place.]
no subject
She shakes her head.]
What implications? What results matter?
What on earth are you saying that it isn't what's happened here?
no subject
[Several seconds later, Kanaya realizes she has shed a small drop of her own jade green blood - the flesh of her thumb grazed by Eridan's horn when she wildly gesticulated her arms. Putting her hand in her mouth like an injured child, she struggles to continue looking at Peko. She shouldn't be angry with her. Peko is right. Smart lowbloods don't get angry; they just sometimes get even.
Kanaya knows that such a duty leads to despair for any heart opened the slightest crack to one's own cares or the hearts of other people; and the door of Peko's heart still shuts out the light, but the air and the dust is seeping inside.]
I shouldn't just tell you "don't think of yourself that way, you're totally a person" when that's how your life was... but you don't get to die a socially acceptable martyr and write off everything you did as "the way things had to be". Life is more than what people are ordered to do, that's why we have feelings when they die! How else would our struggles be taken as entertainment?