This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Ari is out on a nice walk. It's never cold enough for his tastes in Vancouver (why'd he have to pick the one city in Canada that hardly goes below zero?) but it's January, so it's at least pleasantly brisk. He outright refused Sally's offer of a coat. Her mothering instinct would be more appropriate if he hadn't grown up in a climate that shaded from "harsh Midwestern November" to "the Arctic Circle."
He reaches a nice little coffee shop he found near the harbor and decides to go in for one of those icy coffee slush drinks they have. He opens the door.
That is not the nice little coffee shop.
He looks through the glass of the window. That is the coffee shop. He looks through the door. That is not the coffee shop.
He shrugs and makes his way in, trusting in his knowledge of the Ways and his ability to turn most threats into gravel.
Inside the not-coffee shop is a bar. It's a nice bar. The floors are clean, the furnishings look fairly high-quality, there's a cool illusion of exploding stars out the window; he's willing to give this one a firm three stars on decor alone. He strides up to the counter and knocks to see if he can summon a bartender of some kind.
+ Show First Post
bitterchill
bitterchill
"There are... several ways in which that doesn't make sense. The evil things just- don't have souls. You can check, with magic. No soul means no free will. These things are ruled by their essential nature, they have to do what they do; if I were to ask a troll to stop eating children lost under bridges, it would look at me like you would if I asked if you'd considered moving to the moon."
powershines
"Well, now that you've mentioned it I'm wondering how I'd get there if I wanted to and what it's like," says Rapunzel reasonably. "What does it even mean to say they have no free will? I don't know anything about souls, but if they can understand you when you talk the same way I can understand the moon question, they must be somewhat intelligent."
bitterchill
"They are intelligent. But no free will means that- they could think about what it would be like not to eat people, yes, in the same way that you could think about moving to the moon. You could think "well, if I had a rocket" - that's a thing that takes you to the moon - "and some way to breathe and maybe a little garden then I could have a tidy little cottage up there" and it's a fun way to spend half an hour when you're very bored, thinking about your life on the moon. And then you probably continue living in an apartment in Canada, or in your case the royal palace I'm assuming, and think no more of it."
powershines
"When I was, oh, fifteen, I thought about leaving the tower that way. I could do it if Gothel would let me, if the world weren't so full of dangerous people, if I wouldn't surely get lost and taken prisoner and mistreated. But then I actually left. Do none of these creatures ever metaphorically leave?"
bitterchill
"Generally, they don't want to. Your tower wasn't the worst place you could possibly have been, but "what if I left" was a fantasy, as far as I can tell, rather than "what if there was this wacky alternate universe where I didn't even want to live in this nice tower?" Which is how it would be for a bridge troll to imagine eating a side of beef, plus a healthy dose of disgust at the idea."
bitterchill
"Well, the reason why they're like that at all is due to the whole soul thing. Most of the stuff in my world is like that; humans and their soulful cousins are seriously weird by universal standards. And without a soul, logic will always take a backseat to essential nature if there's a conflict between the two. Why are some of them devoted to eating people in particular? Couldn't say. Some people think it's because people think monsters will eat them, so they do. Not sure how much stock I put in that, but I don't have a competing theory."
powershines
"I'm not asking why they don't have souls, I don't understand enough about souls to understand an answer - I want to know why they have that 'essential nature'. Why would they care if people thought monsters would eat them?"
bitterchill
"Well, most of the creatures without free will are sort of- made of magic. Like, ogres, if you tried to make a human being twelve feet tall he'd crush himself under his own weight. So Grenda the Ogre is full of magic making her able to stand upright and not get heatstroke every six seconds and so on and so on. Magic can be influenced by other magic. Now, mortal magic is in many ways just believing in something very strongly- I believe that this coffee mug will float in the air, because I am a wizard" - his coffee mug floats, then sets itself down gently - "and hey presto. And when mortals believe very strongly in things they know nothing about, it still does something. So, when your ten-year-old is scared of a monster under his bed that'll eat him, that belief turns into magic that flies on sparkling silver wings to the nearest boogeyman and makes his teeth a little sharper."
He coughs. "So goes the theory, anyway."
He coughs. "So goes the theory, anyway."
powershines
"So enough wizards could change the monsters so they didn't have to be monsters anymore."
bitterchill
Ari chokes on- he's not even drinking anymore. He chokes on a spit bubble. He requests a stiff drink from the bar. He consumes the drink. He turns to Rapunzel and shakes his head wonderingly.
"That is a terrifyingly cool idea. I like you, you have the coolest ideas. Wouldn't work, though, it's a long-term process. Maybe if you got together thirteen billion people and got them to clap their hands and say they believed for ten years straight, you could make a dent."
He considers getting another drink, then decides that it's two in the afternoon. He gets an unwieldily large turkey drumstick instead, and commences to punctuate with it. "But seriously, that is the coolest idea. I have never been so attracted to a strange magical woman I met in an interdimensional bar."
"That is a terrifyingly cool idea. I like you, you have the coolest ideas. Wouldn't work, though, it's a long-term process. Maybe if you got together thirteen billion people and got them to clap their hands and say they believed for ten years straight, you could make a dent."
He considers getting another drink, then decides that it's two in the afternoon. He gets an unwieldily large turkey drumstick instead, and commences to punctuate with it. "But seriously, that is the coolest idea. I have never been so attracted to a strange magical woman I met in an interdimensional bar."
powershines
"It... seemed kind of obvious to me. Is it normal to tell people you meet in bars that kind of thing...?"
bitterchill
"That's the wonder of an outside perspective, I guess. As for normal, what about this situation would you classify as normal? You come in with seventy feet of unbreakable magic hair, I interrogate you about whether or not you're a faerie and about your relationship with your evil hermit not-mom, you accidentally informed me that my evil hermit not-mom had planned to ritually murder me, you had strange and impractical but kind of brilliant ideas about how to turn my universe into less of a cesspool of evil. Also, the attraction is one part legit to two parts rhetorical to three parts mead for lunch. Not necessarily a proposition, though I wouldn't actually object. Sorry, advanced social maneuver, I should have warned you."
powershines
"You are the fifth person I've ever had more than a few back-and-forths worth of conversation with," Rapunzel points out. "I am not ready for advanced social maneuvers without my friend helping with the telepathy plant. I don't know anything about normal social situations, which is why I asked. What is the purpose of 'rhetorical' attraction?"
bitterchill
"Right, right. Sorry, no, it's not particularly normal except in a somewhat different kind of bar setting, the kind where you go specifically to tell strangers they're attractive and possibly take them home to sleep with. I say rhetorical because me saying I'm attracted to you was mostly to punctuate how amazing you are by adding on another layer of it. And I felt like being cheeky, and I don't get nearly enough chances to hit on foreign royalty. Some degree of all of those."
powershines
"My friend is a lot better at explaining these things," observes Rapunzel absently. "Even without the telepathy moss."
bitterchill
"I have absolutely no doubt of that," Ari says cheerfully. "I'm somewhat drunk and I'm not great at making sense in the first place."
bitterchill
"It makes you less smart, but in a fun way! It makes you happier, unless you have a reason to be sad, in which case it makes you miserable. For some reason we drink it when we're sad anyway, possibly in the hopes that it'll turn out we aren't really sad, which never happens. I'm going to guess you'd hate it."
bitterchill
"Not for everybody, yeah." He wields his drumstick in the direction of his face. It is a pleasing drumstick.
powershines
Rapunzel finishes her orange drink. The glass vanishes. "You don't seem to be trying to do anything about being rhetorically attracted to me; can I expect you to continue to not try to do anything about it?"
bitterchill
"If you don't want me to, sure. It's a big world and there are many pretty blonde ladies with cool ideas, though maybe not so pretty or so blonde or with such a cool idea. And of course, I'm not limited to clones of you, which is good because the dating pool would be pretty small."
powershines
"Okay, good, because I have no idea what to do about it if you do, and it would be very awkward and it might involve me leaving this interesting magic bar sooner than I really want to."
bitterchill
"That'd be a shame. If I suddenly fall in all-consuming love with you such that I can't set it aside for a moment, I promise I'll go before it gets awkward so you can get more orange drinks and appreciate the exploding stars to your heart's content."