open rp post
Dec. 2nd, 2012 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wunderkind
an open rp post
(it is what it says it is)
-1-
pick a character
-2-
leave me a comment. maybe a scenario, maybe an AU scenario, maybe a picture, maybe a word,
maybe a request to resume old game canon, maybe just a comment.
i don't care. do your worst.
-2a-
helpful note: i am currently obsessed with the Hunger Games and Christmas. can you combine those into one tag?
-3-
let's get it on
disclaimer: we probably won't get it on
+ there are no promises i will take this seriously
God me too, make it so
Date: 2013-12-05 09:05 pm (UTC)Save to his Tributes. His Tributes he will hold as they cry. He sends them to their deaths with some last bit of tenderness, because they deserve that much.
You'll have to be a better Mentor.
His motions are firm and sure as he lifts his reading glasses to his face. There's nothing extraneous in them; they are elegant and spare, like he himself. (The glasses themselves used to be an affectation, something from his Stylist to add to his image; they'd proven very popular with the citizenry, and so the Capitol had elected for him to undergo surgery to necessitate them permanently. He had accepted that silently and without protest. When he puts them on he feels ill.)
Likewise spare is the way he opens the folder. It's Axel on top. Axel was fifteen, and very slight, and in this picture he is trying his best to smile but his eyes are reddened. It's the very first picture ever taken of him; Edgeworth knows that much.]
He was two over from you at the Cornucopia. When you wept in training, he told you it would be all right. For you, he was not incorrect. Do you remember him, Ms. Mason?
MAYBE.... if you're good...... as a Christmas present........
Date: 2013-12-06 02:46 am (UTC)She'd looked up, startled, despite herself--she wanted to be ignored, discounted, not noticed and pitied--but the boy from District 6 had misread that look. He'd smiled. It'll be all right.
She hadn't seen him die. She'd run from the Cornucopia. But he's dead anyways, and looking at the photograph of him, shit-scared even in that little picture; she can see it in his eyes, and she knows that's how she looked, just before the end, when it seemed like it was going to go on, and on, her axe in the skull of the last Career and her hands shaking and blood, smeared everywhere--and his eyes are still looking at her, from that photograph, and something goes cold in Johanna's stomach.]
No.
[That's to herself. But she's said it aloud, so fine, she says it again, and she hates the lie:] No.
[She looks up at him, with those stupid fussy glasses, with that pinched face, his folder and his photographs.]
Is that all?
I AM SO GOOD
Date: 2013-12-06 03:05 am (UTC)[He says that unsmilingly. As a rule, he doesn't smile. Sometimes there are complaints about that - why even pay for the pleasure of your company when there's no real pleasure in it - but he doesn't care for that. They can compel a great many things from him; merriment is not one.]
But I speak of two alone.
[The file is subdivided in two. He has copies of everything, school records and assessments and family statements and those first photographs, in his office. Everything on paper. Everything a hard copy. Digital files are too easily accessed, too easily deleted; so long as everything is on paper, impossible to disseminate and difficult to destroy, the Capitol tolerates his eccentricity. So he has copies; this file is for her. Johanna Mason. The Victor.
In the second half if a photograph of Antonia. Her cheeks were still spotted with acne, and her nose was crooked. He'd tried so hard to get her sponsors - begged, pleaded, did anything necessary, things well below his dignity. They were simply uninterested in that good-hearted, brave, ugly girl. Far more fascinated by the likes of District 7 Female, pretty and demure and so frightened.]
Antonia and Axel. She asked after you as well. She worried for you. Her way was an honest one. She was not a liar like you.
WE'LL SEE ABOUT THAT eat your sprouts and do your homework and wash behind your ears
Date: 2013-12-06 07:19 am (UTC)The girl isn't as bad. She hardly remembers the girl. It's the boy whose eyes she can still feel boring into her--that stupid little smile of his, his pity and compassion. Antonia and Axel. It was better when they were only districts, only cannon shots, only faces beamed into the sky at the end of every night. Seeing the girl isn't as bad, but Johanna still feels the urge to recoil, to pull back. Twenty-two to go.]
You're kidding. You're kidding me with this, right? [She barks a laugh, short.] What do you think you're going to get from me--an apology?
[If he would just shut the file, and she nearly goes for it now, just so she doesn't have to look. But then he'll know, that he got to her. Weakness was an act. She is never going to be weak again.]
If you want a sorry, you're talking to the wrong girl. I'm not sorry, for winning. I survived. And so did you.
Dude if you ever try to get between me and my sprouts I will take off your hand
Date: 2013-12-06 01:30 pm (UTC)(And yet he dreams always about District 7 Male, a spear in his hand. They'd worked together to dig a pit to hide in, but it had only been deep enough for one when the Careers had found them. The other boy had fought with his knife, never letting on that Miles was hiding nearly under his feet. When he'd fallen, his body had covered the entrance to the pit. The blood had seeped down through the earth, onto his hands, his clothes, and the Careers had laughed and moved on.
(Miles dreams sometimes about going back there. About going back in time and killing everyone else and then himself, so that that boy could live. He should have lived. He had a family. Miles had - )]
Do you think you were more worthy?
[There's a very slight break in his voice, most likely too slight for her to even hear but jarringly audible to him; he takes a moment to push his glasses up his nose, to comport himself.]
Axel had people to support. His parents are both gone. His siblings have no one, now, and nothing. Antonia - she had dreams and talent. She was going to improve the lives of the people in our District. What will you have to offer that is more valuable than what they had?
[She's not hard to read. He goes back to Axel, angles the photo so that she has to look upon it.]
you're so gross
Date: 2013-12-06 05:22 pm (UTC)And she doesn't feel guilty. She doesn't feel anything. She's going to drain herself of feeling sorry for people, and it's starting now, because she hates what he's trying to do to her. And she hates that it works, even for a second. She deserved to win. She won. That's it. She gets to live, because she earned that right, and fuck anyone who says otherwise, and she will repeat that until it's true.]
You're saying he was better than me?
[She snaps her gaze up to him, and when she grins, there's no happiness in it. It feels false even on her face.]
Because he wasn't. If he wanted to support his parents, then he should have lived. That's what I did.
[He was smaller and slighter and kinder and weaker than she is, and she will not let anyone make her feel anything other than victorious. She's done being scared, done with crying, with nightmares. She doesn't break her gaze from this other Victor's face, but reaches out to snatch the photograph from the file, and turns it around on him instead, so that red-eyed stare is looking back at him.]
He lost. I won. Your fault, if you were a shitty mentor. Your fault, and his. Not mine. I made the odds go in my favor.
you're so pretty
Date: 2013-12-06 08:30 pm (UTC)He looks down at the ground, a break in his composure. Looks away from her eyes. There's no visible emotion on his face, but her accusations have shaken him. Not that - Not that this is anything he's not thought about, but no one has ever...
(They all ask him if it will be okay. The first two years, he'd assured them that yes. They would be okay. They would be fine.
(Now he tells them the truth, and watches them fall apart.)
He's not meeting her eyes, or looking at the photograph, when he replies.]
He died. That automatically makes him better than you.
aww you're pretty too........ .... pretty UGLY!!!
Date: 2013-12-06 10:35 pm (UTC)[She laughs, breathless, like maybe she actually believes him, but a second later, she bites out the rest:]
Nope. Wrong.
[It's wrong, and she knows it, because winning is better, winning is what you want, and anything less is being dead.
(During the year, she's going to come to understand. Better to be dead, and just be done with it. Better dead than being the puppet of the Capitol, surrounded by graves of people you loved, people they killed to control you. Better dead than surrounded by nightmares of everything you did. There's no room for thoughts like that now, but next year--she will be just as fierce, maybe fiercer, because she will have so much more to cover.)]
He's dead, he lost. If he was better than me, then he'd have won. And even if you were right, which you aren't--
[And she's getting to him now, she can see it in his face, in the heft of his shoulders and the tone of his voice, and that drives her on, tenacious.]
--But if you were. You're alive too. So what would that make you, Mister Victor?
ooooooh, YOU GOT ME!!!! but seriously I love brussels sprouts
Date: 2013-12-06 11:40 pm (UTC)Well, it's strange, first off. And it's unexpected. Before his Games, on the way to the Arena, he'd obsessively watched other Games, studied other Victors - and so her utter lack of knowledge of who he is is simply odd. He couldn't imagine having gone into his own Games without being able to identify every other Mentor there -
So for a moment, it's not a cold stare she gets from him, but a puzzled one. And his response to that question does not have the disdain, the hauteur, the triumphant contempt with which he'd have liked to have uttered it; on the other hand, nor does it have the misery he's in danger of revealing. Instead, his voice is actually a bit puzzled.]
I didn't kill anyone in the Arena. I'm Miles Edgeworth.
yeah i know, what's wrong with you
Date: 2013-12-07 06:36 pm (UTC)You're kidding me.
[Because then she remembers. She's heard of him, even if she doesn't recognize him on sight. The name, and the utter pacifism of his Games--or cowardice, or weakness, whatever you want to call it--that sicks out, because every other year is a blood bath with no one left clean. Not his, and she stares at him with this half-grin on her face, full of disbelief.]
Why are you even here?
hold up are you saying that you don't
Date: 2013-12-07 06:58 pm (UTC)And everyone to this point - they've simply bought into the narrative of his bloodless victory. He's never had to deal with anyone like her before.
So he looks down again. He'd look simply thoughtful to someone giving a cursory glance, but to a keener eye, the set of his shoulders and jaw is decidedly uncomfortable.]
All Mentors are obligated to attend the victory celebrations. I will confess that I am surprised by your ignorance regarding past Games.
i don't!!! they're one of 3 vegetables i dislike bless them
Date: 2013-12-08 04:25 pm (UTC)[She spits the words at him, her temper flaring up, like he's actually insulted her by insinuating that she might not.]
I just don't have everyone's faces memorized. Sorry. You're really memorable for what you did--or didn't do, I guess I should say--but your face is...
[She curls her lip, a little sneer and a little smirk all at once.]
Boring. Forgettable. Anyways, sorry I didn't remember you, I know that's really rude of me. I'm still figuring out how to do manners among murderers.
[Murderers. That's her. And Johanna hates the way that her stomach twists when she thinks that word, like she's vulnerable to it still. She can't afford to be vulnerable. Not to words, especially.
And he's going to argue. He's an arguer, she can tell: he's going to say that he didn't kill anyone. But she's ready for that. She's got ire enough for everyone, especially right now, especially because being angry is proving so effective at neutralizing her own fear.]
No oh my god we're not friends anymore...But you love cabbage!
Date: 2013-12-08 04:55 pm (UTC)He doesn't know what to make of her. He realizes, wretched himself, that he doesn't have it in him to hate her. He finds, in point of fact, that there's some tender shoot of sympathy within him, and so instead of heaping more recriminations upon her, he tells her:]
You're going to have to learn, you know. The crowds were charmed by your savagery, but the novelty will wear off. You'll never be safe now.
correction: i love sauerkraut. and nothing and no one else so FINE friendship OVER.
Date: 2013-12-09 05:45 pm (UTC)Yeah? Wrong again.
[Savagery is going to get her everywhere. She looks back at him, hard-eyed. If it's pity he's trying to offer her, he's not going to find her receptive.]
I'm going home. As soon as they put me on that train, I'm going home and I'm never looking back. That's why I won. So I could be done.
http://www.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ron-love-nothing.gif
Date: 2013-12-09 06:26 pm (UTC)[He lowers the folder entirely. For the moment, there are no ulterior motives; for the moment, there's no malice, no cruelty. There's nothing safe his worry for her complete lack of comprehension.
Not that he cares for her. Not that he cares for anyone save his own Tributes. He hasn't the luxury to care. It is his job to suffer for his Tributes, but allowing any sympathy in his free time is weakness in the utmost. He cannot and will not allow it.
But even so, he does ask, his voice quiet:]
Who was your primary Mentor? Who trained you?
yep that's me exactly
Date: 2013-12-09 08:29 pm (UTC)What do you mean, I'm not. That's what happens. They ship you home again, and you live in the Victor's Village.
[Is there some new twist to it? Some second stage of the Games, that the Capitol has devised? Johanna feels the familiar onset of panic, and she hates it, she tries like hell to fight that feeling down, the feeling she associates now with the Games, with hiding in a tree gripped in a fear that was not part of her act--there was always a grain of realism to her act, and here it is again, rising up sharply--
She hurries to close herself off again, to fill in that chink in her armor. He's not going to get the better of her, no way, no way, and she snaps out a question in answer to his:]
Why are you asking? What do you care, who my Mentor was? You know them all, you find the answer out for yourself.
seriously though don't you like cabbage
Date: 2013-12-09 08:50 pm (UTC)Because whoever it is has severely under-served you. Your victory was days ago. They should have begun preparing you at once.
[He studies her a moment longer. She still looks so young. She's only, what, four years younger than he is, but the distance between them feels immense. This time next year - this time next year, she will be so much older.]
It is not over. It is not even close to being over, Ms. Mason. For your sponsors, you were an investment, and in the coming years they will want to see a return on it beyond simply their betting fortunes. As a Victor, you will be commodified. Do you understand?
only sauerkraut! and cabbage *in* things and boiled, once a year.
Date: 2013-12-09 10:40 pm (UTC)It was the crying comment that got her attention. In a way, Comandra had inspired her tactic from the start, but he hadn't meant to. He was ready for her to die, same as everyone else was--but that was just because they didn't know her. Johanna could split a target from twenty-five feet, at least. Moving. Still targets she could hit at thirty feet. Crying wasn't all she knew how to do.
So it's not really surprising that Comandra hasn't told her what to expect. He's been taking credit for her victory, enjoying the spoils of it--
Commodified. She thinks of Comandra's green hair, twisted into peaks. His smile, his gold-dusted lips. The purple liquid in the glass that he sips from. The smell of him, like a shut-up house.]
They can't.
[It is so stupid to say that. They can. They, the Capitol--they do what they want. She's scared, but she's angry, too; that is no lie or act.]
I won. They let you go when you win. I've seen them. Comandra lives in the Victor's Village with the rest of them. He doesn't live here.
You're lying
Date: 2013-12-09 10:58 pm (UTC)I'm not your Mentor. Indeed, so far as I am concerned, the moment we are through speaking on this topic, we are enemies, because next year you will be training your Tributes to kill mine. So you may disregard my comments, you may decide that I am a liar - and, indeed, that is simply logical, as I have no reason to help you. But your own Mentor will not prepare you.
[And it's the right thing to do.]
The reach of the Capitol extends out into the Districts, Johanna. Your home in the Victor's Village will be peppered through with cameras. In six months, you'll be right back here on your tour; in a year, you'll be back again; and all throughout, the sponsors will want to see how their investment is doing.
[He's quiet a moment; he glances off to the side.]
It won't happen for a while yet, but a time will come when you will be called back to the Capitol merely at the pleasure of the President or the sponsors. You will have to come then. It is how you will survive.
i absolutely am not
Date: 2013-12-10 07:46 pm (UTC)Because he has to. Because it doesn't end. In the Arena, Johanna had stood on the edge of the cliff--the cliff which had climbed out of the ground in front of her, one moment flat and the next a sheer face of rock thrusting out of the earth--her toes had curled on the thin dirt. She could hear screaming. They were killing each other. And standing there, the world was infinite, but she knew there was an end, that the Arena ended somewhere, and she would go down there to the floor of the forest and kill whoever was left. The finite space of the Arena would lift, and she would be allowed to go home.
Home, where space was finite too. A Victor is a celebrity. Johanna doesn't want that. She doesn't want anything but to be left to herself, that was what she fucking fought for, not so she could be called anywhere for anyone's pleasure. That wasn't her.
But she knows he's right. This--stupid Victor, with his glasses, and his folder, and his information--he knows, of course he knows, because he's lived it. And Johanna feels dizzy, sick in a way she never felt in the Arena. It was just work, in the Arena. It wasn't a game. And this isn't a game, either, this is her knees growing weak, again; this is her stomach twisted around itself, and she knows she's wearing emotion too plainly on her face, but that knowledge is just a dim thought.]
I don't have to do anything.
[She says it through her teeth. And she means it. Every bit of her means it. They'll say she has to, and she won't. She won. She's the fucking Victor, that has to mean something.]
but vegetables are the best B(
Date: 2013-12-10 08:21 pm (UTC)They are enemies, now, but that doesn't mean that there need be incivility.]
There is no one without weakness.
[He surveys the Capitolites, all of them in fripperies, absurdities. Leaves are all the rage at this party, in celebration of District 7's victory; wreaths of laurel sit atop pompadours, and pasted maple leaves scarcely cover breasts, and shed pine needles litter the ground for the Avoxes to clean up. Comandra isn't the only Victor to have taken the Capitol's fashions, and so it's hard, at times, to pick them out - but there's something in the way every one of them moves. Even drunk, even laughing and simpering for the Capitol, there's a wariness to every one of them. There's a nervousness.
Brutus is, not atypically, standing by himself, looking away. Edgeworth half-nods to him.]
He had considered himself independent, once. He had assumed, as the Careers always do, that once he won he would have a happy, easy life. As I understand it, his parents both fell deathly ill - then made a miraculous recovery as soon as he became obedient.
[In another corner of the party, Sully stands laughing gaily, surrounded by admirers.]
She, over there, has no one to lose. She was an orphan to begin. But during her period of resistance, they played off the acrophobia she had acquired during her Games. As you can see, she is now quite obliging.
[He looks back to her.]
What they wish you to do, you will do. Everyone always does.
i agree! just not sprouts/cabbage/tomatoes alone. (ps nothing is better than bacon)
Date: 2013-12-11 05:44 pm (UTC)With the Games, it had been different. Earn sponsors, that was the way you played. Johanna had gone in nearly entirely without, thanks to her act. But once she started killing, the support had come in droves. She had done what they'd wanted her to do in the Arena--but only because she'd wanted to do it too, because she had to, in order to win, to get out.
So she doesn't feel any surge of gratefulness when Edgeworth touches her on the arm, nor when he looks way, to give her a moment of collection. She doesn't feel anything at all, nothing except the raw panic, and her gaze goes where he indicates, taking in the look of them, these Victors--her peers--
And she wants to say no. She wants to have some better word of protest than what she has right now. Somewhere in here is the strength to dig out of this. She doesn't owe anything to anyone, not to Comandra, not to her sponsors, she won all on her own and she will get out of this--
When Edgeworth looks back at her, her expression hasn't yet cleared. Getting there, but not there yet. Next year she will be better at that, she swears it to herself; she is not going to be the weak girl she pretended to be. She is so much more than that.]
Then how are you so self-aware?
[She spits it out. Her own self-loathing is in there, for her weakness, hurry up and stop your bullshit, Johanna, but her glare she levels on him.]
okay I am going to make you bacon and crispy sprouts while you are here. Just watch me.
Date: 2013-12-11 06:27 pm (UTC)[He looks away from her again - this time less for her than for himself. He will not show sorrow; he will not show weakness. But he was never going to be any exception to the rule. He had no family to hurt, no brothers or sisters to threaten to send to the Games - no friends, even, back then. But he had a head on his shoulders, and he saw how subservient the others were, and he knew why. It took a few years for him to collect all the details of all their stories, but he didn't need the details to know - go with them. Work with them. Others will suffer if you do not.
He'd...also had more leeway than the others had. More time to come to understand things. No one really wants to be cruel to a small, frightened thirteen-year-old boy, after all.
So Edgeworth never lost any limbs; he never suffered through torture; never even had to hear any threats. He'd simply put his head down and cooperated. He'd been smart. And if - every once in a while - he'd heard tales of resistance, of unrest, of courage, well - he reminded himself of his Tributes, and of what the Capitol could do to them. So long as he had hope that any of them would survive, he would keep quiet.]
Tell me: what do you have to lose, Ms. Mason?
well i'll watch you and then enjoy the bacon at least
Date: 2013-12-12 06:31 pm (UTC)But again, she tells herself (because it's true, and she will make it true if it isn't, fill in every last lack and crack and chink): she's not weak. That's part of how she won, by not really being weak, by being more clever than everyone else. Sharp, like the blade of an axe. She knows what weakness looks like. She knows what to protect.
His question bolsters that sharpness, and her mask clicks back into place; her snarl twists over her face again. He's trying to get in.]
Yeah, right. You think I'm going to tell you that? What do you think this is?
{What would he do with the knowledge anyways? He's trying to be helpful--but saying the names aloud would be inviting trouble, and that's not even superstition. They know everything anyways. (Is he right? Is he telling the truth? She doesn't know shit about Comandra, who his family were, if they're still in District 7. A Victor is a Victor, that has to count for something--)]
This isn't an interview. I'm done answering questions, all right? I get it, you think you're helping. You're guilty, because all yours are dead. But I don't need you, all right? I won the Games on my own. I know what I'm doing. And if they think they can scare me, they can think again, because I don't get scared.
No Mici and I are plotting how to make you enjoy them.
Date: 2013-12-12 07:11 pm (UTC)[He flinches back just a bit at that. It's stupid of him to react visibly, of course, but the very idea is simply absurd. He's not doing this out of guilt. And if he felt guilt, then he would be turning it upon her, not expressing solidarity with her. The other Tributes, the other Victors - they are the ones who are ruthless, and nasty; they're the ones who take lives. They're the ones who are deserving of hatred.
(He repeats that to himself, often, to keep himself from more dangerous thoughts.)
It takes only a moment before he comports himself once more. Reaches up, pushes a bit of hair out of his face. Takes a breath. Centers himself.]
And stop lying to me, please. You getting scared was broadcast all over the Capitol. I could show you countless close-ups of just how scared you were. And that was not faked.
GOOD LUCK MAY THE ODDS BE IN YOUR FAVOR
From:Thanks you can keep the evens
From:no i hate even numbers
From:too bad you have all of them
From:i pushed them out the window
From:and then you turned around and there were MORE BEHIND YOU, NUMBERS ARE EVERYWHERE
From:giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiird
From:gourd
From:pumpkin
From:such words of endearment
From:well you are a deer to me
From:baaaa
From:no that's mutton darling
From:moo
From:sausages
From: