Mockingbird, Mockingbird, Mockingbird

[blindwatchersees]

Who: Sheogorath, SQQ, Tarantulas, Jeff, Shouji, and you!
What: Assorted 'meetings of madness' across the island
When: Over the course of August
Where: Various
Warnings: Heavy discussions of identity, possibly discussion of fugue states, possible mentions of violence, unreality




Is that a sound you've heard? [Closed w/ SQQ]

It's as Shen Qingqiu is seeking solitude in the temple that he's visited by a strange sensation. It starts as a physical one, the faintest breeze dancing around the tip of one ear, but then it becomes a song- the erhu part of the Butterfly Lovers begins to play. The sound seems to tug at the end of his sleeve, the way that a narrative piece often seems to pull the listener along with it. Gently, gently, it implores him towards the door, and out into the daylight.


Is that a song you know? [Closed w/ Jeff]

At this point, Jeff's been given a good idea of what to look for when trying to identify Sheogorath. Of course, no one's account of the man is exactly the same, but there seem to be some common elements. He has a beard, and a walking stick, and his eyes are all sort of colors but always strange and piercing.

In the late afternoon, Jeff spots a man who is almost certainly Sheogorath, heading into the woods alone.

Perhaps he ought to follow, and try to catch up to the fellow?


One that was layered with the crackle of a radio? [Closed w/ Shouji]

It's getting late, about the time that businesses are starting to shutter for the evening, when that strange old man who fought off the Tristitia with Shouji a little while ago wanders into the Burger King, his cane making a soft tap tap tapping sound on the floor. He walks up to the counter, and stands there, not making a sound, as he looks around the place, a placid smile plastered across his face. He clearly wants something, but what?


What makes him call in the pouring rain? [w/ Tarantulas]

It's raining.

The drops are big and heavy, and they make a noticeable tapping sound against the window panes. Every so often, a gust of wind will rattle the glass. In the distance, there's a long, low rumble of thunder.

As Tarantulas works on whatever it is he's working on, his auditory sensors suddenly pick up on the sound of purring. Should he take a look around, he's likely to notice a large, gray cat in a little vest, perched atop a nearby shelf. It's staring at him with a familiar pair of eyes, their pupils fractal and ever transforming at their edges.


Is it a song of pride or an alarm of pain? [wildcard]

Anything you've been itching to say, or do, or think with the Madgod? Go crazy!

Comments

[tisnotthehouse]

It is indeed fascinating, and Tarantulas is quite happy to keep it up, making the string dance and sway in the air for Theodor to bat at, until his own back starts to ache from the way he's lounging on the floor. "Ah, sorry," he says, pushing himself back upright with a creaky groan. "I'm not actually as flexible as I look in this shape, I'm afraid."

[blindwatchersees]

"Not a problem at all, my friend. Though your questions feed my appetite to have my own answered- when did you realize you were a spider?"

[tisnotthehouse]

"Oh, that's easy. It was some ten thousand years ago -- I was on the trail of an old scientific idol of mine, the former senator Shockwave. I'd figured out millions of years previously his plan to seed the galaxy with energon caches in order to stave off the inevitable energy shortage, and I wanted to see if he'd had any good results. He had, as a matter of fact, and I helped myself to some of the crystals for my own experiments, but he'd picked this rocky little planet with the most astonishing life forms. It was humanity's homeworld, in that universe, and they'd already established hundreds of interesting civilizations all over their world, but I was most taken with some of the sub-sapient creatures. While I was camping in one of their deserts, a furry arachnid with little orange rings around its legs suddenly crawled onto my leg, breaking my concentration. I coaxed it onto my hand, and I rather fancy we studied each other for a while before I put it back on the ground and it crawled away. That was my first encounter with a tarantula, and well..."

He smiles blissfully. "I suppose you could call it love at first sight."

[blindwatchersees]

He wiggles in delight.

“It was the same with me and butterflies. I spent the better part of my early existence chasing down those colorful little cuties. ‘Course, I am butterflies myself, so that turns into an odd little cycle of a relationship. I still remember when I learned how to change from them. It was terrifying. It was wonderful. It was everything.” He’s managed to catch a bit of the yarn now, and is slowly twisting himself into a kitten-yarn ball.

[tisnotthehouse]

"That sounds like a lovely existence, if a little flighty for my taste." Tarantulas smiles indulgently, watching as his friend gets himself tangled up in the yarn. He'll step in to help Theodor disentangle himself if he needs it, but right now he appears content to cocooon himself in the stuff, like a little furry silkworm.

"I've been thinking a lot about identity lately, actually. What it means to think of yourself as this, but not that..." He trails off for a moment, humming thoughtfully. "When I first got here, I didn't care if anyone knew what I was or where I came from. I even enjoyed the mystery, dropping oblique hints and making snide little comments about that First Aid. But ever since Dawn was born, it's become strangely important to me that people know she's a Cybertronian, even though she's also organic. That she's a unique being, but she also has this long history behind her. I find myself thinking about the things I'll tell her, parts of our history and culture that I'd never cared about before except as context for my experiments. I don't understand why I changed -- except for the implication that becoming a parent in this manner was an even greater transformation than I'd anticipated. This didn't happen when I was working on her elder brother, five million years ago..."

[blindwatchersees]

He pauses in his tumbling, suddenly quite pensive.

"I think one of the greatest lessons I ever taught myself was the importance of everyone having a place to call their own. It's not necessarily a physical place, or perhaps it's only partially physical, but it's undeniably real to the person that belongs to it. It is a home in our hearts, it's the place where we store our skin. Even if we do not choose to live there, the fact that we have a hearth to return to makes the chill of the endless void a little less biting."

[tisnotthehouse]

"And you think me telling her our history would be part of this hearth?" Tarantulas hums thoughtfully. "I'm not sure I understand...but I certainly don't see how it could hurt. She deserves to know her own context. I don't want her to wind up feeling isolated because she's so different from the other people she knows."

He sighs quietly, looking out at the rain. "I don't want her to wind up like me..."

[blindwatchersees]

“At the very least, you are giving her a foundation on which to build. Let her know she has a name to wear, though she need not be obligated to wear it. Let her know of the words in which she can confine herself and set herself free.”

“Do you know why I went through the lengths I did to preserve my realm? The world can be such an unwelcoming place for the creative and the deranged, even when the world itself is mad. My people, my mortals, they needed a place, a world, an identity, and they were of no less worth just because of what they were told, what they were assigned. That many call me ‘The Asylum’ has a double meaning- I am where the mad dwell, but I am also a sanctuary of sorts.”
M

[tisnotthehouse]

"Would there have been a place for me there, even if we hadn't already been acquainted when I arrived?" Tarantulas sighs quietly. "It's a little hard to picture, even though I am quite creative and deranged. But I've never really been one for other people's society. I think I've spoken to more people on this island than I did in an average hundred thousand year period, in my old life."

[blindwatchersees]

"Oh, I've no doubt, there would be a place to you. Somewhere dark, and quiet, where the wild tangle of the root tunnels melts with a stone sanctuary. A place for a spider. A place for a scientist. Somewhere full of traps and tricks that you could study and reinvent, to your tastes. A place where you could take samples of the wellspring and study the energy fluctuations in creatia-made-memory."

[tisnotthehouse]

From Tarantulas there comes a quiet, wistful sigh of longing. "That sounds...wonderful," he says in his hoarse voice. "Nearly idyllic. But..." He shakes himself slightly. "There are many things worthy of study on this world, too. And I really shouldn't go subjecting Dawn to the stresses of interdimensional travel before she's old enough to choose it for herself."

[blindwatchersees]

"There will be a time. And I want to reiterate, it brings me no end of joy that you want to make sure Dawn is able to grow up into Dawn rather than Tarantulas."

[tisnotthehouse]

Tarantulas scoffs quietly, more out of a mingled sense of embarrassment and pleased recognition than real rejection of the compliment. "I didn't make her so I could have a copy of myself. I want to see her grow into her own person, independent of me. Isn't that what parenthood is supposed to be about?"

[blindwatchersees]

“Depends on who you ask, but personally, I think you’re more right than wrong on that.”

[tisnotthehouse]

"I do enjoy being right about things." Smiling, Tarantulas tugs on the string still wrapped around Theodore's cat body, sending him sliding across the floor. "Rather a weighty conversation for such a quite day, isn't it? I wonder what it is about rain that brings out the introspection in people. It seems to transcend species and culture."

[blindwatchersees]

“I like the rain. I tend to visit Nirn more readily when it’s raining. It makes me think on things in a way I can’t always manage. It makes me wonderfully happy. It makes me terribly sad.”

[tisnotthehouse]

"Hm." Tarantulas falls silent for a moment, his hands in his lap. "It makes me feel old," he finally says. "Something about it...the damp, the atmospheric pressure perhaps? But I feel so heavy. As every one of my years had a physical weight...it's silly really." He sniffs disdainfully at his own thoughts.

[blindwatchersees]

He settles into an absolute loaf, sympathetic.

"I can feel that. I'm the youngest of a family of eternal, ever-bickering unsiblings, and even I sometimes feel the weight of time. That should be nothing compared to those that generally experience time in a mortal and linear fashion. See, the worth of things is arbitrary, but that doesn't mean those arbitrary values don't sway the mind. That's part of why I adore mortals so. They attach real meaning to meaningless things, at least as real as meaning can be. Hold onto that. It's worth more than you know."

sorry to necro an old thread, I just got ~inspired~ XD;

[tisnotthehouse]

"Do you consider me a mortal, then?" Tarantulas abruptly asks. He places his hand over his chest, where the glittering light of his spark is hidden by muscle and fur. "Age is a disease among my kind, far more literally than organics speak of it. If I had been more cautious in my choices, I might easily have lived another five or ten million years. Possibly even forever, with the appropriate upgrades."

TBH this gives me a chance for Sheo to voice a thing, so thanks

[blindwatchersees]

“Your time may be bountiful to you, but it still has meaning. You are more story than idea, friend, growing and adapting with a flexibility that a purer concept cannot. Though you may not be fettered by the flow of time, though you might find ways to traverse it, time moves in and around you, and you find pleasure and peril in the things that will pass. The endless can afford to be petty with their time, and that, more than anything, is what makes them boring. When you pass from being yourself to not being yourself, you might not notice, but it will be in the service of the story you tell… and it will be a many-splendored thing.”

[tisnotthehouse]

"Me, a story?" Tarantulas grins, clearly tickled by that idea. "Then would my various transformations constitute new chapters in the tale? What a lovely thought."

But after a moment he adds, "Yet it's true that I spent the greater part of my life in stagnation. Oh, I traveled and observed, but to what use did I put my learning? How much better was I than the endless ones you denigrate, when I treated my time as a simple current in which to drift? I had to craft a new identity for myself before I was able to move with purpose again -- and the inspiration with which to craft it."

[blindwatchersees]

“Now, now, don’t be too hard on yourself. Sometimes, mortals need to stagnant before they grow. A seed doesn’t have any leaves, or roots. It sits there, waiting for the right opportunity to sprout- or the right opportunity to be cracked between the teeth of a hungry rat. Oh, I do enjoy a nice pistachio.”

[tisnotthehouse]

Tarantulas merely laughs. "Me, a pistachio? More like one of those exceedingly toxic seeds that other species must take thousands of generations to learn how to digest. I'm much rarer fare than a pistachio."

After a moment he asks, far less confidently, "You are planning to stay, aren't you? Once the barrier goes down?"

[blindwatchersees]

"It's not a simple matter for a thing like me to leave. I belong here, to this place, as this place belongs to me. Just like there's a me back home, on my Isles, who's the same as me but different. Just like there was a me on that boat, who doesn't exist anymore, because the boat went away. And there will be a me, or the spores of me, traveling to new places when the barrier goes down. Yes, Tarantulas, unless this world is annihilated, utterly, I will be staying."

[tisnotthehouse]

And Tarantulas's reaction is nothing less than utter relief. "Well, good! That's good!"

And he explains, "I'm planning to stay myself of course, you see. Not forever, obviously, ideally I'll eventually find a way to come and go as I please. I'd like to introduce you to my son someday."