un: bahamut | text

[oblige]

Good day, fellow Etrayans.

Concerning Antigone's warning regarding our real names, it occurs to me that we would benefit from collaborating on this front.

To that end, I wish to open discussion.

For those who have chosen a name, please respond with what you have selected, that we may know what to call you.

For those who have not, you may use this posting to discuss your ideas or invite suggestions from others.

As for myself, I shall be using "Lucien", the name of a character from a novel in my world.

Mission Names
Dion → Lucien
Antigone → Shadow
Dwayne → Harry M'Egg
Jayce → Prometheus
Sunday → Dominicus
Prompto → Vesper
Odin → Joss
Mayuko → Murasaki
Vax → Kalas
Clive → Crandall
Percival (Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III) → Scanlan (Keylethus Pikegratia Taryon d’Shorthalt-Grogson, Heir to the Shattered Glory)
Samil → Whiskey
Noctgar → Navyth
Accelerator → Isuka
S.Rogers → Ruirthech
Nico → Slash Brightburn
Jason → Edmond
R.B. → Harker
Lady Vex'ahlia de Rolo → Velora
SquirrelPower → Sally Awesomelegs
Shinra → Evan
Emet-Selch → Eubulus
Vincent Valentine → Garm
Sciel → Céline
Vivi →
Gustave → Jean-Napoleon
Maelle → Esmé
Scott → James Bond / 007
Sleeper → Stevens
Joshua → Praeclarus
Zagreus → Dionysus
Gladio → Heliodorus
Apollo → Artemis
Dylan Brock → Reed Richards

Note: This list will remain available until the date of our deployment. At such time, it will be omitted as a precaution.

[ ooc: Free-for-all on responding to one another, of course. ]

Comments

[oblige]

It sounds that way. Neither strikes me as wrong, rather... A reflection of our experiences.

[ That in itself gives him pause for thought.

Their worlds are diverse, but so are the backgrounds and knowledge they come with. Imagine if they were all to leverage that. It could be what Echo hopes for, or it could be something he hadn't considered at all, simply hoping for some savior. ]

I'd imagine there are many reasons to incline one way or another.

[demigoth]

Your way might not be wrong, but I'm right.

[ ... he's fifteen. He's very good at it, and this something of a concession to admit that Lucien may be right as well.

But not that he's wrong. ]

I know a lot of people who charge in like Errol Flynn, and that often means sword in hand? Half of our parents just encourage us to do it... so I can expect things from cohorts.

[ Including himself. But then he remembers something important. ]

Can you change my "name" to Slash Brightburn? I won't change it again.

[oblige]

[ It seems agreement enough to him, so Dion lets the words pass without comment. Neither of them is wrong, nor do they need to be. ]

I'm unfamiliar with this Errol Flynn. Is he a swordsman in your world?

[ He's doing his best to follow along there, though the bit about being encouraged he believes he understands. Plenty of noblemen's sons are spurred to join the military... Yet he's unsure that's quite what Nico means. ]

Of course I can. I'll do so now, that others have time to see it.

[demigoth]

I thought he was when I was a kid, but he was an actor. I haven't seen any of his movies in a long time, but I wish I could. They were swell - cool.

[ And then Nico realizes something, and frowns. ]

I don't know if I can watch them here or if I want to. If he wasn't any good with a sword, it'd ruin Captain Blood forever.

[oblige]

[ Fortunately, Fabian explained cool to him some time ago, so he follows. Swell must hold similar meaning, he reasons. ]

There is a theatre in Etraya, from what I've heard. It may be possible to request films you do enjoy. Is Captain Blood one of those films?

[ Though Dion doesn't know whether Nico might mean those movies won't live up to his memory. ]

[demigoth]

[ He'd be right on that account, for certain time periods. But Nico's only considering the possibility of requesting certain movies at the movie theater. ]

Yeah, it's a pirate movie. The Adventures of Robin Hood's good too - oh, and Tarzan the Ape Man. But that one wasn't Errol Flynn.

[ He pauses for a moment and then shakes his head. ]

I think it'd be better to ask for Star Wars. More people would like that.

[oblige]

You might yet be surprised. There are those like myself who are new to film. It is something of a marvel.

[ Their technology has not developed in this way. ]

Though what would make one more broadly enjoyable than the rest?

[demigoth]

Il cantante di jazz came out a few years before I was born, so I was never "new" to movies. Do these headphones still translate if we switch languages? I think it's The Jazz Singer in English?

[ Nico is secretly an anachronism, but he's been checking off a list of things to learn for almost five years now. Now that he's been steadily surrounded with other teenagers for a year, he's gotten a much better sense of what, as they say, the kids are into. ]

Everybody at Camp Halfblood likes more modern movies with better special effects? Like a painted backdrop looks sort of "cringe" if you grew up with [ the slightest hesitation, because he knows "CGI" but isn't sure about the acronym ] computer-generated... irises?

[ That's it, right? Iris-messages are like video. ]

Besides... all the talkies I saw when I was a kid - they all got remade "better."

[ With better graphics and effects, modern-cutting techniques - it's hard for an old film to compete. ]

Nobody wants to watch the original King Kong. They saw the better one.

[oblige]

[ For Dion, all of it is futuristic. All of it is some new and curious marvel, and he recognizes that this affects his perspective as a result. ]

Is there not artistic merit to both?

[ Older paintings and sculptures may not have the same resources behind their creation, the same tools used to render form, yet were they lesser for it? Were novels inferior for having been written in older times, with more limited knowledge?

Dion doesn't know how such standards may be affected by culture and advancement, but he'd like to believe there is a beauty to older works, even so. ]

For my part, I would find it interesting to see how they compared, given the opportunity to do so.

[ But also he's a nerd... ]

[demigoth]

If you think the art is bad, I think the answer is no? So that's their side. I think the newer versions have too much everything. It takes away from the story if half the movie is a 90-minute fight that shouldn't have lasted more than five minutes.

Also, you can't stab someone with an arrow. I don't care how "cool" it looks.

[ But Nico would like to see King Kong again. ]

I could ask for a set of movies, but I still thinks it's better if more people would like to see them. What kind do you like?

[oblige]

People think you can stab someone using an arrow?

[ Dion has no idea who would have put forth such an idea, but it does sound absurd. ]

I confess, they are so new to me that I've reason to find them interesting on a general basis. But I did enjoy...film noir? Mysteries. The sort that give one clues should they be looking for them. Science fiction was interesting to me as well, for a number of reasons.

[ He also loves romance, but such films let him down, alas... ]

[demigoth]

And then yank it out and fire it at someone else, and not shatter the shaft at any point. I'm no son of Apollo, but I know arrows don't work that way. If anyone requests Lord of the Rings, I want to have a showing where we're allowed to heckle and throw things at the screen when they do something stupid.

[ Which is... not as often as you'd think. Nico liked those well enough. ]

Noir? Like Angels With Dirty Faces? They have that here?

[oblige]

That strikes me as a fine idea. Audience participation of a sort.

[ Dion wouldn't mind it. Something like that brings to mind how plays would be performed for crowds that would comment or otherwise involve themselves. ]

I became aware of such films during a deployment to Earth. I'm uncertain whether the theatre here has that title, or those like it.

[demigoth]

Yes! Like a pantomime!

[ That would be fun, Nico's definitely in agreement and will be proposing it to Aurora at the next available opportunity. But first... ]

We get sent to Earth? I can go home?

[ He's so hopeful for a second. Then he remembers that his luck is never that good. The dream dies before begins. ]

Don't answer that. She probably doesn't deploy anyone to where they're from. They'd desert, and saving the universe is too important. I don't want to be tempted like that.

[oblige]

[ He hears that hope, and he hears it tempered. ]

Your instinct is surely correct. It would seem there are various Earths out there, and none I know of claimed it was their home.

[ Yet it was familiar to some, enough so that it was easy for them to blend in during that mission. ]

In my tenure, I've been on two missions to other worlds. Auriel will be the third.

[demigoth]

Right. The multiverse conceit.

[ Nico's willingness to believe in the multiverse loosely correlates to how well-rested he is. Right now: he's tired, and a little cranky, so the idea of more than one Earth... yuck. ]

Multiple Earths makes my head hurt, but at least if I wasn't stuck in a bell jar I could go to Long Island and check if I was on the right planet. Are they all pretty different? Auriel's the Fae Realm, so it's probably not like Earth? What was the third one?

[oblige]

I can hardly blame you. I...prefer not to contemplate something quite so difficult to fathom, when there's naught for it.

[ Dion does prefer not to think too deeply on the matter of potentially countless Valistheas and that despite their memories aligning they could somehow be from different ones. The prospect is too daunting.

Besides, supposedly none of them will recall this in the end. ]

The first world I was called to was Aphaia, in the midst of a mission. A world doomed to perish, so we were told, and the whole of its populace gamified death. If you did not entertain for an unceasing audience, your life was forfeit. I've heard tell of another called Moorecroft, but that was before my time.

[demigoth]

I'm... used to understanding things that most mortals don't, but it's a lot to take in. I could never talk about it again if I don't have to.

[ The idea that there's another Earth, or Earths upon Earths, where things are wildly different, it's borderline mind-breaking. Other worlds are a little easier to deal with. ]

Gamified death?

[ Nico looks beyond affronted at the notion of a world that takes death that as to make it a game, but Dion continues, and the teen at least thinks he understands. He's a Greek, so he still finds it kinda distasteful. ]

Sounds like Rome, with the performances they'd have in the Colosseum. But at least they grew out of it? Glad Aurora didn't think I was needed for that one.

[oblige]

Then we need not discuss it.

[ Dion is perfectly fine with that, having little to contribute to any deep discussion of potentially countless versions of worlds. There's also the matter of whether one could even tell whether they hailed from the same one, and it isn't a rabbit hole he cares to dive into.

On the other hand, the death games still rankle him all these moons later. He'd grown up viewing life as precious, especially with the encroaching Blight sapping that very life from the land itself. ]

I couldn't say I much cared for that world's customs. Evidently, we were deployed there despite there being no hope of its salvation simply to prove worlds were imperiled. An illustration, if you will.

[ His disapproval permeates his tone, despite an overt effort to be neutral in relaying that information. ]

I...admittedly found such practices foreign.

[demigoth]

[ Life is precious; Nico knew that before he had an intimate knowledge of the afterlife. He doesn't want to think of existing in a world where life was so cheap. He'd have to stop caring to get through a day. ]

So if we don't take it seriously enough, she'll send us somewhere worse? My world imperils itself every couple of months, I don't need her "help" believing that a world can be on the verge of destruction. And it's always people or gods in the end, but at least when it's people back home, they...

[ ... actually, Nico can't finish out that defense of humanity. Ancient Rome wasn't the worst of the worst; mortals don't care much for preserving life beyond theirs and the lives of the people they consider "theirs". ]

I wish it was foreign. It's just depressing.

[oblige]

To my knowledge, someone asked her for proof. It might well depend on whether someone thinks to ask once again... To that end, it may be worth discussing with her.

[ Heretofore, Dion's interactions with Aurora had been brief. He was polite, and he thinks her as bound by Echo's flawed system as the rest of them, but he hadn't sought out conversation outside of when she relayed information.

What had he to provide in conversation with their overseer, a being borne of technology the like of which perhaps only the Fallen may have come close to? ]

My world was itself withering, steadily so. Nations warred over dwindling resources, so I know not whether I could say my people are vastly better... But I did find the hopelessness of Aphaia disheartening, for they had given up.