infomodder | IC contact [Mask or Menace]

[His face hardens at the mention of euthanizing people. He doesn't have to say anything for it to be obvious they do not (if she can read people at all, it's obvious, but some people might not pick up on a guy who generally looks a little disappointed with life looking even more disappointed than usual), and he doesn't know what he'd say if she asked him about it. He's seen people in states that, if he could, instinct would kick him in the face and he'd shoot them full of something that would end them quickly and peacefully. How many dogs had he been unable to save? Strays he collected that were sicker than they seemed, had tumors, had crippling illness that they could not recover from and would only serve to shrivel their insides until they could not even eat or drink on their own, and like hell if they could hold onto their waste. Each time, Will had sat next to the poor mutt and scratched behind the ears, kept their focus on him when he might have been the only person who ever gave a damn, and watched them fade from a painful life into whatever happened once dogs stopped breathing and no longer had a heartbeat.

He'd seen people left in hideous states. One of the most notable having happened not too long before he got dragged into this superpowered mess. Died on his way to the hospital. Jesus Christ, they had a team of forensic scientists around them (including Will, even if he'd rather left that part of his career behind). They would have been able to take that suffering out in the shallow grave he was in, half-dead already and in tremendous pain, possibly so great that he could no longer feel it.

No. They do not. And he doesn't know exactly how to tackle a question of his opinions on it.]

We don't euthanize people where I'm from. Pretty sure it's the same here. [Human life is important. Will did what he did to save lives, even if it helped destroy his own. Guilt ate at him the same way mushrooms ate at the poor bastard he was looking over, thinking dead. But what happens when that human life leans more towards death or, worse: no longer human. Just a shell, a husk of the person they used to be. No longer walking or talking. Breathing. Existing. But not them, not anymore, not John Smith or Jane Williams. Another body that breathes and uses air and needs food. Besides that? Nothing "human" remained.] And seven dogs, yes. My area was a commonplace for people to get rid of dogs they didn't want. Or strays would wander up to the back porch. Found one curled up in the bushes during a hard freeze. Wouldn't have known she was out there if the other dogs hadn't started barking. Fortunate that we got her in when we did. [No one wants to wake up to a pupsicle.] I'd adopt out the ones that people would take. Ran background checks before to make sure they weren't going to do the Christmas puppy routine that had plenty of them at my house later on.

[Christmas puppy. He should explain that.]

There's a holiday called Christmas, end of December. People give each other gifts. The bigger the better. Lots of people would buy their children puppies. Puppies are cute. They'd buy them for being cute without researching the temperament of the breed. Or being ready to train a puppy. Few months later, kid's lost interest in the puppy. Parents don't want to deal with it. So they get rid of it. It stopped being cute. They didn't have the patience to properly break it. So it gets thrown out.

[While his opinion on euthanizing people is not easily read in tone or the look on his face, his opinion on Christmas puppies sure as shit is.]

[ She can see his expression harden, experienced in her younger years with reading faces and reading body posture, looking to find the meanings that can cue her in to what's going on. Survival depends on reading those cues; they're more difficult, on a tiny screen, staring at a fraction of the man speaking with her on the other side.

She wonders if the concept of a mercy killing is considered taboo in this country, or just his own. If it's taboo across all of this vast, wide world. What a strange thing to grant animals, how callous, really, when denying humanity the option to die on their own terms.

How inhumane. Only she knows it'd be called otherwise... and she can understand why, too. ]

Not even mercy killings on the battlefield?

[ Is their technology so amazing they can save even the most destroyed of lives? This porter business doesn't explain the billions of people worldwide.

His words on this crazy holiday... Annie looks perplexed, frowning. How pointless. How ridiculous. How... ]

Stupid. What kind of idiotic holiday is that, trying to outgift another person, and being expected to do that? Impulsiveness like that won't be responsible. Taking responsibility for lives for a justification like that...

[ She snorts. Honestly, it's the concept that's so alien to her. People do like to give gifts, it's a human thing, when one can afford it, and gifts can be time to company to something more manufactured than either of those.

Here, she hears about disposability, excess. People rich enough to throw away things like they don't matter. ]

... It's so pointless. Human, and pointless.

[On the battlefield? He doesn't know much about her at all, does he. He's getting pieces (he's gotten pieces of his own home, too, but he's leaving them scattered and refusing to so much as touch them) but each one is different. He has a corner, a middle piece, one on the very bottom, another that in no way fits with the other three, waiting for 9,996 more pieces and he's not sure if they'll ever really come. Will has no idea about the battlefield from experience. They're certainly different than they used to be. The question has his eyebrows knitting together as he tries to think it through.]

There've been plenty of wars. Before, medics would have packs with...if the soldier was dying and couldn't be saved, they could pump them full of a painkiller that served to take the pain and. Assist them to death as mercifully as possible. Battlefields are different now. [He's positive similar situations still happen. They have to. War is hell, gentlemen, and not all of it is on camera. No one would ever have to know, and if the guy was hurt enough, why do an autopsy?] Christmas puppies are stupid. Just because something is cute doesn't mean people don't need to be as responsible with it as everything else. Many breeders won't sell around Christmas unless the families prove they know what they're getting into and won't toss it to the pound.

[Many breeders and one lonely guy who lives in Bumfuck Nowhere that gets more adoption traffic during December than usual. They come to the wrong house for that, and he makes damn sure they know it. Them and whoever else they might have recommended him to.]

You not human or just...know humans too well?

[ Drugs as a way out. It's one way - but a luxury. Drugs take resources, too. Wasting resources on those fated to die, too far beyond helping...

Annie keeps her expression neutral. Battlefields are different now? They'd always been different. How different from the ones before the Titans, she doesn't know. Different from ones after...?

What an equally impossible statement. ]

Are they? How strange...

[ But what, exactly, is strange? The waste? The carnage? The uselessness? That people grant final moments to those suffering through pain they can't contain?

No. Just strange that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Fight hard to save lives, wish you could die to stop the pain. Find no one willing to help you, or finding too many willing hands.

But that's a digression. Saving lives against Titans meant stopping the bleeding before someone bled out. Picking them up if knocked out. Strapping them to saddles and running for Hell. Mercy is a shot in the face for someone about to be devoured.

No one earns mercy. No one has the time. ]

The pound being another word for dog shelters?

[ Not really a verification, but something she says for the sake of drawing her own connections. What else he asks... that grabs her attention. Not with anything startling - Annie doesn't flinch, or start, or do much more than blink - but that blink is one that has her focusing her attention fully on the tiny, inadequate screen. ]

That's blunt of you. [ A small sense of admonishment; manners. Have a little manners. ] People are people. It hasn't been surprising to learn that humanity acts in familiar ways here as back home... and I am human.

[ I'm a Titan. ]

Not a righteous one, nor a very good one, but people like me... we're still human, aren't we? Even if we're just the sort to go along with the flow.

[ Human, down to the blood she bleeds and the tears she cries. Titan, from below the knees to where her skinless face touches the sky. They're the same thing.

They're the same damn thing. ]

[She's talking not to hear herself talk, but to understand something. He knows the difference. He's done it himself. He does it often enough in his head (or did, he's retired, he'll never go back) that he can spot when someone likes the sound of their own voice too much to be quiet and when someone uses it to connect the dots. That face on the tiny, inadequate screen doesn't change until she seems to, what, be commenting on his manners? His eyebrows lift, eyes go a little wider, and he looks.

Well.

He looks admonished and incredulous that he's just been admonished by a teenage girl. Better that than what he's dealt with the past few months (though if he could get her back, he'd happily let himself get chewed out repeatedly without ever once complaining).

"We're still human, aren't we?" — her, or people like her included, does that "we" apply to just her, people like her, or is she pulling Will into that we?

Huh.]

There's plenty of people here who aren't human, that's all. Why I asked. Different sorts I never would have imagined, stuck just like everyone else. Still think of them as people. Just...different from humans. Biologically. [Humans are damn different all on their own; why couldn't he extend "people" to everything (everyone) else? Shockingly human, some of the people who weren't human at all.] Humans don't have to be righteous or good to still be human. Or people. No one's perfect. Can't toss the imperfect aside without tossing everyone there, too. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and so on.

[If his voice makes him sound a little dazed, it's because he is. Is he really having a conversation about people being unrighteous and not very good, being asked about it like...he's not a guy with terribly skewed morals who's left plenty of people in misery and dust for his own means?

He'll just go along with the flow.]

[ May the current not pull too fast, and may they meet no strainers along the way.

Annie considers what she hears, in his voice, in the inadequate image of his face, making some small noise of acknowledgement that she's not sure is even picked up by the communicator. She's had to make compromises with her understandings, already aware people are so different - humans are do different - that aliens, from giant metal creatures to ones who look almost human, if not entirely, must be part of the same idea. She has no good words for it; cultures have too many divides. Annie doesn't try to set things in neatly labeled boxes, knowing it's a cluttered mess to slog through.

Thinking creatures are thinking creatures. Werewolves are sick. The Risen are not allowed to rest after life. Gods are as present as monsters. It's all confusing, all improbable, and all difficult to deny. Annie doesn't bother. An open mind will get her further than every denial she swallows down first.

For the peoples, and cultures, of this place. ]

Wise advice, but he with his own sins to hide will cast the first stone to keep eyes looking away from his fears and focusing on something easier to see.

[ She looks away as she says as much, not familiar with the idiom Will quotes. Even stoning isn't much of an issue in her world, but the idea of having such things thrown, oh, she understands that well. ]

Is that what you thought of the people you tracked down, the ones who left you reckoning with the dead? They're all still human, no matter what levels they've sunk to? Even if they feel nothing, regret nothing, of what it is they've done?

[Or nuclear waste dump sites.

She'd never heard of Lucifer. Quoting the bible hadn't been well thought out, he realizes, but her take on it is interesting. Instead of asking what he means or where he gets it from, she takes it and gives back her own thoughts on it (or what she might want him to think are her thoughts, she could be lying about everything to do with herself the same as everyone else here he's never met), gives him something to chew on later. Something to do during downtime that's not crossword puzzles or bookkeeping or looking through everything said to keep an eye on certain people.

It's not until she asks him for his own thoughts that he pulls a face, trying to figure out how to say it without saying too much or too little.]

Of course they're still human. They might not act in ways that humans like or understand very well, and they might not want to be thought of as another human, but that's...what they are. That's something they can't change. Back where I'm from, we're all human. [No superpowers, no talking dogs, no mutations, nothing. Just human.] That's how you catch them. And they're not all—people try to fit serial killers like I track into boxes. Labels. Something that makes sense to them but doesn't. Work. I prefer looking at the way they think as opposed to shoving them into categories. Waste of time until we lock them up, sometimes a waste of time even then.

[Just not Will's waste of time. Until they start killing the staff, then it's less a waste of his time and more an enormous throbbing headache.]

Not everyone who ends up doing that sort of thing would have done it if something hadn't happened to them to make them...not who they used to be.

[Which doesn't give lives back (even if they were the lives of people who should have been locked up themselves), but there are so many gray areas where Will works that sometimes it feels like black and white aren't anywhere to be seen.]

[ Annie envies those who do have the black and white, even as she thinks they're moronic for being unable to see that the world is more complicated than their sense of right and wrong. They usually have a sense of idealistic conviction that's nice - impractical, and likely to destroy the systems they think they're helping, but nice. There's a strength in seeing what corruption and horror is around and deciding I'll change that, I'll make it better, I'll free us from this tyranny instead of turning away and saying, So it goes.

She admires, respects that mentality, is thankful in the same turn that it's not the majority of the people in the world. Such special people are needed... as a balance.

If no one pushed for a better world, then alternative, the end result of apathy dictating the flow of a world is a population ruled by the ambitious without a hope for betterment in the human condition.

Surely, nothing monsters should concern themselves with. It's not like the joke of the system had to be reflected back on them, those who stood and only asked to be considered human, too. ]

I imagine your way of viewing these things is hard for the average person to understand.

[ People want boxes. They want neat lines. She knows life would have been simpler if she had those herself; if she'd had anything close to an absolute belief. ]

Looking for the motivations is along our lines of work in the end... isn't it. I suppose policing has something to do with those kinds of investigations. What makes a person do what they do.

[ Her own time with the Military Police had been short, but such assignments, taking steps outside and striving to understand to be able to bring in what they're supposed to.

Even while other ends are acting at the behest of the highest powers, eradicating threats, not defending anything more or less pitiable than a power base. ]

[The mentality may be similar, but Will's far more inclined to the So it goes reaction. Oh, he helped catch someone doing unspeakable, horrific things? Wonderful, where's the next one? He can sniff and scratch and dig and bark and bite and kill for a thousand lifetimes, and it will never end it. He will never hold a folder in his hands and receive the information that he has helped catch the last of them, he cant sweep up the floor, put the chairs up, turn off the lights, and head home to his dogs for good. The monsters keep coming, and they always will.

So it goes.

The mention of the way he views things being different (not the way he thinks; different wording is appreciated) has his lips thinning out. It's not a happy topic. If there had been more like him (anyone else like him, for that matter), he wouldn't have been so needed, so desired, and if he'd retired like he should have, Abigail Hobbs would not be dead. If only there'd been someone else to fill his slobbery, furry, chewed shoes.

Military Police. Something better to latch onto, even if she seems young.]

If we can find a way to understand the cause behind things, we can work towards a method to stop that cause. [It's...true enough. Just not exactly in his specific line of work.] Setting curfews for the underage to counteract juvenile delinquency, for one thing. That was. An attempt that seemed to do some good.

["Some good" is better than "nothing good at all." But it was still there, and so it goes and so it goes and so it will never stop.]

No offense in your direction because of the...age factor. The first thing to spring to mind. Don't imagine they let just anyone in the Military Police.

[Ah, yes. That's a much more humane smile.]

[ She listens, not inclined to take offense to a technicality that protects her in this place. Hilarious, really. She's one of those monsters people warn each other about in the night, scaring children into behaving, or the Titans will eat you, even if it's not the truth. The shifters weren't cannibals. Not by nature, and not by choice.

It's the people stuck in the nightmare who are, who devour without knowing, who can't wake up and walk on lost for decades as a monster that tries to reclaim what some portion of itself remembers as being right.

Titans, who would be humans. Humans, who would be Titans. Monsters in a fucked up world.

Mankind always invents itself as its own worst enemy. ]

They only allow the best. Which is unfortunate. The Military Police recruit the top graduates each year, and they're the ones who never face the threat we're all trained to handle.

[ Sliding past age. Sliding past the rest; juvenile delinquency, as if delinquency restricts itself to an age group. Curfews means punishing before they can get into more trouble at night. Add a pressure, set a fear. It works.

It always works, for the majority of normal people. Those who like the thrill of breaking with the social law that guides their lives also like the fear of being caught, or fight against it.

Curfews... she needs to keep those in mind. ]

Secured in the center of the human empire, the most capable soldiers humanity has never face the threat of the Titans destroying humanity.

[ Oh what a wonderful world... There's derision there, derision and knowledge; Annie aimed for this group. Not for the reasons she's said, exactly; not because they're safest, but indeed, because she wants to save herself.

Aim for the middle. Aim for the heart. Finish her objective, and get the hell out. It's the only way she's ever getting to go home, and as far as she knows, that's impossible anymore. ]

[Will's opinions on protect the children!!!! might be seen as warped, accustomed to children killers as much as he's accustomed to their fully grown counterparts. Curfews were good and well and all, that pressure, that fear, but they were still capable. They'd find ways around it if they really wanted to. People could murder with or without a curfew, regardless of age.

And he had to clean it up. Had. Not anymore. Not here. He won't let it happen. One whiff of a Ripper murder and it all comes tumbling down for someone else.

His own world is a mess, so it goes, so it goes, and this one is, too, in its own way. He is not yet, however, feeling like he owes it anything. The monsters he knows don't seem to roam here as much, what good would it be for him to get a desk job? While monsters may roam, as long as they don't leave body art to announce their presence, well.

So it fucking goes without him.

This has taken a turn for something he didn't expect, has his eyebrows lifting slightly and lips thinning out. Nothing too expressive just yet. He can control his face.]

So it was...a cushy job for the best, you're saying? Never going out in the field?

[He's not judging, not deriding the idea of a desk job. Some people wanted to sit at desks. He's got knowledge of that.

He wouldn't have minded it so much.

But the more he learns, the less he thinks he'd have liked Annie's home much at all.]

The field?

[ She breathes out, a small, short huff of amusement. ]

The world I come from has its own sense of humor. The best at fighting the threat to humanity are taken away from that fight. They're brought in to police over humanity itself, under the order of the King, and among them, the youngest, newest recruits are most heavily relied on to perform.

There's a field to work in - several, in fact - but it isn't where they could be most effective. Not for the fight against the Titans.

[ For a very different fight, a political, social battle, it's brilliant. The most loyal are rewarded with the kinds of lives that bred corruption by teaching how to look the other way, brutally and effectively making the world conform to those expectations. ]

You go where you're ordered to go. You fight, capture, interrogate as you're told. You hunt down missing family members, you track down people dodging taxes, you escort drunks out of taverns, you stand watch when important prisoners are moved through your district.

We're the enforcement and the executioners when called for. Yet we don't have to stand and fight the biggest known threat for the last hundred years. Funny... isn't it.

[ She doesn't find it funny in the slightest. So it goes. ]

[Will doesn't find it funny in any sense of the word, but he knows his idea of funny is its own beast. This was not the conversation he was expecting to have, not what he thought he could hear, but no matter. Life would be static if he could predict things that well, and in a place full of people from completely different worlds?

It's nice to listen and be completely wrong about things from time to time in ways that don't mean someone else dies.]

You don't think that's unique to where you're from, do you?

[He's careful to add that question mark at the end in his voice. Otherwise, it might sound like he's quietly mocking her, and that is not it at all.]

[ She appreciates that nuance. Wouldn't have minded the mockery, had it been there; not enough to do mor than be irritated in passing. ]

I'm not so optimistic as all that, Will.

[He doesn't want to mock or irritate, honestly, but he ends up doing the latter more often than not. Just by being himself, himself that he's fully capable of controlling to the point where he doesn't end up irritating her.

He's going to try to keep it that way.]

It's not all that unique. [There's the sound of a bell, the door to the shop opening, and he leans back, fiddling with his name tag.] My world's got a long history to it, that wouldn't be out of place.

[ the bell. She doesn't hear it often enough at stores, avoids going in to so many, to identify it as readily as she might later on. ]

Sounds like so many worlds have long histories, especially compared to ours. Ah... but I won't keep you on this.

[The fact is that Will could get up and go to the back room, tell the customer he'd be out in a few minutes if they had any questions, and no one would get onto him for it. But this conversation has gone unexpected places, has probably run its length, and there's no shame is using the out provided. Otherwise, they could be here for...well, a while.]

If you ever get interested, you know you can ask. [Ask him. Or Gideon, even if he's not sure how that visit went. Not that he would suggest Annie spend a lot of time around someone like Gideon, but hell—she shouldn't spend a lot of time around someone like him, either. No one should. And yet...] Hope everything works out and like I said, I'll check around for boats if you ever wanna go on one privately. Just give me a head's up.

[And yet he's still inviting her out somewhere she can't get away from him if anything goes wrong.

Well done.]

[ It's the better thing, ending a conversation she'd never intended to really have. Breaking out of text is strange enough; necessary, too, but strange. ]

Thank you. [ Words with their own ring of sincerity. What, in all of this, she's most thankful for is up to debate, but it's true, much as her own inevitable inability to escape something far worse than Will, or the sea. Herself. ]

I will.

[ Wasting away again in Margaritaville... ]

[No, he Will. Ha ha. So funny. Never used that one before.

He doesn't say anything else, gives her the closest thing to a smile he can, nods, and she gets to hear half a question about some rod on show before he cuts the feed.

Whatever, he'll have her in the shop one day. Soon.

Better get an oven.]

IC contact [Mask or Menace]

so goddamn beautiful i had to ignore this 4 a week 2 live up 2 it

meanwhile i flail at trying to keep up today FLAILS REALLY ARTFULLY

ur a van gogh puts u on wall

but i wanted to grow up monet

u wanted to be a blurry lily pad?

or the water under the blurry lily pad, everyone forgets the blurry water and bridges

you wanted to be the forgotten

i bet you thought this tag was forgotten (CRIES INTO TEA)

yes, like the avril lavigne song (it better be sweet)

which one she has multiple oh no i'm forgotten songs (bittersweet with my tears)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeb6zN7TEYQ the one with that for the name (unacceptable)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYunO8SZe30 randomly this is the one that came to mind for me

stop ship pushing

ships all the way across the /sea/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqwqsKcTNE

musical interval..............

no jimmy buffett, noh-varr would be amazed

but would he be impressed

no, will is not kree enough