Teenagers Scare the Living Shit Out Of Me etc. etc.

[dyingtohealyou]

[Characters passing by the bulletin board may notice a new message tacked to it!]

Drinking party at the bar at 8pm. Under 21 only. Adults will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Fun and games included, party hats optional. Don’t be late!

[Sure enough, there’s a gathering of teens (and maybe some not-so-teens?) to be found in the bar! While the posting mentions this is a teen only event, adults are in fact allowed as long as they are cool. OOCLY please be aware there are going to be teens drinking alcohol and possibly smoking! Also additionally, please let the teens/players have fun; again, adults are allowed but only if they’re cool enough to play along without snitching them out!

All party game top levels are going to be made under Ahito’s account but please assume ICly that Akira instigated/explained them! Once the game toplevels are up you can also post your own toplevels to mingle freely if you like IDK IT’S A PARTY HAVE FUN]

Comments

[fellheart]

[ is that not what happens? put them on a pedestal, hallowed and sancrosact, and they cease to be people. think of them as lesser, brutish and mistreated whether out of fear or not, and they're but animals. regardless of the means, the end is the same.

anyway hey mika remember that moment you had with cid somewhere else in drwp party time. anyway. for a very brief moment, robin's eyes flash red. ]

I am... very, very tired, I believe, of witnessing society's apparent desire for its own self-destruction. I have been laid to rest, only to not die. I have slumbered until next I awoke, only to find that nothing at all has changed.

I have watched desires for peace fail, over and over again, only for those with ugly desires to reap the spoils of the aftermaths. Idealism either makes you a martyr or a victim to those who aren't nearly so kind. So many would so quickly become arrogant and perpetuate the same follies that preceded them; so many claim to be doing things for others' sake, when it is all nothing but a show of self-righteous self-indulgence.

No— I have very little faith left in the hearts of mankind.

[ and yet, the world spins on regardless. ]

[shortleash]

( Perhaps expectedly, Robin's speech meets agreeable ears - there is not a word Mika disagrees with. Yet, Mika is not so presumptuous as to say he understands all that Robin has seen in the way Robin has experienced it. It has been only two years since he's seen the world for what it is - and it has been only four years after the grimed veneer of society was peeled away, following humans' self-inflicted apocalypse.

He has only just begun to see the cruel edges of humanity, and its futility, and yet, he already feels sick enough to drown in it, exhausted enough that he'd give up, if he did not have those few he wished to protect.

He can't imagine what it must be like to be a creature like Robin, as old as he sounds (surely older than Mika, he would hazard), and to know this all so intimately that the nausea no longer appalls; it simply is. )

... And so you resign to your exhaustion?

( Not judgment, exactly. If there is one parallel he knows, it's that vampires simply grow indifferent - for very distinct reasons, but the effect leaves them little different than droning corpses, in some way. No longer moved by the world; exhausted by existence; unable to die.

A fate that haunts him; that is (seems?) inevitable. )

[fellheart]

[ taps his fingers on the table. his answer is not so direct, robin picking and choosing his way through his thoughts with some care. ]

... Over two millennia ago, Saint-King Alm the First ascended to power on another continent. He is remembered for being the first king of the One Kingdom of Valentia, a kingdom that spanned the continent. That continent was originally watched over by a pair of sibling gods ...

[ frowns. how does he want to phrase this. ]

He's known on that continent for bringing about the twilight of the gods, and ushering in an age of man. He cast off the oppressive yoke of the land's languishing gods, gods who might have at one point meant well, but so too did fall into degeneration. [ at least, that's what he's gathered, from accounts of Duma as a fell god. ] And yet, if those gods were stifling humanity's potential to grow...

Why, then, has little to nothing changed since then?

[ unfortunate thoughts, about a world that's been trapped in medieval stasis for thousands of years. ]

[shortleash]

( Mika takes note of the impromptu history lesson, and considers with vague amazement the concept of simply removing a god. Is that truly a god, then, if they can be bested by man?

At the very least, he cannot fathom how one could close the curtains on the God he knows, unknowable; unreachable; inscrutable - sequestered away so far from the hell that comprises his earth, that He cannot be struck, nor felled.

It would not change the world's end, though, Mika decides. It would not change, for the same reason it had not changed the nature of man in Robin's world. )

... The issue lies within humans' hearts.

( Following his series of questions, Mika finally takes a stance. An expected one, but a stance all the same. )

It's not in their nature to change; it's not in their nature to do good. They think about themselves, and their wants, and they think they're justified and righteous, and they will do anything it takes to achieve it. Anyone hurt, anyone lost on the way becomes just "a necessary sacrifice."

( A beat, as he glances across the crowd - toward no one in particular. Humans in a crowd like this... does not provoke within him hope, for precisely these reasons. )

... Some can overcome their nature, even if only somewhat. ( Some can be different - some are protagonists, after all. ) But... that's not enough to change the whole. Nothing is enough.

( And so often they are taken advantage of; so often they drown, as Robin described. )

... I don't know ( or care, really - sorry, Solomon, ) if this was the right choice, but vampires where I'm from were organized into coalitions to remove these categories of surviving humans— not that their motives were good. Cults, churches, armies; self-righteous and violent instigators. Through their deaths, the decline of humanity slowed.

( Mika was just a foot soldier in these operations. He does not absolve himself of the loss of human life, though. He does not wash himself clean of the blood on his hands. )

... Not that the remaining humans didn't come to turn on each other again, eventually. Even with these external fire starters removed, humans seek out harm naturally. Again, and again, and again.

[impacter]

[Not a surprise, but an ache nonetheless.]

[fellheart]

[ perhaps, if the gods truly did wish to see humanity grow, what was left of their minds would have them cede their positions willingly ... he cannot say. he cannot speak for the gods who were gone centuries before his own wings spread to span the skies of what would later be the nation that devoted itself to his worship. all he has is his own experience and the dusty, forgotten tomes and scrolls he's studied. ]

There are some in every age. There are those who are willing to try, but their reach limited, at best.

[ but what an interesting approach these vampires took in attempting to cull the herd, even if not for the correct motives. humanity is a rotten, sickened thing. how does one rescue the healthy, salvageable fruit from the diseased tree? and even if they could, can anyone say they should be the arbiter of who should be allowed to live, if they condemn the rest to die?

no, anyone who would claim to be able to hold the title— they are the last person who would deserve or suit it. is the only thing for it then to burn the entire tree down, and let the ashes feed whatever new bloom follows? ]

So then the question becomes: how does one move the human heart? How does one reach the hearts of many, and make it last?

[ the future is built upon the past. if the past is nothing but strife, ancient animosities, long-established prejudices and grudges, and none will choose to learn from it, is it not better to wipe the slate clean and start anew? ]

[shortleash]

( Though Mika believes Yuu capable of so many great things - on this, he concedes, nothing can be done; not even by Yuu, and all his blinding, beautiful hope. They're just kids. And if Yuu can do nothing, then - no one can. (In this heliocentric way, Mika fixes Yuu at the centre of the universe.) So their world, too, would decay.

He can only wish he could rescue Yuu from it. That - Yuu had been placed here, instead of him.

(... Perhaps...?)

But on this topic, Mika seems to not need to ponder. )

... Nothing. Humans can't look beyond themselves.

( They can't see the forest for the trees. A child who sees the beauty in love and nature grows up to see a man who sees love as a tool and the natural world as fuel.

If humans could change, Yuu could do it. Yuu could not do it. So it is not possible. )

They will undo themselves, eventually, and in every universe. In mind, that came already: their greed led them past every warning sign that told them to stop - and by their own hands they brought about the world's end.

Some few humans remain. ( Hence the urgency of the vampires to preserve what they could. ) But not for very long. The apocalypse and tangible extinction of their kind has not deterred them at all; it's only hastened them, made them selfish at a quicker pace. They steal and kill - they tear each other apart - experiment, and indulge their worse desires.

If their better halves can't touch them, and self preservation can't touch them, and death can't touch them, what else is left to move them?

( Nothing. And so they return to Mika's answer. )

[impacter]

[And there it is. There within lies their differences.

It is subtle, the glance that he lets settle towards Robin. But the line within him towards his fellow ancient one draws up tight.

How very like the Demon King this one sounds. Perhaps he, too, would see what his son had attempted and deemed it pointless due to the role of humanity.

Be faithless, dear Robin, and keep ones eyes open for those cracks in your status quo.]

[leewards]

[Sips his champagne. Of course he heard everything, but he can't really react because Urianger is here.

But with every point Robin makes that he agrees with, every mention of humans' shortcomings that he himself considers as a reason why he hates them so, he taps a finger on his table-- which is every single one of them.]