the perks of virtual insanity
Chapter 01: sisterhood by circumstance
Chapter 02: birth by blender
Chapter 03: adoption by ocean
Chapter 04: mothering by mimicry
Chapter 05: drop by drop
this is so interesting now you say. i see it. shulk who does not know how to communicate laying very unstable groundwork for rex to come in and be her awesome uncle. she dies
It was so quick - just a little thing. She almost might swear she'd imagined it, if not for swearing that she had seen it, for sure.
He'd not even looked. Or maybe he had? He must have done. Maybe he'd looked with his bad eye. Funny how Teacher, for all his love of machines, seemed to be unsure of the accuracy of his prosthetic hand, even now, while Rex loved to clap people on the back with hardly a blink (de facto, a wink) for his or their trouble.
Because that was all it was. Panacea had commented, as lightly as she knew how, "I hadn't taken Rex for such a neatnik."
Meticulous. Punctilious. Nosybody. Old maid.
You know, instead of saying, "Got something there," like most would do.
"Hm? How do you mean?"
"Brushing dirt off your shoulder. I'm sure there was nothing there."
Now Linka self-consciously flicked eyes to her shoulder, around the high collar, as if to see it illumined for visual aid.
"Of course there wasn't. My kit's freshly cleaned."
Miss Perception, fair for flies in the amber ointment, could see Panacea's gears yet struggling to turn.
Panacea, whose Teacher never touched anybody without reason, never spoke from the heart without a great deal of machination from the head. Not that he was standoffish. It just didn't occur to him. He wasn't the touching type.
"Boss isn't looking for imperfections to adjust, Panny. It's just his way. Though maybe it's for want of imperfections that you haven't noticed."
Panacea said nothing, but it was clear now that she had come to understand.
"You know, say your cape is looking off-kilter...well, let him fluff it up a bit."
fryevanne had a gay thot son named mirai
okay so given that frye is a bart what can we name daddy christoph that fits our assigned new englander origins but also relates to fatimas but also fits a man born in the 1990s but also sounds good as a middle name for mirai christoph-taylor
let me add another criterion. was one of the apostles (mark and michael were out for other reasons but they fit this one. by which i mean their new englanderness comes from here)
actually mirai matthew is good and matthew was the publican. bar joke
his initials are mimeosome maintenance center.................
"Mirai? As in Mir-ai-cle?"
Of course Seren, the manifest everythingburger of maximal symbolic simplicity, would jump directly onto and abroad the path of least resistance. As their dealt freckled hand seems to go, it's all aces, up and wild, forever.
They hang their head out gawked from their neck, seeming to point at some apparent risibility of such a name, or the fact that its givers forgot to check it for triteness.
There have been worse names. There have been better names. But more and more, we name with the intent to envision and roadmap an entire future, rather than retiring to the classics and seeing individually what forth must spring, as happens less and less.
Once upon a time, about the parents and their own personal, conservative sensibilities of nominative determinism. Most recently, children named in numbers and occupations, Three Castle Major and Boss Aja-Sir. Who ever said the clothes make the horse girl?
Mira Verum Corpus - a wonderful true body. Mira, planet exodus arrival, what a wonderful world. And the trees are still green, the skies are still blue. The clouds, being that water seems indefinitely to be water, are still cumulous and white.
But now, it's not about that; not really about the destruction of planets bringing two parents together.
It's more like the motivational syllables of Jamiroquai, remixed (truncated) and reimagined to bring about the future vision of a walking Steely Dan lyric, platinum golden blond on top and all silvery swagger below. A cardigan. A cloche hat. A pair of checkered slacks.
It's something about Designer Children. It's always something about Designer Children.
(It's also always something about passing on the lionized grandfather's name in the middle there in order to create great modernized monstrosities with the same initialism as the Mimeosome Maintenance Center itself.)
Or maybe Vivanne's just dreaming a little too hard about the biological unrealities that could, should, would and maybe will allow, eventually, for a perfect fusion of her and Frye, as boisterous and smooth as progressive metal.
"It's just a thought," replies Vivanne. She stops herself short of adding, "And I'm not so sure I recall in whose eye you first started twinkling." That is, whose dreams they fulfilled. Whose plans they made perfect? Whose twinkling, at petty childhood ballet.
How difficult, and really how strange an inclination, this wanting of children. Like teachers abhorring to demand respect so much as command it, you mustn't ever think too deeply into your hopes and wishes, lest a vicious sort of predetermination ever try to come true.
You can do no better than want that uncanny hybrid, if you deign to want anything at all.
You can wish that emotional intelligence is a percentile statistic improving in steady increments, year over year. You can hope to coalesce all generations' patience.
You can prize and preserve a love of fun alongside a great passion for pattern in quotient intelligence. You can encourage fashion, the gamut widening toward infinite freedom.
Is it really so bland a bisexual future, if everyone abandons the sporting debate of gender, anymore? Haven't we made it so impossibly interesting?
As if Frye and Vivanne are really, set across from each other, just the same. As if Frye still buckles down to stand against the path of learning.
All are behooved to design for children that suit the world they're inhabiting, but failing that, if the world must be changed, then let us wish for children apt to change it.
Let us wish for masculine star-child daughters and only the most preeminent of graffitied gay thot sons.
HOW CAN I MAKE THIS ABOUT FIONA !
that's what i was thinking the whole time as i plunged into the depths of despair
It's only fair that everyone in Colony Mu gets the same share of indulgent attention from Cap'n Triton. Fiona may be the commander, but she never wanted to be, right? So it'd be complete tripe if all of a sudden she were to stand up and start claiming her privileges now.
Everyone from Tallow to Tussore on down to Hildemarie deserves their spot of scuttlebutt passed from young mouths to old ears. Everyone, certainly, is equally well equipped to speak with him, or shoot at him, or box those very same ears just as Eunie and Lan-Lan had taught them.
(No one's telling Fiona that Eunie used to be Eunice, once upon a time, or even Eustace, some time prior to that. The diminutive sound is agreeable no matter who came up with it.)
And yet, Fiona stocks up an unfamiliar sort of unconscious pride in her position as the one with whom Triton liaises the most frequently, the most strongly, the most directly.
It's she who travels with him and Ouroboros. It's she who waves the standard of the colony. It's she who supervises the quartermaster in raiding Irma's secret stash. It's she who signs the seeds to plant the flowers to fashion the boutonniere for the jabot.
It's Fiona all the way down. It always was. It always will be.
What's to come of her if she isn't the best? What's to come of all the unrighteous sadness and smiles alike? Cap'n Triton forgets everything else - why shouldn't he forget about her?
Isn't that how that works? Doesn't it have to be? Or don't we know, about people so much unfathomably older than us and ripe to fade away?
anyway. shania's monica moment. when the mother
Shania is still fairly young when she realizes that she's equipped herself to approach new people, if and when she must, in rather a negative way:
She assumes that they dislike her. Not hate - no, that feeling's much too strong. That's too much personal investment.
She just takes, as her ungentle tack, the natural supposition that she will not find in polite society much of any intrigue into the scattered difficulties and disabilities that have made her behave the way she does.
(There may well be intrigue, but it is not caring and it is not very often polite. It is instead accusatory. Shania quickly learns to accuse right back.)
Children are not her friends. Teachers are not her friends. Siblings are not her friends. Parents are not her friends.
By that token, Shania's entire general definition of what can count as a friend must change, of course. But within the preexisting frame, Shania soon stops expecting absolutely anyone to be absolutely any warmer toward her than her own mother has never been.
Her father is weak, a bit of an enabler. Titania's kindness comes only in quiet, private spurts of insecurity; it almost hurts her just as much to try to unravel what it takes to condescend, and there's so much praise to be had in her aloofness - see, here, where the enabling comes?
Meanwhile, Ghondor's a loose-cannon only child whose mother didn't hardly luck into birthing a mini-me. Shania cannot possibly envy the opportunity to act so aggressive, because it merely confuses her in its alienness.
Monica is not soft. Monica is not even so much the starkly softer than Ghondor.
But she nevertheless has kind words ready for Shania in moments that Shania could not possibly expect. Just when everything has toppled all over upside down, too blown into disarray ever to be artfully or even desperately remounted as a placid still life...
She has an inviting gaze. She has patience, silence, grace.
(Also, Monica herself is still fairly young.)
Maybe it's all the leftover tiredness and quiet. Maybe it's the grace she doesn't give to Ghondor, because she can't. Oh, sure, she's the Elder's daughter, but also, Ghondor won't ever seem to take it that way.
Shania doesn't know how to take it that way, this way, or through the third dimension, but she will take it. She may even start to rely on the foreign presupposition that Monica likes her, as well as any adult ever can like a furtive lack of eye contact and an intractable interpersonal way.
Perhaps, the difference between enablement and empowerment. Because as much as Monica may or may not like Shania, she is not Shania's mother, and thus she quite effortlessly maintains the essential mutual freedom to abandon the scope of the frame, the expectations, and the chains.
Shania doesn't do well with lukewarm friendliness, and wouldn't know what to do with genuine concern if it hit her over the head. Oh, but that's awfully negative, isn't it?
Monica's motherly blessing seems to be that she is so powerfully neutral, and that in itself is quite a rare thing.
their [brighaeon] perennial adult siblings relationship. literally were never children but also as children acted like adults. both have nystagmus and aegaeon has autism. must to contemplate sports and hobbies. of course aegaeon doll collection
ohhhh. what if all common blades are blind and use other senses (lidar) to ambulate. but aegaeon never got his cornea cleared and then his phthisis bulbi. a couple of my schoolkids have nystagmus but chandh was talking about its relation to albinism and ummm. mr white hair. ohhhhhh
because dolls have many textures on their outfits or are squishy (aegaeon loves nopon i still never fetched the dialogue) so they're very friendly to someone who cannot see them. and they cannot be creepy to someone who cannot see them
Baba can't see her, but he says she's beautiful. Maybe that's okay for knowing that all of her own eyeballs are in their right place, but really, how can he know that?
He knows his dolls are beautiful because he feels all the intricate textures of their skirts and kerchiefs, squishes the joints of their porcelain bodies, admires the miniature facility of expression by the shape of the tiny lips, eyes, ears, teeth.
Mama and Papa say it's fine if she thinks his dolls are creepy. Sena finds it rude even to entertain, let alone fathom, the thought.
(Well, maybe they are a little bit creepy. But that's all in how you look at it. And Baba cannot see all those frozen faces staring back at him. Certainly, why should he care, if he is the one with white eyes and white hair and wobbling-vibrating pupils? So it just goes to show - or tell!)
Baba cannot know when Sena is blushing, and her cheeks turn as blue as her bright azure head. Right? He can't, can he?
Maybe a lifetime of knowing Mama has informed him of the characteristic heat signature. Maybe a lifetime of knowing Papa has informed him of the ways Ladairs attempt to mask their emotions.
Really, it might be nice to have someone around who can't judge. Not that he would judge, if he could see her. Not that he should judge her. Shouldn't he?