>Reply to Damara.
-- ambologerasAporia [AA] began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at PESTERCHUM TRIAL VERSION - REGISTER TO UNLOCK TIMESTAMPS AND MORE! --
AA: hi
AA: jane
AA: is jane there
GG: As of now, yes!
AA: good day jane thank you as always for my aliveness.
AA: itsumo osewa ni natteorimasu and all that
AA: but i dont know when is "now" for you
AA: the crow just says pesterchum trial version register to unlock time stamp
AA: what is this stamp.
GG: Oh, is it still daylight where you're at?
GG: Anyway, as for the stamp: I think I explained this in passing during your reorientation, but we have to had to jury-rig the Pesterchum trial version, since the servers all instantly went down when we entered the new universe.
GG: We have our own emulated servers now, but even the inventor of the Captornet himself has not been able to crack the arcane techno cyber-riddle that is Pesterchum's baffling Shareware registration unlock code.
AA: and so that is why my crow cannot tell me the time
AA: how silly and stupid.
GG: Very much so!
GG: And, finally, to answer the other element of your two-pronged question: judging by my phone, and the vague insinuations of a broken clock or some kind of plaque in my room, it is about half past 8:13.
AA: it really stays being around 813 doesnt it
AA: you know
AA: its funny.
AA: my aspect is very hard for me now and i am learning all the time how it is more complex than people think or even than i think
AA: essentially
AA: jikan (time) is haado and no one wakarus.
AA: iya chigau
AA: jane
AA: you wakaru, dont you?
GG: I understand? Yes, I honestly kind of do, Damara.
GG: At least... You aren't the only one who has had a little bit of struggle with her aspect after coming to C.
GG: I've had a bit of trouble "grabbing hold of life", as it were.
AA: yes as you have mentioned.
GG: Which feels, I imagine, the same way that it does for you, time slipping through your fingers.
GG: Although I hasten to add: It really isn't! Even if I weren't literally oathsworn to keep you alive for as long as you want to live, current theory holds that rustblood lifespans are not naturally any different than fuschia!
AA: yes ok that is facts but does not address my central question of what am i supposed to do with this much time that i have been given
AA: besides smoking totemo dank nuggets of the harshest craziest earth c leprechaun weed ever to be grown by green little hands
AA: www
GG: Well, first of all, I think maybe it helps to not see your life as a speedrun towards perfect self-actualization.
GG: I know there's a lot you haven't told me, but the stuff you HAVE told me suggests that you might be owed a little bit of time to figure things out.
GG: Is it... I don't know... the first stirrings of wanderlust, do you think? Have you grown tired of shrine-sweeping, ritual, sacred holidays, smalltown life and the occasional covert act of petty delinquency?
AA: dont think so
AA: its more like
AA: am i doing this shit right
AA: like it feels right for me to do as i have and try and reinvent my peoples tradition and way of doing things
AA: with the good parts kept in and the bad parts taken out
AA: old forms reinfused with new values
AA: but i was just a little girl when i went to my last shrine visit
AA: and to be quite honest i do not know if i am honoring the immanent divine forces of nature as my east beforan troll ancestors did or dancing around in a remote shrine making myself look baka before the facepalming gods of shame.
GG: Well, Damara, I find myself in the unusual position of being someone that regularly gets prayed to...?
GG: Yknow, when I'm up there with everybody else on festival holidays behind that weird little veiled pavilion all the carapacians and consorts have us sit in, and they make the big fake Echidna do its fake monster noise and everyone files past and whispers supplications at us,
GG: I do really try and listen. I'm only a demipotent semigod, but I do try and pay attention and do what I can.
GG: And the thing I want to hear most when the prayers are passing my ears is... Sincerity of intent?
GG: You know, there are all sorts of people who come through. Fisher families from the islands of LOLAR, hoity-toity former moon Prospitians that act like temporarily embarrassed millionaires, hardscrabble chess-field farmers, kooky croco-scholars.
GG: It's just become very easy to spot people who are glad-handing versus people who are praying from the bottom of their heart for something that means something to them. Those are the people I take the most seriously. The ones I might try and weave a secret miracle for.
GG: Perhaps the imported genii locorum of East Beforus are not so dissimilar. If you do your work seriously, they'll find a way to help you. Whether that means bringing worshippers to your shrine or illuminating another path for you altogether.
GG: Don't think so much about the formalities of ritual and all of that historical baggage nonsense. Think about where it all comes from. The first encounters between the trollish and the divine. Pottery drums and stone icons. The sharp sigh of an ocarina. The first dim of dusk scattering red twinkles across the surface of the water, the awe of knowing that it is all alive, every single stone, every single whisper of breeze.
AA: shit that is so true.
AA: thank you jane
AA: you are an ii hito (good person)
AA: i am glad that i decided to speak through my crow to your bouncy word ghost today
GG: It has been my pleasure to speak with you too! Damara, would it be impolite for me to make a request of you?
GG: Since the legendary, highly requested Jane/Damara friendship has been blossoming so finely, well...
GG: Mightn't we christen this platonic ship with the broken bottle of a new moniker, and one appropriately themed around East Beforan culture? What do you say?
GG: Would you be willing to call me...
GG: Oh, I don't know if I should be embarrassed to say this.
GG: ...Crocker-chan?
GG: [Scene: A beautiful shrine maiden speaks to her cellular tell-a-crow while the warm breeze flutters the cherry blossoms. So too does our protagonist JANE flutter her eyelashes expectantly, her shoujo eyes twinkling like cauldrons full of stars!]
AA: 草
AA: that is typically not the type of thing you ask a person to do
AA: it is moreso the type of thing that a person decides after a certain feeling of closeness is established and usually with a first name
AA: so asking that is sort of itai (awkward)
AA: but yeah fuck it
AA: let the record state once and for all time that megido damara uses the affectionate honorific for her good friend crocker-chan.
GG: Yes!!
GG: Senpai noticed me. >:B
AA: holy shit you are so good to laugh at
AA: i mean that in a nice way
AA: now you said you were having life problems
AA: you are not permitted to wiggle out of this conversation without discussing them with me.
GG: Haha. Sigh...
GG: I don't know. I feel like I'm being kind of silly, you know?
GG: It's all well and good for me to put on stage shows with my family or go try and snatch up dead people from an ultra-dense plot hole left in place of the reality we left behind.
GG: Sure, my friends have been encouraging, but they're obviously forcing themselves a little bit. You should have seen the tiptoey paragraphs Jake was sending me earlier.
GG: What's more, I seem to be doubting my every single step now.
GG: What does my life look like, when my 'life's work' is complete, when I've finally found the other Calliope and revived all the other dead people who aren't already completely jaded with the 'mortal coil' thing altogether?
GG: What will it look when it's finally time for Jane Crocker to put her big girl pants on?
AA: you wont need to speculate on that
AA: impossible to know it until it is in the process of happening
AA: when you are done with the already dead, you will have eons to spend tending to the living
AA: they will need healing so much more than the dead.
GG: I know... It's just hard to know where the line is. With the dead, it's so simple. Find dead teen, ask permission, miraculously revive, repeat. Fight a couple of freaky monsters, call it a day, then come home.
GG: With the living it's so much harder.
GG: We tried to figure it out first thing after moving here. But it's an awful, awful feeling to feel simultaneously that aren't doing enough, and that you also might break everything far worse by intervening, by breaking the written and unwritten rules of godhood.
AA: crocker-chan i find myself in the position of being someone who prays to the divine
AA: and what i will say is that people dont want a lot of fucking around they want answered prayers so if you have the power you might as well fucking use it
AA: sure there are common sense rules to abide by but if the rule is not all that useful then you throw the rule out and say fuck this particular axiom new rule please.
AA: mondou muyou. which is to say: there is no point vexing yourself silly or endlessly debating when this natural thing happens.
GG: You're probably right. It's stupid that I'm trying to rush the future. I need to let it happen, and just...
GG: Trust that I'll do the right thing when the time comes, whenever the time comes to do some right thing.
AA: thats whats up
AA: ok well this lonely shrine is not going to sweep itself. sorry for missing so many parties i promise i will come to one soon.
GG: Don't worry about it! Just make sure I keep getting your lovely corvid-spoken messages in my phone now and again.
AA: you betcha
AA: ja ne
GG: Oh? What is it?
AA: that was my farewell
GG: Yikes! What a total 'derp moment' on my part...
AA: donmai :)
GG: Hehe, thanks!
GG: "Mata ne!"
-- ambologerasAporia [AA] ceased pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at PESTERCHUM TRIAL VERSION - REGISTER TO UNLOCK TIMESTAMPS AND MORE! --