silph_co | if we can call them friends then we can call them on their telephones

"I'm sure," Steven confirms. "She's popped up on the public network already and I was able to get a good look at her face. It's-- different to translate something you only saw as a drawing to, you know, flesh and bones, so it took me a while, but... it's her. Connie went on and on about their little adventures together and she dropped all kinds of little tidbits about Akane that, uh, added up. Like how she distrusts men and that she's a fighter and shit like that. So yeah. Yeah, I think it's her. And, uh, in another thing on the public network she mentions Ranma, Ryouga, Mousse, and Shampoo, so..."

He sighs and runs his hand through his short hair again and says, "So. When Connie's finally talking to you again--you're not going to tell her that her new best friend is from a manga, right? Because I don't think that's something she could deal with."

Dirk makes such a face at Steven it's almost out of the bounds of his rigid characterisation; in an ideal universe, Steven might remember the symbolic and minimal way Homestuck's characters are traditionally rendered. Of course, this is far from the ideal universe. So there's a very good chance the weird face Dirk is making at him looks better suited to a situation in which Steven had jammed a live sea cucumber in Dirk's mouth.

Then again, maybe that's just the way Dirk feels about Steven's conscious assumption that he and Connie will exchange words ever again. Or that Connie will ever credit Dirk for anything but a scoundrel and a creep.

"I don't think that's going to matter," he deadpans even as his voice ices over.

"But I ain't told no one yet. It's not what I do."

"You told me," Steven points out. Then, a moment later, "Only after I revealed knowing what Homestuck is. Okay. Yes. Fine. The point is-- God, I'm not entirely sure I know what the point is." He runs his hand through his hair again, a nervous gesture. "She's doing, okay, by the way. Connie is. Better than she could be. Traveling with Akane's good for her, at least."

"I didn't ask," Dirk replies callously. "Great. Good for her."

Internally, he commends himself for his restraint in not sighing--or saying anything more provocative.

"I'm sure they're just perfect for each other. What I'm not certain of is what conversation you're trying to have here, but I'm telling you now I'm only interested in one of them."

Steven rolls his eyes. "Whatever," he says. "It's not like you both weren't idiots in your own special ways, especially with how you jammed your entire leg down your throat like that.. Just-- fuck, I don't know. You going to be okay in the long run?"

He's not going to ask about in the short term. That's kind of obvious.

Dirk makes another face, this time like he's stepped in something rancid.

He's been making a lot of faces here for Steven's edification, a veritable one-man variety show.

"You really think I give a shit that I made a teenage girl sad? Or pissed her off enough to stab me? Is that what you think the problem here is?"

Steven scowls. "I was assuming, given that she was your protege, that you actually did give a shit about Connie, yeah."

"God damn but you are absolutely terrible at listening to a single thing I actually say."

He crosses his arms over his chest, very purposefully refrains from scowling--but his tone and demeanour are still about as forgiving as sandpaper.

"I said," he begins--and when Dirk slows down like that, both his clipped enunciation and his drawl get stronger.

"Do you for one second think I feel fucking sorry I made her cry."

It's a yes or no question, Steven.

He can't make a choice-based UI function to narrow it down for you so you'll have to figure it out yourself. But then, usually they call it a brain.

"And you're an extremely literally minded asshole," Steven retorts. "Enough that it makes every goddamn conversation with you a chore. I. Have. No. Fucking. Clue. Okay? This isn't about if you give a shit about what you did, this is going to be if you think you're going to be a functional human being at some point. Because that would be good to know, given your current turn for the recluse."

"Ah. There. See, here's the thing. I do care about what I did." His expression doesn't change at all, and he completely ignores Steven's bitchy preamble in its entirety. But hey, it's an answer, right?

Or was.

"But enough about that," he uncrosses his arms, waving his left hand to the side as though closing a window on a particularly sci-fi invisible touch screen.

"I'm already 'functional.' I'm getting loads of work done, in fact. I mean, look at this thing. The percentage of this project I can call complete is ticking upwards of 90%. Whether or not I'm feeling sociable is irrelevant, especially right now everyone wants to crawl up my asshole and die there."

Now his scowl returns.

"If, however, this is about me being human, I don't know that was ever the case. Maybe in a nominal sense, but now?"

He doesn't wait for Steven to answer before shutting any attempt to answer down.

"It doesn't matter."

Steven rolls his eyes as Dirk explains his supposed functionality and is about to tell him that just because he can still work doesn't mean he's functional in other ways--but then Dirk says his bit about not being human and--

Well. It's not like Steven is unfamiliar with the sensation of feeling cut-off from humanity, even before El Pecador's basement. Of feeling other, alien, a monster. He's always had some idea of what's inside him, after all.

He sighs. "Fine. Whatever. Just-- you're not a robot, Dirk."

"No," Dirk agrees. His tone evens out, though his jaw remains tight. "You're right about that."

Historically, the point of comparison between Dirk and his robots, or any robot, has been a bit loaded. Not unlike a gun. Not to mention a bit contentious.

Steven stopped reading long before he would know any of it.

"I'm the machinist."

After a moment, Steven nods. "Well--controlling vessels outside yourself is kind of your thing, isn't it?" he says, wearily. "Robots and smuppets and all that shit." A terrible thought occurs to him. "You-- haven't made a giant robot smuppet, have you?"

No. Wait. Focus, Steven Durante.

"Look. I don't know if that's your way of saying your flesh is merely a vessel or not. But you know. It's the only one you've got here. Eat. Drink your warm soda."

"Fuck no. The point of a smuppet is the plush. That soft, alluring felt outside imprisons a dense, yielding mass of felt and foam. You stuff that ass so tight it feels like it's gonna burst right up until that last stitch.... but once you tie it off, you can bounce a coin off it and that red cent ain't going nowhere. Shit, it might just settle in for a nice nap."

The very idea of a smuppet that is anything but 100% pornographically provocative plush pal--all perky posterior and friendly facial phallus--is offensive, that's what it is. It's offensive.

He does, however, swipe the plate and actually take a moment to just savour the smell. Which might or might not be a moment to recompose himself after that mental digression. Which was itself only a distraction while he worked around the the other thing.

Before he puts the first bite in his mouth, he has to issue a correction.

"The body is one of many vessels. The flesh is a material limitation." He raises the spoon.

"Not all of those are physical."

Now he eats.

But while he chews, his mental gears are still turning, still thinking about flesh and plush and vessels and puppets. It's less stringent when he speaks again. Clarifying.

But the expression around his shades remains harsh.

"Consciousness is also a vessel. Perception is a limitation on consciousness. There are others."

"I mean, it's not my personal fetish," Steven says, finally. "But since it's yours, I'll believe you. As for the rest of it... what are the others?"

Is he... is he indulging you in your bullshit, Dirk, and actually listening to you expound about this shit?

He is. Will you look at that.

"Other limitations, or other vessels? It's not a definitive list. There could be one, maybe. I could make one. But it wouldn't--"

He's thinking out loud. He can hear it, and he stops abruptly and returns to inhaling the food with a renewed intensity. He doesn't actually finish the thought until he's thoroughly tracked down every last scrap of egg, sopped it up with rice, and eaten it.

"Me saying it won't hold water--not unless something changes in a big way," he concludes at long last. It comes out grim, and there's a truth to that, one that leaves a sour taste in his throat.

"I'm... cut off." He hates the way it sounds coming out of his mouth, hates the way it feels to say it, hates the dull feeling of his thoughts as they run up against an invisible wall, the emptiness of where more should be. The other emptiness, vast and silent, where the words should have been. And his words, and so his Word.

This is why any list he made off the cuff would be incomplete. Missing that essential element of canonocity. He cannot know, or say, and so his heap of ideas, however finely assembled, would only ever be just that. And so too would it be ever haunted by the ghost of more.

Steven nods. He... can get how it is, that feeling of being cut off. How long has it been since he last dreamwalked? Far too long.

"What are you cut off from?" he asks quietly.

"In one word: Canon. And don't look at me like that, you think I'm not sick and fucking tired of how much work it takes to invent the universe every time I have to answer a question?"

That question was rhetorical.

"I already knew saying it directly like that wouldn't help you understand. I'm getting there." He takes a sip off the top of his strictly lukewarm orange soda in a way that's generally a bit pensive but looks, sincerely, like he's having a sulk.

"Or what's there to get, anyway." He chews on the scar issue on his upper lip a moment.

"What that means is... I'm not all here. Emphasis on 'here.' And I don't think I ever was."

The way he says it is perceived, internally, as grave, if not outright ominous. And that's what his tone attempts to deliver.

It's an excruciating revelation, felt so deeply and on so many more levels than he can comfortably cover in one go, or even uncomfortably cover, period, that it's all he's been thinking about for days.

Which has a lot to do with the mood he's been in since before Steven arrived.

"So when I tell you that me saying something doesn't hold water, that goes both ways. I can't make it so, and I can't fucking know it either. Not canonically."

Not in any way that matters.

"I'm making mistakes. Getting mixed up with myself."

He regards Steven for a moment, with stunning ambivalence.

"Don't take my word for anything."

"I don't always," Steven says. "You have been, on occasion, wrong about things--and that's the problem for you, isn't it? You're not used to being wrong about things, for whatever reason." He drums his fingers on his knees, thinking. He knows about Tale Crafting, even though he's never been able to do it himself. It doesn't see strange that someone with Sburb-granted powers might be able to do something similiar.

"Dirk?" he asks, frowning slightly. "How much of the story of your world are you used to affecting?"

"Oh. That."

He takes a breath, like a reverse sigh--and with the sentiment behind it equally opposed.

"Hussie ended the story when the game did. But canon demands more than truth. It demands relevance and essentiality. Without me, we'd have been the collective victims of entropy, decaying from relevance into inanity."

Dirk studies the contents of his plate. If he's trying to divine an answer out of the remaining clusters of rice, now pushed into messy little piles, it's not going very well.

"Affecting. Huh. Real flaccid word there. Could I tell you that every page is soaked in me, every repetitive little minor detail saturated with the taint of my germinescent goo, my narrative omnipresence? Could I say I'm the gestalt force by which the story exists at all? Yeah. I could say all of that. So taking full authorial control? That's every bit as inevitable as anything else that ever happened, or ever will."

........

"Canonically speaking."

"You took control of the narrative," Steven guesses. "From my world's perspective, it was probably some kind of... neat conceit for an epilogue or sequel work or whatever. But in yours... you really did that shit, huh? Somehow or another."

"I'd already finished the Epilogues. Was working on the followup."

The real body of his work.... the real purpose behind every plan he had set in motion, every piece he had played, every role he'd scripted, all of it. He hadn't even started.

And--

"I don't really want to talk about it. Not that it isn't fascinating stuff. Storycraft. The rehabilitation of canon. One man's struggle between the power of choice and the inevitability of the ultimate self. Just a bit hard to get into the telling of a story I can't fucking tell."

Edited 2020-04-10 05:19 (UTC)

"Right," Steven says. "And-- yeah, okay, no, I get it. I get it. For all intents and purposes, you're basically being narratively blue-balled, right?"

He frowns a little, before adding, "You and Tyler ought to talk. I think he's shaped the narrative too, albeit on a smaller scale." It's what Tyler's kith did, after all. Steve knew that much.

"More like I've been narratively cucked." Dirk doesn't quite spit the last word, but only just--this is not an impersonal matter for him. Quite the opposite: the narrative game of chess was fun* but his exile-slash-quarantine stopped being a legal move months ago, and until he finally gets the (occasionally literal) authorial pen back in hand, he regards his confinement as very, very personal.

*It was not fun. It was fucking stupid. Sure, he knew he was engineering his own downfall in the long term, and his victory was pretty satisfying, but she also made herself a real fucking nuisance along the way.

He scraps that train of thought and refocuses.

"Tyler? What does Tyler know?"

"He's done Talecrafting," Steven says. "It's something we can do... well, I've never been able to, but it's something that technically any Changeling could theoretically try. It's, uh, recognizing the narrative patterns going on around you and reaching out to tweak them. Usually with some consequence to yourself later, but I think Tyler's kind doesn't get that part."

image is from the live action adaptation

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oh here we go

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Sorry for delay.... rough brain week (ironic?)

Re: Sorry for delay.... rough brain week (ironic?)

Cuts out like 1/3 of this tag to let poor Steven speak

thank dirk. thirk.

This tag is purposefully confusing sorry Steven

IT'S FINE

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