video & voice; Story-time for All

[abracafcku]

[The video opens on a bare wall and to the sound of very, very corny fanfare. Then Taako's voice cuts in with the sound of applause.]

Yes, yes, welcome one and all to the greatest day of your lives. Today we have a real treat for you folks, so pull up a chair, take a load off and enjoy this banned text we've managed to procure.

[He clears his throat and a puppet appears on the screen - a non-descript looking human priest wearing dark robes and a blue sash around his neck. The voices that read the following lines are similar, but not the same and anyone who knows both Lup and Taako can probably tell it's the twins taking turns to read the passages. People who don't, however, might have a hard time telling them apart.]

"I used to have a lady love,
she journeyed through the sea,"

[A new puppet appears - a beautiful female mermaid with hair that falls just past her breasts. She slides up from the bottom of the screen and the priest turns to her, fawning all over her.]

"Her fins were as the mourning dove,
a mated pair were we.
Our bodies tangled, hand in glove,
a queen and devotee,"

[As the poem progresses, the priest does some...very not PG-13 things to the mermaid puppet. Eventually, the mermaid pushes the priest away, looking tired.]

"But she was called to rise above,
our bond not meant to be."

[Here the mermaid "puppet" flips a double middle finger at the priest and backflips into the sea, leaving him drenched in water.]

"Though I endure, bereft, belove,
I have her guarantee,
I'll be the one she's thinking of,
a little dove told me."

[The priest pines and waits by the water, pantomiming the lament of a forlorn lover as a bird lands next to him, rolling its eyes. The puppet show ends with a curtain drawing across the screen and then the video shuts off. Taako's voice cuts back in once the video is gone.]

Yeah, so the people here? Raunchy as hell. I love it. But then some people were, y'know, boring and said things like--

[Lup's voice takes over smoothly like they're still the same person talking.]

"If any other colonies can hear this message, please respond. This is Havenwell. We're still alive. The city is safe. We will come get you, no matter how far you are. This is not an automated message. Please respond." That there's a radio transmission from "Colony #56'07'4TM", which, obviously, is home sweet home. Not the most interesting, but I won't deny that the archive visits have been… informative.

Anyone else get something fun?

[OOC: It's a joint post! Replies here can be from Taako, Lup, or both of them. If you have a preference, just let us know in the title of your comment or it'll be a roulette of which twin you'll get.

Feel free to use this post to stir up discussion amongst yourselves regarding the lore contributions!]

Comments

video/audio

[twistedempathy]

[Have some delighted clapping at the little puppet show. How cool is that, seriously?]

What a passionate performance! Mine's not nearly as interesting as either of those. It sounds like it might just be someone making a real bad life decision gunking up their inner workings.

[The video cuts off temporarily, as Will changes windows to pull up the passage he'd saved for later.]

I can't make out the name, but I think it's some scientist's personal notes? Log 285, regarding experiment 73.....

[Will clears his throat, now clearly reading aloud.]

"We really don't need food, right? Rawna, preserve me. This is going to fry my internal processors. I wish people would stop complaining about it. We don't need to eat!"

[necromanswers]

Gods, I feel that. Not being able to eat suuuuuucks, especially when you love food.

[Enough years as a lich has made that an all too familiar pain in the ass.]

[twistedempathy]

Know that from experience, do you? What happened?

[An illness? Some kind of surgery? Lichdom is so far outside of his realm of understanding he doesn't know that's even a possibility to consider.]

[necromanswers]

Uhhh...

[Yeah, she's not gonna help him with considering it, either. Certainly not on a public network.]

Starvation?

[twistedempathy]

[There's a glimpse of purple eyebrows raising over the edge of his mask. Starvation, huh? No, "Starvation?" with a question mark at the end. He doesn't believe you for a second, Lup--but he can appreciate not wanting to discuss whatever might have happened, especially in public, so Will doesn't push it.

A beat of incredulous silence, and Will makes a sympathetic noise, shaking his head slowly.]

I'm sorry to hear it..... That sounds scary!

[necromanswers]

[To be fair it's not a lie, just an omission. She grew up on the road more often than not, starving was definitely a thing that happened.

Since he's not pushing though, thankfully, she can shrug it off.]

Water under the bridge, my dude. I'll admit that there's probably a big difference between "I want food" and "I literally cannot eat food even if I had any".

[twistedempathy]

That's true. Why would they try when they knew they couldn't, though? Frying your processors just to make people stop complaining hardly seems worth it.

[necromanswers]

Sometimes people will do weird shit for science. I know a guy who once ate a glowing blue fruit to figure out of it was poison or just bioluminescence. That's not even the dumbest thing he's done for an experiment, either.

[twistedempathy]

Wow..... Was it just bioluminescent? What else have they done?

[necromanswers]

Little of column A, little of column B...

[That was a very interesting year, health-wise.]

Let's see. Once while studying a literal light of creation he fed a fragment of it to someone to see what would happen. He's also cloned himself like, 20 times, I think?

[twistedempathy]

And~?

[You can't just make throwaway comments like that without providing deets, girl!]

[necromanswers]

[Now if only she had more than the bare minimum.]

And...? [Hmm.] Well, the light thing got us all really hype about that particular guy for a while. We had to force him to throw it up because none of us could get anything done while he was around. As for the cloning, it wasn't all at once. Though it would have been wild to see a whole army of science dorks arguing with each other about this or that theory.

[twistedempathy]

It's hard enough to imagine eating light, let alone throwing it back up..... How do you even digest something like that?

[This world sounds incredibly weird, and incredibly interesting. Lup must've had some ridiculous adventures.]

As funny as that would've been to have them all at once, why did he need so many? Were they meant as stunt doubles or something?

[He's just gonna..... try to ignore the ethical implications of creating a whole new life purely to use as cannon fodder.]

[abracafcku]

Thank you, thank you. Not everyone can get a gem as beautiful as mine, but what can you do?

But now at least we know when the whole system broke down. Without food, how do they expect to maintain their humanity? Or robotmanity? Robanity? Fuck. Whatever they called it.

[twistedempathy]

I think I like robanity. It has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

[Just sliiiiightly distracted from the point, there.]

[abracafcku]

Robanity it is then, by popular vote. Although, I guess, we'd have to know what they were before they became robots to actually nail down the correct terminology.

[twistedempathy]

Oh--you're right! There's lots of diversity in the newcomers here, too. They could've been anything!

[abracafcku]

They could've been squid people or people made from, I dunno, cheese. Cheezmanity? Squidity? What would you even call that?

You'd think I'd know, but alas.

[twistedempathy]

Cheezmanity implies "man" in it, come to think of it..... I don't know what they'd call themselves, or if cheese would have genders or anything. Maybe cheezity or squidity?

[The quality content everyone tunes in for, right here.]

[abracafcku]

[This is the quality content he wanted tbf.]

On second though, squidity sounds like equity though and I'm not in the market to buy an entire race of people. Maybe it doesn't even need to end in "ity." We could make up an entirely new word for them and they'd probably just say "dope, thanks for that" and call themselves it.

[twistedempathy]

[Will just laughs aloud at that.]

That sounds really expensive! Not to mention I'm not sure what being a majority shareholder in an entire species would entail, or how that stock market would look..... What would you call them, then?

[abracafcku]

If I was rich enough to become a majority shareholder in an entire species, I'd call them Taakoites because now I'm their god.

[twistedempathy]

Would you start writing up a holy book, too?

[abracafcku]

I wrote a best selling book of quotes and witticisms once.

[Mostly...well, plagiarized, but not from anyone in that plane.]

How hard can a holy book be?

[twistedempathy]

My, my! A chef and an author? You really are versatile. I guess it wouldn't be any problem for you then, once you nail down your religion itself.