theclipper_tlv | 004. video/spam

Entry tags:

zhao yunlan

004. video/spam

[He settles himself on a sofa in a corner of the common area, along the very base of the tree, and lifts his wrist to a comfortable level to smile at the camera. He's done this before. It's performative as fuck, and he doesn't enjoy it, but it's past time that he got over his sulk and started getting people motivated here.]

Good morning, Clipper! Some of you I know and some of you are strangers, but we can welcome one more lovely day on this new boat together regardless. To the strangers: Zhao Yunlan! Formerly of the Barge, and even more formerly of Dragon City's Special Investigations Department.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk to all of you about happiness. Peace. Indeed, justice itself -- because I'm sorry to say I think our dear Nurse's head is not in the right place on those topics, and we could all get some better results with just a little change of perspective.

Anger, you see, is the natural response to injustice! Think back to the last time in your life you got real peeved -- what caused that emotion? I bet you were thinking, That's just wrong, or You can't treat me like that, or How could you do that?

It's a powerful feeling, and don't get me wrong, it sure as heck can be misdirected and cause some real harm in the world.

But the true cure for anger is to gather the strength to go after injustice. Not listening to happy music and putting on a smile. You know it as well as I do! Don't you feel that anger lingering in your heart as long as the wrong goes unfixed?

[He grins at the camera, sharp.]

Who ever repaired a wrong just by saying they were fine?

[And with a grand gesture of his free hand:]

I open the discussion! How do we make a better world? How can we improve this good ship?

Spam

[Zhao Yunlan spends most of his first week either moping in his room or moping generally around the ship. He'll participate in his assigned shifts, but he's hopeless in the kitchen and hopeless at custodial work, outside of the truly unskilled tasks like emptying garbage cans and hauling buckets of soapy water.

Once he's gotten his week of uselessness out of his system, he's choosing to become aggressively involved. Expect him to plop down next to you on the couch and strike up a conversation, Barge transfers and Clipper natives alike. He'll volunteer to tell stories at storytime, and launch into tales of war or murder investigations past if he's able to take the mic. He'll... be stuck washing dishes on every kitchen shift, because he doesn't seem to have the least idea of which flavors can safely go together and which ones will create a heart-rending abomination of a dish.

Sometimes, after the evening storytime but before it's late enough to sleep, he can be found leaning on the railing and staring up at the treehouse and the useless, opaque ceiling above it, lollipop stem jutting aggressively from his lips, expression very far away.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't mind people knowing my name, that's why. [Mikodez, Mikodez. Why is that familiar-- fuck, that's why. He rubs a hand over his face.]

Okay, if this word means nothing to you, don't mind me. Are you from the Hexarchate, kid?

[He can't be a younger version of the one who'd gotten a tiny little mention in Jedao's file near the end. Can he?

How common a name is Mikodez, really? Ugh, it's hard enough figuring this shit out when he knows the culture they all come from.]

It would be kind of funny if you did mind. [One way to make sure you'd be unhappy, though probably unnecessary. Still, you never know. He lets go, managing to grab the railing again before falling.]

Yep. You're Da Qing's person, right? So you aren't.

That's right. I knew a couple people from there on my last ship, though.

[And it sounds like a sufficiently awful place that it's a bit of a shock to meet someone from there who is a child! Obviously, even in awful places, people have and raise kids.

But still. Public ritual torture, yeesh.]

Don't drop yourself over the railing, death tolls are a pain.

Really? It's super big but I haven't met lots of people from there here.

[Mikodez has already thought he had a good life. Picking up books from the Clipper where kids don't have loving parents or completely access to food and medicine and money's problem and the school's sound just awful -

Well, the videos do always say the Hexarcate is the best.]

You can't fall over, the Nurse won't let you. [Less 'withering' and more 'he has tried'. The Nurse doesn't stop him from misjudging his next grab and falling backwards onto the floor. He bounces up, laughing.] You find aliens.

Mostly it seems like you've got Earth people on this ship too!

I have to wonder if these ships divide up the multiverse somehow. The less we'd be able to understand each other's culture, the less likely we are to wind up on a ship together, that kind of thing.

[He shrugs easily.]

So it'd make sense that people on your ship and my old one would've come from the same areas. If your ship was close enough to take some of the passengers from mine.

Not just Earth people, but lots of them!

[Standing up, he starts up his game with the rail again, nodding as he sways back and forth.] It does make sense. People have a hard enough time understanding each other when they come from the same time and place, the more differences you add, the more optimistic the big boss must be.

I don't think your questions go together.

You tell me how they don't go together, I'll tell you how I'm connecting them, how about that, Mikodez?

The ship is the ship and the world is lots and lots of different worlds.

Sure! But my thinking is, the set of worlds my ship pulled from has to have plenty of overlap with the set of worlds your ship here pulls from.

Otherwise, there wouldn't have been nearly so many people from my ship that overlap with yours.

The glut of Earth folk and the fact that we've both seen people from the Hexarchate seems to back that up to me.

[Mikodez points at him, which does end in him falling over again.]

That doesn't mean that improving the ships and making better worlds are the same.

Oh, those questions. I say you work on your own environment first! Making the ship better, well, that's the world we can reach right now, and we'll have different priorities for each of our own world's issues. Won't we?

[Obviously, he has no idea why someone might think that just bringing up questions from hours ago, without any lead in, could be considered a non-sequitur.

He considers Yunlan's answer, idly rocking back and forth.]

But my world is my own environment first.

Only when you're in it. The environment you can affect is the one you're in -- right?

[He laughs, shaking his head.] I can control the environment there right here!

Oh yeah? Do tell!

It's a seeecret.

[So he definitely wants to tell.]

What do you know about the Hexarchate, anyway?

Well, I've gotten a non-zero amount of the history -- summaries for some of the big battles of the last few hundred years....

[Jedao's file is not exactly an objective look at the Hexarchate, but it does hit a lot of the military highlights reel.]

The factions, the calendar, that kind of stuff.

The boring type of history stuff.

[Mikodez isn't exactly interested in military history.]

But you know about the Calendar. And you know how the Nurse works, right?

I know how our Admiral worked. The Nurse offers Assistants deals if they get someone through graduation too, right?

Uh huh. But not just that. The Nurse also watches to make sure there are no slip backs.

Heard that, too. Do you get to keep your deal even if you get brought back here at some point for a teensy little bit of backsliding?

Yep, the deal's all yours!

Still, when it comes to changing things back home, that's more a long-term kind of plan if you ask me.

When it comes to making things better around you, what I mean is thinking about your actions and motivations in the moment!

[He blows out his cheeks, thinking about this for a bit.]

...I think long-term is better.

I don't think it has to be an either/or proposition. You can pursue the long-term goals and also think about the short-term ones, right?

004. video/spam

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening

Re: evening