✶ imeeji: memory
Apr. 9th, 2021 01:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scattershot➤ Part 1
The so-called 'Remembrance' Ceremonies were little more than standard-waving rallies - as if the Calamity warranted scarcely a mention.
A Hero in the Making
Summary
✶ It starts with a speech, or the impression of one. A petite, childlike woman in white stands on a stage in a forested glade, speaking of war and strife and what her nation has done to rise to that challenge and how sad it was that it had to happen at all. A few words sparkle like motes of light - Cartenau, Calamity, Eorzea, Sacrifice - and somewhere off to Alisaie's side Alphinaud is whispering about standards, diligently showing off his learning to what should be another face in the crowd, if only she could see the face or the figure or anything at all of his latest victim but a blinding silhouette. Alisaie is bored.
✶ Afterward, Alphinaud pours yet more words into that gleaming silhouette while she stands and watches and bristles. Can't a girl so much as introduce herself without her brother doing it all for her first, just in case she trips over her own words or somehow forgets her own name? Apparently not. Alisaie fumes and walks off.
✶ Impressions. An airship ride, a walled city, another speech. This one delivered by a bull of a man with an overdressed Lalafell girl perched on his shoulder. Blood and gold, the VIIth Legion, victory and fortune and money, money, money: Alphinaud is talking about heraldry again. Same target, too: it's a wonder they keep on listening. She's starting to pick over what she's not been hearing, and it angers her. She's starting to wonder why she's here and what it is she expected to find. Not this. This is all awful. Not this.
✶ Merciful Twelve Alphinaud loves the sound of his own voice. Now he's banging on about Primals. Glowing silhouette person must just be humoring him.
✶ Another journey. Another expectant crowd lining up to listen to rubbish. This time they're by the sea and the speaker is a statuesque Roegadyn woman but everything else is the same, isn't it? Wasn't everything unpleasant five years ago. Weren't we great to overcome it all. Reef knots, tacking, sailing against the wind, please-- and now she's mentioned crimson standards. If Alisaie has to listen to Alphinaud lecturing his favorite victim about flags again she thinks she's going to start screaming. If this is what the Kobolds are dealing with, it's really no wonder they're all so upset. Crew. Drowning. Don't threaten me with a good time.
✶ Of course Alphinaud gives his victim another lecture. Maybe she should drown him? Alisaie is beginning to doubt there are any other ways of shutting him up.
✶ All that simmering frustration bubbles over eventually, of course. More travel. Hostelry food. Another disquisition-- gazing at her brother across an inn table, Alisaie finally, fatally feels herself crack. This can't be what her grandfather gave his life for, and watching Alphinaud sitting there sipping his drink and lecturing her like one of her tutors back at the Studium is only making matters ten - no, a hundred times worse. There has to be a better way to fix this place's problems - and she's not going to find it tagging along after her overbearing brother, listening to him go on about flags.
Notes
✶ This is an extremely boring and annoying memory involving a lot of tedious, half-remembered bloviating and speechifying, not all of which comes from Alphinaud, and Alisaie massively resents paying to have this lump of geopolitical puffery sitting there in her brain taking up space. Thanks, this was worth 350 points, you bastards.
✶ As if to make it obvious how utterly ridiculous all this is, this memory redacts the names of the city-states Alisaie is visiting. In this memory, the Yellow Team, the Black Team, and the Red Team will make great play of their own contributions to... dealing with a continent-fucking catastrophe that was only prevented from destroying literally everything because Alisaie's grandfather got himself killed ensuring it wouldn't. Yes, she's resentful.
✶ The player-character Warrior of Light, who accompanies Alisaie, is seen as a humanoid shape made up of blinding white light surrounded by a rainbow corona, of indeterminate age, race and gender. None of their individual features are discernible, and though they can be seen to be speaking their voice cannot be made out.
✶ No, seriously, someone probably died for this. Matron's tits.
The so-called 'Remembrance' Ceremonies were little more than standard-waving rallies - as if the Calamity warranted scarcely a mention.
A Hero in the Making
Summary
✶ It starts with a speech, or the impression of one. A petite, childlike woman in white stands on a stage in a forested glade, speaking of war and strife and what her nation has done to rise to that challenge and how sad it was that it had to happen at all. A few words sparkle like motes of light - Cartenau, Calamity, Eorzea, Sacrifice - and somewhere off to Alisaie's side Alphinaud is whispering about standards, diligently showing off his learning to what should be another face in the crowd, if only she could see the face or the figure or anything at all of his latest victim but a blinding silhouette. Alisaie is bored.
✶ Afterward, Alphinaud pours yet more words into that gleaming silhouette while she stands and watches and bristles. Can't a girl so much as introduce herself without her brother doing it all for her first, just in case she trips over her own words or somehow forgets her own name? Apparently not. Alisaie fumes and walks off.
✶ Impressions. An airship ride, a walled city, another speech. This one delivered by a bull of a man with an overdressed Lalafell girl perched on his shoulder. Blood and gold, the VIIth Legion, victory and fortune and money, money, money: Alphinaud is talking about heraldry again. Same target, too: it's a wonder they keep on listening. She's starting to pick over what she's not been hearing, and it angers her. She's starting to wonder why she's here and what it is she expected to find. Not this. This is all awful. Not this.
✶ Merciful Twelve Alphinaud loves the sound of his own voice. Now he's banging on about Primals. Glowing silhouette person must just be humoring him.
✶ Another journey. Another expectant crowd lining up to listen to rubbish. This time they're by the sea and the speaker is a statuesque Roegadyn woman but everything else is the same, isn't it? Wasn't everything unpleasant five years ago. Weren't we great to overcome it all. Reef knots, tacking, sailing against the wind, please-- and now she's mentioned crimson standards. If Alisaie has to listen to Alphinaud lecturing his favorite victim about flags again she thinks she's going to start screaming. If this is what the Kobolds are dealing with, it's really no wonder they're all so upset. Crew. Drowning. Don't threaten me with a good time.
✶ Of course Alphinaud gives his victim another lecture. Maybe she should drown him? Alisaie is beginning to doubt there are any other ways of shutting him up.
✶ All that simmering frustration bubbles over eventually, of course. More travel. Hostelry food. Another disquisition-- gazing at her brother across an inn table, Alisaie finally, fatally feels herself crack. This can't be what her grandfather gave his life for, and watching Alphinaud sitting there sipping his drink and lecturing her like one of her tutors back at the Studium is only making matters ten - no, a hundred times worse. There has to be a better way to fix this place's problems - and she's not going to find it tagging along after her overbearing brother, listening to him go on about flags.
Notes
✶ This is an extremely boring and annoying memory involving a lot of tedious, half-remembered bloviating and speechifying, not all of which comes from Alphinaud, and Alisaie massively resents paying to have this lump of geopolitical puffery sitting there in her brain taking up space. Thanks, this was worth 350 points, you bastards.
✶ As if to make it obvious how utterly ridiculous all this is, this memory redacts the names of the city-states Alisaie is visiting. In this memory, the Yellow Team, the Black Team, and the Red Team will make great play of their own contributions to... dealing with a continent-fucking catastrophe that was only prevented from destroying literally everything because Alisaie's grandfather got himself killed ensuring it wouldn't. Yes, she's resentful.
✶ The player-character Warrior of Light, who accompanies Alisaie, is seen as a humanoid shape made up of blinding white light surrounded by a rainbow corona, of indeterminate age, race and gender. None of their individual features are discernible, and though they can be seen to be speaking their voice cannot be made out.
✶ No, seriously, someone probably died for this. Matron's tits.