[Wrenmae's Scrap] Reanimated Affections

[Echelon]

Ditto and such!

[Wrenmae]

I realized I used my Character journal for letters. So I'm stowing this here.

A bit more dark than I intended it...one of the entries in Wren's Journal.

When I was young, an Ethaeful told me a story about mankind. He said there were more of us because the gods wanted few of us, and kept spitting us back onto the world. He said he’d walked the whole of lands from east to west, from north to south, and that he’d seen the damage humanity could cause. I can still remember the color of his eyes, like moons in that pale face. They looked down at me while he stroked his dagger and asked me if I’d killed someone before. I remember the way he grinned when I said yes. I never asked for this life, I only agreed to it. Ten years old, shivering in the Kalean mountain air, you tell ME you would have played it differently. No one wants to die, not a gods damn one of us. I made the decision for myself and traded in life what I could not in coin. So when I was thirteen, backed into an alley while some fallen moonborn petch talks to me about the wickedness of mankind, yeah, maybe I did believe him. Our life is a war. Every day we wake up hungry and go to bed bleeding. Something broke the world five hundred years ago and no one’s been able to make it right since. More people die than are born, and there are fewer non humans ever season. The gods cling to their chosen, I guess, and we’re the masterless fodder of a ruined oblivion. The Ethaeful did not kill me that night, like I thought he would. I could taste my fear like a flavor, choked on it, languished in it. Instead he brought me with him, and I guess that was his way of getting back at us. I spent four years with him in that city. No one lives who doesn’t fight to breathe. The weak stutter and fall to death and the strong keep on moving. I’ve learned to make the best of what I am, who I am, who I serve...and survived in my own way. I don’t expect your forgiveness. I don’t want it. Whoever reads this entry will do so when I’m dead and gone, when my legacy is the bodies I left behind me. I take no lover, have no children, and seek no family…and if carrying the Blight makes me reviled than let those petchers curse. I will not go quietly. I am not the starving boy in the mountains. I am not the weak adolescent who let himself be sullied. I am Wrenmae. I am a test that no one is prepared to take, and only the worthy will succeed. You have no right to judge me, you have no right to forgive me. Until you still my beating heart and take my soul from this world, take it so the gods and spit it back, you are all my victims and I am beholden to no one. We were young, once…we were young and we believed. Mine was torn from me, and maybe it was torn from you as well…but when that blanket is ripped from our bodies, we are left to look at the world as it really is. Damaged. We’re all monsters, each and every one of us. I’m just one of the few who’s willing to admit it. -Wrenmae

[Wrenmae]

Confession When I was younger, maybe eleven or twelve, I came outside to prepare for art camp only to find a squirrel panting on the ground beside our house. It was an ordinary squirrel by any account, grey with flecks of white in its fur and an orange-brown stomach. When I approached it, the critter just stared at me, its chest heaving up and down so fast I imagined it had just completed some marathon race across the trees with its friends…other squirrels I presume. It had been laying sideways, put propped up the front part of its body on its two front limbs, watching me as alert as it could while the other half lay in still slumber. At that time, I was at least wise enough to know this was not typical squirrel behavior. It was hurt, maybe fell out of a tree…or maybe it was sick, I didn’t know. I’d always been warned not to get close to animals so I kept my distance, watching it as it watched me. There was something pityingly human about the way it regarded me, but in retrospect I probably ascribed human characteristics to understand something I could not get close enough to examine. I tentatively named the squirrel Dave and talked to him for a good fifteen minutes before my mom practically dragged me to the car for art camp. I remember not remembering that day, racing through it, thinking of nothing else. I wanted to come home and for Dave to be gone, that he was only winded when I found him and he’d be otherwise fine. I never deal with animal death very well, never have. But when I got home three hours later, Dave had lied down to die. He was dead. I was sure. I poked him with a stick…albeit gently. I cried after that, as I have after witnessing almost every animal death till the age of 16 (crazy right?), and my younger brother teased me mercilessly about it. I dunno why it meant so much to me. It was a dumb squirrel, one out of hundreds around my house and back through the woods. I never tear up at seeing a dead animal (Unless it’s a cat or dog or other commonly domesticated animal…I can’t help but think about the people that might miss him/her, or if it was confused or lost when it got hit) but seeing one suffer just eats at me. Suffice to say, I didn’t like being teased or viewed as weak for being beat up about a squirrel I’d seen, named, and mourned all in the space of a day, so I clammed up and did everything in my power to change his opinion. I dunno if it ever has changed, but I know I tried. Sometimes I struggle with opinions levied against me, especially when they’re negative. I feel compelled to find a way to make amends, make things right, figure out a way to calm the waters. I dunno what the root cause is, but I don’t like to be disliked…dunno if many people DO…most just learn how to deal with it and move on, which is something I’ve tried of late. I feel like the internet can sometimes give people the wrong idea of each other…or maybe a frighteningly accurate one. I remember being extremely bothered by what someone told me once on Mizahar about my character…till I looked back at all the incomplete threads I made people wait on and realized that the person was pretty much spot on. I do make a bad name for myself sometimes, especially by my actions. The fact some of ya’ll still want to thread with me regardless of my track record is remarkable and I thank you for it. For those of you I’ve promised threads to, or made you wait, I want to apologize. I got caught up in other exciting threads and lost sight that Mizahar is about EVERYONE having fun, not just me…and it was stupid selfish of me not to realize that. We learn lessons all the time, and I can only hope that by making positive steps in the aftermath can clear up some inconsistencies in my character. Mizahar is a wonderful place to roleplay and I wanted to take some time out of my weird animal-love rant to thank each and every person I’ve been in a thread with or has encouraged me in some way. It truly means a lot to me. Some may never change their opinions about me…I have to respect that. But it doesn’t mean I won’t try to convince them anyways. When I was 16, a raccoon was dying down the ravine outside my house. I used to take a lot of walks alone outside where I imagined myself defending my turf from invading marauders making their way up the steep incline. I’d grab a slightly bent stick and pretend-fire arrows into the imaginary horde until I was too overwhelmed and died a valiant death…or until I won and was lauded as a hero, by equally imaginary people. I was out there and heard this dull roaring sound, like a barrel chested man howling through his beard. From my perch, I saw a raccoon rolling around on the ground in the shadow of a fallen tree, brown foam gushing from its mouth as it thrashed the air around it. I freaked right the hell out and got my dad. He took one look at it, said ‘Rabies’ and asked me to get a shovel. I did. I came back and handed it to him, but he batted it away and told me to go bash that raccoon out of its misery. I couldn’t. I tried to; I scaled down the ravine and got within a few feet of the suffering animal. Its eyes were all wild and black, like Dave’s had been when he was dying…years ago. Foam covered most of its jaws and it smelled terrible. I raised the shovel over my head and prepared to bring it down on the critter when it closed its little hands and then opened them, scratching the air at me. I realize it would have happily scratched me to pieces if I’d been in distance, but in that moment it seemed so pathetic, so terribly human, that I couldn’t do it. It looked up at me and suddenly I couldn’t do anything. My dad called me…several things, and did it himself. I dunno if that makes me weak, but I felt like it then. Even to end suffering, I couldn’t take another’s life. It was like I was six all over again and I sobbed at my birthday cause someone stomped on a Daddy Long-legs just to upset me. Our culture sometimes demands a certain amount of secrecy when it comes to personal feelings. Men are supposed to be strong, tough, impenetrable Hemmingway-esque characters who only ruin themselves on the inside when emotions rise and fall. To a certain extent, I think I see it all over the place…people, not just men, who can’t or won’t show their emotions to anyone. Emotion that makes us vulnerable, it makes us reachable, it makes us human. Maybe I just never learned how to properly hide it, or to take an emotional punch the right way, or how to not use worms on fishing hooks because I thought too much of how the worm would feel. Anyways, why am I telling you all this? I dunno. I read Goss’ scrap and the stark honesty of it motivated me to share something deeply personal about myself. I’m encouraged to be ashamed I abhor taking life...or even thinking about it, but I’m glad I have it inside me. I treasure all life, the bigs and the smalls (Except mosquitoes, cause they attack me first, although I concede they have their place) and I’ll continue to be that guy who catches and releases the bugs from my house rather than stepping on them. I'm done trying to convince people I am what I'm not. I'm alright with having a soft spot for animals, I'm alright with myself as a whole, so I suppose people can take their poor opinions and shove em...I don't need their negativity. If that makes me a wimp or unmanly, whatever. That’s just who I am. Thanks for listening. P.S This isn't to say I'm not open to criticism. As mentioned above, some complaints are very valid. If you have any commentary on my writing, behavior, or character that can be phrased constructively and not destructively, I'm always happy to listen and provide feedback. After all, how can we get better if not without someone pointing out when we're doing it wrong?

[Ana Sol Starris]

Deep story.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Take a look at my player status and know that forces of evil, semi evil and occasionally gray morality may or may not be rooting for you depending on whether or not it serves their selfish needs. I, for one, support your victory.

[Wrenmae]

I am honored. I mean, honored if it suites me. But as it does, yes, fantastic. Your encouragement will be reciprocated as per villain code of never giving without expecting repayment or in direct parody of 'good' aligned fools.


*toasts Duv*

[Wrenmae]

So. I got Netflix.


And there are too many series that I want to watch. Time to do the right thing, kidnap my desktop in a fugue, hide it till I finish posting, and then watch Sherlock, Doctor Who, Supernatural, West Wing, etc.


Now...how to induce a fugue state...?



Also. Thank you Jules, for saying I was adorable to Jen.


Villain reputation

Ruined.

[Thomas Cosa]

Netflix is the greatest thing to ever happen to me.

I love it.

I haven't started Doctor Who yet, if just to keep what little time I have left free, haha.

[Phoenix]

The text tone on my phone is the TARDIS disappearing.

My ringtone is the opening song.

And you're welcome.

[Phoenix]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbDfRavI7hI