video. locked to unseelie.

[vrykolakas]

An act of kindness?

[The Brucolac has clearly just received bad news. He looks positively poisonous, wide streaks of silver whorling over his skin. His jaw is stiff with it, even his hair frosted over with strange metal. His right eye burns gold still.]

I am sick to shit of this half-cocked magic. [He shudders—would gesture, but he doesn't want to show off how badly his left arm is faring under the encroaching silver. It hurts to raise it to shoulderheight; above is impossible.] An act of kindness is no godsdamn cure, to be bottled and applied at will!

What is an act of kindness? Is it kind to tax a people, that a city may grow? Is it kind to lie in order to protect the honest? Is it kind to enforce a system of law and punishment?

By the gods, [he drops back, shaking his head, looking weary,] there is no hope for us.

Before anyone tells me to just do something nice, [pitching his voice mockingly higher] I've given my scribe a longer lunch break. [It is midnight.]

And apart from a marked decrease in efficency, fuck all has happened.

Comments

audio

[gehennawind]

Maybe if your scribe gave you a hat?

[Acts of kindness followed by the giving of a garment is a perfectly valid cure.

And the Brucolac could use a hat.]

audio

[vrykolakas]

As if my hair would ever consent to it.

[Grumble grumble grumble but he can at least see the entertainment value of the suggestion.]

video.

[enthraller]

[what the fuck bruc.]

Well, you're doomed. Should we start looking for a replacement for your position now?

video.

[vrykolakas]

Don't even joke.

For one thing, I now don't have a scribe to quicken the process of creating handover documents.

[...no scribe for like another twenty minutes. The Brucolac, office drama queen.]

video;

[entitles]

Kindness is an extremely subjective and therefore inherently worthless concept.

[Balem: world's most pleasant individual.]

Whoever told you that would be the cure must have phrased it poorly. Perhaps it was a specific act they considered kind, and interpreted it to mean kind acts in general.

video;

[vrykolakas]

Precisely.

[That seems very sensible.]

I suspect it was in fact just completely the wrong fucking information, though reports suggest that cures are...varied.

And moralistically ironic. [He risks a brief, dry hike of an eyebrow, assuming from Balem's first statement that he'll agree with the Brucolac's underlying sentiment of massive disapproval.]

VIDEO.

[selfimage]

There is a surprising variety of other options for your choosing, you know.

[ he looks around as if he someone may see him saying it, and he lifts a hand to casually speak over it. ] Yet the kindness one has worked, erm ... well. For some. A little.

Maybe.

[ still looking a little sympathetic. ]

Or you can become immortalized in the gardens of Caer Scima. Though, [ he taps his fingers. ] I'd be curious as to what rude gesture you have in store for the ages.

VIDEO.

[vrykolakas]

Ah, immortalised for generations of Unseelie to drape me with garlands, the voyeur of every Samhain, ironically at my best on a sunny day...

Sometimes, I am so cheered by the prospect of the Void.

So what did you do by way of kindness?

[Video]

[edgar_of_etheria]

...kindness is not always as simple as it sounds. Do we know the true price of this?

[Video]

[vrykolakas]

The true price of it?

We don't know the true price of anything. We can only work on our best information, which is always...incomplete.

[withbite]

You could always be about to kill someone, then change your mind. Or maybe kill someone who deserves it. That's a niceness -- to the rest of us.

I've also heard about kissing strangers, having someone bathe you, bathing in lavender and... riding a horse backwards from one fairy ring to the other. Take your pick.

Neither have worked for me.

[vrykolakas]

The first is foolish whimsy and the second just good practice.

...You must have had an unusual week.

[Video]

[sculptor_of_aman]

What do you intend to do, then? Are you in need of help?

[Video]

[vrykolakas]

What do I intend to do?

Keep working, and keep trying the cures.

I have people researching.

I'm almost certain this can't kill me. [Dryly:] Which is genuinely quite a pleasant thought.

video »

[unsolitary]

( Clarke is, finally, devoid of silver, save the remnants that have decided to remain in her irises. it's left her to be better equipped to help, at least, now that the illness is cured, and in slightly better spirits, so she at least offers a smile. a familiar face she hasn't seen in some time deserves that, at the very least. )

The theme does seem to be 'atonement' and 'kindness' in one form or another.

But there have been other cures used, at least from what I've seen. Washing in water from the Pool of Souls, using moss from the Great Greenwood as a compress on the skin, walking backwards around the castle five times with a new person for every rotation.

video »

[vrykolakas]

Ach.

I'll get people on sourcing the moss. Pool of Souls is a little Seelie-side for me to spend any length of time in.

—If I can get a supplyline from the Greenwood organised, do you need in?

video.

[mixcds]

I'm fairly certain it has to be an incredibly selfless act of kindness.

[His whole right arm and up his neck are silver now and he's been terribly nice to Simon like, all week. Minimal sass and everything. ]

Or it's bollocks.

video.

[vrykolakas]

Guess which I suspect.

video;

[fauxdysseus]

One would have wonder, then, about what defines kindness, if there is always a measure of self-interest behind it? How kind would one truly be if one is motivated by the desire to cure themselves?

If it works, I'll be as kind as I fucking need to be.

Re: video;

[vrykolakas]

Cutting through the horseshite as ever, Flint.

Are you silvered up with this damn disease?

video;

[wasteofbreath]

Well it worked for me. Helped someone out I don't particularly trust, and I was cured. Didn't even expect it.

Maybe it only works if you do somethin' nice for someone you don't like? Or you're not deliberately tryin' to use it as a cure? Or maybe it's not your cure at all. It's different for everyone, I've heard.

[They still hadn't found Kieren's cure yet, and he's rather worried about that.]

video;

[vrykolakas]

Yes, different for everyone. It's so...it's the sort of thing one tells to children at bedtime if one is attempting to instil a morality which is both restrictive and inherently bewildering.

[digophelia]

Would that not depend on the gesture and to that you give it to? It's all a matter of perception, but-

[ This is incredibly awkward; she is sure that she hasn't spoken to him since her near suicidal attempt at going after the Jabberwock. The eye does not go unnoticed by her, yet she decides not to comment on it.

So, softly, she adds, as if it's the only way she can actually express gratitude. ]

- You're more capable of kindness than you realize. So, yes, a longer lunch may have made your scribe's evening. [ Well, she thinks it is! ]

[vrykolakas]

[For a moment he looks like he's going to argue, a frown gathering on his brow like a storm: then his eyes warm up, his face relaxing into a kind of chided smile.]

Shi—... [She doesn't like swearing. He licks his lips and tries again.] Bloody hell. [That's not really swearing, right?] It's been too long.

I don't believe I'm...needlessly cruel.

But I also don't believe that acts of kindness are necessarily...good, or right, or sensible.

[uneulogized]

Sounds to me like you're limiting your options. That, or you really hate being nice. Is it so bad? Do you think you're gonna be covered in silver-colored hives for doing it too much?

[Jason is far from the nicest guy alive, but he's impressed that there is such a focus on the kindness aspect of things.

After a beat, he adds:]

Kindness is obviously not your ticket. Or maybe it is. Sounds like you're overthinking it. Either way, spit some of those colorful phrases at me so I can remember them for the ages. You have a wonderful way of speaking.

[vrykolakas]

I don't hate being nice. I work every waking hour to get my corner of this hellscape in order—making a place for people to damn well live in—so excuse me if I'm prickly about the suggestion that it would somehow better the world on a massive scale were I to...give people flowers more often or tell people how much I, I simply adore their hair.

[That's kindness, yes?]

Go to sea.

I'm not telling you to fuck off, I mean seriously, go to sea. It's the only way to get the cant down pat.

( video, unseelie. )

[atoned]

[ truth be told, zuko thinks these "cures" are all shit, too. where the redness of his scar once was over his left eye, it's now silver. the tips of his dark hair shimmer, silver threading through even that. what can be seen is zuko, walking backwards in azure, holding his locket as he's been trying to do this without looking over his shoulder for an hour now. it's one of those types of cures he knows to be bullshit but finds himself too desperate not think too much of his pride and not do. ]

Did you feel good giving him a break?

[ zuko thinks the answer is going to be no. ]

( video, unseelie. )

[vrykolakas]

[He opens his mouth to answer and then stops himself, considering.]

I'm indifferent to the action in a vacuum. It's meant reordering my schedule, but hell: it's not like the poor bastard doesn't work hard.

Feel good walking backwards?

video

[ziggyzoggy]

Ya overthinkin' it.

[Out of all the weird, nonsensical things they've heard and tried, this one...Well, he's heard weirder.

Case in point: ]

Could try the squid again.

video

[vrykolakas]

Squid are straightforward in comparison to the concept of kindness.