shellphones | video; what's up with those dragons?

Entry tags:

video; what's up with those dragons?

Type: Video
Sender ID: pinksidekicking (Nimona)
To: General Public
Subject: Dragons
Warnings: Only maybe spoilers for Nimona movie

[ Please do not adjust your screens, there is, in fact, a pink gorilla appearing on the network. One who opens their mouth and a somewhat feminine voice comes out of. ]

You know, there are a lot of awesome things about this place. You can have a crew, no one's trying to kill you just because of being different, all the new foods, getting to explore the world, having ample opportunity to use fish and sea puns... breaking things sometimes. [ The gorilla is counting on their fingers. ]

Really, I could go on and on about why I love this world. [ It sounds like there's a- ]

But! You know what really gets me? We can't adopt dragons! Sure, they say "dragons can't be tamed", or "they're just too wild". [ Cue the quotation marks and the eye roll. ] But all I want in this life is a tiny pink mini-me dragon. Who better to try and be a dragon parent than someone who's also a dragon? At least a dragon on occasion.

Come on, you can't keep placing dragons in front of me and expect me to not want to adopt one of my very own! I am literally made to be a dragon parent, watch this!

[ The gorilla is setting up the phone to stand on its own, then steps back several feet before... with a little sparkle of pink magic - turns into a semi-large, equally pink dragon. It's holding out front arms like "ta-dah"! ]

Dragon parent Nimona!

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The whole kingdom is brainwashed by those emotions. They even put up these huge walls that keep everyone and everything locked up behind them. People don't even know what's beyond the walls anymore.

[ A small shrug of her shoulders. ]

Looks like I'm one-of-a-kind in at least two worlds. Mine and this one.

[ Others might be able to change their form into something different, but not like her. ]

Incredibly foolish, then. The whole kingdom. To be so ignorant of what lays outside their walls.

Were you born with your abilities? Were you birthed at all? How did you come into the world... Do you know?

Right? They feel safe with their walls and their giant laser cannons, as if that's really enough to stop me if I did decide to do the whole big villain story.

[ Can she survive the full concentrated blast from those lasers? The answer is... technically yes. Even if she needs some time to, essentially, pull her primordial spirit back together.

Nimona holds up a hand at the questions. ]

Woah, woah, slow down there. I could feed you the whole spiel that I usually spin for people about why and how I am the way I am, but I'm trying to not lie about it. So I'll just say that that whole part is off-limits for story-time. A dragon has to have some secrets.

[ And he knows that they're secrets, so they're only partially secret. Not lying to him about it. No one knows how or why Nimona got her powers ~~not even the mun~~. ]

[She had said she was unique. If she was birthed from a set of parents and not, say, born from the primordial chaos of the world, or from energy that had collected in a lotus for thousands of years, then she may not be as unique as she implied. Only just.

But he didn't care enough to pursue it. He had only be mildly curious. And it held no importance to him. So he let it drop.]

Why do you not conquer them? They sound easily conquered. Then it wouldn't matter if they were afraid of you. They'd still have to serve you.

[ Nimona has not lied about being the only one, though it's anyone's guess exactly what way that means. Could be she was born this way and those parents died, could be the witch story she tells, could be she was just born from the primordial chaos of the world or something like that. ~~We will never know.~~

She props her chin up on her hand. ]

Oh man, it would be so easy. One prison break and I pretty much destroyed most of their main building. [ Yes, she is proud of that. ] But... did you ever want like just one person in the whole entire world who wasn't afraid of you, who you could talk to about anything, who you trusted to watch your back from anyone who wanted to stab you?

Guess I can't just get rid of my feelings and have the whole world afraid of me. And I'm not sure that I'd want to be emotionless.

Without emotions, you wouldn't have the burden of caring about what they wanted. Or that anyone is afraid of you.

[A pause.]

Or that you have no one you could trust.

[He says it softly. And though his tone does not change from it's usual bored air, there is definitely something in it that spoke of wanting someone he could trust the same as she wanted one. And equally... in wanting to not feel the pain of loneliness wanting, and not having, brought.]

[ She blinks at that. ]

If I didn't have emotions, I'm not sure if I'd have anything to do with myself, then. Like, I'd be a useless lump who only ran off of instincts. I wouldn't want to be happy, or find excitement in anything. I wouldn't be curious or be lonely, so maybe I wouldn't even try to interact with people at all. Maybe I wouldn't have any goals in life.

[ There are some things said that don't apply to Dongfang, but Nimona had essentially grown up in the wild. Had almost no human interaction at all, so if she didn't care about anything, maybe in the wild is where she would have stayed. ]

And sure, it sucks having to deal with the pain, loneliness, fear, sorrow, and all those other negative emotions, but those have help shaped who I am today. I like myself, most of the time.

Without emotions, you have nothing to distract you from facing challenges with logic. You would only be useless if you let yourself. This venerable one has not had emotions for over 30,000 years and still has a purpose. He is the leader of his people.

[Their weapon.

Their tool.

Tools didn't need emotions to be used.]

[ A tilt of her head. ]

Were you born without emotions, or did you lose them along the way? [ A pause. ] This is a question with an answer that would honestly change like... so much.

If I didn't have emotions from the start versus, I had them and was able to form goals before losing them.

This venerable one did not 'lose' them. They were killed at the root. Removed to allow this venerable one to obtain the power necessary to lead his people in revenge against Shuiyuntian and conquer the Three Realms.

[Loyalty to his people was all he could remember for thousands of years. And even that had no emotions attached to it. Just a purpose.]

I mean, one definition of the word 'lose' is to 'cease to have' so...

[ Tapping her chin thoughtfully. ]

Okay, so saying I lost my emotions back after the very first betrayal. I was young, I was afraid, I'd just sort of set a village on fire after being run out of it.

[ She is genuinely thinking on this. ]

I probably would have run around as whatever I felt like all the time, become the actual monster they claimed I was, never tried to make any friends, never trying to be accepted. Wouldn't have cared who I hurt, or what I destroyed.

[ Nimona points at the screen. ]

Maybe that doesn't sound too bad to you, but remember, you aren't only looking out for yourself. You have your people to consider, to look after their well-being. I didn't have anything like that. I would have only cared about myself. Thought about what is best for me alone. So anyone and everyone would have been a target.

You would have become a monster without emotions, yes. Nor would you have cared who you hurt or what you destroyed. But neither would you have cared about destroying anything. Or hurting anything. If it served no purpose in hurting or destroying it.

[He paused to take a deep breath before continuing.]

Not having emotions does not mean succumbing to chaos. Just because anyone and everyone would be a potential target, does not mean you would target them. If doing so did not serve a purpose, then you would have no reason to waste your energy on such tasks. 'What's best for you' may have been to seek out everyone that could be a threat and destroy them... or 'what's best for you' may have been to find another place that wasn't as troublesome to live in. Away from the walls they built. You did say there was a world outside it that they had no knowledge of. Sometimes the more logical action is to avoid confrontation and to move on.

[ An eyebrow at his words. ]

You've met me. I'm a chaotic child. Do you really think I'd just move on and avoid confrontation without my emotions?

What feelings drive you now would not be the same as what drives you when you have the clarity to look past them. You do not know how different you will or will not be. To have emotions... To be driven by them...

[His voice dropped, becoming quieter as he spoke. He wasn't really speaking to her anymore.]

The who you are now... may cease to exist.

[Was it worth the pain see what he could become?]

Edited 2024-02-02 02:27 (UTC)

You're right, I wouldn't know. Maybe, I'd just stick to being in my human form all the time and working a regular job. Never changing, or wanting to feel the freedom that shapeshifting gives me.

[ She's definitely feeling like he isn't just talking about her, so... ]

We're two beings who are going to live for a very long time, but that doesn't mean we have to be frozen all our lives. Change is scary, but it can also make us stronger. Feelings can shape who we are, and they only hold us back if we let them. If we never stumble, then how do we grow and push ourselves beyond the limits of what we thought we could do?

If we never stumble, then we might as well just be standing still while everyone around us is moving, and experiencing what life is actually supposed to be about.

[ Nimona is thinking back to what Barnabas said about his God and "paradise" - which made her angry, but Dongfang actually looks like he's struggling a little. Like he's uncertain of which way to go from here. ]

You do not have to have emotions to stumble.

[The words are murmured. Barely audible. He had 'stumbled' more than once while growing in power. He had 'stumbled' when Chidi Nuzi had managed to stop his conquest thirty thousand years ago. He had 'stumbled'...

Hellfire was only fully under his control when he had clarity of thought. Emotions interfered with that. They hadn't yet, to his knowledge, since coming to this world. but his emotions had only begun recovering. The difficulty of control was only minuscule. Not even noticeable. Yet. As the cracks in the sea of his heart grew, and the roots of his seven emotion tree strengthened, the control could only grow more difficult.]

Emotions... Keep them if you wish. They will only weaken this venerable one.

Okay, that's fair. But you're also missing some key elements in the whole stumbling process. If you're gonna stumble, you might as well have the whole package, so your growth is well-rounded. A general "you", not a you "you".

[ Even if this also applies to him. That his growth isn't fully formed, but only the parts that he can understand and learn from are actually growing.

Plopping her chin into her hand. There is clearly a story here. Not one she thinks he'll share with her - especially not over the network. ]

I mean, I suppose that's true. Emotions will weaken any one person alone. That's where other people come in. To step in where you aren't strong enough. But if you think about it, when you have those stumbling blocks and then recover from it with other people at your side, you aren't just making yourself stronger - but the people in your life.

If you're always there to fight every battle, and win every struggle, what do other people need to do if you're handling it for them? I mean, think of it this way.

You're going into a battle, leading your people. You aren't going to take just anyone, even if they don't have any skill or training, or even proper weapons. You're going to teach them, make sure they can hold their own in a fight, arm them with practical weapons, because you want them to be able to do that. You're going to put them into groups so that they can watch each other's backs. And you don't seem like the type to just sit back and watch the troops fight, you're going to lead by example.

[ Waiting for him to picture this. ]

Emotionally, it's the same way. People need the right tools and experience in handling emotional battles, along with the support and aid of their comrades if they falter. Otherwise, they might get hit with something that seems impossible to recover from. Emotions are natural, even animals feel them - though not all to the extent as higher intelligence beings like ourselves. Not everyone has the means or capability of severing ourselves from our emotions.

[The way Nimona spoke was so similar to what Orchid had said at that time.

"If what you said is true... We only cared about our own safety. We're scattered. We would have been eaten by yingzhao. Because we took pity on each other and didn't want to see any of us die, we faced our fears and worked together to win time for survival. So, emotion is not a burden. It is the reason we survived this time."

It kept being put in front of him. This idea that relying on emotions would provide strength. He was a scholar. A trained warrior. A general who knew how to judge his men and move them to his army's best advantage. If emotions were really such a source of strength, then he should be able to measure them in some way.

He should be able to understand their effects. Their uses. Even if only intellectually. But he couldn't.

Why couldn't he? Why was this so far beyond him?

Why?

He shut his eyes and turned off the shellphone. It was ruder than he usually was, but Nimona thought poorly of him, anyway. So what did it matter?]

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video; what's up with those dragons?

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