multiversallogs | i wrote this song while i was drunk

Entry tags:

i wrote this song while i was drunk

Who: Jae and you.
What: Sorting his head out, getting back to work.
Where: Various places around town, including bar hopping and slice of life activities in Creekside, at work at the Vault, Anarchy 99, and the radio station, and at a temple in Brock Marsh.
When: Over the next week.
Notes: Would you like to bump into Jae somewhere? Note the location/vague timeline in your tag and it shall be so.
Warnings: Unpleasant thoughts about rape culture, drug use.

In the aftermath of attempting to help Megan and his encounter with Hilmi, Jae has a difficult time processing the series of events as things that happened to him - because things haven't happened to him. Things happened to Megan. Sure, if you hit a vanity with a sledgehammer, it's not just the glass that's cracked, but he's still not the fucking mirror; Jae's reeling from the turbulence. So is everyone else who knows (well, maybe not Sonja) and everyone else who will know - and more people will react to what Jae did, and so on, and so on, like ripples, because every time anyone does something violent or cruel, the whole of their world feels it. Society didn't become soulless overnight. It took a hundred million weeks like these and now, even when people feel the backlash, they don't seem realize it.

It's normal.

(It's horrible.)

Jae buys a couple of tabs at the Vault before his shift and rolls all the way through it. If there's one thing he appreciates about Baedal, it's that so much more is perfectly legal (or at least, perfectly unregulated), and the ecstasy (or space ecstasy) he can get is pure, none of this shit cut with coke or speed like he had to worry about back at home. It's a good night for everybody, which is fortunate; it's always good when he works whether or not he uses any enchantments, but this week, he's not even letting his subconscious do anything - he feels like there's a great gaping wound somewhere intangible inside him, and the stitches keep splitting. He just doesn't want to bleed anymore.

While he's been made one of the floor staff family with ease at the Vault, his experiences at Anarchy 99 have been more - well. It caters to dwarven metal. Still, there's a fair amount of enthusiasm for his style ("Just put some more INXS on it"), and when one of the waitresses asks him what happened that one night with Hilmi (because he hasn't come back), he just shrugs. Jae isn't sure if he should be feel fortunate that she's the only one who noticed they walked out back together, but while some of the girls liked Hilmi, some of them really didn't, and she decides to interpret that shrug as him having done everybody a favor. The notion of it makes him uneasy - but it's not like he can correct her and not lie, so he just stays quiet, and thinks about the same thing he thought about that night. That if somebody comes to arrest him, he'll just go. The notion of being locked up is like a suffocating nightmare at the end of a long and dark hallway on his head, but what's even more terrifying is the idea of becoming the kind of person who wouldn't take responsibility for doing something awful. (He'll ask Ilde for Sonja's number, he decides. He'd rather apologize to her than the police, and he knows enough about the military to know speaking to someone's commanding officer is as good as.)

Too much liquor, long nights, and investing in a pill cutter; Jae almost feels human again, losing himself in work. The radio station is a hilarious disaster, but he likes his boss, as much of a lunatic as she is. That he's at the bottom of the ladder again makes him feel like even more a child, stumbling over himself and his magic and his emotions as he is in this strange place. But there, it's not as bad. He hits the bar across the way from his flat in Creekside, he buys groceries and a new pair of sunglasses, and then he comes home ("home") and lays on the floor and stares up at the ceiling and pretends his head spins because he's been drinking too much.

He doesn't sleep for two nights, and then spends the third up and reading the book that appeared in the arrival room with him. It's the first time he touched it since he shoved it in the back of his closet when he moved in. The next evening, he goes to one of Shada's temples in Brock Marsh, and doesn't do anything beside sit quietly in the back.

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"I can't imagine Gotham having any hippies," Unlike Baedal, where people have to stay, she imagines that any hippies in Gotham would probably get the hell out, because it's just not a conducive environment to hippe ideals, "They'd probably get beaten up."

(Technically, Jae has heard of Gotham by now from Barbara, but that's currently lost in a time warp, and thus we shall skate on by...)

Jae wrinkles his nose a little. "Really? Is it a small town?" He can't imagine a city Baedal's size or larger not being hyper-diverse. Even Seoul, ethnically isolated in a way most cities of its caliber will never be, has all kinds in spades.

"It's fairly big, a city surrounded by suburbs. It's just, uh, the sort of city where everyone has been mugged at some point in their life," She shrugs, it's weird talking to people who don't know about Gotham, "There are a lot of artsy types, alternative communities and stuff like that, but even they have to pay protection to one gang or another."

They might not like having to pay protection, but unless one of the Bats kicks out the local gang, there's nothing that can be done.

"Jeez."

(Which sounds kind of funny, with his accent.)

"In that case: you definitely need art. Protection-free art." He says this a little like a deliberately silly-dramatic decree, raising his glass as he does so, one eyebrow quirked. DJ Kim has spoken, etc.

It makes her laugh, "Well, if you insist, I suppose I have to go see some art." A beat, then she adds, "So long as it's not that fancy abstract stuff, I've never understood it."

Seriously. She prefers art that makes sense to her.

"Fancy art is classical oil paintings of gardens," he laughs. "Abstract is considered pretty low-brow by a lot of circles, it's the misfit art. You don't like any of it? Have you seen any Rauschenberg?"

Don't get him going, Steph. He won't shut up.

"But the classical oil paintings are pretty, at least," Maybe not very interesting, but they make sense, "Um... I don't think so? The name isn't familiar."

Usually conversations about art make her feel poor, because most of them time they've happened with Bruce or Tim. The worst was when Damian had mocked her for not recognizing one of the Renoirs that was hanging in the manor. So far she hasn't felt like that with Jae, so she's happy to continue the conversation.

Jae's family was well off enough to make the move from Osaka to Manhattan without ever transitioning into vile poverty, but their place in New York was still cramped and noisy, crammed as close to K-Town as possible, with both his parents working double shifts for as long as he was ever in America with them. His interest is personal, his education on the subject willful; art in any form makes every night he spent homeless and every hour he spent getting the glories of communism drilled into his head seem a little less bleak.

"He did abstract impressionism, which is like abstract but less 'sneezed on a paper' and more 'painting a subject in a strange way'. He's famous for 'combine' pieces, making these big interactive things that were half sculpture and half painting."

"That almost sounds interesting," her tone is a little teasing, it does actually sound interesting, but admitting that straight away seems like she's giving in (to what, she's not sure). "I'm guessing I wouldn't be able to find any of his work here?"

He just grins at her teasing. There is art for everyone, he is sure of it.

"Probably not, but I've seen plenty that's interesting already. It's strange, but really fascinating, I mean even just on Earth there's always going to be a big divide between how art turns out based on perspective from different cultures, but here half the stuff out there has a perspective from whole different planets."

If he's going to be stuck here, he's at least going to look at some new stuff.

"I never thought about it like that," Kara had tried to explain some Kryptonian art to her once, but it had mostly made Kara sad, so Steph had changed the topic, "Now I'm wondering what art from third or forth generation Baedalites would be like. It'd have to be pretty unique."

"I think most of the exhibits in the city center are like that," he says with a shrug. Jae hasn't spent an enormous amount of time in there - the snotty attitude most people have about new arrivals is palpable the further into the monied areas one gets, and he can find less irritating ways to waste his time. "There's a woman who displays her stuff sometimes in a coffee shop in Brock Marsh that does portraits, right? But they're portraits of people with tentacles coming out of their heads, and every single one is labeled a self-portrait, and nobody's ever actually seen her."

Art is the coolest thing, okay.

"You know, a few weeks ago that probably would've weirded me out completely," She shakes her head, laughing softly at the whole ridiculous situation, "I've become accustomed to tentacles. Where did my life go wrong?"

Not that there's anything wrong with tentacles, they're just not very... common.

Inwardly, Jae still struggles with beings who aren't human - especially ones who don't look human - but between people like Megan and his own refusal to be so unsteady, he's getting better. Speaking frankly about it and shoving all his insecurities out the window by force helps.

"I had to get used to worse than tentacles pretty quick, at the Vault."

"Yeah, I can imagine you'd have to. The majority of people at the college are human, or at least, people who look it. I guess some of the bias towards humans is visible in places like that," She knows quite well that the education is one of the main systems to show bigotry, even if it's not outright, it's observable in statistics.

"Well, it's like that everywhere." Lightly, but almost brittle - a bit sad, too. Whether or not worlds even have nonhumans, there's always going to be 'bias'. Race, culture, gender, class, orientation. It's one thing that's unsurprising and perfectly familiar, about Baedal.

"Unfortunately," she just sounds kind of tired, she wishes there was more she could do about it on a wider scale, "And depressing, when yo consider that Baedal is better than a lot of worlds."

"If it wasn't this, it'd be something else."

Sad, but true. People are built up of too many emotions to just set aside all the volatile ones - Jae wishes people knew how to handle them better across the board. Sometimes he understands; he can sympathize with being angry, especially after you've been treated poorly, or if you're afraid. But so many people haven't really been treated poorly, and don't know what it's like to be really afraid, and that's where it loses him. (Even if he's not perfect.)

"On the plus side, we've been able to have a drink together."

"That's even more depressing," But she won't deny the truth of it. She wishes it was more obvious to other people, sometimes Bruce and Tim could be oblivious to things like that.

"I think the militia would have a lot more trouble controlling people if there weren't any bars," Partly because of keeping people happy is part of keeping them complacent, and if anyone isn't happy, they still have the option of drowning their problems in alcohol.

Jae wrinkles his nose a bit when she mentions the Militia, his opinion clear without ever having to say anything. Though he was not as shocked as some people were by that broadcast - he was cognizant of the state of the city before, and he's from a part of the world where communist regimes are part of the culture - but he still really doesn't like it. (Who would?)

"I don't know how useful I'd be otherwise."

He's not a soldier, or a freedom fighter. All he can do is putter around and fuss with music (and pretend not to use magic). If his choices were 'suffer or fight back', he'd probably end up getting stuck with suffering. One of Sonja's army, he is not.

She briefly wonders if he means he wouldn't be useful in terms of working - just because two of three jobs are at clubs - but after a moment she reconsiders, having a feeling he might be saying a bit more than that.

"I'm sure you'd figure something out," From their conversation so far, Jae seems pretty smart and self-relient, which are both good things in Steph's book. So while she doesn't know him well enough to make a complete judgement on the topic, she believes what she said.

Well, Jae could certainly get a pencil-pushing job and be fine at it; he's smart and capable of defaulting to a good work ethic when he's forced to - but how useful is that, in a city of nearly three million? Not terribly.

"I hope I don't have to." Peaceful resolution and re-organization, anyone? ... Maybe?

(Probably not.)

"Hopefully not, you can leave the boring jobs to the rest of us." Steph will do her civic duty as a librarian, it's almost as good a cover as being a mild mannered reporter.

"I still don't believe being a librarian here is all that boring." He grins. "And there are books about art in there, I'm sure." READ THEM, STEPH. ASSIMILATE.

(There's also the fact that Steph seems really, uncannily sharp about certain things, and so he wonders, given the nature of the other abductees in their cohort... What does she really do? But maybe that's paranoid of him.)

"Hey - I hate to cut this short but I should probably go shower and get dinner and get my head together for my late shift. Can I expect to catch you around somewhere in the near future?"

"You're intent on making me learn some culture, aren't you?" She shakes her head, but she's smiling, "I'll see what I can find."

"No problem, I wouldn't wanna keep you from work," She should probably head home too, maybe catch a nap before going out to patrol, "I'll be on the network, and I'll dropp into The Vault sometime, maybe I'll see you there."

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boomvox - 2012-01-30 07:11 (UTC) - Expand

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