The Reference Desk: La [Biography, Character/Player Updates]
August 26, 2010 - 4:58am — AlisonRobin
Most Recently: Back, briefly. Discord is Alison number zero three seven one if anyone wants to chatter. I'm trying to get pages working again after dropbox's policy change. I'm just hosting the files now where I host some other stuff.
Being that I am trash, there is now a La tumblr.
Spoken Name: La (humanuses); Archaeologist, Librarian, Researcher Age: Five; arrived in The Forest on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010. Sex, Gender: Female/Doe/Hind, moderately feminine. Irrelevant to character. Real Name:La's Pictograph can be seen in my avatar, with reduplicating circles and isosceles triangles, plus a strange little fifth mark on the side I can't explain. Click for most complete set of visual references, though still a WIP.
Physical Traits and Mannerisms of the Body La's facial structure is fairly typical for Endless Forest deer. She has wide set eyes, a broad nose, and a mostly lipless mouth. She would not be considered pretty by most standards. I never draw her face the same way twice because I'm quite quite faceblind even in real life, and how pretty La is has never affected her as a person. She is usually monochrome (though still a bit brown due to natural brown coloration underneath the spell colors) and tends to look drab in most light.
Four feet tall at the withers, she could look many humans in the eyes comfortably.
La's obsession with humans has caused hand-like marks to form in her pelt and antlers. La has hand shapes over her eyes, shoulders, and hips as well as in her antlers. La's fur is soft and floofy, good for cuddles. Her antlers do not shed but are also done growing for good (unless changed by magic, in which case it seems anything could happen). They are slightly flexible, as if made of stiff rubber, and no matter what spell is cast on her the tines will always be blunt. Sometimes they stick out farther than others or in other directions if she sleeps on them funny. When other spells are cast on her, she will always have hands visible on her somewhere, and her antlers will always have hand shapes to them regardless of shape, so on occasion you may see her wearing all kinds of spells.
Under the regular forest smells of grass, water, wood, dirt, and deer smell, La smells like a new book, and it's the hard cover edition, baby. She can speak softly and still be intelligible, and she can make her voice carry far without shouting. La can sound as strict as a librarian scolding someone for a late return or as kindly as a kindergarten teacher helping a student up on the playground after a fall.
La is often turned into other creatures, though she cannot change herself. She maintains her monochromatic coloration across any form that she takes thanks to the power of the Forest magic, and is black in the same places and white in the same places across different animals. When not a deer, her handprint shapes are replaced with hoofprint shapes to reflect where her heart really is. There are always hairless or featherless white circles where her antlers should be. She always maintains her voice and book-scent.
As a human, La's eyes are on exactly the same level as her eyes when she is a deer. She has short hair and the body structure of a healthy person who exercises regularly but mostly does cardio. She is otherwise very average in build. She resists the wearing of clothes except by necessity to be polite and stay warm. She has limited finger coordination and struggles with things like forks, doorknobs, and other fine motor tasks.
Personality, Emotions, and Philosophies La is a bookworm whose life has been all study with little opportunity to apply what she has learned. At one time she had dreams of being a widely respected researcher, but she has given up on that and now just wants to find kind deer to engage her in conversation because it's rare for anyone to read what she writes. She loves to share what she knows and learn new things, and she loves to talk. If you love to talk too, that's fine because she also loves to listen to your stories. La appreciates but has no talent for art. She is very laid-back about her beliefs and accepting of others' differences unless they are willfully ignorant or intentionally cruel.
The doe can be easily excitable but also easily frightened, and in stressful times her emotions can be all over the place. She isn't as playful now as she was as a fawn, but she still likes to watch play and occasionally join in. Her favorite game is running at others from the side and leaping over them. La absolutely loves being turned into other animals, and usually spends hours in a form. She likes the curiosity of fawns and the conversation and wisdom of older deer. Please assume in The Forest that she is chattering pleasantly (or listening when you chatter back if you like) when your deer is keeping her company. If you are a fawn she will do her best to give you a proper education even if she is playing with you.
Often, La is wrapped up in small details and has difficulty seeing The Forest for the trees, so to speak. She can very easily come across as dopey if the person speaking to her is not making the same connections that she is, or because La will often speak about things without providing adequate context, e.g. telling humans "I've been a squirrel before and..." or other things that wouldn't make sense to a layman.
Conversely, she can be extremely to the point, and her typical threat-response is with a wit and sharp tongue that only shows up when she may be in danger. La notices more than others think and usually knows if someone is a potential risk. She'll fight with her words by being precise and truthful, and that's usually enough--sticks and stones can break bones, but the pen is mightier than the sword. These are only last-minute tactics to diffuse a threat-situation though--if she's actually in trouble, she'll just sprint. If she has to, she will protect a fawn by being a meatshield (and has in the past been injured this way).
La is very pious towards The Twin Gods but has put time into learning about some human religions as well, mainly studying Christianity and assorted varieties of European paganism. La believes that the role of religion in a person's life should be palpable, and worships The Twin Gods because they are present and part of The Forest--she would likely lose her affection for them if they left for good and would perhaps worship the sun instead.
La has no inclination or intention of ever having a mate or romantic partner. She is oblivious to flirtation and will just think you're being weird if you try it with her. She thinks kissing is gross. She just wants friends.
If La put stock in astrology, she would be a Virgo (analytic and helpful) or a Gold Tiger (enthusiastic and brave).
When in human form, La doesn't eat meat even though she has the option. She believes that humans, as omnivores, should eat meat to respect their evolutionary heritage, but she does not because she comes from a line of herbivores, and her people are not meant to eat flesh.
La uses the word "people" to generically refer to deer, humans, and any other entity with a sense of self-identity. Typically when she says "deer" she refers specifically to her human-faced Endless Forest kin, not other kinds of deer or deer-like beings that live in The Endless Forest.
Story and Plot Elements, Pathways Forward La is not an especially exciting person, but exciting things happen to her and she tends to roll with the punches. Because of her insight into the human world, La uses the Gregorian Calendar to keep track of time.
La came to exist on August 24th, 2010. She acquired her book shortly thereafter, or it acquired her. She learned to read before she learned to speak and didn't speak until late September 2010.
Shortly after physical maturation in late September 2010, La became reclusive and mostly sequestered herself to focus on studies. She returned in late December 2013.
On Mardi Gras 2014 she encountered one of The Gods in orb form and saw a disco ball, and was also witness to an airplane flying over The Forest. Somehow, she was invisible to all other deer (but they were visible to her) and a motionless owldeer wore her pictogram at the ruins and several of La's friends later told her about the owldeer. (I even saw it myself on my partner's computer, looking between his screen and my own.) The owldeer's importance on La's life and story is yet unknown.
On March 11, 2014, La woke up with a skull stuck to her face that was impossible to remove. The story is recounted here with illustrations and it is ongoing. On March 15th, she again woke up with a skull but this time also with the rest of the skeleton that goes with the skull.
On Easter 2014 La ate the tree eggs and played with bubbles for the first time with Tanpopo and Twist. She wonders who sets up the candles, who lights them, and how they get to some of the places they get.
On May 4th, 2014, she was turned into a giant dove, thanks to the Glitch Skull's glitch magic. She spited it by enjoying herself. Later, on July 17th, 2014 the Glitch Skull tried a new approach and got rid of all of La's spells while she slept, but she's a tough cookie. La had fun running around naked for a while and even reverted to a fawnhood state. Then on the next day she woke up again as an adult with all of her spells returned to her. Called the Glitch Skull on its shenanigans and went naked anyway, even going so far as to be a fawn in order that her magic wouldn't stick. Allowed her magic to come back naturally by letting friends and strangers cover her with spells.
On July 29th, 2014 La went on an hour long meditation walk organized by Quad. It started at The Old Oak, which unnerved her, but she reasoned that nothing bad would happen if she was surrounded (and protected) by a herd of other deer. She was right--and making it to The Old Oak was the worst part. Meeting Quad there and finding him dancing made her feel better, though she still never went under the tree. The meditation walk was wonderfully soothing after that, and La stayed the entire time.
During October 2014 when many of the forest folk were rutting, The Glitch Skull became enormously active and has been casting spells on La almost non-stop. She has given up on trying to shake off these frustratingly resilient spells for now since new ones keep coming in hopes it would frustrate the Skull.
La celebrated her fourth birfday on August 24th 2014. A cake from The Endless Cake dimension (neighbor to The Endless Forest) appeared and she attempted to eat it but failed due to endlessness.
For Halloween Eve, October 30th, 2014, La met the Big Zombie Deer Velocity for the first time. Later, she met the god Auriea and nuzzled her. She was gifted with a green luchador mask. She followed her god to The Old Oak and fearlessly followed her inside of it--yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me--and followed her after that to De Drinkplaats. While a crowd of naked deer frolicked, La found Auriea and they stood together without magic, side by side. Screens.
La spent the end of 2014 and all of 2015 and 2016 mostly absent from the forest, focusing on her education. She misses her friends but feels a spiritual call to pursue knowledge.
On more than one occasion La has been able to travel outside The Endless Forest and she assumed a human body. Because of her pelt spell sticking to her human skin and the fact that she is a deer at heart with no true human skills, La has proven absolutely unable to pretend to be a normal human in any convincing way. Her trips there are either comedies of errors or very dangerous situations indeed.
And of course, there's always more being added.
Skills, Talents, and Accomplishments of Note La has nothing to separate her from other Deer except her hard work, diligence, and the ability to draw careful conclusions through analysis of facts. La is a polyglot, reading a mix of modern and dead languages relevant to western literature including Old, Middle, and Modern English, Norman, Modern French, Classical Greek, and Latin in addition to her native Deer language. Her pronunciation is imperfect for most and she has a Deer accent (whatever that sounds like). She is good at turning misfortune and failure into opportunities to learn. She thinks outside the box. I would also consider it a power that she does not experience the emotion of boredom--the closest thing she feels is sleepiness and she often ends up using an open book as a pillow.
Her second favorite place to sleep is under the slanted rock in The Playground, around (357,394), because a Kind Stranger kept her company there one night when she was a fawn and they were the only deer in The Forest. After that, she likes the mushroom ring nearest The Ruins and sleeps there whenever she wants to feel safest.
She often wanders around The Forest, especially if she sees a pictograph that she recognizes or is off investigating something. You may see her running around aimlessly and weaving through trees or performing figure eights--it probably means she is trying to look at every side of a thing, or she just feels like moving around. It's possible she is also looking for the exact, proper location of something.
The only place she will NOT go is into The Old Oak, as she believes that it is a well of bad things. She is willing to go near it if there are enough deer around her to keep her safe, but that's her limit. The one exception is when she followed Auriea inside, certain that her god would protect her.
Reasons to Not be Alone, Reasons to Smile La has no family and was born into the world without parents. The Book is her family.
La has many friends and acquaintances whom she enjoys and treasures. She looks for them in moments of awakeness and often tries to stir up activity if she sees them out and about--otherwise she'll usually join a cuddle puddle or just sit with them.
While accepting and loving of all those she knows, La can still be leery of strangers. Individuals who carry themselves in threatening ways, are armed in any sense, or have features typical of carnivores can make La nervous and she is less likely to approach and converse with them. In some but not all cases she considers the wearing of skulls and furs to be morbid and possibly offensive to her herbivore sensibilities, but tries not to judge the cultures of others. If she has heard rumors (i.e. if I read it in a biography) that a person is exceptionally aggressive and especially if they have killed someone before and that is widely known, La will avoid them peacefully but if approached will allow conversation.
La believes that by either magic or nature, deer that most closely resemble The Twin Gods (which is to say, true-blooded Endless Forest Deer with humanoid faces) are the most natural residents of The Forest, but she also believes that there is room for everyone in The Endless Forest and doesn't think that her gods would turn away any good-hearted asylum-seeker. She is usually pleasantly amused to see deer with inhuman faces, or even intelligent animals other than deer who have come to the Forest. She simply doesn't understand why anyone would want to come here, and is flattered.
Vipin- The first deer La ever met. Incredibly terrifying on his own, but he was sitting down at the time and that lessened La's fears. She quote-unquote sneaked over to him because her desire for company outweighed her fear of him and sat a few feet away. Later inched closer. Regards very kindly. Hasn't seen in a long time.
Flyleaf- One of the first deer La ever played with. An infinitely kind soul full of laughter and love, La is always happy to see Flyleaf and would do anything for him.
Ourania- One of the first deer La ever played with. Regards her very fondly. Hasn't seen in a long time.
Kind Stranger- La was often completely alone in The Forest as a fawn and on a dark and stormy night (in the 3.4 beta) she found only the Kind Stranger in the woods. She went to them very sadly and miserably and found comfort and shelter in their company under a mushroom and later underneath the slanted rock in The Playground. Hasn't seen them since and sometimes thinks maybe she imagined them.
Gustiro- Present for the first time La was ever helpful, before she even learned to talk. Gustiro's antlers were stuck and La helped him get un-stuck. Gruff, but he is La's definition of traditional masculinity in deer. Regards very fondly and recently reunited with him.
Kheiron- The first deer that La feels took her seriously, and the first deer that she introduced to The Book. She wasn't talking yet, but La wanted to talk with him more than anyone else in her childhood. Loves his playful nature. Hasn't seen in a long time.
Vaq- An individual she met when he was a fawn. Watched him grow up and developed a strong friendship with him. His extremely extroverted playfulness and tricksiness is counter-balanced by her preference for quiet tricks. He clearly cares for her in return, but La knows that he sees everything about how she likes to study the world around her as heretical and bizarre and has told her that her study of glyphs in pictographs "ruins the magic." She disagrees.
Walter- Owes him gratitude for his patience with her in helping her gather together her magic. La is oblivious to his past. Has run into him again now that he is a fawn and recognizes him by his pictograph. Intends to be nurturing in any way she can.
Ben- Such an eternal source of love and kindness. La seeks out Ben's pictograph any time she can sense it and will cuddle with him and romp with him any chance she gets.
Nika- In La's opinion, the best traveling and adventuring partner that one can have. Nika's life experience and La's technical understandings mix well together. La also probably owes her some money for buying her human clothes. A source of comfort and reassurance and La firmly believes that Nika could kick anyone's butt.
Toya- A sweet and mysterious soul, definitely an artist. Has been pranked by her spells and always surprised to see the way that Toya's visage can change. Hasn't seen her in a while.
Jennie- A wonderful playmate. La is always amused by her antics and happy to see her, but unnerved to see her with a different pictograph lately. Hasn't played with too much recently.
Kio- Much like Ben, Kio is a well of neverending love. La is enticed by her otherworldliness and mystery and seeks her out for cuddles and romps at every opportunity.
Twist- A squirrel! La doesn't know her well and hasn't spent an immense amount of time in her company, but owes her her life.
Stitches- The character of a fraudulent player who lied to the community, so a complicated entry. But, regardless of the player, the character did exist and La did know him as a very sad fellow. Kept him company when possible to cheer him up and attended his wedding, though assumes it is dissolved with the character's absence.
Arcus- A fascinating chimeric person. La doesn't know her intensely well but enjoys her. Attended her wedding to Stitches.
Shahla- A tough gal. La aspires to be more like her in that regard. Enjoys her company quietly most times, sort of observing and admiring.
Peppino- Complicated. Distantly aware that he may have a crush on her that La will never ever want to nor be able to reciprocate. La fails to notice his advances and maintains a strictly platonic friendship, taking advantage of his know-how of elements of the human world that she fails to comprehend. He has saved her life.
Sunna'May- A shape-changer that La finds intriguing. Has played with her and been amazed by her magic in the past, really blown away by her. Wonders what her story is.
Adrien- A deer raised by rabbits. La would like to pick his brain more than she has been able to. Knows him to be a genuinely caring individual. Met him when trying to hatch The Nubbin.
Trout- A unicorn true to unicornness. Beautiful as nature and just as kind. Has experienced and seen Trout taking on burdens for others out of selflessness and was immensely proud when Trout began to talk.
Tanpopo- The sweetest little girl. La is deeply invested in her well-being and frightened for her since she hasn't seen her or Oduvanchik for a while. Intervened in the past to step between Oduvanchik and Tanpopo and keep them apart, seeing the demon as nothing but dangerous for the fawn, but was unable to keep them separated.
V- An anxious, self-conscious person. La wants her to feel good about herself.
Cian- A young boy with a big imagination that La adored. Loved to play make-believe with him and tell him stories. Watched him grow pretty fast, he was always big for his age. Hasn't seen him in a while.
Palila- A very sweet young thing that never really had time to blossom before her player was bullied off the site. What I saw on the forum wasn't pretty. PSA: It's never okay to bully a child, no matter what. Even if a kid does something bad, they are still a kid and they need to be taught, not insulted. Don't let a few jerks ruin stuff for you.
Isca- A very magical young thing that La met trying to hatch The Nubbin. Believes she will grow up right.
"Nubbin"- An alien! La is invested in its well-being but is scared to take a strictly parental role with it, so she got it a cow to provide it with food.
Oduvanchik- A straight up monster from another world that came out of The Old Oak. Terrifying. La would avoid him completely if he didn't hang around Tanpopo. Has clashed with and been injured by him.
La is always open to meeting new people of all kinds, but if you look scary it might be best if you initiate.
Artifacts for Museums and Other Acquisitions La isn't much of a hoarder and has a tenuous concept of ownership at best. For better or for worse she has learned from humans when reading about them. Her view of non-dangerous objects is that they are meant to be shared and kept in good condition, and is in love with the ideas of museums and libraries because they exemplify what she believes responsible ownership should look like. She will happily share and show off her acquisitions to people who would like to learn about them.
Green Luchador Mask cast on La by the God Auriea on October 30, 2014. Outside of The Book, La's most precious possession and symbol of her faith. Her Luchadora name is "La Cierva." A terrible joke.
Blanket from The Human World, gifted by Peppino - His parting gift to La after taking her to The Human World. She keeps it in her nest area near The Point of Origin and it is usually covered with dry grass and leaves. In warm weather she sits on it and in cold weather she uses her mouth to pull it over her and wear it kind of like a cape. She will not hesitate to share it with anyone in need.
Book of Fairy Tales from The Human World, gifted by Peppino - Peppino's other parting gift to La. She read it in a day. It is kept in a hidden room under The Ruins to avoid damaging it but she will happily share it any time she thinks someone would like it.
Shard of Alien Egg salvaged from The Nubbin's Egg - La helped hatch an alien, and after its birth she saved a few shards of the egg. The largest is about the size of her face. She wants to analyze it to learn what the superhard sparkling blue material is made of. She keeps them in one of the rooms under The Ruins and will show it to others.
Glitch Skull and Accompanying Skeleton - The skull and skeleton of a mysterious, unidentifiable, asymmetrical creature. These objects are connected to an entity that haunts La and inflicts glitches on her. She keeps it wrapped in burlap as a way to punish the object. Occasionally she takes them with her to meet others if she thinks that they might be able to help her understand what they are, but is generally not keen on showing them off because she views them as threat.
Human Clothes from The Human World, gifted by Nika - a bizarre but plain costume acquired at a human LARP gathering that makes La look out of place in any setting, strange human appearance aside. Made of cotton, is a brownish red. Outfit consists of a sleeveless shirt, chest wrap and a long skirt over shorts. La struggles to don and remove the clothes because she is inexperienced. Philosophically and because of deer habits, she might be happier as a nudist but understands the social importance of clothes. They conveniently vanish when she returns to The Endless Forest.
Old Books from under The Ruins. Nika showed La where they were. The books are mostly gospels and other copies of the bible.
Ruin Rock A piece of rubble from The Ruins with some lines on it. La doesn't know where it belongs but keeps it because she found it as a fawn. A squirrel stole it and La had nearly given up on finding it when the doe Jezara found it and brought it to her again!
La is always looking to acquire strange things, but she especially likes books, items of historical significance, items connected to mysteries, and of course useful things.
La found a large reddish book in The Ename Ruins when she was only a few days old. It imprinted to her and now bears her pictograph on the front cover. It is the doe's window into the human world and her sole companion on lonely nights. The book appears mysteriously when La wants it and vanishes when she stops paying attention to it. It can display whatever it desires (which is often but not always whatever La desires to learn about). Sometimes it will be a show-off and introduce itself with flashy, full-color illustrations. Occasionally it displays a level of prescience and an awareness of its surroundings, usually with the cheeky intention of causing La some mild chagrin. It leaves opinions and comments in footnotes but they are rarely longer than a word or so and often comedic and sassy. The book seems to have some level of dominion over other books as well and can move them the way it moves itself, but this is rarely necessary.
La's underlying scent of books is this book's way of marking its territory.
It has a fear of water, fire, and any vermin that might nibble its pages.
The book may loan itself out to deer other than La on its own whims. Let me know if you just want to interact with the book or want it to cameo/participate in a roleplay you're in, I'll be happy to come over there. It's unlikely to aid evil characters, however.
How I Play La in The Endless Forest La and I react to people much the same way and like to be friendly and happy and playful. We want to run around and play or maybe just sit with you and enjoy some good cuddles. We'll keep our distance and run off if you do something aggressive or angry in or out of character.
We try to prioritize new fawns and nameless deer because they need the most guidance and help. With my player insight I know they are new players; La sees fawns as babies needing guidance and she sees nameless deer as hapless tourists who have no idea what they're doing and who don't speak the local language.
I generally think of biographies I read on TEFc to represent rumors and chatter that La overhears in The Forest when talking to others, so she may have heard of your deer. Obviously La will only be aware of the most superficial things about your character. She's usually up to date on deaths and births because I imagine those are the kinds of things that she hears most from gossipy deer.
La and I will ignore trolls and OOC rudeness both in and out of character. Additionally, La won't be injured by anything that happens in the forest unless I get to talk about it ahead of time with players and we all agree to something, although that is highly unlikely because she is very much not a fighter and not likely to get into fights. If you just start wailing on her in The Forest, tough titty--your attacks mean nothing.
Please don't have bought pictograms interact with La. I'll do my best keep her away from them too so it will be no work for you, I know several of them by heart and will give you space and avoid affecting your play. I do not hate players who have done it as people because I'm not going to let that ruin friendships, but I am upset with the idea of buying pictograms and I think the best way to resolve this for myself and demonstrate that I intend to side with M&A on the issue is to avoid them peacefully in the game.
When I play the game, I play it windowed so if La fails to react to you it means I've tabbed away or something has happened around me and I have had to abandon my computer. Occasionally this means it's frozen up. In-character, if she ignores you, please assume that she isn't doing it to be rude and is just distracted or dopey. She wouldn't want to hurt feelings and I'd rather your character think she's dumb than mean. If I am slow to react or if I moo, I am on my laptop without hotkeys or I messed up when trying to hit them.
Alison Alison is a turd who can't be trusted to hang out enough with you lovely people. I've always kept the game on my mind though.
Sounds great!
Here also works, I don't think we need a new thread. I haven't got an RP running in the biography so we're pretty free to use it for that. You wanna start or should I?
Two black-tipped ears peeked over the brush as a pair of turquoise eyes scanned the area. Seemed clear. Tip-toeing out from his hiding spot, Cian stealthily crept towards the Ruins. He was an adventurer, seeking out the ancient tomb of the King. The piebald fawn glanced side to side as he searched, making his way through the eerie rocks. He leaped over the gaps that, if fallen through, would land you straight in the core of the earth, where molten lava would burn you to death. Cian had a very active imagination, and could get so lost in his games that he would be oblivious to anything real around him. Without even a blink, the boy jumped onto a rock where a doe sat, straightening his wobbly legs. Finally, he sighed. He had made it. The young stag looked up proudly to see the giant tomb of the ancient ruler.
La looked up from her book regularly to steal glances at Cian. She did her best to discern his solitary game from afar. Some fawns pretended they were other animals, some fawns liked to pretend they were a family, some even pretended they had antlers and fought. But La could not quite make out this fawn's game.
She'd met him briefly at a wedding a few weeks ago, and remembered him for his black and white pelt. Never one to interrupt a game intentionally, La closed her book with her nose and quietly got to her feet to stalk a bit closer to where he played his game.
Suddenly, Cian felt a tremor shake the tombs, feeling pebbles fall around his hooves as the Ruins crumbled in. He hD to get out, and quick! The boy leaped from stone to stone, taking one last glance at the glyphs etched into the walls. No clue what they said. It's not like he could read anyway. Cian finally tumbled out of the tomb just as the dust and debris blew up into the air. That was close. As the fawn stood, he noticed La standing not too far from him. He gave her a friendly grin. "Woah, you gotta be careful! The tomb coulda crushed on you real bad!" His grammar wasn't too great, and he wS typically a bit hard to understand at first, as he tended to slur his words slightly, especially when excited. The boy bounced over to the doe and gazed up at her.
La grinned at him, but her expression turned to one of feigned shock and awe as he brought her into his game. "Oh my, that was close, wasn't it? But you made it out in one piece!" She looked him over just to make sure he was alright--partly to play along with the game and partly out of genuine concern for a child she hadn't often seen in the company of adults.
"Well," she said, raising an eyebrow now and looking back in the direction of his invisible tomb, "How are you going to get the treasure now?"
Cian was stumped. He frowned for a minute in concentration, furrowing his brow as he glanced back at the fallen rubble that was once an intricate tomb build for a king. The little explorer sighed in frustration. It's true - he didn't have the chance to grab the enchanted ruby while he had the chance. The structure was old and eroded from centuries of wind and rough weather. He should've planned for if it collapsed. He wasn't very well-prepared. No matter! Cian always thought of something, and this time was no exception. "The special red rock was prolly a fake! The King would never crush it like that! It mus' be...somewhere 'round here..." The boy's eyes brightened as he found a way to continue his story, and paced a bit as he scanned his surroundings. Where could that troublesome gem be? He checked behind headstones and under rocks, but to no avail. Suddenly, he perked his ears. "Ya hear that? Somebody's singin'! We gotta be real quiet..."
La nodded and became quiet, settling down low to the ground so she could be close to Cian's eye level, and so she would be less visible to any foes he might conjure for them. She flattened her ears against her head to even hide them from view, and whispered, "Whose voice is that, singing? Do you think it's safe for us to go looking for them or do you think it's a trick to distract us from the treasure?"
It was a delightful game for La to be playing, and she found herself being swallowed up by the story just as easily as if she were reading about it in a book.
The fawn crept forward silently, but turned his head to the side to reply to La. "Dunno. Prolly a trap. I'll go take a look, an' you stay here to keep watch." Cian inched his way to the corner of the Ruins, slowly peeking out. He gasped loudly, although whatever it was he was reacting to was out of La's sight. He came dashing back, scrambling over his feet to hide behind the doe. "There's a lady sitting next to the magical red rock, but she's actually a scary evil monster! We have to defeat her so we can get the treasure!"
La stifled a chuckle and kept herself from smiling when he came tearing back to her. She asked him, "How do we defeat a monster that can change what it looks like? And if she looks like a lady, how can you be so certain that she's a monster?" La raised an eyebrow to him.
She whispered on, "I think we should come up with a plan before we do anything too hasty, what do you think? Brain over brawn? I'll be honest, I don't think I'm as experienced with fighting monsters as you are."
He was again a bit stumped when the doe questioned him. How did he know she was a monster? "Her eyes are red and she has nasty fangs and claws and bones aaallll 'round her." Cian widened his eyes as he spoke, his voice getting slowly more hushed and then intensifying for effect. He then tapped on the ground, indicating that La should follow him as he silently made his way to where the monster was. "Don't worry, assistant. I'll protect you." Cian gave a quick smile which almost broke his character, but just as quick as it came, it vanished and the boy was replaced with an ancient tomb raider. At the count of three, he charged out onto the big rock at the front of the Ruins, letting out a battle cry as he fought with the air. He stumbled over and fell, looking panicked. "Quick! While she's distracted! You gotta stomp on 'er!"
La crept after Cian and nodded along with his extremely serious orders, and she watched the fawn--his speed blurred him to grey in La's eyes--leap into action and begin to fight the air.
The doe waited with bated breath at the ready until he called on her for help, and she followed him onto the slab of marble that had once been a mighty wall. For a moment she saw in her imagination the evanescent outline of a red-eyed beast with bones at her feet, knocked prone by the brave explorer, but the visage faded as soon as it had appeared. Her imagination was strong, but it could not be as strong as a fawn's.
She trampled the air where the monster lay in Cian's eyes, hopping and pounding her hooves against the stone rapidly.
Cian panted heavily, watching with wide eyes until he interrupted her attack. "Finally...she's dead." He liften himself to his hooves and cautiously checked around them to make sure there were no more enemies nearby. His ears perked up to check for any threatening sounds. None. Suddenly a twinkle caught the boy's eye. His attention was turned towards a magnificent ruby, about the size of the fawn's head. He slowly approached it, with a wide grin and curious eyes. "We made it! We get the treasure!" To anyone else, it would appear that Cian was just standing in the grass gazing down at a red flower sprouting in the ground. He knew his friend could see it, though.
La flopped down to lie in the grass next to the red flower. "Well done," she praised him. La was more winded from trampling a nonexistent foe than she would have liked to admit, and she did what she could to hide her slightly heavy breathing. Of all things, she didn't want to seem old. Not to fawns at least.
"You're called Cian, aren't you?" she asked after a moment. her eyes were focused primarily on the prized red poppy rather than the boy. "I think we met a few weeks ago. Though I was painted red at the time."
As the world of imagination faded away and the ancient tombs once again became the forest Ruins, Cian fixed the flower behind his ear and sat across from La. "Ooohh yeeaahh...I remember you now. Yer La!" The boy looked rather proud of himself for having remembered the doe's name. "That's a cool name...how'd ya get it?"
"I made it up," she said with a sly smile. "It was the first thing I ever said. And when I was little, it was my favorite thing to say, so it stuck. Now and forever I suppose! But my real name, I've had that as long as I can remember."
For emphasis, her pictograph lit up brightly where it hovered above her head before dimming back to only slight visibility.
"Where'd you get the name Cian?" she asked in turn.
Cian listened in awe and smiled boyishly as the Picto hovering above La's head shined brightly. He blinked suddenly, his attention pulled back to the doe when she asked him a question. "Well..." He glanced up in thought, not entirely sure he remembered. "I think I jus' kinda knew. I learned to talk real faster than other fawns, like Pali. She still can't talk and I did on my second day. I walked real quick, too. And I grow quick." Cian stood again to show off his barely noticeable height to La. It was hard to compare when there were no other kids around but it was true. When compared to other fawns, Cian was a bit large for his age. he said glancing up at the symbol glowing above him. "Like that's how it looks, but Sea-Anne is how it sounds. Yknow?"
La nodded sagaciously along with him. "All fawns age and grow differently. I was a quick grower like you, but I was a slow talker like some fawns." La fondly remembered her days of babbling meaninglessly at the kind older deer who had humored her when she had been small.
She eyed his pictogram and committed it to memory. "We have our spoken names like Cian and La and we have our real names that we can't pronounce... And then some people have nicknames too. It's a bit of a confusing system if you ever really try to think about it too hard. And I have tried to think about it too hard."
He tilted his head at the monochrome doe, squinting his eyes and scrunching his face up for a minute. Afterwards, he giggled and grinned wide. "Yer right...my brain hurts." Cian smirked and flipped over onto his back, gazing up at the two deers' pictos floating beside one another. "Do you have a mommy and daddy too?"
La smiled. "When you feel that brain stretching feeling, that's a good thing. I like the feeling myself, I usually take it to mean that I have some mysteries to solve."
For his next question, she shook her head no. "No, I don't. No mother, no father. The forest is my parents. But I did okay. When I was a fawn there were a lot of adults who helped take care of me and I grew up okay."
Cian kept his eyes gazing up at the sky. His mouth was formed in a little 'O' shape, and it was clear that he was only half aware of his surroundings. The other half of his attention was fixed on sorting out which clouds made shapes and which didn't."It's okay...I don't have some either. But the golden deer are like mommies and daddies, right?" The boy rolled over onto his belly, until he was close enough to La that his hooves lightly touched hers. "An' my friend Pali is family, too. But her mommy and daddy are rabbits..." The piebald fawn scrunched up his face a bit as he trailed off. He hadn't thought about his friend's situation much, and saying it out loud made it sound quite silly.
La was uncertain what to make of the rabbit comment, and let it slide past without calling attention to it. "The Gods are our parents in a way," she said. "They look after us. And we look after each other, that is an important part--perhaps the most important part--of living in The Forest. So we can all be parents, we can all be children, and we can all be brothers and sisters."
Haha, I have a similar thing going on. My Y save is for breeding Pokemon in my bank so that I can have a set team for my X game. Just finished a run doing that, and it was pretty fun.
I still wish we could store items, especially Mega Stones, on the bank. I hate having to hunt for them, and I hate that you can only really use most of them after you beat the main storyline. I usually restart after I complete the main story since there's not much else to do after that.
I move all items to my dedicated file and usually trade them away for pokemon or give them away at conventions to kids. Kids love free stuff. And I have two copies of the game so it's kind of my responsibility to be doing stuff.
I love playing through games with prebred pokemon. The current Y team is
Blue Angel the Togepi (F, Serene Grace, 31/x/31/31/31/31) Offensive Special Attacker
Daniel the Alakazam (M, Inner Focus, 31/x/31/31/31/31) Mega Special Attacker
Mad Jack the Honedge (M, No Guard, 31/31/31/x/31/31) Dedicated Team Ghost Sword
Joan the Quilladin (F, Bulletproof, 31/31/31/31/31/31) Defensive Fuck You Attacker
Hazelnut the Azumarill (F, Huge Power, 31/31/31/31/31/31) Offensive Murder Everything Attacker
aaaand Vagabond the HM Smeargle. She comes on every new playthrough so I never ever have to worry about having an HM slave. I like to imagine that she has a surfboard for surfing and a batman cape for flying. But no good IVs and I just tossed EVs into general defense since she never fights, only HMs.
I have some leftover abras, togepis, bulletproof chespins, and marills if you want with good IVs.
My partner and I also hated hunting for mega stones but I think it only took me a few days to get them all, and I was able to pick up a bunch of the TMs I had missed on the way. I think my favorite mega so far is shiny Garchomp--because I am convinced that it is colored that way as a big fuck you to all the people who think they are so macho with their shiny garchomps.
Cian looked astounded, and sat upright with wide eyes. "So you could be my sister?...Pali could be my sister?!" The boy looked utterly disgusted and frowned deeply at the thought.
((Sorry for short reply..My mind is totally gone today))
"Not literally. Not biologically. But, in the sense that we have to take care of each other and make sure that we are all safe and happy, then yes. It's a metaphor." La saw his discomfort, and interpreted it as a puppy crush on his friend. She had no interest in stifling his fawning affections.
(No worries. Sometimes short posts are better anyway, they say that brevity is the soul of wit.)
He seemed a little calmer after given a better explanation. Now that he thought about it, it seemed to fit what he had always believed. If the Gods created everyone, then they were all like siblings. Cian smiled faintly. It was thoughts like these that made him feel less lonely and afraid. Suddenly, the fawn's smile faded, replaced by a curious 'o.' "Wait, what's a metaphor?" Cian inquired. This doe was just full of mysteries.
Makes me wish I had two 3DS, so that I could trade between my games. That's a no-go though, buying the 3DS I have now was a treat to myself.
I'm not big on EV/IVs at all, I just play with whatever I get. Number crunching and special breeding aren't for me, I can't be bothered with that stuff.
Nah, I'll pass, though I appreciate the offer. (:
I can't stand Garchomp in general, so he's dead last for me really. It's hard to pick a favourite Mega for me - Lucario, Absol, Mewtwo Y, and Houndoom are notable favourites though. Charizard X is pretty damn cool too.
That corgi race is precious, by the way. Which corgi was yours?
"A metaphor is when you describe something as something that it is not," La said with a crooked smile as she thought hard at how to explain it. "A creative lie, but a lie that you tell in order to help someone better understand the truth about something, or to make them see it a different way."
@Mjrn
If you need help trading stuff between games some time we can swap FCs and I can help you move items around. Right now I'm trying to relearn the names of all the moves because not all of them are direct translations. Superpower is "brute force" for instance. Otherwise it's a lot of fun in Spanish. I love the language and reading it a lot gives me a better idea about which expressions and grammars are more commonly used. It's also Spanish Spanish, which I know less about.
My corgi is the pale one who bolts for the top right of the basketball court, and then turns around and runs back to my father. She's almost the same color as the wood on the court so I had to watch the video a few times to identify her. My folks thought she'd like to meet other corgis since her favorite dog friend is a collie/basset hound mix that looks exactly like a giant corgi.
Cian looked extremely confused, but just shrugged it off and went back to looking up at the glowing symbols above their heads. "Have you been outside the Forest b'fore?"
La nodded with such enthusiasm that her ears flopped in the air at the sides. "I have. I went with a friend and we went to the human world."
She paused, and realized he might not have a concept of humans. "Humans were the people who made these ruins a long time ago. They have faces similar to ours, but they only walk on two legs."
Cian scrunched up his face with a displeased look. That sounds real creepy...things are s'posed to be on four legs. 'Cept birds an' fish. An' bugs with a bajillion hooves." The boy giggled childishly and rested on his flank. He liked listening to La talk. Her voice was soothing, and she made Cian feel calm. She was like a walking encyclopedia. "Can you tell me a story, La? 'Bout humans? What're they like? Are they nice?"
Actually it's kind of just poorly constructed in general.
God I love La's face. Your headcanons about the forest may have inspired some of my own, which I'll eventually shove somewhere other than the back of my mind and a Word document. Thank you for that.
"Hmm," La mused at the challenge that she had been posed, and did her best to think of a story that could communicate the best in humanity.
"Well," she began after a moment, shifting the way she sat to show him her hooves, flexing them to spread them apart. "Humans walk on two legs because they have hands instead of hooves in the front. That's the biggest thing that makes them different from us. They used their hands to make tools, and then use the tools to make other things.
"They made buildings, like these ruins. Originally it was all covered up so you could go inside and never feel the rain or wind. They made buildings ten times that big. Because they could, and because they wanted to. They started off with wood and stone and mud, then started pulling metals out of stone to make stronger, better materials. Stronger than any hoof or antler.
"After a while they started making machines to speed up their work. A machine is an object that works, that does something, without a mind. Usually people control them. Imagine if you could go somewhere without having to walk--humans invented machines that could do that for them. I tell you these things so that I can give you more of a setting to tell you the story.
"There was a human man--a male, a stag as we say here in The Forest--named John Henry. This was more than a hundred years ago that he lived. He was a steel driver. His work was all about speed and strength. He used a hammer, a heavy piece of metal at the end of a stick, to push another piece of metal inside of a rock."
La paused, hoping to give Cian a moment to absorb what she had said. She had a hard time herself truly conceptualizing the amount of force necessary to do that. She tilted her head sideways and smiled at the fawn. "Do you think you could make holes in rocks all day when you're older?"
And oh hai Hum :3 This is a place where you don't have to worry too much about grammar construction, ironically. I know what you meant.
I'm glad my headcanons have been inspirational. I have a lot of them. I can't help it. When faced with ambiguity like in The Forest I am driven to supply my own make-believe fun.
Glad you like La's face too. I am pretty faceblind in real life (I use hair and voice to identify most people) and I can never imagine her face the same twice. I kinda like it that way.
I feel you. I'm the same way. I jump between as grammatically proper as I can be and just straight ghetto chatspeak.
I think I've only ripped very slightly--or maybe I just always thought such things and seeing you put the thoughts into words inspired me to do the same--but if our thoughts are too similar, feel free to whap me. I know you won't, because it doesn't strike me as your style, but some of our thoughts are similar enough imo that I'd be more than happy to give credit. Obviously you'll see whenever the dang thing gets posted. (It'll be a "character center" of sorts, or whatever people here call those things. I think I'll be calling mine Nexus.)
I kind of am too imo, weird processing stuff. Silly brains! But yeah--for what it's worth, I've actually admired to myself how consistent you stay with her odd little cute face. So don't be hard on yourself. Either way, I just love her face, my goodness me.
Thank you. I don't know what I was thinking when I combined two difficult to draw things--hands and a face--for her design. What was I doing? Three-years-ago Alison was really not that smaaart.
Language-wise, I dunno. I feel really good about knowing proper grammar and spelling and I like to think I can write a damn fine essay but on forums when I am trying to write the way that I speak in real life, I just can't in good conscience use proper grammar. Like if I ask a question but don't want the tone to go up, gotta use a period instead of a question mark. And I love words like "gonna."
I cannot wait to see your headcanon. I will probably be linking to it from all of my pages that discuss my headcanons and perhaps yours will add to mine and we can build off each other... even if we end up with totally different ideas I can't see how there can possibly be any downside to having more options for imagination. I'm currently going back and doing a lot of editing on a page I made years ago about real life art/archeology and things that The Forest has in common with that. Hopefully I'll get my edits done by this year.
Oh boy, do I feel you. They come in these odd sets of impossible things and you get just no choice in the matter. Silly characters, thinking they can just create themselves. And then doing so.
Oh I'm same. I'm just so same. I tend to leave some sentences without final punctuation when I'm trying to imply some sort of open-ness. Like "I love you" versus "I love you." Sometimes I like the finality and sometimes I like the freedom. I tend to type with the rules of poetry rather than grammar, in non-professional settings. That said, I do love me some well-written English.
I have, like, twenty... two? Axioms right now. I'm sure I'll have more, but I plan to slap them at the top of my Nexus post to give some broader definition to all characters which follow, some unification. I just think it's cool to see not only the characters, but the unique sphere of perspective in which they were created--their laws of physics, so to speak.
I believe in you, man.
P.S. Saw La today. Waved at my computer screen, though I'm pretty sure the message was not conveyed. Also I used La to get pelt enchantment spells once. I just kind of see you two around.
La and I wander and then usually find a comfy spot and I have to leave my computer, so I just leave her in the forest sleeping so people can use her dreamstuffs to make pelt magic. Functionally it just means that she sleeps like a lion. And unless you have some crazy cool software for your computer I will not be receiving waves. Would be cool if webcams could do that though, somehow.
My parents are pretty serious grammar/language people, one of them being an English language teacher and both of them being librarians (among other careers) and I have never found myself wanting for people who care a lot about proper grammar. I still pretty regularly break the rules when I write fiction, not just poetry (which isn't really my thing) trying to hold a rhythm or pace. I'm a fan of the overuse of conjunctions.
Calling them axioms makes you sound like Euclid or something. I can dig it.
Cian listen attentively to the story La told. He tried to envision the scenes in his head, closing his eyes so they acted as a screen. The first thing to appear before him was a tall, disfigured deer who stood on his hind legs. The boy had no idea what hands were, so he made them up in his head. Instead of hooves on the creature's front legs, the grotesque deer had a set of wriggly squid-like tentacles. Cian scrunched up his face, obviously disliking the description of humans he had envisioned.
The next image displayed before him was the ruins, except that they were new and full of creepy human-deer, which made Cian grimace a bit more. The young stag was unable to think of anything stronger than an antler...perhaps the stone on the Playground, but that was about it. He pictured ruins towering above the clouds, bringing an amazed smile to his face.
For the machine, he racked his brain to produce an image. Half of these words he had never even heard of before. It was all so foreign to him. A deformed stag held a rock in his tentacles and smashed against a boulder again and again. Cian opened his eyes and furrowed his brows. "That seems stupid!"
-Replies even though it's technically no longer necessary.-
Oh same. TEF: 5% activity, 95% sitting.
It's okay, we got this wave business down pat.
I can see how being raised in such a household might make one a bit more open to things. Oh man same at all though.
Euclid, Euclid... I'm not actually familiar with Euclid. (Googled him though!) O: I've just taken a handful of logic courses, and really appreciate the elegance of the logical layout. Thus, Axioms! It was, I don't actually know what to call it... It involved making formulas out of actual arguments to determine the validity of the argument. It was super great. I miss it.
"It's very alien," La agreed. "And at first I had a very poor grasp of it myself. Humans were so strange to me that they became something that I needed to know more about, so I kept studying! But the thing about machines and inventions is that whoever you are, they can make life easier. But they aren't always better.
"That's where the story of John Henry comes in. The humans made a machine that could do his job of steel driving, and he wasn't happy about that. He didn't like the idea that a soulless object could possibly replace him, so he fought against it by racing it to prove that he was better than the machine." La hesitated. Her grasp of the story was solid enough, but as an outsider who knew it only from text and never from ballad and with only a very limited historical context of railroad worker exploitation and the American Civil war. "John Henry won the race. He made a tunnel through a mountain by himself. Can you imagine!? Here in The Forest, that is something that only gods can do. An he did it as a human with working tools. He put the machine to shame by making it seem so slow, but he also paid the price."
La's ears flopped as she released tension in the muscles that held them erect and they splayed out horizontally from the sides of her head. "He died when he finished making the tunnel, but he died a hero to all the humans who thought, like him, that a machine couldn't replace a person. They call him a hero even now for showing the machine who was boss," she added with a slight smile.
@Hum
Euclid! He was a Greek guy and is a big name in geometry. Chances are when you were in elementary school you learned his stuff. Whoosh. Personally I'm not that big of a fan of geometry outside of triangles but whatever.
Logic is fun. Formal logic more so. I like if p then q math A LOT.
Oh, chill. I can dig it. I did well in geometry, so I think it was my favourite high school math course.
Oh same. It was legit exactly that. Just a course on solving logical equations. Sometimes I miss it so much I want to relearn it just to solve more problems in it. I really wish I'd bought the textbook to that course. QAQ
I may have to just browse the Internet to relearn it though, now.
I was even making up arguments just to write equations for them and solve them. It's just so stupidly fun.
Hell, maybe I'll even email my old professor to ask if there's someplace else I can buy the book.
oh yay <3 I'm glad you're involved with my little egg <3
I was doing this character not only to connect with more people on tef but to connect others to new people as well I can't wait to see what happens!!
—
You do not have a soul. You ARE a soul. You have a body.
~ C.S. Lewis
@Hum
I call that recreational math and people always look at me weird when I use that phrase.
@Orin
Yesss. La likes strange things and has invested a great deal of curiosity into the egg already. She thinks that it might be a large species of bird but really has no idea. She'll be happy so long as things don't turn into Little Shop of Horrors.
Cian cocked his head and looked quite doubtful of La's last statement. "So what if a machine is better? If it made things better than that's good, isn't it?" The boy already was beginning to view humans in a negative way. Life was simple and good the way he had been living it, so why would humans make it more complicated by trying to change things?
@Orin
Awesome. La's fast getting emotionally attached to the egg and will basically be trying to get everyone who walks past to join the egg incubating cuddle puddle with her.
@Pelicann (EEEE So cute! They look like they could be related because of their markings, you know?)
"Well in this case, the machine wasn't better. John Henry put it to shame. The story is about how humans want to make machines to make their lives easier, but the humans themselves will always be more valuable and better than the machines that they create." La had taken liberties in interpreting the tall tale. "Machines do make many lives easier for humans, but they can also complicate many other lives. In The Forest, we don't have to worry about those things, but in the human world, they do. And that's what makes them different from us."
Sounds great! Here also
Here also works, I don't think we need a new thread. I haven't got an RP running in the biography so we're pretty free to use it for that. You wanna start or should I?
(I'll start :3) Two
Two black-tipped ears peeked over the brush as a pair of turquoise eyes scanned the area. Seemed clear. Tip-toeing out from his hiding spot, Cian stealthily crept towards the Ruins. He was an adventurer, seeking out the ancient tomb of the King. The piebald fawn glanced side to side as he searched, making his way through the eerie rocks. He leaped over the gaps that, if fallen through, would land you straight in the core of the earth, where molten lava would burn you to death. Cian had a very active imagination, and could get so lost in his games that he would be oblivious to anything real around him. Without even a blink, the boy jumped onto a rock where a doe sat, straightening his wobbly legs. Finally, he sighed. He had made it. The young stag looked up proudly to see the giant tomb of the ancient ruler.
La looked up from her book
She'd met him briefly at a wedding a few weeks ago, and remembered him for his black and white pelt. Never one to interrupt a game intentionally, La closed her book with her nose and quietly got to her feet to stalk a bit closer to where he played his game.
Suddenly, Cian felt a tremor
La grinned at him, but her
"Well," she said, raising an eyebrow now and looking back in the direction of his invisible tomb, "How are you going to get the treasure now?"
Cian was stumped. He frowned
La nodded and became quiet,
It was a delightful game for La to be playing, and she found herself being swallowed up by the story just as easily as if she were reading about it in a book.
The fawn crept forward
La stifled a chuckle and kept
She whispered on, "I think we should come up with a plan before we do anything too hasty, what do you think? Brain over brawn? I'll be honest, I don't think I'm as experienced with fighting monsters as you are."
thank you for the lovely
He was again a bit stumped
La crept after Cian and
The doe waited with bated breath at the ready until he called on her for help, and she followed him onto the slab of marble that had once been a mighty wall. For a moment she saw in her imagination the evanescent outline of a red-eyed beast with bones at her feet, knocked prone by the brave explorer, but the visage faded as soon as it had appeared. Her imagination was strong, but it could not be as strong as a fawn's.
She trampled the air where the monster lay in Cian's eyes, hopping and pounding her hooves against the stone rapidly.
Cian panted heavily, watching
La flopped down to lie in the
"You're called Cian, aren't you?" she asked after a moment. her eyes were focused primarily on the prized red poppy rather than the boy. "I think we met a few weeks ago. Though I was painted red at the time."
As the world of imagination
"I made it up," she said with
For emphasis, her pictograph lit up brightly where it hovered above her head before dimming back to only slight visibility.
"Where'd you get the name Cian?" she asked in turn.
Cian listened in awe and
La nodded sagaciously along
She eyed his pictogram and committed it to memory. "We have our spoken names like Cian and La and we have our real names that we can't pronounce... And then some people have nicknames too. It's a bit of a confusing system if you ever really try to think about it too hard. And I have tried to think about it too hard."
He tilted his head at the
La smiled. "When you feel
For his next question, she shook her head no. "No, I don't. No mother, no father. The forest is my parents. But I did okay. When I was a fawn there were a lot of adults who helped take care of me and I grew up okay."
Cian kept his eyes gazing up
La was uncertain what to make
Haha, I have a similar thing
I still wish we could store items, especially Mega Stones, on the bank. I hate having to hunt for them, and I hate that you can only really use most of them after you beat the main storyline. I usually restart after I complete the main story since there's not much else to do after that.
I move all items to my
I love playing through games with prebred pokemon. The current Y team is
Blue Angel the Togepi (F, Serene Grace, 31/x/31/31/31/31) Offensive Special Attacker
Daniel the Alakazam (M, Inner Focus, 31/x/31/31/31/31) Mega Special Attacker
Mad Jack the Honedge (M, No Guard, 31/31/31/x/31/31) Dedicated Team Ghost Sword
Joan the Quilladin (F, Bulletproof, 31/31/31/31/31/31) Defensive Fuck You Attacker
Hazelnut the Azumarill (F, Huge Power, 31/31/31/31/31/31) Offensive Murder Everything Attacker
aaaand Vagabond the HM Smeargle. She comes on every new playthrough so I never ever have to worry about having an HM slave. I like to imagine that she has a surfboard for surfing and a batman cape for flying. But no good IVs and I just tossed EVs into general defense since she never fights, only HMs.
I have some leftover abras, togepis, bulletproof chespins, and marills if you want with good IVs.
My partner and I also hated hunting for mega stones but I think it only took me a few days to get them all, and I was able to pick up a bunch of the TMs I had missed on the way. I think my favorite mega so far is shiny Garchomp--because I am convinced that it is colored that way as a big fuck you to all the people who think they are so macho with their shiny garchomps.
Cian looked astounded, and
((Sorry for short reply..My mind is totally gone today))
"Not literally. Not
(No worries. Sometimes short posts are better anyway, they say that brevity is the soul of wit.)
He seemed a little calmer
Makes me wish I had two 3DS,
I'm not big on EV/IVs at all, I just play with whatever I get. Number crunching and special breeding aren't for me, I can't be bothered with that stuff.
Nah, I'll pass, though I appreciate the offer. (:
I can't stand Garchomp in general, so he's dead last for me really. It's hard to pick a favourite Mega for me - Lucario, Absol, Mewtwo Y, and Houndoom are notable favourites though. Charizard X is pretty damn cool too.
That corgi race is precious, by the way. Which corgi was yours?
@Pelicann "A metaphor is
"A metaphor is when you describe something as something that it is not," La said with a crooked smile as she thought hard at how to explain it. "A creative lie, but a lie that you tell in order to help someone better understand the truth about something, or to make them see it a different way."
@Mjrn
If you need help trading stuff between games some time we can swap FCs and I can help you move items around. Right now I'm trying to relearn the names of all the moves because not all of them are direct translations. Superpower is "brute force" for instance. Otherwise it's a lot of fun in Spanish. I love the language and reading it a lot gives me a better idea about which expressions and grammars are more commonly used. It's also Spanish Spanish, which I know less about.
My corgi is the pale one who bolts for the top right of the basketball court, and then turns around and runs back to my father. She's almost the same color as the wood on the court so I had to watch the video a few times to identify her. My folks thought she'd like to meet other corgis since her favorite dog friend is a collie/basset hound mix that looks exactly like a giant corgi.
Cian looked extremely
La nodded with such
She paused, and realized he might not have a concept of humans. "Humans were the people who made these ruins a long time ago. They have faces similar to ours, but they only walk on two legs."
Cian scrunched up his face
Hello what feels like old
That sentence sounds better than it looks.
Actually it's kind of just poorly constructed in general.
God I love La's face. Your headcanons about the forest may have inspired some of my own, which I'll eventually shove somewhere other than the back of my mind and a Word document. Thank you for that.
"Hmm," La mused at the
"Well," she began after a moment, shifting the way she sat to show him her hooves, flexing them to spread them apart. "Humans walk on two legs because they have hands instead of hooves in the front. That's the biggest thing that makes them different from us. They used their hands to make tools, and then use the tools to make other things.
"They made buildings, like these ruins. Originally it was all covered up so you could go inside and never feel the rain or wind. They made buildings ten times that big. Because they could, and because they wanted to. They started off with wood and stone and mud, then started pulling metals out of stone to make stronger, better materials. Stronger than any hoof or antler.
"After a while they started making machines to speed up their work. A machine is an object that works, that does something, without a mind. Usually people control them. Imagine if you could go somewhere without having to walk--humans invented machines that could do that for them. I tell you these things so that I can give you more of a setting to tell you the story.
"There was a human man--a male, a stag as we say here in The Forest--named John Henry. This was more than a hundred years ago that he lived. He was a steel driver. His work was all about speed and strength. He used a hammer, a heavy piece of metal at the end of a stick, to push another piece of metal inside of a rock."
La paused, hoping to give Cian a moment to absorb what she had said. She had a hard time herself truly conceptualizing the amount of force necessary to do that. She tilted her head sideways and smiled at the fawn. "Do you think you could make holes in rocks all day when you're older?"
And oh hai Hum :3 This is a
I'm glad my headcanons have been inspirational. I have a lot of them. I can't help it. When faced with ambiguity like in The Forest I am driven to supply my own make-believe fun.
Glad you like La's face too. I am pretty faceblind in real life (I use hair and voice to identify most people) and I can never imagine her face the same twice. I kinda like it that way.
ohai Alison. I feel you. I'm
I feel you. I'm the same way. I jump between as grammatically proper as I can be and just straight ghetto chatspeak.
I think I've only ripped very slightly--or maybe I just always thought such things and seeing you put the thoughts into words inspired me to do the same--but if our thoughts are too similar, feel free to whap me. I know you won't, because it doesn't strike me as your style, but some of our thoughts are similar enough imo that I'd be more than happy to give credit. Obviously you'll see whenever the dang thing gets posted. (It'll be a "character center" of sorts, or whatever people here call those things. I think I'll be calling mine Nexus.)
I kind of am too imo, weird processing stuff. Silly brains! But yeah--for what it's worth, I've actually admired to myself how consistent you stay with her odd little cute face. So don't be hard on yourself. Either way, I just love her face, my goodness me.
Thank you. I don't know what
Language-wise, I dunno. I feel really good about knowing proper grammar and spelling and I like to think I can write a damn fine essay but on forums when I am trying to write the way that I speak in real life, I just can't in good conscience use proper grammar. Like if I ask a question but don't want the tone to go up, gotta use a period instead of a question mark. And I love words like "gonna."
I cannot wait to see your headcanon. I will probably be linking to it from all of my pages that discuss my headcanons and perhaps yours will add to mine and we can build off each other... even if we end up with totally different ideas I can't see how there can possibly be any downside to having more options for imagination. I'm currently going back and doing a lot of editing on a page I made years ago about real life art/archeology and things that The Forest has in common with that. Hopefully I'll get my edits done by this year.
Oh boy, do I feel you. They
Oh I'm same. I'm just so same. I tend to leave some sentences without final punctuation when I'm trying to imply some sort of open-ness. Like "I love you" versus "I love you." Sometimes I like the finality and sometimes I like the freedom. I tend to type with the rules of poetry rather than grammar, in non-professional settings. That said, I do love me some well-written English.
I have, like, twenty... two? Axioms right now. I'm sure I'll have more, but I plan to slap them at the top of my Nexus post to give some broader definition to all characters which follow, some unification. I just think it's cool to see not only the characters, but the unique sphere of perspective in which they were created--their laws of physics, so to speak.
I believe in you, man.
P.S. Saw La today. Waved at my computer screen, though I'm pretty sure the message was not conveyed. Also I used La to get pelt enchantment spells once. I just kind of see you two around.
La and I wander and then
My parents are pretty serious grammar/language people, one of them being an English language teacher and both of them being librarians (among other careers) and I have never found myself wanting for people who care a lot about proper grammar. I still pretty regularly break the rules when I write fiction, not just poetry (which isn't really my thing) trying to hold a rhythm or pace. I'm a fan of the overuse of conjunctions.
Calling them axioms makes you sound like Euclid or something. I can dig it.
Tracking ♥
Sig: Aihnna
Welcome to the party!
Cian listen attentively to
The next image displayed before him was the ruins, except that they were new and full of creepy human-deer, which made Cian grimace a bit more. The young stag was unable to think of anything stronger than an antler...perhaps the stone on the Playground, but that was about it. He pictured ruins towering above the clouds, bringing an amazed smile to his face.
For the machine, he racked his brain to produce an image. Half of these words he had never even heard of before. It was all so foreign to him. A deformed stag held a rock in his tentacles and smashed against a boulder again and again. Cian opened his eyes and furrowed his brows. "That seems stupid!"
-Replies even though it's
Oh same. TEF: 5% activity, 95% sitting.
It's okay, we got this wave business down pat.
I can see how being raised in such a household might make one a bit more open to things. Oh man same at all though.
Euclid, Euclid... I'm not actually familiar with Euclid. (Googled him though!) O: I've just taken a handful of logic courses, and really appreciate the elegance of the logical layout. Thus, Axioms! It was, I don't actually know what to call it... It involved making formulas out of actual arguments to determine the validity of the argument. It was super great. I miss it.
@Pelicann "It's very alien,"
"It's very alien," La agreed. "And at first I had a very poor grasp of it myself. Humans were so strange to me that they became something that I needed to know more about, so I kept studying! But the thing about machines and inventions is that whoever you are, they can make life easier. But they aren't always better.
"That's where the story of John Henry comes in. The humans made a machine that could do his job of steel driving, and he wasn't happy about that. He didn't like the idea that a soulless object could possibly replace him, so he fought against it by racing it to prove that he was better than the machine." La hesitated. Her grasp of the story was solid enough, but as an outsider who knew it only from text and never from ballad and with only a very limited historical context of railroad worker exploitation and the American Civil war. "John Henry won the race. He made a tunnel through a mountain by himself. Can you imagine!? Here in The Forest, that is something that only gods can do. An he did it as a human with working tools. He put the machine to shame by making it seem so slow, but he also paid the price."
La's ears flopped as she released tension in the muscles that held them erect and they splayed out horizontally from the sides of her head. "He died when he finished making the tunnel, but he died a hero to all the humans who thought, like him, that a machine couldn't replace a person. They call him a hero even now for showing the machine who was boss," she added with a slight smile.
@Hum
Euclid! He was a Greek guy and is a big name in geometry. Chances are when you were in elementary school you learned his stuff. Whoosh. Personally I'm not that big of a fan of geometry outside of triangles but whatever.
Logic is fun. Formal logic more so. I like if p then q math A LOT.
Oh, chill. I can dig it. I
Oh same. It was legit exactly that. Just a course on solving logical equations. Sometimes I miss it so much I want to relearn it just to solve more problems in it. I really wish I'd bought the textbook to that course. QAQ
I may have to just browse the Internet to relearn it though, now.
I was even making up arguments just to write equations for them and solve them. It's just so stupidly fun.
Hell, maybe I'll even email my old professor to ask if there's someplace else I can buy the book.
My love reigns strong.
oh yay
I was doing this character not only to connect with more people on tef but to connect others to new people as well
~ C.S. Lewis
@Hum I call that recreational
I call that recreational math and people always look at me weird when I use that phrase.
@Orin
Yesss. La likes strange things and has invested a great deal of curiosity into the egg already. She thinks that it might be a large species of bird but really has no idea. She'll be happy so long as things don't turn into Little Shop of Horrors.
haha no worries there XD I
~ C.S. Lewis
Cian cocked his head and
Cian cocked his head and looked quite doubtful of La's last statement. "So what if a machine is better? If it made things better than that's good, isn't it?" The boy already was beginning to view humans in a negative way. Life was simple and good the way he had been living it, so why would humans make it more complicated by trying to change things?
@Orin Awesome. La's fast
Awesome. La's fast getting emotionally attached to the egg and will basically be trying to get everyone who walks past to join the egg incubating cuddle puddle with her.
@Pelicann (EEEE So cute! They look like they could be related because of their markings, you know?)
"Well in this case, the machine wasn't better. John Henry put it to shame. The story is about how humans want to make machines to make their lives easier, but the humans themselves will always be more valuable and better than the machines that they create." La had taken liberties in interpreting the tall tale. "Machines do make many lives easier for humans, but they can also complicate many other lives. In The Forest, we don't have to worry about those things, but in the human world, they do. And that's what makes them different from us."