no offense clarke, but i wonder how many things you haven't seen until new amsterdam lucis works pretty strangely i guess even if it's 'lucis' everything but its capital city was under the nif empire's control for about 100some years war took away a lot of territory and people just tried to exist financially however they could best...
restaurants sure didn't work like that in insomnia
People will adjust and acclimate as best as they can. Were Lucis' leaders unable to reclaim their lands? Or did they leave them to deal with what happened?
long story short? the war pushed the king into a corner. the empire had a bigger army since they didn't use humans technically but robots so man power wasn't an issue, but in lucis magic had to be used by humans and the army's efforts were harder to accomplish there was a peace treaty on the works but the empire lied and didn't keep their end of the deal
[...]
insomnia got attacked and destroyed, king regis was killed
[clarke has offered quite a bit about her experiences, and prompto's been mostly farting about chocobos and nonsensical things about his own world.]
it's not the same but i get a bit of what you mean when you say there wasn't a civilization to experience
Everything you've said is something I understand more than riding birds and going to restaurants.
[War. Kings dying. People breaking treaties as soon as they can. Clarke is all too aware of those things.]
A hundred years before I hit the ground, the world was destroyed. Nuclear bombs were set off. Not because of war, not because anyone wanted it. It just happened. Most of humanity died. But what remained was still prone to strife. To being at war. There were kings, and leaders without such names. There were people who tried to maintain power by passing on beliefs to the people they used to survive.
Nothing I knew before this was good. It's just that it was all I knew.
[he has no understanding of what nuclear bombs are, but he assumes that 'most of humanity died' means that it was something cataclysmic; world ending.]
it doesn't sound like a lot of good to be honest you were raised in space, right? does that mean that you and several others escaped the nuclear bombs?
[a lot of what she says would explain why she is kind but suspicious despite her best intentions. new amsterdam isn't just new in terms of civilization, but the intentions of the people, too. a world this calm, perhaps she never experienced it so.]
My great grandparents were astronauts. Unlike here, it's something that was hard to accomplish. There was only one case of "undesirables" going off into space. They were prisoners sent out to mine. Everyone else was a scientist, trying to help advance humanity. When the bombs went off, they were already living in space stations off the ground.
[So, that's that. It's why it's not glamorous or unique, or something that she fully understands giving the weight that other people give it.]
Does it bother you that I sugarcoated this before?
i can understand not wanting to mention it or skipping on worse details i've done the same too and it's not because i want to trick others or whatever
so... i get it
i'm glad your family was living in space when things went south cuz then i got to meet you and i can tell you're a survivor and you think smart about things
Part of it is that you did seem so excited about where I came from. I didn't want to show you what that meant. It wasn't easy up in the Ark.
[But had she returned there, Clarke knows she wouldn't be where she is now. Wanting to stay here. Dreading that there is the chance she won't have a choice about returning. Clarke's people don't need her anymore. She's certain about that.]
I can say that I'm confident that it won't always be about getting by here. I know that's not reassuring to everyone.
the prospect of space is still exciting you'd probably think the same about parts of lucis i've been to, even if it's not all that peachy and great
[he wants her to know that his excitement isn't in any way diluted despite her own experiences.]
...well, we gotta try, right? walk tall, do what's right
[it's what the king told noctis; it's what cor would tell them with a blunt look, back straight as a rod; it's what noctis would come to tell them, ten years into the future, before he sacrificed his life for everyone else's. besides, he knows of too many who have died for a cause and faced death without fear of it.]
[even if all the odds are against them, he wants to thrive among the thorns. he wants all of them to thrive.]
Truthfully? Actual cities are enough to make me wonder. At least you might have a chance of going up to the moon here. It's temporary, and it's unlikely that you'd get trapped there for good.
[Like her people did.]
There's something I said to someone back home. Someone I cared about. [Loved. Will always love. Lexa will never leave her, will never have less of an impact on who she is as a person now.] I told her that life is about more than just surviving. Sometimes it feels that way. It's easy to fall into that trap.
just getting by you mean? doing enough to make ends meet? it's true though focusing on the smaller things in life that bring joy and happiness that makes things all that much more worth it
so even when we're stuck in a place like this, with all its negatives and unknowns, and i miss people from home? there's still a lot of good going on for us in this place
No, it runs deeper than that. When all you think about is how to survive, you're willing to do anything to make that possible. You think about advancing yourself and the people around you to secure that outcome. Sometimes you only see the worst of it. You believe that the means always justify the ends: and in this case, the ends are survival. You can't only live that way if the world has forced you to do so, and I think ... even among ourselves here, we're risking a lot by failing to remember this. We put ourselves first a lot. We should, to some degree, but not if it makes us lose sight of the bigger picture.
But that just makes what you said all the more true.
i've never been in a position where i just have to figure out how to survive guess i'm pretty conceited and privileged in my upbringing in that way
but before coming here i lost everything to have everything again now, it's so... strange, but it's a gift in many ways a second opportunity even
from what you said, i'm guessing you were never in a position of privilege in terms of not having to think about survival huh? what with coming down from space to a planet that wasn't what it used to be when the bombs hadn't happened?
Edited 2019-02-26 16:28 (UTC)
god this tag is so long, incoming clarke griffin monologue
It's good that you see it as a second opportunity. You don't have to. There was a time when I thought someone here had come from a perfectly normal life. I envied her. I couldn't even fathom what that was like. For a little bit, I thought it might be the same for you. How you carry yourself—you know? I admire it.
You're right, though. I always had to think about it. On the Ark, crimes were always punishable by death. The people who committed them were floated, and if you were under eighteen, you'd be locked away in a separate part of the ship. The 100 [Canon namedrop, aw yeah!] of us that were locked away were chosen to go down. We were expendable. Systems on the Ark were failing, so they needed appropriate test subjects to send down. It was better that it was us than anyone on the Ark who hadn't been convicted for a crime. There was always the chance that once we turned eighteen, we'd be floated anyway.
That kind of thinking, that kind of behavior—the worst part is that once we got down, we had no choice but to hit the ground running. But we were just kids. So, there were only a few of us who did. Who could.
I had to take care of them. Even when everyone from the Ark finally came down, I couldn't stop. It took the "adults," so to speak, a long time to accept that there weren't any acceptable losses among our numbers. But it was us ... the "kids," we're the ones who learned about war down below. Learned from our mistakes in encroaching on the wrong territory, or trusting the people who offered us salvation from the atrocities outside in the woods that had grown after the radiation subsided.
I'm giving you context because in all of that, I started to justify a lot of my actions by survival. I used that line against someone else, but I was just as guilty of it myself. We all were.
Being here, it's like I have to relearn how to think about the world. I'm glad I have some friends helping me out along the way. And yes, the little things do help. Like donuts and fake coffee-based iced drinks.
i'm not gonna deny that my upbringing was a lot more privileged than most. i never had to worry about things like the war happening or anything like that, so... besides "normal" is subjective isn't it?
does floated mean... thrown into space?
[perhaps if prompto had been raised in niflheim, where the war was felt most strongly, or in any of the settlements across lucis that fell to the empire -- perhaps he could relate to clarke's experiences more strongly. still, although he paints a picture of privilege, he had his own struggles growing up: an obvious foreigner, with absent and neglectful parents, a constant encroaching loneliness. it's not the same, but whatever 'youth' and 'childish' demeanor he had upon leaving insomnia only to find out days later there was no home to return to and how much darker their trip was becoming after reaching altissia, it was very much like trying to make amends for something so much bigger than himself.]
[still, to this day, he feels the guilt of the clones that were made and used to fuel soldiers that were involved with bringing down insomnia, as if he is somehow at fault for their losses back home.]
it's not the same, but you were in a world that you thought you knew and were thrown into a whole new world with new rules and new perspectives something similar happened with me and my friends some things can be excused by survival...
but yours sounds like it was a really tough ride knowing that and making a change is really brave
[Realistically, it's because Clarke can't function the way she did before. Here, survival is defined differently. "Normal" is what she saw on movies growing up: people whose concerns were mostly ones that involved romance, or money problems, or anything like that. It was another life. She knew what "normal" was, and even recognized it once when she went into Becca's house. A view into another world: one that burned away with everything else.]
My normal is subjective, but that doesn't mean it's okay. The way everyone grew up on the Ark wasn't okay.
Yes, "floated" means what you think it means. Open the airlock. [She doesn't type more. One day, someone will hear her say "go float yourself," and they'll understand it in a new context. Today isn't that day.]
What happened with you and your friends? I understand if you don't want to share. But if you would like to, I'd be interested in hearing it.
...it's not like it's a big secret or anything, it's just not an easy conversation starter since it's such a bummer all things considered
lucis and niflheim have been at war for forever. lucis is where we come from there was a peace treaty so the prince has to marry a princess, but they gotta meet in a different city, so off we go to escort the prince out of insomnia. a few days we get the news that the treaty was a lie and a way for the enemy to get inside the city, killing the king and basically decimating insomnia to nothing
so we're on the run and trying to reach the princess to save her
eeexcept my friends don't know this, but i do, we don't get to save her and instead everything's falling apart and all we can do is try to four-man army our way into the enemy territory
it's full of suck though. no home to return to, on the run, unable to save the princess, very shitty forecast for success
i never experienced the war so close to home like that before
Four people might be enough. It was for my people.
[It might be surprising to hear that from her. Clarke hasn't been good at pushing optimism like she used to when she first touched the ground. Hope is a nebulous, dangerous thing to her these days.
She isn't saying it because she thinks he wants to hear it. This conversation is evidence of Clarke making a proclamation to stop doing that with the people who have become her friends.]
Are you planning on telling your friends? I doubt they want to hear about what happened to the princess, but they may be able to help you. Though I am glad that you're willing to talk to me about it.
they already know even if they haven't lived through it and know exactly how it came about it's... it's fine. it could be better but this is just how our cards played out kinda hard to follow the path you want when the guy you're bound to has to follow whatever whim the gods have in store for him
[he respects the gods because -- they're gods, but at the same time, he can't help thinking they're exceptionally unfair.]
as long as we're together we can do anything though noct, iggy, gladio and i
I'm glad you've told them. I wouldn't want you to carry that around alone.
But I don't like the sound of that with the gods. I'm guessing otherwise would be blasphemous, but I'm not very religious myself. Or spiritual, for that matter. That way of thinking didn't make it to my time.
clearly they're dramatic but they're chill as in they're pretty cool guys all things considered some gods i met are real bitchy and willing to drown a whole city just cuz they didn't like the tone of the only person who can actually talk with them
and she was being hella respectful as far as i know
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no subject
lucis works pretty strangely i guess
even if it's 'lucis' everything but its capital city was under the nif empire's control for about 100some years
war took away a lot of territory and people just tried to exist financially however they could best...
restaurants sure didn't work like that in insomnia
no subject
[Might as well come out with it.]
People will adjust and acclimate as best as they can. Were Lucis' leaders unable to reclaim their lands? Or did they leave them to deal with what happened?
no subject
long story short? the war pushed the king into a corner. the empire had a bigger army since they didn't use humans technically but robots so man power wasn't an issue, but in lucis magic had to be used by humans and the army's efforts were harder to accomplish
there was a peace treaty on the works but the empire lied and didn't keep their end of the deal
[...]
insomnia got attacked and destroyed, king regis was killed
[clarke has offered quite a bit about her experiences, and prompto's been mostly farting about chocobos and nonsensical things about his own world.]
it's not the same but i get a bit of what you mean
when you say there wasn't a civilization to experience
no subject
[War. Kings dying. People breaking treaties as soon as they can. Clarke is all too aware of those things.]
A hundred years before I hit the ground, the world was destroyed. Nuclear bombs were set off. Not because of war, not because anyone wanted it. It just happened. Most of humanity died. But what remained was still prone to strife. To being at war. There were kings, and leaders without such names. There were people who tried to maintain power by passing on beliefs to the people they used to survive.
Nothing I knew before this was good. It's just that it was all I knew.
no subject
it doesn't sound like a lot of good to be honest
you were raised in space, right? does that mean that you and several others escaped the nuclear bombs?
[a lot of what she says would explain why she is kind but suspicious despite her best intentions. new amsterdam isn't just new in terms of civilization, but the intentions of the people, too. a world this calm, perhaps she never experienced it so.]
no subject
[So, that's that. It's why it's not glamorous or unique, or something that she fully understands giving the weight that other people give it.]
Does it bother you that I sugarcoated this before?
no subject
i can understand not wanting to mention it or skipping on worse details
i've done the same too and it's not because i want to trick others or whatever
so... i get it
i'm glad your family was living in space when things went south
cuz then i got to meet you and i can tell you're a survivor and you think smart about things
we're all trying our best while here, right?
[well. some of us. glances pointedly at ardyn]
no subject
[But had she returned there, Clarke knows she wouldn't be where she is now. Wanting to stay here. Dreading that there is the chance she won't have a choice about returning. Clarke's people don't need her anymore. She's certain about that.]
I can say that I'm confident that it won't always be about getting by here. I know that's not reassuring to everyone.
no subject
you'd probably think the same about parts of lucis i've been to, even if it's not all that peachy and great
[he wants her to know that his excitement isn't in any way diluted despite her own experiences.]
...well, we gotta try, right? walk tall, do what's right
[it's what the king told noctis; it's what cor would tell them with a blunt look, back straight as a rod; it's what noctis would come to tell them, ten years into the future, before he sacrificed his life for everyone else's. besides, he knows of too many who have died for a cause and faced death without fear of it.]
[even if all the odds are against them, he wants to thrive among the thorns. he wants all of them to thrive.]
no subject
[Like her people did.]
There's something I said to someone back home. Someone I cared about. [Loved. Will always love. Lexa will never leave her, will never have less of an impact on who she is as a person now.] I told her that life is about more than just surviving. Sometimes it feels that way. It's easy to fall into that trap.
no subject
[he'll keep dreaming big-]
just getting by you mean? doing enough to make ends meet?
it's true though
focusing on the smaller things in life that bring joy and happiness
that makes things all that much more worth it
so even when we're stuck in a place like this, with all its negatives and unknowns, and i miss people from home?
there's still a lot of good going on for us in this place
no subject
But that just makes what you said all the more true.
We do have a lot of good going on here.
no subject
i've never been in a position where i just have to figure out how to survive
guess i'm pretty conceited and privileged in my upbringing in that way
but before coming here i lost everything
to have everything again now, it's so... strange, but it's a gift in many ways
a second opportunity even
from what you said, i'm guessing you were never in a position of privilege in terms of not having to think about survival huh?
what with coming down from space to a planet that wasn't what it used to be when the bombs hadn't happened?
god this tag is so long, incoming clarke griffin monologue
You're right, though. I always had to think about it. On the Ark, crimes were always punishable by death. The people who committed them were floated, and if you were under eighteen, you'd be locked away in a separate part of the ship. The 100 [Canon namedrop, aw yeah!] of us that were locked away were chosen to go down. We were expendable. Systems on the Ark were failing, so they needed appropriate test subjects to send down. It was better that it was us than anyone on the Ark who hadn't been convicted for a crime. There was always the chance that once we turned eighteen, we'd be floated anyway.
That kind of thinking, that kind of behavior—the worst part is that once we got down, we had no choice but to hit the ground running. But we were just kids. So, there were only a few of us who did. Who could.
I had to take care of them. Even when everyone from the Ark finally came down, I couldn't stop. It took the "adults," so to speak, a long time to accept that there weren't any acceptable losses among our numbers. But it was us ... the "kids," we're the ones who learned about war down below. Learned from our mistakes in encroaching on the wrong territory, or trusting the people who offered us salvation from the atrocities outside in the woods that had grown after the radiation subsided.
I'm giving you context because in all of that, I started to justify a lot of my actions by survival. I used that line against someone else, but I was just as guilty of it myself. We all were.
Being here, it's like I have to relearn how to think about the world. I'm glad I have some friends helping me out along the way. And yes, the little things do help. Like donuts and fake coffee-based iced drinks.
:9
besides "normal" is subjective isn't it?
does floated mean... thrown into space?
[perhaps if prompto had been raised in niflheim, where the war was felt most strongly, or in any of the settlements across lucis that fell to the empire -- perhaps he could relate to clarke's experiences more strongly. still, although he paints a picture of privilege, he had his own struggles growing up: an obvious foreigner, with absent and neglectful parents, a constant encroaching loneliness. it's not the same, but whatever 'youth' and 'childish' demeanor he had upon leaving insomnia only to find out days later there was no home to return to and how much darker their trip was becoming after reaching altissia, it was very much like trying to make amends for something so much bigger than himself.]
[still, to this day, he feels the guilt of the clones that were made and used to fuel soldiers that were involved with bringing down insomnia, as if he is somehow at fault for their losses back home.]
it's not the same, but you were in a world that you thought you knew and were thrown into a whole new world with new rules and new perspectives
something similar happened with me and my friends
some things can be excused by survival...
but yours sounds like it was a really tough ride
knowing that and making a change is really brave
many just stick to their ways
no subject
My normal is subjective, but that doesn't mean it's okay. The way everyone grew up on the Ark wasn't okay.
Yes, "floated" means what you think it means. Open the airlock. [She doesn't type more. One day, someone will hear her say "go float yourself," and they'll understand it in a new context. Today isn't that day.]
What happened with you and your friends? I understand if you don't want to share. But if you would like to, I'd be interested in hearing it.
no subject
lucis and niflheim have been at war for forever. lucis is where we come from
there was a peace treaty so the prince has to marry a princess, but they gotta meet in a different city, so off we go to escort the prince out of insomnia.
a few days we get the news that the treaty was a lie and a way for the enemy to get inside the city, killing the king and basically decimating insomnia to nothing
so we're on the run and trying to reach the princess to save her
eeexcept my friends don't know this, but i do, we don't get to save her and instead everything's falling apart and all we can do is try to four-man army our way into the enemy territory
it's full of suck though. no home to return to, on the run, unable to save the princess, very shitty forecast for success
i never experienced the war so close to home like that before
no subject
[It might be surprising to hear that from her. Clarke hasn't been good at pushing optimism like she used to when she first touched the ground. Hope is a nebulous, dangerous thing to her these days.
She isn't saying it because she thinks he wants to hear it. This conversation is evidence of Clarke making a proclamation to stop doing that with the people who have become her friends.]
Are you planning on telling your friends? I doubt they want to hear about what happened to the princess, but they may be able to help you. Though I am glad that you're willing to talk to me about it.
no subject
it's... it's fine. it could be better but this is just how our cards played out
kinda hard to follow the path you want when the guy you're bound to has to follow whatever whim the gods have in store for him
[he respects the gods because -- they're gods, but at the same time, he can't help thinking they're exceptionally unfair.]
as long as we're together we can do anything though
noct, iggy, gladio and i
no subject
But I don't like the sound of that with the gods. I'm guessing otherwise would be blasphemous, but I'm not very religious myself. Or spiritual, for that matter. That way of thinking didn't make it to my time.
no subject
the gods are very literal
i've seen them with my own eyes
that and my best friend can communicate with them, royal blood and all that, and harnesses their power and gains their favor and stuff
so while i don't consider myself particularly religious i can't really dismiss it as not being real? cuz it's real
no subject
[Clarke's life is proof of that.]
Either way, it sounds like it's not enough to count on that level of divine intervention.
no subject
or maybe they're minding their own business
who knows what gods think like
but also: divine intervention sucks a lot sometimes
...anyway but loki and thor are gods they seem pretty chill
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no
clearly they're dramatic
but they're chill as in they're pretty cool guys all things considered
some gods i met are real bitchy and willing to drown a whole city just cuz they didn't like the tone of the only person who can actually talk with them
and she was being hella respectful as far as i know
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