[OPEN] A Tale Told By an Idiot

[therevanchist]

Who: Revan and Whoever
What: Misled by the badass title, Revan attempts to read The Sound and the Fury
Where: Philly library
When: Towards the end of the Philly stay
Warnings/Notes: The Sound and the Fury is basically a nonstop parade of awful, so if you want, we can just stick to Revan not knowing what golf is or whatever to avoid dealing with early/mid-20th century race and gender issues and horrid people being horrid to each other.

[Anyone less stubborn would have given up days ago. Revan, on the other hand, is seated at a table in the reference section, surrounded by books pulled from all over the library, none of which seem to have any relationship to each other. A copy of the Concise Oxford, still large enough to brain livestock. A single-volume history of Germany and another one about the state of Mississippi. The official rules of golf. A biography of Thomas Jefferson and a history of Cambridge, England, both pushed off to one side. Harvard Observed: An Illustrated History of the University in the Twentieth Century, published of course by Harvard University Press. Several slim books about Easter, all obviously for children. And so forth.

Directly in front of her, stuffed full of flimsy paper bookmarks printed with the library's hours pilfered from the circulation desk, lies the cause of all the trouble: an unassuming paperback copy of The Sound and the Fury, with all the terrible stock photo cover design a cheap reprint of a classic entails. Revan herself is scribbling something in a spiral-bound notebook with a ballpoint, her surprise at the sheer amount of paper in the city long subsumed by irritation over this maddeningly incomprehensible book she's found.]

Why does it even matter?

Comments

[likeits1999]

[ Kevin's drifting along, like one does, when he hears someone complaining. He pokes his head around a shelf to peer at Revan and the paraphernalia of her suffering. ]

Why's what matter?

[ Damn, man, that sure is a lot of books. ]

[therevanchist]

There's an appendix that spells out the history of these people, as if anyone could possibly want to know more about them beyond which penitentiary they went to and for how long.

[That's a few days of pent-up frustration right there, and only after does Revan turn in her chair to see who's speaking.

...The blood drinker. She's not sure how she feels about that.]

[likeits1999]

[ Kevin squints at the book as Revan talks, then seems to gain confidence. He saunters up, plants a hand on the end of the table, and leans. ]

Oh dude, I read that thing one time.

[ Wait. ]

Okay so like... maybe not read all of it read cause that was for school. It was lame.

[therevanchist]

They make you read this in school?

[For the moment, Revan forgets her concerns about metaphysics, since she now has an ally regarding the stupid book.]

[coiledscales]

Why does what even matter?

[ The voice carries over the stacks and then Alacruun pokes his horned head out from behind one of the shelves. He's mostly taking notes himself, but so far there's been woefully little on actual magic or anything remotely useful. It's all histories and stories of the sort that might be useful to an academic, but not to someone who is trying to research how best to annihilate someone with a gesture.

Pity. ]

Life? Our being here? The universe?

[therevanchist]

[Darth Revan would relate. Regular Revan is just killing time, not to mention distracting herself from the whole Darth Revan thing. Being annoyed at a dead author from a different universe seems to be doing the trick nicely.]

Marriage! They're not nobility, so who cares?

[Illegitimacy is not a concept Revan understands outside claims to thrones.]

[coiledscales]

Ahhhh...

[ Alacruun's eyebrows shoot up just slightly. Marriage. He's never much understood it either, to be honest. Humans seemed to have a thing for it (and quite a few of the other short-lived species too, for that matter). ]

I've never particularly cared about it one way or the other. Humans do seem to consider it important, though. So...

[ He shrugs. Can't help you, Revan. ]

[therevanchist]

Jedi are celibate.

[Revan mutters to no one.]

You'd think a book called The Sound and the Fury would have something happening in it.

[That's louder, inviting Alacruun to commiserate over her bad reading choices. If she has to suffer, so does he, because he's there.

Ignore, please, the fact that her suffering is entirely self-inflicted.]

[shipoftheseus]

[They've never been one for the library, even back home. Sure, they're willing to work through books when they're really dying to know something and can't just ask anyone, but it's hardly something they'd do for fun.

But books back home hadn't been like this. Phos pauses by Revan's table at her sudden outburst, frowning at the her stacks of books and the one she's currently reading.]

What's with all these?

[The books here seem weird. They'd thought there were a lot at home in the school's library, but this place is huge and completely packed full of them. And the letters are impossibly neat and uniform. Phos picks up one of the books at random, peering at the dense text. Who the hell is Thomas and why did something write a whole book about him? What a waste of paper.]

[therevanchist]

[Oh, hi Phos. Revan glances up from her note-taking, sees which book Phos is holding, and rolls her eyes. That had been a useless one.]

That is the biography of a man whose principal claim to fame is writing a list of complaints.

[Yes, Revan, that is exactly what the American Declaration of Independence is, and the only thing Jefferson ever did.]

[shipoftheseus]

[They make sense of "biography" entirely from context clues. No one wrote entire books about one person back home. It sounds kind of obsessive, to be honest.]

Really? [That sounds like something that should be a joke, but the little bit they skimmed out of it doesn't contradict it. Phos gives the book a distasteful look before dropping it back on the table.] I could do that. Humans are really easily impressed, I guess.

[therevanchist]

It was a long list.

[That time it's clearly a joke.

Revan's just going to let the slam at humans go, because she's still operating under the impression that Phos is maybe thirteen or fourteen.]

There's a settlement named after him in this [she holds up her heavily bookmarked copy of The Sound and the Fury] but I don't think it means anything.

[awfulcer]

[If Dixon weren't trying to save the battery on his iPod and weren't bored to absolute death of playing solitaire, he'd probably continue avoiding the library. He's been keeping to himself, sluggish from the morgul wound and embarrassed after that whole network incident, figuring that when they get a move on someone will have the decency to come fish him out from under the counter at the Wawa and let him know.

But there might at least be something to ease the boredom in the library, and last time he went in there he found some magazines and comics, although foolishly forgot to bring them with him. He manages to track that one Mad Magazine issue back down and even a volume of Preacher he hasn't read yet, which brightens the day considerably. He straggles around the aisles, nosedown in the adventures of Jesse, Cassidy and Tulip, when he stumbles on Revan.

He surveys the scene in front of him with alarm at first, and then puts the pieces together. He pauses in the aisle like he's not sure whether to say hello or not, given that he's spent the last few days fashioning himself into the team's resident jackass. Even moreso than usual.

But he wants her reassurance and whatever company they had, so he gives a soft wave.

Anyone who's done five and a half years in high school knows the look of a reprinted classic from the canon. Dixon isn't sure which one it is, but the sight of one is a little like running a hand vacuum at a cat. He bristles and waves a hand at it.]

If it's in one of those it probably don't. [He considered, for just a second, figuring out which book it was and bullshitting that he knew what it was about to seem worldly, but even he's not dumb enough to actually commit to that scheme.]

[therevanchist]

[While not entirely insensitive to Dixon's self-inflicted social wounds, Revan knows the only way he'll learn is if he cleans up the mess himself. To her mild horror, she's caught herself wondering if this is the sort of feeling a master gets about a troublesome Padawan, even if there's no way anyone as hapless as Dixon is would have made it out of the Enclave.]

Hmm? What do you mean?

[Judging a Book By Its Cover, a seminar led by Jason Dixon.]

[awfulcer]

We read books like that at school where I'm from. And they're awful. Every last one of them. You don't even learn anything you can use. [At least home ec had some illusion of utility. No one's every managed to say anything about lit classes that's penetrated Dixon's thick hide of resentment.] But I don't think I read that one. They're all like that, though.

[He meanders a little near one of the chairs.]

Can I sit down? This stabbing thing's a bitch. [He's giving her an open to shoo him away, hoping she won't.]

[therevanchist]

[It seems natural to her that someone should ask her permission, and Revan nods at the chair.]

How's the wound? Have you seen one of the healers?

[She'll drag him, not even metaphorically. Just watch.]

[wherenoonegoes]

I'm not sure I follow. What doesn't matter?

[From the array of seemingly unrelated books, Hiccup can't quite figure out thr context. As for his own book, he's currently carrying a copy of The Princess Bride.]

[therevanchist]

[She waves the bookmark-stuffed paperback at Hiccup.]

The entirety of this alleged story.

[So why are you still trying to read it, Revan?]

[wherenoonegoes]

Ah.

[The way Revan has dragged out all these books just to figure out the context of a story she clearly hates reminds him of home. He can't keep the slight smile off of his face as he speaks a well-worn phrase.]

You have stubbornness issues.

[cleansingstrike]

[Agrias visited the library now and again, looking for more books to take back to Ovelia. Much of their subject matters were frankly foreign and unfamiliar to her, which would also do little good for the Queen. Some of the books, though, she felt would be a suitable read.

She gathered them all together into a stack, before hearing a bit of commentary.]

I beg your pardon?

[therevanchist]

Hmm?

[Revan looks up to see she's not alone.]

Sorry, yelling at a book.

[She does not seem at all abashed by admitting this. Perfectly normal behavior, yelling at books.]

[cleansingstrike]

[Well alright then. She's not gonna judge.

Yet.]

And what has this book done to deserve your ire so?

[greyerrant]

{ Loken looks over at Revan and asks. ]

What's wrong? Is the book not to your tastes?

[therevanchist]

[That's an understatement, Loken.]

It's terrible.

[And yet, here she is, not only still reading it but raiding the entire library in an attempt to understand it.]

[greyerrant]

Then why read it? Is there valuable historical, tactical, or cultural data in it?

[ He seems utterly confused by her behavior. ]