[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

[shipoftheseus]

[Chonologically? Not at all. Mentally and emotionally? Ehhhhhhhhhhh it's hard to say (but probably not too far off).

Phos frowns a little at that explanation, hesitating to respond for a few moments while they look over the cover of the book she's holding up, searching for clues and finding none. Ugh.]

What do you mean, "settlement"?

[That's not fair, you can't pull out unfamiliar human words without enough context for them to vaguely work it out for themself.]

[therevanchist]

[Look, it's not Star Wars unless you're using a Space Word instead of a perfectly normal word.]

Town. There's a town named Jefferson.

[Which is not a real place, but does Revan know this? No, she does not.]

[shipoftheseus]

[Look, for once it wasn't the fault of Weird Space Words.]

Okay...and what do you mean by "town"?

[The word sounds a bit more familiar, like they might have caught one of the others using it in passing maybe, but. Yeah. They don't know that one either.]

[therevanchist]

[Well, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary is right there, but Revan thinks she can field this one. Where's Phos from that they don't have a concept of "town," anyway?]

It's...a place where people gather to live permanently.

[shipoftheseus]

[ revan they don't know what a town is, do you really think they know what a dictionary is?? ]

Oh. [They seem satisfied enough with that answer, shruggling slightly and just taking the seat opposite her to idky flip through more of the books.] We just called that the school.

[therevanchist]

Towns are bigger than that, usually. They have a school, but other buildings, too.

[Trust her, she was raised on a cult compound in Space Kansas, so she totally knows everything about how normal people live.]

[shipoftheseus]

Is this a town?

[They look up from one of the picture books to gesture vaguely around them, as if to indicate Philly as a whole. There are definitely a lot of buildings here, even if they're all abandoned. Phos can hardly imagine what they're all for.]

[therevanchist]

[Revan glances around the library, a modest structure by her standards.]

I think it probably qualifies as a city. Same idea, just bigger.

[She's from a universe where planets have their entire surfaces covered by buildings so old and so high no one has seen the ground in millennia. An Earth city with a couple million people isn't much in comparison.]

[shipoftheseus]

[Phos sighs heavily, dropping their head to rest their chin on the open picture book, right on top of a colorful illustration.]

Why do they need so many different words for the same thing? Is it just about size? Is more than one building a town? How many do there have to be before it's a city?

[This is stupid.]

[therevanchist]

[Okay, maybe not the time to mention the existence of villages. Revan looks taken aback as Phos asks a question she's never considered.]

It's size, but I don't know what the cutoff is. There probably isn't an official one.

[Sorry humans are like this, Phos.]

[shipoftheseus]

That's dumb. Why bother have different words at all, then?

[They sigh again, turning their head to press their face to the pages instead. For a centuries-old immortal being, they sure do pull off "whiny teenager" well.]

Why do they need so many buildings in the first place? What do they even use them all for?

[therevanchist]

[Revan is going to have questions about gem lifespans when she finds out Phos's chronological age, that's for sure.]

Places to live, shops, offices, restaurants, government services, [she gestures at the room] libraries...when you have a lot of people living in one area, it just makes sense to build everything you need close together.

[And now you're going to have to explain government and economics, Revan. Good job.]

[shipoftheseus]

[Phos doesn't lift their head from the book but instead tilts it up just enough to peek up at her with an exasperated look.]

I only understood half of that. [That sentence is beginning to feel like a catchphrase, jesus.] Are those things humans need? Restaurants and government...whatever?

[Jeeze humans need so much stuff. How the hell do they manage to survive?]

[therevanchist]

It does seem like we're a lot higher maintenance than you are.

[Revan agrees easily enough. No skin off her nose if the weird sparkly kid wants to feel superior. As the only representative of their species, they're even more out of their depth than most of the group.]

[shipoftheseus]

Higher maintenance, and fragile, and less beautiful, and full of gross liquids and stuff...

[ Phos, please. There's feeling superior, and there's carelessly kinda shitting all over all your new friends including the one you're actively talking to.

It doesn't appear to be something that's occurred to them as being rude -- after all, she acknowledged at least one of those points herself, and the rest are just facts, so this is more like vague sympathy for their situation, right? They frown, leaving their head resting in the book on the table and idly dragging over a different book at random. The rules of golf, how exciting.]

So where's the good part? It sounds kind of awful all around...

[therevanchist]

[Revan's smile just gets wider as Phos lists off all the ways being a human is terrible. They don't even realize they're being tactless, and it's hilarious.]

Guess there's isn't one.

[shipoftheseus]

[At least they were lucky enough to pull this shit on someone chill enough to just find it amusing. Glancing up at her from the golf book, the look they give her is so full of sincere sympathy that it's probably even more comical.]

I'm sorry.

[If physical contact was a more common form of comfort for their species then they'd probably be patting her hand and everything.]

Most of you are pretty nice, for what that's worth.

[therevanchist]

[As a human Jedi, Revan is basically the top of the heap back home. Phos can't make a dent in that self-assurance.]

Why, thank you.

[Only a little dry. Phos is so sincere Revan wants to ruffle their hair. It doesn't look ruffle-able, more's the pity.]

Is your school off on its own, then?

[Phos doesn't even recognize the concept of a town. Maybe they're just very sheltered.]

[shipoftheseus]

[Phos shrugs, sitting up a little to actually look through the golf book properly. It sounds kind of silly, honestly, but it's seems like instructions on how to play a game and that's more interesting than a book about some random human. Hell, there were definitely a good amount of books in the library back home that were just rules for different card games.]

The school is the only building on the island. It's all we need.

[Or potentially, the only building in the whole world. They've certainly never seen any sign of any other land beyond their own island, but who knows what's true anymore.]

[therevanchist]

It sounds like a Jedi Enclave.

[In that it's a weird cult in the middle of nowhere, maybe, Revan.]

My Order builds strongholds out on their own, away from other people. I grew up in one.

[It doesn't occur to her she's going to have to explain the concept of children.]