Delphinus's Bookshelf

[Fenn]

If you can't puncture it, inflate it? IDK.

And music is great for inspiration huh? Especially songs with a defined tone and vague lyrics.

[Delphinus]

CONVERSATION PRACTICE, BABY. contains foul language and desexifying of vampires

SPOILER! :

“I heard your visit to the Duke's daughter didn't go so well. Come in, come in, take a seat.”
“W-where did you hear that?”
“On the grapevine. It's amazing how often fruit talks these days.”
“You must've heard wrong.”
“No, I had reliable sources. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“I – I just...”
“Oh? You have a good reason?”
“I couldn't finish her off – she's barely an adult. She has her whole life ahead of her.”
“Oh, she has her whole life ahead of her?” Milhaven's voice was increasingly dark and mocking.
“Y-yes.”
“That's nice. Did you stop to consider, for one second, what you were doing? You're a great fucking specimen of a man, alright, sparing the daughter of our biggest enemy because she's young. Did you forget something? Like your whole fucking reason for joining us? You used to serve her until she threw you out, like the piece of shit you are, onto the street. What would you have done if I hadn't picked you up, you worthless bastard? Starved to death because everyone you saw had their whole life ahead of them – oh, fucking brilliant! Yeah, your high morals and everything are lovely, but you want freedom? We're freedom-fucking-fighters, not freedom-let's-skip-around-like-worthless-pussy-bastards. You drained her and left her pale. And then you pussied out from cutting her throat. Let me tell you something, my friend, if you'd been out on the street, you'd have died to turn one cute little teeny like her pale. And yeah, I say fucking died, I mean it. You know what happens when the hunters come round to clear up and they see some ex-servant leech sitting around and craving blood? They shoot the son of a bitch because they know what he's gonna do. Animal cravings, my friend. Animal – fucking – cravings. You want us to look like little bitches in front of the other cells, huh, is that what you want? You want them to start laughing at us: 'Oh those guys, what a pair of fucking jokers, ha ha ha, they got to the Duke's daughter and didn't kill her'? You are a fuck-up and I want you out of this place and out of my life. Get the fuck out, I'm not kidding. You are nothing. You are shit. The whole damn city thinks of us as trash, and in your case they're right. Now, if you want to have any chance of surviving the next week, you find that bitch, wherever she is now she's one of us, and you stab her through the heart. Twenty, thirty times, fucking rip her to shreds, I don't care, just make sure she's not coming back. I want her dead, the sadistic bitch. She's stabbed you, beat you, and then thrown you onto the street: and you pussied out at the last minute. If she's not dead, dismembered, and on the Duke's doorstep by Sunday morning, then you are. Yeah. Chew that over. Now fuck off!”

[Delphinus]

Moar writing. I wrote the day before today as well, though possibly not the day before that.

An interesting essay I just found related to this.

SPOILER! :

You are caught in a loop. I mean, you're caught in the machine. When you were young you were eager to start working, because it earned you money, and that money gave you more leisure time. As you grew older, the money slowly stopped being spent on leisure and began to be spent, bit by bit, on essentials. This began in university, or when you first started renting a house: you paid your bills and paid for your food, then spent the rest on leisure. Perhaps you took out loans to allow yourself to have the leisure you were acquainted with, only to find that the thing about loans is that they have to be repaid. Later, you got married, and bought yourself a house for your family. Now you have to work to survive: slack off, even for a couple of months, and you can wave goodbye to your beautiful house and your beautiful wife. Now they hate you for becoming jaded with the whole damn process: debt has forced you into wage labour and chained you to companies. It's not chattel slavery, but it's close enough: “Labour for wages or we'll destroy your life.” You began life as a free man; now you have been ensnared by debt and forced to obey the lash of some cruel master. And this ensnarement is of your own design: you had the choice to avoid buying a house, you had the choice to opt out and live for free, or even buy your own land and become self-sufficient. Only social pressures made you choose the usual path. Your own poor decisions have made you into a servile wretch, happy to work and satisfy your beautiful wife and your beautiful children. Your life, as it is, seems ideal to you, but there are invisible chains everywhere. You have only the illusion of freedom, and if you try to obtain true freedom now, then men with sticks and men with court orders will ruin you.

And this is the middle-class dream.

[Delphinus]

Have been reading too much Brett Easton Ellis. I think it's affecting me.

SPOILER! :

It's either Tuesday or Friday. I'm fairly certain about that, even if I don't know where I am or what – or who – I did last night. I can barely remember who I am at first, but I remember and tell myself that my name is June May, and that at the moment I'm pretending it's Emma Pearson. I am lying in a double bed, I have a killer headache, and my mouth tastes like a dog's arse. The bastardly sliver of light that manages to worm its way through the curtains is stinging my eyes, and I know now that I won't be able to get back to sleep without chemical assistance.
I manage to crawl out of bed and the bedroom, though I nearly trip and break my leg on a cheap acoustic guitar lying on the floor. Some guy who I slept with last night is sitting on the nicotine-stained sofa in the living room and smoking a cigarette. He's wearing a pair of jeans, his hairy-but-muscular torso exposed to the world. The cigarette smoke makes me choke, and my choking makes my headache worse, so right after I recover from my death rattle, I croak at him to put it out. He reluctantly complies. I can't even remember his name – oh Christ, what's his name?
“Brett, baby?”
“Yeah?” I feel a sudden surge of relief that I got his name right.
“Can you get me a drink?”
“Well, I can.” Why did I sleep with this guy?
Eventually the orangutan drags himself off the sofa and gets me a glass of water. Why did I sleep with this guy? Oh yeah; I needed a place to stay and the guy I wanted to go home with left with a bitchy blonde.
I sit there dizzily until I finish the glass of water. Then I use Brett's shower, change my clothes, and make an attempt to leave. Brett meets me at the door and asks me if I'll be at the bar again next weekend. I tell him I might be, even though that's a lie. Fuck you, Brett: you're not even as good-looking as the guy I wanted to spend the night with, let alone smart enough for us to have any sort of basis for a relationship beyond sex and cigarettes.
I hitch-hike ten miles north in a car containing a middle-aged, middle-class, middle-intelligence, middle-of-the-road couple with some annoying kids.

[Son44]

Woah, really good stuff you got here. Only critic I have for the conversation piece is that the last reply is too long.

[Delphinus]

It is a monologue, but I can see your point. If I broke up the speech with some more action in that last part, it might be more interesting.

[Delphinus]

I quite like the dialogue format. Here I built humanism out of nihilism.

SPOILER! :

So, if logic and science, etc. tell us that the universe is essentially blank and devoid of all meaning, what reason do we have to behave 'morally'. None. All decisions must be judged to be of equal value if we believe that they are all meaningless. That's what you believe, isn't it, my young nihilist friend?

That's correct.

Well then, if all things are believed to be of equal worth, and if it doesn't matter whether a creature lives or dies, would you condone murder?

I wouldn't condone murder, but I'd say it was indifferent.

Ah, then you are consistent in your reasoning at least. You believe that ethics serve no purpose at all aside from to inhibit our freedom of choice? That is well; ethics and such similar moral codes do indeed inhibit our free will. But I must ask you, if you believe that life and death and ethics are equally indifferent, whether you are totally consistent here?

Of course I am.

But is not your own life as meaningless as anyone else's? Since you ascribe no value to life and thus presumably no value to your own life, it only seems fair that, in choosing between life and death, we should just go ahead and flip a coin to determine if you live or die each day. After all, if both cases – you living, and you dying – are of equal meaning, then the only fair way to pick between them is with random chance, isn't it? Why do you not flip a coin to determine your own fate at a given interval, for example each morning? Or do you, in fact, do so and have simply turned up heads each time?

I do not flip a coin each morning.

Why not? You said yourself that whether a person lives or dies is indifferent in the eyes of the universe; why have you not yet committed suicide – or at least played Russian roulette?

Because I want to continue living.

Isn't that a value, one of the same you were decrying earlier, the value of life? Even if it's only your own life you approve of, that's enough to base a philosophy on – goodness knows Ayn Rand tried (and failed) to do so.

I suppose it is.

And do you often choose to murder people you come across in the street? Do you flip a coin to decide their fate, like a particular villain, or do you spare their lives in the same way you spare your own?

I've never killed a person! How absurd!

And why not?

I couldn't handle harming another person, of course! It would be horrifying for me and I would feel guilty for months, if not years, knowing the pain I caused them and their family.

Ah, so you agree with me that human life has value, then? Even if it's only sentimental value to oneself? And isn't that the basis of most secular humanist moral systems?

It is.

[Fenn]

Aw you could have gone WAY farther with that last one. I felt dissatisfied when it was over.

[Delphinus]

I didn't really want to go too in-depth in deconstructing nihilism and explaining why self-constructed ethical codes are to the mutual benefit of the individual and society, because really that sort of thing requires a proper essay structure to elucidate on properly, and mostly I just wanted to push that out because it's late and I just got back from Oxford.

But yeah, will probably follow up with more philosophistication.

EDIT: Also, lol, take that me of last year. Critical thinking on ethics is far too effective.

[Delphinus]

Meh, I wrote this yesterday, and it's short as hell, but it's polished (rather than being somewhere between notes and a first draft) and it's something. Most of my current writing is in an A4 notepad I bought because I was bored.

SPOILER! :

On the train today, I saw two girls of about sixteen. They had bleached blonde hair and were wearing the latest fashion. Having very little else to do, and not wanting to continue reading my book on the brief journey, I decided to surreptitiously listen to their conversation. The first thing I noticed was the girls' love of the word 'like'. They used it, like, every other word, and it was, like, a little bit annoying. The second thing I noticed was the vacuous nature of their conversation: gossip about some other girl who one of them disliked. “Aha,” I thought, “I recognise these girls. They were the type that picked on me at school, leading to my quiet cynicism, quick temper, and superiority complex!” Not that I resented them, but observing them brought back some unpleasant memories.

Anyway, I was listening to them with some interest when I heard this immortal line issue forth from the makeup-laden lips of one of the girls: “I was next to a pair of annoying girls. They were, like, 'burburbur', then they were, like, really annoying.”

I found this more than a little ironic.