What I want to hear on nights I can't sleep is your voice

[philoxenia]

[ ... Well, that was an absolute shitshow, wasn't it? Instead of dwelling on how she feels about everything that just happened, Mira's channeling that energy into something else--and she has a little bit of help doing it. Zerinda and Ema are here in the bar to make drinks, and Mira's brought in a ton of food that's definitely not healthy for anyone, but screw it, who cares about health right now?

Della's here to pass out invitations, too--they let everyone know there's a gathering in the bar, if they'd rather not be alone.

If you choose not to come, well... Mira's got that taken care of, too. She'll place a little container of cookies and hot cocoa outside your door. Maybe it'll help someone feel a little less alone--at least, that's what she's hoping. ]

Comments

[hardnosed]

... Not where I'm from. There was just her, and everything she's ever touched.

[ This is in no way, shape or form true, but Jasper's spent her whole life diving headfirst into Diamond propaganda and taking it to heart. Besides, it's not like she'd know about rebellious Gems before her time. Their memories, much like the memories of Rose herself, would have been deliberately erased from the records. It's easier to think that there's something wrong with Rose Quartz specifically, something wrong with the planet that made her, that inspires traitorous individuality. ]

You just set something off.

[archboxer]

Perhaps things are different but rebellion takes many forms. Greed. Anger. Lust for power or destruction... of course if you asked any of them they would say it was for good reasons.

[It was always someone. If she could thoroughly suppress that urge for peace she would and by her mother, she tried so hard. Authority meant stability. Stability meant peace. Peace meant prosperity. Even if suffering happened it was so that more didn't lose their lives.]

I am sure I did. What I am doing is fixing the crimes of someone who still is held up as an exemplar of heroism. Someone who 'slew the false gods' and 'freed humanity'. No doubt actions that align with her own.

[hardnosed]

[ Jasper absorbs all of this, while every other character I've ever played suddenly feels extremely called out and doesn't know why. And at the end: ]

That's exactly the kind of thing she'd say she did.

[ She looks down at the remains of the stuffed animals before continuing. ]

Your... mother. When she made you, did she do it for a reason?

[archboxer]

Yes... my siblings and I were to populate Fodlan, to help guide and rule any who lived there. She had traveled far from her home star and chose that land as her home.

[They're alien dragons, okay. That happened many years before her time, before Seteth's.]

So we did. There was a war when I was young but that had been settled. Mother even reformed the land after the war so the humans could thrive once more. We had no hate for them yet to them we were just the children of the mother of monsters.

[hardnosed]

They wouldn't accept your rule or her authority. And in the end, she died because of it. Because of all of them.

[ She came to a planet inhabited by humans. She populated it with her own kind. She made a colony.

It sounds both more merciful and more weak than any of theirs was... but then, in the end, the result wasn't that different. Rhea's creator is dead. ]

Do you hate them now?

[archboxer]

She died because a single man thought he deserved her power. Then he slew my kin with her power so he could give his minions 'gifts'.

[Disgust. Anger. Hate. She had been the only one who had survived that slaughter so of course she felt hate. A handful of humans ruined everything simply because they wanted power.]

They paid for their acts with their own lives. [Still, she had been persuaded not to commit the same atrocity. Their families had been spared. Most of the humans had been.] I hate those individuals and those who harbor like thoughts but I do not hate humanity. That man would still be alive if I did not have their help.

[hardnosed]

[ So they helped — probably to save their own skin, she reasons misanthropically. And Rhea seems soft enough to have honored their efforts by sparing them, or perhaps it was actually the more reasonable option at the time. But to not loathe the entire site of what happened, and every species that inhabits it... that, she can't understand, or twist around to gel with her own view of the world.

For once in her life, she just kind of shuts up about it instead of pivoting to an argument. There's more she wants to know first. ]

And you've been remembering it ever since. [ ... ] Carrying on her legacy. Is that — what your religion is, to you?

[archboxer]

[Some certainly were just looking after themselves. She knew that even then. But to leave Fodlan... she couldn't leave the planet but even leaving Fodlan, the continent, was impossible to her. She couldn't fathom it. It was her home, her birth place.]

Yes. Yes, it is. There is more to it but at least... they remember her in a positive way.

[hardnosed]

... I've been thinking about it since I gave you that stupid book.

[ And she really hates that she's been thinking about it. She's been so strapped for things to do and think about that she knows all about Jesus and the arcane temple that is his Cheesecake Factory. ]

Organic species have religion because they need it. They're born for no reason, and they want to believe their brief, aimless lives are worth something, so they make up some story for how they came to be and what comes after.

Not Gems. We come out of the ground knowing who made us, and for what. We know we'll exist forever. There's no need for any goddess to explain what we can't understand. But the Diamonds, who created the rest of us... they're probably the closest thing we have. Each of us is intended to serve a specific one.

Earth was Pink Diamond's colony. Every Gem made there was hers.

[archboxer]

[You know what? She didn't expect these kind of questions from Jasper. Jasper might hate it but she's impressed.]

So she was the progenitor there. No, there would be no need for a goddess if you could see and understand your creator.

[She takes this in and nods. It's a bit rough but she understands. They were Pink Diamond's followers so of course that meant she was in charge.]

My church was created so that the continent would at least, partly, be ruled once more by a Nabataen until I could restore her. Comparing Sothis to Pink Diamond would not be incorrect. Fodlan, by all rights, is hers. Once she returns she will once again rule.

[hardnosed]

[ So she wasn't just bluffing to hurt Zelos at the trial...

She wonders, knowing that she couldn't comprehend the answer if she asked, how thousands of years later Rhea's mother could be brought back. She feels a different kind of negative emotion tinging her preexisting anger, the emotion that's served as Jasper's baseline practically as long as she's been alive. ]

You're lucky it's possible.

[ Jealousy. Maybe that's why she keeps talking. ]

Gems don't really die — not the way organic life does. Even when one is shattered, her shards keep some kind of twisted consciousness. But once a gemstone's been broken beyond repair, there's nothing anyone can do to restore it.

Even when we thought that Rose and her followers had been destroyed, for five thousand years... it wasn't enough. No punishment can replace what's been lost.

[archboxer]

[She wasn't lying that she was closer than she had been in all those years.

What she was bluffing was that Seteth had told her it was going to fail once more. That maybe she should give up this business. Rhea's reaction to this is... shame at the jealousy.

Even if reviving Sothis was theoretically possible it was so incredibly unlikely. Her shoulders slump.]

I had not realized... that is truly unforgivable. It was not even a foreign force. It was rebellion. A Gem against Gem conflict.

[Ugh. She had liked Rose, too.]

[hardnosed]

... Anyway. That’s what I meant before. It’s never enough to just — stand back, and let it be taken care of.

[ Not when you were made to make things right. Not when you were the only one good enough to really make it out. ]

Is his daughter not a full Nabatean? You said you were the only one.

[archboxer]

No; Flayn is not. Her mother was human.

[Seteth liked humans more than she ever had.]

This was, of course, before the conflict.

[hardnosed]

You really are organic, then.

[ It... it at least sounds less pointed than it was when she was asking her about it at the trial? But hey, a hybrid! What a crazy concept, which she absolutely hasn't had right in front of her face for months on months and ignored completely in favor of pursuing a 5,000 year old grudge! ]

... Thanks.

[archboxer]

Yes.

[...She's still unsure what counts as 'organic' and 'not' but okay. Gems are weird and, well.]

...You are welcome? [For what.]

[hardnosed]

For listening.

[ Regardless of any brackets, she gets the unspoken question there! And it sounds like it is physically uncomfortable for her to clarify, which makes sense given everything about Jasper and the identity she's spent a month projecting, but she's doing it. ]

You didn't have to. And I — wouldn't be listening, if it were me. So.

[archboxer]

[She... understands. It's hard to speak about your problems but everyone has issues. She's listened to many confessions in her life. She tries to think about the best way to handle this.]

Our fates are similar. I could not help but listen. [She can't say she understands because she feels that Jasper would take that as an insult.]