sixthiterationlogs | Meeting - How To Deal With Winter Without Blaming The Starks

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Meeting - How To Deal With Winter Without Blaming The Starks

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn/Pub's main room
WHEN: 2st December
OPEN TO: E V E R Y O N E ~~not going on science/hunt quest. Hunt a monster, miss a meeting <.<~~
WARNINGS: TBA as needed
STATUS: Open!

For the past few days, Kate has been spreading the word that there'll be a meeting after lunch today. The previous meetings had been in reaction to something, and to a certain extent, this one is no different. But Kate wants to try something else: planning. Planning on how to deal with the coming months when the weather will only get worse. How to deal with blizzards, storms. How to deal with problems hopefully before they arise.

And, maybe, it makes her feel better doing this. Organising something, now that her comrade-in-practical-arms (Mark Watney) has left her to go trek after a monster. Far, far more practical than having hysterics. Which she won't admit to having to anyone but her cat and Benedict.

(Her tea that night might have been spiked with a dash of whiskey to insure that she slept.)

Today, the weather is cold. There is snow on the ground, and the sun isn't coming out to play. It is the kind of day where people linger over their meals in the warmth of the Inn anyway, seats near the fireplace taken quickly. Towards the end, Kate starts to organise for the meeting. One of the smaller tables is tipped over its side so Ivan has something to write on to take the minutes, and Kate hands him some pieces of precious chalk.

Then she stands on a chair and taps a spoon against a tiny saucepan in lieu of a bell.

"Attention, please! I call this meeting to order. So much as we ever get order. Winter's not goin' away in a hurry, so before we all run into trouble, we're goin' t'come up with some ideas and share knowledge. Not all of us come from the same world, let alone the same environment. If it seems obvious to you, say it anyway, because it might not be to others. Everyone got that? Good."

With that, she steps off the chair and sits on it.

Meeting's begun.

[OOC: Like our other meetings, set-up is mingle and threadjackable unless otherwise specified. Please set up your own heading posts for various topics that your characters would bring up for some organisation, but otherwise, have fun!]

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"Actually, it implies that we don't want to starve to death," Veronica shot back with a low scoff of her own. "I'm sorry, I can see that you're used to warfare, but I've been here long enough to have come to the conclusion that, one, if the people in charge here wanted to wage an actual war against us we'd be fucked no matter what, and two, if we're going to get out of here, it's going to be either because we were smart about it or they let us go." She lifted her arms in an exaggerated shrug.

"And it's not like there aren't people in charge of things. Kate makes sure everybody eats everyday. Mark is in charge of the fields. People team up and go hunt and patrol or whatever. So excuse me, but I don't think I'm an idiot because I happen to think we don't need to be a military nation-state with our 40 people."

In Ren's mind, the argumentative young women clearly didn't understand the difference between leadership and arrangements of convenience. Having people periodically repeat tasks didn't make a plan or true organization and the inability of people to realize the importance of that for all aspects of survival, not just war and defense, was maddening. It was basic strategy and logic, and it got under his skin every time someone slammed the door on his foot over the matter or claimed it unnecessary. But what did they know? They were not leaders, they were followers, and they were content to let things play out and live reactionary rather than through advanced action.

Content. Even thinking about it put spikes to his nerves, and the dark side of the force woke from slumber and tried to curl its smokey tendrils around his bitter mind, twisting about and quietly whispering to him. The call from both sides was weak enough in the village that he could brush them off with barely a thought, but he embraced his frustration and rose to his feet.

"That might be true for you, but a few cliff walls are not going to trap me here, and I am not going to wait around with my head in the sand because a few convenient trends make your lives feel managed." He was excusing himself from the meeting. The conversation was far from productive, and if she didn't want to see reason, he wasn't going to waste his breath convincing her.

"I have work to do."

"What?" Veronica breathlessly sputters, her eyes rounding as he just marches off, just like that. God, maybe he really is brainwashed, maybe he really is delusional and legitimately can't take having his ideas questioned.

"Wait!" she calls, and takes off after him before she really thinks about it. "I wasn't trying to be a dick, I was just saying! Not everybody has the same priorities as you and that doesn't make them stupid or naive or whatever you're saying! If you think this is so important, why are you walking away? What the hell?"

Ren stilled halfway through his move to the door, his teeth momentarily clenched before he forced himself to slowly release the pent up frustrations, fingers curling and uncurling. What did she know? She was one of many who had pushed back against him, and he could only take the build of frustration for so long before he decided he had had enough of it. She should have let him go. She wasn't the main source of his frustration, just another push toward the edge. He had held back and dropped and let it go for weeks.

"But it does." He cut back, cold, stiff, but controlled. "It does make them naive." It makes all of you naive. The whispers of the dark side brush and curl around him, pushing and pulling, coiling up his tensions and feeding the frustrations, the uncertainties, the maddening lack of direction, order or guidance that had taken over every aspect of his life since emerging from the fountain. It fed them, which fed it in return, in an ever building cycle slowly driving him to a breaking point he had been holding back.

"What do you think any of this matters? Patching up houses and farms, coddling pets, capturing livestock, telling yourselves there's a point to it all because it means you'll live a little longer in this pit. What's the point? You don't know why you're here, you don't know how to get out, or who put you here, or even where we are. Prolonged survival, playing like this is a community or these buildings are homes, even temporarily, is a trap that leads to acceptance and normalization." He says everything in an even, if venomous tone, leaves no room for a pause. He watches her, glances around the room and then back, his stare as intense and drilling as ever.

"I'm not waiting for my my blood to hit the snow before I prepare for an attack. If you accept that you're fucked then you are. You've already lost."

"Oh, fuck you!" Veronica snaps back, staring up at him, undaunted. "You know nothing about me. You don't know what I'm preparing for or what I've trained for or who I have helping me. Why don't know this? Oh gee, because instead of having a conversation like a normal human being, you got your panties in a wad and ran off to sit alone and stew about how we're all herd animals and you're the only one with any sense. Get real."

She lifts her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug and then throws her arms out. "Are you serious about doing something about all this crap you keep spouting off about or not? Because being some kind of intergalactic drama queen won't get you anywhere, sorry to tell you."

Scathing venom waits on the edge of his tongue to throw back at her, but it doesn't come. Ren stares her down for a long hard moment, meeting her undaunted gaze with his own unrelenting one. There's smoke and fire in his mind, and an unguided, undirected frustration that has been building for far longer than just his time in the village. It wages and burns and crackles in his mind and through his veins, urging him forward, demanding he seize back control of the destiny ripped away from him and find his path once more, cutting down any who step in his way.

But while control is something he struggles with at times, he has reigned in a far hotter temper than this for lesser causes. He pulls that venom back, bites it down into his own tongue if he has to. It's wasted energy and power to let loose his building rage on Veronica. Not because she is worthless, she is far from that. She serves her purpose, he is sure. But because he stands nothing to gain from it.

He has no desire to know her, to know any of them. Their pasts, goals, and aspirations matter only when they could be put to use. Knowing anyone is a risky slope to sentiment, if he can not properly split the relevant from the unnecessary.

"You're right." His tone sinks to an even cadence. Admitting when he was wrong was nothing new to him, and it serves him better to show a sliver of humility in this moment that fangs and fire.

"I do know nothing about you. You or the rest." He gestures vaguely to the rest of the room, his back to the door he had been making his way toward. "No more than any of you know about me or what I've done here, or who I've tried to talk to. Being familiar doesn't serve me half as well as observation of the facts. I don't need to know you to see that none of these buildings would stand up to more than a couple hard knocks, weather or beast. And I have seen enough of the failures of organization, of a firm framework, to be able to see how this will go when luck runs out or things start to go bad, training or otherwise."

He pauses only a moment, looking away to scan the room briefly before stopping back on her.

"I am doing something about it. With or without assistance. Talking will only get any of us so far when none of us are inclined to listen."

"What are you even talking about?" Veronica says with a roll of her eyes, frustrated enough that the words are out before she can consider whether their content or her tone are particularly wise, at which point all she can do is soldier on. "I was trying to get to know you. Maybe people would listen if you didn't get all pissy and stomp off. It's called having a conversation."

Whether or not he looks scared, it's clear enough that he has real, tangible fears, and she gets it. She really, genuinely does. Maybe those fears are legitimate. Maybe he really is some kind of tactical genius who, despite spending the better part of his first time here getting pissed and diving into the fountain, has some kind of actual solution knocking around that hard head of his. But shit, attracting flies with vinegar much?

"I'm not an idiot. Maybe I don't comprehend your vaunted position because I don't come from where you do, okay, but I'm not stupid, I'm not blind, and I'm not sitting here with my fingers in my ears pretending we're not all literally trapped in some kind of human ant farm. And yeah, maybe there are some people who are doing that, but fuck you for giving them shit about how they cope with losing their entire lives. They do what they have to do. If you could dial being a dick down just a little, maybe people would be more willing to help you."

She has points, and it both irritates and curbs him in equal measures that leave him silently watching her tirade. For all people accused him of stomping about, they seemed to do a fair amount of it themselves. Her irritation wasn't invalid, but his own felt wholly justified in his mind as well. He was stuck, cut off from the force in a heavy way and separated from his teacher and his purpose. The village was full of reminders of his failures, and people who insisted there was no way out, a reality he refused to ever accept.

"Are you done?" His words are low, quiet and measured as he watches her where she stands. Those were a lot of words, and it seemed she had her own issues she was dealing with, ones he had apparently struck a nerve with. He sifts through it all to find a response, and again he wonders why she couldn't just let him leave, but she was clearly after something. Maybe it was genuinely that she wanted to know him, though he couldn't imagine that was actually the case. So what did she want from him?

"What do you propose I do? Hold their hands until they straighten themselves out? Sometimes losses have to be cut for the good of others. People without direction need to be directed back to a more useful purpose."

"I didn't say you had to hold anybody's hand, Jesus," Veronica says with a relenting sigh. "We were talking -- Debating, if you like. And you stalk off in a huff because I don't immediately clasp my hands to my bosom and call you a genius. That's a really bad way to convince people you're right, you know."

Unless he really does think she's useless, in which case, fuck him. Recent existential crisis aside, she's smart -- Really smart -- and she knows it, even if he doesn't.

"So yeah, I'm done. Are you?" she asks, eyebrows arched.

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Meeting - How To Deal With Winter Without Blaming The Starks

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