Salme @ SYSYSYGAMI

Hi. You’re Seye, right? Or Jorule was fucking with me I guess.

Anyway you don’t have to respond but didn’t know if you’d like to talk.

I mean. Or shittalk Jorule, but I figure that’s low stakes. Fun stakes sometimes, but low ones.

I’m Seye!

You can think of me as the “Angel of Freedom”.

I think the stakes will be low, because no matter what you ante, how could I meet it?

Insulting him behind his back… I don’t really want to do that.

But talking is nice. When you’re stuck on something, sometimes it’s easier to think about someone else’s problems, and celebrate their successes, than your own.

You can probably relate!

“Angel of Freedom.” I like that.

Ah to be honest I don’t really want to insult Jorule behind his back either. I like him a lot. I Keep trying to draw him more and more into this story, actually, which he keeps trying to stay out of. I actually admire him a lot. Hm. You’ve known him a while, right? He’s been happy, right?

I worry he hasn’t had much happiness, but … hm. He doesn’t seem to like to discuss how he feels about stuff? At least not with me.

Hah. Yes. Talking is nice. Part of why I don’t shut up. Are you stuck on something? And how much do you know about … all this?

I’m catching up, but if you wanted to talk, explaining things takes words and finishes sentences.

Even knowing yourself is a little hard. We see our own hearts and feelings only darkly, like through smoked glass. But even then, by speaking, we can know each other just a little bit, even though it seems impossible. So, instead of “knowing him a while”, I’d say “We met a few times.”

Looking over your metaphorical shoulder, it seems pretty happy in there. So, it’s a little funny that you’d say “I’m worried that he hasn’t had much happiness” about him, even though I think I get it, too.

“I’m worried that he hasn’t had many hotdogs…” said about someone holding two hot dogs… it could be true in a lifetime sense, but would adding a third hotdog help…

Ah… I cast impetuously… he could be sadder later in the bits I haven’t read yet…

I think knowing yourself is harder, in some ways, than knowing anyone else. At least, I’ve only recently been able to articulate a lot of things I’m feeling under the surface.

Hm I guess I was talking about Jorule’s past, before he came here. But I take your point about hotdogs, even if I’m not … precisely certain what a hotdog is? (A kind of food, right? I think I saw a couple street vendors selling them where I am currently at).

I guess also … I’m not. Sure. I’m new to think whole Spark/Angel/Pure Heart business. I’m not sure I actually understand it terribly well? I was speaking about Jorule-who-is-Jorule and not Jorule-who-is-part-of-Aurelius? I guess I tend to think of them separately, at least in part because my relationship with each is rather different? I don’t know if that’s standard. When I brought that up to Jorule, he kind of … did that thing where he just … skips over thinking about it.

Basically, I am aware of many of the meta aspects of the story right now, and I am aware it is a story. How well I understand those aspects is almost entirely reliant on Jorule’s ability to explain them to me when I’m idly poking at him while on my tomestone.

I hope our story’s good so far, as you’ve read it.

It’s not a story. It’s real. You can put your tongue anywhere in your mouth right now, behind any tooth or against any gum without telling me, and you’ll feel it, and no one else will.

Just because a story is written about something… Doesn’t make it a “story”, right?

And if all the words that rhymed meant the same thing, A dictionary would be a lot shorter.

Oh. Yes. Of course. I suppose, to me, everything is a story. The very nature of how we conceive of ourselves is a story. That does not make it any less real. Though I suppose that is attacking it from the opposite direction.

Without a narrative I am just a string of moments, events, and experiences unified only by the fact they all occurred to me in my body. Salme, the way I have changed and grown, the way that I can see a self moment-to-moment, she is herself a story I tell myself. She is also the realist thing there could possibly be.

I will never think something is lesser for being a story, I can assure you of that.

Though, “And if all the words that rhymed meant the same thing, A dictionary would be a lot shorter.” I like that way of thinking. I might steal it, if you don’t mind.

That’s true but it’s true in the way that you can go “reading is a WHALE of an adventure!” and it isn’t a lie but the picture of a big whale flying out of the book on a rainbow is not telling you that is literally what you will experience it is just hinting at the joy of fantasy and the broadening of your horizons that good fiction can lend you.

In a literal sense what is happening is you are sitting somewhere comfy and deriving meaning from viewing letters on a page, recognizing them as symbols, construing meaning from the accrued cultural associations and history of those symbols that you have garnered from your life experience, and assembling them into a narrative with your sense-making apparatus of choice

Similarly what is happening to you in a literal sense is you are doing things

feeling them,

touching them,

tasting them,

having thoughts within your head

Forget that at your own peril, Salme! You have to keep living after your “ending”, whatever it is. Because an ending isn’t real.

That is a valuable reminder. Thank you.

I will not forget. That is a promise.

You write beautifully. Are you a storyteller too?

Promise me things at your peril too - 50 dragons attack!!

🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲

🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲

🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲

🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲

🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲

Hahaha!

I like these little guys 🐲. They’re cute. Jorule said you’re the … princess? Of them? What does that mean?

It’s not literal right now but was once! Maybe it will be again. “Time flows like a river and history repeats”. People are more alike than they’re different, so we’ll meet shapes and feelings that are like the ones we had before, and we’ll see parallels… if I said “stop calling me that!” I would stop being the princess of dragons, but since I haven’t, you can look for ways it fits.

A princess is someone who changes your life forever if you can reach her, or someone it entirely changes your life to become.

A dragon is a monster so great you can’t help but idolize it, beyond the point where “terrible” becomes “terrific”, where “awful” becomes “awesome”. It is great in fang and claw and breath and scale. It is majestic like how if you are rained on hard enough and rattled enough by the hot gale you smile instead of being miserable. Yes, they’re just like monster royalty!

That means that if it’s easier to remember, you can refer to me as “king of kings”, Salme.

I can manage to remember “princess of dragons” and “king of kings” and any other title you throw my way, Seye. That is one thing I generally do well. I remember.

Unless, of course, I am kidnapped by an awkward god with severe depression, and then I forget. Though the god helped, to be sure.

Well. If I have to die, 50 dragon monster royalty attack doesn’t sound like a bad way to go. Though. “Fang and claw and breath and scale.” Interesting terminology. Have you looked into our Rite of the Dragon at all?

Yes, I’ve looked at it. It wouldn’t be too hard to play over BBS, right? 🐉🎶

“Have to” and “going to” are really different…

Ha. Well, I mean, I’m going to die, obviously, but I’ve been thinking I might get a couple years, maybe most of a lifetime, before that happens. If I do have to die in the next couple years or months or days, 50 🐲 would be a fun way to go out.

I’d be happy to try the Rite via Linkpearl if you want? I’m not the most talented at it (Aurelius or Luĉja probably are? Maybe Wolf?) but I am starting to find it fun. We could also see if we could make teams? I see people strategizing about beating the Scorpion Queen.

People fail to do things they have to do all the time!

If you have to die in the next couple of days, you should just let everyone down.

Then, you make it up to them later if you feel like, which you can’t do otherwise.

I had to read that a couple times to get what you were saying, then I laughed.

You remind me of Awoken rather a lot, you know. Which I hope sounds like the compliment it is.

People are more alike than they are different, after all.

Angel of Freedom, how much stock should I put in these “Angel of [Something]” titles? Jorule tells me they don’t mean much, but I notice when he manifests he always puts at least one of his titles there. (Is it normal to have two?)

I also. Got thrown a title. Or. Something inside of my got thrown a title? I don’t know if you’ve caught up to that point yet. It’s towards the end of Samudra. I don’t know how to feel about that at all, honestly.

Who’s going to stop him from having two? It’s nice to have something to say when you spread your wings. You should put stock in it as “something we say when we spread our wings”…

I don’t think anyone can stop Jorule from much of anything he wants to do once he decides to do it. And that’s good, I think. If it isn’t presumptuous I’d. Make sure no one could stop him.

I was. Sort of. I’m still not sure it was an Angel like anyone else uses the term, but. Something inside me was referred to as the Angel of Tragedy and that feels. I don’t know what was being communicated, I guess. I’ve not been thinking about it overmuch, but sometimes I take it out and I (rotate) it.

I guess “Darkness” doesn’t sound particularly pleasant either, but to hear Jorule explain it made sense. But truth, hope, freedom … those are all lovely.

Though as … something in this board told me, a tragedy isn’t necessarily just sadness. I’m probably overthinking it?

Freedom for who? Hope for who? Law for who? Mercy for who? Truth for who? Miracles for who?

If you see someone cruising for some hamartia, it doesn’t have to be YOUR tragedy.