I'll put you to sleep at night/Like a foreign movie/I'll sing you lullabies [OPEN]

[friendofdorothy]

WHO: Liir and you
WHAT: Noone mourns the wicked, but they sure do make hilaribad propaganda/action movies out of them
WHERE: Common room, late at night
WHEN: Sunday night
WARNING(S): "Now I'm gonna drop a house on your ass!" will probably be said


Late at night (that is, about midnight, for Liir kept a boringly regular schedule) and Liir could be found up. The halls were dark, fluorescent lights stilled, save one or two that buzzed and wouldn't turn all the way on or off. He was having trouble sleeping, not from restlessness but from being in District X, where the state of mutants was bound to get him agitated, thinking fussy, revolutionary thoughts.

Late night TV, then. He flipped through the international channels, hoping maybe for news from home. What he saw was...

It was a Volstovic action movie vaguely based on the confrontation between his mother and Dorothy Gale.. A terrible one. Dorothy was there...different. She was a Volstovic agent now, a 007ized version of their 'dragon' teen supersoldiers. The movie must have predated their revolution.

It wasn't the parade of tragic blunders, missed chances and manipulation by the old 'wizard' that Dorothy'd told him about. Dorothy was shooting, karate chopping and slicing her way through hordes of winged monkeys (godawful CGI, was this supposed to be scary?). He'd remembered them as sweet and kindof pathetic in real life, but on screen they were clearly meant to be menacing. Sweet, brainless Toto was unrecognizable.

As for how they portrayed his mother...the plier-faced monstrosity there resembled the bitter and angry but very human person he'd known as much as much as Bela Lugosi did the historical Vlad Dracul. This portrayal belonged on a bag of halloween candy, not on screen.

Liir is not himself present in the film at all, though perhaps the witch's cringing, nerdy assistant is meant to be based on him.

"God, this is terrible..." He says, sounding genuinely anguished. It's not that it hits close to home. He's used to not being able to control his own image or those of his loved ones. It's the complete distortion of history.

Comments

[griot]

When it walked it's claws made a clacking sound on a wooden floor.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Slow as a snail sprawled out of the hallway on to the carpeted floor of the common room, dragging it's tail, and it's belly. It looked away from Liir, but it's flickering tongue could taste a human nearby. It didn't mater.

The cold made its body stiff. It sought the light, and it felt it close. It latched its claws into the wooden television stand, and pulled it's self up. Like a serpent, it curled it long tail around the warm television. Laying down, the Nile monitor pointed its eyes and its flickering tongue to Liir.

[friendofdorothy]

Exploring new frontiers of awkwardness, Liir recognized this particular nile monitor and felt awkward. The last time he'd seen it, he'd been comically trying to raise his body temperature enough to kill the virus without frying his brain. Heat lamps were all shining on the rest of him while he'd packed ice all around his head. It hadn't worked.

"Oh, it's you. Hello."

He waited for the lizard's reply or whatever. His power assured him he'd understand it.

[griot]

The lizard was silent for two minutes, but then there were changes in it's musty sent, changes in it's breathing, all too subtle for normal humans to ever detect. Through these the reptile spoke.

"I have little to say, and much to hear. There is a flood of babbling, but until I met you, it's has had no meaning."

[friendofdorothy]

Liir allowed himself to imitate the reptile, letting his nose withdraw into stumps, parts of his skin to scale over. It'll take a minute for him to adjust and understand the signals it's sending him.

"You're just sharing my consciousness for a bit. I think that's what my power does, anyway. That's why it sounds to me like you're speaking English, not some kind of...well, I guess you'd call it a forked tongue."

Liir's resemblance in personality to a middle aged man is heightened by the dad joke.

[griot]

(ooc note: relevant music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_8G7DiEBRA)

The lizard lifted up its head, looking directly into Liir's eyes.

It spoke again, with it's version of whispers.

"What are you? Why are you different than the others?"

[friendofdorothy]

"It's just something I was born with. My mother could have made the change permanent, reshaped you. Me, I can just imitate and communicate."

What a strange conversation to be having with an animal he'd last seen with his head covered in ice packs and eight heat lamps pointed at him. Speaking of...

"Sorry about last time, by the way. That must have gotten very old very fast."

He'd needed contact with the creature to maintain the physical changes, the same way he needed contact with a person to view their memories.

[griot]

If the lizard ruffled it scales slightly, it's version of shaking it's head.

"No. Meeting you was a hopeful day. I began to understand those who shaped my world. And for a time I was free of the oppressor!"

The lizard hissed, when referring to "the oppressor" but then he calmed. "Humans are all I have seen, yet I know so little."

The lizard gave a long flickering of the tongue.

"Are you human?"

[theveilisin]

"It is terrible," Luvander agrees from the doorway, where he'd halted at first merely to see who else couldn't sleep, and then he'd recognized that movie. That it was even being aired was bad enough, but that it was Liir of all people who had found it made it particularly unbearable.

"I was present during some of the production, you know. And at the premiere, of course. Oh, and Rook slept with the lead actress." He sighs, walking into the room and slumping next to Liir on the sofa. "So I suppose I should apologize on behalf of my nation, really."

[friendofdorothy]

There was a pang of weird jealousy, turning slightly green on his cheeks, at that little piece of gossip. It wasn't as if that was the real Dorothy Gale, or even that things had ever gone beyond the silly schoolboy crush he'd had on her, rather perfunctory parting kiss notwithstanding.

"If we start apologizing on behalf of our countries and who we've slept with, we'll be here a long time." He said in response. "Is that what you thought about us though? Just a bunch of picturesque roads, simple peasant folk and cackling terrorists?"

[theveilisin]

"If I was going to apologize on behalf of Rook, I imagine a new Ice Age would roll around before I was done. My own history in that department needs absolutely no excuses what so ever, apart from maybe being frightfully dull."

He's silent a moment, before countering with a smile and: "Think? Why should we think at all? That's the government's job, don't you know?" Then after a moment he winds down the hyperbole a couple of notches, shrugging a bit listlessly. "A lot of people probably did. It was easier to just believe what you were told. As a rule, the Dragons were better informed, but only from a military standpoint. We were still told fairly repeatedly that you were 'primitive'."

[friendofdorothy]

Frightfully dull, huh? That belied his flamboyance. But then he should be used to that kind of thing by now.

Speaking of the Dragons, 'Dorothy' was proclaiming herself one, in response to one of the Wizards' Gale Force troops interrogating her. Would she karate him to death, seduce him or intimidate him into serving her assassination quest?

"And after all that 'modernization' too...We were told you were godless automatons good only for making cheap toys, by the way."

[theveilisin]

He could probably have had a lot of interesting fun if he'd only, say, been among those of the Dragons who could spend actual hours discussing breasts - or hadn't been healthily frightened of the punishment if he'd decided to go for more unconventional fare. As it was, all he had to his name were the kind of kisses and embraces that happened sometimes after death had been close and adrenaline high, never to be spoken of again after.

He gives the screen an unimpressed look. "Can't even get our own procedures right, not immediately assigning her a handler in this script. Or maybe that's the dog?" He'd heard something about a sequel being considered. Maybe they'd planned to as a love story there. "Oh and honestly, I wouldn't say that's too far off - at least for some parts of our culture, regrettably." He shudders. "And don't remind me of toys."

[friendofdorothy]

"There's still time. Maybe Nick Chopper or General Cherrystone will be him, under cover or mind controlled the whole time."

He's fairly sure the narrative won't allow a girl to independently complete her mission, even if that is killing another woman, a mutant terrorist too. He eyes that shudder. If hell froze over and he ever wants to play at the kind of teasing Luvander does, he'll know what to look for now. There's probably a lot of very embarrassing merchandise floating around.

[theveilisin]

"My dear, you are of course right. How silly of me. I'll be astounded if there isn't at least a subtly titillating bondage-esque rescue scene or something similar, where her clothes will be ruined but her make-up remain intact." He rolls his eyes slightly. He has rescued both ladies and men in need more than a handful of times, and generally speaking there is nothing particularly attractive about a sweaty, bloody, shaking comrade who might have either thrown up or soiled themselves - or both.

He watches Dorothy on the screen perform a highly unlikely but very aesthetically pleasing high kick. "Honestly, I sort of missed the second half of the movie, since Compagnon and Natalia had smuggled in some booze - I can't get drunk, but I am perfectly capable of being distracted. Either way, I've seen so many bad propaganda movies, my eyes usually start to glaze over in self defense at the title screen."

[friendofdorothy]

He can't get drunk? For some mutants, their 'gift' truly is a curse. It must have something to do with his healing ability. Scrubbing out the bloodstream and such.

"The real Dorothy Gale is...Well she can't do that." By which he means that same high kick. But then again neither can most people, especially not on someone who's really fighting back. "And her dog is an obnoxious little throw pillow on legs, not a war-mount." God does he hate Toto. "What I'm saying is, she'd make a terrible Dragon."

But then again so would Luvander, if you went by surface impressions.

[theveilisin]

Luvander snorts, amused, and glances sideways as if trying to read Liir's expression a bit better. "Really? You amaze me. I'm assuming that you mean disregarding the fact that it looks like a splendid way to get knocked on your ass."

He pulls up his legs, looping his arms around them loosely and leaning his chin on his knees. "The real Cassiopeia made art with pressed flowers. The real Jeannot adopted a baby bird and let it sleep next to him on his pillow. Anastasia cried every time Bambi's mother died. Evariste ate a pound of butter on a dare - and I refused to heal him when he was miserable afterwards." He makes a small face, watching Dorothy pout seductively at some kind of guard before hauling out a gun from her cleavage. "No one makes a good Dragon, really." A small grin. "Except maybe Rook and Havemercy."

[friendofdorothy]

This was helpful for him, really. It at least confirmed that Dorothy really was the ingenue she seemed, and not a foreign agent, which meant his mother's death really had been an accident. He does long to ask: are all those people dead? But he recognizes it immediately for the kind of foot-in-mouth comment he's learned by bitter experience to avoid.

"Does that include you?"

Not quite as bad but...

[theveilisin]

His lips twitch in an amused little smile, shoulders rising in a light shrug. "I used to pick furniture apart to make fancy hats, I looked forward to whenever prostitutes were acquired for us boys just because it was so rare that we got to talk to outside people, and I harbored secret fantasies of being a doctor and never having to shoot people at all."

Luvander looks a bit distant for a moment. "We all thought of ourselves as Dragons, as soldiers, but that was because we never thought we could be anything else. It wasn't the kind of life you chose for yourself." A small, cynical snort. "That is, at least not when you're six."

[friendofdorothy]

"...Or fifteen. Which is when I joined the army."

Liir thought that was only fair to tell him after he'd unintentionally dug around in his most traumatic memories. God knew he wouldn't want anyone doing that to him.

Speaking of, and then the witch's nerdy teenage assistant got a glimpse of Dorothy through the cameras and he began to comedically salivate over her. That part hit home and he turned green and tried hard to keep from sinking into the couch.

[theveilisin]

It's a strange sensation to revisit, feeling like someone is at least a bit like him. Completely different as a person, of course - but then again, so was Raphael, and Erdeni, and Chastity... and Yesfir. Liir isn't a Dragon, it's not the same, it will never be the same, but... it's something. He feels like right now, he could definitely do with something.

Relaxing slightly where he sits, leaning back, he at the same time ends up sitting a bit closer, and that's alright. Maybe he can let the guard down a bit.

Like that, it's definitely hard not to notice Liir's reaction, and certainly not very difficult to connect the dots. Ah. How very unfortunate - and cruel, even if it wasn't intended to cut quite so deep. "What is she like, then? When she's not concealing weapons bastion-knows-where and parroting another country's party lines?"

[friendofdorothy]

"The eternal plucky orphan." Which was ironic, considering she was the one who'd made him an orphan. "She's exactly like her last name: a force of nature. She rearranges and destroys things in her path while still being completely innocent."

Which might imply that he resented or hated her, but that was never true. He wished his first crush all the best. Oz simply didn't have that for her.

Which was why he cringed when she cut the head off 'Chistery', the boss-mook flying monkey, with a sword. Poor old Chistery.

"...God help you if she ever lands in Volstov."