mayfield_rpg | (no subject)

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[phone]
Oh, marvelous, it's August again. My favorite time of the year.

Students, I hope you've been working on your summer assignments. Adult men, I hope you're prepared to be perfect gentlemen when we all find ourselves floundering in that ghastly hotel. Anything else to expect this month? No? On to business, then.

I'm sure we're all very distracted by talking pony parties and pool parties and platter parties and inpourings of perpetually perplexed new populations, but has anyone made any effort whatsoever to sort out that business from last month or are we still playing the game where we ignore all interesting information in favor of smashing random objects we find in the dairy? I don't mind that game; of course, quite invigorating, good for the vasculature, but it might be worth trying a different approach at some point in time. I venture to suggest today, if no one's too busy holding competitions to see who looks the most absurd absent their clothing.

[action, 726 Anderson Lane]
[Susan can be found hanging up black cloaks and other assorted clothing in uniform crepuscular shades around the house where garish green was all there was formerly to see. A welcome change, in her opinion; she'd missed her wardrobe from home, even if everything looked exactly the same as the black cloak she had commissioned here in Mayfield.

Still, she pauses for a moment as she handles an emerald-green cloak, never worn, hanging in the hall closet since the previous Christmas. ...It goes back on the rack after a bit. And she'll only push it back behind the others an inch or two.]

[action, park]
[A rather unusual sight in the park later on that week. Somehow, Miss Susan the English teacher has been cajoled into reading a nice story for a small group of drones.]

And so, adding conspiracy and first-degree murder to their trespass and property damage charges, Hansel and Gretel pushed the old woman into the oven and ignored her anguished screams as they left the house of gingerbread, naturally taking all of her valuables with them as they went. With these illicit goods, they reunited with their criminally negligent father, but not, surprisingly, their 'wicked' stepmother, who had mysteriously vanished in the space of the two nights in which the children were gone, leaving the father sole keeper of his property and remaining funds and raising suspicion as to who it was had devised the plan to leave the children in the forest in the first place.

But it doesn't matter, because they all lived happily ever after.

The End.

[The drones seem quite pleased with her recitation, at any rate.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The story is much more interesting when the witch is poisoning the children and the consulting detective hired by the father to find the children is being framed for the crime.

[Sherlock might sound a bit bitter - well it did lead to him flinging himself from the roof of a hospital.]

I rather think poison would defeat the purpose of fattening them up.

[Susan arches an eyebrow at this odd interruption before beginning to shoo the children away.]

Oh? Didn't I mention. Painted the chocolate wrappings with mercury. It's not enough to kill them on it's own. Just make them incredibly ill and lethargic.

[He still has that bitter edge to his tone. But it's not without reason.]

I'm not sure whether you're trying to tell me that you lived in this storybook or if you're trying to convey that someone mimicked the attempted murder minus the gingerbread house and cannibalism, and therefore, having very little to do with the story at all.

Either way, the tips on how to poison children should probably be kept to yourself.

[There's a faint grin. He might be slightly impressed.]

Oh, I didn't have to live in the storybook. It's all rather dull - everything with happy endings. What good is telling children about happy endings, when reality would better prepare them for the future?

I propose the hypothesis that parenting was once conducted with the principle that anything that could get a five year old to sit still for longer than ten minutes could be classified as divine inspiration.

Also, children produce an unseemly amount of snot when they begin to cry.

Was. That would be an important word in your hypothesis. As things stand, it's always better to tell the truth, rather than make up some silly rubbish that has nothing to do with anything anyway.

[The second comment gives him pause.]

I propose that they produce the same amount of snot as adults, but adults have learned to sniff it back in.

Nonsense. I never sniff.

[Susan sniffs ironically in disdain.]

I would venture to suggest that learning to tell truths from lies is a skill most children manage to pick up on their own, regardless. They know perfectly well when they're being fed nonsense.

[Sherlock just raises an eyebrow as she sniffs. Thank you for proving his point.]

What makes you so certain? After all, most adults can't seem to tell the difference.

[Granted, most people are idiots, but Sherlock would like to know her opinion on the matter.]

Children are much cleverer than adults, of course. It's when you begin to lie to yourself that you become unable to separate truths from lies. A human's greatest talent is the ability to see what isn't there while ignoring what actually is.

Oh it is worse than that. They see but do not observe. Or the do not understand what it is they see...

And if they don't understand, they lie to make it more tolerable. It's not even really a conscious decision.

But if it's a really big lie, they wrap it up in truth to make it more palatable.

[He pauses and looks long and hard at the woman. Finally, he decides she's worth knowing. He offers his hand.]

Sherlock Holmes.

[Susan is, perhaps, not quite so assured on her end, but the two or three people she finds worth knowing aren't treated any differently than the ones she doesn't, anyway. She shakes.]

Susan Sto Helit.

[Despite having a decidedly upper-class British accent, Susan doesn't recognize the name, coming from a different world altogether.]

[That's okay, Sherlock prefers not being known to either being told he's been here before or is a character in a story.]

Judging by the story you were telling I presume you teach English.

[If not in Mayfield, then somewhere.]

But you might do well with philosophy as well.

[Maybe. It's as close to a compliment as he gets.]

Quite right, though I normally teach in secondary school. ...Here, I mean; back home, it's children about this age.

Philosophy is rather a different matter. It runs in the family.

[There's another small smile.]

Runs in the family?

We have a different view on... life than most.

[Now Sherlock really is amused.]

Mine too... if others are to be believed.

[He doesn't sound like he cares what others think.]

I do hope most people don't go about picking up efficient ways of poisoning small children.

[Susan's tone is less severe than it ought to be if she were being serious.]

[Sherlock sighs taking her words more seriously than she intends them.]

No. Just the one. Who then offered a choice to me: Fall from a building or let my friends get killed by snipers.

[He shrugs slightly.]

He was... rather impressive in the end...

The trick, I expect, is that falling from a building failed to kill you. Or perhaps it's that you haven't got friends, but that's rather a depressing thing to introduce into casual conversation.

[Sherlock chuckles grimly.]

I don't know yet... I was brought here mid-fall... The reason it was impressive was he pulled out a pistol and put a bullet through his mouth to convince me to jump.

[He looks at her after she make the last statement.]

This isn't casual conversation. It is simply the next chapter of your fairytale. What happens after the story ends? What happens to the man who found the children?

He got old and fat and sat about lazing about all day depending on Hansel to split the firewood until the poor boy lost a leg in a rather unfortunate accident involving a sow and a thresher. Gretel was married off to a disreputable salesman on account of bringing in more income, but he ran off after a lovelier girl, saddling her with seven children and loans to pay.

Rather typical, all in all.

[Sherlock chuckles less grimly this time.]

My ending is less dull...