fussiest: (Default)
manic pixie dream architect (it's kaveh, sorry) ([personal profile] fussiest) wrote in [community profile] citylogs2023-09-23 02:09 am

[ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

WHO: kaveh ([personal profile] fussiest) & y'all!
WHAT: this is a perpetual catch-all for kaveh because i'm too lazy to make a new one every month. this is for closed starters, tag-ins, visits to kaveh's workshop and the like! be wild! be bold! be free!
WHERE: all around the city, and especially at kaveh's workshop, the pairidaeza architectural design studio in district 1
WHEN: everywhere! everywhen! all at once!
WARNINGS: bickering, probably - everything else will be warned for on a thread-by-thread basis



badfeyth: (📚 the world it used to be)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 12:36 am (UTC)(link)
...Okay, you know what? Look. Come and look.

[She says, as she gets the coatrack righted and follows his path into the kitchen, and makes sure that taking him by the arm isn't going to cause him to upend the food onto the floor somehow via a careless tousle of limbs, and when the dinner is safe and the stove isn't hot enough yet to pose a hazard and she's got him by the elbow, she drags him out of the kitchen and across the second little hallway in the apartment, clearly in the direction of her bedroom.

It's admittedly not much better, but there are tiny embers of improvement flickering. Her work clothes and jacket are laid out across the foot of what's clearly her bed. On the table, propped against the lamp, is a sketch of an endearingly fat dragon that looks conspicuously like Netzach's style. And in the otherwise barren closet, a green dress is hanging by courtesy loops sewn into the otherwise delicate bodice, with a pendant necklace looped around the hanger and dangling against the fabric as if the two are designed to go together.

She sighs. She motions. It's still terrible, but it's something.]


I know what you're thinking. It's not as though I'm completely useless, all right?
badfeyth: (📚 before our dreams started)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 12:53 am (UTC)(link)
I'd say you could have it, but I'd get in trouble for giving it away. Probably it'd look better on you than it would on me, though.

[She positions herself in the doorway, more out than in, letting Kaveh have the run of the room while situating herself so that she can hear down the hallway in case something sounds like it's just caught fire or started to boil over. That's the reason she justifies to herself, at least, and when she glances down she sees that her feet are half in and half out of the doorway, toes on the carpet and heels in the hall, and she pushes her thoughts away from that before she can get to thinking too hard about it.]

Netzach did a good job with him. That's Perry, my pet dragon. I'm sort of used to having him clunking around the house or my shop; it's strange not having him underfoot.
badfeyth: (📚 from the deck of a sinking ship)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, not you too. Isn't it enough that I — hey, what do you mean you wouldn't trust me with an iron?

[As distractions go, it's a good one; whatever justifications and rationalizations might've been turning revolutions in her mind and just waiting to be offered up in defense, they all quickly go by the wayside in favor of her just sputtering.]

Who says I'm even wearing it, anyway? Maybe I just have it here to look at. Or — or under protest, or something.
badfeyth: (📚 we're ever looking back)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 01:52 am (UTC)(link)
You'll recall I also made the salient point that the project would need a representative to act as its focal point. And I very decidedly made that person not me. I go to venues to work, not to —

[She falters, just for a second, not fast enough to catch the rest of her sentence before it leaves her mouth, but fast enough that she already knows it's a stupid thing to say to begin with.]

— be a part of them.

[Oof.]

I'm sure there's a girl somewhere in some world and some circumstances who's meant for a dress like that, but it isn't me. Things like that just...aren't.
badfeyth: (📚 before our dreams started)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
...There's a term, in chess. Zugzwang. It's a word for being in a position where it would be better not to move than to do anything else, except you're forced to move anyway. No matter what you do, the situation gets worse.

[It's a good word, tailored for a very particular meaning and a very particular situation. The kinds of words you could build a whole chapter on, from the strength of them. Breathtakingly efficient, to have such a vast array of meaning wrapped up into two easy syllables.

She stares at her toes. It's not a good thing to do, but it's easier than looking at Kaveh.]


Any way I answer that question will only make things worse, won't it.
badfeyth: (📚 except my serotonin yeah)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 02:23 am (UTC)(link)
[She sputters again, easily-turned, but goes along gamely as he frog-marches her back in the direction of the kitchen. She's not particularly thrilled at having one of her tells so brazenly aired to the open, but there's far more than just that uncomfortable revelation to latch onto, in what Kaveh says.]

You're not on speaking terms with — I assume it's Alhaitham? I suppose it could be anyone but he strikes me as the likeliest suspect. Also the most obnoxious.

[SHE SAYS, WITH AFFECTION, PROBABLY.]

Point of order, Mister Chairman, can't we argue about something else instead?
badfeyth: (📚 we're ever looking back)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
That was an absolute disaster of a sentence. How much food did you make?

[The sheer amount of food he appears to be producing out of his tote speaks volumes about just what Kaveh had meant by "made too much" — largely because she suspects she's not the only one he's made this offer to.

Or it's all a farce and a way of checking up on her. Or both. It could be both.

She finds her way into a dining room chair, turning it around so she can fold her arms across the back rail and rest her chin atop them while she watches him.]


But fine. First point: we should not argue about it because it's emotionally imbalanced. This topic of conversation puts me into a position of vulnerability that you aren't subject to.
badfeyth: (📚 and saying that's the way)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
...I probably don't know anyone that you haven't already thought of.

[Speaking of vulnerability, there's some in that remark, too. Not overtly, not significantly, but there in the way that a house with no personality is there, in the way that a few scattered objects are supposed to make it better when everyone already knows they won't.]

Second point. Your stated intention is to influence my thinking, which presumes my perceptions can and are available to be changed to begin with.
badfeyth: (📚 at a picture of two thousand nineteen)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 03:41 am (UTC)(link)
And sodas. I keep wanting to try a cocktail but I don't know any bartenders, except the one who doesn't like me. Plates are in the next one over.

[She picks idly at her sleeve, because the way she's sitting in the chair means that it would be gawky and uncomfortable to try to look at her toes, and she's going to be doing everything she can to break that habit anyway, now that it's been pointed out to her.]

Third point: you're clearly inciting this conversation as a way of not talking about whatever happened between you and Alhaitham, which makes your motives inherently suspect.
badfeyth: (📚 the world it used to be)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 04:03 am (UTC)(link)
Mmhmm. Either he's remarkably thin-skinned or he's got it out for me for some reason. I called him a doofus and he hung up on me, which is a fairly disproportionate reaction for what amounts to a playground insult.

[It's somewhere around the point when Kaveh starts hefting the actual food over that the feeling of being waited on seems to reach critical mass for Ghost; though she doesn't move to help him specifically, since he seems to have things balanced well enough for himself, she swings herself up and out of her chair and goes looking for something to bring over — plates, if he hasn't yet; silverware, if it's still needed; drinks if she's got a hand to spare.]

Counterpoint: I'm not a character in the stories I write. The fact that I'm not is quite significantly the point. I was made to be different. I'm supposed to be. You can't fault me for being what I am.
badfeyth: (📚 before our dreams started)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-06 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
[She could keep him going about it the wrong way, if she wanted. The mistake he made is subtle but significant: he said your story, as though that's the problem. As though she thinks there's a story for her and she doesn't fit into it, when it's not really about her reality at all, but everyone else's.

Except that's not the point. It's a technicality, and she doesn't want to dodge the question badly enough to rely on obfuscation when it's the spirit of the question that matters.]


...I've wanted to be the protagonist of most of the stories I'm aware of. And I'm aware of a lot of them. Mostly I wanted the denouement of it. The sleeping girl wakes up, the apple gets dislodged from her throat, the prince finds her in the ashes and the lost shoe fits. I wanted to think I was like that. The kind of person that things like that happened to.

[She shrugs a little, closing her eyes.]

It's worse to believe that. Better to just understand that my story isn't like others, and accept it. Things like that don't happen for me, and that's just how it is. It's better to just acknowledge that, rather than hoping for something that's never going to come.
badfeyth: (📚 except my serotonin yeah)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-07 12:31 am (UTC)(link)
That's a conspicuous segue that definitely isn't suspicious at all.

[She's also pretty sure she's never seen food like this before. Certainly she's never smelled it. Maybe once she would've been more suspicious of it than she is, and maybe once she would've been less well off than she is now, and in no place to be picky.

Neither one influences why she picks up the fork and starts to poke at the stew, not in a way that resembles distrust but more like someone appreciating a work of art from every perspective possible, taking stock of the work that went into getting the meat so soft and the colors just right, appreciating with all of her senses before she lets taste have its turn.]


...I don't think there's anything I know about Netzach that I wouldn't be able to share. Which also makes me suspicious, for obvious reasons.

[The lamb comes apart easily on the tines of the fork; she starts collecting a little bit of everything onto it, wanting the whole experience when she takes her first bite.]

He does art. He works in Angela's bookstore. He gives his job as "librarian" and drinks beer. He doesn't pry into people's business because he assumes they'll come to him if there's something they want to say. I asked him once if his name was like mine, but it wasn't. He's spent a lot of time around a select few people, prior to being here.

[She pauses, thinking a minute.]

...Like I said. Nothing I can think of that wouldn't be benign to repeat.
badfeyth: (📚 the world it used to be)

[personal profile] badfeyth 2023-11-07 02:02 am (UTC)(link)
[It's her natural inclination, as always, to try to run ahead and outpace his train of thought. Get out ahead of it while it's still building up steam, figure out its final destination and beat it there. Maybe she was trained to do that too, when she was taught story after story and connection after connection, because there are only so many to begin with and once you know them all, it's easy to generalize. Probably this winds up somewhere in the ballpark of stories are things that are interwoven between people or every person you meet, you touch their story and they touch yours, something something intersections, something something you matter, Ghost.

It annoys her, a little bit. In part because she wants to be right, and in part because she wants to be wrong, and neither outcome is a particularly good one. But at least she's got the prospect of the stew to occupy herself with, and she pushes the bite into her mouth before it can get too cold, lest she miss something of the experience by failing to have it while it was still the temperature Kaveh wanted it to be.]


Would you tell this story to anyone else?

[She looks at him, gaze level, as she chews.]

Would you go to someone else and use me as the example, and tell them about how I did something that mattered to prove to them a point? Or is it just me. I'm the only one who needs to wake up and see how my story conjoins with all the others of everyone I know.

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