Green Mouse and Telephone Icecream

baby_endless @ 2006-09-12T21:01:00

2006-09-13T04:09:43Z

Oopsie. Um.

I think maybe everybody should stand a little bit back. I have to do some stretching, now.

(( Delirium is going to be hard to talk to but easy to find in this post. If your character comes asking after her, some kind of madness will ensue. Probably a hallucination of some kind. If your character comes to talk to one of the hallucinating people, nothing will happen to them. If you have specific bits of madness you'd like to have happen to your character, I'm in the IRC! Also, Delirium is currently surrounded by a big psychadelic swirl of colour and noise... or maybe she is the swirl.))

Random Facts About My Delirium

2006-05-16T06:49:51Z

Delirium likes Camp very much, really. It has interesting things to say. But she wishes it weren’t so clingy.

There was a time between Delight and Delirium, when she was only Del. She didn’t define any particular concept at this time. In fact, she was really just a girl unsure of whether she’d fade away into nothingness or not. Her memories of this time are more unsettling to her than anything else.

Although Del doesn’t always know when she’s doing something that others would consider negative, she has learned for the most part to ask permission before she does anything to anyone.

She has learned this mostly because she knows that within camp, anything she does to one person will affect how many others think of her. And she doesn’t want to lose her friends.

Del doesn’t try to make friends. It just happens sometimes. When it does happen, she enjoys it. When it doesn’t, she forgets.

Despite not trying to make friends, she does have a compulsion to interact with people. Delirium being a state of mind, she needs minds to interact with, even it’s just talking.

Delirium’s best friend is River, because River happens to have the same story as her. Delirium is to some extent aware that River is a metaphor for her. She does not think it, however. It’s peripheral, forgotten, and intrinsic in the fabric of her being. She does not know whether or not River knows it.

Without Barnabas, Del has to rely on other people to take care of her. She considers Allen almost as good as a doggie.

When in camp, Delirium is aware of all time-lines that she exists in that exist in camp. That is, she is aware of time from the beginning of her existence to the furthest point in the future that anyone in camp has experienced. She does not know that she ever didn't have these memories.

Death is someone Delirium will not go to in a crisis except as a last resort. It is not because she does not trust her sister, or like her sister, or want her help. It’s because she somehow feels that asking Death for help is cheating.

Sometimes, Del will stand in the lake up to her waist and listen to it and not say a word for days.

When it comes down to it, Delirium wants to be liked. Sometimes she doesn’t want to be touched, or spoken to, or looked at, but she wants to be liked. She wants to help people. It hurts her when they don’t want her kind of help.

Delirium thinks Ash is amazingly clever.

Just an essay to prove I've been thinking too much.

2006-04-24T19:21:04Z

Okay, so... I'm getting kind of annoyed with my characterization of Delirium. And clearly I've put way too much energy into thinking about it. Because somehow I produced an essay.

My fear with the way I’m playing Delirium is that I’m playing her too harmlessly. In canon, Del is sometimes cheerful and enthusiastic, but she also spends a whole bunch of time being very blank; she gets completely apathetic and just asks questions reminiscent of a little kid going “Why? why? why?” It goes without saying that she also has huge fits of depression and screaming temper tantrums. However, most of all… she of all the Endless does stuff with her power while around human beings. Like… making little frogs in the lobby of a travel agency. Stuff like that.

The way I’m playing her, I’m trying to avoid the temper tantrums pretty much altogether, simply because Del reacts violently when she’s unhappy with someone, and I can’t make you all go mad. For one thing, I’d run out of ideas for it pretty fast, and for another thing… well, most of the people who Del could potentially strike out against are probably people for whom going mad would be sort of an involved and unpleasant experience, and then we’d have to play it out, and… no.

Anyway, what I’m really getting frustrated with is the fact that I keep playing Del as this sparkly, dancing fairy – disconcerting to many, but not dangerous. And insanity should be dangerous, should be a little scary. Which I’m pretty sure isn’t coming across. I don’t think I’m playing her strongly enough. I’ve got the playful, okay. But the impetuousness and the brokenness of her? Not so much.

One other nitpicky thing – I’m not sure Del would be quite so willing to tell everyone her name as I’ve made her. She doesn’t ICly reveal it to a lot of people. So she will probably be a bit more evasive about that with people she meets in the future. And she won’t know the names of people who haven’t been a bit crazy at least, in their pasts.

Um. Thoughts? I guess what I'm really saying is: does anybody want to volunteer to piss Del off and go crazy for a post or so? You will be rewarded with love and... probably bribed with drabbles. Because they're fun to write.

Drabble Meme!

2006-04-21T22:14:22Z

Yeah, so. I'm between exams. For an entire week. And I guess I could just study hardcore the whole time, but... yeah right.

So! Drabble meme! The in-camp canons I am more than passingly familiar with include: Anne of Green Gables, Bleach, Buffy, D. Gray-Man, Discworld, Firefly, FMA, HP, Sandman (duh), Star Trek, and Star Wars. That said, I ask that at least one of the characters in any given request be from one of those canons, so I at least have something to go on. You can request totally outside of them, but I reserve the right to... yeah, ignore your request and write something completely different. Which is not to say that, within those canons, I might not TOTALLY MANGLE somebody's characterization, but... I can try!

PROMPT ME!

Oh yeah, and this is OOC. ~~Obviously.~~ Because... I'm not that bored.

Relationship Meme

2006-04-12T22:10:13Z

And the Lord said, go forth and bandwagon. And the people went forth, and there was much bandwagoning. And it was good.

So, what does Delirium think of you, anyway?

Thank You Stories

2006-03-10T03:39:22Z

A Firefly/Sandman crossover and a Firefly/Sandman in camp scenario. Short one-shots. First one's for River. Second one's for Simon. With hearts and love and thanks and cookies.

River tiptoed gracefully through the corridors of Serenity, bare feet tingling with the vibration of the panels.

“Where are you going, little one?” the captain asked her as she drifted by.

“She’s following her fish,” River said, eyes focused to a point somewhere beside Mal’s shoulder. “It knows where to go.”

“Well. That’s surely the answer I was looking for,” Mal muttered, mostly to himself, as River continued her slow, precise steps across the ship.

“He’s. Um. A good man. Isn’t he?” Delirium looked uncertainly at River.

Del’s hair was long and wild, orange and pink and green. A small shoal of perfect, purple fish trailed in front of her, swimming against the slightly stale air.

“He keeps us safe,” River replied, holding her hands out to the fish and smiling as they darted through her fingers. “He has to. He doesn’t remember how to forget.”

“Oh. I knew someone like that, once. I think I did. He was. Um. A little scary sometimes. But he was my friend. He said so. He said he liked me. Because. Um.”

Delirium hugged herself tightly, pulling the light in around her body like a blanket.

“He was my big brother. He really was.”

River nodded, solemnly. “They’re helpful. A single thought process can’t exist without making connections. Interdependency. Like a circle of hands, holding.”

Endless eyes met human. A secret was exchanged.

Kaylee was nearly knocked over when River burst laughing into the cargo hold.

“Whoah,” she said, smiling at the girl’s playful mood. “Careful you don’t ‘splode the whole ship with your dancin’.”

“We won’t!” River giggled, flinging her arms forward.

Kaylee watched in amazement as River leaned back, and farther back, spinning around and around with ever-increasing speed. It was almost frightening how the girl could balance without anything but air holding her up.

“Whee!” Delirium squealed as she and River spun, kept from falling by the tension of their clasped arms.

“Did you have a good day?” Simon asked as he tucked River into bed.

He smoothed the hair back from her face with a smile both loving and sad. River nodded at him.

“Made a friend,” she said, wishing she could take it back as his forehead creased.

“A good day,” she reiterated. “Danced. The chaos was friendly today. Stayed up and talked.”

Simon’s smile returned, hesitant and awed, but there.

“Goodnight, Mei-Mei,” he said.

As he turned out the light, he thought he saw someone out of the corner of his eye, a girl no older than River, standing by the door in a halo of color. He was not surprised when he turned and no one was there.

The man at the hospital door was thin and tall and very pale, with a shock of inky hair and eyes like fast-approaching stars in the black. He said nothing, but watched Simon intently.

“Excuse me,” said Simon, when the silence became ominous. “Did you need something?”

“It is possible,” said the stranger. Or was he a stranger? He seemed very familiar, although Simon couldn’t place him.

“Is it… something I can help you with?” Simon tried again.

“No. I do not think so. I am here to observe, for the time being. Please carry on.”

“Actually, I was about to leave. I should check on River.”

“I see. Then I will accompany you.”

It was his voice, like a dark echo, that stopped Simon from arguing.

They went to see River. She slept, deeply but uneasily, murmuring to the night, flexing her fingers.

“Shh, Mei-Mei,” Simon said, stroking her forehead. She stilled.

“She dreams of the house where you were born. She walks through it, alone, looking for something she’s never seen. But all the doors open onto fields of sky,” the pale stranger said, behind him.

“I’m sorry?”

He looked up, but the stranger was gone.

That night, Simon dreamed that the camp had been overrun by chibis of the companion to whom he’d lost his virginity. He tried to talk to one of them, but its face distorted into that of a reaver and he fell backwards, into the lake. It was warm and comforting and much easier to breathe than the air. He looked up and saw the bottom of the lake. The tentacle monster waved at him lazily, upside down. Looking down, he saw the blue sky, forever away beneath his feet, and he was falling, falling up, accelerating away from the earth with terrifying speed.

It was the stranger from the hospital who caught him before he reached the ozone layer.

“My youngest sister has asked that I grant you a favor, Simon,” he said. “She has requested that I grant you a boon.”

“Um. Thank you?” Simon tried to make sense of the situation. Chibis. Falling up. “Are you – I apologize if this seems rude – are you a dream?”

“Yes,” said the stranger. “Yes. I am Dream, of the Endless.”

“Oh. I mean. Uh…”

“I believe you have had the pleasure of meeting my sister, the Lady Delirium.”

“Uh. Yes. Sir.”

“She has befriended your sibling. It is on her behalf that I am doing this.”

“Can you make River better? Can you make her like she was before the academy? I mean, I’m trying to take care of her, but the extent of the damage that’s been done is so great, I hardly know where to begin sometimes. Neural surgery isn’t even my specialty. Can you do that? Can you give me back my little sister?”

Dream looked at him, considering. When he spoke again, it was in tones of regret.

“I cannot do that, Simon Tam. I, too, know what it is like to feel as though one has lost a sister through… unfortunate changes. But I cannot take back what has already been done.”

The earth rotated, far above them, and Simon fell into it as the words echoed through his mind:

“Instead, I will give you this. It is a point of view, Simon. A third option. Your sister is growing into herself again. She is no longer a child. It is acceptable for her to take care of you. Remember this, Simon. Build a relationship, not a dependency. I believe you will find this helpful in the future.”

And then he woke up.

App Mcsnap

2006-03-07T23:56:22Z

According to Neil Gaiman’s Vertigo comic books series Sandman, seven anthropomorphic personifications of essential aspects of the universe exist. They are known as the Endless, and in order of age are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction (who quit, and is now just sort of… a really cool hobo), Desire and Despair (who are twins), and Delirium. Delirium was once Delight, but changed untold aeons ago for reasons that only she knows. She appears to be a punk kid of anywhere between twelve to twenty when in human form, but her form is the most varied of all the Endless. She has been known to be a thousand perfectly formed multicolored tropical fish when she decides to be, or possibly when she forgets not to be. Delirium could potentially get stuck in a place like CFUD, since her older brother Dream once got stuck for seventy years in somebody’s basement, in a magic dome made by a bunch of truly obnoxious early twentieth century British hedge-wizards.

Obviously, she can have a variety of effects on the minds of those that surround her. For instance, if someone upset her, she could potentially make them be covered with invisible insects for the rest of their life. Or make them see only colors. She’s equally dangerous to people she likes; once, she made someone “always be happy for ever and always,” and I don’t even want to think about what that means. (She could be her own little camp virus if she wanted to.) She reacts to situations with a child’s spontaneity, so even though she’s immensely powerful and knowledgeable about certain things, I don’t think there would be a god moding problem. For one thing, she’s too unpredictable and just plain messed up. For another thing, half the time it wouldn’t occur to her that she could fix anything, and even if she tried, her solution probably… wouldn’t be what others would call a solution.

Delirium tends to need someone to take care of her. She gets lost easily, has really bad days, and has trouble expressing herself in a way that people can respond to. She can be completely adorable and completely scary. She’s broken and funny and loveable and playful and sad. Also, since she is delirium, anyone who’s ever been delirious or insane will find her unsettlingly familiar.

Um. I came here by myself. I can do that. If I want to. Because I guess I was already sort of here, but then I was really here. And then I got stuck. This is a weird little place. It’s like an itty bit of everywhere. But with tail-gaters.

Um. They’re actually alligators. I know that. Except the other ones. With the different teeth.

…tailgaters.

Once I was driving and you can only do that on one side of the road. And you’re not supposed to be a tailgater. Those are for swamps.

Mostly I don’t think swamps are like this one, though. With little bits of everywhere in them. Mostly I think they’re just squishy and mud-colored. Um. I don’t know. But this one has places in it. Lots of places. Bits of…

What’s the word for the thing that’s everywhere but also it’s a little piece of whirly rock and water?

I think there is one. There must be a word. Um. I used to know it but I forgot.

Worlds?

All the people here. They’re running around looking for their worlds. Sometimes you just have to be your world for a while. You know.

Everybody wants somewhere back. Or someone. Or something. Like that. They all want to go home. Except they are home. And they’re here. At the same time. Like a race with two people except they’re the same person really. I don’t know. They’re going to the same place after everything’s over for this time.

Oh. Oh, wow. There are purple gorillas here. That’s really good. I didn’t even think of that before.

I think I want to be a swimmy balloon now. With stripes.