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[Veiki]

[spoiler]

In the waning days of that patriotic conflict that resulted from corporate secession sometimes referred to as The Exodus War as my direct primogenitor would have called it; a group of neuroscientists, cyberneticists and those kind of guys who think sticking nanometre thick meshes of electroencephalitic materials into people's brains just to see what happens explored that ever abstract of questions: Hey, how do we bring people back out of that wetgrave?

I'm not sure if results were as planned but hey out popped me: Infomorph ex nihilo. Guilty as charged.

So I am who I always am, which much like an AI programmer with a penchant for profanity is just stochastically... recursive

[/spoiler]Reference

[spoiler]

I did not have a planet to call home but I do remember my childhood residence.

I remember the austerity of its empty space and blank walls. The cold concrete against the tips of my fingers and the soles of my feet. The many stairs and rooms devoid of anything but myself. The motes of dust I would watch as they caught the light and lingered upon the air. It was beautiful in its own way. People always seem to clutter. Clutter with the detritus of their own lives. The little bits of paraphernalia they desire others to remark upon. I prefer the emptiness. Solace is a comfort especially when everything just is. Just so. Just as it should be.

I do not like diversions that distract and deter. From the task at hand or the thoughts that linger.

I remember some rooms with glass walls. Opaque. Obfuscating the voices. The voices that gave me games to play.

Veikitamo. Look at the sequence of lights. Repeat the sequence of lights.

My highest score was six hundred and forty six.

Veikitamo. Make the jigsaw puzzle pieces fit.

I always did but it was only later I learned jigsaw puzzles were not always blank white.

Veikitamo. You have three colours. Fill in the patterns on the page without two colours touching on a side.

 Colouring in is always fun when it is NP-Hard.

Easy and simple games at first, the harder ones would come later.

Other rooms had different games to play. I just had to get to the other side. To the end of the maze. Then I would get cake with my dinner. I always got the cake. It was not a lie.

I remember the library. Only Father knew how to get there. He would hold my hand and show me the way. Sometimes he would let me put on the cotton gloves and read the old books. The special books. With the words lost and forgotten to memory.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I remember them.

Father taught me many things. He taught me to be strong and defend myself because I was different and others would try to hurt me, to humiliate me, to deride me because they did not understand me.

Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit.

I am a stranger to everyone; everyone is a stranger to me. All that remains is to be as the wolf.

I did not know at first why Father would send me to bed to cry myself to sleep with the taste of blood on my lips and the bruises on my thigh. It was only later that I learned to love him for it. The first and only man I would ever love.

One day there was a new and different maze. A forest. I did not know the word at first. I liked the different kind of light. That would break in new ways. The way the soil felt between my toes. Walking between the rows of bamboo stalks that shot upwards. The feel of the wind through my hair and against my skin. The strangeness of new smells. The cold water of the streams. The slick way the rocks felt in my hand as I piled them up one on top of the other.

It became my favourite place.

I was only allowed to go there when the strangers were there too. Sometimes they were alone. Sometimes they were in a group. Always I had to show Father I could be a wolf too.

It was easier when they were alone. Help. Help. I'm lost and alone and afraid, won't you help? I liked it better when they were alone. They would tell me stories and sometimes if I liked the stories enough I would wait before I got rid of them like Father showed me.

It was harder when they were together. I wasn't good at pretend then. Sometimes they wouldn't believe I was alone and afraid. I learned to get rid of those strangers first when it was dark. There was usually someone who believed me and said the other ones were silly, she's just a little girl they would say. I would try to get rid of them last.

Sometimes they would try to run away from me. They did not know how to hide in my favourite place and I already knew all the good spots. I did not know why they never looked up.

I always felt better once they were all gone floating away down the stream.

Then everything was just as it should be again. Quiet. Beautiful. Just so.

If I were to call anyplace home it would be somewhere that made me feel the same as I did in the forest of my childhood. A long hallway. A rooftop. A crossroads at night. The middle of a bridge. The staircase of an emergency exit. Inside my walk-in wardrobe. An abandoned factory or house. Sitting on top of a wall or fence. Big server rooms. Maintenance ducts and ventilation systems. Underground service systems in cities. Alleyways. Behind a building. Offices at night when everyone has gone home. Waiting lounges at a spaceport.

I do not why. I just do.

But the foremost place that comforts me and makes me feel at home is still inside the hydrostatic capsule.

[/spoiler]Reference

[spoiler]

I have to admit to a bit of a cold sweat while considering the question posed.

However. The things I take seriously:

Perfecting my disco dancing skills with the members of my personal protection team. Because after years of tearing up the battlefield being able to tear up the dance floor and get down on a Saturday night is a welcome reprieve.

Managing my rare salt collection from across the cluster. Still looking to acquire some pink salt from the mountains on Ardishapur Prime.

Reading. It does not matter too much what it is, whether hardboiled detective stories, poetry, or Amarrian scripture. Mostly detective stories.

Solitude at home and the time to just appreciate the valley outside or to walk alone in the forest to think to myself.

Falconry and rearing my small coterie of pyre falcons and kestrels.

Dinner with old comrades in the Home Guard to talk about the Good Old Days over vodka and cigars.

Trying to learn how to use my empathy not as a tool to get into people's heads all the better so I can determine where to stick the (metaphorical) knife but rather to reserve it for those I do care about.

Curbing my ambitions, but not my enthusiasm.

Understanding my capability for personal cruelty and violence should not come to define me. The knowledge I am able to be cruel and violent will always give me the confidence of being dangerous - for I have inflicted that danger upon countless many - but more dignified that cruelty is a choice and not for its own sake.

Smashed avocado on toast.

Trying to view my time in the pod and the death and violence that often serves as corollary to it less as my profession and more... as a hobby, I suppose?

Mathematics. Even if at times it makes me uncertain what is real or surreal anymore and I have to remark to myself: Well, wasn't that a fun game to play.

Exploring the doubts I have about my own Caldari consequentialist and legalist philosophical outlooks.

Baselining under different names around the State to experience the pleasure of speaking with strangers, mingling among my own people, and just to eat some hot noodles while standing on the street.

There are more than a few things I take seriously, or to read into the subtext of the question posed, find meaningful but increasingly I find myself drawn back to life outside the pod. If only because I feel that the life I had led within hydrostatic fluid was much like trying to erect a monument to self which in the end -- much like forgotten Kings -- would be dust eventually. The capsule taught me beauty and truth in its own way, but I should also seek it elsewhere. For in the nominal heights in which I existed I forgot the small things, and sometimes... well, just existing is the greatest gift of all and everything else is just a bonus. Especially at times those small things. It's just a matter of finding them.

Addendum: However there are two things I should probably take less seriously.

Definitely one is an ingrained tendency towards seeking to seize the initiative, attack, and maintain the momentum in personal exchanges. Not every exchange has to be a zero-sum transactional scenario and not every medium has to be a battlefield of in arguendo just for the sake of in arguendo.

The second... it probably ties well into questions of why communication can feel so trivial not just on the IGS but elsewhere -- and that's playing to persona for the purposes of provocation and misdirection. The reasons for it vanished along with the Shiigeru. While it says a lot about the nature of capsuleer celebrity and the effectiveness of delivering the message so to speak via the visual epistemology of style and image over a substantive publishing of thought a priori it was, quite honestly, becoming a crutch to play to character so I could maintain personal distance and revel in my own introversion.

Thirdly (Yes, I said two things) my own potential ideological blinkering when it comes to topics and matters related to the Caldari people, State, and Kaalakiota.

[/spoiler]
Reference

[spoiler]

For public release.

// Vessault // Aroniyo District // Mies System // The Federated Union

6 Juin YC 119

At a gala dinner held today in the city-state of Vessault, Kurilaivonen Chief Executive Matias Kurovassi announced the successful incorporation of the company under the auspices of the Vessault civil authority. The conclusion of over six months of negotiations to ensure compliance under Federal charter regulations the move is expected to grant further scope for Kurilaivonen to pursue its mandate of humanitarian action; social justice initiatives; ethical social investments; and political lobbying in the defense of human rights within the borders of the Federation.

Veikitamo Gesakaarin
Chief Legal Officer & Public Liaison
Kurilaivonen

[/spoiler]Reference

[spoiler]

[ 2017.06.12 18:29:39 ] Jev North > What's this I've been hearing about mermaids, Veiki?
 [ 2017.06.12 18:30:23 ] Jev North > Brief pause. Side glance at the others in channel; she frowns a bit. "..excuse me, pilots. I forget where I'm speaking."
 [ 2017.06.12 18:30:29 ] Lunarisse Aspenstar > ...
 [ 2017.06.12 18:30:42 ] Lunarisse Aspenstar > I think I am not even going to ask.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:32:08 ] Julianni Avala > /emote just keeps silent and raises a single brow.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:32:48 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > Hmm? Oh, I mentioned I have an aquarium-cum-art installation on my private vessels. The mermaids are part of it. It caused some controversy. Jason and Mizhir came over to inspect everything was above board.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:32:57 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > It was a pleasant evening.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:33:24 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > Vessel. Not plural.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:35:00 ] Jev North > /emote considers it a beat before hm-ing, almost appreciateively. "Good excuse. Well. As long as everyone went home smiling."
 [ 2017.06.12 18:35:01 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > I enjoyed the philosophical discussion with Jason regarding it. After all, art is intended to be confrontational so I'm glad it provoked him to thought and feeling as intended.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:35:27 ] Lunarisse Aspenstar > ...
 [ 2017.06.12 18:36:09 ] Lunarisse Aspenstar > Forgive me, Miss Gesakaarin, but I do find that disturbing on a number of levels.  Art should uplift and inspire.  At least the mermaids were not real it sounds.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:36:20 ] Jev North > We've strayed far from topic, though. I momentarily forgot this isn't the Jev and Veik Catch Up, Grin Like Sharks At Each Other Channel.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:37:00 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > Mizhir seemed more concerned with the nature of the augmentation. Not the soda-lime respiratory inserts. The Cas9 RNA transcription to grow their tails seemed to be be upsetting for her. However, I assured her...
 [ 2017.06.12 18:37:17 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > The process is reversible once their indentured work contract is complete.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:39:48 ] Jev North > I love how you said "is reversible," as opposed to "will be reversed."
 [ 2017.06.12 18:41:11 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > It is as ever always a choice with me. I simply open the door, as to whether someone steps through? Up to them.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:42:02 ] Lunarisse Aspenstar > /emote frowns. "Leading others to tempation is as bad as doing it yourself."  She raises her chin "Not my channel, however."
 [ 2017.06.12 18:42:37 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > I lead no one to anything. I simply offer choices as I said.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:43:14 ] Lunarisse Aspenstar > "Some choices shouldn't be offered" she says quietly.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:43:29 ] Jev North > Of course, but the temptation lies in the kind of choices-.. ah, yes, that.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:43:39 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > As I told Jason. He found the affair undignified and I told him if it is an indignity it was an indignity chosen by those who took it.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:44:46 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > More importantly, for me it was a reflection on being an egger. Yes, some choices should not be offered. Such as what -- the promise of payout for your crew at risk of their own lives?
 [ 2017.06.12 18:45:16 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > I told him, my work is just the mirror darkly. Look, or do not.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:46:25 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > You see debasement, indignity, exploitation? Welcome to the pod. I do not feel much need to hide who or what I am, but in the least I can make the experience of it aesthetically pleasant.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:46:50 ] Jev North > True on the one hand, something of an easy escape on the other. Pretty much every capsuleer is guilty of some things that would be heinous crimes under different circumstances - does that mean we don't get to judge any choices, at all, ever?
 [ 2017.06.12 18:48:04 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > No, not at all. How we deal and confront the shadows within us differ, there is no one solution, no easy path. It is a struggle, and as it should be.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:49:16 ] Jev North > "I guess they should thank you for giving them the opportunity, hm." She delivers it completely straight-faced.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:50:39 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > If they are adherents to the Achuran faith, I but showed them another reflection of reality.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:51:30 ] Jev North > Mostly by virtue that it would be hard to show them something which is not.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:52:24 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > Yes, and at times it is confronting with difficult choices to be made.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:55:49 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > They made their choices and I made mine, albeit with salted fields and many a burnt bridge along the way.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:56:53 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > I can be this way because I know there is no redemption, nor should there be.
 [ 2017.06.12 18:57:38 ] Jev North > /emote tilts her head a fraction. "What's redemption, in this case?"
 [ 2017.06.12 18:59:36 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > A sense of normality. Rest.
 [ 2017.06.12 19:00:38 ] Jev North > /emote still seems a tad skeptical. "Why do you think it's impossible? Just the way you're wired?"
 [ 2017.06.12 19:02:45 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > Perhaps, yes. Deep down, there is always... a hunger, an urge. Ever since I was a child it was there. I can resist it sometimes, sometimes for a long time, but eventually the beast has to be unleashed upon someone.
 [ 2017.06.12 19:03:58 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > So I know, because of that I must be a stranger to everyone and everyone a stranger to me
 [ 2017.06.12 19:05:31 ] Jev North > Mm. Not completely bereft of morality, then.
 [ 2017.06.12 19:06:45 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > I am aware of what I am, Jev, and being aware I know it cannot be fixed. Only suppressed, for a time.
 [ 2017.06.12 19:08:45 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > It is why I kept you and so many others at a comfortable distance. Not out of any awkwardness, but knowing getting close to me and what I am capable of is not something I wanted to realize.
 [ 2017.06.12 19:11:22 ] Lunarisse Aspenstar > /emote is quiet.
 [ 2017.06.12 19:13:12 ] Jev North > "Thank you, I think. It shouldn't have been too hard to keep some distance, in my case - I can't recall ever trying to, offhand." She grins.
 [ 2017.06.12 19:14:21 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > Ah, I admire from afar, dear.
 [ 2017.06.12 19:15:03 ] Jev North > "For what it's worth, you're a great friend to have under fire. All we need is a light repeater team to follow you around, shooting all the while."
 [ 2017.06.12 19:16:47 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > /emote laughs, "Oh, I'm sure... but yes, there's a reason I take the piss so much. Sometimes it's a means to adjust, knowing what I am."
 [ 2017.06.12 19:17:42 ] Jev North > /emote half-smirks. "You don't say."
 [ 2017.06.12 19:18:34 ] Jev North > I'm off. I'll console myself by noting that we at leat touched on morality.
 [ 2017.06.12 19:19:16 ] Veikitamo Gesakaarin > Mm. Be well, dear.

[/spoiler]

[Veiki]

Don't mind me, just building a background run sheet for Veik.

Notes:

Yes sometimes even I forget what Veik bullshits about in public.

Yes, the public profile of Veikitamo Gesakaarin can be considered to be both incoherent and inconsistent. There are reasons for this:

a) I haven't RP'ed with an interest towards character interactions (with some exceptions) for a couple of years now.
b) As from above there exists a separation between public narrative and private narrative.
c) While I immerse myself in the game and rationalize actions via Veik's private narrative much of what she does and displays to others plays to her public narrative and persona that she has constructed.
d) No, I don't consider other characters as the sole motivation for how Veik presents herself in public or plays to her persona/s. I consider the major impacting factor that of the baseliners that constitute her fanbase and the ancillary social media commentary culture associated with capsuleers in general as "celebrities".
e) As such what most people will see of her in public capsuleer channels and forums will always be a bleedthrough of an ostensible celebrity persona and playing to her fanbase.
f) Veik is very serious about trolling and shitposting in public because it serves as a distraction from her life as a corporate operative for Kaalakiota. If people are too busy with lol Achurans got choked and doubting the veracity of her claims, then she is able to tell the truth with impunity and remains well satisfied that no questions are asked about things like Strix takeovers, her time in SuVee, the audit of WHG and the formation of PY-RE.
g) Veik just enjoys the idea that no matter what claims to godhood may exist, capsuleers still remain as prone to the same dull, facile, and vacuous commentary and behaviour as the rest of humanity.

Yeah, I just hate Veik. One day I thought to myself where is the real grimdark in New Eden?

Is it the nature of life in the pod that desensitizes her and cuts her off from human contact?
Is it the hard moral questions of being a participant in the capsuleer war economy?
Is it the constant death and violence?

No.

I realized that the real grimdark is the constant and never-ending scrutiny. Not just from CONCORD that controls her communications networks and potentially monitors the majority of her interactions. It's the rest of humanity. The constant barrage of information, commentary, speculation, and gossip from all the thousands, millions, maybe even tens or hundreds of millions of people that might constantly tag her in the daily media churn. Where a human being in all their complexity is reduced to just another meme by the masses.

This to me was the most horrible thing that could happen to someone like Veik and yes, I just amuse myself that it is now her patriotic duty to have to co-opt all those people and at times perform for them in order to ensure the spread of misinformation about herself.

I enjoy the idea that she now has to live in a special hell of danq memes, anime fans, and those kind of people who take Ayn Rand seriously and consider themselves sovereign citizens.

Since a great deal of her views of humanity and the rest of the cluster is filtered through this lens she considers that everyday they stray further from God's light and all that remains is to just kill them all with her own brand of hard-bitten cynicism and ultraviolent weaponized autism.

I use the roleplay and Eve community as the stand-in and standard by which Veik forms the basis of her views for the rest of humanity.

[Ché Biko]

Don't mind me, just building a background run sheet for Veik.
[..]
Where a human being in all their complexity is reduced to just another meme by the masses.
[..]
to co-opt all those people and at times perform for them in order to ensure the spread of misinformation about herself.

Whoops, minded you anyway.
Interesting stuff. It made me consider how this applies to my character and... I think you may be onto something.
I'm not even sure whether it was him or others that first labelled him a pacifist, but I do know that he started referring to himself a Gallente stereotype.

[Veiki]

Updated.

Whoops, minded you anyway.
Interesting stuff. It made me consider how this applies to my character and... I think you may be onto something.
I'm not even sure whether it was him or others that first labelled him a pacifist, but I do know that he started referring to himself a Gallente stereotype.

Yes, there is a point where sometimes you do less of actual Roleplaying and more talking about Roleplaying. Ostensibly this is pretty meta, but Veik as a character is designed and played to the RP meta. A case in point for Veik would be her alleged "predilection" for Achurans. The topic came up during some drunken downtime on TS a few years back with some corpmates. I didn't write it in initially, but eventually I started playing to it IC and it became part of the character mythos.

That creation of myth is intentional and it is conducted both exclusively IC and derived from the OOC RP meta. I am well aware of the amount of player assumptions made over character/player intent; the gossip to get info in order to leverage into IC encounters; the gatekeeping of, "If you talk or play with this person we can't be friends,"; the public pastebinning of private RP logs; the speculation of who is and isn't an alt of whom; and most critically for RP the attempts at the denial of character narrative through things like votebrigading on IGS, passive-aggressive veiled OOC shitposting, and both IC and OOC character assassination. All the while trying to imply: "It's those guys who did it first, so it's fine to do it too."

On some of those counts, but not all, my hands are dirty as I've deliberately used such tactics to provoke and shut others down in what I considered a fair game dynamic. However I consider in what could nominally be called the, "RP Community," everyone's hands are dirty in trying to play to the meta -- some more aggressively than others.

As such over the years, I've constructed Veik deliberately to the best extent in which denial of narrative is ineffective while remaining consistent to her core concept. She is built around the nature of perspective and can be whatever people or characters want to see in her: Caldari patriot; former Provist Commissar; racist; traitor; mass-murderer; serial killer; Achuran fetishist; Fed spy; State spy; lawyer; troll; Gurista pirate; Sansha adjunct of the Nation unimatrix; human trafficker; attention-whore; a simple girl from Nonni; edgelord; or whatever the hell is damn pleased.

It doesn't matter.

There does not need to be consent on that count and the validation of, "See my character as I see it," is not sought or required. Because the meta of Veik is talking about Veik either IC or OOC only adds to myth and reputation of the "Fake" persona and legend which remains distinct from the "Real" Veik.

Yes, this post was meta too.

[Veiki]

Updated with a thing from the Good Word channel. I really need to clean this shit up but lazy and effort. Additionally an object lesson in saving things to remote drive so things make some semblance of sense.

Admittedly, a lot of it comes down to me tending to enjoy characters I don't personally identify with. Which probably explains a lot of the shitposting since with a character like Veik it takes time to get into her skin.

I'll probably try to play her more for serious from now on though, even if the moments of knowing irony at notions of "le edge" and having a chuckle at fellow role players had its amusement.

At core though, she really is a pretty simple notion to grasp. It's just an exploration of power granted to capsuleer. You can tell a lot about someone when you give them power and what they do with it. In Veik's case she's just a functional psychopath.

What I try to show with her is not, some kind of hey look I'm crazy watch me pull a stunt for shock value but the nature of her pathology.

To me, written as a high functioning psychopath doesn't just mean going wild and crazy just for the sake of it. It means someone who, given her level of current pathology, has absolutely zero notion or regard for boundaries. Personal, moral, ethical, legal, social, or otherwise. That is her nature and she does so, continuously, with complete equanimity because she has no restriction or incentive to do otherwise.

To me, that makes sense and indeed I think she'll probably be more compelling when I don't make much of a fuss about that, because when all the things she does is simply portrayed as something banal, unremarkable and just a casual note of interest for her I think it casts the actual nature of what she is into much sharper relief.