ataraxion | Text; another poll

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Text; another poll

Hey everyone.

I'm sure some sort of demographics survey has been done in the past but I haven't seen one since I've been here and I'm curious. I've tried to keep it pretty basic. I know people are touchy about their privacy, and I know some aren't cool with being asked about special abilities/skills/powers/whatever, so obviously skip questions if you want to, no hard feelings. I'd rather just get name/age/planet than nothing at all, you know? Not like I'm going to hunt you down and force you to fill it out. But if you're willing to be more complete that'd be awesome and if there's something you think is important that I didn't include a field for, let me know.

Maybe there's a pattern here somewhere, maybe there's not, but at the very least it might be interesting or provide some useful data for department recruitment or something. Maybe you'll find some friends, whatever.

Thanks!

UPDATE: On request from several of our fellow passengers, I'm adding a 'relationship status' field. You're all welcome. Feel free to edit/update your entries accordingly if you want to.

(ooc: feel free to treat this as threadjack city as far as I'm concerned. if you squint it's kind of almost like an ic cr meme?)

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Could always ask the Evil Queen.

[ Belligerently pretends Gold doesn't exist. It probably manages to sound very sarcastic for a text, but there's an attempt at a helpful follow-up. ]

It isn't about lessons, Swan.

[ Grateful for the change of topic, actually—let's not talk about how much she DOESN'T want to learn to abuse magic like Regina does. ]

Then what's it about? Why do you care what I'm doing about MY magic?

[ Grateful for two seconds, maybe. Time for Real Talk with Captain Hook. ]

Believing in yourself.

[ He hasn't got magic. He doesn't want it, either, but he's seen enough of it to have ideas. Except that's the Tink end of the spectrum; as for the rest: ]

Or your cause. If you want to get your son back from Pan, you'll need it.

[ #regret.

Literally she is so mad right now that he acts like it's so fucking easy to identify why she's uncomfortable with it — why she's denying it. That he can see straight through to her insecurities does not feel like a balm, it feels like being stripped bare of her defenses. ]

It's not Pan I'm worried about. I can handle a bunch of ten-year-olds with sticks. The only thing keeping me from my son is this ship, and magic hasn't done anything to change that.

[ Hook briefly considers switching to voice or video, even finishing this in person— but he's aware he's pushing it, so he'll give her the distance of the devices, at least. ]

Not yet. Regardless of how long it takes, your son will be waiting for you when you get back. There's nothing to be gained from losing hope.

[ The ship doesn't faze him, not in the long run. It's just another kind of Neverland, removed from time, and a few months doesn't hold a candle to a few hundred years. But that's a perspective that was a few centuries in the making, and it's much easier said than done. ]

[ She doesn't have his perspective.

Emma has burned out. The first six months on the Tranquility felt like one long adrenaline high — if she fought hard enough, worked hard enough, pushed hard enough, she could get off this boat and back to her son. Henry was never far from her mind, and the pressure to get him home and safe was all that could carry her through.

That wind has left her sails. Each day that creeps by is a day longer that she feels like she's abandoned him. They'd had less than a year together — she's been on the ship almost that long, now. She's letting him down, and if it were her? By now, she'd already be lost. She'd already have given up hope that anyone was coming for her.

Regina and Belle's news tempered the sentiment, but it still sticks in her gut. It feels like she's out of time. It feels like she's already lost him, and the notion that she just has to hope and leave him waiting doesn't do much to help. It sounds exactly like what Mary Margaret would say, and in some ways, that just makes her heart ache because god, she misses her mother.

She misses her mother and she doesn't feel like there's anyone she can explain that properly to because she's never even felt like she had a mother until they were separated, and now suddenly she's orphaned all over again.

Maybe that's why she can't pretend that she's just fine with the notion of Henry waiting. Emma spent 28 years waiting for her parents to come back, to find her, to swoop in and save her, and they never did. These lonely months on the Tranquility only remind her of a lifetime of loneliness, of feeling unloved. ]

Hope won't change the fact that one day he's gonna stop waiting. Just like I did. Hope can't get us home.

[ Lecturing anyone on keeping up hope is probably hypocritical, all things considered. Hook gave up on it ages ago. It has its perks — easier to tolerate being trapped here, for one — but it has no future, either.

Losing someone isn't the same as being left. He's well aware of the distinction; he built his life around the latter, once, following in Liam's footsteps instead of his father's. So when Emma changes the terms, makes this about Henry's faith instead of hers, it makes her stance clear: Henry's more important than she is. Not surprising news, of course, but it'd almost read like a deflection if it weren't so honest.

It's a sentiment he can understand, even if it feels like something that's no longer within his reach. Losing his brother and Milah, that hadn't been a choice— losing Bae had, and it's a choice he has to live with. It's also one Emma would never make, implicitly or otherwise.

He's a lost cause. She isn't even close to being one, despite her assertions to the contrary— but either way, the crux doesn't seem all that different. He should've believed in Bae when he'd been given the chance. ]

How did you find your son?

I didn't. He got sick of Regina and came to find me.

[ Emma Swan, grand prize winner of the "undervaluing yourself and your relationships" olympics. ]

To break the curse.

[ If it were anyone else, she might just leave it at that. Yes. Plain and simple — break the curse. Like it was just some transaction. She owes Henry more than that, though. ]

To find my family.

[ Which is the entire point, of course. She owes Henry more than that, even if she doesn't think she owes the same to herself. ]

Give him some credit, love. He fought hard to find you. He's not likely to give up on you so soon.

Yeah. He found me. All so that we could lose each other again. That kid has been let down enough, and now I'm doing it to him all over again. He's waiting, and I'm getting nowhere. Magic isn't about hope, it's what got us here. You may not realize it but our lives have sucked since the day that curse broke.

[ Slight delay, this time. ]

You'd rather they all forget?

[ Pressed as fuck rn. No, she wouldn't rather that. She'd rather be back in Storybrooke with Henry and putting all of this behind her. She'd rather know what the right answer is instead of feeling like an impostor just winging it all the time. ]

Of course not.

Magic's a part of our world as much as it's a part of you. You don't get to have one without the other.

[ "Our world" meaning her family, mostly. Although she'll try super hard to do exactly that in season three, spoilers. Also don't tell Kate he just validated her argument about the arrows. ]

[ She might never see them again.

Her mother, her father, Henry. Her family. Storybrooke. Ten months in and it's becoming a realer possibility that she just won't. The thought terrifies her, shakes her to her bones, and seeing Henry down there—"Henry"—makes her realize just how much she misses it.

It kills her to think she might not be there again, and yet she can't see a place for herself there. It all still feels like a lie. Like she's an outsider trying to pass herself off as something that she's not. ]

The Enchanted Forest is not my home, and magic is not a part of MY world.

[ But it is a part of Storybrooke, and Storybrooke is her home. It feels like an impossible paradox. ]

[ Text hides a lot, but it can't hide the defensiveness and the escalation. For his part, it hides the fact that he's genuinely frustrated with the turn the conversation's taken— that's what it's been doing, anyway. Probably not so much after the next text. ]

Then we'll find another bloody way off this ship. I've managed for 300 years without magic, I'm sure we can manage a few more.

Then don't tell me what to do with mine!

[ This is now a couple fight. It's not even about what it was originally about anymore but here's Emma, bringing it back around. ]

[ Oh my god, fuck text. Switching to voice. ]

Swan.

[ Just for that. Although he sounds more frustrated and aggrieved than genuinely angry, which probably wouldn't have translated if he just typed her name very intensely. ]

What?!

[ She just sounds angry. Except it's the defensive kind of angry, the kind that's only barely holding back eleven years of buried pain. Scratch that — twenty-nine years. She's trying not to rattle apart at the edges, but it's like the wheels are coming off the car on the freeway right now.

This isn't something she's used to.

Maybe if it were, she would be able to accept it without the defensiveness, but Emma Swan is an orphan. Emma Swan was abandoned by everyone in her life, and she is not used to her walls not being enough to rebuff them and push them away.

She is not used to people coming after her, persisting even after she's taken to the offensive, and it terrifies her. Terrifies her, and makes her try harder. ]

Why are you making this your problem?

[ The worst part is that she genuinely doesn't seem to understand, can't grasp it. Can't grasp that maybe, just maybe, he actually wants to help her, actually cares. That it could be as simple as caring about her and wanting her to see her kid again, because people don't just care about Emma. They never have. She searches out an ulterior motive because it's all she's ever known. ]

[ Hook had called her out on the beanstalk the first time they'd met, then walked away when she'd tried to do the same. It's always been uneven, in that sense; playing the empathy card to full advantage without ever having to show his hand. It's easy to do when your opponent's guarding their hand too fiercely to notice anything else.

Unfortunately, signals and tells don't mean much when you can't see a person's face. He'd have to be stupid to not realize she's upset well before she speaks. The urgency of it's still startling, and it's enough to rob him of his usual caution. ]

Because I lost hope. [ A confession, maybe, but it doesn't really feel like one. It's hardly a well-kept secret, and odds are he'd have said it willingly, were the circumstances different. Right now it's too sharp, walking a fine line between outright anger and vulnerable frustration. ] I gave up, I chose this life. You've still got something to fight for.

[ Every bit of it's genuine. It's also vague; something instead of someone, and no direct answer to her question. ]

Edited 2014-07-19 08:26 (UTC)

[ The truth is that it sticks deeper than she’d like it to.

All of it feels hopeless. He has her pegged in that, and she knows that all he’s done is try to get her to see that she doesn’t have to feel that way. To get her to see hope. That shouldn’t infuriate her, but it does—hope isn’t something she can remember having. Hope skipped a generation.

The only thing that gives her any hope for herself is Henry, and he’s gone. She rubs the heel of her hand against her brow, silent as she tries to work through her frustration a moment. Instead, she just gets more exasperated. ]

So what, you wanna try and bond with me now? [ She tries to make it sound absurd. Like that isn’t precisely what they’ve been doing, even before the Tranquility. Most of all, she puts as much scorn in her voice as she can muster. ] Because to me it sounds like you’re the last person who should be lecturing me on giving up.

[ The barbs grow sharper, more pointed, more personal. If they dig deep enough, he’ll let go, and she won’t hurt when he does it down the line without her expecting it. She’ll see it coming. ]

[ Kate clears her throat. ]

I just thought you might want a reminder that this is all public.

[ Hook's only managed to use the private function correctly once so far, so this is Emma's fault, just fyi. There's a slightly muffled curse before he hangs up, though the brief clatter that accompanies the feed cutting makes it fairly clear he didn't do it by pressing any buttons. More likely options are the floor or the wall. ]

[ There's an exasperated sigh that really sounds more like a growl on Emma's end. She mad. She hesitates a moment, wanting to say something to save face, and finally deciding that yeah hanging up (GRACEFULLY) is the best answer at this point.

Thanks, Kate. ]

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Text; another poll

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omfg switching from charming to hooK WHIPLASh

different kinds of love for emma. i hope.

i'm very disoriented rn

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text > voice

voice

voice;

voice;

voice

voice

voice