2022-03-27: MEMBERS ONLY: Arguing with Dolls

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<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

___[NO ARCHIVE] Radio Chat!~ Call Asciel! Yes right now!~ (please read rules) v[(n.~)]

        1) Reload call system! Queue will clear at regular intervals and a new number will come up.

        2) Please be polite and courteous! You'll be kicked and your account logged if you aren't.

        3) Have fun!


The stream starts on a familiar cozy living room background. Blank, but for the slow yet upbeat little tune in the background. Then-! From the side, a puff of dark teal hair sloooooowly tipping into frame. Then the bright orange headphones. Then a forehead - then those equally orange eyes-!

Eventually, the little sliding in game is concluded, and Asciel swings into frame with abundant swaying and bobbling, giving her warm, cozy little laugh. "Goooood evening, good evening! Aaaaaaah. Are you all comfy? ...Yeah, don't forget that - I figure a lot of you are hunched over and staring at your phones . . . but! Buuuuut. You all know that you can't think properly when dealing with pain or discomfort! You'll constantly be thinking of that. Always prioritize dealing with your physical wellness before getting off the deep end dealing with others! Heehee...AIs don't have to deal with that, but I'm pretty sure most of you watching are humans, yes yes!"

"Without further delay, though - the lines are open! Who's gonna call in first...? I'm all settled for the night, and here to guide you on your path~" 

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


Asuka's sitting cross legged on a chair in her room, a controller hooked up to her laptop as she leans forward, trying to beat her latest speed run times in this game. Her phone is just off to the side playing the countdown to the Virtual Sage's stream. "And that's... Rambutan." Asuka says, looking satisfied as she finishes her Magical Princess Natural Lychee run right as the Virtual Sage's show actually comes on.

The opening greeting though causes her to side eye her phone as she sits up straight, and stretches. Putting down her controller during the credits roll. Swiveling around the chair casually, she plants her feet back down and snatches up her phone. Moving to her bed instead, laying down...

... and holding her phone up overhead, so she's looking up at it. It's a comfortable posture she's taken many times, when giving herself a pep talk.

"It's no different." She tells herself. "Just like a doll." Asuka still has to work herself up to hitting the link.

Much to her surprise, the queue moves faster than expected, much faster, and Asuka stares in silence as the phone connects, sideeyeing it in disbelief. As she then connects the call to her interface headset. "Hey... this is..."

Her eyes shift from side to side for a moment before deciding on a handle. "... S-2, calling in. So, I've always relied upon myself for just about everything... that's how it's supposed to be... which means that other people just complicate things - right?"

She takes a deep breath, now for the hard part, "For example, work is requiring me to live with this guy my age... he's this idiot with some real Daddy Issues. And... he just can't take a hint! I want him to stay far away from me but he just keeps pestering me, trying to make me meals and stuff. No matter what I do! Normally I'd just keep decking the guy until he stopped - but this loser... supervisor... of mine at work is threatening to suspend me if I do that."

There's a sort of tentativeness in her next question... as she's hoping for validation perhaps, from a doll whose voice isn't hers, yet she feels in control of.

"What do you think of that? It's so stupid right?"


<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

A vivid smile crosses Asciel's lips once Asuka's on the line, eyes brightening and twinkling for just a moment - before they close tight, gently nodding along with every word Asuka provides.

"Aaaah. Thank you so much for calling in, S-2. It's a pleasure to hear your concerns. Mhmhmhm~"

For a little while, Asciel's pondering, eyes gazing upward, hand shifting over to tap her chin, each movement shifting wires on her headphones. It's a high-effort avatar for sure! But still easy to tell the seams, the limits of what can and can't shift on screen.

"Relying on yourself is something you value a lot, yes? I hear it very much. Mmmmm...I've long held that it's a way of thinking that burns people down to their limits." Her eyes gently crack open once more - gazing directly at the screen, directly at Asuka's eyes - though she's not so intrusive as to track them -completely- if she looks away.

"...wouldn't it be -nice-, to not worry about where your meals come from, to not worry about learning how to make them - if this world didn't demand that you figure it out on your own? You know? Self-reliance is a thing that only has any meaning because you've constantly had to be that way just to survive. But..."

Her face leeeeeans in a little closer, taking up a bit more screen real estate. "...the only thing that can stand alone is something inhuman."

A warm little laugh jingles merrily afterwards, and she back right back down. "That meaning - if a human were really totally self-sufficient, there'd only need to be one of them in any given place, yes? Everyone's homes would have all they need to feed themselves, to build things for themselves, and nobody would feel at all any guilt about being lonely. You wouldn't have a -word- for loneliness."

"...I think this person that you're living with, who's struggling with their own situation...daddy issues, cooking for people...yep, that's classic difficulty with self-worth. Probably~ I can only know so much about him! But it's not about him - otherwise he'd be the one calling me, fufufu.~" 

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


Asuka watches the avatar move... so doll like, like she was holding it up as a hand puppet. Certainly it's a high quality doll, but still a doll...

She listens though, as if she were the one controlling it. Her eyes seem to become a bit abstracted as Asciel says 'Wouldn't it be nice?'

No. It wouldn't be. She hates watching people who can do that.

It's so easy for them to live that way. And so hard for her.

Because she's not...

'something inhuman.'

The sudden avatar getting that close along with that statement causes Asuka to snap back to attention. Sure she heard all of it it's just... that struck it home.

She's not human. She can't have any of that. She doesn't want any of that.

"Right? It's not about him! Not really."

Asuka clears her throat, then follows up, "I get your point of course. That it's impossible. Even buying some ingredients at the store fails the challenge. Yet what if I just wanted to be as self-reliant as possible? What if I just wanted to cut as many people out of my life as I could?"

She takes a moment, then adds quietly, "What if I really didn't ever feel lonely at all?"

Another pause, before she adds, "That's pretty inhuman, right?"

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

>Internal note: Wow, this catch is way more fucked than I thought~

Asciel's -so- close to unloading that special brand of sadism she can't help but spill out. It's -exciting- to have this girl clinging on every word, it's -fun- to hear her call out such difficult things out in the open. There's. . . relatively little self-awareness about this being a potentially problematic impulse.

But she's live, and here, she's at home, she's here to relax. It's ~positivity~ hours!

"...Ah, well, I can't say I expected you to take what I said as something of a rallying call. Generally, I assume the people calling me are human, you know?~ Or Zentradi! Ehehehe...we might need a better word for encompassing them both, don't we? ...-are- you a Zentradi, is that what you're getting at?"

Another tapping on her lips, Asciel's doll like form adopting a seated posture on a chair prop, her head resting in both hands. "...well, couldn't you figure out how to get, like, a few weeks, or a month off, to stay somewhere completely on your own? Find out if it's -really- true, or if you needed people out of your hair in a specific way? It kinda sounds silly, but going out of your way to do things like that is one of the few ways to untangle any knots in your heart. Assessing the way you respond to new patterns, yes?~ Maybe just even going out camping for a weekend, hehe~" 

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


"It's nothing like that." Asuka says of being Zentradi, "I'm uh... a Coordinator."

It's not strictly true perhaps. And she knows it's not. There's are many key differences between her and the average Coordinator. But it's a convenient explanation, one her handlers told her to use.

It also may have unfortunately contributed to her unfortunate habit of dehumanizing Coordinators just like she does herself while fighting them in the AEU, but hey! Separate issue.

"I know they're not exactly popular or common right now here on the Earth Sphere, but I'm not looking to be popular either."

Her advice though causes her to lean over to the side, staring into her phone, "I get what you're saying... and it's a good idea. But I have... a purpose."

Putting two fingers up to the bridge of her nose and pinching it, she continues, "Look I know it sounds weird, like I'm some delusional Chuuni loser or something - but it's true! A lot of people spend their whole life searching for a purpose - and never figuring it out. Well I've... just always had one. My current job? That's... my purpose. So taking time off? Doesn't really work for me. I'm right where I'm supposed to be..."

Dropping her hand away from her eyes, she looks away from her phone and at the bedspread, "... it's everyone else around me who isn't."


<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

Asciel takes this hesitance about what Asuka is. . . and takes it mostly on the face of 'people get weird about that on Earth'. ...indeed, -some- in the chat briefly say something rather uncouth, though their messages are quickly removed.

"Ahahahah~ Don't fall for what the biggest and loudest say down here! Coordinators are just planned humans. Much like a house is a planned hut. It's just taking tools and using them - and the tool in question was DNA. I'm going to be rather fussy if even up in the PLANTs they're starting to emphasize the divide. I was planning a little concert up there, actually!"

"...But it sounds like you're clear-headed in your role, yes? ...Maybe you should sharpen that role. Push deeper into it, and let the people who are trying to do -their- singular role fill in some of the gaps you left behind. Wouldn't you be way more efficient at the most important part of your job if you didn't have to care about cooking? All that time spent wrestling with that could be spent refining yourself."

There's a brimming, warm assurance to Asciel's smile. The background around her gets fuzzier - a little more pastel. Her own little world tints to reinforce her own claims.

"Nobody's role is to be everything. Yours will one day bump into people who don't want you to assert it either - and they'll be the ones who've gotta be convinced it's their turn to give in!~"

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


Asuka might catch a few glimpses in the chat before they're removed, and the grip on her phone might tighten somewhat. She may not be a Coordinator, but she knows what it's like to be ganged up on for being perceived as one. And part of her wants to reach across the internet and give a few people a black eye.

Fortunately Asciel manages to defuse her aggression somewhat before it gets worse than that.

"Yeah... just planned humans..." The way she trails off, may sound like perhaps it's not the full story on that. But it'd be a truly monumental feat to suss those details out of her.

"A concert huh?" It would be dangerous, or impossible for most idols... but... "Well I suppose that'd be fine for you."

The Virtual Sage though offers some advice, and Asuka doesn't quite smile, but the edges of her lips do tighten up somewhat. "Tempting. It'd be easier if that were possible for us. But we're all in competition too. At the end of the day there's only going to be the best - and all the rest... well... they'll just be gone."

She waves a hand, gesticulating with it in mid-air, "I hate it though. I wish they'd just acknowledge my talent so we could move on. Until they do, I'm stuck dealing with my competition. Like, just as an example. My first kiss? It was from this girl I'm up against, a real weirdo. She ambushed me with it as a part of some messed up power game after she couldn't beat me."

Strictly speaking Asuka didn't beat her EITHER as it was a draw but...

... right now she's here to make herself feel good.

"Now she goes around calling me her 'best friend' even after I keep telling her to shove off."

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

This girl...her firmness in her 'role', that insistence on overcoming her competition...

Asciel wonders, for just a moment, if the thing she feels for Asuka is some sort of <hate>. That toxic will to triumph that she's come to ascertain only she deserves...

>Absolutely none of that. What I'm seeing here is not something to <hate>. No.

>I know what I think of it. It's pathetic. The thing wrong with this world.

"...Fist kiss, eh?~" Asciel diverts into, her eyes displaying little white raster-lined hearts in a vivid flash. "Aaaah, I think that's a cute way to have that, though. No, really! Isn't it so much better than some sappy love-love situation that sours later? Hehehe. I'm a big fan of stories where kisses start with disdain. Where they start one-sided. That way you know how you feel. This person's the worst in the world, and they just claimed something precious of yours. That level of turbulence is oh so wonderful, especially if it blossoms into something more vivid down the line~"

She proclaims this with so much confidence, so much zeal, that it's almost a little embarrassing. "...I think it's actually the way I'd like my first one to go..." Asciel trails off, eyes diverting off to the side. She's thinking of someone specific there. Uh oh.

"...we're almost out of time, I'm afraid, and I didn't give you much to go on for those competitive urges...so I have to close off this little session with what I hope's a good farewell wisdom. How abooooout..."

The carefree background music halts. A dramatic little drum sting rolls.

        "Any competition has way more people watching than participating! Don't mix up the people in your life who want to win...and those who want to -watch-!"

And with that, the link Asuka has beeps a few times to signal termination-! 

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


Asuka isn't looking at her phone when Asciel starts ruminating on the first kiss. And she starts side-eyeing her phone when she starts saying it's better than some sappy love-love situation that sours later. "It... wasn't precious. It was meaningless." Asuka says, trying to forget the few nights after the fact where she'd been all twisted up trying to figure it out. Wondering if she'd been sexually harassed, or if Alouette was attracted to her, or what?

Deciding it was a power game was the kindest thing to her.

"I don't need anyone after all. But I guess... if it was going to happen, better that it did like that."

Though then Asciel speaks of Farewell wisdom, and Asuka sits back up. She doesn't really want to end the call, but at the same time - it's not precisely like with her doll, even if she is speaking to a doll. Her doll has no time limit.

"Yeah?" And then she imparts it... "Of course I know that." She says quietly, "I could never forget that."

She doesn't thank Asciel. She doesn't even say Goodbye. It's like such niceties don't even occur to her. The phone call drops off in this awkward silence as she lets gravity take her back to the bed.

And as the show continues she just lay there with the phone set down beside her. What happens if they were monitoring that? Would it count against her?

"What are you stupid?" She says to herself, "They don't... care if you talk to a doll. They don't care, so long as you're always ready to pilot your Eva."

A beat and she repeats it yet again.

"They don't care. Noone cares. You can only rely on yourself... Asuka."

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