[ open ] .002 though I am empty, I still warn the sailors on their way

[watermarks]

Who: Katara
Broadcast: Written, Video
Action: Yes! Blue Fish and Planet
When: Message sent Monday, midmorning. Some backdated shuffle action.

[After giving it some thought, Katara decided to make an open network post. She wanted to write it out, but as part of her habit from living with Toph, she decided to both transcribe and say it aloud:]

I want to thank the person who put the memorial into place. If you get in touch with me, I can help you get the number to fill in.

I know that a lot of us have been pretty impacted by what we found here. I don’t know how long we’re usually on a planet, but I was thinking… it might be good to have some kind of remembering ceremony by the memorial? It feels important to find a way to show honor to the lives that were lost here. I don’t know what kind of funeral rites they would have preferred, and there’s no way to respectfully move them, so… maybe some fire and some music? Does anyone have any ideas?

I know that this might not be for them as much as it is for us, but… I think that’s important too.

(OOC: Please feel free to threadjack all up in this conversation; Katara would like to make this a community effort, because it feels like it’s something that’s needed to her.)



[The confetti is still as annoying as the last time it happened, but Katara is happy to be on her brother’s ship. She’ll want to wander around and meet everyone, though no doubt Sokka will soon join her to give her an Official Tour. (Did she really need to know every single detail about the ship and all its history? Probably not, but now she does, unless someone saves her.) She’ll spend some time in the kitchen and try to figure out what she needs to bring up from the planet, and then do the same thing in her new room.

Before she heads back down to the planet, she’s going to try to linger long enough to meet everyone.]


[Since the Blue Fish will likely be her permanent home as long as she’s on the fleet, that means that Katara will be doing what she can to take advantage of the free… everything. Her first stop is a hardware store where she picks up a wheelbarrow and several cans of water-based paint. The color - some shade of blue, though she wants something a little lighter too. She’ll be there pondering over choices for a bit.

She also has no qualms about stealing a good idea from the Vanquish when she sees it, and will pick up a chalkboard for the kitchen there as well. She spends a long time staring at a small electrically powered fountain for noise, trying to decide whether or not to get it. For now, she walks away.]

Hmm… maybe I should get different chair too?

[So feel free to find her, either at the hardware store or wheelbarrowing her way back to the shuttles! After dropping the paint off in the cargo hold, she’ll return once more to the planet for a bunch of canned fruits and vegetables and rice… and maybe go back for that fountain.]

Comments

video »

[watermarks]

No, not at all. [Said as if the thought had never occurred to her, as really, it hadn't.] It's just... good to hear and good to say sometimes. I know how... draining a place like this can be.

[And in fact, she's still drained from where she'd been, as she remembers it, just before waking up here. These places are exhausting on the emotional resiliency.]

video »

[mucked]

[ softly, and with a funny hint of hesitation: ] It's not all draining.

[ -- she doesn't usually bring this perspective up when the arrivals are still so new. but, god, it can't be helped. too often now she wakes up with happy butterflies in her stomach. it's almost embarrassing. ]

video »

[watermarks]

[ She sounds like she's referring to something specific. Katara responds with a small, upward turn of her lips and a question. ]

...no?

video »

[mucked]

In the beginning, it's rather easy to write off the very organization of the fleet -- her ships and crews -- as a cheap means to keep us under thumb. Emotionally connected. Manipulated, in a sense. [ ... ] But it doesn't change how real these families become.

[ closer than any unit she's been party to, barring one. ]

Nor how real our opportunities are. [ peggy's cheeks puff. ] The fleet offers a great many lessons in how to live with as few regrets as possible.

video »

[watermarks]

[ The first bit of that, Katara understands. The second takes her by surprise. ]

What do you mean by that? What kind of lessons?

video »

[mucked]

There are two members of this fleet I was quite convinced were dead. Without being here, without learning what I have, it would have been a damn long time before I realized that's not the case.

[ it's the...simplest way to say it. ]

video »

[watermarks]

[ ...that... doesn't mean anything outside of the fleet. But the immediate nature of relief for now - that she can understand. ]

That must have been good news, I'm glad. [ So... she's got people she cares about here, who she doesn't think are alive back home... that can be a very tempting thing. ] I've found that the people in places like this can make being in them be... [ almost bearable ] worth it, in the end.

video »

[mucked]

[ it's make more sense, surely, if she dared to tell the whole story. but she so rarely does. ]

Yes. I imagine you must be a bit familiar with such paradoxes -- given you were somewhere else before you came here. It becomes a bit like tending two very separate gardens in one's heart.

video »

[watermarks]

...a bit, yeah. [ Even now, she missed her friends. So far, though the planet itself had been subject to something horrible, and the food wasn't much to speak of, she couldn't help but think she was better off here than in Luceti - no experiments, no war, and selfishly? She wishes her friends were with her almost as much as she just wishes they were all at home. You couldn't remember what you'd lost, at home. ]

It's one of those things where it changes by the day, and we can only do the best we can.

video » it'd* whoops

[mucked]

And sometimes the 'best we can' manifests as getting on with our lives and not letting circumstances stymie us.

[ a cant of her head. ]

I'd gone and wasted too much time, back home, to let myself make the same mistake here. So perhaps one garden gets a bit more tending than the other.

didn't even notice

[watermarks]

...I'm glad you found that here, Peggy. [ A brief, soft smile.

And that's all. No judgement or truisms or attempts to explain it away. ]

[mucked]

[ ahem. well! a stern clearing of her throat -- as though remembering herself. ]

Not that it's all roses, of course. We are still all of us effectively living in a panopticon. I wouldn't want to downplay such a problem.

[watermarks]

...living in a what?

[ She has never heard that word before, and is not ashamed to ask about it. ]

[mucked]

Panopticon.

[ a click of her fingers while she tries the conjure up the best way to explain it. now it's her turn not to judge; not only has peggy been in the fleet long enough to understand how such differences in vocabulary come to pass, she's also more often than not been on the questioning side of this exchange. so many people know things that have yet to be invented in her decade. ]

Pan means all. And opticon has to do with -- being seen. Observation. Shove them together and you get a word describing an infrastructure where all its inhabitants can be watched from most, if not all, angles.

[watermarks]

...that's common enough in your world that there's a word for it?

[ That's creepy, dude. ]

[mucked]

Actually, I believe no true panopticons were ever built. At least not by my decade. It was more theory than design, in the end. But there panopticon-like elements involved in a great many prisons. Hospitals. Boarding schools too, I imagine. Bits and pieces that got incorporated at some point even if the whole philosophy was a bit too...ambitious to enact.

[ there's a pause in the way she says it. like condemning the idea without really coming out and saying so. ]

[watermarks]

...I can see why that might be useful in extreme medical situations, but anything else seems like a terrible violation of privacy.

[mucked]

Some would argue privacy has no place in a prison.

[ ... ]

But I digress. We ought to have our privacy here. Although it's often assumed we don't.

[watermarks]

[She thinks of the prisons that she's heard of, seen. Thinks of Hama's description of how she'd been kept. Thinks of the earthbenders kept on ships. Thinks of what she'd heard about her own father's incarceration.

She thinks of what she would like to happen to Azula.]

...I think that I would argue with those who said that. I understand the need for guarding prisoners, and I understand the need for punishment, but there is a line. When you're stronger than someone else, when they're under your control, you have to be even more careful to treat them like people - for your sake as well as theirs.

[She frowns.] Otherwise, you lose something. Like the Atroma must have - to take people from all around the world and watch us for entertainment.

[mucked]

[ interesting. peggy does agree with katara's reply -- to a point, at least. but telling katara that she may as well be preaching to the choir isn't a necessary diversion. besides, it's useful (perhaps) to see how easily the woman is goaded into taking a position.

she's like steve, peg suspects, in that way. not a bad thing at all -- even if it runs quite counter to her own behaviour. ]

Provided what we're told is true, yes. Certainly someone is watching us; I'm not yet convinced our audience is as wide as we're told it is.

[watermarks]

[ Katara was externally processing as much as she was making her position clear; she shifts easily with the change in conversation, tilting her head slightly. ]

Because there's no evidence of the "show" on any of the worlds we visit?

[mucked]

For all our sponsor "gifts" and lauded ratings, you'd think someone might have heard of us -- but very little evidence supports so.

[watermarks]

Yeah... that's what I've heard. [ It's a little creepy. ] And the planets we go to haven't heard of the Atroma either, right?

[mucked]

Not unless there's some massive conspiracy on their parts to deny any knowledge of them and -- frankly, the simpler explanation is simply that they genuinely have no idea who the Atroma are. Or the television programme. Or us.

[ ... ]

Which only makes it all the more maddening, really. Because why on earth would the Atroma sell us a story with so many obvious holes in it?

[watermarks]

...unless the people on the planets aren't the show's target audience? You said they often need help, right? To pull off something like this... I have to guess that the technology and power is on a level I've only seen with the Malnosso, and they were using the planet's ability to shift. Nothing like - [she touches her augment] this.