[Rennac][Fire Emblem 8][Tavreynya] A Skeptic's Litany
Title: A Skeptic's Litany
Author: tavreynya
Character/Pairing/Group/Whatever: Rennac, everyone he supports with except Tethys.
Word count: 1036
Warnings: None
Rating: Pretty sure this is a G
Disclaimer/Notes/Whatever: Don't own, not profiting, debt of gratitude to FEDR but seriously you can take my Rennac muse back any time you want. He's starting to sound like my uncle.
1. Rennac does not believe that mankind will ever be confronted with a problem that money can't solve. Sometimes the world tries to prove him wrong, and as one might expect, he seldom takes this very well. His usual explanation is that it’s simply a case of not having enough money.
(2. The very idea of "enough money," in a more general sense, strains his credulity. As he scornfully tells Colm, that's what we adults call an oxymoron.)
3. Rennac does not believe in awarding points for effort. You're turning a profit, or you're not. Breaking even is a just special subclass of failure, and nothing to boast about. Colm’s failure to grasp this principle is one of the more irritating things about him, and not for lack of competition.
4. Rennac is not entirely convinced that Dozla is human.
5. At any rate, no force in the world will ever convince him that Princess L’Arachel is.
6. He’s never understood her fascination with pastries, either. She’s taken to buying two or three dozen at every market they stop in, and he would be utterly shocked if she couldn’t have better at any time back in Rausten.
7. He’s noticed that they stop in every market where someone appears to be selling mirrors. While he was never that enthusiastic about “rooting out evil wheresoever it lurks,” and has only gotten less so with each day he doesn’t get paid, he doesn’t really see how all this time L’Arachel spends staring at her reflection and striking bizarre poses contributes to this quest, and would actually rather get on with it.
8. It later emerges that she’s testing out various “victorious attitudes,” for use immediately after vanquishing the forces of evil so that all will be awed by her power. He points out that her power would awe more people if she ever actually used it for vanquishing the forces of evil, and she responds with the most condescending lecture he’s ever heard. Considering that he’s already been traveling with her for months, this is an incredible feat.
9. As an added insult, it’s about the need for standards in every undertaking. He doesn’t know what’s worse: that she doesn’t see any irony, or that for a moment there he almost thought she might.
10. He can’t quite believe he still puts up with this every day. It doesn’t seem entirely in character. Sure, there was that one time he tried to escape, and that other time, and by all rights the third time should’ve been the charm, but…
The really incredible thing is probably that every time he tries to put a stop to this madness, she’s two steps ahead of him.
11. It follows, then, that the natural state of the universe must be absolute lunacy. There’s no other way to explain it.
12. Actually, one other: the whole world could simply be out to get him. That idea has a certain luster to it at times, he won’t deny it.
13. Rennac has no doubt that someday soon people are going to stop pretending to listen to him, and instead stick their fingers in their ears and start singing any time he mentions the 50,000 gold pieces he’s still owed. He also has no doubt that the songs in question will be paeans to their own righteousness and generosity of spirit.
14. This is one of several reasons he believes Rausten is the worst country on the planet. Renais - which was in ruins at the time, thank you very much - still would have paid him almost as much as he was worth if L’Arachel hadn’t showed up just then.
15. Things that, according to a theory earlier advanced, exist solely to inconvenience Rennac:
Swamps
Snow
Moths
The undead
Pegasi
Rennac’s brothers
16. Contact with any one of these things can ruin a good jacket instantaneously (which is the principal reason Colm isn’t on that list - it takes him three days and a diagram). Rennac is always in a foul mood when this happens, and the one time Dozla suggested he might be overreacting, delivered a rant that actually almost succeeded in fazing the old man. Almost. Sort of.
In short, it’s hopeless and he isn’t even going to try anymore.
(17. Well, he did try one more time:
“Princess L’Arachel,” he said, “settle an argument for us, would you?”
“Why, gladly, Rennac. If there is any conflict between my vassals, it is no less than my duty to see it equitably resolved.”
Rennac started to point out that for the last time, he was not her vassal, as evidenced by the vast sums of money she still owed him, about which the more said the better, because somehow in all this time he hadn’t yet disabused himself of the delusion that he would ever see it, that maybe, if he kept harping on it long enough -
He started to say all of this, and then some, but then Dozla bellowed, “Well said, Princess! Aren’t we lucky to serve such a considerate lady?”
Silence but for the sound of someone’s teeth grinding.
“Now then, what was your question?”
“Never mind,” said Rennac.
Some people can’t be reasoned with. He has mentally labeled this group, for expediency’s sake, “people who aren’t me.”)
18. One day, under significant duress, he was forced to concede that Dozla or even the princess herself might have redeeming features. It’s bothered him ever since. He has since come to the conclusion that they each have exactly one - the ability to so absolutely conceal their redeeming features. Nothing any less paradoxical would do.
(Of course, there are those to whom the capacity for deception does not seem a positive quality, and he supposes that in those people’s eyes his party must be beyond salvage. In light of that, seeing the way Princess L’Arachel has attached herself to Princess Eirika is very nearly enough to move him to pity someone other than himself.)
19. If there is any one thing Rennac believes with the persistency most people assign to religion, if he holds anything as fundamental truth, it’s that he has done nothing to deserve any of this.
20. Either that or “finders keepers.”
Author: tavreynya
Character/Pairing/Group/Whatever: Rennac, everyone he supports with except Tethys.
Word count: 1036
Warnings: None
Rating: Pretty sure this is a G
Disclaimer/Notes/Whatever: Don't own, not profiting, debt of gratitude to FEDR but seriously you can take my Rennac muse back any time you want. He's starting to sound like my uncle.
1. Rennac does not believe that mankind will ever be confronted with a problem that money can't solve. Sometimes the world tries to prove him wrong, and as one might expect, he seldom takes this very well. His usual explanation is that it’s simply a case of not having enough money.
(2. The very idea of "enough money," in a more general sense, strains his credulity. As he scornfully tells Colm, that's what we adults call an oxymoron.)
3. Rennac does not believe in awarding points for effort. You're turning a profit, or you're not. Breaking even is a just special subclass of failure, and nothing to boast about. Colm’s failure to grasp this principle is one of the more irritating things about him, and not for lack of competition.
4. Rennac is not entirely convinced that Dozla is human.
5. At any rate, no force in the world will ever convince him that Princess L’Arachel is.
6. He’s never understood her fascination with pastries, either. She’s taken to buying two or three dozen at every market they stop in, and he would be utterly shocked if she couldn’t have better at any time back in Rausten.
7. He’s noticed that they stop in every market where someone appears to be selling mirrors. While he was never that enthusiastic about “rooting out evil wheresoever it lurks,” and has only gotten less so with each day he doesn’t get paid, he doesn’t really see how all this time L’Arachel spends staring at her reflection and striking bizarre poses contributes to this quest, and would actually rather get on with it.
8. It later emerges that she’s testing out various “victorious attitudes,” for use immediately after vanquishing the forces of evil so that all will be awed by her power. He points out that her power would awe more people if she ever actually used it for vanquishing the forces of evil, and she responds with the most condescending lecture he’s ever heard. Considering that he’s already been traveling with her for months, this is an incredible feat.
9. As an added insult, it’s about the need for standards in every undertaking. He doesn’t know what’s worse: that she doesn’t see any irony, or that for a moment there he almost thought she might.
10. He can’t quite believe he still puts up with this every day. It doesn’t seem entirely in character. Sure, there was that one time he tried to escape, and that other time, and by all rights the third time should’ve been the charm, but…
The really incredible thing is probably that every time he tries to put a stop to this madness, she’s two steps ahead of him.
11. It follows, then, that the natural state of the universe must be absolute lunacy. There’s no other way to explain it.
12. Actually, one other: the whole world could simply be out to get him. That idea has a certain luster to it at times, he won’t deny it.
13. Rennac has no doubt that someday soon people are going to stop pretending to listen to him, and instead stick their fingers in their ears and start singing any time he mentions the 50,000 gold pieces he’s still owed. He also has no doubt that the songs in question will be paeans to their own righteousness and generosity of spirit.
14. This is one of several reasons he believes Rausten is the worst country on the planet. Renais - which was in ruins at the time, thank you very much - still would have paid him almost as much as he was worth if L’Arachel hadn’t showed up just then.
15. Things that, according to a theory earlier advanced, exist solely to inconvenience Rennac:
Swamps
Snow
Moths
The undead
Pegasi
Rennac’s brothers
16. Contact with any one of these things can ruin a good jacket instantaneously (which is the principal reason Colm isn’t on that list - it takes him three days and a diagram). Rennac is always in a foul mood when this happens, and the one time Dozla suggested he might be overreacting, delivered a rant that actually almost succeeded in fazing the old man. Almost. Sort of.
In short, it’s hopeless and he isn’t even going to try anymore.
(17. Well, he did try one more time:
“Princess L’Arachel,” he said, “settle an argument for us, would you?”
“Why, gladly, Rennac. If there is any conflict between my vassals, it is no less than my duty to see it equitably resolved.”
Rennac started to point out that for the last time, he was not her vassal, as evidenced by the vast sums of money she still owed him, about which the more said the better, because somehow in all this time he hadn’t yet disabused himself of the delusion that he would ever see it, that maybe, if he kept harping on it long enough -
He started to say all of this, and then some, but then Dozla bellowed, “Well said, Princess! Aren’t we lucky to serve such a considerate lady?”
Silence but for the sound of someone’s teeth grinding.
“Now then, what was your question?”
“Never mind,” said Rennac.
Some people can’t be reasoned with. He has mentally labeled this group, for expediency’s sake, “people who aren’t me.”)
18. One day, under significant duress, he was forced to concede that Dozla or even the princess herself might have redeeming features. It’s bothered him ever since. He has since come to the conclusion that they each have exactly one - the ability to so absolutely conceal their redeeming features. Nothing any less paradoxical would do.
(Of course, there are those to whom the capacity for deception does not seem a positive quality, and he supposes that in those people’s eyes his party must be beyond salvage. In light of that, seeing the way Princess L’Arachel has attached herself to Princess Eirika is very nearly enough to move him to pity someone other than himself.)
19. If there is any one thing Rennac believes with the persistency most people assign to religion, if he holds anything as fundamental truth, it’s that he has done nothing to deserve any of this.
20. Either that or “finders keepers.”