Stygium: Moist, Vetinari, hands-off machination, and mutual entrancement
Just found this old piece of idleness on my hard drive looking for old translations of Li Bai. May as well post.
Title: Stygium
Fandom: Discworld (Making Money)
Pairings/Characters: Moist, Vetinari
Rating: none
Warnings: authorial arrogance in attempting a Vetinari POV, but brief
Summary/Notes: Come set up shop in my parlor...
I've just noticed a hint towards Unseen Academicals in here. I don't even remember when I wrote this, but it was long before I knew UA was on the horizon (ie: before I saw it in the library and went HOMG). o.O
“Incidentally,” Vetinari remarks, tone barely interested, as black velvet swallows the white-hot flare of the most dangerous trinket (for someone, anyway; a lesson to the community at large of the benefits of taking healthful exercise and not allowing age and complaisance to swell one’s fingers to the size of plantains may be, he suspects, on the horizon) in the city, “I think you were needlessly silly to hold it all that time. I’m not a monster, you know.”
No, you’re worse, flicks under perfectly bland features. Not, let it be understood, a bland expression. No, indeed. The expression is one of a moderately well-bred man (one who knows full well that he is indeed a man and has long since discarded such protestations to that effect such as permanent stubble, a cigar that could easily choke a camel with either its stench or sheer cubic capacity, and armor painstakingly maintained for the perfect balance between perfect efficiency and the maximum possible degree of untutored, unpolished (hah, yes indeed) scruff, to take an example at random--or, to turn it on its head, a voice and even expression, wrapped in crisp crimson with gold frogging, with sufficient drawl to explode a desire for fisticuffs in all those whose demographics leaves them unable to dare satisfy it, purely for the pleasure of watching them fail to dare) caught off guard in horrified surprise.
Entirely satisfactory. Oh, not merely because it shows that his point has been made. A knows that B knows that A knows that B knows that A knows, and so on; a foregone conclusion, and one, quite frankly, sufficiently underlined for his purposes ten minutes ago, under the haughty, painted eyes of the contemptible (perhaps he ought not, after all, to judge his predecessors very harshly-this being, after all, redundant. History is malleable, but lessons learnable from the facts history obscures remain for the observant scholar). Satisfactory, rather, because he’s almost as certain that the horror is honest as he is that von Lipwig (with that instant, thoughtless intuition that marks the true craftsman) is, not failing to prevent, but, rather, instinctively permitting its expression.
Satisfying, yes. What, more than satisfying, gratifies and even satiates, is what follows: the flicker, the barest shadow of a hint of a whisper, of tolerance. Tolerance, by every focal point of belief given insubstantial flesh by human worship. Resigned acceptance, in those no-colored eyes that cloak themselves as a matter of course in a just slightly overdone (or, from a practical standpoint, in fact done perfectly) attempt to not look too innocent. The faintest of wryly philosophical twists at one corner of a moderately-made mouth just beginning (and this promises mild entertainment when its owner realizes) to run to smile lines.
It’s all about the city. Sometimes, he even thinks someone else understands that. Personal isn’t the same as important. Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty, small-minded little jerk. The truth will make ye fret. You say to people, Throw off your chains, and they make new chains for themselves. Of course, a thorough comprehension of man’s intrinsic disbelief in freedom (never believe anyone who tells you otherwise; in fact, never believe anyone who tells you anything) is only to be expected.
Sometimes, of course, of course, one must look for enlightenment in those who would disdain to be endarkened. That hearty little marching… tune, for lack of a better word, Vimes’s trainees had been galumphing around the city shouting with tormented and perspiring expressions as a happy troll chased them with a club with a nail on it, for example. How did it go? Why we sing this we don’t know; we can’t make the words rhyme properly, wasn’t it?
An affront to the very soul of a man who would, really, prefer to read even really good music than hear it played by overfed, dribbling-spitting men with sweaty, shiny faces frozen in terror under hair slicked back with odiferous oils while the conductor propels them through it in impatient flicks (or, worse, with that really appalling expression of passionate transcendence employed by those who are there to do a job of work but would like others to believe them possessed of fine, artistic souls).
An affront, one would think, and yet. And yet. And yet, something profound in the enslavement of melody and meter to rhythm, something in the helpless subservience to a higher power (which, naturally, is not in fact embodied by the club or even the nail, which are merely inanimate objects, waving around, for the purpose of).
For the city is a mechanism, a great, monstrous clockwork full of gears turning their courses over and over, choked with grease, deadened to the vibrations of even other gears not so very far away, blind to anything beyond their own metal. Ants doggedly run their paces, innocent of the great kinetic energy their weak little passes build up in the great, unthinking machine, innocent of even the implications of their lifting power. The spider understands the entangling, world-ordering power of the tensile strength it spins, the silkworm does not.
What will the chaos butterfly become, when it emerges from a spidersilk cocoon? Something intriguing, no doubt, and entertaining, and, above all, useful. He can’t wait to find out. Except, of course, that he can.
Title: Stygium
Fandom: Discworld (Making Money)
Pairings/Characters: Moist, Vetinari
Rating: none
Warnings: authorial arrogance in attempting a Vetinari POV, but brief
Summary/Notes: Come set up shop in my parlor...
I've just noticed a hint towards Unseen Academicals in here. I don't even remember when I wrote this, but it was long before I knew UA was on the horizon (ie: before I saw it in the library and went HOMG). o.O
“Incidentally,” Vetinari remarks, tone barely interested, as black velvet swallows the white-hot flare of the most dangerous trinket (for someone, anyway; a lesson to the community at large of the benefits of taking healthful exercise and not allowing age and complaisance to swell one’s fingers to the size of plantains may be, he suspects, on the horizon) in the city, “I think you were needlessly silly to hold it all that time. I’m not a monster, you know.”
No, you’re worse, flicks under perfectly bland features. Not, let it be understood, a bland expression. No, indeed. The expression is one of a moderately well-bred man (one who knows full well that he is indeed a man and has long since discarded such protestations to that effect such as permanent stubble, a cigar that could easily choke a camel with either its stench or sheer cubic capacity, and armor painstakingly maintained for the perfect balance between perfect efficiency and the maximum possible degree of untutored, unpolished (hah, yes indeed) scruff, to take an example at random--or, to turn it on its head, a voice and even expression, wrapped in crisp crimson with gold frogging, with sufficient drawl to explode a desire for fisticuffs in all those whose demographics leaves them unable to dare satisfy it, purely for the pleasure of watching them fail to dare) caught off guard in horrified surprise.
Entirely satisfactory. Oh, not merely because it shows that his point has been made. A knows that B knows that A knows that B knows that A knows, and so on; a foregone conclusion, and one, quite frankly, sufficiently underlined for his purposes ten minutes ago, under the haughty, painted eyes of the contemptible (perhaps he ought not, after all, to judge his predecessors very harshly-this being, after all, redundant. History is malleable, but lessons learnable from the facts history obscures remain for the observant scholar). Satisfactory, rather, because he’s almost as certain that the horror is honest as he is that von Lipwig (with that instant, thoughtless intuition that marks the true craftsman) is, not failing to prevent, but, rather, instinctively permitting its expression.
Satisfying, yes. What, more than satisfying, gratifies and even satiates, is what follows: the flicker, the barest shadow of a hint of a whisper, of tolerance. Tolerance, by every focal point of belief given insubstantial flesh by human worship. Resigned acceptance, in those no-colored eyes that cloak themselves as a matter of course in a just slightly overdone (or, from a practical standpoint, in fact done perfectly) attempt to not look too innocent. The faintest of wryly philosophical twists at one corner of a moderately-made mouth just beginning (and this promises mild entertainment when its owner realizes) to run to smile lines.
It’s all about the city. Sometimes, he even thinks someone else understands that. Personal isn’t the same as important. Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty, small-minded little jerk. The truth will make ye fret. You say to people, Throw off your chains, and they make new chains for themselves. Of course, a thorough comprehension of man’s intrinsic disbelief in freedom (never believe anyone who tells you otherwise; in fact, never believe anyone who tells you anything) is only to be expected.
Sometimes, of course, of course, one must look for enlightenment in those who would disdain to be endarkened. That hearty little marching… tune, for lack of a better word, Vimes’s trainees had been galumphing around the city shouting with tormented and perspiring expressions as a happy troll chased them with a club with a nail on it, for example. How did it go? Why we sing this we don’t know; we can’t make the words rhyme properly, wasn’t it?
An affront to the very soul of a man who would, really, prefer to read even really good music than hear it played by overfed, dribbling-spitting men with sweaty, shiny faces frozen in terror under hair slicked back with odiferous oils while the conductor propels them through it in impatient flicks (or, worse, with that really appalling expression of passionate transcendence employed by those who are there to do a job of work but would like others to believe them possessed of fine, artistic souls).
An affront, one would think, and yet. And yet. And yet, something profound in the enslavement of melody and meter to rhythm, something in the helpless subservience to a higher power (which, naturally, is not in fact embodied by the club or even the nail, which are merely inanimate objects, waving around, for the purpose of).
For the city is a mechanism, a great, monstrous clockwork full of gears turning their courses over and over, choked with grease, deadened to the vibrations of even other gears not so very far away, blind to anything beyond their own metal. Ants doggedly run their paces, innocent of the great kinetic energy their weak little passes build up in the great, unthinking machine, innocent of even the implications of their lifting power. The spider understands the entangling, world-ordering power of the tensile strength it spins, the silkworm does not.
What will the chaos butterfly become, when it emerges from a spidersilk cocoon? Something intriguing, no doubt, and entertaining, and, above all, useful. He can’t wait to find out. Except, of course, that he can.