[ OPEN ] hide your love, don't be shy

[godshattering]

Who: Claude and you!
When: all throughout August and September
Where: Cadens (pre-Nocwich), the Horizon (any time), and Libertas (post-Nocwich)
What: Catch all for both months
Warnings: For anything referencing Libertas: death, violence, and war


( Open and closed starters in the comments! Also good with prose or brackets and if you'd like to plot something more specific, you can find me at indech, arboria#1862, or by PM at any time. )

Comments

[ordinar]

[It's not that he finds Claude uninteresting. The man has a wyvern, after all, and a liveliness to him as he single-handedly keeps the conversation marching forward. It's just that Wilhelm's capacity for this sort of introductory chatter is abysmally low. He's trying so hard to think of something worthwhile to say in response that he forgets to listen and nearly misses his cue. A beat late, he realizes mid-sip that he's been asked a question. With a gulp — and a little bit of a grimace for the still scalding hot tea — he scrambles to nod.]

Oh, uh, yeah— [Off to a good start.] We have the internet where I'm from.

[Then he feels obligated to correct Claude's somewhat naive misconception. (Not his fault, as he's experienced neither the wonders nor the horrors of the internet.)]

It does bring people together from all over the world, but it also creates a ton of drama. People can get pretty nasty when they have a screen to hide behind.

[godshattering]

I could see that. It seems people everywhere have the capacity to be quite cruel when only given the chance to take advantage of doing so or when it's something they feel justified about to draw others into doing the same.

[ Claude says this casually despite it being a heavy topic, one admittedly so even without the full context of the internet enabling such behavior that he completely lacks. He thinks briefly of Julie telling him about face book, something he hadn't questioned then but sounded tangentially related, and could be to what Wilhelm says now. ]

Unfortunately, that's something I've dealt with even on just a local scale rather than the whole world being part of it though it felt like the entire world at the time. Rumors will always find a way to fly whether we like it or not.

[ 'We' being yet another partial test, to gauge whether his attempt to read between the lines of what's being said is just merely a warning even if the internet is highly unlikely to come to pass in Fodlan, or if it's from some other kind of personal experience Wilhelm's had. That's driven his decision to share his own experience, a true one though he'd rather it not be, and he follows that up with a sip of his tea. ]

[ordinar]

[He's already decided that he likes Claude. The revelation that he's also been the subject of rumors just reinforces that opinion by striking a sympathetic chord in Wilhelm.]

Sorry you've had to go through that. [Sincerity presses into his words, but a sip of tea later, he reaches for some levity.] Just be grateful nobody could turn it into a meme.

[Not that...Claude has any context for what the hell that means. By way of explanation, he offers:]

It's a kind of...joke that gets passed around online.

[He does sense that the man is trying to sift more details out of him — and he has no reason to believe it's anything more than a friendly effort to get to know him. However well-intentioned the reason, though, Wilhelm would rather not — not even in the vaguest way, not even with the longest stick — touch on that mess. That mess being how he was outed via a video of a make out session that was maybe a little more than a make out session... Even months removed from the shitstorm that followed, just thinking about it makes his whole being clench up like a fist.]

[godshattering]

[ At the apology - appreciated as it is given it's a rather kind gesture, considering it's not like one needs to be offered at all, really - Claude just shrugs. The specifics are something he's happy to let rest in the past or in reality, far out of reach where they're unlikely to matter here. Not with how many people they have from so many different worlds around Abraxas and more importantly, not now that there's others from Fodlan also here.

At a word he doesn't know, though, and can't begin to find a definition for even based on the context, Claude pauses with his tea partway to his mouth and looks at Wilhelm with a puzzled expression. The explanation soon follows and he blinks while processing that, then finally remembers to take a sip of his tea. ]

That's... a thing that happens?

[ Now he has to consider this for a moment, what with what Julie's told him about how the internet works and what Wilhelm's now explained is a potential of that worldwide connection. It's a successful distraction from his mission to find out more about the person sitting next to him. ]

Huh. That makes the pictures we used to draw on paper as jokes - ones that whoever it was about was in on, for the most part - and pass around the academy seem ridiculously tame in comparison. At least those didn't go outside school grounds and usually ended up in one of the classroom fireplaces before too long. We had some ongoing pranks too that I might've been mostly responsible for, but those were only witnessed by whoever was around.

[ordinar]

[This is a position Wilhelm rarely ever gets to occupy — actually knowing more about something than someone else. After what feels like an age of stumbling around in ignorance, he finds that he enjoys the change in role. Claude's distraction from pursuing more personal questions is, of course, a bonus.]

Once something gets posted online, it never goes away. People repost it to other sites and save it on their phones. Basically, there are thousands of copies getting passed around. If not millions. So...

[The fireplaces of the world are no match. Metaphorically speaking? He takes a measured sip.]

And everything gets turned into a meme. Doesn't matter how serious it is, or how personal, or whatever. It's fair game.

[godshattering]

Huh. [ A placeholder for a better reaction after he mulls this over and takes another sip of tea while doing it. ] That sounds-- well, I was going to say unpleasant, but I feel like that doesn't really cover it especially with nothing ever disappearing. As much as there's downsides to not having anything resembling the internet where I'm from, unless you want to count when someone's collection of scandalous letters gets published and high society gets all in a tizzy, not having to deal with something existing forever seems like an okay enough tradeoff.

[ Honestly - those rumors he'd mentioned? While them being repeated by mouth and getting more and more warped with each iteration isn't exactly great, there's a chance for them to be corrected and stopped there. Eventually they'll end; in Wilhelm's world, it seems like that isn't the case at all. ]

Just thinking of when I was a teenager, [ followed by a wry smile a second later because he knows How That Sounds, ] which wasn't that long ago for the record, and assuming that we're all the same around that age, I can see how things might escalate quickly. Seems like a good way to become infamous easily or labeled that way whether it's accurate or not.