Event Log: Keepsakes

[hadrielmods]

Who: Everyone participating in the event!
What: The event log for the Keepsakes event!
Where: All around the city
When: October 15th-October 19th
Warnings: A bunch of random crap.

Well, Hope and Delight are messing with the door again, but at least this time dragons aren't involved, right? This attempt goes a bit better - sure, no one gets sent home, but if everyone will just look under their seats, they'll find a FREE [INSERT SOMETHING YOU MAYBE DIDN'T WANT AT ALL HERE]! Awesome! So nice! Yup, throughout these few days people will be finding things from home - something they loved, something they used all the time, something they hated, something they totally forgot they even had. All sorts of cool stuff!

Well, they might not actually find it. Their neighbor might, or a complete stranger. And who knows where it could turn up? At the park, half-buried? In the Silent Hill zone, kept safe by a horrifying monster? Or hey, maybe in somebody's underwear drawer. Awkward. Better try to find your stuff, or find the owner of whatever weird crap you found. It could be something important.

► This log covers October 15th-October 19th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you somehow manage to die in this event, please let us know here, and also what the hell?

Comments

[torrefied]

How true it is.

[Mello gently closes the book and glances up, giving L his attention again.]

Machiavelli gets a bad rap, but he wasn't wrong. A lot of people like to believe that those in power have their best interests in mind, that they're good, virtuous people. They don't really understand how flexible political machinations truly are. There are a lot of variables to consider. "Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good."

[He shrugs lightly.]

Frankly, I think it's all pretty sound advice, and I always have.

[Which perhaps says a lot about Mello's disposition toward the world at large - something L has probably already been able to observe about him.]

[hearthebell]

[It says so much that Mello took a book like that as truth, as opposed to what so many other potential successors chose. Religious texts, ideal-ridden narratives, things that promised a stark difference between right and wrong and assured that good would always eventually triumph. Especially when good, like the ultimate good that was L, stood in a position of power, evil ran out of corners to lurk in.]

I don't think that Machiavelli is so far from the nihilistic rhetoric of certain other influential thinkers. Monsters fighting monsters, the abyss staring back... it's all very relevant, or... was.

[L has seemed paler since arriving in Hadriel, in more ways than just his coloration. It's like vitality has been sapped from him, leaving an earnest but exhausted husk who doesn't know quite how to deal with the loss of his own relevance. Some are quick to find new purpose and establish a new life in Hadriel, but L hasn't been one of them.]

[torrefied]

I've always considered Machiavelli to be more of a pragmatist, personally.

[Not that he's saying L is wrong, necessarily - in Mello's tone, there's an unspoken prompt for elaboration, if L feels so inclined.]

It's still relevant, I think - maybe more so here, where we have actual monsters to face.

[Mello sets the book down on the bed and draws his knees up with his arms wrapped around his legs.]

But I've always found nihilism a fairly depressing branch of philosophy - I tend to fall more on the side of existentialists. "Life has no meaning a priori … It is up to you to give it a meaning." “I rebel; therefore I exist.” That sort of thing.

[None of this is likely surprising.]

[hearthebell]

[Truly, none of it is very surprising, knowing Mello. Of the forerunner's for L's title, it makes sense that he would be the one with an interest in philosophy, the way lives are lived and the reasons for certain methodologies. L can easily envision the 14-year-old Mello poring over such books; he has a hard time imagining Near doing the same at any age, although it would be dangerous to assume that any successor contender is predictable, especially over years L did not witness unfolding.]

You did a lot of rebelling, in a lot of all-or-nothing situations. I don't find the side you fall on terribly difficult to believe.

You deserved to exist longer than you did. I've always been in awe of people who have such a strong desire to exist.