One of the odder* things about Dirk Strider is something he himself only became aware of relatively recently in life--or if not the core feature, at least the extremity of it. Despite his dogged insistence on as-near-to-absolute stoicism as he can purposefully achieve in the face of life, his own face is also particularly insistent on a chilly impassivity he's never been able to break effectively, at least not on purpose. Some permanent disconnect between mind and body, maybe--or just another psychopathological manifestation of the blueprint later intended for use by some other splinter selfhood. Doc Scratch's perfect sphere, perhaps. Or if not that handsomely featureless (or was it featurelessly handsome?) orb, the necessary (lack of) neurological wiring for three years of incorporeal corporeality as the transhumanist pipe dream embedded in a pair of sunglasses.
The lines between 'intentional inexpression' and 'intentional expression' are notoriously blurry most of the time, but it is rendered in hi-def crystalline clarity now. The cold stone of his expression during a time like this--an event not unlike an event eight years in the past (as two young men sat, sharing a moment of confessional logorrhoea--a haemmorhage of the psyche, if you will--)
If he could have devoted any thought to the control of his expression and not just an acute awareness of its lack, he would not choose to stare down at Hades with a look of total apathy.
"Okay...." he enunciates the two syllables slowly--the first half crisp, if heavily weighted, the 'k' distinct; the second half, by contrast, drawls into silence a couple of tangible seconds after the foreign correspondent of its counterpart.
It's not that he didn't expect, going into all of this, that things would not develop in this vein. It's that he didn't expect the way this particular vein was punctured, from the inside. The gross, hot, thicker-than-watery blood spraying all over the walls and his face and getting in his mouth and thank fucking christ he's wearing shades or it would be getting into his eyes, and all of this is really just an out-of-control metaphor for the barely-controlled emotional experience of 'unpacking a whole shitton of baggage Emet just kind of announced at once?'
"Damn." He adds. Quiet. Toneless. Not quite a whisper.
"And you can't ask--"
Shit.
"--because you're dead."
Lowercase d, or at least in air quotes for the longevity of the story. Fuck. Wait. He starts to clarify--
"Too dead to give him that crystal--"
No. Wrong. Stop that one.
"--would you even want to?"
Worse. The worst.
"You don't have to answer. But you can. If you want."
Unless?
"I'm not leaving, though."
*(or potentially odder; let's not underestimate the overall oddity of the individual in question)
[Dirk Voice] holy shit,
The lines between 'intentional inexpression' and 'intentional expression' are notoriously blurry most of the time, but it is rendered in hi-def crystalline clarity now. The cold stone of his expression during a time like this--an event not unlike an event eight years in the past (as two young men sat, sharing a moment of confessional logorrhoea--a haemmorhage of the psyche, if you will--)
If he could have devoted any thought to the control of his expression and not just an acute awareness of its lack, he would not choose to stare down at Hades with a look of total apathy.
"Okay...." he enunciates the two syllables slowly--the first half crisp, if heavily weighted, the 'k' distinct; the second half, by contrast, drawls into silence a couple of tangible seconds after the foreign correspondent of its counterpart.
It's not that he didn't expect, going into all of this, that things would not develop in this vein. It's that he didn't expect the way this particular vein was punctured, from the inside. The gross, hot, thicker-than-watery blood spraying all over the walls and his face and getting in his mouth and thank fucking christ he's wearing shades or it would be getting into his eyes, and all of this is really just an out-of-control metaphor for the barely-controlled emotional experience of 'unpacking a whole shitton of baggage Emet just kind of announced at once?'
"Damn." He adds. Quiet. Toneless. Not quite a whisper.
"And you can't ask--"
Shit.
"--because you're dead."
Lowercase d, or at least in air quotes for the longevity of the story. Fuck. Wait. He starts to clarify--
"Too dead to give him that crystal--"
No. Wrong. Stop that one.
"--would you even want to?"
Worse. The worst.
"You don't have to answer. But you can. If you want."
Unless?
"I'm not leaving, though."
*(or potentially odder; let's not underestimate the overall oddity of the individual in question)