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| Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] | |
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Ifnb
Posts : 343 Join date : 2017-12-08
| Subject: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:00 pm | |
| Weekends were profoundly challenging. Various school events often gave out free food. Those events largely provided sufficient sustenance for daily life. In addition, they more or less came every few days, which resulted in never having to go more than a day without food.
The real problem was when weekends added to the gap. School wasn't open on the weekends. The last school event must have been...a little over three days ago?
Hunger was of course not a problem for Marta. Allowing yourself to be disturbed by discomfort is a remarkable sign of weakness that Marta would never stoop to. Women in the past used to wear rib-squishing corsets just to keep up images. Ignoring hunger was nothing in comparison.
However, some symptoms of not having food for three days are headaches and muscle cramps. And those were...far more unpleasant. From Marta's experience, this seemed to result not from lack of caloric intake, but rather salt imbalances. He needed a source of sodium and magnesium. The other symptoms were light-headedness from low blood sugar, but he didn't actually find that unpleasant. He just needed to make sure not to stand up too quickly.
In addition, he needed a socially acceptable source. Yes, he could go to a convenience store and buy a heavily discounted, expired meal. However, that would be too shameful. He could imagine the disappointed look on the clerk. Despite his...condition, he was actually still dressed quite nicely and presentable, with designer jeans, a cashmere sweater, a brand-name scarf, expensive shoes, and the priciest of the various schoolbags that his academy offered its students.
As a result, Marta was in a very small park adjacent to two roads on both sides. He took a small bottle and filled up some water from the fountain. Due to the hot springs in Little Tokyo, many of the fountains in the district were known for having salty, mineral water. Then he wandered around the park, pulling out weeds that were known for being 1) edible and 2) having a high magnesium content, as many weeds did. He then threw them into a glass, sealable bowl.
After a few minutes of gathering such weeds, he sat down on a bench and pulled out a fork to enjoy his "meal" of weed salad and fountain saltwater. The fork was of course, the proper salad fork. It wasn't going to be tasty, but it was going to pull him through the weekend. | |
| | | Infernal Zero
Posts : 2610 Join date : 2017-11-15 Age : 27 Location : Currently Unknown. Please advise.
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Thu Jul 26, 2018 8:55 pm | |
| Now, normally, one would not pay attention to someone eating on a bench. It's am ordinary thing that happens with reasonable frequency, and in any case, not a thing to really be alarmed about. Or indeed, that's even noteworthy. However, when what they are eating is a bunch of weeds you happened to see them pulling from the ground...then, it's worth concern. It didn't help that they were wearing well kept designer clothes, of all things. That was not the attire expected of one who ate weeds. ...even the fork looked expensive. Why...?
Cecil approached with a look of concern and honest bemusement as he gazed upon the...glamour hobo. "Is...everything ok?" | |
| | | Ifnb
Posts : 343 Join date : 2017-12-08
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Thu Jul 26, 2018 9:54 pm | |
| Marta did not expect anyone to interrupt his lunch. In fact, he specifically chose this park because it was small, dingy, and deserted. This was certainly not in his plan. As a result, his mind started to concoct all sort of lies that he could tell in order to justify his actions. He would probably justify his picnic as "natural health food."
The most important thought racing through his mind was this: KEEP CALM.
He carefully set down his fork onto the bowl in a way that seemed to both comply with etiquette and lower the chance of the fork falling onto the ground. Without moving any part of his lower body, which was very important as the salad was sitting on his lap, he turned towards the unknown boy, who seemed the same age as Marta. He seemed rather...bland and nondescript to Marta. At least by clothing.
Also for some reason, he seemed slightly familiar to Marta, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
Marta did his best to put on an entirely serene expression, and spoke calmly.
"Ah. Excuse me? Is something the matter? Are you perhaps looking for directions?" | |
| | | Infernal Zero
Posts : 2610 Join date : 2017-11-15 Age : 27 Location : Currently Unknown. Please advise.
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Thu Jul 26, 2018 11:55 pm | |
| There seemed to be a...shift, of some sort, in the person before him. Just what that was though was another matter. He seemed to be trying to act like he was just an inquiring passerby and there wasn't anything wrong, but it was honestly a bit late for that. "You're...eating weeds. I should really be asking you what's wrong...and well, I am." He swallows. "Why are you, ah...doing that...?" | |
| | | Ifnb
Posts : 343 Join date : 2017-12-08
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Fri Jul 27, 2018 2:31 am | |
| Oh God, this person was asking the exact questions that Marta didn't want him to ask. What was up with this guy???
Marta's eye just twitched very slightly as he otherwise kept his composure calm. This was nothing to worry about. He gamed out his fake excuse already.
The best way to make someone withdraw from a social situation was to make them feel insecure about themselves. Marta had been honed in years of social combat in order to do this.
He willed his eyebrows to just both slightly raise, "Oh? Have you not heard about the new trend?" Marta put just the subtle emphasis on "the" in order to have it implied that this "new trend" was something that the young boy should feel bad about knowing. Without actually seeming as if Marta were consciously implying that, because that would clearly be too aggressive and uncouth.
Marta smiled, as if he were kindly explaining something obvious to an RPG protagonist, "It's part of the new 'Paleo diet' health trend." Marta wasn't entirely sure what a Paleo diet was, but he knew that the phrase was trendy and could probably be used to justify eating weeds.
"What many call 'weeds' are a fashionable component of this, because many wild plants are very nutrition and mineral-dense. Assuming that Marta didn't actually pick up anything poisonous. But he shouldn't have, he decided ahead of time to stick to only a handful of easily recognizable edible weeds. Unfortunately, that meant it took longer than he expected to find enough. His salad was thus mostly pigweed.
He forced himself to smile again at the young man as he offered polite niceties that he truly did not want to offer, "Speaking of that, would you like to try some of my salad?" Marta's smile as he held out his bowl was completely faked, as he was actually thinking inside, "PLEASE DON'T SAY YES PLEASE DON'T SAY YES PLEASE DON'T SAY YES" Marta did not want to have to re-collect the weeds. Though then again, not many people would want a part of a salad that was literally just weeds, with the only "dressing" being saltwater from the nearby park fountain. | |
| | | Infernal Zero
Posts : 2610 Join date : 2017-11-15 Age : 27 Location : Currently Unknown. Please advise.
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Fri Jul 27, 2018 1:29 pm | |
| Even if he didn't remark to it aloud, the sheer exasperation that was summoned by the reference of a new trend was palpable. He did not feel bad about not knowing it. He was not embarrassed, he was not ashamed, and frankly nothing about him suggested he even cared about not having known of this before now, regardless of the fact it was a fabrication. No...he just found the whole thing incredibly, irrefutably stupid. It did at the very least, do its job in throwing him off the scent, explaining the boy in expensive attire's diet with another. Stupid. Trend.
"Yeah...no thanks." He gave a long-suffering sigh, squeezing his temples. "I don't know what's worse...that going around plucking weeds to eat is apparently the next stupid diet, or that I'm not remotely surprised by the statement." He shakes his head, gesturing out with one hand. "I really don't get why people chase trends that are going to end two weeks later and make you look like a moron when it happens." | |
| | | Ifnb
Posts : 343 Join date : 2017-12-08
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Fri Jul 27, 2018 3:42 pm | |
| As soon as the boy said no thanks, a bit of tension instantly released itself from Marta's body. His precious weeds were safe. He would not have to hunt for additional weeds. Thus, his body was guaranteed to operate until its next meal.
Marta softly chuckled at the boy's response attacking trends. If Marta was offended, he didn't show it, "Oh, I suppose that's quite possible. And you may even be just talking about the tip of the iceberg here."
Marta continued, "Since trends often last far longer than a few weeks. Take for example the abominable gluten-free trend, which has morphed into a multi-billion dollar industry with its own institutional inertia of sorts."
Marta sighed, "But not all trends are "stupid". Even a broken clock is right at times. The converse of slavishly following every trend is reflexively dismissing every one."
Marta took his fork, stabbed a piece of pigweed, and held it up, "The concept of a weed is to a degree a social construct. A weed is just a plant that gets in the way of cultivated plants. But one could imagine cultivating these plants as food instead of treating them as pests to other cultivars. This wild plant for example, actually is cultivated for food in some countries." To be quite fair, they still probably weren't harvested and directly eaten, both raw and unwashed in anything but fountain saltwater. Marta took a bite of the weed. Well, it was not what many people would call tasty or edible. But it was biologically edible. And the rules of etiquette taught Marta to basically eat anything without complaining. He quickly swallowed it.
Marta then coughed, realizing that he had probably gone on far too long, "Oh, my apologies for the digression. But yes, thank you for your concern, and yes, I am 'okay'", Marta lied. | |
| | | Infernal Zero
Posts : 2610 Join date : 2017-11-15 Age : 27 Location : Currently Unknown. Please advise.
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Fri Jul 27, 2018 5:00 pm | |
| Cecil soon went back to massaging his temples, raking his fingers through his hair. "Good to know..." You had to admit, trend or not, seeing what he had would provoke concern in most people. Or, you know, derision. That was way more likely in all odds. People were dicks. He shakes his head. "Anyway, uh...it's not a problem. It's just..." He pauses. "Guess you have a point. Still - it's not really the basis that's the problem in and of itself - I mean, they're often crazy, but that's another issue. It's just the way people find something arbitrary, focus on it like it's actually important, and generally try to act like it somehow makes them better or special. It's...I don't get how these things start, and I despair that people think it's necessary." | |
| | | Ifnb
Posts : 343 Join date : 2017-12-08
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Fri Jul 27, 2018 7:00 pm | |
| Marta's eyebrow went up slightly, "But are not some people better? Or worse?" This young man actually seemed interesting enough to talk to. Didn't quite seem like the interchangeable conformist that Marta had grown so intensely used to. He wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing. But it was certainly different.
He paused before continuing, "Yes...it is very arbitrary. But what would happen if people sorted into hierarchies, as all humans naturally do, with something non-arbitrary instead? 'Law of the Jungle.' 'Might makes right.' I suppose there are plenty of idioms about what that would entail. Fancy ways of describing 'jacked bros' flexing on everyone else."
He looked straight at the young man, ready to lob a question, that would hopefully move him even farther from the issue of why Marta was pitifully scrounging for weeds, "Would that be an improvement? Do you have a preference between the arbitrary and non-arbitrary?" Marta was somewhat interested in where the stranger fell on the spectrum in terms of his cultural orientation. One could actually learn quite a deal about someone's values with their answer to this question. | |
| | | Infernal Zero
Posts : 2610 Join date : 2017-11-15 Age : 27 Location : Currently Unknown. Please advise.
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Fri Jul 27, 2018 7:39 pm | |
| "I mean...no? That suggests there's an empirical scale to this stuff. Even for the same type of thing, different people will still be better at handling things in any given case, if that's your measure. I wouldn't really gauge that stuff on anything other than how much they cause problems for people, be it deliberately or.just by not caring."
He snickers at the description given. It definitely put Skelter in a new context. "I just want people to stop going out of their way to act like they're above all. Being confident, even arrogant is one thing... but there's a line crossed in actively putting people down, be it in trying to lessen of slander them, or in trying to place yourself above in such a way as to make them insignificant." | |
| | | Ifnb
Posts : 343 Join date : 2017-12-08
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Sat Jul 28, 2018 11:10 am | |
| "...No?" An uncomfortable silence followed as Marta didn't respond. He was feeling slightly light-headed, but even he was surprised to hear the young man's rousing defense of well, hypothetical riff-raff. "...I wonder..."
His voice trailed off a bit again, "...is the world really so just? Life isn't quite an RPG. Most people smart in one aspect...tend to be smart in almost all aspects. And vice versa."
Marta gave a slightly off-color smirk at the irony of his next statement, especially because the young man was considerably larger than he was, "Even being tall and strong is correlated with having a good personality and being smart. And vice versa."
In all honesty, he suspected the young man did have a better personality than Marta. Marta figured whatever passed for his personality was largely consciously constructed, not natural. And an artifice always had its glitches. If anything, there is an empirical scale. And any attempt to judge people's moral worth by their empirical capabilities...will lead to a lot more losers than winners. And vice versa. Marta figured he actually came out okay on such a scale, especially compared to some of the ghastly figures walking around shamelessly at his new academy. But strangely, he figured he engendered the same emotions to someone with a more exacting perspective.
Marta had seen the phenomenon the young man was referring to. Almost regularly. He didn't find it very complicated. "Anyways...this slandering...is it not easily explained? Those relatively low on the totem pole desperately need to prove themselves not the lowest. And few people have the drive to make themselves less ugly, less stupid, or less weak." | |
| | | Infernal Zero
Posts : 2610 Join date : 2017-11-15 Age : 27 Location : Currently Unknown. Please advise.
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Sat Jul 28, 2018 1:38 pm | |
| "I didn't say it wasn't understandable why they'd do it." It was a brief, but sharp dip in his mood, eased with the shunting of these negative emotions into a space where they wouldn't be perceived - but still present. "I still don't believe it's any good, though. It doesn't even satisfy the one doing it in the end a lot of the time - to say nothing that they start getting the idea that it's the way to deal with what they take issue with."
He takes a breath. In...and out. Push it deeper. "Never said things were fair. Never said it was all nice. There's a lot wrong, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away." Something within him feels satisfied at that acknowledgement. "But whatever the case, there's no way of measuring things that's always right, and no generalisation that's complete truth - like some of the stuff you've said." They were almost funny, in an utterly depressing way. Not just the statements, but that they was taken so seriously. "Even if there's any relationship...it's only according to a specific way of testing, it's not significant enough to be used as any good guideline, and honestly all of that stuff is going to be caused by something else altogether."
"What even is a good personality, anyway?" He gives a questioning look to the weed-eating fashionista. "The ways people would measure that are so different between people it isn't even funny. Even two people one of us said had a 'good personality' could easily be atrocious by each others' standards." | |
| | | Ifnb
Posts : 343 Join date : 2017-12-08
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Sun Jul 29, 2018 1:05 am | |
| Marta was mostly done with his salad by the time that Cecil stopped speaking. Marta had a fairly strong suspicion that Cecil was someone who had been bullied before in the past. He did notice the trend of perfectly normal being very touchy about these subjects, most likely for that reason. Then again, Marta also experienced such things in the past...and they just encouraged him to double-down on his worldview.
He felt that the young man was simply empirically wrong about the statistical significance of the various methodologies measuring intelligence and other forms of talent, but he wasn't going to argue about it. Since neither of them really had the data at hand, it would be pointless hearsay on both sides.
He kept on chomping on the last of the weeds, making sure to lick his teeth so no unslightly green was stuck in his teeth as he spoke.
"Presumably, not being an uh, pardon my language, 'asshole'? That's mostly universal, I think. But popular culture has the idea of popular, spoiled, privileged people being like that. It's a common trope. But those are rarely the twisted personalities of the world. In fact, they're usually nice people." He thought about himself. And what exactly explained his rather...not being so nice.
"The twisted personalities are often the kids who were bullied, ostracized, mistreated. Which is why most bullies were bullied at one point. Growing up ugly on the outside makes people ugly on the inside too." Marta honestly felt that was a pretty good depiction of his history, but nothing in his expression belied that conclusion. Marta attached very few emotions to these conclusions that he had reached.
"Then again, I suppose there's more to a "good personality". I doubt you would call me one. Something inherent, not developable." Marta was also quite serious about this statement. He was socially deft in many ways, but he was fairly certain that he didn't have a spark or magnetism that drew people. If he did, he wouldn't have to be eating god damn weeds. | |
| | | Infernal Zero
Posts : 2610 Join date : 2017-11-15 Age : 27 Location : Currently Unknown. Please advise.
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Sun Jul 29, 2018 9:15 pm | |
| "...yeah. There'd be more to it than that, though...I can at least agree not being an asshole's a good part of it." He looks curiously at Marta, struck by something the boy had said. "Why would you think I wouldn't say you had one, though?" It was a curious statement...and one that said more about what he thought of himself, if he had to be honest. He wasn't a stranger to not having a high opinion of yourself. What he said before probably had something to do with it too. He'd probably had to deal with some unpleasant stuff. "You know...there's some bits that are just going to be a big part of who you are, but people don't just get worse with no way of coming back." He might be jumping the gun here, but...he really wanted it to be said. "If people can get worse, they can get better, too - whether that's because of something or someone else, or them trying to work on themselves." "People do change. Just because you started one way doesn't mean you can't develop from there, for better or worse." | |
| | | Ifnb
Posts : 343 Join date : 2017-12-08
| Subject: Re: Thus, I Became a Hunter-Gatherer [Cecil x Marta] Mon Jul 30, 2018 1:58 am | |
| Marta smiled wistfully, before looking at nobody in particular and reciting a nursery rhyme, "Humpty Dumpty sat on a great wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and all of the Queen's Men couldn't put him back together after all."
He was pretty sure he ad-libbed half of it because he didn't actually remember how it went. But he more or less knew how poetry worked and kept the cadence and rhyme mostly where it needed to be.
He looked again back at the young man, "Yes. Some things can change. And some things can't. And some things can change, but only for the worse. And there's no rhyme or reason, sense of 'justice' as to what falls where. I doubt we disagree on that. You will after all, likely experience old age." Marta used a second-person pronoun in a very strange place.
Marta also gave a strange smirk before he continued, as he thought about a topic near and dear to his heart - dieting, "Though there's a distinction in how people view what is possible. Returning to an old topic, as to why people love fad diets, imagine a very obese woman. If we were in her body, we might lose weight. But if she could consistently make the same decisions as us, she wouldn't be obese in the first place. So from one perspective, she just needs to make certain decisions, so all is possible. But from another perspective, she can't make those decisions, so success is impossible. Is either view wrong?"
And right on cue in a discussion of fad diets, Marta ate the last weed. He gave a weirdly self satisfied smile, "Yes, dinner was palatable. Anyways, I do apologize for the rudeness of just gorging on my dinner in front of you. What Marta did could not be reasonably called gorging, though he still felt slightly embarrassed eating in front of another. But he wanted the "salad" inside his body rather than sooner.
Last edited by Infb on Tue Jul 31, 2018 7:31 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : fixed coloring) | |
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