hadriel | [3] video (post Delight's event)

(Newt's sitting cross-legged on the floor and has his phone set up to be set on him in a very steady image. He's got a sheet of paper with what looks like a map drawn on it next to another, slightly more different map. For anyone who bothers to look at the floor anyway. Newt, however, is not looking at the floor but at the camera itself.)

You know, I've been thinkin' bout the monsters here lately. Went explorin' out in the caves the other night and I kinda realized something. I know it's gonna sound bloody insane but hear me out.

I kind of feel for the monsters. I mean, think about it. They're being treated just as unfairly as all of us, aren't they? They were dragged outta their worlds too and thrown into this place. I know they're violent but they don't seem...that bad? Mostly they stick to the caves and yet we go on in there slaughtering them all of the time and not always for food. Maybe I'm wrong but...that doesn't feel right to me somehow. Throwing all these creatures into a small section of this place then just tearing them apart because the gods tell us they'll give us rewards for it.

And trust me, I'm no bloody saint there - I'm guilty of it too but now that I've taken a step back and really thought about it, I have no idea why I ever thought that was okay. They're not robots. They're living creatures. They feel pain too, don't they?

(Newt frowns, twisting at the ends of his sleeves.)

Half the time- no. More than half of the time they don't even do anything to us. So maybe we should stop killing them unless it's for food. I 'unno.

(He sighs, looking off to the side of his room. Maybe he doesn't understand the world enough to understand something like that. But then he looks as if he's remembered something and grabs the two pieces of paper and holds them up to the camera so that everyone can see. The maps are of the tunnels.

Except one is different.)

By the way, the tunnels change. Discovered that. I'm kind of disappointed. That's how our Maze was too so I can't say I'm all that shocked here. Our Maze would change every night and it turned out that if you aligned the patterns, they spelled out words. So if anyone cares about seeing why the tunnels change- there you go. Wish you luck.

(Annnnd that's about it actually. He flips the video off after that casual reveal.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Yeah, some things were born with claws and fangs, and that isn't their fault. But a lot of people think that's a good enough reason to kill them, too.]

[He snorts.]

They bother 'cause shithead says he'll give us things for it. And the other bitch is giving out bullets for every fuckin' head you put on her altar, so that's plenty of incentive for some people around here.

But maybe they're getting some other shit out of all the dead monsters, I dunno. Heads on altars sounds a lot like fuckin' sacrifices to me, maybe they get a bump out of that shit or something.

I guess so.

(And he still doesn't see the point of it. He didn't know that that was happening though and makes almost a comically disgusted face.)

Wait, what in the bloody hell...?

(Give him a second. A second....Because seriously what in the fuck are people doing? Gren, congratulations, you're slowly changing this kid's entire perspective of Hadriel.)

The hell kind of barbaric bullshit is that? Are people insane? That's...I mean, it's one thing to kill something okay- but to disfigure them too...

Pretty sure desecratin' a fuckin' corpse only matters if it's a person, and I don't think anybody's looking at those monsters and calling 'em people.

[Sometimes, people don't really give a shit even if they are people. Gren's had some experience with that.]

[But if no one thinks of them as people, there's not much difference between taking a monster head and taking a rack of antlers from a deer, or making taxidermy. It's only wrong if they aren't just animals.]

It's for Rage, anyway. That bitch'd want some kind of violent shit for her favors.

But people aren't the only people alive. They aren't the only ones who are just trying to see through to the next day.

(Newt is so unhappy with that ideology. He's not usually bitter towards humans as a whole but right then, he was definitely disappointed in them.

Newt's never even heard of such things such as taxidermy. The poor kid would probably have a hernia if he did.)

It does make sense for her though it hardly excuses it. We aren't them and we shouldn't let them make us do such things. So what if we have no ammunition? It's not like there isn't plenty of weapons around here we can use for self-defense.

[Does this kid's heart just hemorrhage for everything? It's one thing to be a bleeding heart, the world would probably be a better place with a few more of them, but it's something else to bleed yourself out for everybody. Pick your battles, kid, you can't fight all of them.]

And some use guns, which need fuckin' ammunition. Rage's got the only supply of ammo that I fuckin' know about, so she's got a stranglehold on anybody who don't know how to knife shit to death or something.

[He'd thought about trying to haggle with Rage to see how much he'd have to bring in to get a firearm and ammo for it; not for himself, he didn't use guns, but for his idiot of a housemate, Rhys. Kid couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, he'd need the firepower if he ever got himself into trouble.]

I ain't saying it's a good system, kid, but I get why people're using it.

(Yeah kind of. Everything but himself, namely. He really was a bleeding heart, through and through, and cared way too much about too many things for his own good.

He can try to fight all of them.)

I guess I just had more hope that people would be willing to form some sort of logical structure of order to abide by instead of -whatever we have going on now.

(Where everyone just kind of did whatever and during the intervals of monster attacks, they just sat around staring at walls. What kind of life was that?)

I never said I didn't understand it. Understanding something and supporting it are two different things. I get it, I do, I just.

(Have stupidly high expectations.)

I guess it doesn't matter though.

[Gren frowns and looks away from the vid feed a little.]

[Newt expects better of people. He knows people can be better than this, are better than this, even if they aren't acting like it. It's something that Gren's tried real hard to believe in for a long time, because if they won't act like people, than who will? And he might actually be a monster in a very literal sense, but he at least tries really fucking hard not to be.]

It fuckin' matters.

[It matters for people to hold themselves to expectations that are a little higher than ground level.]

But good luck convincin' anybody else about that.