animus_network | Fourth Candelabram

[Lucifer has found that he's begun to use the network almost solely when he's angry. Truth be told it's one of the few times it has any real appeal to him, at least in regard to using it as his own platform to speak. And after the embarrassment and insult leveled at him by the Tower this last month, he's quite fed up. He needs something to take his mind off of things.

Which brings him to what he has to say.]

I quite enjoy competition. I believe myself a competitive man. But I felt there was something lacking in the competition the tower gave us. I found it a bit impersonal. Part of competition is getting to know the people you're competing against. That's not particularly possible when so many of them have had their identities crush and assumed by something else, now is it?

I'd go so far as to say it wasn't sporting.

I wasn't very satisfied by this last competition. If anything, it served to simply arouse my thirst instead of quench it. And so I would like to propose a more personal competition. A bit of a way for me to get to know some of you better. To even find a few more who are like-minded, you could say.

I therefore propose a duel, or set of duels, to take place one week from today. I will take on any and all challengers who answer my challenge whether they come at me one at a time or in groups or all at once. The challenged may even choose where the battle takes place and, if they wish, any restrictions they wish to impose.

It's been quite a long time since I've taken some exercise. And certainly there must be some others who would be interested in a friendly bit of competition.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One I need not be educated on.

One should hope so.

Though I've met too many people who believe in honoring the dead.

I see little point in it, myself.

[Half the time he's the asshole that killed them, so.]

There are more significant things for the living to do with their short time than lament those who can't hear their pathetic whining.

Whining begets more whining. And those who whine for too long will take any reason they might get to do so even more.

It's a shame. So many are happy to choose comfort over reaching their potential. To choose an artificial happiness over true joy.

[Oh geez you're gonna get him started.]

'What a piece of work is Man...and yet to me, what is
this quintessence of dust?'

Such potential, such ability and cleverness all wasted on sentiment. Mankind is-- speaking on the most general of scales--pathetic. So much of what they see as commonplace I see as futile.

[Only Liquid would quote Shakespeare casually...]

And yet despite all that there are those who have risen above the trappings of their sentimentality. Of their morality, as some would see it.

Mankind, above all other creatures, has the ability and the right to reign over creation. To ascend to a higher level, and still be known as only one thing: man.

It's an odd set of circumstances. Man might look to God for guidance, but God must look towards man in order to assure His own survival. Without God man has no guidance but what they give themselves.

But without man God has no existence.

I have no reason to believe such things are more than a childish fantasy. The only things that matter are that which can be seen or touched.

I have seen hundreds of human lives ending, and I'm sure quite a few of them cried out to one god or another in their final moments. And as their lives drained from countless wounds, do you think God or all his angels condescended to answer? Of course not. Each of them were simply snuffed out like so many candles. I wonder if they took solace in their delusion, or if the complete silence answering their players left them to die in despair.

God is dead. And if one exists, he doesn't care enough to answer his precious creations.

If only others would think it was fantasy, as well. It would do the world a great deal of good to do so.

Of course they wouldn't answer? Why should they. God, who in his madness and pride saw himself as the pinnacle of perfection decided that the world he must have made be the best possible world, and the life he put upon the world to populate it the best possible life. That they may have fallen from this perfection, that they should have chosen what He considered sin, that was a fault only of their own and none of His.

God is the ultimate narcissist, and in the end the ultimate attractor of masochists.

I think I'd prefer to assume such an entity doesn't exist than to to think it doesn't give a damn. Perhaps I'm the deluded one, but I find it notably more comforting to simply be alone in existence.

But I suppose if we're to assume for the sake of conversation that you're correct, it was his own fault for creating something imperfect. That which is flawed can only fail, in the end.

No. It can fail, but it might also become perfect.

You're quite a pessimist. That's admirable in most cases. But not all things are destined to end in failure.

You're wrong. Something with a flaw can never become perfect. It can try for all of its existence, but it simply can not reach such a level.

Some flaws can never be repaired through any means. That is a simple fact.

And yet I have seen it happen.

Perfection itself is a subjective term, a subjective state of being. And who is to define it? You? Me? Perhaps you've never seen what you might call perfection but I have seen what I would call it.

And I will see it again.

I define my own perfection, and none in the world have ever attained it.

You're remarkably cryptic. Who exactly is it I'm speaking to?

I've always found it quite rude that others feel the need to ask my name without introducing themselves first.

Louis. Louis Cypher. And who am I speaking with?

[...What.]

That's a rather ominous name.

Liquid Snake.

Edited 2012-11-02 05:22 (UTC)

[Lucifer's found that one of the best ways to hide among people is to just hide in plain sight.]

And yours is rather unconventional.

I must assume you had quite an interesting upbringing.

[It was a little tricky for an atheist to accept any such things as God or Lucifer existed, never mind that he was talking to one. For now he accepted it as an ominous name and decided to deal with the implications later.]

That's certainly no inaccurate assumption. Of what significance is it to you?

None I suppose.

I just enjoy knowing who I'm talking to.

I would think my name to be enough.

For some it is.

But a name in the end isn't an indication of a person at all.

That one is; where I come from it's indicative of a soldier. The codename of 'Snake' has only ever been granted to the three most dangerous individuals to stand upon a battlefield.

To measure yourself only on that name.

That's quite a folly, even if the others who bear it should have strength.

Was the name given to you, or did you take it for your own?

It was given to me, and in the time that followed I earned the right to use it.

A name that is given is worth nothing. Only a name that is made has any.

There is pride to be had in earning what is yours. So perhaps it may have been made by yourself instead of given, or I could see it as such.

But does it not bother you that they gave you a title, defined so much of who you are? That two words define who you are, and you are tied to the history of those words? That words might overshadow your actions, overshadow you?

Fourth Candelabram - Voice

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