Talking Sense Into Grinwipey

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Me: “What on wood possessed you to go beat up Invincible Fire Demon?”

Grinwipey: “Aw, I don’t know, boss. Not the spollical sparkiest clue. ‘Cause, well, I didn’t lay club nor clentacle on him, so I ain’t got no what you might call practical experience to guide the way to an answer. Ain’t done no proper research into the matter, wouldn’t you know? But iffen I go beat him up sometime sure and I’ll tell you why I did, though.”

Me: “Well, you went and threatened him.”

Grinwipey: “Had to get him to wear that droll dress somehow, y’know? He’s a happy enough joker when it’s him that’s putting the joke on some sweet shoggy, but when it’s him as is going to wear the joke, he needs a wee wittle bit of wencouragement.”

Me: “Jokes or no jokes, I won’t have you threatening my passengers. I run a kind and tolerant ship, and there’s no place for violence or threats of violence on it.”

Grinwipey: “Well, boss, there’s a wee wittle bit of wonfusion about that matter.”

Me: “There is not.”

Grinwipey: “There’s what you say, and what Squadgin says, and somehow I think that it might be Squadgin has the more accurate memory of the matter.”

Me: “… Squadgin? …”

Grinwipey: “Squadgin, my imaginary friend what on the thirteenth of Trandary last you had me talk all intimidating-like to Alzagonde about, not so long after she had tried to do her rospy little researches on Feralan. Sure and you said ‘no threatening’ to me in public back then too, but just as sure you said in private that I should go do that little scene. So I says to myself, I says, ‘Wipey, old shog, old self, that stuff the boss says about no threatening, it’s just a public line, zie tosses it into the cramper-and-goo whenever it’s not convenient. And it’s sure not convenient now, when a wriggly swimmy is writing wriggly poems at me.’”

Me: “And that’s another point. This is largely a traff ship. There’s bound to be cross-species flirting, even at you and Windigar and the other cisaffectionate people on board. I won’t tolerate anyone responding with violence or even ill manners to a cross-species flirt.”

Grinwipey: “Oh, a flirt was it? That diddly little detail somehow escaped my old agèd eyestalks. It wasn’t no fiddle-fucky flirt when I read those poems. Now, a flirt is a thing I can laugh off and say a kind no-thankee-ma’am, like I did for Inconnu and Hops and even your doggy, doggy girlfriend though she was sort of drunk at the time and it was before she was actually your girlfriend. Not a word or a whomp did I give one of them, though I found their suggestions as repugnant as a rotten rotifer!”

Me: “Well, what then?”

Grinwipey: “I read it as a mock, and a mort o’ mocks at that. Someone thought it’d be fun to squirt the squinky squid with the squackle of squeem, you see. Happens now and then. Happens that when someone realizes he’s a wrongfolk of some kind, he needs to feel he’s better than some other kind of wrongfolk. ‘I might be traff’, thinks he, ‘but at least I’m no Khtsoyis! And what better way to emporposize that I’m no Khtosyis than to poop out some pulpy putrid poems at one!’”

Me: “Well, they were mocking, but they were more mocking the person who wrote them.”

Grinwipey: “Well, if you want a strick literary axes-geeses, for chopping their heads off all clean-like, it’s not so much the person who wrote them, but the presumably-fictive person who is the first-person narribator of them. Or that’s what I thinks to myself when I’m all deconfucktioning them and detectiving about them.”

Me: “But you went to punish Invincible Fire Demon anyhow — who was all but the name signed on them. By the logic you just said, he should have been the last person you’d suspect: the poems were mocking him too.”

Grinwipey: “Well, boss, here’s how it goes. I thinks to myself, ‘It sure ain’t Invie, that would be ridickerous, just like my boss is going to say in a day or two when all the shits hit the shins. So, by a process of pooping, or, as those polite toffs say, elimination, it’s got to be someone else what done it!’ But I needs to be sure, I does, because I won’t go wicking and wearing-at the wrong wone, wou know. So I finds me a Cani what’s got a bit o’ sense and a big ol’ nose — these being two things what I am lacking the way that a shrike lacks a pudding-spoon — and I finds me your own girlfriend Arfaen. And I asks her to sniff at some of the poems. Well, of course they stinks as poems, so I ask her to sniff with her eyes closed, and she says they smells like Invincible Fire Demon, all over, and nobody else at-all. So I says to myself, ‘Well, there’s no arguing with a Cani nose, and I’m a-thinking it’s some psyprological preculiarity of the turning-traff coming up here and he wanted to be publicquely acquelaimed as the funny, funny fipper what writes funny, funny poems. So, if he loves making everybody do the laughing, sure as a shirrer he can love it from the costume I’ll make him, too!’”

Me: “So … you checked and it was Invincible Fire Demon who wrote them?”

Grinwipey: “Nah, I checked with Phaniet who saw a scent-squiddling spell on them. It was Inconnu who wrote them.”

Me: “So why’d you beat up … well, threaten and mock up … Invincible Fire Demon?”

Grinwipey: “Oh, that. Didn’t check with Phaniet ’til after it was later, not nine minutes ago it was when I got the impression somehow I’d made a proper pie-and-cake of it. I was so sure it was Invincible Fire Demon when I frengled him. I’d done my doo-doo diligence, don’t ya know?”

Me: “You admit that you got the wrong victim?”

Grinwipey: “Yeah, yeah, that’s what happen when you’re a stupid stupid shoggy trying to get a bit o’ justice in the world. It’s a mistake to even try, you see. Not like traff people, who can get a wizard to make a city for them.”

Me: “That has nothing to do with it, and you’re not a stupid shoggy.”

Grinwipey: “Not feeling like a spiffy-smart one today, though. But it was a natural-like mistake, it was. Even a wize, wize wizard might gibble up a goof when zie checks with only one expert chocky checkapoo.”

Me: “There’s several people have suggested I cease to be your patron and toss you off the ship.”

Grinwipey: “Well and I’m sure as shitwater they’re right about that. But maybe instead we get some someone sensible ‘n impartialatible to mediate it, like we was civilized peoples what tries to live together in peace ‘n harmony, just as if they was in a city together like they wants to be?”

Me: “… That’s fair.”

This is why I — and many another Zi Ri — should never try to rule anything.

Comments

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

It still wouldn't've been a good way to treat Inconnu and what's Inconnu framing Invie for anyway and who on wood are you going to find to mediate this?

Also I guess this means you need to do something about Inconnu too for trying to get Invie beat up and ow my head hurts I'm glad I'll never be in charge of anything.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

Nope, "you once had me intimidate an outsider who'd been harassing my regular crew" is a bad excuse for doing it himself, without permission, to a regular crewmember. Unless you actually want anarchy!

[OOC: This was hard to read what with all the slang. Might've been better summarized, or shorter.]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Invulnerable Fire Demon is an outsider. Or maybe "was an outsider when he came on board". Two or three of the students may stay with us, with Invie being the most likely one. (Surprisingly -- not because they have fallen in love with my crew!) Anyhow, he's not technically crew yet.

[Sorry. I woke up far too early with the phrase "doo-doo diligence" not letting me sleep, so I had to write it exactly then, despite not being actually awake. But that's how Wipey talks. -bb]

[archadia.livejournal.com]

[I like that flavor that we get when Grinwipey talks. ]

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to bet it's less about being a good excuse and more about finding a way of turning attention from himself to Sythyry, who seems prone to taking blame on zirself whenever possible (something I'm also prone to, and have only recently begun developing the mindfulness needed to realize what's going on when others pull this sort of crap).

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That is merely one of the many approaches which can be used to defeat me in conversation!

[rowyn]

Grinwipey probably realized that he was going to make tears work against you.

Alas, you cannot defeat him with cupcakes either.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Did zie even *try* cupcakes?

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Mm, cupcakes.

But cupcakes probably work better on those with a sweet tooth!

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

I'm sure he had a sweet manible...

[rowyn]

You think they might be his secret weakness?

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

It'd be an interesting day when Phaniet someday cedes affan in leadership to Sythyry, who so far is eager to let her have it. Grinwipey here reminds me of my days as a lawyer, when my employers told me "our job is to make things grey", avoiding any straightforward resolution of a problem.

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

This is why, in anything I run, I have a very strict "no justice" policy.

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

"Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary." - William S. Burroughs

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

So he's admitting he was wrong in the most belligerent way possible. Ugh.

[rowyn]

That's about the best you can hope for from Grinwipey!

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Well, you know... 66% of a clue tends to give someone else the game.

"It was IFD in the Hallway with Poetry!" "Wrong! I have IFD!" "Drat!"

[allessindra.livejournal.com]

I suspect that there needs to be some way to find out what happened -- not figure it out now, from evidence, but find out -- before 'justice' can happen. I have this sideways 'aha!' going on in my head that says that *obviously* it must be Arfaen.

Nope, no clue why. And I'm probably wrong. But still.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Grinwipey: “Well and I’m sure as shitwater they’re right about that. But maybe instead we get some someone sensible ‘n impartialatible to mediate it, like we was civilized peoples what tries to live together in peace ‘n harmony, just as if they was in a city together like they wants to be?”

Speaking of mocking people, this would have been Grinwipey's last line as my employee.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Really? I would feel terrible about firing someone for admitting that htey were wrong and then asking me for justice and a trial. It is hard not to think of that firing as prima facie evidence that I were being tyrannical and unjust.

Perhaps his choice of words leaves something to be desired, but he always talks like that.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

I read it as him openly mocking your sense of honor. It certainly wasn't sincere, given he just finished confessing to doing exactly what he was demanding you not do.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

He was sincere about accepting mediation, at least. I daresay he was also sincere about mocking me.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Which is why, as I said, it would have been his last line as my employee. I'm not going to tolerate having my principles mocked at the same time someone is appealing to them for salvation.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

They can't help being like that. Their mad god made them that way.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting situation, and very revelatory to me.


Grinwipey has revealed that he is a shoggy's shoggy thru and thru; Tiggers are made of springs and rubber but shoggies, they're made of equal parts chaos, fun, and old cigarette butts floating in stale beer, and he's an exemplary shoggy.

IFD has revealed that he is an Orren completely; thinking through and negotiating with the shoggy, not even something that came to mind. Panic rush for the nearest place with water!

However, Inconnu seems to have acted with not-traditionally-Orren single-minded vindictive manipulativeness, and I wonder if he's entirely himself. Has anyone checked the lockdown on the mind-bender lately?

[kibbe.livejournal.com]

Not sure about everyone eleses take, but sounds to me like Grin is somewhat err, embarased? asshamed? of being in the wrong. When you work around the way he speaks, he is somewhat contrite, and admits he rushed to accuse and deal with, before being sure to check his facts. Even gone so far as to, persay, thow himself on the mercy of the court.
Gotta remember, Grin was not trying to hurt Fire, he wanted to embarass him. When he found out he made a mistake, he admited it, and even asked for ajudication/arbitration in the matter.
I should also point out, if you read back, Grin allways sounds like hes insulting you, even when hes being coplimentery.
Sythery I have seen prefures for other people to solve there own problems, he trys very hard not to deal with them, often tell it hits a crissis point. He then will deal with it, and often not too horrably. If he plan to start a city, he will need to learn how to manage people better, or find someone who can mannage people and put them basicly in charge.
An important question is why would Inconnu write such things and make it seem like Fire had writen them?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I thought he was somewhat ashamed of being in the wrong.

Also -- yes, you are quite right about my preferences. I plan to build a city. I do not plan to rule a city. I will leave that job for people who are good at it.