piper90 | [Video] [locked to the New Hires]

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[Video] [locked to the New Hires]

[While Woody needed some time to come to terms with speaking to big people, and more time to test the waters as to how they'd receive him, Buzz has already overcome the hurdle of making first contact, and has longer term plans to set in motion. Woody's comfort keeps him from introducing himself right away, but once his pal has calmed down a little, Buzz doesn't wait around.

His introduction video arrives as encrypted as possible and labeled "for New Hire eyes only," in case anyone was in danger of opening it in front of an employee.

The video is being shot from the communicator installed in Buzz's forearm, and the Uncanny Valley of seeing an action figure speak is unavoidable, well, that's a shame.]

Greetings. I am Buzz Lightyear. I come in peace.

That's a space toy joke.

[He's trying his best to maintain good Space Ranger bearing, but though he's not consumed with anxiety at breaking the non-contact rules the way Woody is, he's still a little nervous.]

As you may have gathered, I am an action figure. [sure it's obvious, but it is the tiny plastic elephant in the room he has to acknowledge.] Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have made myself known but . . . Jorgmund didn't leave me much of a choice. Therefore I've decided to introduce myself and clarify my, uh. Unusual circumstances.

[Gosh he's already embarassed by the masquerade he's going to have to keep up.]

Due to a nonfunctional feature of my model, Jorgmund currently believes I am under the delusion I'm a real Space Ranger. I'm not. They also believe I am loyal to their agenda. I'm not.

[He has to be vague. Brainy would be implicated immediately if it were known that his demo switch no longer worked. This channel may be secure, but not secure enough for him to risk someone else's secret. He can pretend the switch never worked in the first place, and that the drama surrounding it during his interview has been a clever lie of his own all this time.]

If I'm right, this deception may be useful in covert operations against our captors. Therefore I am apologizing in advance for anything . . . mind blowingly stupid I say or do in front of everyone to keep Jorgmund convinced I'm too deluded to question even their substandard ethics.

[If he sounds formal, well, he's being formal. He thought for quite a while about how to make this speech, and longest about how to end it.]

I understand it may be . . . unsettling for some of you to think of a toy as alive. I will do my best to be considerate. I don't know how it feels to be a person. [He thinks he does, because he thought he was one once, but since he never has been, he must not actually know.] But I think I want to see this world saved and all of us safely home again as much as anyone else here could.

[Even with all this planning he still looks a little awkward and uncertain as he picks his closing statement.] This is Buzz Lightyear, out.

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[Buzz doesn't understand the comment. Matters to who? Is there a way to be a person that doesn't matter?

The pale girl must be confused.]

I assure you, I'm not pretending to be anything I'm not. I was built in a factory in Taiwan. I may have a working laser now, but until today, it was just an LED.

[Is this going to be a struggle many of them have? Believing that he's just a tiny person who pretends to be a toy because it's a convenient cover? Maybe that's understandable. After all, he was mistaken in believing he was a person for really far too long.]

Right now, you can help me best by pretending we've never spoken. When I know for certain what Jorgmund intends to have me do, I may have a better answer for you.

Edited 2020-06-25 09:26 (UTC)

No, I get that you're a toy. Being born from a human mother and father and being made of skin and bone isn't what makes a person.

[It better not, because not even Vanya meets all those criteria.]

Alright. I'll pretend I only know about you from what your friend told me.

Right. Being a person does.

[So where are they missing each other here? Buzz isn't sure.]

We have a cover story. He's sticking close to me to jog my memory, and I'm sticking close to him because Space Ranger Buzz believes he's a spy for the evil Emperor Zurg.

[It sounds ridiculous even as he explains it from the outside, but hey, Jorgmund believes it and it lets him still hang around his buddy in this deeply uncertain and stressful situation, so that's all that matters.]

In any case I appreciate your offer to help. We're not used to working with people. This is all very new to both of us and you're being very considerate.

[He's doing his best, too! That's why he keeps responding to everyone in text, since horror movies have made it clear that for humans, seeing dolls and action figures moving like people is very unsettling.]

Wait, how do you define being a person?

[Because she thinks they're talking past each other here and she's confused.

And... yeah, this sounds ridiculous. But hey, it's no more ridiculous than falling through a wormhole into a giant vehicle thing run by authoritarian worker bees and staffed with aliens and toys.]

Don't mention it. I think a lot of this stuff is new for everyone. It probably goes without saying, but I haven't really talked to toys before.

[Besides her teddy bear, but that doesn't count because he (probably) isn't alive.]

[Buzz is starting to wonder why this matters to her so much. Defining a person sounds like . . . well, it sounds like something he's never had to actually sit down and do, because all he knows is he's not one. He believed he was, and then he learned he was not.

Defining a person is going to mean digging into all the ways he's not one.

He considers not doing that labor and just ignoring the message. But not responding during a conversation would be very rude in person. It's just as rude over technology.]

A person has control over their own fate and decides what to do with their life. They aren't made by other people to be a certain thing.

[This is putting him in such a bad mood. He likes what he is, spaceman and toy and all. If he were a person, he wouldn't pick anything but a spaceman who protects and brings joy to kids.

But it was such a harsh journey for him to get there, and realize it.

That's no reason to be rude to the young lady. She doesn't know that not being a person was difficult for him to accept. She's only asking him something that, likely, she's never had to think about.]

Since they aren't made to be one thing, they have to figure out what it is they want to be. Toys like Woody and me help by being there for kids, as they play and learn about the world, and what they want to do in it.

You must have experienced that, when you were a kid. Or did I get that part wrong?

[Who knows? He only THOUGHT he was a person. Maybe he's totally off the mark about what it's like to be one.]

[With only text to go off of, she doesn't know she's upsetting him. So she's just going to keep rolling.]

Not all humans have control over their fates. Sometimes they're created to be something too.

[Her voice is heavy with experience.

But the fact she's on video allows him to see she's stricken when he talks about what she should have experienced when she was a kid. Yeah, he's probably right. She should have experienced that.]

Uh... no. Actually, my father didn't allow my siblings and I to have toys. I had a teddy bear, but I wasn't allowed to take him out of my room and there was only a half hour on Saturdays that we were allowed to play.

[It seems really awkward to say after Woody and now Buzz have waxed poetic about the wonder of childhood. She can't really relate and not for the first time, she thinks about what she missed.]

Edited 2020-06-28 04:51 (UTC)

[That's such an enormous bombshell to drop on a toy that Buzz HAS to switch to video.]

He what?

[Her father denied her playtime and made her feel like she wasn't a person? What kind of horrifying monster raised this poor girl?]

He had no right to do that! Children need to play, it's how they learn to navigate the world! It's how they learn who they are, who they want to be, what brings them joy!

[Unless he's wrong, and she didn't need those things at all? Something tells him he's not wrong, but he's felt things very strongly and been wrong about them before.]

Unless - unless you figured all that out anyway.

[But she's still said that she was created to be something, and that simply cannot possibly be true, categorically, because she is, in fact, a person.]

Listen, I don't know much about parenting. [He's only seen how three parents do things, between Mrs. Davis and Bonnie's Mom and Dad, but they all fall on the side of 'let kids play' and that worked out well for Andy, and is working out well for Bonnie.] But I do know that you - [he is categorically right about this, he has to be, because that is the whole reason not being a person can be terrible, if you don't like what you're made to do, why it's so fortunate that he DOES like what he was made to be -] are nobody's tool. You're your own person, no matter what your father taught you. He was wrong about not letting you play as a child, and he's wrong to tell you anything else.

[Vanya freezes, eyes big and wide and white irises turning to brown abruptly. The force of Buzz's and Woody's anger catches her completely off guard, and their outrage and compassion on her behalf kicks her in a soft spot that makes her eyes well up and her throat close. It almost reminds her of Diego screaming at the sky about the cruelty of their father, but Diego had screamed for his own pain and he hurt her as much as anyone did. These little people meant for children who insist they aren't people at all feel more for her than anyone ever has.

She tries to speak, but she's a bit choked up. She has to clear her throat quickly to actually respond.]

Wow, uh, you guys really like your impassioned speeches, don't you? [It's an attempt at playing off how touched she is by it, but it falls flat. She is very touched and there is no denying it, even if she doesn't know how to deal with her feelings. They're stronger than she's used to without her medication, and vulnerability was always punished in her family even without her father around, so it's hard for her to compose a response.]

Yeah, I... our dad wasn't really any good with kids. [Understatement of the fucking year.] Your child is really lucky to have you.

Thank you. I hope it's all right with you, but I had to share your message with Woody.

[Both so they could share outrage over Vanya's injustice, but also so Woody could share in the compliment about Andy and Bonnie being lucky to have them, which is making Buzz feel all sorts of warm fuzzies.]

I just hope you know you deserved better, even if you didn't get it in the past. But your future is always open to change.

[That's the thing about being a person. Vanya isn't fated for a dump, or a thrift store shelf, or indefinite storage. There are a thousand different good paths she could follow, a thousand she should already be on.]

I... hope it is. [There's something in her voice that says she doesn't think it is. Between her siblings wanting to kill her, her ex opening Pandora's box, the power humming furiously in her body, the violence and murder and the promise of the end of the world... she's not so sure that her future can change. If it can, she's worried that there's no good change to be had.]

Yeah, uh... yeah, feel free to share whatever with Woody. It's fine. [These toys apparently work as a unit to tackle her childhood trauma, and while she doesn't know how to respond, she still appreciates the effort. She wants to welcome this, welcome all this positivity and warmth and optimism, but she's been so bereft of it that she doesn't know how to. She's worried that maybe her awkwardness will be taken as disinterest, but she doesn't know how to make it better.]

[She sounds so hopeless even as she says she hopes for it. No wonder this poor young lady had to ask him to define a person to her - she's been so stripped of her own personhood that she needs an outsider's perspective to define it!]

That's the beauty of what you are. Whatever you have been, you can be something else! Nobody can tell you what you are.

[Woody's already made sure to invite her to board game nights (once they find out if there even ARE any board games or decks of cards on this rig), and that's about the best a pair of toys can do for a big person who's gotten this far into her adult life with what sounds like a terribly deprived childhood, but Buzz still fishes around for something else comforting to say.]

What do you like to do? I don't really know anything about how adults occupy their time but you, uh - you must still do something like playing, when you aren't . . . paying bills or crunching numbers?

[Those are things adult people do, right?]

[Paying bills or crunching numbers? Vanya almost gets whiplash from the laugh that surprises out of her. It's small, but it's a genuine laugh, one that lightens her spirits a bit.]

When I'm not paying bills or doing other adult stuff? [It makes sense that children's toys wouldn't know much about adult life, but the way he shrinks it down to bills and math is just funny. Maybe that's really how kids see adults.]

I play the violin. Sometimes I write music or dabble with piano or guitar, but I'm a violinist. [She smiles when she says it. It's a wan smile, the kind of smile you have after a very long day, but it's a smile.] I write too, sometimes.

[He nods along blithely. Really, what else do adults even do, when they're not playing with their kids? Which they could stand to do more.]

Writing sounds like Playing, just written down. Boy, the stories my kid Andy could have written!

[Aww. Now he's thinking of Andy, and when he thinks of Andy, Buzz misses Andy.]

I bet you're a great violiner. Ist? I've, uh, never actually heard anyone play the violin, but I'd certainly come to a concert if you had one.

Yeah, I guess that's a way of looking at it. [She's sure her siblings wouldn't agree, but oh well, they're not here. Which is probably for the best because their family drama would probably end up with all of them shocked to death or in some holding cell.

'My kid Andy'. She doesn't know what it is about it, but hearing him talk about the child who played with him as though he were his own makes her smile.]

You've never heard the violin before? I should fix that as a matter of professional pride. [Here's something that she's more comfortable with. The confidence of showing off her skill is new, but the violin is her life. She can talk about the violin.] What kind of music do you like?

[Woody cuts in because he can't not cut in, because why. Why?]

[He has no experience with parents that mistreat children. Fortunately Andy's mom and Bonnie's parents deeply love their children. Andy's dad had, too, before he passed on. But there are movies and TV. Rapunzel, trapped in her tower by a mother that belittles her. After school specials.]

[Still, that's fiction or informative TV and while that makes it clear it's a thing some humans do, he is pretty shaken to see it so concretely. Real, from someone right in front of them.]

I think you probably know this. I hope you do. But you deserve someone saying it.

[His expression is soft and gentle.]

You deserved to play as much as you wanted.

[A pause.]

I know you're too old now to play pretend, but if there are any board games here, or cards, or anything like that that'd be fun for you - that might make being here easier - we know just about every game in the book.

Edited 2020-06-28 06:49 (UTC)

[How did he even see this is this a thing people besides Buzz can see??? Tech things for Vanya to investigate later.

Has any person made Vanya choke up this much in a couple day period? Probably Reginald, but anyone else?

Vanya's eyes turn brown as they grow a little too wet and her throat gets a little too thick. She tries to swallow the lump there, but it won't go away.]

I, uh...

[She's about to say that she doesn't actually know how to play most card games or anything like that, but that'd just be too sad to say. Instead, she says what she's thinking.]

I'd really like that. If we played a board game or something. If it's not any trouble.

[It's instinct to always hedge a little bit. 'If it's not any trouble' or 'are you sure' or 'only if you're okay with it'. If you give people room to reject you politely, it doesn't hurt so much when they do it.]

[Buzz has the "you're a person, not a tool" angle covered, and that's something he's got a better angle on, given his complicated struggled with identity.]

[So Woody goes the nurturing angle, because it's what he does best, especially in relation to the humans he's trying to care for.]

[Just because she's not a child anymore doesn't mean she doesn't need support and kindness and nurturing. After a childhood like that it's long overdue. Humans support each other just like toys support each other so why can't they do that for humans?]

It'd be no trouble at all.

I'll look around and see what I can scrounge up.

That's... that's nice.

Thanks. I'll let you know if I find anything too. [She'll look around for some games. The idea of playing them and maybe making friends is appealing, even if she appears to have withdrawn because she doesn't know how to accept kindness. Last time a stranger was immediately kind to her, he tried to manipulate her into murdering her family, but she's pretty sure that two toys would have no interest in manipulating her. Pretty sure.]

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