"if you could go back in time to tell your past self just one thing about the future, what would it be?"
"oh, what are these for? are you going to post them somewhere?" yeji has always liked the idea of being famous. smiling too wide, they lean down to look at the journalist's clipboard with great interest.
this instantly earns an affronted look from the journalist, and she turns the clipboard away from their view. "just answer the question, ma'am."
just answer the question, ma'am. yeji's mouth twitches with a late wave of contempt. "i'd tell my past self that our twin brother's going to grow up so evil and fucked up," they declare. "and that he eventually gets so rich and powerful that he rules the world and sends out drones to laser-cut off everyone's fingers so no one can have a fatemark again. we don't disagree with that, but we like having fingers for drawing. oh, yeah, we grow up to be an artist. also, there's going to be this one day when we're really hungry and we remember we've saved some leftovers, but they'll be missing from the fridge, and our brother's going to say, no i don't know what happened to it, stop bothering me yeji, but don't believe him because he'll be lying, he's the one who did it. it's too late for me now but you still have time. you can still eat him in the womb and save your timeline."
"what the fuck are you saying to her, yeji?"
the hand of god comes down to slap judgment into the back of his head. yeji has time to shout, "OW," before joonhyuk, finally making it across the street, gets a good fistful of his shirt and drags him away from a follow-up question.
SETTING. virtual reality, in one of yeji's digital proving grounds on lacuna.
WITH @digitalmemorybook.
‼️ TW / GRAPHIC BLOOD, GORE, VIOLENCE (simulated in vr, but graphic nonetheless)
yeji feels most like himself when he's elbows-deep in someone else.
somebody. some body. this one is static-hot inside, and filled with all of the newest 3d models he'd had his brother load into this mod. the programming was straightforward; it simply fleshed out pvp interactions and broke the default player death animation, allowing them to add extra behaviors.
the real art was in what came spilling out.
it had taken yeji weeks of meticulous sculpting to really nail the intricacies of the human anatomy: the human lungs, the human heart, the way a ribcage bows inward to protect these softest parts of a body, the cords of muscle and sinew that tether it all together. besides all of the obvious reasons, yeji understands why secondlife didn't want their character models to be so detailed: virtual reality should mirror reality enough to be appealing, but not too closely. their players don't log into a game just to be reminded of the very real and very fragile things that make them all up on the inside.
it must be nice to feel that way, though. to be able to look at something and see a reflection, he means, to know themselves well enough to even recognize it someplace else. no matter how hard he tries, no matter how much realism he chases, nothing he's created has ever looked like anything his.
he lays out the organs one by one on the asphalt, assessing and critical. these are still far from perfect. the blood physics don't work quite right yet, and the color is a few shades off--- well, he thinks so, anyway. it's not like he's seen a real set of organs before. maybe they should be a little redder.
"i really thought i had it right this time." he wrinkles his nose, swiping the back of his hand across his face out of habit. because it isn't real, there's nothing to actually clean off, but the simulation of warmth is there. the blood is like a balm on his cheek.
this player avatar is one of the defaults. yeji feels an inkling of remorse, but honestly, who goes wandering into a 3-person server with only one slot left, no name, no description, no rules, the MODDED and UNMODERATED warnings in full view? he and jiho had been having a great time by themselves, and yeji had been planning to ask him to be his art gallery, up until the NEW USER HAS CONNECTED notification popped up in the corner of his eye.
and he'd felt a little charitable tonight, so he hadn't instantly flagged them down. no, he'd dragged jiho along to watch the newcomer stumble through the uncanny cityscape he'd spun up on this server, half unmodeled and littered with broken interaction points, convinced that they'd eventually disconnect and leave him and jiho alone. yeji had finally cornered them in a small maze of mismatched city assets; their eyes had blown wide in terror when they saw his username, but they still didn't disconnect, so what was a girl to do? look a gift horse in the mouth?
it wasn't until yeji was on them that the USER SESSION TERMINATED message finally appeared and the avatar ragdolled mid-stab. now, the notification is more than fifteen minutes old, which means the body's going to despawn soon.
on top of all of that, the edges of his vision keep going fuzzy --- a telltale sign of a faltering connection. usually these servers don't last more an hour before they get taken down.
"that was a waste of time," is his final verdict. he trails a finger absently over the avatar's hand, their fourth finger bare where a mark would be. then he slouches away with a grunt. "i guess i'll tweak the textures and have my brother build them into a new package for us next time. or---" his eyes light up, and he looks up at jiho with a mirthful smile. "---you could let me see if yours look any better after all?"
anddd now for my second muse! you can give this post a like if i can reach out about plotting or threading, though i'll prob reach out from my main blog @stellarmechanics for ease.
kim yeji: about / plots / muse
— preset #12: these violent delights
— they/them pronouns by default; around those they're close to, they would be comfortable with he/him pronouns.
— unfated, so has no marking. if they did have one, it would be the color of nausea, #ddffa7.
— in contrast to mirae, yeji is very painfully present in the world. born to a family of no particular importance, with no major lifetime event that could have explained why they eventually turn out the way they do.
— what they do turn out to be: first just a stupid kid with a propensity for recklessness and general lack of self-preservation, growing up into an adult but not quite growing out of all of the other things. yeji is passionately creative and expressive, feeling so closely attuned to living that they can feel just how . . . wrong they feel inside of themselves.
— (cw. themes of depersonalization) does that make sense? it's past any label or identity, past any cosmetic they can slap on or clothes they can take off. sometimes yeji looks down at their hands and their nerves scream that SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS but they don't know what is, or what "this" even is. this suffocating feeling always comes when they slow down enough to let it catch up — so yeji tries to never let it.
— none of this really explains the path that they wind up on. "being human is a condition that requires a little anesthesia" — for yeji, it's art at first, and then video games, and then body mods. then street drugs, and then virtual reality, and now this emergent sadistic streak. earlier, you could've reasoned it for them just trying to find distractions, but now it's been tinged by a sense of desperation—like they're trying to assert themselves to some thing, some force, that they can't even put to word .
— by all appearances, yeji has gotten themself together & turned over a new leaf ever since they landed a prestigious gig as a 3d artist @ secondlife studios (prestigious to them, anyway). before this, they were doing freelance design and bolstering that meager income by dealing some crystal hearts; they've "left that behind" now, with a few exceptions (i'd love to have past connections related to this!!).
— their job pays well and they get to make a career out of their passion, isn't that what most people want? still, yeji pushes it. their brother is a programmer, dealing in his own dirty work; together, they develop game-breaking mods for lacuna, allowing yeji to go on little player killing sprees.
— it looks like senseless gamer violence, but in some twisted way, it nags at a deeper craving for intimacy. yeji likes modeling realism the most, as if they can better understand reality if they can replicate it exactly enough. secondlife would never allow them to add blood and viscera into their game. so yeji sticks to mods and private servers, using player avatars as living galleries for their best work. it might be the only time that they feel any sense of fulfillment.
— yeji is def the more sociable of my muses and has a lot of existing friends & enemies both offline and online, but also likely to be the catalyst of new interactions, so let's figure smth out together! my goal with their arc is more straightforward, aka force them to actually face any meaningful consequences of their actions LOL. they've touched a lot of people's lives, not always for the better, so i'd especially love some messy connections!!
*guy stumbles out of torture labyrinth, covered in dirt and blood, clothes torn, on the verge of passing out with a thousand yard stare* maybe... Maybe I will buy myself a yummy treat. As a reward
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