( hitch your wagon to a star )

[bottecellie]

the stargazing meme

oo1. comment with your characters
make sure to put names, series, & preferences somewhere!
you can use < ! > sans the spaces to make the comment "blank"
oo2. reply to others in character
oo3. use the rng and enter 1-10
oo4. play out what happens -- anything goes!
oo5. profit? oh yeah!

prompts

one → meteor shower you just saw a falling star! and another! make a wish!
two → aliens what was that? was that really? omg no way a ufo!
three → lunar eclipse you've been sitting out for hours, waiting for this. it's so cool!
four → comet does it move fast or slow? either way, it's amazing.
five → full moon the moon is so huge! just don't look too long, it's really bright too.
six → star dust anything can happen in space. make up your own plot!
seven → solar eclipse this might be happening in the middle of the day!
eight → planet sighting is that a new star? nope, just a neighbor in the solar system!
nine → constellations do you know the stories behind these odd patterns?
ten → deep space normal stargazing isn't that much fun. you got a telescope!

taken from here.

Comments

[candothat]

[He doesn't understand what he did to warrant that look. He was even careful not to question a worldview that implies that koi are somehow connected to gravity!]

That is very noble. I would have misgivings about becoming a fish--even an immortal one with a connection to the spirit world.

[anatural]

[There are times when she almost hates him. He makes her feel so stupid sometimes, babbling about his science stuff, and he makes her feel so small when she tries to talk about her world. He doesn't have to outright question her. She can tell by the tone of his voice that he's just indulging her ignorant superstition, and she feels helpless in the face of it. She's too spiritually stupid to make him understand.

She sits up and wraps her arms around her knees, not angry enough for a fight, but no longer comfortable enough to remain in such a vulnerable position. Her tone is perhaps a little sullen.]

What abou your story? Virgo or whatever it was.

[candothat]

[Chekov isn't the most emotionally perceptive of individuals, but he can tell when he has upset someone. That's not something that he can just let stand... not that he knows what to say to fix it, especially with Korra. Her culture is so alien.]

Virgo? That is just a story, it's not important.

[He takes a deep breath and prepares to do something that he's not all that good at: admitting that he doesn't know something.]

I think I misunderstood what you meant about the moon spirit.

[anatural]

[She looks at him from the corner of her eye, and lets out a little sigh.]

I know you don't believe me.

[candothat]

That is not-- [True? No, it's completely true.]

It really happened?

[anatural]

Yes! I was there! ...sort of.

[She's not really up to getting into the whole "past lives" thing with him.]

Master Katara, my waterbending teacher, was there.

[candothat]

You were? She was?

[No--nononono. Questioning Korra is the second least intelligent thing to do now (the first least intelligent thing would be to take another stab at paraphrasing what she says).]

Ay, forget that. I believe you. [He flops back down to look back at the sky.] Where I am from, all of the stories are just stories. No one thinks that the constellations are ancient gods and goddesses or that the moon is the wife of the earth god any more then I think that Baba Yaga is going to come out of the woods in her chicken-footed house right now. It is different where you are from.

[anatural]

[She rolls over, resting her chin on her arms and looking at him.]

Why don't you believe them?

[candothat]

Because I know that the universe I live in operates according to the laws of physics, not the laws of gods.

[It sounds so cold and clinical, that worldview. No gods or spirits, just scientific evidence and, in the last several centuries, mathematics.]

I know that the stars I can see from home don't appear as they do because of anything other than happenstance and, once off of Earth, their appearances change altogether. And the moon? Nothing more than a lifeless satellite that was caught in Earth's orbit early in the planet's formation.

[anatural]

[Korra looks back up at the moon, and wonders if it has a spirit, or if it is one of Chekov's lifeless rocks.]

That sounds so lonely.

[She's not a very spiritual person; she can't connect with the spirit world the way the Avatar is supposed to. Spirits are shy; they require a stillness of mind and spirit that she can never seem to achieve. She's too physical, can't stop herself from moving.

But she can still feel them, especially the moon, which lends her strength to all waterbenders. She knows they're there, even if she can't see them, in the same way she knows that her parents are there and love her even when she's thousands of miles away. The idea of a world without them seems almost painfully empty.]

[candothat]

It is, a little.

[Spirituality isn't something that is typically found among Terran scientists of the twenty-third century. There is no way to prove that spirits exist. They can't be quantified and, more importantly, they are unnecessary. Natural phenomena can be explained without resorting to supernatural explanations.

That doesn't mean that the universe is dead. Maybe it isn't animated with spirits, but there's an elegance to a world explained by facts and numbers. Science tells a story about death and rebirth and interconnectedness and stardust; mathematics is the language of nature itself, and there's a deep and abiding beauty in that language. The Fibonacci sequence can be found in the spiral of a pine cone. The Mandelbrot set can capture the delicate crystalline structure of a snowflake or the glint of a diamond.

There's a stunning symmetry to all of existence that can only be captured in numbers, but Chekov isn't nearly eloquent enough to explain any of this to Korra.]

But it is very beautiful in its way.

[anatural]

[Mathematics and spirituality aren't incompatible, any more than spirits are incompatible with any language. It's too bad neither of them have the words to explain.]

I believe you.

[She does. She may not get it. She may not agree. But she's seen the way he lights up when he talks about it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.]