Aww, I can empathize with Edward on the whole guilt bit. Guilt is sucky. : /
Koh, your great meme response has inspired me to finally get off my lazy bum and put up the answers I've come up with for the latest one.
I // Your OC’s guilty pleasure.
…baths.
Baths, to Genesis, are a ritual part of some greater cult of cleanliness. He bathes often, bathes thoroughly, and always in the same manner. It calms him in a way that few other things can—after all, what’s a better feeling than being entirely, perfectly clean?
He does, however, have an unsettling tendency to sink to the bottom of the tub and lay there for a half hour or so without coming up for air. There’s nothing more soothing than being surrounded by a layer of clean, fresh, hot water. Furthermore, it has a beneficial effect on his health in the form of raising his core body temperature into a range more suitable to someone who isn’t, currently, a corpse. Many suspect that Genesis’ breathing trick is achieved through some sort of spell, but no one has been suicidal enough to walk in on his bath and try to find out. Furthermore, those who do happen to walk in on his bath on accident seem more preoccupied with the thought that Genesis has finally gone and offed himself than they are with his the spells he uses to make himself even more of a creeper than he is by default.
Ideally, the Bath is a solo affair, but Genesis’s doctor-cum-division commander-cum-semi-husbandly figure, Mirk, has been trying to wedge his way into it. Genesis has grudgingly accepted this, more to check to make sure that the healer’s personal hygiene is up to par than out of any sort of affection. At least, that’s what he says about the matter. Mirk could say a lot more about it, but he has a feeling Genesis might kick him out of the tub if he does.
II // Something that inspires them.
There’s nothing Genesis likes more than a very intricate, very expansive, very powerful display of magic. It doesn’t matter whether it’s practical magic or just magic for magic’s sake—the amount of effort and thought put into it makes him as close to giddy as it’s possible to get him. As soon as he gets back home, he just has to go down to the basement and try his hand at making his own. Unfortunately for rival mercenary companies and contracted enemies, Genesis’s spells tend to be mostly made to wipe out whole rows of cannon fodder at once.
Speaking of cannon fodder, it also inspires Genesis to see the troops all assembled and ready to march. There’s nothing more powerful than a whole field full of men whole-heartedly dedicated to fighting and even dying for the same causes he believes in. It’s the feeling of the revolution being born that makes his fingers tingle. It means things are going to get ugly, and, for once, he’s going to be useful instead of just terrifying.
III // What they imagine paradise to be like.
It’s very, very clean.
It’s also very peaceful, without the sounds of civilization there to bother him while he works. In his paradise, Genesis has finished his work on killing and war and can instead focus on wherever his whims take him. Summoning. Crafting. All sorts of areas that have gotten pushed to the side in his studies. He has all day and all night to work and read without being interrupted by emergencies or inquisitive interlopers. The House is there—the one he made to recover from his first Plague Tour—and it’s clean and perfect and full of deep shadow and cool night. The whole area has a sort of English countryside feel about it, only it’s an English countryside that no one else has managed to visit other than him.
He’d like to keep up his aloof façade and pretend that he would be all alone in his paradise, but he knows, in his heart of heart, that such a situation would end up being very bad for his psyche. So there are people there, friends and family and…otherwise. But in his paradise, he can tell them to leave him alone to work whenever he wants to, and they won’t get upset or angry at him for doing so. And when he comes back to talk to them about what he’s discovered, they won’t still be bitter about him throwing them out of his office.
IV // A thank you letter to someone who has changed their life.
K’aekniv:
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the use of your right arm. It has done me a whole world of good, you see. It may have caused you some inconvenience to be temporarily without it, I understand. But you know well enough how hellish it is for me to get through the sort of barriers that you religious sorts put up. Typically, such defenses take me many days to get through. However, with the help of your right arm, I was able to walk across them with little trouble at all, allowing me to turn my attention to more pressing matters, such as the creatures responsible for the construction of said barriers. In any case, now that I have retrieved our foremost physician out from behind them, he has taken great pains to assure me that he’ll be able to put your arm back on post-haste. There shall be some scarring, true—but did you not tell me, on numerous occasions, that scars are a true symbol of one’s manliness? Think of them not as scars, but constant markers of my gratitude towards you for your service.
However, I do hope you’re taking care not to get blood everywhere. Wrap a bag around the stump, if you must. It’s hell getting the red out of the carpeting.
Cheers,
G
V // A memory that never fails to make them laugh
Genesis is not much of a laugher. But when he does actually find something funny, usually his fits of laughter are disturbing enough to put those in surrounding rooms on sedatives for the next few weeks. It’s not that bad of a sound, it’s just…unnerving. A mix between shrieking Furies and the gurgling of the dead and dying. Genesis can’t help it. He never really learned to do it right, so whatever comes out…comes out.
The hardest he’s laughed in recent memory was due to the souvenir Colonel Panik brought him back from his vacation to the Continent. Panik had noticed that Genesis collected books on military tactics from countries around the world, and though it would be nice of him to fill in an apparent hole in his collection. So, upon his return, he presented Genesis with The Great Military Techniques and Tacticians of the French.
Genesis still chuckles a bit at the sight of it on his bookshelf. One could ask him what exactly he finds so funny about it, but no one really wants to hear another of Genesis’ hour-long rants about the incompetency of the French.