I'd like to take a turn at thanking everyone who nominated the_unicorn for Best Cartoon/Anime Muse and Favorite Non-Human in the Tammy Awards. I'm afraid I can't properly express to you how flattered I am that she was mentioned at all, let alone included in the top five of the former category! It means so much to both of us that people think of her, despite the fact that I've been an incredibly negligent puppeteer.

A very heartfelt thank you from mun and pup!

Comment here with your character's name and I will tell you what the Unicorn thinks of them. (If they have met or interacted, of course.) It does not have to be said that this is mun knowledge only!

I hope for no help from the magician.

The woman wears her disdain lightly, as she does many emotions, now. Once she would have resisted, fighting the weight of feeling as it settled over the human face, sentiment sticking fast to one feature -- the crease of an eyelid, the corner of the chin -- and skidding off another, leaving an expression as disparate as mud and marble. But now she draws on this mask whole, without effort. It seems to her that nothing is so easy as letting the twist of a mouth say exactly what it should. And if her mouth speaks only in scoffs, so be it.

I see him every day playing the fool for King Haggard, amusing him by his failures, by blundering at even the most trifling trick.

There is no other way to speak of him. She is what he has made her, after all. Though he mocks himself more cruelly than her mouth will ever manage. She watches him juggling his battered oranges, twirling his tattered scarves, and she sees that he grows as resigned to his tired carnival cliches as she grows resigned to her fickle woman's skin. One day soon they will be forever caged in these guises he has fashioned for them -- only she wonders, now, if his was not always the truer form. Her answer may be found in the king's musty smile, ever-present over the magician's capering.

He says that it is all he can do until his power speaks in him again. But it never will. He is no magician now, but the king's clown.

She speaks of Schmendrick, knowing, well before Molly Grue tells her, that she does wrong. But she mocks him anyway, the taste of it far from bitter on her mortal tongue -- indeed, it is quite bearable. And that frightens her more than the face in her mirror, the face which every day feels less foreign and foolish than that of her dearest friend.

I'm going to be trimming the unicorn's friends list down a bit, just so it's a more manageable size for me. I don't actually post in this journal a lot (bit of an understatement, huh?) but if I remove you and you'd like to stay on for any reason, just leave me a comment and I'll gladly re-add!

On behalf of the pup, I'd like to say thank you for the honorable mention in the category of Favorite Animal or Non-Human. Both unicorn and mun were quite surprised and flattered that she was nominated! Thank you! =)

When in your life did you feel the most alone?

"I tell you, there is one unicorn left in the world -- good luck to the lonely old thing, I say."

The hunter's words strike at the core of the unicorn's heart, swift and sure as a volley of poisoned arrows. Before she has even an instant's worth of doubt (in which she will suppose, quite naturally, that the hunter is as given to shameless exaggeration as all men of his profession must be) she has this: the livid shock of the impossible made possible, followed by the cool creeping claws of dread.

Before this, the unicorn has lived alone, but she has never felt herself to be lonely. And that subtle but crucial difference between aloneness and loneliness is what makes all the difference. Knowing that she is no longer just a solitary creature, but possibly the last of her kindred ...

Before this, it was enough for her to feel that other unicorns existed, though she never encountered them. Now, it's not enough. With just a few rambling words, the hunter has taken from her the surety that however alone she may be, she will never be lonely. And until she discovers the extent of this loneliness--whether she is, indeed, the last unicorn left in the world--she can have no peace.

Cross-posted to theatrical_muse.

If you could do one totally irresponsible or even bad thing with absolutely no consequences, what would it be and why?

Contrary to what you may suppose, I have had the opportunity to make irresponsible choices ... though both 'irresponsible' and 'bad' seem too gentle a description.

When I was a mortal woman, I might have chosen -- I would have chosen to stay with Prince Lir, rather than face the Red Bull in my true form and thereby free the other unicorns. "Marry the prince and live happily ever after," Schmendrick said to me, and I would have tried, though I knew as well as he that there is no such thing as happy-ever-after. I would have lost myself for Lir, and the rest of my people with me. I loved him, you see.

Fortunately, I was not permitted to act upon that choice. But if I had been, and if I had done so with, as you put it, absolutely no consequences, I know what would have happened next. Absolutely nothing. Molly, Schmendrick, Haggard, the Bull, Lir, Amalthea, the unicorns -- we would all of us have been frozen in time, never leaving, never changing, never living, never dying. To think that I might inflict that kind of immortality on my friends, my people, and myself ... it is unthinkable.

Consequences are the force by which the world moves, whether they are borne of actions made deliberately or unwittingly, with noble or malicious intentions. And to me, a world without consequences is as appalling as a world without unicorns.

Cross-posted to theatrical_muse.

I would change the mind of King Haggard. I would alter whatever terrible thing it was, destiny or madness or mere character flaw, that gave him greed enough to covet all the unicorns in the world. I would ease the rancor from his thoughts, the cruel bitterness which made everything he touched turn hard and grey. I would see him understand that no amount of immortal beauty can fill the void left by a jaded heart. I would have Haggard free my people of his own accord, rather than meet his destruction as they broke from their prison.

I say that I would change the king's mind, and yet I know that if Haggard had proved a different man, my story, and the stories of those mortals I came to befriend and love, would not be the same. The price of that alteration should be far more than I'm willing to pay. But when I think of King Haggard, I cannot help wishing the impossible -- perhaps for my own sake as much as his.

Cross-posted to theatrical_muse.

( The Unicorn was going on, when his eye happened to fall upon Alice: he turned round instantly, and stood for some time looking at her with an air of the deepest disgust.Collapse )

I do not think I would do well in Wonderland. From the little I know of it, it seems a fairly chaotic place, like an entire country made out of the Midnight Carnival's room of mirrors; there is no constant shape or size to anything, and if you linger there too long, you begin to mistake the reflection of madness for your own mirror image.

I have heard that there is at least one unicorn in Wonderland, and while that should comfort me, I fear that he has been distorted by that world into something ... unnatural. I have yet to meet one of my kind who possesses pockets, after all, let alone hands to place in them. And the character of this unicorn seems rather questionable. He must lead a very strange and lonely life indeed, if he thinks children are monstrous!

I've no wish to judge Wonderland unfairly, however. I have known many beings who really prefer to go among the mad, and if I were more like them, and not so fond of my forest's tranquility, I suppose I would enjoy myself there. And I mustn't neglect to mention the fact that my friend _cheshirecat has never been anything but courteous toward me. If I could travel with him as my guide, I'm certain I would not feel nearly as anxious at the prospect of plunging down a rabbit hole -- or through a looking-glass, for that matter.

Cross-posted to theatrical_muse.