manifcst

[manifcst]

THIS GUY WANTS TO TAKE A LONG DIRT NAP SO BAD IT'S ACTUALLY CRAZY. Jed's never seen a more punchable face in his life.

"Don't go'n give me ideas, now, I just might." Leaning back on one leg with his hands resting over his gun's holsters, he squints up at him with more confidence than a plastic figuring has any right to exude. "Go for the heel where it really smarts, you don't know! But you don't go around tellin' a vaquero he don't know how to cut a mean steak, Tut Junior, that's just itchin' for a scrap."

@manifcst asked :

"Those are bold words for someone in stabbing range." ramen noodle

Kahmunrah looks left and right , pointing with his thumb towards where Jedediah stands. ❛ Stabbing range ? ❜ He asks , scoffing. ❛ Look - look at this guy. He thinks I'm in stabbing range. What are you going to stab ? My ankle ? ❜ A hand rests on his waist as he squints down at him. ❛ Do you even have anything to stab me with ? Is there a thumb tack down there , by chance ? Or perhaps a toothpick ? ❜

[manifcst]

@thronecage liked for an event starter

JEDEDIAH CAN'T EVEN DRINK, IS THE THING— or, well, he can, but he doesn't need to. He's made of plastic, after all. But it gives him a refreshing ( and frankly unearned ) sense of normalcy. Even if he's just sort of standing on the bar next to a shotglass he's barely even dipped a hand into— feels good. Feels natural. Thanks.

Needless to say he's not exactly thrilled when somebody takes a seat on a barstool right in front of him. This seat is clearly occupied. In spirit. God forbid a man take a moment or two for himself every now and then.

"Do you mind? Some of us already had business here, Slim Jim, and it sure as shootin' outranks yours. Get in line!"

[manifcst]

@togabcy liked for an event starter

"OCTAVIUS!" Jedediah's hand lashes out of seemingly nowhere, grabbing him by the elbow and yanking him into the little hole in the wall he's wedged himself into, nose to nose and beaming. There's a look in his eye, a certain set to his expression that plainly communicates a bad idea on the horizon - and, naturally, not a hint of care towards the unusual circumstances the city has found itself in. Jed feels just fine, so why worry? "Just the man I wanted to see."

Of course he is. Octavius goes along with all of his ideas with only mild complaining. One gloved palm smacks excitedly against the Roman's breastplate, the other digging into his shoulder with an iron grip. See his visions, boy.

"How'd you like to go out on a little roundup with me?"

[manifcst]

@hggsbury liked for an event starter

"HEYO, FANCYPANTS!"

Given Jedediah is already repeatedly nudging his car against the back of the man's ankles, heaven only knows what makes him feel the need to lay on the horn while he's at it.

"Get outta the way, for crying out loud, some of us have got places to be here! Goddang, I've seen molasses move quicker'n you. Move 'em on, rawhide!"

[manifcst]

"HAVE YOU MET LINCOLN?" Because last time Jed bumped into the guy he was, like, thirty feet tall. Granted he was also made of marble, but nobody can prove that the Original Lincoln wasn't.

Kids these days. Thinking they know everything just cause they weren't born in the 1800s or whatever. Jed knows full well that for all that head-bobbing he's doing, everything's going in one ear and out the other - that or he's absorbing it all but not taking any of it seriously, which might be worse.

"When dinosaurs—" he very nearly throws his hat down in sheer offended disgust, because even if he has technically hung around dinosaurs more often than not he still knows an insult when he hears it. "Boy, you're treadin' on thin ice, that's what you're doin'. I know what it is, I weren't born yesterday. I wanna know how to make it go, for crying out loud. It ain't got no buttons! Flat as a pancake!"

          danny couldn’t help the way his head kept nodding, as if seemingly agreeing with everything the tiny ( and that was still rude, right, even just thinking it? it felt rude, at least ) man was saying. because so much of what he was saying was baffling, and maybe even just straight up wrong. or maybe outdated was a better word? honestly, his brain was still short-circuiting a bit from the initial shock.

     ❝ Uh-huh, right, I don’t think I’m really the right person to have to tell you that Abe Lincoln wasn’t, like, the tallest person in the world, dude. ❞ heck, danny was pretty sure his dad was taller than that old president. ❝ I also feel like there’s more wrong with that statement but honestly I don’t have the bandwidth to point it all out right now. ❞

     and then, the phone. the tiny, tiny phone. the sight was enough to make danny nearly coo, if it hadn’t been paired with a grizzled cowboy guy.

     ❝ Right. I bet they didn’t have those when dinosaurs walked the earth. Yeah, well, that’s a cell phone. It’s like smoke signals, but way better. ❞

[manifcst]

"IF IT FALLS LIKE A HOG and squeals like a hog then I don't gotta say nothin' more on the matter, hombre." His gloved hands spread into an innocent splay of what can you do. He's not really sure what all the whining's about. It's not like they ain't still edible. Pick 'em right up off the ground and you're good as gold. But Jedediah is not in the business of being helpful and instead goes on the defense.

"How's I supposed to know you was carryin' food? You could've had anything in that bag of yours!" Never mind the fact that if he had known he probably still would've done it; think of the reward.

( Not the food itself, of course, Jed doesn't really want anything to do with that, but it sure feels like it counts as taking down multiple trophies in one fell swoop to him. )

"Wasn't nothin' personal, anyhow. Wrong place, wrong time. Now take it like a man!"

★ --;; One of the donuts continues to roll a bit sadly down the sidewalk before landing with a silent, depressing 'plop' against the concrete; the hooting and hollering feels like salt in the wound, like a horrible soundtrack to his fallen treat instead of the beautiful eulogy it deserves... !

Watery eyes locking on to the sole of a boot meeting his poor, deceased, delicious friend is the final straw. In a great flailing of limbs Vash brings himself to sit upwards, legs crisscrossed and eyebrows furrowed.

"Do I look like a hog t'you!?" Vash wails, bending clean over at his waist, hands on his knees making his elbows splay out to his sides. Never mind that this is far from the first time he's been hog tied, but this didn't even count! All this tiny little man had done was make him trip over like a particularly mobile tree being separated from its base.

"I didn't do anything t'you and you go an' make me send all a' my food rollin' down the street! Don't you have the decency not t'get between a guy and his food?!"

[manifcst]

jedediah is ORANGE — pride, impatience, and nearly-boundless energy. think a hair-trigger temper, an arrogant sense of confidence, and the tendency to leap without looking.

just like with mccoy, i won’t be getting to these until i return home in a couple of days — still, i wanted to get a starter call out for the event. we’ll cap it at three!

[manifcst]

quick! tell a lie!

from shrek 2 starters

"Hold on, now, Jedediah ain't no liar." Which, to his credit, is not a lie. Sometimes he exaggerates. Oftentimes he greatly exaggerates. But he's not about to throw his honor under the bus just like that. "This is a hustle and I ain't buyin' it."

...But then again he does love to get In On Some Bullshit.

He jerks his chin in the other's direction. "You first."

[manifcst]

JED SQUINTS AT HIM CRITICALLY, as though Larry has just said something astoundingly stupid. Anybody around here with eyes - or ears, or a general sense of awareness - could tell him that Jedediah is most certainly not the only exhibit who settles things by fighting, and in fact it would probably be a whole lot quicker to list out everybody who didn't settle things by fighting, but he's always privately thought Larry lives inside some sort of little fantasy world so he can believe whatever he wants to believe. It helps him feel in control. They let him have that.

"What other way IS there to settle things, Gigantor?" It's a rhetorical question and clearly framed as such, and truth be told grousing around a little IS kind of making him feel slightly better about his woes, but it also doesn't get to the root of the problem. He stomps around a bit, kicks at the ground petulantly, and then takes off his hat, slapping it on his thigh with a theatrical sigh.

"Every now and then a man needs to do some wallowin'. You know how hard it is to drag your boots what with all the noise they're makin' out there?" A broad sweep of an arm out beyond the diorama's edge. Then, because an explanation for all the moping in question seems earned by this point: "They're doing drills over in the Roman diorama all night. The whole doggone night."

Jed is aware that surely he must have been doing something with his time before befriending Octavius, but to the best of his memory it had been... fighting Octavius. When presented with neither option, the future seems bleak.

He raises his hands in surrender. ❛ I'm not trying to " therapize " you , Jed. ❜ Although he does think that therapy would fix him. Or at least mellow the guy out a little bit.

❛ Yeah , and that's great , but need I remind you that this - ❜ He gestures to the Museum around them. ❛ - isn't the Wild West. If you want to settle things by throwing rocks or whatever inside your diorama , that's fine. Knock yourself out. But not everyone here settles things by fighting. ❜ Now that he thinks about it , a lot of the exhibits in here do just that. But there's no way in hell he's saying that out loud when Jedediah's right there. He sighs. ❛ Now , are you going to tell me what happened , or did you just need someone to complain to ? ❜

[manifcst]

worst thing about jed is i cant send him for any of those height comparison things

[manifcst]

AND BAM, DOWN HE GOES; Jedediah punches the air, tosses his hat up, which at any other time would feel like a rather silly celebration given no one else is around to cheer over it but feels earned in this instance. It never gets old. Who needs a posse when you're this good?

"That's right!" He whoops. "That's the hog-tying champion you're lookin' at, boy, fifty-seven years and he's still got it!"

He moseys his way around the fallen figure to get more in front of his face, tapping the toe of his boot lightly against one of the fallen pastries. Its jelly innards are strewn out all across the sidewalk. It's a massacre; Jedediah's never felt so proud. Thumbs hooked through his beltloops, he rocks back on his heels, tilting his head at the other.

"How's it feel? Not so high and mighty now, are you? Brought right on down to a reasonable level for once!"

( It sounds more personal than it is, certainly. The sentiment applies to everyone over six inches tall. )

★ --;; Life on the island is full of conveniences that they had definitely never had back on No Man's Land; back home, Vash's Walkman had been one of the few possessions he had ever bothered to take much care of besides his arm and his gun ( much to the chagrin of those who kept making his coats ), but nowadays the ease of accessing music through the phone he'd been given has him reaching for it at least a bit more often, even if he still prefers the tactile feel of all the buttons on his old companion, especially under the fingers of his prosthetic.

So he's fiddling with it now, the other arm wrapped around a paper bag filled with a bunch of day-olds from the cafe while his organic thumb taps the screen. The street's pretty empty, all things considered, so he's not particularly paying attention; he finally finds the song he wants, is about to tap it when--

He abruptly smacks into the sidewalk, aborted shriek punctuated by the landing.

"Owowowow what the hell--"

... Only to see his pastries also tossed out onto the ground.

"Ack-- no no no no no!!" He's really about to start wailing.

[manifcst]

" we came, we saw them, now let's go before they light the torches. "

from shrek 2 starters

"WHAT, TURN TAIL'N GET like a yellow-bellied tenderfoot? No can do, wildfire." His tone is grim, head shaking solemnly, even as he eagerly adjusts his gloves and then removes a ( plastic, completely bulletless ) pistol from his belt. Make no mistake: he is itching to cause problems. Escalating situations for no reason rated best pastime fifty years in a row. "I say we go right on over there guns a-blazin' and give'em a real what-for. Where's your guts! C'mon, now!"

[manifcst]

"THAT'S WHAT I SAID, GALAHAD," and of course he knows how impossible it is but the inconvenience of its location cannot be overstated. Sometimes a man simply needs to air his grievances, gosh darnit, even if he can barely hear himself think over the fella's dog ( he's 0-for-2 when it comes to the dogs in this city, which is a crying shame like no other ).

He's not all too concerned about it otherwise, of course - the dog, that is. Its down there and he's up here, relatively unbothered in the way he tilts his head at the critter. He's a plastic toy in a museum that routinely fails to close the display cases during the day. Getting slobbered on happens once a month.

"Hold on now, I ain't lost." The sheer audacity of the implication earns him a squint when Jedediah looks back up to the man he's trying to converse with. The dichotomy of their existence means that he is both fully aware that the memories in his head aren't his at all - aren't even real, just part of some story that sprung to life the same night he did - and yet entirely dead-set on clinging to them. He's a cartographer, for as far as he's concerned. A trailblazer. "Ol Jedediah ain't been lost a day in his life. I live just thataway," he jerks a thumb over his shoulder, vaguely in the direction of the far wall. "Right on over there. This homestead of yours just gets in the way of gettin' to it every now and again."

He's often in a hurry to get there, after all. The sun sets a mean deadline.

The offer is one he has to consider deeply. He doesn't need to eat, hasn't ever felt hunger, though he knows it's something they can do. Jed doesn't typically bother, but that's mostly a case of not trusting a single thing Larry brings in. But, y'know, the stuff in the vending machines - now that's a different story entirely. And, heck, he's got time to kill and nothing particularly to lose. He's here already, isn't he? Jed shrugs a shoulder.

"Don't get hungry much but I ain't gonna say no. Wha'd'you feed that thing, anyway?" He jerks his chin towards the dog - Birdie, evidently. "Size of a dang horse, she is!"

Cullen isn't sure what (who?) he's staring at on his countertop in his kitchen.

Breakfast. He's supposed to be making breakfast for himself and Birdie, his mabari, who's barking up a storm behind Cullen's legs, trying to get at whatever—no, whoever—is speaking to him.

"You want me to...move the house?" The ridiculousness of that scenario breaks through his confusion. Sure, Thedas has a race smaller than humans, dwarves, as well as tales of mythical creatures which are rumored to be smaller than dwarves. But this? This tiny person looks like one of the toy soldiers he and his brother used to play with when they were children, albeit the outfit doesn't match any Thedosian culture he's aware of.

The lasso, however, looks like the sort of tool he grew up seeing at his family's farm.

"Fourth time? Are you lost? Do you need me to take you somewhere?" Using his body to shield this poor, tiny man away from Birdie's maw (to slobber on him, no doubt) won't work forever, so he might as well get on with what he's meant to do while figuring this mystery. "Are you hungry? I, uh, have to feed her and myself anyways." So might as well be the gracious host his mother taught him to be. "I'm Cullen, by the way. And this is Birdie."

[manifcst]

boy which part of not havin this conversation with you was unclear

i don't - i don't get moody ! just tell me , jed. is it really that obvious ??

[manifcst]

listen gigantor i ain't havin this conversation with you on account of you get all moody when we tell you things you don't like hearin

it can't possibly be that obvious.

[manifcst]

don't shoot the messenger laredo it ain't like i enjoy witnessing it

i do not -

[manifcst]

clearly. cause you keep doin it

trying not to flirt with mcphee in front of the exhibits is a lot harder than he thinks it should be