thisavrou_log | Open: chalk art

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Open: chalk art

Who: Yori and anyone!
When: December 2
Where: Out and about, in a corridor near the labs and a couple of different residential halls around Avagi.
What: Chalk art! Yori doesn't know what she's doing, but she likes these colors. You artists should come give her advice. Or tell her to quit marking up the walls, whatever you prefer.
Warnings: None expected.

Yori studies her materials: a blank wall and a large selection of colored powdery cylinders.

The bright colors called to her, a stray find in the barter area, but she has no idea what purpose they were designed to serve or what the Users will allow. At least the marks seem easy to remove.

She needs to try these outside her shared home first, considering the amount of dust and general practice she suspects getting any satisfactory result will involve. Yori picks up a color at random and draws a bright streak up the wall like a proper circuit. She might as well amuse herself.

The colored dust tints her dark long-sleeved uniform at once, but she can't mind if the result is as vivid as this. Much better than Avagi's blank walls.

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"Hey, Yori," Nate calls out, finding his roommate in the halls on his way home. The slash of color up the wall draws his eye, and then, as he draws nearer, the matching chalk in her hand.

"Huh," he says thoughtfully. "I've usually just seen chalk on chalkboards or on the sidewalk. That's cool."

Stan is wandering and without much purpose. For once, he's not being tailed by one or all of the rest of the Losers that are here with him. He comes across Yori as she begins drawing on the wall and at first he's surprised at someone doing that. Is that even allowed?

Then he realizes that she's using chalk and well... that's not permanently defacing anything. So, he watches curiously to see what she'll draw. Never mind him not saying anything as he does.

The familiar voice gets a swift smile. "Hello, Nate." She knows less about this medium-sized User than some of her other allies, but finds nothing to dislike.

It's some reassurance that he seems to approve. "I don't really know what I'm doing," she has to admit. "The colors just looked nice." Chalkboards must be specialized for this kind of thing, but does that mean it won't work in a different context? It's staying on the wall pretty well. A space station doesn't have weather the same way the Savrii worlds did.

She steps back a pace to observe the effect of the chalk-circuit, drawn from the floor to as high as she can reach. It won't glow, but it makes the wall look a little more alive, to her eyes. "Any suggestions?"

Yori notices her audience at once, but since her audience is a small User who looks more curious than hostile, she doesn't interrupt her slow line of blue chalk across the wall.

After a moment's thought, she adds an outline of something like a pair of narrow pink leaves sprouting from the ground, steps back, and looks at it thoughtfully.

Her audience still hasn't said anything. "What do you think?" she inquires politely.

"Very bold." She's found herself another admirer, his hands clasped behind his back as he observes the bright streak of Basic blue, at odds with the cold steel. Flynn leans aside, mildly conspiratorial.

"How many colors you got?"

Stan found himself surprised when she spoke to him but he studies the work she's done already.

"I think it looks very nice," he said. "The blank walls are a little cold."

Even if this small User isn't her User and has no reasonable authority over her here, Yori appreciates the praise. At least it's evidence that her aesthetic isn't completely wrong out here. "Thank you for saying so."

She nods at his assessment, a touch rueful. "I've always thought they could use some color, but it's hard to tell what's allowed or how to apply it."

Some of these station walls haven't changed much in three hundred years, when she was working for the Savrii who ran the Ingress.

It's hard to tell for a moment whether Flynn means the color or her action in using it on the wall, but since he seems to approve either way, Yori leaves the question. She's not sure how to value Flynn's approval in general. Still, at least he's trying.

She opens the little box in which she found the set of colored cylinders and holds it out toward Flynn. There's no shortage of different colors: blue, pink, yellow, black, white, purple, green, red, some in several shades. Impressive, if only she knew how to use them to their full potential. "Sometimes I wish it were easier to erase or draft a design out here," she admits, "but these seem less permanent than most."

Safe for a little experimentation.

"You didn't ask?" Stan questions. It's not that he thinks it would be a big deal. If nothing else, chalk is very easy to get rid of.

Asking would have been a good idea, but under the circumstances Yori can only shrug. "I couldn't find anyone assigned to hallway decoration." It's inessential compared to all the other urgent priorities.

They're so new to the station of Avagi that it's debatable whether anyone's in charge here at all; she's glad Nihlus has at least taken responsibility for life support and some basic security.

"If there's a rule against it, I'm sure they'll tell me so." And not just remove her as would have happened under the MCP in Encom. It's a slow process of trust.

Stan nodded and he studies what she'd drawn again. It was really pretty to him.

"Chalk is easy to wipe away if they don't want it, too. Paint might be more frustrating for someone if they didn't want it."

"Very true," Yori agrees. If she had found paint, it would be more frustrating for Yori herself as well; she still wouldn't know how to use it and also wouldn't know how to remove it. The chalk is easier to learn with because she can wipe it away.

Small Users are supposed to learn by experience, aren't they? Yori holds out the box of cylinders she isn't using, every color except the blue and pink. "Would you like to try?"

It's not as though he could spoil plans she hasn't made.

Stan looks at the chalk and then he smiles. He hasn't played with chalk himself in a very long time. But he used to when he was smaller. He reached out and took yellow.

"I'm not a very good artist," he admits as he studies a blank space on the wall.

"That's all right," Yori assures her new acquaintance. "I'm no artist myself." He's welcome to the yellow color. For her it has too many bad associations with Clu.

Not designed to be, not trained to be, certainly no expert in the inexplicable User standards. She likes color and art more than it was safe to admit under the Master Control Program, but she's a long way from claiming such a title.

On the other hand, she appreciates the freedom to try an occasional artistic design more than some programs might.

"I'm trying to narrow down patterns I like that are simple enough to reproduce." Is it a suggestion? Not exactly. She's not sure User memory or creativity works the same way.

He takes the offered box, touching each color in turn. Periwinkle and eggshell, olive and burnt sienna, quite a selection.

"I wouldn't worry about that," he assures her. "It's a wonderful idea. We could use more color around the station."

The station is in desperate need of brightness, but it's hard to tell whether Users feel the same or if it's just Yori's expectations from being in a computer system. These days she's reasonably confident no one will arrest her as long as she's polite about her attempts. That's an improvement.

"It's nice to hear I'm not the only one to think so." Yori's smile is a touch uncertain. She adds a new blue line, ascending in precise steps.

She's regained a little respect for Flynn over the process of making the ACE functional. Considering the scope of his bad decisions and their consequences...well, one step at a time. "Any suggestions?" she inquires.

If they end up being terrible ideas, she wants at least a little warning.

Things are still so touch and go. In the old days he might have taken a reticence to engage as a challenge, a need to impress, to be liked; validation in all things under the swagger and floppy hair. If he could make Tron smile at a harebrained project of his, or see the light of approval gleam bright in Clu's eyes... It took him a long, long time to grow up.

Now, it's all about the present, isn't it? Yori is here, and he can delight in her for that reason alone.

"'Anything' is too broad, isn't it?" Flynn gives her a wink, selecting a thin stalk of saffron. Clu-yellow, but it's also the color of a child's sun, spring daffodils, and roses that mean friendship.

"May I join you?"

To Nate's eye, this looks like a single line; he doesn't quite connect this to the stark contrast of colored lines on black that had briefly taken over the bartering area.

"Definitely something more, it looks kind of weird by itself," he says. "You could draw something you've seen that you liked, maybe, or something we don't have on the ship."

He is not one for abstract art.

"You may," Yori agrees. Watching someone else use these colors is a lesson of itself, whether she likes anything Flynn comes up with or not.

She moves over a step, allotting more space to Flynn, and draws a few more blue lines. Nothing too complex. She wants to focus on whatever Flynn does.

No matter what he manages to draw, at least that will be a better association with the yellow than Clu is. She wouldn't want the chalk to go to waste. And any technique is interesting when she knows none to speak of.

She's taking accurate inspiration from the walls near her former home, but that's not something she can expect anyone who doesn't know Encom to recognize. User aesthetics are very different; even the glimpses of Flynn's Grid looked strange to her.

Yori nods with a quick smile for the suggestion. She switches to black to outline the edge of a wall and a corner, a line of smudged violet horizon, and makes an attempt to render the Solar Sailer in small wireframe, wings wide to take flight.

She remembers every detail of the design, but that doesn't make it easy to reproduce in soft chalk on a wall at a fraction of true size. At least no one will tell her how wrong it is or punish her for the errors.

Nate tilts his head, trying to figure out what she's drawing.

"Oh, a butterfly," he says, as it dawns on him. Kind of a weird looking butterfly, but even in this universe, different places have very different insects. "I didn't know you like bugs."

Bugs of any kind are not something Yori has much positive data for. Gridbugs were an active danger in Encom; bugs in the User world seem too often a nuisance. She chuckles softly and shakes her head, unwilling to go into all the details in public.

"I don't, but wings fascinate me." Even if they are on bugs.

Now that he mentions it, the Sailer's wings do bear a certain resemblance to that design as noted in books. She wonders if the original programmer took some inspiration from the bugs.

Maybe it's just as well that her art isn't immediately identifiable as a program's work.

He slides the stick from its place beside its brothers.

"Thanks."

Aware of her scrutiny, he's nonetheless unbothered by it. Back in the day he relished the chance to show off, particularly for a pretty face, and he'd shouted dreams to crowds of thousands- Yori's quiet presence matters way more than all that. Flynn rubs his thumb down the side of the chalk while he steps away from the wall for a second, a quick survey of his canvas, and then he begins.

One line. Two, in keeping with Yori's own careful efforts. More follow, purposeful, as every quick line put down has a necessary place to be, to suit the whole that isn't yet anything more than dashes of hot, scalding yellow. Another color is added, then another, in shades like a sunset.

Finally though, with chalk dust on his sleeves, Flynn seems satisfied enough to stop.

Here, it looks for all the world like a great, incoherent mess.

Watching Flynn's confident speed is a lesson in itself. Yori makes careful note of how the chalk reacts at different pressures, different angles, how the colors react with one another.

The final result, as indicated by Flynn's pause, leaves her more baffled than illuminated. Not all art has to represent real things. Maybe this is somehow symbolic.

"That does make the wall look brighter," she notes in mild approval regardless. "Is it meant to be something specific?"

There are a lot of things in the User world she still hasn't seen, despite everything she's learned since Encom.

Flynn just laughs, a gentle thing, an air of mischief peeping in at the corners of that silver mustache. He walks back a good handful of feet from the wall, and beckons to Yori with orange-tinted fingers. Come here.

In the span of that quick distance, the mess of color transmutes into a picture at last. Autumn in full swing, a sea of trees populating the wide avenue of a city thoroughfare, a chorus of scarlet and rust leaves, the hard lines of towers gentled into dreamlike softness by burnished gold light and purpling shadows, all under a liquid sun drooping slow and sultry in a western sky.

"There."

Wonder illuminates Yori as the scribbles resolve. Not a thing, but a world, colored in gold as the local star falls behind the atmosphere toward darkness. "I see it now," she murmurs, eyes fixed on the expanse of sky.

She'd never seen a sunrise or a sunset before learning all the stellar mechanics that navigation crew aboard the Moira needed. The sheer beauty in the moment of captured starlight amazes her, even if it's not her favorite color.

This doesn't look like Kaittos, so Flynn might be inspired by images from his own world. Yori isn't sure whether to ask, considering how far away they are from Encom and Earth. "That's beautiful," she tells him instead. "I see I have a lot to learn."

She hadn't imagined the soft chalk could provide so much accuracy.

"They're cool," Nate agrees, being somewhat ambivalent on bugs so long as they're not the oversized ones that attacked people back in Balamb. "One of my spells makes people float - for a second it looks like they have wings."

He gestures at the chalk on the floor. "Can I draw it?" While he does have a small figure in his journal, it was squeezed in with his notes from that class.

She hadn't known that aspect of Nate's skills. It's certainly an image Yori would like to see. The idea of Rinzler with wings is unexpectedly hilarious; her mouth quirks. "Please, go right ahead."

The chalk isn't in limited supply yet, at least. Plenty to let her allies show her their own techniques and memories, if they want to, and plenty of colors to choose from. She steps back a pace to give Nate room to work, all the better to watch his choices.

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Open: chalk art

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