milliways_bar | Return of the hung-over Viking

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Return of the hung-over Viking

[[OOC: Context: Ragnar had some very uncomfortable ideas planted in his head by young!Moriarty, and then walked off into the mountains to ~~get drunk~~ think about them.]]

The back door to the lake and garden opens, and Ragnar Lothbrok walks in. He looks a bit dirty and scruffy, and if you get close, you'll notice that he smells of unwashed Viking.

He walks up to the bar and orders a pint of beer, which he drains to over half mark before putting it down again. He sighs, opens his magical belt pouch, gets out a bottle and puts it on the bar counter where it vanishes.

And another.

And another.

And another...

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"It's the kind of church where nasty old bishops tell everybody sex is the worst, and all other kinds of what they call sin is waved away?" Ragnar asks.

He knows about bishops. Bishops are bad news.

'Pretty much.'

For a Viking, he's got a handle on it pretty well.

'Everything's a sin - unless a priest is doing it - and you're supposed to confess all the time and beg forgiveness, and it's all absolved if you really repent...'

He rolls his eyes. Yeah, no, not happening.

"But if all is well when you really repent, then why fight sin with laws?" Ragnar says. "Isn't it more of a personal thing?"

'Try telling them that.'

He's spent a lot of time in England, so his anger at this is not as strong as it would be if he'd stayed exclusively in Ireland. But he's still illegal in the UK for another couple of years, and it's annoying.

Not that it matters. It's not like it stops anyone doing what they want.

'The Church doesn't believe in personal opinion. If you do what you want, you're giving into the Devil's temptation and you're going to hell, blah blah blah. You're supposed to resist. You're not even supposed to have sex with yourself.'

Which. C'mon.

Ragnar looks at him with an expression mirroring Jim's thoughts. "Why don't they set standards people can actually keep?"

'Control.'

Obviously.

'If they can convince everyone they're living their lives wrong, they'll all be cowed into doing whatever the Church wants. If people grow up being told they'll go to Hell for behaving like people, they can be told to do whatever the powerful institutions want.'

Institutions can go to Hell, as far as Jim's concerned.

"But that sort of thing probably makes them weird, as they are still people," Ragnar muses.

'Who? Everyone?'

Well, perhaps. Weirdness is subjective. Jim thinks everyone is, and most people think he is. Eh.

"Everybody who believes in that shit and tries to live by it," Ragnar says.

'There's a billion Catholics in the world,' he points out.

But, like, he's not disagreeing with him.

'It just makes them feel like they're achieving something. Living a 'good' life, even if it deprives them of stuff. It's the only meaning their lives have.'

"How can there be a billion people?"

Jim snorts. Oh yeah, he forgot.

'How are people usually made?'

He pulls a cigarette out of his pocket, and as an afterthought, offers one to Ragnar as well.

'There's a billion people in China alone. Almost a billion in India. Over six billion altogether.'

"That," Ragnar says, "must have taken a lot of fucking, and more kids than a family would usually want."

'Not necessarily. Exponential growth rates, and all that.'

He lights his smoke.

'People get richer, more educated, understand health and hygiene a lot more - they live longer, and less kids die, so there's more people to make more people, blah blah. Now the whole place is overpopulated and we're killing the planet. But that's what parasites do, so I don't know anyone acts like they're surprised about it.'

"So everything just gets fucked up, and the Christians fuck themselves up on top of that?" Ragnar says.

'Yeah.'

Obviously.

'Not just the Christians, though. There's a billion Muslims too, and their rules are even more strict, especially if you're a woman.'

In short: fucked. He does not understand why people deride his lack of faith in humanity. People are pointless.

"And they all fuck a lot and breed even more?"

'Yeah.'

Because that's what people do.

'Luckily, we're still pretty good at killing each other, so there's a bit of space here and there. One man managed to kill six million on his own, once.'

Even Jim does not applaud that effort. He doesn't think it matters, but it's still not a great legacy to leave behind.

"Without any help at all?" Ragnar asks.

Jim laughs.

'Oh no, he had an army. Control of a whole country. But he orchestrated it.'

"What kind of war did they fight?" Ragnar asks.

Jim looks at him. Then asks the bar for a dummies guide to World War II, and pushes it towards Ragnar when it appears.

'A big one.'

Ragnar looks at the book, and shakes his head. "Why a book for dummies? Can they even read?"

A look, an eyeroll.

'It just means they've made it simple for beginners to understand. It was a world war, with a lot of countries, and politics, and economics, and over forty million people died altogether. If you want to know what sort of war it was, have a skim through that.'

Because Jim does not have the patience to teach anyone without a grasp of twentieth century geopolitics and technology.

"I will do that, then," Ragnar says.

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