valis2 | Predator vs. Shakespeare take two.

So someone posts this Predator fanfic to

fanficrants completely by accident. It features two warriors named Eschte and Cthinde, who are angsting over their latest assignment. Next thing you know, me and another LJer end up slinging comments back and forth about the fic, and it just dissolves from there.

Craziest Shakespearean Predator Dialogue ever

Comments posted between me and

edward_hyde:

Me: HAHAH!! Yes, too true, that's what I thought as well. "Have you tried that new seratonin prescription yet?" [In response to EH's wonderment that two Predators would be hanging out and one would say to the other, "So what's REALLY on your mind?"]

EH:To quote an AIM discussion I'm having with someone about this very thread:

Me: Predator slashiness is...an odd concept, to be sure. But it could reasonably be done. I mean, the whole manly warrior hunt-brother thing, kinda like how all the manly roman soldiers were shagging each other. But they certainly would not be sighing dramatically and saying things like "how do you REALLY feel, smoofy-woofy-kins?"

Friend: *snorts and dies*

Me: At the smoofy, or at the fact that I can almost rationalize manly warrior bonding between hideous mandibled predators who like to skin people and hang their carcasses like a spring ham?

The combination of "brutal alien who likes to mutilate corpses for fun on the weekends" and "do you really think so? It doesn't make me look fat?" is truly surreal. I hope the OP has a sense of humor and doesn't delete it, this made my day. :P

[I missed one or two. Someone compares something to a Renfest.]

Me: ROFL! "Huzzah, Cthinde! Thou hast the fairest tights in the land!"

"Ah, but thou hast forgotten in thy praise thine own mandibles, Eschte! How they glisten in the sun..."

"Watch as I Morris dance!"

"Mine eyes are cheered by thy grace and natural beauty, Eschte! Now, let us away anon to the tent of much beer..."

EH: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more bloody and more temperamental.
Rough claws do shear the human flesh away,
And Hollywood's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometimes too hot the laser on thy shoulder shines,
And often is your mottled complexion masked;
And every predator from predator sometimes declines,
By chance or their nature's gruesome tasks;
But thee, Eternal Hunter, shall not fade
Nor lose posession of that skull thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to the sequel thou grow'st:
So long as yautja breathe or in nightvision see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Me: Cthinde: "But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks! It is the east, and Escthta is the sun!"

Escthta: "Ah me!"

Cthinde: "He speaks---O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art as glorious in your mandibles and array of weaponry as is a winged messenger of heaven."

Escthta: "O Cthinde, Cthinde! Wherefore art thou Cthinde? Deny thy skulls, and refuse thy Leadership, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer flense these skulls."

Cthinde: "I take thee at thy word: call me but love, and I'll be new baptiz'd; henceforth I never will be Cthinde."

Escthta: "What Hunter art thou, that thus bescreen'd in mottled skin, so stumblest on my counsel? My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words of thy tongue's uttering, yet I know the sound of your clicking mandibles; art thou not Cthinde, and a Hunter?"

Cthinde: "Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike."

Escthta: "How cam'st thou hither, tell me?"

Cthinde: "With love's light wings did I press the sumcom; for mere doors cannot hold love out: and what love can do, that dares love attempt; therefore thy malcontent sighs are no stop to me."

(deepest apologies to Master Shakespeare.)

EH: "Captain of our hunting band
Escthta is here at hand
And the yautja, mistook by me
Pleading for a Leader's fee
Shall we their skull-cleaning see?
Lord, what pauks these Predators be!"

(I think we are *way* past the point of being able to beg Shakespeare's forgiveness. ^_-)

Me: "To flense, or not to flense, that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the armor, to suffer the lasers and pauk of outrageous fortune, or to take homing missiles against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To sleep! perchance to dream; ay there's the rub; for in that sigh of malcontent what dreams may come, when we have cleaned off this mortal's skull, must give us pause: there's the warrior-bond, that makes calamity of so long life: for who would bear the guns and energy bolts of prey, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? who would these yautjas bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life; but that the dread of something after Leadership, the undiscover'd country, puzzles the will. Thus oddly-placed fic does make humor for us all."

At this point Shakespeare is ready to don the Predator uniform himself and set his lasers to "frappe".

EH: "Out, damned pauk! Out, I say! One: two: why, then, 'tis time to flense 't. Mask-vision is murky. Fie, my Leader, fie! A Predator, and afeared? What need we fear who hunts it, when none can call our lasers to accompt? Yet who would have thought the old yautja to have had so much blood in him?"

(I can just see predator-masked Shakespeare holding up one of our bloody skulls. "Alas, poor Edward, I knew her well Valis2.")

Me: This has been the highlight of my evening at the computer. But I'm nearly off to bed. It was fun mangling Shakespeare bits and lobbing them at you, only to see them neatly returned.

"Good night, sweet prince; and flights of yautjas see thee to thy rest!"

EH: It's just as well; I've been sitting here since my last post, trying to figure out how to fully Predator-ize Shylock's speech from Merchant of Venice. It's not going well, my multiple sinus medications are finally starting to rot out my brain. ;)

This thread was awesome. I have screenshotted the entire thing for posterity. :)

"If hard-meat is the food of love, hunt on!"
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I'm missing an early one, but otherwise it's fairly complete. Too bad you can't read the original fic now.