Silkspeech

Mystical, demonic power, taught by  Death himself...and you can learn it too!

"Silkspeech is the power of influence and control....The ability to sway other people to believe what you want them to believe or to do what you want them to." [Death]

"Like mind control?" [Nick]

"Yes and no. Mind control won't work on thse who are really hardheaded. You know....Creatures like you."

Well, if it only worked some of the time--"Then what good is it?"

"Fine." Grim (Grim Reaper AKA Death) headed for the door. "If you don't want to learn it."

"Wait, wait, wait. I didn't say that. I want to influence others." Especially if it could change his mom's attitude about dating, driving, chores...(Nick is 15 years old).

Yeah, it had a lot of possibilities. With luck, he might not ever have to take out trash again!

Grim turned around slowly. "Word to the wise, short stack, when you do use this power, you have to be careful. LIke all the others, it can sometimes come with a desvastating side effect."

"Like waht?"

"It could cause someone to kill themself. Alter their fate. Impact you in ways you won't know about until it's too late."

Oh goodie. Another power he couldn't count on. Just what he wanted.

At this rate, he wasn't sure why he was being trained. It was like giving nuts to a squirrel who had no teeth.

Nick let out a heavy sigh. "All these powers and the only one that actually works is the ability to call for help--and that one only so long as Caleb isn't in the shower or with a woman. Why can't one...just one power work the way it's supposed to?"

Grim's expression was wicked and cold. "Technically, they do. The problem is every human is different and they react to stimuli in ways unique t them. That's what you can't count on and it's what makes you powers appear to misfire. Before you use them, you have to take time to know your target."

Nick frowned. "I don't understand."

"Yes, you do. It's instinctive in you, and it's why you gravitate toward some people and run from others." Grim picked up one of the porcelain dolls Nick's mom collected and studied it as he talked. "Let's take the term 'redneck.' Some people think of it as a badge of honor. Others as the ultimate insult." He returned the doll to its shelf. "Originally, the word had an entirely different association and meaning. Back in the day, rednecks were union coal men from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky-a far cry from the Deep South where most people mistakenly believe all rednecks live. They were from all races and creeds, and proudly wore a red bandana around their neck as a way of identifying themselves to others, and as a mark of solidarity of the working man standing up against the big corporations who exploited them. In sort, they were folk heroes and admired."

Nick widened his eyes. When Grim and Kyrian talked about history, it was interesting. When his teacher did it, it put him to sleep. "Really?"

Grim nodded. "It took decades before it was twisted into a derogatory term. Happens a lot with language. The word 'war' once meant to be cautious, as in 'warning'. 'Precocious' originally meant 'stupid.' But I digress. The point is, Slim, people have triggers. Words or images that cause a surge of negative emotion to run rampant through them. If I were to call your friend Bubba a redneck, he'd laugh and agree. If I were to call your friend Mark that, he'd be extrememly offended and probably, to his detriment, try to punch me. Whenever you attempt silkspeech, you have to understand how it might adversely affect your target. If you accidently hit that person's trigger, then you could end up with a violent response instead of a positive one. Or vice versa."

Nick nodded as he followed Grim's teaching. It was something he'd been doing for years, especially with jerks and bullies like Stone at school. "So what you're saying is I have to learn what buttons to push."

"Exactly."

"That's basic psychlogy, Grim. How's that supposed to be a power?"
.....pause for two pages discussing Nick's specific powers, Nick's inability to stay on subject ("like trying to train an ADD cat in a mouse factory") and how everyone treats Nick like a kid (If you want respect from others, you have to give it--Nick's mom)

[Nick] "All right. You have my undivided attention."

"That'll last three seconds," Grim said under his breath. "Honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you're not the Malachai. It mystifies me that someone as worthless as you could have any power whatsoever. You were born white trash and that's all you'll ever be." He raked Nick with a scathing sneer. "You're nothing."

Rage darkened Nick's gaze. Blood rushed through his veins so fast that his entire body heated up to the level of molten lava. "I ain't nothing, boy. You about to find out just what I can do."

Grim laughed. "That's it. I finally do have yur attention, and you've just learned the first lesson of influence. You use your divination and clairvoyance to strike the nerves of the person you're trying to manipulate. Even someone with a will as strong as yours can be influenced. Not with your mind, rather with your mouth or actions. I can't control you, but I can set you off and manipulate you to have the emotional  or physically response I want you to. That is one power no one is immune to."

--Passage from Infamous by Sherrilyn Kenyon

More Favorite Quotes

(Since I can only post 200 characters of labels.)

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
--Maya Angelou

"Death should be a celebration. Like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: ahh!"
--Joanne Harris

"I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow."
--Woodrow Wilson

"I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me. It was a battle cry."
--Jim Butcher, My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

"I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from the cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no ne else can help you, give me a call, I'm in the book."
--Jim Butcher, Storm Front

"I think that men aught to treat women like something other than weaker men with breasts."
--Jim Butcher, Storm Front
[yes: we're definitely not weaker, and more importantly, we're smarter :-)]

"It came charging toward me, several hundred pounds of angry-looking monster, and I did the only thing any reasonable wizard could have done. I turned and ran like hell."
--Jim Butcher, Death Masks

"Hope is a force of nature. Don't let anyone tell you different."
--Jim Butcher, Changes

"Christ, Dresden! You almost got me killed!"
"Don't be a baby. You're fine."
Thomas frowned at me. "You at least could have told me!"
"I did tell you," I said. "I told you at Mac's that I'd give you a ride home, but that I had to run an errand first."
Thomas scowled. "An errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo."
--Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

Favorite Quotes

"Apocalypse is a frame of mind." [Nicodemus] said then. "A belief. A surrender to inevitability. It is a despair for the future. It is the death of hope."
--Jim Butcher, Death Masks

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
--Robert Frost

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
--Oscar Wilde

"Insanity is doing the same thing, overandover again, but expecting different results."
--Albert Einstein

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
--Mark Twain

"There's more magic in a baby's first giggle than in any firestorm a wizard can conjure up, and don't let anyone tell you any different."
--Jim Butcher, Fool Moon

"Bow ties are cool."
--Steven Moffat

"Every now and then I like to do as I'm told, just to confuse people."
--Tamora Pierce, Melting Stones

New favorite "quote"

"There were some things that no man wanted to hear under any circumstance. One, that he’d lost his testicles in battle. Two, that he’d lost his testicles to a fluke injury. Three, that he’d caught some disease that interfered with his ability to perform as a man. And most of all four, that the father of the woman, who was one of the most powerful men in all of Christendom, was at the gate of the home where he’d just violated the man’s daughter without the sanctity of marriage. Four was guaranteed to cost him not just his testicles, but the rest of his internal organs as the king ordered them scraped from inside him while he was still alive enough to feel it. " --The Warrior by Kinley MacGregor (men sure seem to be attached to their testicles, hahaha)

P.S. As I finish this book and the series, I'm thinking about how sch-mooth Sherrilyn Kenyon is when it comes to bridging her novels into one world. I know that the revelation in the epilogue pointedly states that he belongs in the Dark Hunters world. I'm not sure if I agree with the fans on her website (another very smart move--she states in the books that the Dark Hunters use the dark-hunter.com domain to correspond with each other, a convienient way to steer fans of the books to her website) that he deserves his own book--I think that 90% of The Warrior was made up to make Lochlan a tragic character. No where in the previous books are there any hints of the abuse his father is accused of--all that we know is that he cheated on his wife once and paid penance for that by neglecting his bastard son--which makes him one kind of bastard, but how could there have been no hints of the many bastards he must have fathered, plus the physical abuse of women? Kieran's disappearance, while it did hint at being more than it seemed, seemed too much like an after-thought for my liking.

Quote

"The art of diplomacy is the luck of knowing more of your rival's secrets than he knows of yours. Always deal from a position of power. These were Shrewd's maxims. And Verity abided by them."
--From Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb

From "Assassin's Apprentice" by Robin Hobb

"Tell this to King Shrewd. Our population grows, but there is a limit to our arable soil. Wild game will only feed so many. Comes a time when a country must open itself to trade, especially so rocky and mountainous a country as mine. You have heard, perhaps, that the Jhaampe way is that the ruler is the servant of his people? Well, I serve them in this wise. I marry my beloved younger sister away, in the hopes of winning grain and trade routes and lowland goods for my people, and grazing rights in the cold part of the year when our pastures are under snow. For this, too, I am willing to give you timbers, the great straight timbers that Verity will need to build his warships. Our mountains grow white oak such as you have never seen. This is a thing my father would refuse. He has the old feelings about the cutting of live trees, And like Regal, he sees your coast as a liability, your ocean as a great barrier. But I see it as your father did--a wide road that leads in all directions, and your coast as our access to it. And I see no offense in using trees uprooted by the annual floods and windstorms."

excellent quote, I think.

Favorite Quotes:

"If you can't convince them, confuse them"
-Harry Truman

"Dance....consists of stylized movements whose significances configure and affect a people’s existence in time."

"Love a challenge"
-Me

"it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
-W.K. Clifford

"Keep Moving Forward"
-Walt Disney

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."
-Thomas Jefferson

"Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night"
-Philip K. Dick

"Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted."
-Fred Allen

"I don't listen to Rap; I listen to Par"
-Annonimouse

" 'Cause I'm just a little girl you see
But there's a hell of a lot more to me
Don't ever underestimate what I can do
Don't ever tell me how I'm meant to be"
- "Just A Little Girl", Amy Studt

Not really a quote, but something my history prof said in class Tuesday...
Apparantly the original feminists from the 19th century would disagree with the way of feminists today. They disagreed with abortion, divorce, and fornication; anything that made life in anyway easier for the man. They didn't agree with a double standard, but when it came to which standard should be set, it is the woman whose ideal is better. Women should not sink to the mans level, but should expect men to rise to the standard of woman.

"Beauty is in the imperfections"

"By 1798, voters had formed two parties, each of which accused the other of threatening republican liberty"-- Enduring Vision--USHist 201 textbook. Things really don't change do they?!?

"Science explains the what; Religion explains the why"
--condensed version of something my anth. prof. said.

"When I use a word [...] it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less"
--Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.
--Wizard's First Rule; book by the same name, Terry Goodkind

"Truth and falsehood have both alike countenances...Wee beholde them with one same eye"
--Montaigne

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
--Albert Einstein

"If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur."
--Doug Larson
(actually, I think an apostrophe with fur would be a catastrophe--or would at least scare me silly)