Lacks a certain barbarism, to be sure, [Demeisen agrees, in dry acknowledgement of the cesspit city that Silco had almost certainly summoned for their first stop on their world-hopping trip. Silco’s is a familiar enough refrain to the avatar, though most in the Culture wouldn’t hold the opinion with such vitriol: people in the Culture were complacent. They were pampered and effete, coddled by the Minds who kept them and cared for their every whim.

It was only that to most who considered themselves part of the Culture, this wasn’t a bad thing. After all, those who disliked their lives could simply leave. It was easy to do so. People left the Culture all the time, moving to worlds that were messier and more “real,” or just Subliming and leaving their lowly universe altogether; that just didn’t stop the civilization as a whole from growing even so.

As Silco slowly forces the doors apart, the avatar steps closer, coming to stand right beside him, looming almost a head above the smaller man. Turning to face him, he reaches out with one arm, grips the edge of the door nearer to him, and pulls the door a little further open.]

That’s why some people get so hard for Special Circumstances.

[He grins lazily down at his companion; there is the implication that, whatever Special Circumstances is, he falls somewhere within it.]

They think real danger, real violence is roguish and sexy. It’s fantasy to them.