The Doorway: a panfandom game

Well I don't know why everyone these days thinks it's on to talk about ghosts and witches and monsters like they was friends and putting them up for decorations (and they're always smiling) or dressing up like silly harmless versions of them. I don't know why everyone acts like it's some game to call out to things what are supposed to be evil. I'm not superstitious very but that's just tempting fate and you won't find me doing it when I walk by a churchyard I do it fast and keep my head down because anything else is just wanting trouble.

So at midnight tonight and tomrrow I'm going to be in bed and the rest of you can have all the trouble you called up and don't come knocking because I won't answer.

Fall comes later here or maybe it just comes later these days. I've heard it's all getting warmer and I don't pretend to know very much about it but it stands to reason you can't do what we did and cover a whole city in soot and expect it won't make a damn bit of difference. Anyway the leaves aren't quite what I was hoping for but no one needs a reason to get out of the city not really, not any day and especially not today. I'm taking the train out to go apple picking.

FILTER: WALTER BLYTHE

It'll be nice we'll take a picnic.

And you can have a nap if you like.

[Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers (616) Septimus Smith, Isabel Pole, Howard Stark, Basil Hall, Alec Scudder (close friends. Ask if you want in on the filter!)]

Pte. Walter Cuthbert Blythe, DCM. Now a card carrying SHIELD Agent, who has managed to make it past (in one piece) Agent Margaret Carter's initiation. Though I've only just woken up now, and I smell like a Speakeasy the night before prohibition hit -- and I might still be wearing your lipstick, Peggy.

TEXT TO WALTER BLYTHE:

» I found your note
» I hope it was you what left it anyway
» Because it's you I want to give it back again to

( Note Stuck to Alec Scudder's Door )

I'm trying to sort out which of the Fates thought it funny to throw me in a gas mask last weekend. I was fine. I'd been working on it, I'd been training -- but I didn't need to catch a whiff of those sickening fumes to have fears and disquietude.

What has, I think, left me the most distressed is the fact that I'm... not. I'm not perturbed in the slightest. Trudging through panicked persons and listening to the whistle and wheeze of discarded effluvium filtered away from my every laboured breath did not leave me distraught. I felt absolutely nothing at all.

...Except, perhaps, a tight, grating anger. The sort that seethes, the sort that froths and fumes and simmers...

Every nice summery day we have now comes with that bite of knowledge that so few remain. I'm not looking forward to the winter months, even with this Canadian blood of mine. We feel the cold just as the rest of you do, we've only learned better the value of woollen socks and long johns -- and there's not a bit of shame in either.

But enough of those depressing predictions of things to come, I'm going out, I'm enjoying the day, I'm getting a fancy smoothie and a ridiculously overpriced salad and sitting outside to savour both.

[Scudder]

Are you feeling better? If so, would you care to join me and share in my pathetic attempt at extravagance and indulgence?

Well a couple of weeks ago I got a book out of one of them boxes people leave things in for free. I got it because it was small and it looked about the right size to go under a lamp I have which is always wobbling probably because I got it out of a box too but people leave so much stuff on the side of the road it's stupid to buy anything.

Today I started to read it because I had to come home from work early on account of my head hurting that way they do when looking at lights can make you feel all done over in the stomach and I couldn't even think of looking at something all lit up like a screen.

Anyway it's about this place called Starkfield Massachusetts which apparently everyone wants to get the hell out of and it does sound pretty cold and lousy. But near as I can tell from the first two chapters it's just a story what's already given up its ending which is that a fellow who probably did want to get out of Starkfield couldn't see his way to getting out of Starkfield and now he's old and wretched. It's all pretty slow going so I don't see why I should shoulder on through the rest of it if it's already over.

I'll never know why people read when they get sick.

So.

I look like Ben Whishaw.

We've all been through this, we've all grappled with that strange moment when we finally realised our uniqueness is not entirely unique and that God did not quite break the mold as we'd all been lead to believe.

Over the weekend, Ben Whishaw gave me a gift. No, I didn't meet him personally, but he did help me to realise that privacy can exist even though it feels like everyone is reading over your shoulder and waiting for you to trip and fall, that love does not have to be loud, or broadcast but can still thrive as privately as the meaningsome of his deserved privacy by doing something important, and talking to us about it.

There's been plenty of things I've turned down even though they was free. I never wanted anybody's clothes but my brothers' and those I think I was only happy to get because it meant I wasn't quite so short as I used to be. I never took anybody's money for doing nothing not even when the berks who tried to give it to me had more than was good for them or than they'd ever miss. They was the sort of men who thought I owed them something just for standing beside them and I didn't want to ever let them say I didn't earn everything they threw at me.

This is different. The world owes everyone a place to stay and if you haven't got a home no more because someone took you from it then you've got whatever's coming to you I think. I shall stay here.

[FILTER: Walter Blythe]

But someday I'm going to go to Wyoming and stay there.

It never got this hot in Bristol! I'm just glad I can't feel it.

I think I'm going to crash a wedding. I love weddings. And I never got my own, so...

Who wants to come with?

...Holmes?

There's a man what comes in with his keeshond pretty regular and last week we got to talking about I think it was a shirt he was wearing. He's part of a group concerned with the waterfront although I don't know which one but in any case they've got these plots anyone can take and use to make a garden. So we took a walk and he showed me round and now I've got a decent sized piece of ground for a city anyway that I can plant things in. It's off Union Ave which is not too close but I don't mind the trip.

It's late to plant tomatoes and cucumbers but I might get some in pots going. For sure carrots and beets and onions and you never can have too many cabbages. If anyone knows what else to put in the ground I'm on the lookout except I never liked turnips.

I won't lie it's half the getting into the dirt I'm looking forward to. Here you can buy just about everything you need except that part.

Why do people eat soup. What's the point of it?

I can bruise. I knew that. I did know that. They fade quickly, over hours really. I don't know if they show up on the portait, I wouldn't be able to see But I like watching them fade. I know it's about as aimless as watching a fish swim around in their bowl but

-- but it's a change. It's a change in my skin, even a temporary one. Something all of you take for granted all the time. You don't know how boring it is, not aging. You fret about wrinkles or growing old, drooping bodies or gained weight -- but I... sit for hours and stare at a bruise because it's all I have.

[Tony Stark (616)]

Where do you want to go first, Virginia or Canada?

[Septimus Sm

So I realised yesterday, that I was angry. Upset with barbecues and parades, upset with remembrance because all it seemed to do, was make it glaringly obvious how much people have forgotten. I don't even mean the fields of bloated unburied dead or the millions that suffered on either side, of any war.

(When you are standing at your hero's grave,
Or near some homeless village where he died,
Remember, through your heart's rekindling pride,
The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.)

I mean the homeless veterans on the streets now. The men who fought and didn't die, those who returned damaged, either physically or mentally, those who are forgotten every day, who don't march in polished parades, but those who sit alone. Who die alone. Who don't remember what they fought for because they gave themselves up for a country that no longer saw them fit to reap the benefits.

I spent my day with Septimus, doing out best to hand out lunches to those veterans who need to know that they haven't been forgotten. I wanted to tell them that I was sorry.

I think I've always been a rather introspective person, honestly, and it might be Scudder's influence, but lately I've be valuing action over reflection -- I have the ability to do, and therefore I must.

Today is the 140th anniversary of the North-West Mounted Police. Excuse me for a moment, while I get extraordinarily patriotic and share this song with you.

I guess it's lucky just last week I found my way around an electric razor finally.

A man who came in today had a Yorkshire terrier called Prometheus and I told him it was a funny name for a little dog but he said it wasn't the hero he was named after but the tree. There was this bristlecone pine what some idiot cut down to see how old it was and it turns out it was about five thousand years old. Which I didn't hardly know things could be five thousand years old until I came here but in any case this fellow thought it was sad and named his dog after it. Which can't mean much when the thing won't live more than twenty years no matter how lucky it is but I suppose it's what you'd call a gesture.

Anyway in a country with five thousand year-old trees I can't feel all that creaky now can I.

I should probably be ashamed of discovering A Softer World but I am not. You can judge if you'd like but I thought this one was quite apt.

Though, I do not understand why you contemporary folk are deadset on revealing so much about yourselves.

Take it from me; there are parts of a man or a woman -- dark parts -- that ought to remain known only to them. (As such) ... discuss amongst yourselves.

I never been sick before. Not since I was six years old.

It's all these people crammed in so close together half in buildings with windows that won't even open. No one's got no room to breathe and there's nothing in the air anyway but what people put there. Leave more room for your trees or plant yourself down in the muddle of a bunch of them instead of all these skyscrapers and you won't get caught with all this unnatural sickness.