NO EXITS

Anyone else get an invitation to a ball?

I think I should go. Not that I can tell what day it's supposed to be, but maybe we can get more information about this place. It's supposed to be a void week.

Probably should find myself a date?

I purchased far too many watermelons for the beach party yesterday, much more than we could eat there at once. I brought them all to the kitchen, so please help yourself. They are ripe and delicious. I'm heading off to this desert ranch place and bringing some there, too.

[ooc: Edited after reading Orlin's post.]

Loki's still sleeping. I just checked.

Richie was one of our Much Ado cast members, and while I have understudies, we’ve got enough time and I know we’ve had some new arrivals since we held auditions, so I thought I would throw it out there if anyone was interested.

He was playing Borachio and one of the messengers. Gender/age isn’t an issue. If you’re interested, hit me up. I figure it’s better to get this settled before we hit next week since it’s always a who knows sort of game.

Why am I in the infirmary? Did something happen? Are we under attack??

Wow. I feel incredibly well rested.

Stephen and I were talking about the possibility of getting some of us together at the beach and maybe this evening? BYOB and something to grill, and we'll have fires and enjoy the sunset. If you're into that, let us know and we'll expect you.

[Eliot]

Magical older brother I don't suppose you can magic us money so we can do a major prop/costume shopping expedition? And actually, possibly something a little less legal - don't tell dad?

[Pike & Steve]

Thank you both so much for helping with this whole backstage thing. I think we've made a lot of progress on what types of scenes we're going to want and the propers we need.

I know I said that buildng sets isn't my area of expertise exactly, but we all had to do set construction at UW, so whenever you want to work, I'll try to be there to help with what I can.

I've been around for a few days now, mostly keeping to myself. I'm Marc, originally from Chicago. If you've spoken to Layla El-Faouly, who showed up around the same time as I did, we're close friends. We kind of determined we're from the same place as a few of you here, where Thanos snapped half of everybody away for five years.

Still not entirely convinced this isn't a hallucination.

[...]

[...]

[...]

And if you happen to bump into somebody who looks exactly like me but speaks with a British accent, that's Steven.

I'm in love. Well, maybe not with the Toon bit, but otherwise, this is a great week. I'm thinking of going and checking out the Cocoanut Grove tonight - does anyone want to come with me?

[Cast of Much Ado]

Since everywhere so far seems to be pretty stable, we're going to have rehearsals for a couple of hours in the afternoon every other day, starting this afternoon.

Allison, can you read Claudio*'s lines for us so that we can keep movement considering that Loki is sleeping currently.

*Ahem. So my brain took a trip, and we'll just pretend this always said Claudio, and in any comments pls ty.

[Yelena]

I thought I'd check in, see how you were doing after last? Would you want to do another morning dance sometime?

My roommate appears to be comatose. He's the doctor around here, but are there any other medical professionals or clerics who can check in on him?

[VAX]

I'm sorry.

I'm not a cartoon, but I look like my dad in these clothes. This is

Anyone want to check out Chinatown with me?

[STEVE]

Any chance we can just forget about last week?

Has anyone ever gotten aggressive when they landed in this world? Just wondering how that was usually dealt with.

Hello, network. Reaching out per your possessed paper airplane to say I have too many questions.

Well, damn, I'm feeling serious FOMO watching half of you become cartoons this week!

Thank god I can at least lie and be sarcastic again.

Filter: Richie Tozier

Okay, cartoon or not, the first thing we need to do is find a place to properly drink and forget about Derleth's general assholery.

Filter: Hugh Christian

I'm going to miss you being your dog self, just FYI. But I have to ask... is there any possible chance we're about to fill up the theatre's costume department with a fresh supply of period clothing?

This is AWESOME! I look like the pikachu in the television show! YES!!! Hat and all.

It's like this world was meant for me!

There are CRIMES TO BE SOLVED!

Here's hoping things are a bit better this week, though I guess 'saner' isn't really in the vocabulary around here.

In any case, I was up early this morning. There's a bunch of bread and fruit turnovers in the kitchen for anybody who wants them, please give deference to the folks who cooked for us last week since I heard they were stuck eating gruel.

Also I'm headed into the city around lunchtime if anybody wants to tag along. Purely sightseeing.

[Bucky, Sam, Nat]

Everybody's still here, right?

[Clint]

Hey pal, seems like you're in luck with the milkshakes this week. Assuming all your appendages are stuck on right, we should go find a malt shop.

Also if you wanted to try the hootch thing this week I made some bread for it already. I've stashed it in my room so it doesn't get caught up in anybody's snacking.

Okay, so. Looks like sometime in the past on Earth. Los Angeles even. Well, could be worse.

Anyone found anything different going on? Or are we just in Maltese Falcon this week?

YELENA BELOVA:

Talk to me. How are you doing?

I feel like compelled honesty is a really good stress test for relationships, right up there with having a baby and moving house and going on one of those reality tv shows like The Amazing Race. Though, personally, I think we'd be great on The Amazing Race, especially since Bucky speaks something like a dozen different languages and I speak, well, Arabic. Bonus: a world tour without Baron Eurotrash constantly around with his smug smirkiness and stupid headtilt and fucking Turkish delight like he's the Queen of Narnia or something.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. Though now I'm a little worried that it's going to be terrible and I'm going to regret saying that. Derleth probably doesn't really care what I say but I've always been a little superstitious and it's not like it runs on the same rules as home anyway.

[blocked from Marc and Steven]

There's no moon here?

( Read more... )

What's a girl gotta do to get a few fruity cocktails with a couple of handsome men to fawn over her with palm fronds poolside?

Or should I try to make that a little less blunt and more woe-is-me, I'm so vulnerable here in this pocket dimension, would a nice strong man help me adjust?

You know what, I can't even fake being a helpless fawn. That was Alice's forte a long time ago

To the cat (kitten?) I might have startled today - I'm sorry. I imagine I can be a bit intimidating as a horse.


Hopefully I haven't startled/spooked too many people/animals.

Somewhere in the universe, I can hear Jonah's disappointment that he's not here to see me turn into a kitten every night. It almost makes me glad he's not here, I'd never hear the end of it. Sam would absolutely Guess my nights are planned out for the time being.

[Mobius]

You know, you make a really good mentor. I feel like the Empire City version of you would've scolded me for eating the cupcake.

[Hugh Christian]

I'll work as much as I can during the day, but it'll definitely make rehearsals a little more interesting.

[Stephen Strange]

Thanks for looking out for her or me, last night. Sorry if it's an inconvenience, but do you think you could keep a lookout for her? She's a kitten and if there are other predators around at night, I don't want to be eaten.

Okay, if it wasn't for the weird shit with the cupcakes, I'd say this is a fantastic week if just for the food. Which one of you made all of this breakfast? It's absolutely amazing and if every week could come with all these dishes, that would be amazing, although I get that something is also forcing you to make all of it and wanting all the dishes is selfish of me. But unfortunately, I can be a pretty damn selfish person, like I used my powers to get a lot of things in my life to make it to where I am, and then it eventually backfired, so I stopped but then I had to use it when I ended up back in the 1960s with the rest of my siblings. Do you know how addictive it is to have this power when you start using it on one racist twat? No, you don't but I'm sure some of you can imagine. [...] Damn, I could have ended all bigotry back then. Even though there's the whole don't-change-the-future thing. Not that it matters because we fucked it up someway because we decided to meet up with our adoptive dad in the past before he adopted us and when we traveled back to our real present time, he had subsequently not adopted us and adopted other people?? So yeah. I think I just learned that keeping your mouth shut and holing yourself up doesn't work.

Filter: Richie Tozier

Day two, still painfully honest!

kovacs, i drew us

I tried to resist eating the cupcakes for as long as possible. And then it just.. overtook me? I didn't feel particularly starving at that time or anything, so I guess at some point, it's inevitable? I'm not sure.

Anyway, hello to all the new people to Derleth, my name is Fen and I was born in the Square of Times. (Okay, that was a lie, I was actually born in Fillory, just a test to see if the cupcake affected me the same way as some people.)

I am part of the welcoming committee here! If you got a paper airplane hitting your head, I'd say read it for some kind of explanation about this world (Eliot's magic did that!) and any other questions you have, there will be plenty of people to explain, I'm sure. I can give you a tour tomorrow in the day if you want!

I miss my apartment already.

[Much Ado About Nothing Cast]

Much Ado cast, ultimately last week seemed a little difficult to get us all together considering some of you didn't even remember auditioning, so we're going to have our first meeting this evening (hopefully), if Delerth cooperates.

I'll give you a rehearsal schedule when we meet, but I'm hoping to keep it so that initially you all have a couple of afternoons of rehearsals, and a couple without. Any questions, hit me up. I'm taking Shadow out to the Green to run and then I'll be at the theatre.

[Julia Sowinski]

The dog's friendly, I promise.

Okay, I get it. No eating mysterious food that appears in your room, no matter how much you want to. Message received.

Don't except me to physically talk this week. Things got weird.

Wow, last week was messed up, wasn't it? LOL! That was pretty weird. Glad it's over. Where can I get another one of those cupcakes?

By the way, is it just me or has everything in campus shrunk?

So, the plan didn't work and we still reset at the end of the week. I'm sorry. Unless, of course, you hated last week and then I can be weighed down with the knowledge that you were almost trapped in a timeline you hated for the rest of your life.

Someone please reassure me I'm not terrible for trying this. At least Rick didn't give a fuck what everyone else thought. That would honestly be easier in this situation.

But we can try again. We can make it better this time. We'll figure out how to beat the reset.

Just... let me know. Some of us have been here about a year now, maybe longer? I might legitimately be losing it or just being overdramatic. This is usually when Bambi would step in and tell me not to cock out but hey, she's not here because all my friends keep disappearing, so there's that.

I'll be at the bar, pretending that I'm just really drunk but really I just plan on being high on narcoberries from Dinosaur Island that I swiped and purposefully failed to tell anyone about.

Cupcakes and a drink, huh?

[MARVEL (STEVE ROGERS EXCLUDED)]

Uh. I woke up with Captain America in my room. You know, the Steve Rogers version. HOW DO I LIVE HOW can I live like this I'm afraid to breathe, man

On the off-chance that he asks me about what happened in our world, what do I tell him? Do I tell him anything? Do I tell him nothing? Do I just pretend I know nothing?

Bucky

You’re still on the network. Does that mean you’re here? Where are you?

Rocket

There's a ping before a quickly redacted message.

What did you do.

To All

So. I remember a life in Empire City, and another life altogether. Is there somebody who will explain all this to me?

[filtered to those who remember]

Alright, hi everyone. As you've no doubt seen by now, some of us here in Empire City remember the previous Derleth resets and some of us don't - that definitely wasn't the intended effect, and none of us 'wrote' this universe; it already existed, and our research and work nudged us from the Void to it due to its temporal stability. The memory effect was, like I said, not a part of the calculations - I personally have enough trouble with my memories before Derleth, not to mention after with all the Derleth variants of myself (and the variants of ourselves all of us have met) that dealing with that again is never on the agenda. But Derleth's mechanics are quirky and we'll make the best of this.

If someone you're close to seems to only remember Derleth as a series of dreams - it's possible they could eventually fully remember? This admittedly isn't my area, so if anyone wants to chime in on how to help get that to settle for folks, I'm all ears. And also if someone could properly explain a TubeTube to me, I'd appreciate that also.

NEW DAGGER DESIGN DROPPED!!

I'm going to be honest, I miss having a lot of the materials I could only find from my own home world because a lot of them had magical abilities that you wouldn't find in this world... and also was easier for ME to forge there than here (someone who has no magic). But I can't say I'm not enjoying the general population's love for sharp things that don't have any thing extraordinary except for the sharpness of the blade and the design on the hilt.

I also get way more requests here for resin daggers that are not used for anything to stab but sit on the shelf and look pretty, which I guess... whatever rocks your boat! I make non-stabby knives too!

Filter: Those Who Remember

Okay, I remember everything about Derleth's life and my life here, pretty equally I think, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to take full advantage and keep my business up!

I am so curious though, what have some of you been up to in this world if you remember it??

Filter: Natasha Romanoff

Pretty sure the postal service is way too slow on sending me tracking updates so I wanted to know.. did you get something in the mail recently??

Looks like another dreary day in the City. Does someone want to fix this? I was hoping for at least a break in the clouds at some point.

[DSS]

I'm no good at the computer stuff. How do I even know that word? So I feel useless in this app situation with the phones. Does anyone fancy a sparring match to pass the time until we have something to do?

The day had turned out alright, really. Steve had to admit that despite the crummy night of sleep and the whole mess around the coffee shop, he had managed to make it back to work and picked up right where he'd left off. The usual knots in the system were handled, the mail was taken and sent on schedule.

Not that he'd forgotten his reaction that morning. But going over and over it in his head as he'd fallen into routine, he wondered if he just was drifting too far into fictions because he wasn't focused on enough but work in his regular life. Maybe he really was getting boring.

Clutching the small paper bag from the grocer's with a fresh box of chamomile tea he stood in front of the rows of mailboxes for his apartment building, his own box open as he thumbed through a few of the letters. Two junk mail, two bills, but one special issue of motorcycle monthly and a newsletter from his favorite book club outlining their book schedule for the next month. He smiled, pleased at himself as he read through the titles. He wasn't boring enough to go crazy, surely. Maybe he just had to make some extra effort to socialize and engage his brain in reality.

[Private to Friends]

Wednesday, karaoke party at Totally 80's Bar & Grill on Broadstreet. We're celebrating a friend and former colleague of mine's need for a night off from work, helloooooo Dr. Hamada.

Hope you can make it. Let me know if you are, and if there's enough of us I'm going to book the room.

Question of the Day: what were you doing yesterday?

It's the perfect night to gorge yourself with Chinese food.

[FRIENDS *]
Roll call.


* for those who remember. you know who you are

Okay okay, if I'm asleep then this is the weirdest dream I've had in a long time. Very nice, brain! You really did a great job this time, now let's wake up!

But in case you're all real, what's going on? Did I die? Is that what happened? All that time I spend doing things to make sure the way I go is really cool and... what, did I space out with headphones in and step in front of a taxi? I die and end up at a frat party. I know I really did some things when I was alive, but I think I'm going to need to talk to the person in charge about how so many of them (so many!) weren't actually my fault.

Are you there, god? It's me, Yelena. I just want to talk.

Seeing as it's a quiet dayISH, I thought I'd take a moment to ask for any sort of updates for our "This or That." You've seen it as an icon on your Derleth phone, but it needs to be updated from time to time.

Just a reminder: most of us are fighters. This is specifically for things you can do outside of fighting. Can you sew? Do you know how to cook? Garden? Woodwork? Building things? This is what we're looking for so everyone can talk to someone instead of randomly putting out feelings.

FRIENDS:

We could really use a few people with some therapist skills around here.

You all okay after this latest round of what is going on?