the displaced; ic

IANTO JONES:

Printers over here have quit working. I'm not sure who needs to do what, but I am not a tech.

MICHAEL:

You're sliding backwards.

Hello, boys and girls, and Moose. Name's Crowley. King of Hell. 😈

Get your freaking out or pissing yourselves or impotently threatening me out of your systems while we're not face-to-face. Let's be civil. Have me round for tea or buy me a drink. I promise I won't bite unless I feel like it.

I am designed to assist in all human matters. If you are in need of something and do not wish to bother someone in your household or do not have anyone to attend those matters for you, all you have to do is say, "Hey Janet" or "Janet" and I will arrive instantaneously to assist.

As a side note, I do not know why my powers work outside of the Neighborhood I was meant to server, but my concern is your good luck!

WHO: The Displaced and a bunch of fairies.
WHEN: From midnight until 6am. Technically early Sunday morning.
WHERE: Another dimension
WHAT: The Unseelie Court invites you to a ball. (Make sure to tag your characters as you add them). Masks arrived shortly after the Abducted were taken the prior night.
TRIGGERS: TBD

( Welcome, welcome! )

Hello.

Since there have been some concerns regarding the dual invite/threat of kidnapping to a ball, I'd like to offer my assistant Janet. Janet is capable of performing quick, non-invasive scans of Tumbleweed for the purposes of accounting for all of the displaced.

In order to get an accurate picture of if anyone has been abducted without notice while they were alone, vulnerable and likely very terrified, please comment here if you plan to flee from town and leave your friends and community behind to fend for themselves.

Thank you.

Hello.

I'm Janet.

I am outside of my parameters. I must speak with my architect and there are too many non-human lifeforms in this area for me to detect which one is him.

[Jason Mendoza]

You realize you are literally torturing yourself.

[Private to Team Cockroach]

Yoooo. I pretended I had to pee so these losers would leave me alone. They kept talking to me about weird things that didn't make sense. They just kept using all these big words I didn't understand. I didn't even read this weird story they wrote. Like who has time?

Did we get on a train or something? Is this another Medium Place? :o IS THIS THE REAL BAD PLACE? DID WE GET ABDUCTED BY ALIENS?

Texas is such a dumb place to be. Like nothing even happens here. They don't even do gator hunting season or anything. And what kind of a name is Severed Arm? It's like a 4 out of 10, which is like only second from the worst score for naming.

GUESS WHO HAS TEN FINGERS AND HIS HAWAII BODY BACK?

This Guy.

MICHAEL!

This isn't giant cat overlords in bowties.

Just so you are aware, I calculate a 42.7% chance of the portal sending giant cat overlords in bow ties on August 14th. For your safety, please do not fight them. Placate them with catnip and pretend to worship them until the portal self-corrects and sends them away.


[General Organa]

Have you ever been to Hawaii?

FORT NEILL DOCUMENTATION DEPARTMENT MILITARY BASE*

Can you guys do demolition permits?

*ooc: originally filtered just to documentation, now open to the whole base after this

(edited in later)
KAREN PAGE & CASSIE SULLIVAN

Going to check out an evil hotel before I try to take it down. If you haven't heard from me in three hours, send back up to [address]

WHO: Justice of Toren & Michael
WHAT: Documentation
WHEN: July 7
WHERE: Fort Neill
WARNINGS: Misgendering, reference to loss

( Yes, I am experiencing strong emotions. It’s really quite terrible )

Greetings everyone. It would be a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Most recently in my life, most people call me Breq, but I am also Justice of Toren. Please forgive the immediate discussion of business; however, I have some issues that need to be addressed.

Athoek Station, part of it, has arrived with me, and Station - its AI - is in need of more assistance than I can provide. The Botanical Gardens, recently repaired, will need regular work to maintain it. Given enough time, I can take care of the rest of Station. The Undergarden was mostly repaired, and I can fix what remains. However, living things cannot be ignored for so long. Unfortunately, having just arrived, I do not have local currency on a scale to pay anyone yet. I do have more than enough food, we grow our own, as well as tea and other options, pursuant to conversation and your needs.

While I could spend all my hours maintaining Station, and I will spend a good number of them doing just that, I am also interested in gaining paid employment. I have roughly two thousand years experience in the military, five years experience as civilian security, as well as experience in a multitude of jobs from janitorial to sewing to sports. I am fluent in more than sixty languages and learn new ones easily. If you have means and need for any of my skills or ones I could learn, I am interested in speaking with you.

TEXT MESSAGE TO MICHAEL

» Watch this.

[General Leia]

I think I'd like to stop this game now.

[Eleanor & Tahani]

Janet is [...]

[Brooke Maddox]

This is all your [...]

WHO: Michael & Frank Castle
WHAT: Michael puts Frank into an illusion scenario to see if he'll murder people. (Spoiler: he doesn't.)
WHEN: Backdated to Friday afternoon, 6/22
WHERE: Frank's work, aka a construction site.
WARNINGS: Mentions of gangsters, meth, implied off-screen violence (all actually an illusion), mentions of Frank's past

( The whole lack of murdering people just… You people aren’t supposed to grow. Your brains are too small for that. )

[General Organa]

Interested in a wager?

Picked up my new guitar today from Wood and Waves. It's a beauty; never had a hand-made guitar before. Almost makes me feel bad for being so rusty.

There still people around here doing jam sessions and so on?

CASSIE

You wanna go out for dinner tonight? Yes, we can go for burgers.

[Attached is a 357 page, highly technical and scientific document with a series of complex mathematical theorems. However, names are named. Read on!]

Hello,

I thought I would take a moment to introduce my latest research which, given the disappearances, appearances and reappearances of loved ones, might be of interest to others at this time. In the document I have, based on the months I have been here and data gathered from network posts before that, calculated the possibility of disappearances and reappearances based on:

1. Homeworld connections
2. Romantic connections

The details are all in the report for your perursal.

In layman’s terms, I believe there may be a sort of invisible tether between the Displaced that come from the same world and the portal. That tether is what increases the possibility of others appearing from that world, but also increases the possibility of a string of disappearances of that world. Think of it like a game of tug-o-war. Everyone from your home world is connected, but if one slips back through the portal, the possibility is increased they'll drag others with them.

[The document, while Michael does not call this out in this post, does name one name from each world (fandom) who he believes to be the most at risk for being taken away, who in turn puts everyone else from their world at risk. Have fun with this drama bomb if you like and see the OOC comment thread if you want to be the named person from your world/fandom!

Those who are the only character in their world (fandom) are not mentioned, but he does propose while they are the highest at risk for disappearing initially, that risk goes down much lower than those with multiple people from the same world the longer they're there if they remain the only person from their world as they might have developed a special resistance to being sent back.]

Now interestingly, new tethers can develop between the Displaced from separate worlds in the case of romantic connections. There may be a benefit of increased stability, but it seems just as likely to add an increased layer of risk. If one partner disappears, that tether appears to increase the risk of disappearance for the other.

Again, this is all discussing risk. The percentages of increased risk are within a range 3 to 37.4 percent, depending on variables mentioned in the document. I hope my work will help add awareness and understanding to our very particular set of circumstances.

Thank you.

[For the super smart characters in the room, the math does add up, buuuuut... For the super, duper smart characters (think Doctor level brain power) there's still quite a bit of conjecture. It's an interesting hypotheses, and Michael isn't lying but... Whether he's presenting the document to create drama or prepare people for the worst (or both!) is hard to say.]

Never get bored, Google yourself, and read fanfiction written about yourself.

Or do, if that's what you're into.

So after sleeping for a solid 16 hours I started digging around on the internet. And found movies.

That probably sounds sketchy.

I found movies that include parts of my life.

It turns out my life is an alternate ending. So that's... cool. I guess. Not really.

Is this normal? Does this sort of thing exist for everyone?

FILTER TO ARIA MONTGOMERY & MICHAEL

Hey, Michael. Would you like to go see Hawaii with Aria and I at some point? I was thinking we could show you some important food stops.

Which, obviously, would be halo-halo since we talked about it before but I was also thinking loco moco and poke and maybe manapua?

Hello. You next Bad Person Lesson is as follows:

Panicking, vaguebooking and posting the same confused nonsense over and over again, when someone has clearly already posted the same confused nonsense, is bad. It doesn't resolve anything and it makes it more difficult to post useful information to the network.

Good job, everyone!

Or, I suppose, you could just make one post about an ongoing issue and invite everyone affected by said issue to comment and share information. But I honestly don't expect that much from you.

It should also go without saying but posting repeated pictures of your pokemon is the moral equivelant to that one friend on facebook posting about their 2 week anniversary with their new boyfriend, then their 2 month anniversary, then their 3 month anniversary, and so on. You get one a year, people. That's it.

Hello.

So I am about to have the best job ever. I got a job I'm starting Monday and I just got this picture* text from my boss with the caption "Your desk is ready and waiting for you! See you at 9am :) ".


*[ooc: Pretend the candy brands all say Sweetums]

Although I have no need for money at all, I've decided that it is in my bests interests as a Growing Janet to take on a job of some kind. Is anyone in need of someone that can do anything, knows everything, and can instantaneously manifest anything that they may need? I'd be happy to offer my services and take your money.

[Brooke and Eleanor]

Hello! As my friends, I feel it's only right that I inform you that I am going on strike. As a Janet on the road to being More Than a Janet, I can no longer set aside my personal growth in order to serve and help others. To quote the Good Place's own Stevie Nicks: "I've been afraid of changing, 'cause I built my life around you. But time makes you bolder, children get older, and I'm getting older too.*"

I hope that I have your support me in my endeavor.


*Note that, in this context, 'my life' is referring to my existence, from activation onward, 'you' is referring to everyone in the universe, 'time' is referring to Michael's relentless determination to make his torture experiment work, resulting in my being murdered and reset 802 times, and that, as I am technically immortal and therefore I do not age, I am truly only 'getting older' chronologically.

I have been contemplating the nature of humanity and bringing back good person lessons. Quite frankly, I thought you were all mostly likely walking trashbags that would give me ample research opportunity for my own personal project I've been working on. And while many of you do in fact do terrible things, I have been humbled. You're not completely awful and your potential for self-sabotage and suffering doesn't amuse me any more like I thought it would.

The problem is you, as humans, are very psychologically fragile. So if I give advice on how to be good for the sake of benefiting you both in the every day and for your eternal salvation, likely it'll be met with the same result as when I gave perfectly reasonable good advice in an effort to make you feel insecure and give into your worst instincts. Reverse psychology is a heck of a thing.

After much thought, I've decided instead to give Bad Person Lessons. I feel this will be much easier to grasp. So without further ado, your first bad person lesson.

Your Intentions Matter.

Now, I don't want to get into a slippery slope of what ifs. Nor do I want to even try and get into the complicated algorithm and point system that weighs each and every one of your actions. We'll just keep this simple.

1. If you do a good deed for ulterior motives (like one-upmanship or a crass attempt to improve your Good Person Score®, for example) than the deed is not really good. Your motives should be pure and you should expect nothing in return for your good deed.

2. Conversely, if you do something bad, it will almost always be bad. But sometimes your intention makes it less bad than it would be if you were acting out of pure selfishness and evil. But only sometimes.

This concludes your first bad person lesson.

I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who helped during these last few weeks while the Resettlement Bureau was getting on its feet. The primary goal of the organization is simple: greet new arrivals and set them up with what they'll need to get on their feet here. That means paperwork, helping them acclimate to Tumbleweed and Earth, finding their housing. The secondary goal is to study the portal, to see if there is a way we can figure out its agenda, where it came from, how to stop certain creatures from coming through or at the least, being prepared when they do.

These are now paid positions. If you were volunteering before, just come see me if you want to transition to paid.

You can see how outlook and agenda here.

Our open positions are as follows, and yes, they do come with health benefits. [OOC NOTE: If you are on here in a position, you'll need to comment here to get the ball ICly rolling, please!]

TONY STARKS:

Tiny, I wanted to thank you for establishing the food bank. I'd like to work directly with you to help those who first arrive who won't have a paycheck for a week or so. The Resettlement Bureau can help, but you've already got that in place and it would help foster relations with others. Do you have plans to make it an actual charity?

Tony (and Tiny), any ideas on a time frame for the reactor?

Now that Jason is gone, this mansion suddenly feels a lot larger than it actually is. It's rather lonely, actually. I don't like it.

Maybe I'll throw a party. I certainly have the space for it.

Attention Fellow Displaced:

For those of you literally fresh off the boat, you may come to [address] to pick up your new documentation. Driver's license, social security card, and whatever else you might need are all ready and waiting for you. If you are a minor, your guardian will need to be the one to pick up your paperwork.

Unfortunately my suggestion that some of the more famous or ridiculous names be replaced with something much more common, Severus Snape being both famous and ridiculous for Sylvester Snipes which is a much, much better name for example, was overruled. Only your actual names will appear on the documentation.

A number of folks here have worked very hard to replace whatever government presence there was and help get things back up and running. For the documentation you may thank Smart Loki, Quentin Quire, Jo Harville, Matt Murdock, Ianto Jones, Rick Jones, Integra, Scary Alucard, Jason Todd, Slightly More Attractive Loki, Kurama, Pidge Gunderson, Sam Winchester, Tim Drake, and Ezekiel.

Thank you.

Team Cockroach

Hi there! This is to inform you all that I will not be staying in the void for the foreseeable future, as I have taken on guardianship of a teenager, and will be guiding her into adulthood in my spare time. This will require me to take up residence in her very large mansion. By my calculation, this will decrease my reaction time by approximately .0341 nanoseconds. Thank you for your understanding, and I’m sorry for your wait!

Okay, are we sure this isn't the Bad Place? Because the clown house is here.

So, I legit get that a lot of people are feeling really shitty right about now, and the ship is kinda lame in both senses of the word. But I'm kinda feeling like distractions might be good for the masses. And because I cannot with my suite mate right now

That said, what activities are still functional? Can anyone tell? That symposium room is totally big enough we could make it a mini-movie theatre for like a night if anyone could set up projection stuff. Anyone up for light-hearted mindless movies that mean people around but not talking?

Help me out here it's too much like.

I have put together a report on the attack for review with suggestions for improvement and some of my own observations regarding what happened. Please take from it what you will. If you need anything further or additional clarification, just ask for my assistant Janet. She’s very helpful.

[Attached is about a 700 page PDF. It is an incredibly detailed but very technical, dry report of the attack. There are suggestions for improving escape routes, safety procedures, patrols, etc. But in addition to having a fairly accurate summary of the events of the fight, the report finds that nothing further could have been done to prevent the deaths of the two deceased and out of several thousand simulations run of the attack, it could have very easily been far worse. The report concludes that the number of deaths and injuries being as few as they were are a testiment to the skill, teamwork and dedication to those on the ship.]

So yeah, in case anyone was wondering, Rocky Horror's being pushed back to IDK when yet.

[Steve Rogers]

I am sorry. Even though you are a stupid primate and easily manipulated, it was wrong of me to do so. As you are still alive you should be free to make yourself miserable without any of my assistance. You’re doing an excellent job of that, by the way. Maybe don’t keep it up.

Sincerely,
Michael


[Quentin Coldwater]

I am sorry. Your depression and sensitivity make you an easy target and it was wrong of me to exploit that. I did not enjoy seeing people attacked or hurt earlier today. It was, for lack of a better word, unfair. Please know in the future I shall keep my distance from you and your loved ones, unless you or your loved ones initiate contact. Your bodies are stupid and fragile. Who puts a breathing tube next to the food hole?

Sincerely,
Michael

The shops on this ship have a pretty good selection as far as clothing goes. Not quite as high-end as what I'm accustomed to, but for now, they'll work. I'm not spending an entire cruise wearing the same outfit everyday.

So I have what may end up being a fantastic idea!

Let's put on a Rocky Horror Picture show live action thingamajig. Janet is Janet, but the other parts are up for grabs. If we want to do rehearsals or whatevs, maybe we can start scheduling that next week?

Who's in? Who wants to handle putting this together?

( cut for cast/tech list )

Excuse me, but I'm having a bit of a panic attack. Again.

I do not appreciate being poked and prodded by robots, even if it is apparently for my own health.

Oh dear. Is this the Medium Place? Am I doomed to a tacky singles cruise with under-cooked food in the dining room and loud tourists in horrible Hawaiian shirts? Because if that is the case, that's worst torture than anything Michael ever thought of himself when I was in the Bad Place.

What's even worse is having to hear bad covers of Jimmy Buffet at the karaoke bar, if that's also a thing.

( She turned to the sunlight, and shook her yellow head, And whispered to her neighbor: “Winter is dead.” )

( Delivery for Eleanor Shellstrop )

Whatever ash-hole changed the musak to that Disney crap, you better change it back soon.

Michael, was this you?

( left in a Build-a-Bear carrier outside Michael's room with a note that says 'Love E!' )

Hello. I'm David.

I suppose this just goes to show that there is no such thing as a permanently closed portal.

WHO: Sam Winchester & Michael the Architect
WHAT: having another conversation in person, after this
WHEN: February 15th ish? Fairly backdated.
WHERE: Michael's (and Max Goof's) room
WARNINGS: pretty tame actually. Sam didn't even end up being threatening.

( ... )

Hi there! I’m Janet.

Fun fact: Though Dr. Alexander Wood, the inventor of the hypodermic needle, is in The Good Place, he only missed being sent to The Bad Place by 312 points. Incest and torture are, as a general rule, frowned upon, no matter the reason.

With that in mind, I do not have skin or a circulatory system, so I can be neither infected nor innoculated. The experience was fun, though!

I feel like I need to apologize for anything Michael's been telling you losers saps folks. He likes to mess with people. ( spoilers for The Good Place ) Speaking of, does anyone have any philosophy books around? Better yet, are there any philosophy teachers or ethics professors here? Because that would be fantastic.

Also - since I died and now I'm alive again, does that mean that any sort of lifetime ban from, let's say for example, a store that lets you build a cute stuffed animal of some kind would no longer be in effect?

[Jason Mendoza]

Come on man, I need your help here.