The Doorway: a panfandom game

[Nick Fury (616)]

What can you tell me about -- you know, I'm not quite sure how it'd be best worded: "the director of New SHIELD" or "the new director of SHIELD". Neither sounds quite apt.

[Jasper Sitwell]

How did your competition run you?

[Jasper Sitwell]

Sorry I missed you message. I was down for the count with this one, I'm afraid. But I'm much better, now. How'd you keep?

[Mara Jade]

I know there's rarely rest for the wicked, my dear, but I've been thinking about you lately -- wonder how you've been.

[Tony Stark (616)]

How's Dorian doing, son?

[Filtered to LEOPARD]

Guess we didn't need to step in. As if anyone doubted Putin would get his men.

[Filtered to Pinky Pinkerton]

You're a restaurant guy.

I'm going to be in your neighborhood tomorrow morning. Are there any decent brunch spots?

[Filtered to Nick Fury (MCU)]

Heard of this end of the world?

Who: The whole game!
When: Valentine's Day! (Pretend it's the 14th)
Where: In your pants. Wherever love is!
What: Valentine presents!
Rating: Who knows!

Because this game is massive, and even if everyone just sent ONE package to anyone, it would end up being 300+ posts in the community. So to save our friends lists from imploding, we the moderators are asking that you fill out this form and reply HERE. It'll make it easier to find (Control-F is a lovely thing!) and we won't have to abuse our scroll button. Here's how we're going to do it. You will post for one character with everything that they got for their friends/family/etc. Make sure to tag your character as soon as you get their information up! <b>Character name:</b> Name! <b>GIFTS:</b> • <b>Giftee:</b> Present. • <b>Giftee:</b> Present. • <b>Giftee:</b> Present. • <b>Giftee:</b> Present. • <b>Giftee:</b> Present.

In eleven days time, I'll have called this place my own for a whole years time. And what a year it's been. I've a club and restaurant up and running -- stunningly successful, I'd say, for a vanity project -- I've had the blessed opportunity to reconnect with old friends. It's been an interesting and appreciated semi-retirement.

And of course I'm grateful for you refugee chaps like me who've made so much in making me feel welcome here, and the good old boys and lovely ladies here who do what they can to help us all.

So friends, new or old, intimate or barely-acquainted, drop in this week at Kamchatka Peninsula. Ask for me by name; It'll get you in the door and I'll buy you a drink.

I'm glad this cube didn't bring me to some world or so far into a future where I couldn't still see nazis die.

How's that for positivity on a Monday?

But I guess on more of a conversational bent. You lot ever think of what practices people here are bringing in from television or movies to your respective fields? I mean, I find spy movies and cop dramas as entertaining as the next guy, but I wouldn't exactly use em as a road map for what works in the real world.

What's that mean d'you suppose for the ace detectives or top lawyers or what have you? Maybe even more interesting's the docs.

[Filtered to Daisy Johnson]

And how're the kids?

[Filtered to Jessica Drew, Sharon Carter (MCU)]

So suppressing the news is great and all, but there're a lot of disappearances of these white event people.

Maybe we should try to draw some of that attention.

Looks like the toss for the India, Australia game was delayed do to rain. I'll refrain from the obvious sticky wicket blather. But I'm excited about he Fantasy League set up by the ICC. Might need to finally bite the bullet and sort out a facebook. But let the record reflect I held out at least a bloody year.

I say, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was creating Gordon Ramsay to convince the world that the British might know the first thing about the culinary arts, as opposed to our true talent: stealing things from other people and passing them off as our own.

[Tony Stark (616)]

I'd like a word with you this afternoon, if I might. I could stop by your offices after lunch if there's the time.

Chopping celery always makes me think of Sydney Carton.

I could say this is because of the smell (l'odorat, ce mystérieux aide-mémoire, venait de faire revivre en lui tout un monde, says old Vic, and he's not wrong), and that awful soup they dished us out on Fridays at school, intersecting with the many hurried meals during which I tried to force myself to choke down Dickens. Or, I suppose, I could say that cooking is a civilising activity, and that no matter where one does it - especially when one does it in, say, a shack of a house with a view of a smoggy Polish highway, or a basement in Brixton, or a kitchen-closet in a warehouse in Newark - it kicks up a little of the refinement of home.

More likely it's the crunch, though, isn't it. Poor old Syd.

Anyway, I've always liked cooking up a proper lunch at work. No better way to feel human after a very long morning. If anyone wants to please come visit to swing by New Jersey for a bite, there'll be more than enough for two.

This afternoon, any current servicemen (and women) or veterans looking for a moment's peace and a stiff drink can have both for free this afternoon at Kamchatka Peninsula.

[Avengers, Nick Fury's A-Team (Filtered Separately)]

So there was a bit of dreadful business that unfolded last week that was rather unexpected. But it seemed as though the Avengers had some troubles of their own, so I didn't have the heart to mention it.

There was a regular at our club, a Captain Sergei Nik, as we called him. I've no sense at all whether he was a Captain or not, if we're all mingling with honesty in mind, but if any of you were to see him, could you see if he's all right? He hasn't seemed himself lately.

If you don't know what he looks like, he's hard to miss. Can't overlook him in a crowd, rather. Imagine the side of a barn with a mustache, and you'll be on the right wicket.

I don't think he's dangerous, really. Just verbose and enthusiastic. I'm sure he only waved a gun around in my club for the dramatic, as it were? But look sharp.

For those of you interested in the whereabouts of James Buchanan Barnes, the younger. He has been located here at the Kamchatka. But something has happened to him. You might all want to come and see for yourself.

He's all right, but he's in bad need of a razor.

One of the most touted parts of intelligence work - in my time, at least, and, I don't doubt, now - is the assurance of connections. Someone once described it to me as being part of the club, which, if a little glib, is nonetheless true. People love to be in the know. People treat you differently when they know you know. It's an intimate society of mutual respect and favor, and to be in it is to be in on a great many things, and to be out of it is to be out entirely.

I'm out, now. Everyone (well, enough people) know my name, and I know very little of them in return. The membership's lapsed, the doors are shut, there are no more champions extending hands because the old boy's one of us. No more connections.

But there's a lesser-valued perk I've stumbled into after falling through that net, which is that, as it turns out, pretending is the same as doing. I've spent years at other men's work, near on a decade of running freight ships in and out of busy ports and wrangling crews together from the (often decidedly reluctant) local populace. Lo and behold: I have job experience. Who knew? They tell you to live your cover as though that weren't just living, and so I've always thought of myself as a spy with a line on the side - but the unglamorous truth of the matter is that I've been a damned shipping clerk who sometimes sent sensational letters to dodgy people. The party's over, but at least I left with something useful in my pocket.

So now I'm a damned shipping clerk again, and, do you know, I find the only complaint I have left over is that Jersey City is, sadly, no Casablanca. But nothing really is.

[Filtered to Pinky Pinkerton]

Can I talk to you about something?

[Filtered to Dorian Gray]

Hey. So. I told Pepper.

[Bucky Barnes]

Quit folding napkins and get in here right quick, boy. You have instructions.

Hard to believe it was seventy years ago that the Forces françaises de l'intérieur -- the French Resistance -- took back Paris. I still remember the parades down the Champs-Élysées as though they were last night.

[Nick Fury 616 (encrypted)]

Comment est Paris vous traite?

Or have you moved on from there?

Who: Peter Guillam & Percival Pinkerton
When: Backdated: Thursday evening
Where: kamchatka Peninsula
What: Old boys discuss the war, get drunk and smoke a lot.
Rating: maybe pg-13 for language, we’ll see
STATUS: In progress, in G-docs. Will be updated as we go.

( More by rumor than reputation )

I'm happy to find New York a much more inviting place to visit than I'd heard it was. My impression until today was that the threat of a nuclear strike would have been only slightly more upsetting than having to take the subway. It's dead pleasant, though.

I'm a little embarrassed to drop in amid this kind of kerfuffle, but I hope I'll be excused. My name's Peter. I've spent the afternoon watching the endless news in a place called Whitehall, where the staff has kept up an impressive indifference both to current events and to my comfort. Beneath the facade, however, there's a current of upset: when I asked the poor chap behind the bar for a Fitzgerald, he asked me what was in it. I think he must be sadly distressed. We're all sorted now, anyway.

At any rate, I thought I ought to say thanks for the undeniable (if strange) hospitality I've received, and to apologize to anyone with whom I might have been shortish when I arrived. I've been advised I need a holiday. I hope everyone comes out more or less intact; I'd rather not die in a place called Whitehall. Cheers.