Subject: "Mm. Vania mentioned that."
Author:
Posted on: 2014-09-24 16:18:00 UTC
Jenni took the opportunity to share an encouraging smile with the other woman. This was good progress for less than an hour. Back to Doc, she continued, "I'm not really familiar with Bradbury. What's he like—the real one, that is?"
Scratch "joking" off the list of tools for this job . . . . She returned to her own butterbeer, gone tepid now, but still a pleasantly warm flavor.
"Personally," she said, peering down into the mug cupped between her hands, "I believe that all the great forces of the multiverse exist to balance each other. I'm told that good would still be good without evil, but I'm not sure how we would recognize it without something to compare. By the same token, there's not much point to order without some chaos to sort out—and without a little bit of chaos, there could be no change or growth. You know, I really respect Eru Ilúvatar as a deity because he came out and admitted that the discord of Melkor was part of the plan. You don't get that with most deities."
That being a longish, rather philosophical speech, she stopped there and took another drink.
Doc stared into his own Butterbeer for a long moment. Across the table, Vania was ticking her eyes back and forth, watching the other faces at the table and holding her hot dog as she chewed.
Finally, Doc took another sip of the drink and leaned back again. "I guess . . . I kind of see what you mean about change? It's like, the worlds whose authors quarantine them. They're safe from badfic, but the world gets kind of stuck, because no one can add new side stories except the original author. So nothing ever changes, and we don't get to see the characters grow beyond their original appearance."
He nodded to himself, drank more Butterbeer, and continued. "And we're the order, huh? We're around to balance out when the chaos gets too out of hand, like in trollfic." More Butterbeer, then a grin towards Jenni. "It's almost like we're the protagonists in our own plot!"
Jenni grinned back, then glanced at the fourth wall. This more or less resembled a reflective flick of the eyes toward the ceiling. "Occasional walk-ons, at the very least," she added. "But yes, I'd definitely characterize the PPC as a force for order. When badfic puts the canon asunder, the agents set it to rights. When badfic puts the agents asunder, that's where I come in." She punctuated the statement with a pleased nod. It seemed she'd struck the right chord at last.
"But . . . it still felt really . . . yucky . . . to kill something with Ray Bradbury's face. Twice." Doc grimaced harder. "I know it was just a troll in a suit, but it still looked like him when I . . ." He made a tight swish-and-flick movement in the air.
((This took a while. I hadn't actually thought about how they were going to execute Rep Placebury before now!))
Jenni took the opportunity to share an encouraging smile with the other woman. This was good progress for less than an hour. Back to Doc, she continued, "I'm not really familiar with Bradbury. What's he like—the real one, that is?"
"Well," Doc started. "Ray Douglas Bradbury is the best author in existence."
Vania put her head face-down on the table. "I don't know who your favorite is, Jenni," Vania mumbled into the wood, "but just let him get through his rant."
Doc continued. "Bradbury is a writer who writes, do you know what I mean? It wasn't just telling stories for him, it's—he talks? To you, through the words, while you read him. And so many people try to label him with a medium, like, 'Oh, he's a science fiction writer,' or, 'He does short story anthologies.' But he did so many different things in his works! And he doesn't just limit himself to a genre; he talks about people, and about history, and about time and the universe and how everything is. Because he was such a thinker—Yeah, that's it! He thought about everything he ever saw and experienced, and everything he wrote has some of that, like there's a slice of his mind on every page, and when you're reading him, it's like you're right there, peering into his perspective and he makes you think and you're thinking along with him! So it's like this really intimate experience, and it doesn't at all feel like you're alone reading words off sheets of paper, it's like you're sitting there with someone, and having a conversation in your own mind, and it makes things you've never thought about before seem completely clear all of a sudden! Yeah." Doc stopped, chest heaving. He grabbed his glass and finished off the rest of the Butterbeer all in one go. "Yeah," he said again. "He was great."
Jenni sat quietly and tried not to gape like a fish at the outpouring of words and feeling. Fanboy crush, much? she wanted to remark, but of course she didn't.
After rewetting her throat—she was almost to the bottom of her mug, she noticed—she said, "So. You feel very close to this author through his work. I can imagine that confronting a clone, especially a troll clone, would really bother you. I'm sorry."
at the sound of Jenni's voice. "Oh? Is he done already?"
Doc ignored her. "Yeah. I feel awful. I know you're not supposed to 'feed the trolls,'" he said, rolling his eyes. "But I couldn't help getting upset, just from the thing being thrown in like that. And then, having to kill him."
"I offered to do it the second time," Vania said quietly.
"I know. But I wanted to do it. I wanted to get rid of that monster! But now I can't get its face out of my mind. It's the only time I'll ever see Ray close up now, and it was just a fake." Doc slouched down, resting his cheek against the table.
and reached over to give his back a rub. Poor guy.
A thought formed, and Jenni debated with herself about bringing it up, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. Finally, Doc's sad, slightly smooshed face won out. "You know," she said carefully, "that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. There are ways—"
She was cut off by a high, tinny beep from the vicinity of her ankle, and she jumped, yanking her hand clear and knocking her chair back about an inch. "Shards!" she hissed, flushing deep red in humiliation. "Not even like that, you stupid, frelling thing."
(( Hey, I wasn't gonna mention it and then not do anything with it. *g* ))
"Mission!" She tilted her head to the side. "No. Consoles go BEEEP. This is just a little beeep." She started looking around for the source of the noise.
Doc had widened his eyes when Jenni jumped back, but didn't otherwise move. "Can't say that's the worst reaction to touching me I've ever seen." He kept talking, even though the table pressing against the side of his mouth slurred his words. "Don't feel bad, it's an automatic reflex, like the kneecap thing. Small animals do the same thing around me."
Jenni looked from Vania to Doc in a bit of a panic, not quite recovered enough to process words. After a couple deep breaths she started to pick up the pieces, though. Ashamed all over again for making Doc feel bad, she tried to explain. "No, it's—that's not—you're very—" She took another breath, held it for a count of three, and started over. "I have . . . this thing." She swung her leg around the side of the chair and pulled up her cuff enough to expose the round metal band of the Sue-tracker, its little red indicator LED glowing judgementally (or at least that's how Jenni felt about it). "It's a . . . it's . . . . Shards." Now it was her turn to plant her forehead on the table, both hands covering the back of her neck. "I knew something like this would happen eventually," she mumbled into the space under the table.
Vania started to say something, but Doc interrupted. "No! Sorry! I was just joking! You're fine! Um." He reached over towards Jenni, but then hesitated, looking to Vania.
She nodded, wide-eyed. Doc moved his hand above Jenni's shoulders and started lowering it, but then looked at Vania again. He was biting the inside of both lips, so that from the outside, his mouth looked like a thin line.
Vania nodded again, vigorously this time.
Finally, Doc gently tapped the closest edge of Jenni's shoulder with just his fingertips. "You're fine," he said again, more quietly.
that Jenni couldn't help but twitch, and she briefly considered the merits of certain misapplications of physics that would allow her to melt through the floor. That would probably set off the damn anklet again, though.
In any case, Doc's soft words reached her, and she picked up her head again, though she remained defensively hunkered down in her chair. "Um. Sorry," she said. "And thanks. I, uh . . . I'm trying to figure out what to say next that isn't angsty or insultingly diversionary, but I can't think of anything, so yeah." She remembered the existence of her butterbeer and downed the last quarter or so, one measured gulp at a time.
(( D'awww, Doc's awkwardness and the effort he's going to to overcome it is adorable. ^_^ ))
"Well, we can all be diversionary together, so no one would be insulted when we divert the conversation elsewhere," he offered. "Unless you would feel better talking about the band, in which case, we could do that instead." He shifted his eyes away, trying to look nonchalant.
Vania was looking from one agent to the other; she hadn't seen the anklet, and didn't understand what was being talked about. I'll bet this is how canons feel at the ends od mission, she thought, when the agents pop out and start talking about PPC stuff.
Jenni had to give it some thought. It was extremely tempting to grab at the first new topic that came to mind and run away with it, but when her first thought was So, ever been to a desert island? she decided against it. "I mean, do you know what it is?" she asked, including Vania with a look and in doing so realizing that she at least was totally lost. It didn't occur to her that the other woman hadn't even seen it. "No, then. Okay, well, I suppose having to explain it is part of the punishment."
At this point, she couldn't really lose more face than she already had. She heaved a resigned sigh, lamenting the emptiness of her mug, and retreated to her next line of defense: desperate attempts at humor. "So, hi. My name is Jenni, and I am an avatar-slash-borderline-Sue." She waved her hands in a limp parody of a showman's flourish. "I kept my head down and stayed clean for about ten years, and then I teleported myself and a badly abused canon character into Headquarters during a field assignment because I didn't think to wait around, find my partners again, and use their remote activator. And I think the Flowers took exception to the whole hot spring thing, too; they were a bit unclear on that point. But unauthorized jaunts between universes is definitely a no-no, which is precisely what I was about to suggest a minute ago, even though I was not planning to do so under my own power." She scowled down in the direction of her ankle, even though she couldn't see it under the table.
At first, he was just trying to be polite, but—well, Jenni's story was rather interesting. At some point while she was talking, however, Doc became aware of Vania staring at him, elbows on the table, chin resting in her hands, eyebrows raised.
After Jenni finished, Doc turned to meet Vania's stare. "What?"
Vania flicked her eyebrows towards Jenni.
"What?"
"Well?"
". . . Oh." Doc looked away, avoiding both women's eyes.
"You couldn't tell, could you?" Vania demanded. "We've had this nice, long conversation . . . Good thing no one decided she couldn't join the PPC, just because she was a Sue! Or we wouldn't have enjoyed her company today."
((I cannot believe the number of times I've nearly spelled "Vania" wrong today. My keyboard does not want me typing it, for some reason. #blamingthekeyboard ))
Clearly she'd sparked some old debate between the partners, and if she were to be honest, she'd have to allow that she was a little miffed at being put in the middle of it when she was trying to have a sincere moment of progress for herself. She was more miffed at actually being referred to as a Sue, though, even in the past tense.
"In my defense," she said mildly, "I joined the PPC and gave up my old habits of my own free will. I've always been a redeemer, so redeeming myself made sense once I realized how screwed up I'd been. It did take a long time for my superiors to trust me, though."
(( FYI, I'm heading out of town this weekend for my great-uncle's memorial service. I'm leaving this afternoon and returning Monday, and I don't know how connected I'll be in-between. Greyhound buses have WiFi, though, and it's a long ride from Chicago to Minneapolis. ))
((Oh, I'm sorry! Well, have a safe trip, and I'll hear from you when I hear from you.))
"Doc here didn't want to recruit a couple of kids on one mission, even though they were barely Suish."
Doc peeked at Jenni, but kept his face averted. "I told them I was sorry! I'm still new here! I . . ." He did turn to look at Jenni then. "I don't mean . . . I don't have anything against Sues! I didn't know at the time that we ever recruited them." He cast his eyes down. "I guess I didn't get that there were different levels of bad writing."
For a moment, Jenni just sat, absorbing the information. Then, apparently forgetting her recent humiliation, she rounded intensely on Vania.
"Are you taking care of them? Do you at least go see them sometimes, let them know there's somebody out there who gives a damn about them? I mean—" She stopped herself, shutting her eyes and taking a breath to reign in her passion. "I get it. I couldn't kill the worst Sue, let alone something that looked like a child, and I know the life of an action agent is not conducive to parenting. But a lot of you don't even think about what happens after recruitment. As a nurse and a mom, I see it every day."
(( Attempting to post from my phone. Please forgive any oddities. ))
After Jenni finished, Vania began to sputter. "Um. Oh! Wow, um. Well . . ."
"We've seen them!" Doc interjected. "During that blackout, we wound up at the Nursery."
"Right, Nursery," Vania added, "but they're older kids . . . what are they now, eleven? Twelve? . . . They're already getting classes with Professor Beans!" She squinted her eyes in thought. "I'm just trying to say, I think of them as friends, not, like, our kids?"
Vania and Doc shared a look.
((I love how you turned that around against Vania!
Oh, dear. The Blackout. Something else I haven't gotten around to writing yet. >_> I need to get to a break point with the archival and actually work on my spin-off more.
Also, it just occurred to me that "Professor Beans" is a joke on "Professor Binns."))
"Look," she said. "It doesn't matter about age. I'm not just talking about kids here. Everyone—everyone"—here she planted a fingertip on the tabletop for emphasis—"needs to know they are loved. Half the tragedies in the multiverse result from the lack of love where it is sorely needed. The Nursery staff are great, and Powers know we do our best with the bit characters, but it's no substitute for the individual care of a parent or a true friend. Just . . . just keep it in mind when you're deciding whether to recruit or not? Please?"
(( This reminds me, I have an idea for an interlude based on hS's Root and Shoots (or whatever it was; I don't remember and I can't check), where Ilraen sits in on the Sex Ed lessons given for the DBS path. I'd need some older kids for that, probably, and it might be fun as a cowrite. Whadda you think? ))
"Hey! I—" She blinked her eyes a few times, trying to decide what to respond to first. "Okay, first of all: in this case, your little 'recruit or not?' The 'not' would have been assassination. There was no place for them in canon, at all."
At the mention of assassination, Doc leaned away from the table, eyes cast down.
Vania continued, "So don't be all high horsin' about 'think before you recruit' because that was the only option! And if you're saying I'm not a true friend—"
"She's right, though."
Vania drooped. "Doc?"
"I mean about me," he said. "I'm not a good friend. I was pretty terrible to them, on that mission. And it wasn't even anything they did; I was just upset because of what that Poison Joke stuff did to me. It wasn't fair." Doc looked up again, looking between the two women. "I know I apologized, but . . . Jenni's right, I should try to spend time with Millie and Ollie. Make up for . . . how I acted."
Vania gave a sad smile. "Sure, Doc. That's a good idea, we can do that." She looked to Jenni. "They must have weekends from the school thing, right? Or some equivalent time off? Unless they're on, like, a between-missions schedule, like agents." Her face froze. "Please tell me the kids aren't on a schedule like ours."
((Oh, that would be great! I was planning on putting Millie and Ollie through that program, and also to depict a bit of their school classes, too. (Link here, by the way.)
And yeah, there's quite a dearth of kids in HQ. Huinesoron's got the monopoly on that! I suspect we'll have to make some up, but maybe we can fish for some cameos, on the Board. Also, you'll probably need to do most of the work making the DBS lesson, because I don't think I'm equipped to teach even fictional kids about romancey/emotiony stuff. >_> ))
Jenni might have had a lot to say about the relative merits of swift oblivion versus the long, drawn-out fading away that sometimes befell people who were abandoned in FicPsych with no coping skills and no support system outside the tiny staff of nurses. Not everyone held on long enough to be assigned a partner.
As it was, though, the melancholy agent had a firm grip on her heartstrings by this point, and his quiet anguish shut her up very nicely.
To Vania, she muttered, "No, it's more or less a proper schedule." She looked up at the clock and grimaced. "Look, um . . . " She drew a hand across her face, massaging the tense spot between her eyebrows. "This thing really went off the rails. I'm sorry. I have to go pick up my son, but I'd hate to just take off on this note. You guys could come along? If you want?" She peeked at them from under her hand.
(( I'm back home now, yay!
Thanks for the link! And, no problem, I've got the lesson plan covered. Phobos and I talked about having his Agent Decima be the teacher. I was thinking more or less basic humanoid anatomy with an emphasis on Things That Are Not Physically Possible For Most Bipeds, and maybe a side-lesson on People Do Not Generally Taste of Strawberries, Champagne, or Other Foodstuffs—not so much the romancey part. Kids can learn anatomy at any age; it's the emotional stuff they're probably not ready for yet.
So yeah, whenever we wrap up this RP, which I am not in a huge hurry to do. Things got really interestingly tangled. *g* ))
((Yeah, our characters have rambled pretty far. It was easier at the beginning, when I knew what I was intending to say, but got tougher later on, when new stuff cropped up. But I'm happy to continue; I need to get better at this anyway. :) ))
"Can we, Vania?"
Vania knew she had to agree. She had been hoping to make a clean getaway from the nurse, now that the conversation had been long and distracting. But at least they weren't going to FicPsych itself; the Nursery was nice and safe.
"Of course, Doc," Vania said brightly, smiling and carefully not looking at Jenni's face. Plus, the other two agents were ultimately right: even if Millie and Ollie weren't her kids, she could still be their friend.
Vania could still do right by the new memories she had made, even if her older ones were lost to her.
((So, uh, should we narrate walking there, or just do a scene shift? After you're finished with this scene, of course.))
Jenni got to her feet with relief, happier knowing she still had a chance to set things right. "I didn't mean to accuse you two of anything," she said, following up on what Vania had started to say a moment ago. "At least, not specifically. It's the trend of carelessness I don't like. People really don't think sometimes." She fully faced Vania now. "But, I'm sorry for going off on you like that. Truth is, I was being defensive, and it wasn't appropriate."
(( I want Jenni to have a separate word with Doc on the walk, so I was planning to narrate a little of that.
You're doing great, by the way. I feel like we've been pretty much on the same wavelength the whole time, which always makes for good RPing. ^_^ ))
Vania stood up and rubbed her arm. "It's just, Doc and I got in a fight because of that mission, and . . . I guess bringing the kids back was a positive thing to come out of all that? So, when you came out of nowhere about that, I got defensive too."
Doc muttered, "Let's just bring up all the ways in which Doc has been a jerk tonight."
Vania smiled. "Sorry, Doc. But don't worry about it any more; that's water under the bridge. Let's hit the Nursery! I think we'll all feel better if we see some little kids running around and frazzling Miss MacKinnon." She started striding for the door.
Doc hung back until Jenni was ready. "So, uh, Jenni. Did you get hit by the Poison Joke, too?"
((Glad you think so! This is definitely the longest I've ever participated in one.
Murr, keep forgetting to put the Poison Joke RP together into a page. Wish I had gotten around to it before it got turned into a spreadsheet. Oh well. Maybe I'll get to that tomorrow.))
there was an awkward moment when she realized what was going on and started abruptly into motion so they wouldn't get left behind.
She flushed at his question. "Oh, that. Just about everyone got that. I, uh, turned sorta incorporeal. I couldn't touch anyone. Stuff, yes, but not people. I'd just go right through. You can imagine how wonderful it was trying to deal with a two-year-old wizard who thought the whole thing was hilarious." She shook her head. "Thank goodness Ilraen only got stuck in his human form. Poor Nume was useless, not that he would've been leaping to babysit even if he could have remembered what he was doing for more than two minutes . . . ." She realized she was rambling and checked herself. "Erm, what about you?"
(( I just made all of that up right now. ^_^; I wanted to join in that thread, but I was having trouble deciding what to do at the time.
Luckily, in the process of trying to find the thread to figure out when it happened, I found Tomash's and Dann's T-Board, which has the thread in close to its original form: http://ppc-posting-board-2-proto.herokuapp.com/posts/2792 ))
Vania had just passed through the doorway, power-walking in a rather cartoonish fashion.
"Oh. Well. My vision reversed. Like, I'm normally nearsighted, but I switched to farsighted. So my glasses were redundant, and I couldn't read . . . That's about it, really. But, to be honest, at the time, I got really scared. I was so upset, I kind of freaked out at Millie and Ollie—that's the mission we recruited them from—and got in a fight with Vania afterwards. I realize now how childish it was, since the Medical Department could probably just have made me a new prescription. But, at the time . . . it was my vision, you know? It's such a fundamental part of me, and to wake up and find it all wrong, and then to start my second-ever mission right afterwards . . . I was pretty panicked."
He nodded in Vania's direction. "She was talking through text boxes, if you were curious. So . . . your son is a wizard, eh? What kind?"
((Daaaaaang. I'm pretty sure that's the second most Doc has ever said at once, and the other was the Bradbury rant from earlier. Jenni is very good at her job!
I love what you've done to your poor agents with the Poison Joke. That would have been so frustrating for Jenni! And thanks for the link! I didn't even think about using the T-Board for that.))
She knew precisely how he felt. With her own Poison Joke memories alive in her mind, she wanted more than usual to reach out with a comforting touch, but she couldn't very well do it while dodging tables and people going in and out of Rudi's. Oh well.
They crossed into the corridor. Following Doc's nod, she wondered again what Vania's story was. Why would the Poison Joke make her speak in text boxes? It messed with whatever you were proud of or felt most identified you, so . . . ?
But Doc was asking her about Henry. As usual, the topic put a beaming smile on her face. "Potterverse," she answered. "His magic had actually just showed itself for the first time when he turned two—he put out his birthday candles, and it wasn't by blowing a raspberry at them." She was foolishly proud of him for it. There was no doubt in her mind that he would turn out to be quite talented with the proper instruction when he got old enough. "His name is Henry; he's five now," she added.
(( Okay, so Vania is totally from a video game, right? I just put this together [and will feel really dumb if you actually came out and said so somewhere and I forgot]. I don't think Jenni really has enough information to do the same, though.
Speaking of, it's always nice to hear someone else say that about her. ^_^
Looking up the T-Board wasn't my plan; I just couldn't find the thread in the archive spreadsheets, so I tried Google instead, in case it was cached or something. It is good to know it's an option, though. ))
"After the stupidity I just had to sit through, it'll be fun to meet an actual wizard, even if he is five years old. How is it going to work when Henry gets older, since he doesn't live in the Wizarding World? I guess he can learn magic from other Potterverse agents here, but does he still get to go to Ollivander's for a wand?"
((I'm pretty sure you're the first to catch on to that! Or at least, the first to tell me so. I've actually been dropping teensy little hints about Vania's origins for years, and not all in the spin-off itself.
So now, someone has figured out the medium. Hmmmmmmm.))