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I ship all you pale people, with a sunlamp. - Neshomeh

Well, she did. ^_^

Also, Twistey... you know they're all joke shipfics, right? None of this is serious; Kaitlyn isn't actually off gallivanting with Phobos all the time, and I'm pretty sure I don't have any leather trousers that you know of....

hS

[Phobos:]
One winter's day I went to HQ

[Kaitlyn:]
One winter's day I went to HQ

[Phobos:]
I walked to the cafe and I stood in the queue

[Kaitlyn:]
I walked to the cafe, and I saw you

[Phobos:]
Even while I stared from the back of the line
Lovely Lady Kaitlyn put her hand into mine
She pulled me in close, led me out of the shop
Maaaaan, the girl is non-stop!

[Kaitlyn:]
Phobos my dear, I'm curious, bear with me
How are you so irresistably sexy?
I walked in there and I knew I had to have you
I hope my attention isn't undue

[Phobos:]
Non-stop!

[Kaitlyn:]
I intend to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
My undying devotion-

[Phobos:]
Or something
Kaitlyn, calm down
You've known me only twenty seconds
This isn't eternal love
It's not even a date!

[Kaitlyn:]
Okay!
But just let me--

[Phobos:]
How can she always be the hottest in the room?
How can she always be the hottest in the room?

[Kaitlyn:]
How can he always be the hottest in the room?
I fear that sexiness may be my doom!

[Both:]
Why do we write like we're running out of time?
Write day and night like we're running out of time?
'Shipping all night, like we're running out of time
Keep on 'shipping in the meantime
Non-stop!

---

Hamilton turns out to be very difficult to filk. I did my best. ^_^

hS

The thing about corsetry is, well, you have to get into it.

Scapegrace sighed, leaned back. Her chair squeaked a bit. So did the rats.

It wasn't working. She couldn't get the scene right. Was this going to be serious, like the last two? Or would it be dumb fun, like the inexplicably popular Doktor Trollenfisch badfic? God forbid, there might even be poetry if she was really stuck for ideas.

And then there was the scene itself. It's BDSM, Jim, but not as we know it. For a start, writing basic BDSM softcore stuff just felt... tacky. Especially involving her friends, no matter what the context. That was the problem with sex-positivity, she thought, it ground you down with all the ways things could be. It was a good problem to have, sure, but applied to people she cared about in a non-romantic sense? Not worth the sleepless nights.

She swivelled in her chair, looked out across her living room, and sighed. "Any of you lot got any ideas?"

Neshomeh was too busy trying to cut hS out of his leather trousers to give an answer, and hS was too busy trying to retain some blood flow to his legs. Meanwhile, Phobos and Kaitlyn were fat too busy doing something utterly unspeakable with a caddy of loose leaf tea; a call tried to come up from Leto about them putting the ass in Assam, but it was muffled by the ballgag. Zingenmir said she'd have a think about it later when she wasn't being sandwiched between Delta Juliette and an actual ham sandwich, and all that Tomash was allowed to say for the afternoon was "Woof", which was really helpful. Calliope and Granz were busy gazing into each others eyes, which they were managing despite the blindfolds Thoth had obliged them to wear. Thoth, meanwhile, had been the victim of an unfortunate misspelling, as Twistey had gotten mixed up, crammed him into an Adepta Sororitas cosplay composed simultaneously of too much and a grossly insufficient amount of black latex, and left him on a date with a branch of Primark.

"Fat lot of good you lot are," Scapegrace sighed, and turned back to her keyboard.

Derik: Seriously? Bloody authors. And Thoth, you are not helping!

Nume: Better you than me, new guy. 'Bout frelling time I got a break. *walks off smugly lighting a joint*

Jenni: Good grief, Derik, get a haircut already. You look like Conan the Barbarian!

Neshomeh: I drew this in record time, okay? I'm not freaking Leonardo da Vinci! Gawd. *sulk*

Gall: Uh, is it just me, or is it really dry in here? Dang nosebleed... >.>

[You're welcome/I'm sorry/Don't judge me]. Select as appropriate. {= )

~Neshomeh

Just two white cards for you:

A roaming copy of The Monster Book of Monsters.

Nursery kids repeating questionable words.

Author's Note: This kept getting longer and longer. I think I may eventually expand this into a longer interlude, but for now, I just want to post what I have. I'm falling disastrously far behind on free time stuff this week. Unbetad.

"Coming Knocking"
As Jim Gardener was entering the shed outside to talk to the living batteries imprisoned there, a thin blue portal opened in Bobbi Anderson's kitchen. Agent Doc slid through quickly, his hand already on the button to punch it closed once he was through. For safety's sake, he had first portaled to one of the dead worlds touched by Orannis in the Old Kingdom universe before coming here. He would go through a different one on the back to HQ. Those planets no longer had any atmosphere; the electromagnetic particles that slipped through the portals would disperse harmlessly into the vaccuum, and only a very insignificant number of the molecules would follow him back home.

Hopefully. The fewer the better.

Doc had set the portal into the kitchen to be as far away from Gardener as he could be, just in case he had noticed the flash of blue. This was no fanfiction; Doc was now right in the canon setting, and there was no room to screw up, no option of letting events be disrupted.

The drawback to starting in the kitchen, however, was that Doc got a much too close-up view of the body that had once belonged to Bobbi Anderson. The body, burned and bloody thanks to Jim Gardener’s actions not long before, that clearly hadn't been human for quite some time now.

Reading King's descriptions of a Tommyknocker didn't do any justice to seeing one in the translucent flesh. Doc gasped, but then mentally reprimanded himself for doing so. The oxygen tank strapped around his back wouldn't last forever, and he had needed it before even getting here, in the airless world destroyed by Orannis. Doc hurried around the body and out of the kitchen.

In Bobbi's living room, Doc forced himself to ignore the various machines and gadgets Bobbi had installed under the influence of the Tommyknocker-mind that had invaded hers. Despite being cobbled together from batteries and eighties technology, their undeniably futuristic nature made for a weird contrast with the homey wooden construction of the living room, and its worn-out couch.

It was the desk against one wall that Doc sought. What looked like an old-fashioned typewriter sat there; it only looked that way, because anyone with a Tommyknocker's telepathy could run it without touching the keys. How far away had Bobbi said she could still use it? Five miles?

But thinking of that distance reminded Doc of the other time limit he had to keep in mind. Long before his oxygen ran out, nearly every Tommyknocker in Haven would be bearing down on this farm, having felt Bobbi's psychic screaming when Gard murdered her. Not long after, this house would be going up in flames. And that was why he had come, to rescue . . .

There. Next to the typewriter. The Buffalo Soldiers. Bobbi Anderson's final novel, written while she piloted a levitating piece of construction equipment in the forest behind her house, excavating a flying saucer.

The unpublished
unbetad
manuscript sat there, a stack of computer paper almost as thick as Doc's palms. He picked up the pile and carefully wedged it under his arm. He was terrified of the prospect of even one precious page slipping out of his grip, but he wanted the manuscript already in his hands when he opened the portal. The fewer molecules of this polluted air that followed him through, the better.

Which is why he was so distracted by the two sounds that started as he got the pages firmly and lovingly nestled into the crook of his arm. One was a sputtering old truck engine. Freeman Moss, the first of the former humans-turned Tommyknocker who would come to attack Gardener, had already arrived, much faster than Doc had expected. The fire would be catching soon.

The second was a female voice in Doc's head that said, Honestly, I don't know that it's worth saving.

Doc froze in place, and felt a chill creep up and down his spine. He thought of all the things that might have gone wrong.

A leak in the air pack somewhere I've been breathing the air this whole time and now I'm "becoming" one of them I can never go back to HQ now—

Hold on, there, admonished the voice. It's not you, and it's not them, this is just me. The old and unimproved, as Gard would say.

Then, Freeman Moss's mental voice interrupted, broadcasting to Gardener outside: Looks like Bobbi put at least one good one into you, you snake. It really was close to hearing someone talk, that Tommyknocker telepathy. Loud, and impossible to ignore. Different from hearing an Andalite's thought-speech, and different from the thoughts of Bobbi's ghost just now.

A ghost? I don't know about that, kid. There's been a lot of weird mind stuff going on in this town lately—although I suspect you know all about that, somehow. I think being psychic these last few months has let my mind last a little longer than my brain, if you can dig it. And I've got to tell ya, it's real good to think for myself again.

Doc mumbled around the mouthpiece of his breathing apparatus; really, he didn't know what to say. Bobbi's ghost—or at least, what he had thought of as her ghost while he had been reading—had indeed appeared to keep Gardener safe a couple of times right at the end of the novel, before eventually fading away. But Doc wasn't prepared to encounter her like this. And without a physical body, the neuralyzer Doc had brought along just in case wasn't going to accomplish anything.

I didn’t quite catch that. I'm not as good at reading minds as I was an hour ago, and that hick yelling at Gard out there doesn't help. But I think I got the jist of it. You didn't want anyone seeing you, and you think I'm trouble now. Well, don't sweat it, all right? I have a feeling I'm not going to be around much longer—wouldn't exactly want this to be a permanent set-up, anyway. All I care about now is Gard. But listen: that novel you got there? That’s not mine. I didn’t write it. The Tommyknockers did. The old and unimproved Bobbi Anderson never could have written anything that good, especially not in three weeks.

As Doc mulled over her words, a green light bloomed out in the dooryard. The light was bright, but the green was a sick and dirty one, and Doc closed his eyes against it. Soon after, he flinched and hugged The Buffalo Soldiers to his chest as Freeman Moss’s mental screams slammed into him. Straining to focus on his words against the not-quite-a-sound, Doc concentrated on his thoughts, trying to make them as clear as possible for Bobbi. That’s bullcrap, Mrs. Anderson, and you know it! The Tommyknocker that was in your body admitted it! They can make things work, but they don’t understand why things work. They’re only intelligent, not smart. They ran this entire town on batteries! You think creatures like that could write an entire novel? They aren’t capable of creativity, Mrs. Anderson. That was you. Freeman’s screams finally died down, as did the green light outside. Doc relaxed and thought his words more calmly. It was you. The Tommyknockers may have made the telepathic typewriter, they may have buzzed your brain to make you work yourself to death, but they couldn’t have created a story. Only you could have done this. He held the manuscript out in both hands, displaying the thickness—not that he had any clue where Bobbi actually was, so to speak. This right here is Roberta Anderson. And I’m here to make sure it survives this day.

Outside, the fuel tank of Bobbi’s truck exploded. It wouldn’t be long now.

Well, all right, then. You do whatever you want. But . . . just make sure, if it does get published, you keep that dedication page intact. He’s been a good friend to me. I’m going after him now, see if I can’t still be some kind of friend to him.

You’ve got it, Doc said. But somehow, he knew that whatever part of Bobbi Anderson he had speaking with was no longer there to hear it.

Next, it was Freeman’s truck’s turn to blow. Bits of flaming debris began to drift against the front of the house, and through the open door.

Doc carefully settled the manuscript into the crook of his arm again, then he took an unexpectedly ragged breath and frowned. I wasn’t supposed to stop for a chat, he thought. It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out, and they gave me just enough oxygen for that..

He moved away from the front door. A couple of objects in the living room had already ignited. His eyes focused on the RA, he very carefully and deliberately typed in the coordinates to the second of Orannis’s victims, despite his breathing growing more difficult. There was no time for errors now. A thin portal edged open. He slid through and immediately closed it, cutting himself off from Haven’s polluted air for, he hoped, the last time in his PPC career.

This world looked identical to Orannis’s other victim Doc had passed through on the way to the Stephen King world. The air back in Haven was toxic, and would have killed Doc on the spot if he had breathed much at all. But here, there was no atmosphere at all, and the danger of the oxygen tank running out was just as real. Still, Doc trekked across the dead world, getting as far away as he could from the spot where he had opened the portal out of Haven. The fewer molecules of Haven air that followed him back to HQ, the better for everyone.

He marched across that rock, listening to his breathing grow more and more strained as the tank’s supply grew thin. He already had the RA set to portal back to Medical Research’s quarantine room. Once Doc took his first completely empty breath, he clicked it open and slid through, then closed it. Dizziness was just beginning to cloud his mind as he yanked the breather out of his mouth. He drew in a full and wonderful breath.

He knew the MRD scientists would already be remotely monitoring the room’s atmosphere, and Doc’s own biology, for contamination. That was fine. He could wait. He had a way to pass the time. He lay down on the generic floor and set The Buffalo Soldiers down, neatly patting the edges of the stack until all the papers were perfectly squared. He turned the title page over and laid it face down next to the rest of the pile. He then did the same with the dedication page, which read so appropriately:

For Gard, who’s always there when I need him.

* * *

Author's Note: I hope this doesn't reek too much of "PPC agent chumming it up with a canon character." When I got the idea for this, I was expecting it to be much shorter, but I just kept uncovering more as I wrote. Bobbi's "ghost" or whatever does vanish from the narrative soon after the point in time when this story takes place, so I don't think the lack of neuralyzation is an issue. The Buffalo Soldiers is of course destined for la Musée des Univers Perdus. (I know it's not from a lost civilization, but it is lost, eh?) The novel's dedication is taken directly from the narrative in The Tommyknockers.

—doctorlit

Uh... yeah. Basically. I mean, I don't think anyone here has read every spinoff. Heck, I don't think anyone here has even read all the "must-read" spinoffs. I know I haven't. I read TOS, Pads and Trojie, and Tales from DOGA, originally. And while I've read more than that now, there is a MASSIVE list of spinoffs I haven't read. Here's a short list:

-Wobbles & The Notary

-Illraen and Supernumery

-Gall and Derik (Yes, really. It's humiliating and terrible and I need to fix it)

-Ix and Charlotte

-The Aviator and Zeb

-Suicide, Diocletian, and Ithalond

-...And those are just the famous ones.

So don't feel bad about not knowing everything and not reading it all.

And have a must-stay-within-PPC-territory Sindarin translation of Mist: i-Pharf Étrus.

How'd I miss my own comment below? 9_6

Okay, so it's a joke "ship" fic about how pasty we all are. I get it now. Haha!

I'd kind of like to see a continuation of this.

-Twistey

*nervous laughing* What? Why?

-Twistey

Can you explain? Do I want to know?

Aside from pasty jokes, that is? (By the way, I do have pastier friends.)

-Twistey

*lifts up drink* I'm Twistey.

Nice to meet you. Welcome back.

-Twistey

So your relationship with VI is too lukewarm for shipping. I'm telling you, it's XV.

It'd be trivial to hateship me with VI. Or... not really a hateship? I mean, it's not like I hate VI. It's just I'm a fan of their mortal enemies.

XV. Definitely XV.

*Tries not to imagine Derik in a thong. fails miserably. Results not unpleasant."

Meanwhile, Agent Thoth:
"Which I would not advise it in a combat scenario, you would certainly manage such an outfit handsomely should you wish to attract attention, Brother. I will confess that I might have once enjoyed such a sight. Take that as you will."

Hey, folks! I've just added a few things to my Neshomeh's Archive CAHQ deck, plus "the warsheep" to the More Cards Against Headquarters deck, and I thought it might be a good time to ask for any suggestions you might have, too. It's been a while, and I know there are card-worthy things I haven't got yet. Calls are always especially needed, since they're harder to come up with.

For reference, my decks (in addition to the ones linked above) are these:

- FicPsych
- The Inevitable Holiday Edition (note: winter holidays only; other holidays might need their own deck?)
- The Flowers: A (the 30 most popular ones; responses only)
- The Flowers: B (all the rest; responses only)

So, if you have ideas, tell me! I'll add pretty much anything to the More Cards Against Headquarters deck, though I might tweak the grammar to make sure it functions properly and with maximum potential for lulz.

The only suggestions I definitely won't use are those involving Boarders; there's a separate deck for that, and it's Mattman's, not mine.

Feel free to suggest stuff from your own missions, but please don't suggest your own characters' names as responses. Names, by and large, are pretty boring, so it just doesn't make sense to add them unless it's by popular demand. (Humorous descriptions, e.g. "a flake with a camera," are another matter. Go nuts with humorous descriptions.)

By the same token, fandom references are good, but it's best if they're funny in their own right, so everyone can enjoy them even if they're not in that fandom. Anyway, there's probably a deck for your fandom out there already.

With those guidelines in mind, go wild!

~Neshomeh

How did you know what I found in the--?

Uh I mean what I don't know what you're talking about what even is leather?

hS

Ix: Yeah, I guess that's fair.

That would leave even less to the imagination! *eg*

Derik: You've still got both eyes, and the madness lurking in your subconscious runs on a consistent time-table. You win some, you lose some.

~Neshomeh

Darn, I guess that's just a scene I'll have to save for when September's badfic games roll around.

As for Derik, I prefer a little more be left to the imagination—especially in a way that won't leave me reaching for the Bleepka. :P Unless by shamrock thong you meant flip-flops...

Ix: "Oh, is it, now?" *grumpy* "How nice for him."