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"Thank you," he said.

Tom turned to look at Gall, his face displaying a horrified expression. "They fried Ecto Cooler? Good god, that's horrifying. What will they do next? Dip Doritos in Mountain Dew?"

The lament was Celtic in flavor, each high, mournful note unspooling with aching slowness from the throat of the man singing:

The tears I feel today
I’ll wait to shed tomorrow,
Though I’ll not sleep this night
Nor find surcease from sorrow.
My eyes must keep their sight;
I dare not be tear-blinded.
I must be free to speak
Not choked with grief, clear-minded.
My tongue cannot betray
The anguish that I know.
||: I’ll keep my tears till later;
But my grief will never go. :||

Derik could rarely bring himself to sing anymore, but he still had a clear, near-perfect upper register. Even off-kilter as he was now, with his sound further disturbed by the ambient Halloween music in the room, it was an uncommon soul that could fail to be moved by it. Even Gall listened quietly, her expression slack.

"For your brothers," said Derik. "For Skepnadth. And for us." He looked around and chuckled. "Normally someone would offer a toast at this point, but I'm already toasted!"

Gall rewarded him for the terrible joke with a punch on the shoulder. "You maniac. Eat your, uh, I think that blob thing is 'Fried Ecto Cooler'."

For the moment, Jenni stood quietly, contemplating.

(( "Song for Petiron," from the Pern album Sunset's Gold. Derik may have taken it just a hair faster than the recording. Oh, and yes, fried Ecto Cooler is a real thing. Don't ask me how, but I heard of it on Brad Tries at some point.

(( ∗checks off RP Goal: Get Derik to Sing∗ Woot.))

"Halloween isn't as big in France as it can be in say, America, so I never gave it an actual try as far as I remember. Dunno how big it is here in HQ, but... Willing to give it a try? If so, dibs on candies with red berries flavor or caramel."

"You'll do it without me, then," Marina said. "I got more than enough of that back home. Comparing inadequate disguises to the real deals far funnier for me now... When Halloween isn't a just a job night. I'll continue to enjoy that party."

"Alright, then. I won't be sorry." He shrugged, and turned to Thoth. "Do you want to tell her?"

Thoth shrugged. "She will find out sooner or later if she really wants to, anyways." He turned to the nurse. "The fifteenth legion's story is not a happy one, and our doom was neither quick nor painless. We were accused of sorcery, the Wolves sent to our world to bring us back. As to whether the judgement were just... that is not for me to say."

"The orders were changed, telling the Wolves to destroy us. Our own primarch found the judgement just. He did not inform us of what was coming, lowered our defenses." He looked down again. "We tried to fight back. At first, it went well. But they had brought the Sisters of Silence with them. And as the battle wore one... more and more of my brothers succumbed to our defects."

"They called it the flesh-change. A menace accentuated by our psychic talents. Those who succumbed became... something I'd rather not think about. Death was preferable. And as our city burned and our brethren and citizens lay slaughtered in the streets... our primarch made a pact to save us. A pact that gave us our lives, and but cost us our pride and our freedom. We were taken to a new world, our powers amplified - and we had become servants of the Architect of Fate, choice or no."

Thoth looked down. "As the flesh-change grew worse... a group of us made an attempt to fix it. They failed, the ritual going horrifyingly awry. Most of our number were turned to dust, their souls fractured and trapped within their armor, becoming little more than mindless automatons, doomed to eternal torment." He looked back up, still seemingly distant. "I saw my brothers fall around me, cursed to a fate worse than death. A fate I myself narrowly escaped. That is what happened to me."

"Dunno—we never had anything like this back home, so I'm not really sure what to expect. I've heard all about trick-or-treating; is this what you meant when you were talking about tricks?"

Derik swung around to glare at Tom. "Don't be sorry." He sneered the word. "Nobody be sorry for me."

"I'm not!" Gall chirped.

Jenni shot her an angry look, but this went ignored.

"Thank you," Derik said profoundly, flourishing an arm in imitation of a bow to his partner. "That's what I like about you. You're rude, and annoying, and selfish—but you're not sorry. And you brought me food. ... What is this?" He held up something that looked like a cocktail wiener, but its sauce had somehow been turned a noxious shade of green.

"Um, I think the sign said 'Alien Guts'? Gimme one." The two of them bent over the plate.

Jenni shook her head, gave a sniff to clear her sinuses, and took a step toward Tom and Thoth. She couldn't help but observe the Astartes' withdrawn silence, and the nurse knew trauma when she saw it. Her work was never done. "Hey, big fella." She gently rapped a knuckle against the back of his armored hand. "You want a turn in the sharing circle?"

"Well, that will need investigating, but this does not seem like an appropriate time." There was, after all, some sort of party going on.

He pulled out a small notebook and opened it up to a page near the back, which was almost entirely black from the various notes that had been written there. "Halloween - World One sources?" he wrote somewhat diagonally (but surprisingly neatly, for diagonal text) near the margin.

"We were, after all, doing, ... uh, doing, going ... why are we here, anyhow? It had something to do with candy, I think." he said, having gotten a bit sidetracked by the whole discussion.

The trick is not to hide to the exposition, it's to make it enjoyable. Heck, if you're writing in first person, you can have a character straight-up explain to the audience. The Dresden Files does this all the time, and it might get annoying, but it doesn't because 1) The exposition is largely kept very brief, and 2) it is absolutely dripping with personality: this isn't the writer telling you a thing, this is Harry explaining his world.

"And actually, playing up with the tune could be something really interesting to do, so maybe you could try that?. In any case, I'll be sure to be there if there is really such thing for winter, and nothing stops you from giving it a shot at this moment," Richard said. He then began to look around. "Anyways, why don't we look for something interesting to do? Come on, it's Halloween, tricks are part of the fun. Or failing that, well something else!"

Marina shrugged slightly before looking at Dax, "Well, you heard him. Any idea?"

The Eddingses loved doing this, using a fake historical account as a prologue. The Belgariad starts with what's basically a religious story; each book of the Tamuli starts with a scholarly study of the events you're reading about. Heck, Tolkien does it, too, name-dropping King Elessar in his discussion of the Red Book.

What they do is to introduce you to the world and its background without having a character say it to another character. If the Prologue can tell us that Middle-earth is 'Earth but long ago and with elves', then Frodo doesn't need to have a conversation about it with Gandalf. ("Gosh, Gandalf, I do wish you'd tell me that old tale about how the world was created, I always so love to hear it...")

Another example is Brandon Sanderson (again!); each of the Mistborn books has false-document quotes at the head of every chapter. They let him feed in the backstory that everyone in the world already knows, while at the same time using it as a storytelling device and subverting it (by casting the setting's myths as a diary, I seem to recall).

The trick to doing this successfully is to use your false-document (or any other form of exposition) not just as exposition, but as part of the story. Check out the opening of Serenity (y'know, the Firefly movie), which manages to recap the relevant backstory from the series as part of the introduction of the villain. If you have a mentor to deliver information, make her teaching style relevant to the plot - the Wonder Woman movie gives us its founding myth as a bedtime story for Diana, which builds her relationship with her mother, feeds into her motivations, and - through what she is and isn't told - helps to establish both conflict and the plot of the film.

And for the love of all that's fictional, never do what some comic books do and have your hero yell "I'm trying to use my laser vision to stop you, but your forcefield is making you immune to it -- how?!". Trust your audience.

hS

"Gods and demons... Derik, I'm sorry. We've all lost friends, but... I couldn't imagine..." He trailed off.

Thoth merely stood silently. His focus didn't seem to be on the world around him, or anywhere close.

"Just morph my vocal cords to that of a siren, and then everyone's falling all over themselves to say how great I am." She grinned unabashedly. "Maybe they'll have it at this year's winter holidays party."

But she allowed Matt to lead her back to the others.

Charlotte had a very concerned look on her face."I dunno, Izzy. I'd love to try it, but not that much... It would be interesting, yeah, but I don't really want to risk it."

The fact was, her partner didn't really live up like that, unless he was facing an interesting game, story or something else catching his interest, or if a mission or something else was really driving him up to wall. Not really for other people.

"A pity they don't have a karaoke. Nobody would disagree if I was stealing the scene rather than do the same to their hearts. Unless they dn't care abut the tune, but hey, that's karaoke for you."

At least that was in character alright.

((Trying to suggest the idea that with a mask on, Richard is pretty much showing a rather different side of him than the usual subdued one.))

Izzy started fidgeting and gesturing around. "Worst case scenario, you implode and get stuck in the Speed Force, where you constantly relieve every moment of your past, your present, and your future, to a point of absolute insanity... But that only happened once, and the Flash did it on his own free will... Or..."

She extended her hand. It started vibrating incredibly fast, letting out small sparks of red electricity.

"You get a boost of super-speedyness. I don't know for how long, though."

~~~

"Come on, new best friend." Matt grinned gesturing over to where Izzy and Charlotte were. "Let's see what our ladies are conspiring about behind our backs."

In other words, reply to Thoth's original post instead of down here, since we're starting to get crunched up against the right side of the screen.

~Neshomeh

She glanced down at Derik, who'd sagged in his seat and turned away to stare into the middle distance. Pressing her lips together, she resolved to speak further. "On the other hand, Sybok had a point about dragging it out into the light. What you need to know about Pern," she said, returning to the point, "is that the dragonriders have an indelible telepathic bond with their dragons from the moment of Impression at the dragon's hatching until death. A total sharing of the psyche—a constant companion who knows the depths of your soul and loves you unconditionally. There's nothing else like it. Nothing comes close." Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked them away. "If that bond is broken, it shatters you. Riders rarely survive the death of their dragon, and even if they do, they're never whole again."

"Then there's the whole freaky Phantom of the Opera thing," Gall added, swiping a couple of chocolate-covered pretzels, decorated like bats, and crunching loudly. "Don't forget that."

(( One of Gall's jobs as the insensitive jerk character is to keep everyone from wallowing in angst too much. {= )

(( DroP IS good, but more for the worldbuilding than the actual writing, in my more informed mature-adult\* opinion. Characterization is not McCaffrey's strong suit. But I love Pern, and if you can get past the occasional cringiness of the text, it's an awesome series. ... Well, up until Skies of Pern, anyway.

(( \*Hahaha, mature adult. Pffff. {X D ))

For the first time, she allowed herself to smile.

~ ~ ~ "For some reason, that number doesn't exactly fill me with confidence." Charlotte frowned. "Would this exploding involve fire? Because if it doesn't, it'd just be a temporary setback for me."

I think the best mindset towards exposition is: No exposition.

Or, to be less hyperbolic, with regards to explaining how things work in your story, you should try and take a very minimalist stance (or, at least, that's how I do it.) One of the things I've found in writing - not just with magic or technology, but writing in general - is that you are essentially trying to get heaps of information into the heads of your readers, without them knowing or feeling like they're having information shoved into them.

This is the difference between telling, and showing. In terms of characterisation, you can just say: 'Jim Jackson is a very angry man' - you are delivering the information that he is angry, but the readers can see, so obviously, that you are just shoving that fact down their throats. It's awkward, and takes them out of it. Meanwhile, if you have Jim Jackson get very angry at something, snarl, throw something and go red, the information - that he is a very angry man - is delivered, but so is an actual event in the story. Rather than feeling like they've just read an infodump, the reader feels like they've simply read an occurrence in the story - which has also had the effect of telling them that Jim Jackson is an angry man. It fits right into the flow of the story, and doesn't feel awkward.

It is a similar thing, then, with magic and technology. In essence, you 'disguise' information, by weaving it in alongside something else. Remember that all these sorts of rules can be very vague and floaty - it is possible just have a short paragraph explaining how a magic or technology works, so long as it feels like it still has a role in the story beyond just 'explaining.'

I've found a lot of times that, if you're sneaky with it, you can pass off a straight explanation as a character simply thinking of the technology/magic in question, as they look at or approach it or such. Which works even better, then, if you use that to also show their character - like having them think that force fields are cheap and lame, which shows that the world has force fields, that they aren't rare, and that our character finds them lame and is probably a dope. In doing so, the information is successfully disguised! But that's, ah, only one example. So long as you get it disguised.

You also need to consider the relevance of the information you're delivering - essentially, be on the prowl for unnecessary information that can be removed, and considering what information can't be removed.

Going back to the minimalist thing, you will only want to explain things that are actually relevant to the plot and the character - there is no point going on, in detail, about Jim Jackson's fondness for dolls and motorcycles, if these are irrelevant to the occurrences of the story, both the plot and his character. Even if you show, rather than tell, about his fondness for dolls and motorcycles, it's still irrelevant.

Similarly, with magic and technology, you should use its relevance to your story as a basis for the existence of an explanation for it - what would you lose, if you removed the explanation for this technology? Would the story make no sense, would the world make no sense, would a point you want to get across with the story not be there? Does a person reading this need this information, for the story, or world, to feel complete? You should, in essence, consider - very specifically - what it is you want to do with the piece of introduced technology or magic. If you're not losing anything by removing it, and it's not doing anything, it's probably going to be very distracting, and ought to get a chopping.

Going back to my force field example, above, it is necessary to know about force fields in the world - to explain how they can have their ship defend itself, so that it makes sense when, later on, the force field is used to defend said ship, and to demonstrate that the existence of force fields is a part of this particular world. What you don't necessarily need to know is how the force field works, or how the voltron crystals that make up its motor are made out of diamondised grapium that are flux capacitated to the nth dimension, or that it it was the Jim Jackson and Co company that built it. These pieces of information are not relevant to the story, world, or plot.

But!

You will need to demonstrate that information if, for example, the main character deals in diamondised grapium and it's a big part of the plot, or if, for example, you wanted to make some sort of statement mocking big corporations, and mention the shoddy job Jim Jackson and Co did in building the force field, or so on, so forth.

So, er, there you have it, I guess! If you want to have exposition, you ought to consider, essentially, how you deliver it, and what you are delivering (and what doesn't need to be delivered.) Explain only what is precisely necessary, and make sure it never feels like it's only an explanation.

This, of course, is all just how I write, and is all guidelines, and I'm sure other people may think differently, and I'm sure there will be cases where you'll be entirely within the right mind to go against these guidelines. So long as you know what you're doing, and why, and all!

"Socially Awkward Fist Bump?" He smiled.

~~~~

"I don't suppose hooking you up to machines in Medical or FicPsych after gulping some of my blood comes into play, does it?" Izzy asked. "It would give us the best results, but regular observation of your behavior will be good as well. I can be about..." Her eyes quickly glanced upwards, "seventy percent sure you won't explode."

Ix scuffed her toe against the floor. "So, er, not very long at all, I'm afraid." She coughed. "And I'm... not too great at talking to people, either."

~ ~ ~

"What kind of test do you have in mind?" Charlotte asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet.