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Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

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Close enough. This vote tally brought to you by nicotine addiction. Nicotine! Fun fact, it can be useful in regulating certain medical problems, at least until it gives you new, even more dire ones.
 
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Threshold 2: Foundations (Begin II)
  • Threadmarks
    • Subgroups
    University???
    - Sports people. Complain a lot about missing sports. Very physical play activities. High incidence of visits to HR office, in groups of 1-4.
    - Oneiromancers/Divinity students. Nattie calls them 'baby oneiromancers'. Very nervous, very solemn. Lead prayer circles. Everyone participates in prayer circles. Jill had to stop me from telling them the Everlasting Lady isn't a god.
    - Engineers/"Eggheads". Harassing Jack to do things with the forklifts. Improved the bathing situation. Talk a lot.
    - 'Party people'. Low useful skills. Tendency to stare off into space. Kind words make them cry sometimes. One picked a fight once. Dunno what the grandmas said to her but she wouldn't talk to anyone for two days.
    - Old people. Like people, but old. Seems to be the smallest group. Absorbed into the broader body of old people.
    - Professors. Somehow not old people. Spending a lot of time with Nattie.

    Children
    - They have accepted me amongst them
    - Cuteness factor inexplicable but consistent
    - I really keep losing at games with these people
    - No really how

    Asset Protection
    - Smallest coherent group
    - Tendency to stare off into space, nightmares, waking screaming
    - Volunteer for dangerous jobs at approximately triple the rate of other groups
    - Volunteer to escort Me Specifically places
    - Pretty sure they're making little felt dolls of me???
    - The dolls all have axes

    Cooks
    - Working well under the leadership of Chef Nettleson
    - DARK sense of humor
    - No really the shit they say
     - Very pro-active with asserting the needs of their section of the community. Sasha says we'd starve if they weren't such 'helicopter parents' about it.
    - Chef Nettleson's smile does things to me

    Grandmas
    - Actually old people in general but the grandpas are severely outnumbered
    - Holding up surprisingly well? Comments about 'living through the war'.
    - Many useful skills, great confidence, difficulty taking direction balanced by tendency to volunteer usefully
    - Fashion sense is oddly appealing. Must try for myself
    - Why the fuck do I know what gender a grandma or grandpa is and why is it not giving me other useful information

    "Punks"
    - Similar fashion sense to Sasha
    - High incidence of not being heterosexual
    - Rude. Endearing.
    - Why do so many of them know their way around the guns?

    Misc.
    - Various people I cannot easily categorize
    - Most of the parents are in here
    - Doctors also in here because I can't grasp what it is they have in common other than the scary voice they do
    - Would it be so much to ask that I simply understand the diversity of the human experience?

    Concerns about population crash alleviated by informal inquiry; large proportion of population theoretically willing to reproduce
    Note to self: refine those questions until they don't sound like offers

    Or until they sound like better offers
    ​
    Music???
    No wind chimes no wind chimes no wind chimes no wind chimes
    ​
    Femme = some kind of combat-specialized female?
    Butch = Flannel? Beanie hat?? Self-identified 'men' and 'women' both use the term
    Dyke = ???? Wall powers????
    Woman = Skirts sort of, breasts sometimes, higher-pitched voices maybe? Switching complicates
    Man = No idea except 'if they sit on their own balls it's probably a man'. Jack refused to elaborate.
    Child = Genderless??? They appear to use pronouns. Possibly apprenticing as a gender.
    ​
    Films
    Greater access to films has widened the non-adult offerings available. So far I sorta like the romances and the mysteries. 'Action movies' have been a miss. General consensus has led to the slasher and monster horror films being smashed with hammers and mixed into the soil for later gardens. Someone tried to put on a documentary about the gold standard? Everyone yelled at it. Then they smashed the documentary too.

    Asked Andrea about it. She tried to explain. Doesn't make sense. Gold has no worth without electronics...
    ​
    Condom situation getting dire
    Correction: prophylactic situation getting dire. Schedule raids.
    ​
    Spiders are doing well. Some limited sentences. They keep drawing things Brianna is presumably sending them. Jill gets very red when I hug my spider friend.
    ​
    Cogito ergo sum?
    "I think, therefore I am." An invitation to talk? An assertion? Mysterious advice? Sasha talks a big game about banging a dragon but I don't think she's volunteering to go talk to it alone.​

    ​
    Jill and Sasha check over your notes with nearly identical and nearly-identically unreadable expressions. You clear your throat and look away. "You think I'm insane again, don't you?"

    "...I think we haven't appreciated just how little y'know, flower," Jill says gently. "There's a lot we take for granted 'cause we grew up being taught it all the time. Without ever having to, y'know, really learn it."

    Sasha nods, scans the notebook again, frowns. "You uh, were worried about the fuckin' breeding population?"

    "Should I not have been?"

    Jill and Sasha look at each other, and then they both shrug. So that, for the moment, is that. They take your hands, one each, and the three of you kinda put your heads together. "We're always here," Jill murmurs. "If you're ever gettin' too confused, we'll try our best, alright?"

    "I will absolutely bang that dragon," Sasha adds, and the three of you bust up laughing. "Y'know, you're rubbing off on me? Been catching myself using 'it' as the neutral pronoun lately. Kinda a power move."

    You blink several times.

    Several more times.

    Open your mouth -

    Jill: "We'd be all month explaining, just go with it."

    - Close your mouth.

    * * * *

    You're supposed to be preparing to leave when the Threshold Internal rings; just the Captain, Nattie, and you. You pick up and hear the voice that is yours immediately: "Hey y'all, you know how you were gettin' ready to leave? You're gonna wanna do not that."

    You share a glance with Nattie, and she puts her finger on the button. "Acknowledged, but why?" Finger off the button.

    "We got a real shit-kicker comin' in off the coast," explains the Captain. "Like, bad. Wash-you-into-the-sewer bad. The old man's models didn't account for weather...in any event I don't want you doin' anything stupid. Stay put, hunker down, enjoy some R&R, and when the sun comes back out y'all can move on Station 104. We're working on getting into contact with them but the storm's getting us to hole up too, best I've got for you is the address of the holding company that technically owns the facility."

    You put your finger on the button: "Corporate?"

    "Like you wouldn't believe, doll. Like you wouldn't believe. Preliminary recon suggests three nodes of the hive-mind lording over some ninety employees. Big jackpot in labor if we can avoid fucking killing them all but I seem to have left my fuckoff sniper rifles in my other budget, so it is what it is."

    This will be the third week since Doctor Heller said you had a month
    [ ] Brave the storm
    [ ] Hunker down

    Should 'Hunker Down' win, select 2
    [ ] Brace for the flooding with Glazier's Dominion
    [ ] Mortgage your recovering health to get more gardens up now.
    [ ] Relax socially (write-in?)
    [ ] Romance Novels II: Revenge of the Euphemisms
    [ ] Try to seek advice about the conversation you overheard, between Jill and Sasha (who?)
    [ ] Write-in?

    The flooding will be braced against by more conventional means if you don't handle it personally

    Begin Threshold 2: Foundations
    "You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."​
    - Pirkei Avot, Chapter 2 verse 21
    ​
    You are 58 days old.​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • For reference, that does mean I'm requesting votes in both categories, so that people who vote to brave the storm still have a say in what happens if that doesn't win.
     
    [X] Hunker down
    [X] Brace for the flooding with Glazier's Dominion
    [X] Mortgage your recovering health to get more gardens up now.

    I may not like the Captain as much as Orchid, but if what she says is correct, we gotta lock in rn.
     
    [x] Hunker down

    Should 'Hunker Down' win, select 2
    [x] Brace for the flooding with Glazier's Dominion
    [x] Write-in:
    -[x] Try to make contact with Station 104.

    As much as its going to suck for Heller and Co. having to wait, its going to be nigh impossible to do a Water Rescue during a massive Storm, let alone an Underwater One. Hunker Down, prepare best we can, and then we GO.

    Also any kind of attempt Orchid can make to signal Heller than it IS still coming would be good, but with the Spiders beginning to People again, I'm not sure what options we have on that front
     
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    Honestly I know this is just Orchid not knowing, but...

    Child = Genderless??? They appear to use pronouns. Possibly apprenticing as a gender.

    I think it'd be really cool worldbuilding if you had worlds where people did that? :V
     
    [X] Hunker down
    [X] Brace for the flooding with Glazier's Dominion
    [X] Mortgage your recovering health to get more gardens up now.
     
    The Laurent said:
    Honestly I know this is just Orchid not knowing, but...

    Child = Genderless??? They appear to use pronouns. Possibly apprenticing as a gender.

    I think it'd be really cool worldbuilding if you had worlds where people did that? :V
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    But what's the masterwork you submit to become a Master Enby & take on your own apprentices?
     
    Morrowlark said:
    But what's the masterwork you submit to become a Master Enby & take on your own apprentices?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    10-20k essay on how gender is as formless and ephemeral as our own loves, phases, and hopes, and why not having it is a freedom in and of itself.

    Got a little poetic there for a sec.
     
    In any event I do hope this insight into Orchid's thought processes is...helpful. It's out here having a wild one in a new, alien world that is not free from the influence of the old world that birthed it.
     
    Dykes SHOULD have wall powers tbh. Well, technically Orchid can have those so…
     
    [X] Hunker down
    [X] Brace for the flooding with Glazier's Dominion
    [X] Romance Novels II: Revenge of the Euphemisms
     
    [X] Hunker down
    [X]Brace for the flooding with Glazier's Dominion
    [X] Write-in:
    -[X] Try to make contact with Station 104.
     
    One Hour

    This incarnation of my irregular schedule brought to you by: pain! It's the body's way of telling you that you're dying.
     
    Our health is volatile but, If we need to hunker down the last thing we want is to be low on food.

    [x] Brace for the flooding with Glazier's Dominion
    [x] Mortgage your recovering health to get more gardens up now.
     
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