thespherelogs | Fourth Wall Month!

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Fourth Wall Month!

Who: Everyone and visiting Characters!
What: The Fourth Wall log!
When: The month of September!.
Where: All over.
Notes: If you have any questions about how this all works, please head over here to the Fourth Wall info post!.

Fourth Wall Log!

Company's coming!

So the Sphere is malfunctioning and there’s new arrivals here. In order to give them somewhere to sleep and rest, the Sphere has given them all temporary housing in dorm dome number two! That means sunken beds, three squares a day that are already prepared for you and clothing in the closets that just happen to be to your character’s taste. (And you know if they happen to die then you’ve got a nice space to Rez.) All and all it’s a nice little home base for people to have. There’s several common areas for mingling, and all though there aren’t individual rooms for the characters who are staying there, the domes also provide screens for privacy. Don’t worry, no one’s spying on you or something. Probably.

John (one of our resident NPCs here, who is a doctor and also a ghost but shush) knows the importance of family, and she knows how tough it can be when people arrive in a place they don’t know. The visitors haven’t really had the same experience as people brought in the traditional way, so John has stationed herself in the dorms with a sort of ipad thing, and she’s offering to take people’s information and to show them how things like the network work. She’s also there to hold hands and deal with any medical issues that these new arrivals may just happen to have. If people don’t want to talk to her, that’s totally fine! She won’t push. But she’ll also provide directions to places if people need them. Or at least point them in the general places that they need to go.

Speaking things out into the void.

This is a prompt for visiting characters to be able to put out a network post without actually joining the network community! Upon waking in The Sphere, each character (even temporary ones!) are fitted with a small golden circle behind their right ear. This is how they are connected to the network through a neural link. Touch and hold the button to create a broadcast of one of three types:

Audio. Your character thinks audible words onto the network.
Writing: Your character thinks text into the network.
Video. Your character projects a broadcast of a video of themselves onto the network.

Replies are determined by the player. The network needs to be accessed by choice, so character broadcasts are not automatically beamed directly into people’s heads. The Sphere isn’t that rude.

Private messages are allowed by pressing and holding and pressing and holding again as you picture the person in your mind. This can be an image or a name, err more on the side of things being more accessible than less.

God let people have their pumpkin spice lattes, Karen!

It’s September, and that means that fall has hit the Sphere hard. Well, as hard as any place can be without having actual seasons or sunlight. So, in the artificial sun of the Sphere, what there is instead of colder weather and leaves changing is a new festival. The festival, which if you ask someone who’s been there for a while is in celebration of the most fall thing in the entire world: pumpkin spice. That’s right, there’s an entire festival just centered around pumpkin spice flavored things! Of course, the people of the Sphere do try and make an effort to invoke the spirit of the season, with large garlands of fake brightly colored leaves lining the street. The scents of pumpkin spice fill the air and there are small fire pits near Adirondack chairs that are clustered together with all the things to make s’mores.

For those not pumpkin minded, there are also a fair amount of apples picked from the Sphere orchards, and a few small knives. Some older women promise that if people can peel the apples in a long spiral and throw them behind them, then the peel will form the initial of the person that the thrower is destined to marry. Of course there is also bobbing for apples and pumpkin carving.

In both the merchant dome and the agricultural dome there’s massive tables brimming with enough pumpkin foods to make Harry Potter jealous. There’s all sorts of pumpkin baked goods, pumpkin ravioli, roasted pumpkin and vegetables and there’s even roasted meats with pumpkin sauce! There's also drinks of both the alcoholic and non alcoholic sort: pumpkin beer, pumpkin spice wine, pumpkin spice vodka, apple spiced whiskey and so on! At each place is a coffee cart with a poor overworked barista who is doling out every sort of pumpkin coffee, hot chocolate and tea imaginable including yes pumpkin spice lattes.

We're waiting for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

There’s even a pumpkin carving contest in the agricultural dome! Pumpkins of different sizes ranging from small sugar ones to ones that could comfortably form a children’s fort are stacked around, and there are picnic tables set in newspaper and with things like knives and scoopers and nails and even drills for those people who want to remove the pumpkin guts or use them to do some carving. Everyone who participates receives a ribbon as well as a bag of toasted pumpkin seeds to take home.

They hope you really like pumpkin seeds. There’s a ton of them.

When the dark comes, people hunker down between the false stars above, with blankets all around them, the scent of pumpkin in the air. Flashlights and small lanterns are distributed by people, and when asked what’s going on, they’ll say that they’re waiting for The Great Pumpkin. Children whisper the name excitedly, and even some of the more inebriated adults do the same. Either way, at midnight the largest pumpkin rises above the crowd to gasps of shock and awe before it just magically changes into the types of candy and small toys that one would expect to come from an excellently stocked pinata.

The color of magical bounty.

In the rec dome, some magically gifted people have conjured up massive piles of dried leaves for people to frolic in. And when I say massive, I mean massive. It’s almost like an entire forest of leaves that’s thankfully free of all of the problems that come with jumping in leaves. With no animals in the Sphere, there’s not any of their presents hiding in the leaves and anything sharp hasn’t been created! Which means that it’s great for things like jumping in, burying things in and of course leaf fights.

If your character is missing nature, the area smells exactly how one would expect a late September walk in the woods to smell: it’s almost as if you’re there! The sunlight in the dome has also been altered a bit where the leaves are located, so it’s cooler, and a slight wind seems to be in the air, stirring the leaves every so often. It’s enough to encourage sweaters and scarves, that have been provided by people if they’d like them. The scarves and sweaters all seem to be of the handmade variety, and just the tiniest bit irregular, with one sleeve longer than the other, or the fringe on a scarf being slightly askew, that sort of thing. But they’re still lovely and soft and warm and smell of dryer sheets and leaves.

And we're flying, flying far beyond...

So the Sphere saw that everyone just loved the fireflies last month so this month it decided that what the city needs is to fly for real! So in the Rec dome, there’s a marked pad that people can step on that lets people fly around this particular dome for 30 minutes at a go using the same sort of controls that the communications behind your ear has! Press quickly once to go up and twice to go down. The clearance in the dome clocks in somewhere around 400 feet so there’s plenty of room for flying and even going up and touching the top of the dome and staring out into the abyss of water.

Be careful though because sometimes if you stare too long into the abyss, things just happen to stare back at you and then there are things in the deep water that you may not expect. Or that you might. Giant fish and squid may just find all this unusual activity quite interesting. But don’t worry the dome won’t crack. Guess what! You are now the fish in the aquarium for them! Or you know the bird flying past the cat in the window.

Wanna go to a real party? (CW: Mentions of drugs and alcohol.)

If people are looking for more illicit entertainment, and discreet inquiries are made, a passcode to the Black Market hidden behind some of the stalls is offered. The entrance is hidden enough that someone needs to be looking for it, and there is a rather large bouncer guarding the door and asking for the proper passcode. The passcode of the day happens to be I hate pumpkin.

Inside the black market is large, but much more dimly lit than the regular market dome. There are various pockets of people clustered under bright neon lights. The lights, someone confides to you, are code for what they’re offering. And nearly everything is on offer if a person has the ability to make a trade. Things from home, character skills and even favors tend to be the currency here, but watch out: the hawkers within are shrewd and sharp. If they make a deal with someone, it’s nearly always going to favor them. Eventually.

There’s also a large and loud party happening inside. Think of a rave with a large amount of people who happened to be a bit out of their minds. Drugs aren’t given freely here, they’re too valuable, but should someone want to figure out what they’re rolling on, eventually someone will ask or offer. The drug that they are currently using is called ‘self’ and it’s something that affects your character in an intensely personal way. For some, it’s an experience like your favorite cocktail mixed with vicodin, and for others it’s just like being drunk. For still more people, it’s like ecstasy without the side effects.

The drug has no physically addictive properties. It does however cause a hangover. The Sphere doesn't want to take all the fun out of imbibing too much.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Betsy has never been the motherly type. In fact some people might claim she was the direct opposite. Her idea of interacting with the students included asking them whether or not she should just kill one of their enemies and putting them through training scenarios reenacting literal ancient wars. That didn't mean she wasn't going to judge Tommy for making a drink that looked like sugar with some coffee.

Judging was exactly what she was doing too and her expression didn't even try to hide it.

"How can you possibly drink that and not immediately die from the sugar rush?" Her tone was light, even revealing the slight hint that she was teasing him. "Why not just ask for a cup of sugar?"

Oh, Betsy. Tommy flinches back at her voice, and almost spills his drink. But then he's smiling at her. But he stabilizes himself and grins at her, not being bothered by the tease.

But he takes a deliberate sip to down some, and he has a whipped cream and sprinkles mustache.

"You remember I'm a speedster, right?"

Even Betsy can't hold back a little chuckle at the mustache Tommy now wore. It was light, but it was more than she'd given most people lately. It almost felt a little foreign to actually laugh.

"I recall. Does that mean you require an inordinate amount of sugar to sustain yourself?"

Oh, he knows what the laugh comes from. So he licks his lips to get the whipped cream. And he's still grinning.

"Sugar, carbs, protein. Lots of things. But the sugar helps. Sugars are a carb, and carbs burn REALLY fast. They're better for quick topping up, and I often need extra boosts in the day."

She shakes her head and actually lets out a bit stronger of a laugh.

"I suppose I can't argue with speedster logic. Though I really can't imagine that's actually any good."

It's not speedster logic. It's speedster biology. And yeah, it's miserable to try and argue against. He knows from experience.

"It's really good, though. Tastes amazing. But not for most people."

"What does it taste like aside from sugar?" She really can't imagine it has any other flavor other than sugar.

Well, he can list that easily.

"Coffee. Whipped cream. Amaretto. Espresso. Cinnamon, for good measure. My tastebuds are complicated, they sense things faster too. Makes life a real wonder."

And this thing, which would be wretched for most other people, a complex dance of flavors.

"I had no idea your speed extended to your tastebuds. Must make life a nightmare when you taste something you don't like." Nobody should be surprised she so quickly spotted the negative side of it. "You've almost sold me on trying it."

Well, it's more complicated than just fast taste buds, but he doesn't want to deal with the complications of explanations.

"It's probably way too sweet for you," Tommy admits with a shrug. "These things were too sweet for me when I first started putting them together back home."

"That almost seems like a challenge." She gives him a minor smirk.

Really? Then he'll take this and escalate to that. He offers the drink over.

"You drop it, I'm going to be SUPER mad."

The one thing that Betsy could never resist was a challenge, even if it was a challenge she'd made up in her own head.

"I promise not to drop it." She took a very small sip and twisted her face up before shoving it back to him. "Well it's...an experience..."

"It really is," Tommy grins as he takes the drink back and takes another sip. "My brain runs faster than normal people's. Probably faster than Xavier's ever did. Which means I pick things out faster. Faster neurons and the like. Makes it taste really different."

His senses are kicked up to eleven/

"Faster than Xavier's is quite the claim," she smirks. "I'll admit though, it's never much fun to try to read a speedsters thoughts.

“Faster doesn’t mean smarter. But I can count Picoseconds, so...”

Please let him be faster. It would be SO cool.

"Well, Charles isn't here to argue so I think we can say you're faster." She would give him this. Besides... "He never really cares much for being the best at anything. That's more Wolverine's thing." Wolverine had a strange tendency to let people know he was the best. Personally, she just thought it was him attempting to compensate for something.

Faster! Tommy pumps a fist in victory. Score. And then she says the OTHER name and it makes him glower.

"Who the fuck cares what Wolverine thinks?"

"I take it you've had a bad experience with him?" Who hadn't really? It wasn't really surprising to hear that he might have an issue with Wolverine.

"I'm Wanda Maximoff's son. My twin brother is a reality-warper on a scale that might make Mom look weak. How do you think Logan takes that?"

He'd impressed the guy once, when doing Avengers things. But then Billy had gone and done something that scared people, and Logan just wanted Billy and Wanda dead.

"Logan takes his desire to protect our people to levels I don't always agree with." The child Apocalypse was still fresh in her mind. It'd been hard to believe that all of them had decided the best course of action in that situation had been to kill a child. She shook her head.

"Yeah. He tried to gut my twin and assumed we weren't smart enough to see Gramps as potentially using us. Even while Gramps was actually an X-Man at the time!"

Stupid fucking Wolverine. Tommy doesn't approve of him.

She heaved a sigh. "His first instinct is always gutting something, especially if he sees it as a threat to us. He came to the same bloody brilliant conclusion when it came to the child Apocalypse." Which was endlessly frustrating. She wasn't entirely surprised to find someone that was angry with Logan. He had a lot of people that were very very angry with him.

Hey, the X-Men would have done bad things to Wanda too. Which Tommy never could have forgiven. But Wolverine tried to kill his twin, the only family that cared about him. And he didn't take that lightly.

"Like, sometimes problems can't be solved with killing. That was, like, the FIRST thing I learned as a hero."

"It's a lesson Logan has yet to fully learn." And probably never will. It's Wolverine.

Get Your Drink On

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