thespherelogs | 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

Will would have appreciated that. He wasn't exactly crazy about Nico and his moods. In fact, it was one of his life's missions to make him happier. And he was dammit, one smile at a time.

"So stuck. For now. Until we find Percy." Or oxygen tanks. "Or a child of Athena with a better plan."

Will looked around smiling. It was at least pretty? The foliage was nice, the pumpkins were....a little overdone but. It could seriously be so much worse.

"It's kind of nice here though. I mean, it's at least a change of pace. And so far no one's tried to kill us."

He makes a scoffing kind of huff, but doesn't contradict Will. Having Percy or Annabeth here would be helpful. Maybe.

"Yet." No one's tried to kill them yet. He's going to need some convincing before he accepts that they're safe here.

"So where can we go that doesn't have all this holiday cheer?"

"You are such an optimist, Nico."

Still, he knew it wasn't pessimism. It was realism. They hadn't survived all these years to stop and think 'nah, everything will be fine. Let's just go to the beach, nothing will try and skewer and eat us.'

"Well, I do have space in my dorm. It's like a cabin. With any luck, most people will be out here enjoying the celebration." Nah, Will didn't have any ulterior motives in getting Nico alone at all. Nope.

[He has survived this long being optimistic.

He nods and make a "go ahead" gesture.]

Okay. As long as it's quiet.

[The way Will remembers it, Nico almost died from being so 'optimistic'. But that was why they were good for each other, right? Will smiled, keeping his hand in Nico's as long as it was allowed, enjoying the touch, and gave him a sardonic grin.]

I could blow out your ear drums with an ultrasonic whistle? It would be real quiet then!

[He was so helpful, wasn't he?]

[He'll allow the hand holding until and unless they cross paths with someone else, at which point his hand goes right into a pocket. Camp is one thing - he knows nothing at all about this place.

He rolls his eyes, but does kinda sorta smile just a little.]

I might consider it. Depends on how annoying people get.

[Well at least Will knew there was one thing he still had to work on with Nico. Holding hangs in public places. With actual people. But, Nico was still getting comfortable with himself. He'd grown a lot in the few months they'd been together. Change was hard. Especially for a son of Hades.]

You know, Nico...

[Will had of course noticed Nico's hand going into his pocket.]

I doubt anyone will say anything. And if they do. You do summon zombies. And I could curse them with rhyming couplets.

[Will was totally for fighting discrimination and homophobia with zombies and bad poetry.]

[He was still learning how to be... well, himself. A lifetime of fear and self-loathing was not easily erased. If it weren't for Will, he may not have come this far. He supposed he should consider himself lucky to have someone with the patience to put up with him.]

Are there zombies to summon here? I haven't felt any yet.

You're the expert. I guess maybe not, especially considering we are kind of surrounded by water. Maybe the ground isn't that deep? We don't know anything about the type of people that lived here. If any did.

Well, I'm pretty sure I can still curse people. Besides, even without zombies, you're not exactly helpless.

[Nico had come a long way, but undoing not only all that self hatred but the 1940's mindset took time. And as far as Will was concerned, Nico was going to have that time. It was just a balance of when to push and when to let Nico retreat. Even the sun couldn't shine all day.]

Never said I was.

[Maybe it made him a coward, but his way of dealing with the idea of not being accepted hadn't been to fight or threaten - he'd run away instead.]

I can't exactly draw a sword on everyone who says something behind my back.

No Nico, I don't think threatening everyone with a sword is quite the right way to go.

[Will smiled a little, laughing to himself.

But you do kill grass. I'm pretty sure that sends a message.

[As for running away, sometimes retreat was the best option. That didn't make him a coward. It made him a live.]

Fun though.

[His smile borders on sardonic.]

Sure. If you love gardens.

[Probably reason #one million why he and Persephone don't get along.]

Where's this dorm of yours?

Just up ahead!

[Will pointed in the general direction.]

Yeaaaaah um. Nico.

Have I mentioned that your step mother is here?

[He promises to water you.]

I ...haven't brought you up.

[He doesn't want to spend eternity as a sunflower, thank you.]

[He pauses mid-step, nose wrinkling up.]

Oh. No you didn't. Is she in a bad mood?

[Was she ever in a good mood?]

Wait, why is she here? Can't she just, go home?

Well...
[Good moods and bad moods in gods were funny, dangerous things weren't they?]

I brought up Apollo and his situation?

[because that was totally how you referred to the fact that your divine father was now mortal and you were older than him. Not weird at all.]

She found it amusing? So far, I haven't been turned into a sunflower. She actually seems more....depressed.And why she can't go home? Maybe Zeus got to her too?

[Zeus after all had....moods.]

Well... that stuff with your dad is kind of funny...

[He can appreciate the weirdness of the situation. Good on not becoming a flower, though.]

Hmm. Maybe. Did she say anything about Zeus?

[Gods weren't shy about airing their dirty laundry (and expecting their kids to clean it up).]

Hilarious. Kind of traumatizing.

[But if he didn't keep laughing, he'd freak out. So, it was funny.]

Well. Kind of? She mentioned a lot of the gods had died where she was. So I'm guessing either Persephone's ....off a bit, or she's not quite ours. She did mention 'Daddy' had a tempter.

[As if any of them needed a reminder of Zeus' moods.]

Died?

[That's alarming. Of course they could die. He'd seen it himself. But it was hard to fathom "a lot" of the gods being gone.]

A bit off or not ours, she's still a god. We should be careful regardless.

Yeah. Something happened. Bad. She didn't exactly go into the details and I didn't really ask. Cause upsetting her sounded like a very poor idea.

Exactly. We all know how...moody gods can be. And you know Persephone more than most.

Fourth Wall Month!

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