phantasmalrift | INTRO LOG

Eventually, Charm starts herding people towards the parked exploratory drone, a few at a time, mostly people who have finished their noodles or other business. "It's almost nightfall at the Station," he says, "and with this many new arrivals, we're going to have to make multiple trips."

(For those who might ask, he also explains that they've chosen not to stabilize the noodle shop for the time being, as the other androids will almost certainly want to speak to Viella, and have no other way of doing so, due to the fact that they don't dream. Aside from that small region, the Fissure is largely stable.)

It in fact takes four trips total to get everyone to the Station. Those of you who don't fall asleep on the way there - the minute you hit stable reality, the inability to sleep vanishes, and most will be hit with a wave of exhaustion - will find that the Station Annex, a building off to the side of the main station, has been finished, at least outwardly.

By the time the first group arrives, the sun is dipping towards the horizon; by the time the last gets there, it's set, leaving a few pink-tinted clouds in the sky. The drones drop everyone off (and that is everyone, even though of you who have fallen asleep) on the observation deck, where those of you who didn't get your fill of noodles will find several buffet-style tables set up with...

...Pizza? Yeah, pizza, in damn near every variety you can think of, including a few things that only loosely fall under the heading of "pizza." Half a table is full of calzones of various varieties; another significant chunk is things that are just desserts in the general shape of pizza, including a couple of iced cinnamon pastries, a pair of brightly-colored "pizzas" made of canned fruit over cream cheese, and a two-layer cake that's just decorated to look like a pizza, with strawberry jam and round slices of strawberry 'pepperoni' sandwiching yellow icing. Finally, the last third of the third table is just three baskets of breadsticks with varying amounts of cheese and garlic, accompanied by two turrens of dipping sauce (one white, one red) and a tower of little plastic dipping cups.

(Those who opt to head directly to bed will find that the banquet gets packed up and moved back to the kitchens around midnight, though it stays warm under a stasis enchantment for roughly the next day before someone packs the remainder into the fridge.)

In the common room, meanwhile, the usual boxes of clothes and trading post sign are set up. Unclaimed rooms can be claimed by writing your name in on a list set up next to the boxes, on what seems to be a broken music stand with a large ROOMS AVAILABLE sign hanging from it. There is also a rather hastily assembled, hand-poked Braille version of the sheet (with the paper punched through in one or two places).

Those who go looking will find that the androids are somewhat more absent than they usually are after an expedition; save obviously for Charm, and Strange who arrives on the deck as usual not long after, you'll have to go looking. Considering the amount of the station you have available, they could be just about anywhere... But perhaps it'd be worth checking over in that new building...?

[Mod note: Strange is the only NPC with a top-level this round, but others may respond to your top-levels, especially in the Annex areas! Consider it a fun surprise. c:]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I can't imagine it's any better than human romance novels, no. This is probably a bit more reliable.

[He pulls Managing Quadrants for Imbeciles from his Armiger for her to see.]

Ah. [It appears he has been doing some research. She steals a glance at the page number on the book in her own hand, and then slips it into her sylladex.] Yeah. I don't recognize the series, but it does look more the thing.

It's rather dense to someone who doesn't know the jargon, I'm still not entirely certain on some of this, but it's a start.

[Also the word 'cahoots' is now a part of his vocabulary. Be afraid.]

[Cahoots is a good and useful word I don't know what you're talking about.]

Well, I can try and help clarify. I imagine I'll be better at it when I'm not actively fixating on my ex.

I rather think some of it is just a difference in how our species process emotions. Your concept of romance has a far more distinctive split and more separation between relationships than ours does.

...Honestly, the fact that the closest we have to a formalized sort of rival relationship is culture touchstones about siblings has made reading some of the caliginous sections a bit uncomfortable, but nothing I can't deal with.

...ah. Yes, I imagine the parallels would be sort of awkwardly imprecise. Our family structures don't involve any kind of kin-selection instinct.

[Enough so that while she thinks she mostly understands the issue on a theoretical basis, it's not something that has any real immediacy for her personally.]

If it softens it any, it's not as if all rivalries are romantic. Most people have friends they amiably hate without any degree of sexual tension coming into play.

I'd guessed as much. An incest taboo is meaningless without any kind of immediate biological family.

[Congrats Jetshard, that's relevant to your life enough now that you now have a term for it? Aliens, man.]

Honestly? If you said the phrase "amiably hate" to most humans outside of context, they'd think you out of your mind. We have a concept for finding someone endearingly aggravating, but 'hate' tends to imply a desire to seriously harm or at least entirely avoid.

[Aliens, man. Aliens.]

We tend to use "hate" more as a catchall for negative feelings toward another. Our society would be much bloodier than it already is if we couldn't build functional relationships on that sort of thing.

Humans tend to use "dislike" or any number of more specific words. But human society also doesn't really do much in the way of functional relationships based on those emotions. Relatives and coworkers are about the only ones you can't avoid if you dislike them, and there's various social protocol for dealing with them that boil down to "tense politeness."

Oh, we've got plenty of nuance. It just sounds like we have a more combative baseline we're working off of.

[The pair of them could, quite easily, continue in the vein of casual cultural comparisons for quite some time, Jetshard knows; they've done as much plenty of times in the past couple of months. And it's tempting to just kinda let it happen. But on the other graspprong, Jetshard's a grown-ass troll who is capable of not constantly beating around the bush, so -]

Can I ask if, well, there's a particular reason your immediate choice of reading material on returning to the station was troll social dynamics?

[They could indeed. And that's certainly comfortable enough,pretty much routine for them.

But Jetshard cuts right to the heart of the matter, and, well. He's not going to pretend it was just simple curiosity.]

Well, there doesn't seem to be anything on comparative anatomy.

[The problem is that he's barely ever flirted in his life and he's terribly out of practice. #nailedit ]

[Well. She did ask. You can't really complain when your blunt question gets a blunt answer, and her practiced composure mostly holds other than a bit of a green blush beneath the faint scattering of jade freckles that occasional sun exposure has given her. She brushes her bangs out of her face with one hand.]

That's a shame. There might be something relevant in my quarters.

[Score.]

Far be it from me to turn down the guidance of an expert.

[Sparkle, there goes that book into his Armiger. It's definitely the sort of thing that can wait.]

INTRO LOG - APRIL/MAY 18

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