[ video ] » ❝my patience is waning; is this entertaining?❞

[ephemerios]

OOC: assume a 100% chance of Stranger Things spoilers in the comments.

---

[ What's up, network at large? ]

So, after that disaster, I just have a question: Is anyone here from an actually normal, at least relatively not messed up, kind of place?

[ Honestly a serious question. Brought to you by someone from an absolute dumpster fire of a town. ]

Because aside from being home to everything in every HP Lovecraft story apparently, where I'm from is where dreams and ambition go to die, in the makeshift graveyards of its flat lands and corn fields. It's really great if you're looking for a quiet small town to raise a nuclear family and mind the business of everyone except yourself. Oh, and you'd better have an easily malleable attitude about it and enjoy your new home of a suffocating box, otherwise if you show even a hint of personality that doesn't fit into that idea — forget it, you're so screwed.

[ Is someone finally getting mad enough about her own suffocating box? MAYBE SO. This is how she's trying to light it on metaphorical fire. mic drop, truth bombs deployed, et cetera. ]

Which almost makes me wonder if the cosmic horrors are actually worse than everything else about it. [ It should at least be very close. ]

Comments

[text]

[in_extremis]

Have you tried tequila?

[ephemerios]

yeah no one's invented a tequila that actually deletes all of your problems :c

[in_extremis]

I'll get on that. The one we got is a pretty effective temporary solution, though.

[ephemerios]

are you 100% sure it's not just effective for feeling terrible the next day?

[in_extremis]

I've got a bulletproof hangover cure as well. Very rigorous testing process, oversaw it myself. It sounds like you have a 100% chance of feeling terrible either way, though, you might as well enjoy yourself where you can.

Audio

[work_wife]

Trust me, I can feel you so much on this, Chrissy. You don't even know. Anyway, um, I owe you explanations. A lot of them.

Though when it comes to it, there are, like, two different terrible things about Hawkins, but one of them is basically exclusive to Hawkins and one is just part of life I guess?

[ephemerios]

Only two? [ she has a whole list of hawkins-roasting to do, and that's before she has the full idea of it. ] I can meet you somewhere, if you want.

[work_wife]

Two things that really matter enough to care about. They're the worst parts. There's plenty of bad, but I can live with that next to the two major things that I can't.

How about I meet you somewhere? I have a single bottle of rum left.

[ephemerios]

Oh, you didn't burn one? [ there's a hint of amusement in her tone. ] But yeah, I'm hanging out in the hotel place now.

[work_wife]

The Flayer went down before that bottle, so yeah. There to take the edge off.

[Wait, the hotel?]

I'm on the fourth floor of the same.

Audio

[butterfly_kiss]

I would say that Tokyo isn't this bad, but there is a league of 'phantom thieves' who are changing the hearts of corrupt and evil people and apparently using this to cause people to have a change of heart and confess their sins, which has ranged from admission of admissions of abuse of student athletes, art theft and financial abuse, even stopping a yakuza group using teenagers as drug mules.

I think I could almost understand these sorts of horrors more.

Re: Audio

[ephemerios]

That sounds like a different kind of wild, for sure - did they do that with.. some sort of magic?

[ She can also see how that could get sketchy really fast if used in different manners on different people. ]

These are definitely the more literal in-your-face horrors.

[butterfly_kiss]

Honestly, I don't know.

[She knows they are high schoolers probably. Knows one of their members. But she doesn't know how her little guinea pig does it. And she doesn't want to know.]

They are, but there is a unifying affect to those, whereas things back home are often division via social inequality.

[ephemerios]

Insert something about ignorance is bliss here. [ ha. haha. hahahah. ahhahahahahahaahahaha. HAAAAAAAAAA. god. ]

That's true. You can beat up a monster, but it's harder to do that to bad policies that lead to that kind of division.

[butterfly_kiss]

Ignorance is complacency. There is no true bliss in it. Self-deception is something we must struggle against.

[She wants to laugh, bitter and angry.]

I suppose I'm not good at either. But I am good at keeping everyone healthy. Are you still okay? Sleeping better?

text

[daddy_longlegs]

Can you define normal?

I'm gonna say no, but probably not in the same way yours is if all of that mess was a sample of what you call home. Not so typical.

[ephemerios]

normal at least being more on the side of 'we don't have weird creatures or monsters running around' than not. what kind of weird is yours?

[daddy_longlegs]

Ours is a pretty standard villian of the week, occasional apocalypse kinda deal. Super villains, heroes, spiders that give you powers and junk. Nothing too out there.

[ephemerios]

then I would call that not normal, yeah. So, everything breaks a lot there?

[daddy_longlegs]

Construction is the business to be in, definitely. Stuff's always getting wrecked. Keeps things interesting at least. Lotsa jobs and stuff.

None of those weird monsters though. Those are new. Not a fan.

Video

[crystalmaster]

Hmm. Relatively normal? Well, we don't have an ooky-spooky alternate dimension of mind-flaying bogeymen, but I've heard some loco stories on the news about crazy people trying to plunge the world into the Netherworld and using giant sentient monster versions of the Nazca Lines to do it. So if all that's true, it's pretty bad off in my world too.

[ephemerios]

Netherworld sounds like something you'd call an alternate dimension. What.. exactly is it supposed to be? [ Sentient monster versions of anything sounds like bad news, too. ]

[crystalmaster]

Judging from the videos I saw of what was coming out of there, I'd say Hell.

[The sentient monsters were very bad news. Two of them demolished a skyscraper.]

[ephemerios]

That's a horrifying thought. Someone definitely stopped that, right?

[crystalmaster]

No kidding. And yeah, thankfully. There were these people called Signers who fought back with ... white magic, I guess, and they trounced all the bad guys.