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Unfinished Library Mod & NPC Account ([personal profile] libraryassistants) wrote in [community profile] unfinishedlibrary2025-10-31 06:42 pm

Careful of the stacks - LIBRARY LOG

Who: EVERYONE!
What: A bunch of Editors walk into a library...
When: October 31st - November 13
Where: The Unfinished Library
Content warnings: Please add them as needed in the comment titles!

Welcome to the Library, Editors.

As the new residents drop into the Library, they are bound to have questions. Unfortunately it seems no one (except perhaps someone on the phone) appears to have any answers. But there is a nice little cart with a carafe of too weak coffee, a pot of too strong tea, assorted creams and sugar packets, and what appear to be leftover boxed shortbread cookies. There’s a sign inviting people to help themselves but reminding them not to take any food or drinks into the stacks, or touch any of the books with their grubby cookie hands. But aside from this little display and the nametags they’re all given, which do reappear whenever removed for the first week (where do they keep coming from?), the Editors are more or less left alone.

The Library is eternal, or at least it seems that way, unbothered by its new inhabitants. It certainly does not seem like this is anything unusual within its operation. Are there other sections of the Library with Editors, tucked into a different part of the stacks? Have there been Editors here before, and the ones here are simply a replacement? It’s impossible to say, just that the Library seems quite prepared for them. The refrigerators are stocked with appropriate (if generic) foodstuffs, any tantrums in front of the circulation desk are completely ignored, and attempts to set the Library on fire fizzle out before anything can even catch.

However, after a few days, some of the scenery in the Library seems to be changing. Little singing bowls and white noise makers pop up on various shelves and counters, yoga mats appear tucked under the bunk beds (plenty for everyone, somehow), and some of the rooms have started playing relaxing, meditative music over unseen speakers. More confusingly, there are also small UFOs hanging by string from the lower ceilings of the contained rooms, which on closer reflection are revealed to simply be two paper plates glued together and painted silver. In the beginning they’re quite sparse, but by the end of the second week they are everywhere and impossible to ignore.

At the start of the second week, there is a possible hint as to why, for at least part of it. On the table by the circulation desk there is a sign: “This Week’s Recommended Reading: Invasion of the Body Snatchers!” Next to it, there is a sign up sheet: a waitlist to check-out the ‘reading.’ (There is no explanation or apology for it actually being a movie.)

[ooc note: The Library prompts from the TDM can be considered canon to the game. Remember any of the locations listed in the setting are fair game. Have fun!]
wontforbidtherain: A side-view drawing of a bony dark-haired white woman looking down; folds in her neck suggest gills. (Default)

The Film - After

[personal profile] wontforbidtherain 2025-11-01 11:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Movies were something Aphra was familiar with, though the idea of watching them on one's own whenever one wanted, like reading a book, was new. The date was... slightly alarming, as it was three decades in her future. While Aphra knew that knowledge could filter from future to past -- mostly as a byproduct of the Great Race of Yith -- a physical artifact is a different matter. And she can't think of a way to reconstruct a film, short of memorizing the entire thing and re-filming it.

(This was cementing her theory that the Librarians were something akin to the Yith, but the ability to move physical matter... well, that was the sort of magic that quickly drove you insane where Aphra comes from, so she's not thinking about that. )

She had only seen the title, which was slightly unsettling, given she'd been recently hunting for mentions of body-swapping before she was pulled here, and not anxious to see another war movie, but it seemed relevant.

Laina's expression coming out of the viewing room was not reassuring her about the movie. "Are you well?" Awkward to ask of a stranger, but they were all stuck in the same situation here.
terraboo: (Hurt)

Re: The Film - After

[personal profile] terraboo 2025-11-02 01:12 am (UTC)(link)
"... That was my first time seeing a film properly instead of just reading about it, for one," she said. "And... Copies of people that exist only by consuming the original... It's. A bit too adjacent to my situation before I got here."

Laina sighs. For her, film was literally centuries ahead if she understood technology advancement. But reading about it, it should have felt almost old hat. Except, of course... It didn't. Seeing recorded fiction actively like that...

Even reading this story like she'd though it'd be when she first signed in might have hit hard. But the imagery instead...
wontforbidtherain: A side-view drawing of a bony dark-haired white woman looking down; folds in her neck suggest gills. (Default)

Re: The Film - After

[personal profile] wontforbidtherain 2025-11-02 07:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Films weren't new technology for Aphra, though the ones of her youth were set to phonographs or a live pianist's performance, and she remembers the impact of sound and color.

The rest was was not the answer she expected to get, but... well, Aphra had watched World War II movies in an audience of largely Japanese immigrants and their descendants. 'Relating to the monsters' was not a new sentiment to her. "Can I ask how, or is it too personal to discuss with a stranger? We can go get a cup of tea and a snack."
terraboo: (Hmm)

Re: The Film - After

[personal profile] terraboo 2025-11-02 09:20 pm (UTC)(link)
"I..." Laina paused.

"I'm Laina Guthart, from the world of Mundus, setting of the hit online role-playing game, Wonders of Mundus. An NPC designed to toss memes at the playerbase. Scripted, you get the idea."

"A day or so ago, I learned about this. That my entire life was... I'm not even sure if 'a lie' was the word. So, at what point does the design written for me end, and the girl begins? Like, I still have all the freshest and dankest of memes, plus a literal personal library of classics."

She sighs. "... So yeah, the 'pod people' thing maaaaay have gotten to me a bit. Like a nightmarish reverse of my own situation. I think I'll be fine?"
wontforbidtherain: A side-view drawing of a bony dark-haired white woman looking down; folds in her neck suggest gills. (Default)

Re: The Film - After

[personal profile] wontforbidtherain 2025-11-03 01:34 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm afraid I don't get the idea," Aphra said. "Some of those words you used were unfamiliar to me, or in unfamiliar ways."
terraboo: (E-he....)

Re: The Film - After

[personal profile] terraboo 2025-11-04 02:58 am (UTC)(link)
"R-right. Can't assume tech levels when I'm from the Renaissance but read stuff from the Internet Age. Basically, though... Imagine I came into existence from something closer to... Uh, is an 'automaton' a usable word maybe?"

... Laina seems distracted by a thought for a moment or two.

"So, yeah. Seeing people who are less than themselves in a key way..."
wontforbidtherain: A side-view drawing of a bony dark-haired white woman looking down; folds in her neck suggest gills. (Default)

Re: The Film - After

[personal profile] wontforbidtherain 2025-11-07 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Aphra recognizes that Laina is struggling for words, and she's met enough people to sympathize. "It is. So you existed in an incomplete form, but then... woke up as a full person?"

Not necessarily a human, though Laina appears to be something close enough to one now. "And now you see a film about aliens who think that the incomplete form is preferable to being fully human?"
terraboo: (Hmm)

Re: The Film - After

[personal profile] terraboo 2025-11-08 05:39 am (UTC)(link)
"I.. I guess that communicates the idea. And. Yeah, that's sorta the idea. Plus them full on killing people to replace them. That's not a great addition to it."
wontforbidtherain: A side-view drawing of a bony dark-haired white woman looking down; folds in her neck suggest gills. (Default)

Re: The Film - After

[personal profile] wontforbidtherain 2025-11-09 11:28 pm (UTC)(link)
"No, it isn't." Aphra stopped, considered, "Are you afraid that the people here will associate the story with you?" It wouldn't have occurred to Aphra, but she also had not known Laina's nature before this, so she had no preconceptions about what Laina's people were 'supposed' to be.