Careful of the stacks - LIBRARY LOG

[libraryassistants]

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!]

Comments

Siobhan Greenwood | Wonders of Mundus | OTA

[codeswitchcraft]

Stacks

As only natural when waking up in a strange place, with very little idea of how she'd gotten there, Siobhan Greenwood reaches for the presence of her goddess inside her.

"My lady," she whispers, "I need your help."

She waits, then, for the goddess Thorne to look first through her memories and then through her eyes themselves, to see better their surroundings.

Well, fuck, the fae guardian of the wilds says inside her mind. I don't have any better idea than you do.

"Fuck," Siobhan echoes her goddess out loud.

Maker Space

Siobhan is poking at the sewing machine with great interest. After everything she's had to sew and weave and embroider in her lifetime, for her trousseau and otherwise, the idea that there might be mechanisms that will do it for her is enchanting and honestly kind of liberating.

"So how do you make this go?" she asks whoever around her that seems like they might know. "Just press play?"

(There's nothing that says 'play' on the machine, but saying it like that is what an adventurer would do, right?)

Recommended Reading

A movie, according to Siobhan's goddess, is a moving and talking picture inside a box or on a wall that functions much like a play--and Invasion of the Body-Snatchers is definitely supposed to be a movie. Which makes it confusing why it's labeled recommended reading, but Siobhan puts her name on the bottom of the waiting list anyway.

"How are we supposed to read a movie?" she asks whoever else is waiting to put their name on the list next, because she really doesn't understand that part and when she asked Thorne, Thorne just said something about subtitles. Siobhan doesn't know what those are either.

Stacks

[ugh_emotions]

While Sio explores the Stacks, she'll notice something curious: a tiny flying mechanical object, flying in an unerringly straight line through the aisles of books. At first, it seems like its going to ignore her, and keep going - but then it stops, hovering in mid-air, and swivels in her direction.

You have a feed connection? she'll hear, with a sense of [surprise] - though not with her ears, exactly.

Re: Stacks

[codeswitchcraft]

It is more like the voice of the goddess in her heart, which startles both her and the piece of Thorne inside her, who cut off from the rest of her divinity and her duties has decided she'll be a little more immediately present for Siobhan while they are here.

They likely mean the sendjewel, Thorne suggests. It has wifi.

Siobhan is going to have to ask about wifi later. She reaches up to brush her fingers against the sendjewel she was given in her Adventurer's Rites, the one that she barely uses because all the Adventurers she considers allies are ones she's already traveling with, and she concentrates on replying to the metal insect--Thorne supplies the name drone--the way she would reply to her goddess without speaking aloud.

You could say that, she says. You can talk through sendjewels, Ser Drone?

[ugh_emotions]

I'm not the drone, it says. Or whatever the hell a 'ser' is. It's just scouting for me.

Said drone had now flown closer to Sio, and appearing to be inspecting her closely. (The wings, in particular, seem to be a source of human. Sanguinius has fucking wings too; it hopes this human isn't like him, urgh.)

And yeah, I have an internal feed device. Or sendjewel device, or whatever.

[codeswitchcraft]

'Ser' is a courtesy title, Siobhan explains. If you give me the name you wish to by called, I will call you it. I myself go by 'Siobhan Greenwood.' So the drone is your familiar, then, and you are watching me through its eyes?

She is watching the drone just as closely as it is watching her and just as curiously.

I was given the sendjewel as part of my Adventurers' Rites. Hikaru and Laina have them too—and you, I suppose? Or perhaps just something very like it. I have little experience using them and it is the same with Laina, but I would not be surprised if Hikaru has had much more practice than us. He's been an adventurer longer.

[ugh_emotions]

I'm Rin, it says, giving her the human alias it was going by here. And I don't know what that is. It's just my drone. But yeah, it sends its camera inputs to me.

Then she starts spouting off stuff about 'Adventurers' Rites', and it starts wondering what the hell it was with this place that so many people seemed like something that had walked out of a serial, not reality.

(And then it stops thinking about that, because if it thinks about that too much it might acquire some uncomfortable existential questions about its own existence.)

What, only some people get access to the feed where you're from? That fucking sucks. It sucks here too, by the way. They don't have a feed, just the stupid books that you have to write in. Manually. You can't even share files through them.

Science Fiction Double Feature

[extrasaltypotato]

"I think that's just the Librarians being Librarians, or else using a form letter that doesn't account for movies. Or games, for that matter."

He stops to consider.

"It's in English - what you'd call Caelibyrnese, what I perceive you to be speaking - so it probably isn't subbed either."

Re: Science Fiction Double Feature

[codeswitchcraft]

She glances around and there doesn't seem to be others to overhear.

"Will you explain subtitles?" she asks very softly. "I know the word, but not all of what it means. I grok movies though," she adds hurriedly. "They're more easily explained."

Re: Science Fiction Double Feature

[extrasaltypotato]

“Written dialogue at the bottom to the screen - sub titles,” Hikaru says in that same low tone. “Either with a translation from the original, foreign language or for the benefit of the deaf.”

In a more conversational tone, he says, “I generally prefer when it’s dubbed over by a voice actor. If translated with enough nuance and spoken with verve, you can get more of the original writers’ intent across.”

Re: Science Fiction Double Feature

[codeswitchcraft]

Siobhan nods. "And you wouldn't get distracted from the rest of it by watching the words. Do you watch many things that need to be 'subbed' or 'dubbed'?"

Re: Science Fiction Double Feature

[extrasaltypotato]

“If only for the benefit of friends. I’m fluent in Japanese, but most of the rest of the team is not, and Deedee is fond of Korean music videos.”

He grins.

“I follow an amateur historian’s videos on the Greek and Latin languages, what you’d call Omphalan and Popular. He did a fascinating exercise where he watched an Ad Terra spinoff dubbed into modern Italian - Lupernican - to brush up on scientific and naval terms. The command for cruising at ‘curvatura maxima’ was quite memorable.”

Recommended Reading

[terraboo]

"... A good question, though as someone who's read a shitload of anime in book form, easy enough to answer. I would of course rather watch it, if only because that'd be a new experience to me, but..."

She can't help but giggle.

Re: Recommended Reading

[codeswitchcraft]

"Perhaps we could watch it together with Hikaru?" Siobhan suggests. "He would have prior experience." And would most importantly know how to make the movies go without having to consult with a goddess.

Re: Recommended Reading

[terraboo]

"... True. Does make sense to me at least. Just need to skip the 'and chill' part."

Yup there's the memes flowing again. She's regaining her emotional balance!

until she watches the actual film

Re: Recommended Reading

[codeswitchcraft]

"Chilling comes after dungeon crawling with Hikaru's party anyway," Siobhan says blithely. "And I told you he's a gentleman."

... Sio is going to by just as upset by the film as Laina, holy shit

Re: Recommended Reading

[terraboo]

"I mean, fair enough. He seems respectful of both people and libraries, so, that's good. But... Yeah. Film. Film's gonna be a whole new thing to actually experience."

maker space

[starandhope]

Luckily, it's an old-fashioned Singer today, and Mina definitely knows how to use those. Perhaps it's a bit exciting, to find herself in a position to be able to teach someone else - since being here, she's more often than not found herself needing to be taught.

"It's very simple," she says, seating herself and gesturing the small woman to watch as she threads the machine and begins turning the crank. "You can adjust the speed as you go, you only need to look out in case the thread gets bunched up here -"

Re: maker space

[codeswitchcraft]

"It's wonderful," Siobhan says, eyes practically sparkling. "Do you know how many shirts I've had to sew in my life? I could have finished my trousseau in a quarter of the time with one of these."

[starandhope]

“Oh, I never would’ve finished my trousseau in less than six months if not for my trusty Singer,” Mina says, delighted to have met another person who seems to be from a similar cultural background. “Mine at home has a foot pedal, but you likely wouldn’t be tall enough to use it. Forgive me, I’m Mina Harker. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She offers her hand to shake.

[codeswitchcraft]

Siobhan clasps it in greeting.

"Siobhan Greenwood. Are you Jonathan Harker's wife? Or... not exactly his wife, but." She shrugs, awkwardly. "He was very kind to me when I met him, is all."

Let's switch the topic to less dangerous waters, maybe.

"It took me years to finish my trousseau. I had to sew and embroider everything by hand and even weave some of it."

[starandhope]

“We’re very good friends,” Mina says with a smile. Yes, it’s a very weird situation, and this is how she’s glossing over it. “And he is, very kind.” True of both her own Jonathan, and this one.

“I’ve never learned to weave,” she comments, interested. “And I’m afraid my embroidery often leaves something to be desired. Our initials, and a few flowers are the extent of my skill there.”

recommended reading ohai

[angel_of_baal]

He had had a similar question, so he is here to be Helpful with the answer. "You use this device and cajole the machine spirit to display the pict recording." See? Perfectly clear!

Re: recommended reading ohai

[codeswitchcraft]

"I see!" Siobhan says, with a small nod. "Have you done it already, then?"

[angel_of_baal]

"One of the assistants--a very low-level tech priest, I presume," not a single augmetic! "showed me how. It is a disturbing documentary."

[codeswitchcraft]

"It has a disturbing title," Siobhan admits.