20 years of X-Project - Frito
May. 7th, 2023 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_daytripper posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
x_projectFrito joined May 2003, beginning with Marie-Ange and then picking up Kyle in 2004. She is currently one of the mods.
1) What brought you to X-Project?
As I recall, I saw a post on livejournal by Kielle talking about this new X-Men RPG she'd seen, and she mentioned some familiar names. I took a look, and decided to jump in. I don't remember all my motivations at the time besides "This seems like a fun way to get writing again" and "How obscure of a character can I dig up?"
2) What keeps you in X-Project?
The people. I've kept old friends, made new friends, been to weddings (I made a cake for one of them!), brought friends into the fold. It always comes back to writing, with my friends, and the 'friends' part is the big draw for me. Twenty years is a long time, you can't do that without people who get you, who step up and get creative and funky and bring their best work and their best selves.
3) What's a moment that has really stuck with you that you wrote?
I have to pick ONE?
Marie-Ange fighting an aspect of London - The Lord of Misrule and battling Mr. Punch (from Operation: London Calling) to help save Amanda's sanity. It's not necessarily the first time I got weird with her powers, and tapped into 'how far down the metaphor and symbolism rabbit hole can I go" but I remember sitting at my desk with about 10 tabs of research, and deciding that if there ever was a time for her to go big and get weird, this was it.
Marie-Ange stirred, and despite her head pounding like the speakers at a Clash concert, mentally commanded her figure to once again draw it's weapon. But it was futile, the image barely responded to her wishes, robed covered arms rippling limply. She turned to push herself upright, and dropped under the heavy feet of two of the deacons pressing her to the ground with their heels. As they held her down, the warped Mr. Punch raised his twisted stick to strike her. She felt the puppet's robes brush her legs, and then a slight movement of the air over her head, as though the stick had missed.
Marie-Ange looked up to see Death, his skeletal arm holding the puppet by his throat should have been, where Punch's wooden head met sewn on robes. The puppet struggled, cloth thrashing around as though kicked by invisible legs, and he was thrown away, crashing into several of the deacons.
The sheer strength was exhilarating, in a way. The animated skeleton shoved one of the deacons off Marie-Ange's prone body without any effort, and it flew back several meters. The other fled, running pell-mell through the crowd until it could no longer be seen. There was almost no pain, except in a dull throbbing that felt both very acute and yet separated from her by the abyss. Marie-Ange moved with Death, reaching behind her to finally draw the long slender scythe, it's handle thick and solid in her hands. Hands that had no nerves, or even muscle or flesh, and yet she could feel the wood as though she were grasping it herself.
It took two impossibly long strides to reach the high seat where the Lord - the figurehead of this twisted play - sat, and he cowered, begging silently. Soundless pleas for his life, for forgiveness. That he was very sorry and that he'd gone too far, and it was futile because Marie-Ange couldn't read lips. She bent slightly and reached for the man's shoulder, bending him backwards over the arm of his seat, and raised the scythe.
Death cut with a single stroke, slicing through the Lord's throat, and he passed silently, unable to speak even in death. Around him, the seat and dais and theater cart disappeared, and the crowd thinned by over half. And then further thinned as the now freed spectators fled in confusion. The Lord of Misrule's body fell to the ground with a thump as the bony arm that had held it up also faded.
The thump was followed by a long groan as Marie-Ange painfully got to her feet, stumbling several times before she was entirely upright. The street was nearly empty now, only a few people milling around looking lost, all of whom seemed more interested in figuring out where they were, or making frantic phone calls than in the young woman collecting a discarded jacket and broken cell phone and several cards from the ground and limping away with the remains of the crowd.
4) What's a moment that has really stuck with you that someone else wrote?
Two part answer, because I win at X-Project. Day Zero, Doug and Emma.
"Actually," replied Emma. "You can." She ignored Doug's expression, too tired to bother hiding her ruthlessness. "For what we are doing, the fight we are in, your power is almost without limit - except for those limits you choose to impose. If you were as single-minded as Ignatova, you would have a chance of besting her." She closed her eyes for a moment, unutterably weary and heart-sick. "And I am very tired of making people die, Mr Ramsey."
For Doug, touching Xorn's consciousness, even indirectly through the link with Haller and Betsy, was like trying to dip one toe precisely in a raging river and not get torn away by the current. The communication from his mind almost transcended language, as if, by the nature of his power, Xorn was communicating in some sort of proto-language, each word conveying a vast depth of nuance and meaning. It was overwhelming for Doug, coming up against a language that he had to struggle, for the first time since the certain knowledge of his mutancy, to translate.
Doug frowned at the naked expression on Emma's face, the way she was looking at him like he was a piece on a chess board to be moved here and there at her need.
As Doug took a deep breath, he idly remembered reading in a D&D source about a group called the Fraternity of Order, who believed if they could but tease forth every law of the cosmos, they would then have the power of deities. For a stunning moment, he could see patterns. And they were -everywhere-. The subtle interconnectedness of everything around him left him in awe.
He rather doubted that Emma was carrying Fabian Cortez in her back pocket, which only left one other option he could think of. "What, are you going to hop me up on Kick?" he asked nervously. He didn't care much for the idea of becoming an addict just so that they could foil Ignatova.
"Oh my dear Doug," said Emma and her laugh was almost a purr. "Why on earth would you need Kick when you have me?" Her humour vanished as quickly as it came. "Your head is full of mental blocks, Doug. Distractions." She stood up, walked to Doug, touched her hand lightly on his temple. "Power is - a dangerous thing." Her fingers feathered down his cheek, cupped his chin gently so he couldn't avoid her eyes. "A seductive thing. Some of us revel in it. Some of us are afraid of what it could turn us in to." For an instant her fingers trailed down the curve of his neck, the hollow of his throat and then, almost reluctantly, returned to her side. "When I touch your power, I can see what it could be. But you hide it away from yourself with childish things, stop yourself feeling what you could be. I can put all of those away, take away everything that limits you. Make you - complete."
Doug shivered at Emma's touch, and the way her lips had almost caressed the word 'seductive'. He remembered when she had gone peeking in his head for his 'dictionary', and let him shut her away from his more visceral reactions when she had playfully touched the pleasure centers of his brain. He rather doubted she was going to let things go so easily this time. "What...what did you have in mind?" he stuttered slightly.
"Let me in," replied Emma. "No shields. No barriers. Let me see what you really are and I can make you more than you imagined. A match for Ignatova. A perfect weapon aimed at her heart." A smile played on her lips. "Or more precisely, her stomach. And her mainframe." Her expression sobered. "You'll have to trust me. Absolutely," Emma said, aware of the irony, aware of the number of times she told people she was not to be trusted. "You have to be willing to die for me and hope that I've given you the power to bring yourself back from the dead. To let me take away your limits - and your boundaries. But first of all, you have to be willing to let me see everything that's in your mind and change it as I choose. You'll have to put yourself in my hands, Doug, utterly naked, utterly vulnerable." Her gaze held his. "Are you willing to do that, Mr Ramsey?"
She was right. His power did frighten him, the brushes he'd had of it with Xorn and Cortez. And while Emma was certainly manipulative and ruthless, he sensed somehow that this was his decision, and that she'd abide by it either way. His brain snapped through pros and cons in an instant. He could be a match for Ignatova. But at what cost? ~For what shall it profit a man if he save the world, and lose his soul?~ he paraphrased to himself. Did he trust Emma? Did he trust -himself-?
"Yes," he answered her seriously and simply, the answer to all the questions he'd asked himself as well as the ones Emma had asked him.
For a moment, Emma's breath caught in her throat, touched by the raw courage and trust she was being offered. "Oh, my dear Douglas," she said. "You really are quite a remarkable young man. And soon, you'll be - extraordinary. But I think it may be best if we sit down for this." She caught his hand, led him over to the couch and sat him facing her. It wasn't strictly necessary, but she touched her hands to his temples, anchoring herself in their physical reality, before smiling. "I promise," she said, "that this won't hurt a bit," and stepped into his mind.
This log is pretty much the moment when Twiller decided to take Doug from the mostly sweet canon interpretation to explore the darker side of the job, and his power, and what he could do with it. I got to be part of the discussions about what this would mean - for him as a player, and Doug as a character, and this log has sat in my browser bookmarks until this plot and log:
Twiller took a tiny little micro idea, and ran to the fullest extent he could, and pushed himself past a self-imposed restriction and getting to be part of that was amazing.
A Fistful of Nanites - Doug and Emma
Her path to the soon to be crash zone was interrupted, however, by the brush of not only a mind familiar, but a thought familiar. Familiar and frightened and resolute and tinged with a very specific dread.
~Mastermold? Really?~ she sent to Doug. ~My darling, what are you doing? You’re not feeding yourself to the nanites, are you?~
~It worked last time, didn't it?~ Doug was very aware that his logic was...thin at best. But this -felt- right in ways that he couldn't necessarily put words to. The reprise of a battle against a hostile technopath. Scattered bits of hints in Marie-Ange's readings, or even sometimes just snatches of casual conversation that only made sense when you had enough pieces to see the outline of things.
~Well, yes, but I did have rather a hand in making sure you stayed Doug that time,~ replied Emma. ~Do you have a plan that you’d care to elaborate? Beyond “it worked last time”.~
Doug's mental connection to Emma was deep and nuanced, the product of long experience with each other. The downside to that was that it was very hard for Doug to hide anything from Emma without shutting her out completely. ~You're not going to like it,~ he sent through the mental equivalent of pursed lips, clearly reluctant but also resigned. ~The nanites are keeping everything out of the secure areas, right? Well, they can't exactly keep themselves out...~
~So you’re using them as camouflage?~ mused Emma. ~It… carries risk, of course. Is there anyway that I can help? Put your mind in a box? Provide rousing moral support? Deliver painkillers and martinis when you’re on the recovery couch?~ She deposited a picture in Doug’s mind, of her wearing a wisp of something that might charitably be called a waitress uniform delivering a cartoonishly large martini to a prone Doug on a red velvet chaise lounge.
Doug's thoughts were amused. Emma adopted a submissive state like that for approximately no one. But she'd been deeper into his brain than anyone else, and this particular idle fantasy was certainly something drawn from his own subconscious. ~I never say no to painkillers or martinis,~ And while he enjoyed the thought of Emma in something frilly and brief, he locked it away much as she had all those years ago. ~As for the rest, I've given it a start...~ There was a sensation of a hallway, doors closed or closing. ~But a bit of assistance is always appreciated.~
5) What is something about X-Project that you really like/enjoy?
Pushing my skills and abilities. Every time I feel like I've stagnated, someone comes up with an idea that challenges me to write more, better. To push into aspects of writing I don't usually explore, or really hone the skills I am naturally good at.
1) What brought you to X-Project?
As I recall, I saw a post on livejournal by Kielle talking about this new X-Men RPG she'd seen, and she mentioned some familiar names. I took a look, and decided to jump in. I don't remember all my motivations at the time besides "This seems like a fun way to get writing again" and "How obscure of a character can I dig up?"
2) What keeps you in X-Project?
The people. I've kept old friends, made new friends, been to weddings (I made a cake for one of them!), brought friends into the fold. It always comes back to writing, with my friends, and the 'friends' part is the big draw for me. Twenty years is a long time, you can't do that without people who get you, who step up and get creative and funky and bring their best work and their best selves.
3) What's a moment that has really stuck with you that you wrote?
I have to pick ONE?
Marie-Ange fighting an aspect of London - The Lord of Misrule and battling Mr. Punch (from Operation: London Calling) to help save Amanda's sanity. It's not necessarily the first time I got weird with her powers, and tapped into 'how far down the metaphor and symbolism rabbit hole can I go" but I remember sitting at my desk with about 10 tabs of research, and deciding that if there ever was a time for her to go big and get weird, this was it.
Marie-Ange stirred, and despite her head pounding like the speakers at a Clash concert, mentally commanded her figure to once again draw it's weapon. But it was futile, the image barely responded to her wishes, robed covered arms rippling limply. She turned to push herself upright, and dropped under the heavy feet of two of the deacons pressing her to the ground with their heels. As they held her down, the warped Mr. Punch raised his twisted stick to strike her. She felt the puppet's robes brush her legs, and then a slight movement of the air over her head, as though the stick had missed.
Marie-Ange looked up to see Death, his skeletal arm holding the puppet by his throat should have been, where Punch's wooden head met sewn on robes. The puppet struggled, cloth thrashing around as though kicked by invisible legs, and he was thrown away, crashing into several of the deacons.
The sheer strength was exhilarating, in a way. The animated skeleton shoved one of the deacons off Marie-Ange's prone body without any effort, and it flew back several meters. The other fled, running pell-mell through the crowd until it could no longer be seen. There was almost no pain, except in a dull throbbing that felt both very acute and yet separated from her by the abyss. Marie-Ange moved with Death, reaching behind her to finally draw the long slender scythe, it's handle thick and solid in her hands. Hands that had no nerves, or even muscle or flesh, and yet she could feel the wood as though she were grasping it herself.
It took two impossibly long strides to reach the high seat where the Lord - the figurehead of this twisted play - sat, and he cowered, begging silently. Soundless pleas for his life, for forgiveness. That he was very sorry and that he'd gone too far, and it was futile because Marie-Ange couldn't read lips. She bent slightly and reached for the man's shoulder, bending him backwards over the arm of his seat, and raised the scythe.
Death cut with a single stroke, slicing through the Lord's throat, and he passed silently, unable to speak even in death. Around him, the seat and dais and theater cart disappeared, and the crowd thinned by over half. And then further thinned as the now freed spectators fled in confusion. The Lord of Misrule's body fell to the ground with a thump as the bony arm that had held it up also faded.
The thump was followed by a long groan as Marie-Ange painfully got to her feet, stumbling several times before she was entirely upright. The street was nearly empty now, only a few people milling around looking lost, all of whom seemed more interested in figuring out where they were, or making frantic phone calls than in the young woman collecting a discarded jacket and broken cell phone and several cards from the ground and limping away with the remains of the crowd.
4) What's a moment that has really stuck with you that someone else wrote?
Two part answer, because I win at X-Project. Day Zero, Doug and Emma.
"Actually," replied Emma. "You can." She ignored Doug's expression, too tired to bother hiding her ruthlessness. "For what we are doing, the fight we are in, your power is almost without limit - except for those limits you choose to impose. If you were as single-minded as Ignatova, you would have a chance of besting her." She closed her eyes for a moment, unutterably weary and heart-sick. "And I am very tired of making people die, Mr Ramsey."
For Doug, touching Xorn's consciousness, even indirectly through the link with Haller and Betsy, was like trying to dip one toe precisely in a raging river and not get torn away by the current. The communication from his mind almost transcended language, as if, by the nature of his power, Xorn was communicating in some sort of proto-language, each word conveying a vast depth of nuance and meaning. It was overwhelming for Doug, coming up against a language that he had to struggle, for the first time since the certain knowledge of his mutancy, to translate.
Doug frowned at the naked expression on Emma's face, the way she was looking at him like he was a piece on a chess board to be moved here and there at her need.
As Doug took a deep breath, he idly remembered reading in a D&D source about a group called the Fraternity of Order, who believed if they could but tease forth every law of the cosmos, they would then have the power of deities. For a stunning moment, he could see patterns. And they were -everywhere-. The subtle interconnectedness of everything around him left him in awe.
He rather doubted that Emma was carrying Fabian Cortez in her back pocket, which only left one other option he could think of. "What, are you going to hop me up on Kick?" he asked nervously. He didn't care much for the idea of becoming an addict just so that they could foil Ignatova.
"Oh my dear Doug," said Emma and her laugh was almost a purr. "Why on earth would you need Kick when you have me?" Her humour vanished as quickly as it came. "Your head is full of mental blocks, Doug. Distractions." She stood up, walked to Doug, touched her hand lightly on his temple. "Power is - a dangerous thing." Her fingers feathered down his cheek, cupped his chin gently so he couldn't avoid her eyes. "A seductive thing. Some of us revel in it. Some of us are afraid of what it could turn us in to." For an instant her fingers trailed down the curve of his neck, the hollow of his throat and then, almost reluctantly, returned to her side. "When I touch your power, I can see what it could be. But you hide it away from yourself with childish things, stop yourself feeling what you could be. I can put all of those away, take away everything that limits you. Make you - complete."
Doug shivered at Emma's touch, and the way her lips had almost caressed the word 'seductive'. He remembered when she had gone peeking in his head for his 'dictionary', and let him shut her away from his more visceral reactions when she had playfully touched the pleasure centers of his brain. He rather doubted she was going to let things go so easily this time. "What...what did you have in mind?" he stuttered slightly.
"Let me in," replied Emma. "No shields. No barriers. Let me see what you really are and I can make you more than you imagined. A match for Ignatova. A perfect weapon aimed at her heart." A smile played on her lips. "Or more precisely, her stomach. And her mainframe." Her expression sobered. "You'll have to trust me. Absolutely," Emma said, aware of the irony, aware of the number of times she told people she was not to be trusted. "You have to be willing to die for me and hope that I've given you the power to bring yourself back from the dead. To let me take away your limits - and your boundaries. But first of all, you have to be willing to let me see everything that's in your mind and change it as I choose. You'll have to put yourself in my hands, Doug, utterly naked, utterly vulnerable." Her gaze held his. "Are you willing to do that, Mr Ramsey?"
She was right. His power did frighten him, the brushes he'd had of it with Xorn and Cortez. And while Emma was certainly manipulative and ruthless, he sensed somehow that this was his decision, and that she'd abide by it either way. His brain snapped through pros and cons in an instant. He could be a match for Ignatova. But at what cost? ~For what shall it profit a man if he save the world, and lose his soul?~ he paraphrased to himself. Did he trust Emma? Did he trust -himself-?
"Yes," he answered her seriously and simply, the answer to all the questions he'd asked himself as well as the ones Emma had asked him.
For a moment, Emma's breath caught in her throat, touched by the raw courage and trust she was being offered. "Oh, my dear Douglas," she said. "You really are quite a remarkable young man. And soon, you'll be - extraordinary. But I think it may be best if we sit down for this." She caught his hand, led him over to the couch and sat him facing her. It wasn't strictly necessary, but she touched her hands to his temples, anchoring herself in their physical reality, before smiling. "I promise," she said, "that this won't hurt a bit," and stepped into his mind.
This log is pretty much the moment when Twiller decided to take Doug from the mostly sweet canon interpretation to explore the darker side of the job, and his power, and what he could do with it. I got to be part of the discussions about what this would mean - for him as a player, and Doug as a character, and this log has sat in my browser bookmarks until this plot and log:
Twiller took a tiny little micro idea, and ran to the fullest extent he could, and pushed himself past a self-imposed restriction and getting to be part of that was amazing.
A Fistful of Nanites - Doug and Emma
Her path to the soon to be crash zone was interrupted, however, by the brush of not only a mind familiar, but a thought familiar. Familiar and frightened and resolute and tinged with a very specific dread.
~Mastermold? Really?~ she sent to Doug. ~My darling, what are you doing? You’re not feeding yourself to the nanites, are you?~
~It worked last time, didn't it?~ Doug was very aware that his logic was...thin at best. But this -felt- right in ways that he couldn't necessarily put words to. The reprise of a battle against a hostile technopath. Scattered bits of hints in Marie-Ange's readings, or even sometimes just snatches of casual conversation that only made sense when you had enough pieces to see the outline of things.
~Well, yes, but I did have rather a hand in making sure you stayed Doug that time,~ replied Emma. ~Do you have a plan that you’d care to elaborate? Beyond “it worked last time”.~
Doug's mental connection to Emma was deep and nuanced, the product of long experience with each other. The downside to that was that it was very hard for Doug to hide anything from Emma without shutting her out completely. ~You're not going to like it,~ he sent through the mental equivalent of pursed lips, clearly reluctant but also resigned. ~The nanites are keeping everything out of the secure areas, right? Well, they can't exactly keep themselves out...~
~So you’re using them as camouflage?~ mused Emma. ~It… carries risk, of course. Is there anyway that I can help? Put your mind in a box? Provide rousing moral support? Deliver painkillers and martinis when you’re on the recovery couch?~ She deposited a picture in Doug’s mind, of her wearing a wisp of something that might charitably be called a waitress uniform delivering a cartoonishly large martini to a prone Doug on a red velvet chaise lounge.
Doug's thoughts were amused. Emma adopted a submissive state like that for approximately no one. But she'd been deeper into his brain than anyone else, and this particular idle fantasy was certainly something drawn from his own subconscious. ~I never say no to painkillers or martinis,~ And while he enjoyed the thought of Emma in something frilly and brief, he locked it away much as she had all those years ago. ~As for the rest, I've given it a start...~ There was a sensation of a hallway, doors closed or closing. ~But a bit of assistance is always appreciated.~
5) What is something about X-Project that you really like/enjoy?
Pushing my skills and abilities. Every time I feel like I've stagnated, someone comes up with an idea that challenges me to write more, better. To push into aspects of writing I don't usually explore, or really hone the skills I am naturally good at.
