20 years of X-Project - Dex
May. 8th, 2023 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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x_projectDex joined X-Project in 2003 with Nathaniel Essex, before dropping him (by mod request as he was out-arguing Charles) and bringing Remy LeBeau/Gambit on board in early 2004 and then Garrison Kane/Dominion in 2006. With the relaunch he killed off Remy (literally!) and brought in Kevin Sydney/Changeling. He is directly responsible for the Wiki, X-Force and more plots than you can poke a stick at. Oh, and he was a mod.
1) What brought you to X-Project?
Back in the ancient days of comic book fanfic, there was a central site called C-FAN. The owner Kielle, who was a big part of the community, had brought up this game that had just started. It included names like Alasdair Watson, Lady Amethyst and Andrew Wheeler who, years before, had been big names in the X-Writers community of comic fanfic. Having literally no experience in any kind of online RP, but knowing all three to a limited degree, I took a look and sent in a submission for Nathaniel Essex because why make anything easy? At the time, Dex-Con was still at its height so once I came on, it was easy to recruit friends to join. And then they kicked me out, so it says a lot about me.
So I was not unhappily gone that spring, and then that August, as Dex-Con rolled around, a lot of the comicfic community who were still in started to talk about plots and ideas and asked me for help. The original Psylocke player, Jazz, asked me to sock Essex for a couple of logs she needed shortly and between both, I rejoined following all kinds of interesting sturm und drang. Been here other than a couple of hiatuses ever since.
2) What keeps you in X-Project?
A collection of film negatives depicting acts so heinous that the world itself would burn should they ever be released. Actually, I hate to sound glib - no, wait, I love being glib. But really XP has long been a mix of a regular writing outlet for me and a community of old friends. It may sound a little sad, but I've been doing this so long, I'm not sure how I'd actually replace it. It provides the outlet that fic used to for ideas and most importantly, adaptations which is by and large the majority of my plots. It's tremendously easy to sit down in a chat or over a beer and talk about what our fictional characters are going to do this week.
3) What's a moment that has really stuck with you that you wrote?
Entirely too many. I've written novels worth of words over the years in logs. The most recent piece I liked was in the Powers Swap event. Because I suffer from all kinds of masochism, I took over MA's precognitive powers for Kane and then asked for volunteers for future events and ended up stitching them together using elements of Kane as the filter mechanism. Which ended up telling the future of seven characters through lyrics from Canadian Juno winning songs, 70s-80s Canadian children's shows, Canada's classic 'Heritage Moments' series and, of course, songs from The Tragically Hip.
Kane was hammered. Not in a way he was used to. The Canadian had been drunk many times, but he was having problems navigating himself. Briar had said something as he left, but the road back to Xavier’s was one he’d followed so many times that he assumed he’d be fine. The snow crunched underfoot as he walked through the forest and ended up out by the stream that fed the lake. He started over the bridge but a vision hit him so hard his knees buckled and he collapsed, grabbing at his head.
***
Kane recognized the K-Rock Centre in Kingston instantly. But not from any junior hockey game. No, this was a crowd from wall to wall, every seat filled, even the Prime Minister of Canada in attendance. Every set of eyes glued to the stage as Paul Langlois began to play, and the rest of the band followed him. And then, he appeared. Grey hat, silver pants, and a retro JAWS t-shirt. You couldn’t have summed him up better if you tried. But Kane hadn’t been at the show. Like most Canadians, he’d been glued to the live feed, understanding that this was both a concert and a goodbye from Gord. He raised the microphone to his lips and sang.
“Bourbon blues on the street, loose and complete, Under skies all smoky blue green I can't forsake a dixie dead shake-”
Behind him, on a massive video screen, a video played. But it wasn’t the video for the song, which Kane had memorized as a kid. It was a swamp, rain beating down in thunderous waves as figures moved in the gloom, struggling against the weather. As he watched, the swamp turned black and threatening, darker and more ominous.
“Me debunk an American myth? And take my life in my hands? Where the great plains begin At the hundredth meridian”
A maple came down, leaves a vibrant autumn red as the trunk cracked and brought it down into the ground with a crash. As it lay there, as if in a time lapse, the leaves curled, blackened and rotted away on the ground.
“Want to be a nobody without peer, Want to be a thought that's never done, Want to shake your faith in human nature, Want to break the hearts of everyone”
Boston. The Mansion. The Ocean. New York City. Berlin. Toronto. The sounds of grief, sharp and keen. Erik the Red’s helmet, but instead of being worn, cracked and broken. A folded flag. A black band. And the white smile on the face of a dark woman as the hole was filled in with fresh dirt.
“Hope I'm a fast healer, fast as hell, Heaven is a better place today, Because of this, but the world is just not the same”
Kane staggered for a moment, finding a chair under him and sitting down as the entire stadium sang along with Gord Downie. Urging him on, helping him find the words when he struggled. The sickness hadn’t taken his energy or his passion yet. He wielded the mic like a weapon, keeping back the darkness, pausing the future for a little bubble that would only last a few hours. Dueling with fate and for an entirely too short but also impossible time, winning.
“Tell me how life's made you bad Kick me when I choke and I smoulder When I'm not what you had”
Amanda looked out from the screen, a skinny teen with badly dyed black hair. She was naked from the waist up, looking over her shoulder as the camera zoomed into the scars on her back. It pulled back to a shitty crumbling room, an equally scrawny male teen, with a shock of black hair falling over his face, mumbling to himself as a red glow flickered on and off between his hands.
“I'm just a shade shy of true wickedness I'm a shade shy of truly loving it, yeah There are other things I'd rather be doing”
A dozen sitcom fathers rolled across the screen before it jerked, swiftly, to a blow landing. And another. A fist full of rings lashed down and out of camera before coming back up. Another flicker of red energy dying and the fist returning again and again and again. Until the fist changed, became younger, tattooed instead of beringed, but just as violent. A thin scream as Marie-Ange fought against a thumb jammed into her eye.
“Stare in the morning shroud and then the day began I tilted your cloud, you tilted my hand Rain falls in real time and rain fell through the night No dress rehearsal, this is our life”
Red energy lanced through the darkness, underscored by flames. The flames rose and rose, consuming all the darkness as the energy disappeared. In a staccato burst of images, a life passed on the screen - brute and cold and violent but also in pain and sad and broken scenes tumbling across behind Gord as the entire stadium sang along with him.
“Beautiful and disaffected It was perfect till He came along and wrecked it”
Kane could recognize Amanda without recognizing her. And Sarah, but how she’d been. And LeBeau. Marie-Ange with both eyes. And a man he didn’t know, but he could recognize the magic movements of his hands. He and Amanda faced each other, his energy bright and golden while hers was dark.
“I want you to enchant my days Onward, daily, forward, away. So what's today's answer then?”
A shoot emerged from a seed, the same kind of time lapse he’d seen in dozens of nature films at school. Three women standing over a grave; Marie-Ange, Amanda and an elderly Black woman he’d never seen. A brief glow around Amanda’s hands as they spoke in words he couldn’t identify.
The two women beside him were singing while openly weeping. Most faces in the crowds had the same journey; elation, tears, admiration, and remembrance. The struggle was on Gord’s face but not in his voice. There was only determination there. This was a battle and he’d come prepared. A last stand that he was ready to make.
“Where the wild are strong, And the strong are the darkest ones, And you're the darkest one”
A beautiful dark haired woman filled the screen, one he thought he might have recognized before her hair changed to blonde. She smiled with two mouths, looking at him with four eyes, and when she waved her hand in an easy gesture, ten fingers made complex gestures as magic trailed along behind them.
“I thought you should know, it's no worse Her blood is still clear and sanguineous.”
Death. The grim reaper replaced by a skull-faced man in a high black top hat and a fine suit, swinging his ebony cane. The hair flickered between black and blonde on the woman, as she sat in the centre of a spider web, waiting for attendance by her men.
“She used to like lavender pant suits And long black velvet gloves Smiles cross crowded rooms.”
And suddenly it was him, in front of her. Talking, yelling. Her amused and dismissive. His red serge flashed on and off of him, in a richly appointed hall. Her court. Why did Court suddenly come into his head?
”One afternoon four thousand men died in the water here And five hundred more were thrashing madly As parasites might in your blood”
Dark water rose up in a flood. The surge rolled over the city. New Orleans. Battered by hurricanes and plundered by outsiders, now, the forces it fought against forever were looking to choke them off forever. Men and women fought the flow but were carried away by the force of the dark water.
“-But I would say you've been told, You work me against my friends and you'll get, You'll get left out in the cold”
Her beautiful face looked up and suddenly showed fury; defiance; and finally, fear. Like a woman facing death she railed, mouth open and screaming soundlessly into the camera. For all her beauty, her court melted away around her, unless the scene faded into black.
Gord stepped to the front of the stage. Like the rest of the stadium, he was fighting tears. This was the last fight. The final performance. The last American exit. He’d come out with courage and grace, too. And he’d won. Kane watched, transfixed or stupified, he couldn’t quite tell.
“Riding on horseback and keeping order restored Till the men they couldn't hang Stepped to the mic and sang”
A hand fought free from the dirt. A new bud unfurled into the familiar shape of a new maple leaf. And he saw his own hands carefully buttoning up the front of his red serge. Securing the Sam Browne belt. Placing his Stetson carefully on his head. Gord’s song came to an end, the entire stadium was captivated and lost between adulation and grief. He looked out, caught Kane’s eye and tipped his cap.
***
Kane threw up everything he’d had. His head was breaking as he staggered on the bridge. Without his powers, he toppled over the edge of the bridge into the water below. The cold water swallowed him up and he wasn’t able to catch his breath. The depths swallowed him up and as he grasped for the surface his vision went black.
There was a white flash.
And nothing.
Yeah, sometimes I like an unnecessary challenge. Whatever. Kane now has a wolf. Does your character have a wolf?
I didn't think so.
4) What's a moment that has really stuck with you that someone else wrote?
Fucking hell, there's even more of those. One of the truly great things about this game is the sheer depth, range and scope of the work people do here. I actually have a list of about 30 logs that are my 'just need to distract myself by rereading'. So to take one example, the capper for my plot Operation: Siege Perilous I thought was tremendous work between Mack and Amanda Sichter.
Emma Grace Frost. Emma Grace Frost. Emma Grace Frost. Emma Grace Frost.
Reflections and facets, a diamond-dazzle of them.
Emma Grace Frost looked into a mind that looked back at her, a diamond reflection that was and wasn’t Emma Grace Frost. An Emma that had never (literally) fallen beneath Shaw’s spell, an Emma who had gone looking for cracks in her world and suddenly found herself looking back at herself on the other side. For a brief moment the two Emmas looked into each other’s mind and then both of them smiled at what they saw.
Whereas Emma saw diamond, Jean saw fire. It burned through the curtain that up until about 5 minutes ago she didn't even know existed, casting a light onto what lay on the other side: another world with another Jean Grey, where her experience with the Hellfire Club was mostly just a note in a case file. Where she still lived with the X-Men and practiced medicine. Where she still had a family. A world that almost felt fake, but she somehow knew was real.
Staring at a frozen picture of herself, lost in the woods with Emma, of all people, Jean couldn't help but notice something else. Something more complicated.
It was the world that was far more complicated, pieced together like patchwork that ran up into the sky and spread out, up and through the stars. The edges had once been long raw, frail, and jagged, easy to rip apart, but had just needed the right push until now, the right energy, to be able to scar over and heal.
Jean unconsciously reached out her hand toward one of the scars that went right through the ballroom. But the ballroom itself seemed hazy, like something out of a dream.
"Do you see this too?" she said quietly to Emma.
Emma smiled as she felt a mind utterly familiar, completely different, open to her, let her see what had been on the other side, what now was. “I know about it,” she said, let the wonder she felt come through in her tone. “I’ve always known about it. The cracks. The wounds... I’ve had to be so careful not to open up the wounds.” Her hand raised, almost in imitation of Jean’s. “You’ve fixed it. Healed it.”
Jean's hand stopped just short, trembling. She pulled it away, Emma's words ringing through her ears. "No. This can't be right," she said, swallowing. She knew if she touched it, fell down the rabbit hole, she'd find out more. She didn't know if she wanted to know more. Did she?
“It is what it is,” breathed Emma, a strange distracted joy in her mind as the other Emma showed her the world beyond the cracks, a world where the White Queen had never been in a cage, had always been formidable. “I think... I think you can choose not to know. But it won’t break the world if you do.”
Turning to Emma, Jean saw the look on the other woman's face, like a child opening up a door to find everything she had ever wanted. And Jean envied her.
When she started spouting confusing nonsense and confessing secrets, part of Jean knew she was telling the truth, even if she didn't quite understand what the full truth was. It lay just under the surface, waiting. She didn't think she could continue to choose to live in blissful ignorance, never knowing, part of herself always missing. Because it had been like that for as long as she could remember.
"I want to know, but I'm scared."
Emma’s gaze sharpened, her focus returning from the story of the other Emma to the woman beside her. “You’re extraordinary,” she said, simply. “One of the strongest people I’ve known. And one of the most moral.” She laughed suddenly, a throaty chuckle. “Which is probably why we don’t get on nearly as well as we should. Whatever it is that you might find out, you’re strong enough to deal with it.” She reached out suddenly, her hand taking Jean’s in a mirror image of them lost in the woods on the other side of the… crack in the world. “And it turns out,” she said, smiling at the knowledge of the other Emma, “I’m strong enough to help you, if you need it.”
Jean met Emma's eyes for a moment or two, taken aback and not quite feeling worthy of the compliments she had bestowed upon her, in either world. It took a few long moments for the words to sit right in her mind and in her heart. Eyes fluttering, she glanced down at her hand. It felt strengthening, like a tether, or an anchor.
She drew in a breath. "Okay," she said.
5) What is something about X-Project that you really like/enjoy?
The deep sense of warmth and satisfaction it immediately provides. Oh wait, no, that's heroin. I'm a person who deeply needs things to do. Idle time is not something I manage well. X-Project provides a creative structure as well as a social network, which is hugely important. It also lets me share ideas, and anyone who knows me knows I always have ideas. All the ideas. Too many ideas.
Far too many ideas. It's the reason I didn't get to go to any of the really good schools.
The writing outlet, the creativity, the collaborative aspect, the dumb chat arguments and AU smut, the odd sense of satisfaction in finishing a wiki update, and that feeling posting that final log of a plot and waiting on tenterhooks for someone to comment on the journals or in the Discord about it... yeah, there's not much about it I don't really like//enjoy.
1) What brought you to X-Project?
Back in the ancient days of comic book fanfic, there was a central site called C-FAN. The owner Kielle, who was a big part of the community, had brought up this game that had just started. It included names like Alasdair Watson, Lady Amethyst and Andrew Wheeler who, years before, had been big names in the X-Writers community of comic fanfic. Having literally no experience in any kind of online RP, but knowing all three to a limited degree, I took a look and sent in a submission for Nathaniel Essex because why make anything easy? At the time, Dex-Con was still at its height so once I came on, it was easy to recruit friends to join. And then they kicked me out, so it says a lot about me.
So I was not unhappily gone that spring, and then that August, as Dex-Con rolled around, a lot of the comicfic community who were still in started to talk about plots and ideas and asked me for help. The original Psylocke player, Jazz, asked me to sock Essex for a couple of logs she needed shortly and between both, I rejoined following all kinds of interesting sturm und drang. Been here other than a couple of hiatuses ever since.
2) What keeps you in X-Project?
A collection of film negatives depicting acts so heinous that the world itself would burn should they ever be released. Actually, I hate to sound glib - no, wait, I love being glib. But really XP has long been a mix of a regular writing outlet for me and a community of old friends. It may sound a little sad, but I've been doing this so long, I'm not sure how I'd actually replace it. It provides the outlet that fic used to for ideas and most importantly, adaptations which is by and large the majority of my plots. It's tremendously easy to sit down in a chat or over a beer and talk about what our fictional characters are going to do this week.
3) What's a moment that has really stuck with you that you wrote?
Entirely too many. I've written novels worth of words over the years in logs. The most recent piece I liked was in the Powers Swap event. Because I suffer from all kinds of masochism, I took over MA's precognitive powers for Kane and then asked for volunteers for future events and ended up stitching them together using elements of Kane as the filter mechanism. Which ended up telling the future of seven characters through lyrics from Canadian Juno winning songs, 70s-80s Canadian children's shows, Canada's classic 'Heritage Moments' series and, of course, songs from The Tragically Hip.
Kane was hammered. Not in a way he was used to. The Canadian had been drunk many times, but he was having problems navigating himself. Briar had said something as he left, but the road back to Xavier’s was one he’d followed so many times that he assumed he’d be fine. The snow crunched underfoot as he walked through the forest and ended up out by the stream that fed the lake. He started over the bridge but a vision hit him so hard his knees buckled and he collapsed, grabbing at his head.
***
Kane recognized the K-Rock Centre in Kingston instantly. But not from any junior hockey game. No, this was a crowd from wall to wall, every seat filled, even the Prime Minister of Canada in attendance. Every set of eyes glued to the stage as Paul Langlois began to play, and the rest of the band followed him. And then, he appeared. Grey hat, silver pants, and a retro JAWS t-shirt. You couldn’t have summed him up better if you tried. But Kane hadn’t been at the show. Like most Canadians, he’d been glued to the live feed, understanding that this was both a concert and a goodbye from Gord. He raised the microphone to his lips and sang.
“Bourbon blues on the street, loose and complete, Under skies all smoky blue green I can't forsake a dixie dead shake-”
Behind him, on a massive video screen, a video played. But it wasn’t the video for the song, which Kane had memorized as a kid. It was a swamp, rain beating down in thunderous waves as figures moved in the gloom, struggling against the weather. As he watched, the swamp turned black and threatening, darker and more ominous.
“Me debunk an American myth? And take my life in my hands? Where the great plains begin At the hundredth meridian”
A maple came down, leaves a vibrant autumn red as the trunk cracked and brought it down into the ground with a crash. As it lay there, as if in a time lapse, the leaves curled, blackened and rotted away on the ground.
“Want to be a nobody without peer, Want to be a thought that's never done, Want to shake your faith in human nature, Want to break the hearts of everyone”
Boston. The Mansion. The Ocean. New York City. Berlin. Toronto. The sounds of grief, sharp and keen. Erik the Red’s helmet, but instead of being worn, cracked and broken. A folded flag. A black band. And the white smile on the face of a dark woman as the hole was filled in with fresh dirt.
“Hope I'm a fast healer, fast as hell, Heaven is a better place today, Because of this, but the world is just not the same”
Kane staggered for a moment, finding a chair under him and sitting down as the entire stadium sang along with Gord Downie. Urging him on, helping him find the words when he struggled. The sickness hadn’t taken his energy or his passion yet. He wielded the mic like a weapon, keeping back the darkness, pausing the future for a little bubble that would only last a few hours. Dueling with fate and for an entirely too short but also impossible time, winning.
“Tell me how life's made you bad Kick me when I choke and I smoulder When I'm not what you had”
Amanda looked out from the screen, a skinny teen with badly dyed black hair. She was naked from the waist up, looking over her shoulder as the camera zoomed into the scars on her back. It pulled back to a shitty crumbling room, an equally scrawny male teen, with a shock of black hair falling over his face, mumbling to himself as a red glow flickered on and off between his hands.
“I'm just a shade shy of true wickedness I'm a shade shy of truly loving it, yeah There are other things I'd rather be doing”
A dozen sitcom fathers rolled across the screen before it jerked, swiftly, to a blow landing. And another. A fist full of rings lashed down and out of camera before coming back up. Another flicker of red energy dying and the fist returning again and again and again. Until the fist changed, became younger, tattooed instead of beringed, but just as violent. A thin scream as Marie-Ange fought against a thumb jammed into her eye.
“Stare in the morning shroud and then the day began I tilted your cloud, you tilted my hand Rain falls in real time and rain fell through the night No dress rehearsal, this is our life”
Red energy lanced through the darkness, underscored by flames. The flames rose and rose, consuming all the darkness as the energy disappeared. In a staccato burst of images, a life passed on the screen - brute and cold and violent but also in pain and sad and broken scenes tumbling across behind Gord as the entire stadium sang along with him.
“Beautiful and disaffected It was perfect till He came along and wrecked it”
Kane could recognize Amanda without recognizing her. And Sarah, but how she’d been. And LeBeau. Marie-Ange with both eyes. And a man he didn’t know, but he could recognize the magic movements of his hands. He and Amanda faced each other, his energy bright and golden while hers was dark.
“I want you to enchant my days Onward, daily, forward, away. So what's today's answer then?”
A shoot emerged from a seed, the same kind of time lapse he’d seen in dozens of nature films at school. Three women standing over a grave; Marie-Ange, Amanda and an elderly Black woman he’d never seen. A brief glow around Amanda’s hands as they spoke in words he couldn’t identify.
The two women beside him were singing while openly weeping. Most faces in the crowds had the same journey; elation, tears, admiration, and remembrance. The struggle was on Gord’s face but not in his voice. There was only determination there. This was a battle and he’d come prepared. A last stand that he was ready to make.
“Where the wild are strong, And the strong are the darkest ones, And you're the darkest one”
A beautiful dark haired woman filled the screen, one he thought he might have recognized before her hair changed to blonde. She smiled with two mouths, looking at him with four eyes, and when she waved her hand in an easy gesture, ten fingers made complex gestures as magic trailed along behind them.
“I thought you should know, it's no worse Her blood is still clear and sanguineous.”
Death. The grim reaper replaced by a skull-faced man in a high black top hat and a fine suit, swinging his ebony cane. The hair flickered between black and blonde on the woman, as she sat in the centre of a spider web, waiting for attendance by her men.
“She used to like lavender pant suits And long black velvet gloves Smiles cross crowded rooms.”
And suddenly it was him, in front of her. Talking, yelling. Her amused and dismissive. His red serge flashed on and off of him, in a richly appointed hall. Her court. Why did Court suddenly come into his head?
”One afternoon four thousand men died in the water here And five hundred more were thrashing madly As parasites might in your blood”
Dark water rose up in a flood. The surge rolled over the city. New Orleans. Battered by hurricanes and plundered by outsiders, now, the forces it fought against forever were looking to choke them off forever. Men and women fought the flow but were carried away by the force of the dark water.
“-But I would say you've been told, You work me against my friends and you'll get, You'll get left out in the cold”
Her beautiful face looked up and suddenly showed fury; defiance; and finally, fear. Like a woman facing death she railed, mouth open and screaming soundlessly into the camera. For all her beauty, her court melted away around her, unless the scene faded into black.
Gord stepped to the front of the stage. Like the rest of the stadium, he was fighting tears. This was the last fight. The final performance. The last American exit. He’d come out with courage and grace, too. And he’d won. Kane watched, transfixed or stupified, he couldn’t quite tell.
“Riding on horseback and keeping order restored Till the men they couldn't hang Stepped to the mic and sang”
A hand fought free from the dirt. A new bud unfurled into the familiar shape of a new maple leaf. And he saw his own hands carefully buttoning up the front of his red serge. Securing the Sam Browne belt. Placing his Stetson carefully on his head. Gord’s song came to an end, the entire stadium was captivated and lost between adulation and grief. He looked out, caught Kane’s eye and tipped his cap.
***
Kane threw up everything he’d had. His head was breaking as he staggered on the bridge. Without his powers, he toppled over the edge of the bridge into the water below. The cold water swallowed him up and he wasn’t able to catch his breath. The depths swallowed him up and as he grasped for the surface his vision went black.
There was a white flash.
And nothing.
Yeah, sometimes I like an unnecessary challenge. Whatever. Kane now has a wolf. Does your character have a wolf?
I didn't think so.
4) What's a moment that has really stuck with you that someone else wrote?
Fucking hell, there's even more of those. One of the truly great things about this game is the sheer depth, range and scope of the work people do here. I actually have a list of about 30 logs that are my 'just need to distract myself by rereading'. So to take one example, the capper for my plot Operation: Siege Perilous I thought was tremendous work between Mack and Amanda Sichter.
Emma Grace Frost. Emma Grace Frost. Emma Grace Frost. Emma Grace Frost.
Reflections and facets, a diamond-dazzle of them.
Emma Grace Frost looked into a mind that looked back at her, a diamond reflection that was and wasn’t Emma Grace Frost. An Emma that had never (literally) fallen beneath Shaw’s spell, an Emma who had gone looking for cracks in her world and suddenly found herself looking back at herself on the other side. For a brief moment the two Emmas looked into each other’s mind and then both of them smiled at what they saw.
Whereas Emma saw diamond, Jean saw fire. It burned through the curtain that up until about 5 minutes ago she didn't even know existed, casting a light onto what lay on the other side: another world with another Jean Grey, where her experience with the Hellfire Club was mostly just a note in a case file. Where she still lived with the X-Men and practiced medicine. Where she still had a family. A world that almost felt fake, but she somehow knew was real.
Staring at a frozen picture of herself, lost in the woods with Emma, of all people, Jean couldn't help but notice something else. Something more complicated.
It was the world that was far more complicated, pieced together like patchwork that ran up into the sky and spread out, up and through the stars. The edges had once been long raw, frail, and jagged, easy to rip apart, but had just needed the right push until now, the right energy, to be able to scar over and heal.
Jean unconsciously reached out her hand toward one of the scars that went right through the ballroom. But the ballroom itself seemed hazy, like something out of a dream.
"Do you see this too?" she said quietly to Emma.
Emma smiled as she felt a mind utterly familiar, completely different, open to her, let her see what had been on the other side, what now was. “I know about it,” she said, let the wonder she felt come through in her tone. “I’ve always known about it. The cracks. The wounds... I’ve had to be so careful not to open up the wounds.” Her hand raised, almost in imitation of Jean’s. “You’ve fixed it. Healed it.”
Jean's hand stopped just short, trembling. She pulled it away, Emma's words ringing through her ears. "No. This can't be right," she said, swallowing. She knew if she touched it, fell down the rabbit hole, she'd find out more. She didn't know if she wanted to know more. Did she?
“It is what it is,” breathed Emma, a strange distracted joy in her mind as the other Emma showed her the world beyond the cracks, a world where the White Queen had never been in a cage, had always been formidable. “I think... I think you can choose not to know. But it won’t break the world if you do.”
Turning to Emma, Jean saw the look on the other woman's face, like a child opening up a door to find everything she had ever wanted. And Jean envied her.
When she started spouting confusing nonsense and confessing secrets, part of Jean knew she was telling the truth, even if she didn't quite understand what the full truth was. It lay just under the surface, waiting. She didn't think she could continue to choose to live in blissful ignorance, never knowing, part of herself always missing. Because it had been like that for as long as she could remember.
"I want to know, but I'm scared."
Emma’s gaze sharpened, her focus returning from the story of the other Emma to the woman beside her. “You’re extraordinary,” she said, simply. “One of the strongest people I’ve known. And one of the most moral.” She laughed suddenly, a throaty chuckle. “Which is probably why we don’t get on nearly as well as we should. Whatever it is that you might find out, you’re strong enough to deal with it.” She reached out suddenly, her hand taking Jean’s in a mirror image of them lost in the woods on the other side of the… crack in the world. “And it turns out,” she said, smiling at the knowledge of the other Emma, “I’m strong enough to help you, if you need it.”
Jean met Emma's eyes for a moment or two, taken aback and not quite feeling worthy of the compliments she had bestowed upon her, in either world. It took a few long moments for the words to sit right in her mind and in her heart. Eyes fluttering, she glanced down at her hand. It felt strengthening, like a tether, or an anchor.
She drew in a breath. "Okay," she said.
5) What is something about X-Project that you really like/enjoy?
The deep sense of warmth and satisfaction it immediately provides. Oh wait, no, that's heroin. I'm a person who deeply needs things to do. Idle time is not something I manage well. X-Project provides a creative structure as well as a social network, which is hugely important. It also lets me share ideas, and anyone who knows me knows I always have ideas. All the ideas. Too many ideas.
Far too many ideas. It's the reason I didn't get to go to any of the really good schools.
The writing outlet, the creativity, the collaborative aspect, the dumb chat arguments and AU smut, the odd sense of satisfaction in finishing a wiki update, and that feeling posting that final log of a plot and waiting on tenterhooks for someone to comment on the journals or in the Discord about it... yeah, there's not much about it I don't really like//enjoy.
