fandomtownies | Town Hall, Saturday Morning

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Town Hall, Saturday Morning

"This," Jesse sighed, looking up at Margo with serious eyes, "Is going to mean so much paperwork."

The Magician rolled her eye, and placed her hand flat down on the desk. "Yeah, yeah, we can deal with the bureaucracy later," she said. "Well. You can. I plan to spend the rest of next week at Theodoric's."

Jesse ran her fingers along her hairline, and... reached for the microphone that connected the island-wide PA-system with the radio. She leaned in.

"Hi, Fandom? This is Jesse Faden speaking. Uh. The mayor. I know we're dealing with an invasion situation right now, and in order to fix it, we need some creative problem-solvers with good, uh, creative skills to come over to Town Hall right now, okay?"

Beat.

"Apparently we have to write our way out of this one. Or macramé. Any talent will do, honestly."

[[ ~~wait for some~~ ocd up! ]]

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Anakin made a face. "Well, it's certain unexpected," he allowed. Grudgingly.

"As for what else we could do - hope? I find?" Steven offered. "That's general but helpful, maybe? Hope and courage that they'll succeed?"

"Okay. How do we weaponize hope?" Anakin asked.

"Right," Steven said as he took that question in. This felt a tiny bit like talking to Marc, actually. "Er - generally speaking not a weapon? Hope? It's a motivation. For example, why do anything at all if you don't have hope that your actions will make a difference?"

Steven thought about it. "Of course presumably our fighters already have that. Why they're fighting in the first place. Oh! What if they falter? Hope could help get them back on their feet again."

"Meep meep?"

Anakin frowned. "I have no idea what that means," he admitted. "We gave you the chicknes already."

"Yes, sorry, I don't speak... Meep?" Steven said, making a wild guess as to what Beaker's language might be called based on the evidence. "Could you perhaps draw it?"

"Meep!" Beaker said happily, then drew a picture of the group of them (as stick figures, let's not get crazy on the details), then arrows to a stick people group of fighters, and wrote "HAPPY MEMORIES?!"

"Oh!" Steven said. "Well - first of all, thank you. Do they teach classes in how to speak - right, not the point at the moment. Come back to that later perhaps. But you're right, that could be just the thing."

And then, because Beaker did seem to be coming up with the best ideas here, "I wonder if anyone has happy memories of a chicken kick line?"

"Meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep mee! Meep meep mee."

Of course Beaker had happy memories of a chicken kick line!

Steven nodded intently. "Right. And was that the subjunctive tense or am I not yet getting the hang of it?"

"Meep meep meep mee," Beaker said approvingly.

"Really? Wonderful!" Steven then remembered what they were meant to be doing. "Right, yes, sorry. Crisis on the island. I do think a chicken kick line would be brilliant. I've not seen one before - well, as far as I remember."

Steven came from a world where talking trees sometimes hung out. He could not rule out chicken kick lines.

"But I daresay it would be a happy memory for me if I saw one," Steven said. "So that's two things that might be helpful. We hope?"

Anakin nodded. "We probably need some more concrete options, too. People who fight look for, well, weapons."

"Right, right," Steven said. "What about something to keep them safe while they're fighting? Like armor of some sort?"

Armor was not in fact a weapon. This was what happened when you were talking to Steven. Marc would've suggested guns.

"Like medieval armor?" Anakin asked.

"That's a type, yeah," Steven said, thinking about how there were people on the island who were probably perfectly comfortable in that sort of thing. Then again, when they didn't know what the fighters would be, well, fighting against specifically - "Oh! Or Marc and me, we have a sort of armor that's adaptable? Takes a different shape depending on which one of us summons it. Maybe something like that?"

Anakin nodded again. "So the fighters could imagine an armor best suited to them. Is that too vague, though?"

"I can say that simply telling someone to summon a suit is very confusing," Steven told him. "So if you've an idea to clarify that I'm all for it. Personal experience, you see."

"Well, this is supposed to be a story we're writing, right? Or telling. Is there some kind of narrative trick like armor that protects the heroes from bad choices?" Anakin asked. "I know Rory's ranted about it when she's reading things for her book club."

"Oh there's all sorts of literary devices," Steven said. "Deus ex machinas, for example. Oh! Perhaps we could look those up? I'm sure the google could find us a list."

Steven wasn't going to suggest asking Navaan, even if she was the writing teacher. He suspected her suggestions would involve a great deal of sex scenes.

"And we can turn those into weapons," Anakin said happily.

"Tools for whatever they might need," Steven said. That was sort of a compromise, right?

Steven was absolutely picturing non-lethal weapons. Good thing other people were there.

"It's hard to keep those hopeful feelings when you're losing a fight," Anakin said.

"Ah! You see, that's when it's helpful to remember why you're fighting," Steven said. "Not just that things can be better, but why you'd like them to be."

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