fandomtownies | Fandom Museum, Sunday November 2

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Fandom Museum, Sunday November 2

Today, in between helping any visitors what needed it, Gregorith was spending most of his time up in the art gallery. Partly he was seeing if he could match any of the paintings, photos and sculptures with events that had exhibits downstairs, and partly he was looking for inspiration for his own creative endeavors.

And then one of the plaques caught his eye. Two portraits of former students, on loan from a museum in another version of Faerie it seemed. The sign said they were Momoko and Karla. Apparently they were good friends of the last queen of Faerie, Leda Danan.

That had been the name of one of the ambassadors he'd met some years ago back home. He'd have to look it up later.

In the meantime he went to the desk to grab his sketchbook.

(Museum is open, portraits used with players' permission.)

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Sometime before lunch, Steven popped in with a wrapped bundle. He looked around to see if he could spot Gregorith.

Excellent timing, Gregorith was just on his way back to the desk.

"Steven!" he smiled. "Good to see you."

~~I forget if there's a break room~~

"Gregorith!" Steven replied. He came over to the desk. "Wonderful to see you as well! Glad I'm finally able to pop by while you're working. I'm sorry I missed your first two weeks, being out of town and all."

"Not a problem, I hope you had a good time. I'm glad you stopped by, there were a few things I wanted to talk to you about. First off, I wanted to say, you can call me Greg, if you want."

"Cheers," Steven said. "I'm just Steven. With a V. No nicknames or anything like that I'm afraid."

Steven then held up the bundle he was holding. Then, realizing that wasn't clear, unwrapped the cloth around it to hold out a rectangular plastic container with smaller objects inside. He presented it with a flourish. "Here. For you. Cinnamon sugar muffins. My husband's a bit of a baker, you see. He made them as a welcome to the island from the both of us."

Now see, if Greg wasn't already kindly disposed to Steven and his beau, this would have done it. It was one of the worst kept secrets of the universe that demons were suckers for baked goods.

"Oh Steven, thank you, and thank Watts for me please. These look and smell delicious."

He added asking his mother to send one of her pies to his list of things to do when he called home this evening.

"I will," Steven promised, pleased the gift had gone over well. "Given what you'd said at the party about what you don't care for, we thought sweet would be a good way to go. Oh, those aren't vegan by the way. If that matters at all."

That taken care of, Steven leaned against the desk to get more comfortable. "You said you had questions?"

"I'm going to do my best to be at least vegetarian, but not vegan should be fine. Thanks for the heads up."

Then he did his best to collect his thoughts. "Questions, and an apology. I'm sorry if I scared you the other night. My job back home is, well I suppose it's a euphemism but my job is in dispensing justice and I kind of went to that headspace when I thought about what you might have gone through."

"No apology necessary," Steven assured him. "My fears had - well, not nothing to do with you I suppose. But more that you were from somewhere unknown to me. There's always that worry that someone might be - that they might look at us as broken. Wrong. Or worse. You couldn't have been kinder, I assure you."

And whenever Gregorith met Marc he'd likely get better understanding of why someone with resting stab face who specialized in justice was not a thing Steven found off-putting.

Good, okay that was out of the way, now the other thing.

"Good, I'm glad of that. Back home it can put people off. Anyway, the main thing I wanted to talk to you about is, have you experienced any for lack of a less dramatic term, invasions while you've lived here?"

"Sort of?" Steven said. "Not in the sense of an army? But events which can involve a need for some people to fight? I've been about for a few of those, yes. At least if that's the sort of thing you're asking about."

"That's it, yes. I've seen from the exhibits downstairs that things like that happen here, fairly often?"

"At least once a year I'd say?" Steven, well said. "There's also - I suppose you could call them influxes? Of certain things? Not trying to cause harm. More - I don't know. Sprinkling glitter all over the town sort of a thing? So a sort of an invasion in that there's a fair amount of them, but not in the sense of doing any real damage. Those types seem to happen more often. December in particular."

Ah, maybe some of the art upstairs wasn't as abstract or symbolic as he'd assumed.

He knew December. That was a big party time in the afterlife. Many realms had their own celebrations but there was also at least one big universal blowout around that time. Which reminded him, he wanted to get presents for people.

Anyway,

"The things that do cause harm...I guess this is a subjective thing but how bad does it get? This is partly why I'm here. Back home we were invaded by a hostile universe, not long before we found out about Fandom. We drove them back, but it was a near thing. So, I can see that the citizens of Fandom mean us no harm, but if hostile forces come here, they could conceivably get from here to home."

"It is subjective as you say," Steven agreed. "Back home we've had invasions from hostile forces as well. One ended up destroying half the life in the entire universe. Can't say we've had anything like that here by far."

Steven thought about the various invasions he knew of. "There's been danger, certainly. Large - erm - statues? I suppose you could say? Then rather specific enemies to people here? Things where people gathered together to push back on those trying to do harm. Though there's also been ones where the day could be saved without violence as well."

Steven was particularly fond of those ones, which was perhaps clear by the way he said it.

"I think a commonality is they're rather focused on the island though," Steven said. "I can't recall any who viewed the island as a stop on the way to somewhere else."

Half of all life in the universe?! From an afterlife perspective he shuddered to think of the work load that would lay on them. He'd had stress dreams about the apocalypse and having to sort out every mortal soul in existence.

"That, definitely puts it into perspective." He'd been right in his estimation of how often things seemed to happen, judging by the exhibits. "I'm glad to hear how well people here seem to work together to deal with it."

He should make sure he was ready, just in case.

"I know there's a gym in town, are there any adult self defense classes? I haven't kept in practice in that regard for...longer than I care to admit."

"Most of the people here on the island are very nice," Steven said. "Look out for each other, care about one another. Happy to lend a hand without being asked, that sort of thing."

Almost as though a large majority of the island was made up of hero types or something.

"I'm not sure about self defense classes?" Steven admitted. "I'd rather not fight if it's avoidable. Leave that sort of thing to Marc. And anything I need to know I get from Marc anyway. The gym's run by a man named Gladio, though. He's good with a sword, I know that. You might want to pop by there and ask him if he offers classes himself, or has recommendations."

"My friends Beleth and Asmodeus are the fighters in my friend group back home. I know how to use a knife but I wasn't one of the ones going off to war. I was one of the ones who stayed behind and worried. So I get it. But if it becomes necessary...I don't know, maybe I'm overreacting."

"There are often other things that can be done," Steven assured him. "During one of the incidents I helped out by doing research to give the fighters what they needed. That sort of thing happens a lot when these things occur."

"Hmm, my work here could be good practice for that." It hadn't been a skill he'd known he might have. Truth be told he'd sometimes considered himself something of a one trick pony, and was content with that. But then he'd volunteered to dive out of his comfort zone, and here he was.

"Can you tell me about that? That incident I mean?"

"It involved creativity," Steven said. "So in the end those fighting needed tools to fight with that had appeared in stories, you see. Those of us researching had to find things that would be useful for them."

"What were they fighting? Characters from fiction? Tulpas?" Creepy Pastas?

"It was rather a detailed affair," Steven said, as he then went in to explaining all of the details of the ~~Alan Wake inspired~~ creativity influenced events of that particular happening.

"It did give me a renewed appreciation for the role of writing in the end though," Steven said, once he concluded.

Greg jotted down some notes about it for future reference. "Thank you, I hope I didn't dredge up any unpleasant memories."

"Oh no, no," Steven assured him. "That one sort of turned out all right in the end for me. No unpleasant memories at all. Though it's kind of you to be concerned about that. You're very thoughtful, I must say."

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