|| text | @ciscodelamancha ||

[franciscoramon]

informal poll for you guys. if you had to choose, is this place more like:

a) fantasia, from the neverending story
b) oz, from the wizard of oz
c) wherever the hell it was with the muppets and stuff, from labyrinth
d) wonderland, from alice in wonderland

[ The question might seem like a frivolous one, but the answers should actually be pretty informative, and it's way more fun than just asking people to describe what this place is really like. ]

Comments

[batbullets]

A villain modeled after the guy from the books, at least. He's a neurotechnician, nasty all around, uses tech to mind-control people. Sometimes kids. Sometimes an army of blonde girls or women made up to look like Alice.

[adiuvio]

Educated guess.

There's always a man behind the curtain.

[snarkbark]

All the whackadoodle monsters and wishful thinking, mostly.

no worries pal i haven't seen any of them in ages either

[greyjane]

someone needs to control your world's teenagers, in that case :)

but on that note, most definitely d.

[It's the hookah that won her over, really.]

[franciscoramon]

i think the point of that movie was she had to learn to not be such a bad person. i'm pretty sure most teenagers wouldn't sell their little brothers to shady mystical strangers.

well, maybe my brother would've, but that's besides the point.

[ Haha. See. It's funny, just a joke, and definitely not a little bit too real. ]

oh great
in that case i'll watch out for the mushrooms

[franciscoramon]

what kind of whackadoodle monsters, exactly?
here, i mean, i know the ones that were in labyrinth
i'm assuming we're talking something a little more heavy-hitting than muppets.

[franciscoramon]

[ A while ago Cisco might have argued with that, but well, Eobard. So while he might not be entirely convinced, he's not going to dismiss the idea out of hand, either. ]

maybe.

the problem in oz wasn't really the wizard, though. it was witches with flying monkeys, and unregulated magic shoe proliferation.

[franciscoramon]

ew? that is so CREEPY. i mean, you expect some low-grade strangeness from supervillains but that is straight-up WEIRD.

there anyone like that here? i mean, that you know of?

[ He'd said this weird Alice in Wonderland themed villain wasn't here but what if there are others? Without Barry here, that could get bad..... ]

i just noticed my html fail in that last tag.... 😩 sorry

[franciscoramon]

[ Peggy! What a name! She really is from the 1940s. Not that Cisco's going to say that to her. ]

no no no, he's not real or anything. he's a famous fictional spy, british and very debonair, with all the coolest gadgets, always saving the day. he introduces himself like that in a lot of the movies, "bond, james bond."

i'm seriously gonna have to work on my joke repertoire if half the people here aren't going to get the ones i've got on stand-by.

have you been here long?

[franciscoramon]

[ Congrats, Victor, you're the first one to actually succeed at making Cisco feel a little bit calmer and happier about this whole situation. ]

yeah, i guess you're right. it could be a lot worse.

have you been out into the jungles? or are you just going off what other people have said?

[franciscoramon]

wait. and you're... not... human?

is the world ending where you're from?

[ Cisco is really trying to keep his cool here but there's no way he's going to pass up the opportunity to ask a few slightly prying questions... ]

[franciscoramon]

i'm sure your teachers love that.

does this network not have some kind of... parental filter or anything like that?

[ Or, he wonders, is he going to have to code one in himself? ]

[franciscoramon]

[ Cisco laughs, of course, at the puns. Then, because that's just the life he lives nowadays, he has a brief moment of worry that this guy must be some kind of villain who has puns as his gimmick, the way the Trickster was with 'pranks' or Brie Larvan with her bee obsession. It'd be nice not to have that be his first thought, but Cisco is learning to be wary in his old age. But for now he's going to choose to ignore that little twinge of paranoia. No need to make assumptions before even meeting the guy. ]

ogre-rated is a new one, you come up with that on the fly?

so, lay it out for me: what's your dream sci-fi movie night roster look like?

[franciscoramon]

yeah... i'm getting that from all the people who have never heard of the wizard of oz. or movies.

some dude named jay garrick.

[franciscoramon]

not exactly. but it's still not the same. i mean, no one's holding a gun to my head making me do anything i don't wanna do. no one's hurting me or hurting anyone i care about. no one's stopping me leaving, if i can figure out how, and decide i want to.

so sure, we might not have decided to come, but did anyone even know coming here was an option? it's more like being drafted than being kidnapped, if you think about it.

[dust_of_life]

You have a very sunny way of looking at it

Not a bad thing, just an observation

Who are you, anyway?

[spellslots]

Nope: elf.

Maybe: there's this black goop/oil taking over planes of existence, it suuuucks

[signifies]

Where do you work?

[supersweet]

I dunno. Does it?

[ Who puts parental filters on things anymore? ]

[starspangled]

I can do you one better. Where are you staying? I can walk you there.

[seditionist]

No. I don't know. There are some things that are so important you shouldn't take a break.

Happens to me all too often

[mannerism]

A British spy? fancy that.

[ unseen, she's smiling to herself. ]

I imagine it all as an Agatha Christie novel.

are you aspiring to be like him, then, Mr. Ramon?

[ a spy. ]

[firelogic]

Hmm? Well, weird asking if this is like a fake place. No idea what a movie is either...

*Fortunately Chandra's used to not knowing what's going on, you end up in a new world, it has all sorts of rules that nobody just tells you.*

Well, it's kinda like technology only it makes a lot less sense and it's a lot harder to explain.

*Look, explaining how things work is Jace's thing, or Lili's thing, honestly any member of the Gatewatch should be doing it other than Chandra.*

I'm Chandra, a pyromancer.

[adiuvio]

You've put a lot of thought into this.

[franciscoramon]

not necessarily

where i'm from there's a saying that any technology that is sufficiently advanced becomes indistinguishable from magic. so even if i don't know the exact tech they must have used to open up the portals and bring us here, i know some scientific theories about alternate realities, and how different universes occupy the same space but vibrate at different frequencies.

so maybe it was a little of both?