Esso-teric: soylentOrange's Fanfic Thread

[Reply #320 on:]

And the prolificness continues. I kind of still can't get over the otherworldly amazingness level of your non-Futurama story, frankly. Things like this, however -

"You mean that wasn’t a piece of rock candy?  Huh.  Well, that explains why it tasted so awful, and why my throat is bleeding.”

show why you're so good at Futurama, too. Extremely Fry. Interesting that Leela would invite the mutants to the surface. Given the fact that in the show, mutants were allowed to obtain one-day surface passes, that always made me think that it wasn't such a huge deal for them to sometimes be above ground; I don't know. The way you often seem to inject some realism into the elements of the show, though, in your work, adds richness and depth to your writing.

I also like how you incorporated the two inventions into this part, the camera and the pill-walkie-talkie.

[Reply #321 on:]

pfft, prolific nothing.  Back when I first started writing Futurama stuff I was posting an update every two days.  I spit out all 110 pages of Talora in just over three months, snd tbat story almost didn't suck!

It's a relief to hear that someone really liked The Oak Tree.  It's definitely makes me a little more hopeful that I'm not completely incapable of writing anything other than uber-melodramatic scifi fan fiction.  Now, if only I wasn't so damned lazy- and not spending every last bit of the sparse motivation I do have on GSR- maybe I'd start that novel. 

Oh,and I think you're probably right, Kim.  I don't think the show said anywhere explicitly that mutants going to the surface was an extremely big deal.  I sort of had to connect the dots (and invent a few of my own).  There really seem to be three contradictory portrayals of how the public views the sewer mutants.  In "I Second That Emotion", the mutants are portrayed as an urban legend.  It's almost like the mutants either didn't want ot be discovered, or the government was keeping them secret from people.  On the other hand, Bender refers to the mutants in "I Roommate", though that just may show that he believes the 'myth' of the mutants' existence.  My guess is that, shortly after ISTE, Leela (or somebody else at PE) went either to the government or the media with proof that mutants existed.

Then there are episodes like "Leela's homeworld" and (parts of) "Less than Hero".  Morris and Munda claim that Leela will be forced to live the "horrible, degrading life of a mutant" if they keep her, and they try to get themselves killed in order to protect Leela from learning her heritage.  To me that says that mutants are shunned from society, maybe even brutalized by normal humans.  In "Less Than Hero", Amy tells Leela that her parents "can't come above ground because they're inferior genetic scum".  Finding a mutant on the surface must be a big deal then, at least sometimes.

The problem is really the other part of "Less Than Hero".  The Mayor doesn't seem to mind handing over two mutant surface passes, and that guy in the National History Museum didn't seem like he was about to attack Morris and Munda with a pitchfork for being on the surface, either.  I tried to come up with an explanation for the Mayor's charity, but, as for the other guy, I don't really have an explanation for that.  In GSR, the explanation for the surface passes is that the Mayor owed Leela a favor for saving the planet from that ball of garbage, and Leela managed to convince him to give her two passes, no questions asked.

The logic behind all of this is tenuous at best, I know, but I'm afraid that's about the best I can do. 

[Reply #322 on:]

It could probably be explored more thoroughly in something else. For the purpose of the story, it works, and that's what counts in the end.

[Reply #323 on:]

Good point about the contradictory portrayals of the mutants. Of course what you're doing for your story is your interpretation, and your rationalized justification for it makes sense; I wasn't at all implying it doesn't. I guess I just meant that I tend to take more the ISTE/part-of-Less Than Hero view myself. But it is true that 'mutantness' is certainly made a much bigger deal of in LH, which is a fairly melodramatic episode, overall.

And speaking of melodrama, I really would hardly call much of your work uber-melodramatic in the least - maybe a little occasionally in parts of Talora, but I would have to reread it again honestly, and bits towards the end of Disillusionment - and see, I only say that because I try very hard not to make it so that your ego wouldn't fit in Bender's chest cabinet
anymore..  (in regards to what you said on TLZ about 'slimy green ego-juice'). But you always mix enough humor and sciencey-ness in to keep the drama balanced.
And the oak tree tale showed that you definitely have a solid, not tenuous, grasp on writing.

In addition though, Talora absolutely didn't suck at all - again, if I had read it more recently I would be able to elaborate more on why not; dammit - but I think you probably improved exponentially with The Leelazarus Effect.  That story blew me away.  I guess I was reading both that and Talora concurrently when I was going through your old thread in the fall of '07, and then just in time you showed up again and finished LE.
Um, in short, I'm pretty sure you're capable of writing different types of things and I bring up the mutant discrepancies mainly as a side-note.

[Reply #324 on:]

haha, you just won't let me get away with self-deprecation, no matter how hard I try... :P

[Reply #325 on:]

Additionally, your framegrab caption caused me enjoyment.

  thanks

I was hunting through the dark depths of my laptop's hard drive this afternoon and came across this story I wrote a couple of years ago for a creative writing class I was taking at the time.  It's not Futurama related, but I thought I'd share anyway: The Oak Tree  

Hi SO, read it and enjoyed it-very thoughtful.  It actually made me think how much I'd be willing to sacrifice to explore space.  You beat Wall-E by a couple of years in showing how a plant can change a society.

[Reply #326 on:]

JN: Glad to hear you liked it.  Funny story how I came up with the plot.  I was walking around the campus arboretum trying to come up with a story about colonizing Mars, when I walked straight into an oak tree.  Actually, come to think of it, alot of my stories end with "and then I walked into a [insert unyielding, upright object]"
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______________

 “Phil, remind me to kick your ass when this is over.”  Leela growled into her wrist computer.

“Look, I’m sorry.”  The delivery boy whined.  “I forgot you were watching.”

“Just keep moving.”  Phil’s breathing was becoming labored.  Bender had been waiting for him at the bottom of the building’s southern staircase, and the two of them were now working their way toward the floor that held Poopenmeyer’s office.

“Tell me again why we couldn’t use the elevator?”  Phil wheezed.

“Because one of the guards would hear the elevator running.”  Leela answered impatiently.  “It’s only three flights of stairs, Phil.  A little exercise will be good for you."  If it doesn’t give you a heart attack.

After much wheezing and gasping, Phil and Bender made it to the right floor.  Bender cautiously opened the fire door and leaned out into the hallway beyond.  He signaled to Phil that the coast was clear, and the two of them made their way to the waiting room outside Poopenmeyer’s office.  Bender moved to the locked office door while Phil looked around the waiting room.  In a matter of moments, Bender had the door open.

“Wow.”  Phil remarked, obviously impressed.  “You bypassed that security system already?  I don’t think even R2-D2 could have done it that fast.”

“Pfft.  Bypassed, nothing.”  Bender retorted.  “I knew the Mayor’s security lock back in high school; he’s like the biggest drunk ever.  All I had to do was offer him a couple of bottles of booze and he let me in.”
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________________

Leela watched as Phil set the mutants’ Bill of Rights down on the Mayor’s polished oak desk.  The PE Captain looked around her at the mutants.  Each of them wore expressions of extreme concentration.  They had just made a move that there was no turning back from, and they all knew it. 

Phil started to head for the door, but he stopped on the threshold.  The camera whirled to face Bender, who was still by the desk.

“Hey Bender, are you coming?”  The delivery boy asked.

“Yeah, just a sec.  I’m looking for a- Ooh…”  The robot held up a gold-plated analog watch that had been hidden in one of the desk’s lower drawers.  “This thing’ll pay for a month’s worth of gambling!”  Opening his chest cabinet, Bender tossed the object inside.  “Alright, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Phil and Bender left the office, worked their way back along the corridor, and started to descend the building’s staircase.  They’d made it about halfway to the ground floor when they heard footsteps coming from below.  Fry and Bender froze.

“Hide, you morons!”  Leela hissed into her wrist computer.  Her voice broadcasted over Phil’s communicator louder than she’d anticipated, but the rhythm of foot falls from below didn’t change.  Bender grabbed Phil by the collar and dragged him up a few stairs to a landing that they had passed moments earlier.  The two of them hurried out of the stairwell into the hallway beyond and tried to shut the fire door behind them as silently as possible.  They’d run maybe a third of the way down the hall when the door they’d just closed began to open.

“Quick, in here!” Bender whispered, tossing Fry through the nearest doorway.  The robot shut the beat up metal door behind him and chuckled.  “Heh, heh.  The perfect getaw- aww, crap.”

Fry turned around to follow Bender’s gaze, and the camera planted on his forehead panned across several computer consoles and a bank of blank televisions before finally settling on the two security officers who were staring, dumbfounded by what was going on.  A moment later, the door opened behind Phil, who whirled around to look.  Another guard stood in the doorway holding a bag of Dinkin Donuts, staring at the robot and the delivery boy in much the same way as his fellows.

“Uh, I caught the intruder.”  Bender said, pointing at Fry.
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________________

“Leela, you can’t do anything for them right now.   Please, just let go of the death ray and come with me.”

“Phil and Bender are in serious trouble, Dad.  They’re going to be killed!”  Leela brought the antimatter rifle up to chest level and pumped it like a shotgun.  The metallic click of the device’s mechanism made all of the mutants- except for Morris and Munda- take one step backward.  “I was the one who screwed up and let them go on this crazy mission without proper supervision.  I’m sure as hell not going to let them be executed for it!”

After Phil and Bender had been arrested and carted off for questioning, one of the guards had found the Bill of Rights sitting on Poopenmeyer’s desk.  The camera that Phil had been wearing had been confiscated and stashed in some drawer somewhere, so Leela had only been able to tell what was going on to her friends by listening over the communicator that was, by now, probably lodged somewhere in Phil’s small intestine. 

Leela and the mutants had listened fearfully to the police interrogation.  At first, things were fairly docile.  The cops seemed more interested in how Phil and Bender had managed to get past the alarms than anything else.  But the mood changed drastically when it was discovered that the mutants were involved, and that the police seemingly had no record of Fry beyond the fingerprints that had been taken during his arrest during that ridiculous bank robbery trial.  Suddenly the questions were all about mutant conspiracies and plots to overthrow the government.  It had taken Leela a moment to realize what was going on, and when she finally figured it out her heart nearly stopped.  The cops didn’t have any record of Fry’s identity: no birth certificate, no social security number from before the year 3000, no history that he had even existed before the new millennium.  Phil tried to explain that he’d been unfrozen in a cryogenics lab on New Year ’s Eve of 2999, but Applied Cryogenics had no official documentation of that because Fry had run away before Leela had been able to enter it all into the computer.  Of course the police weren’t going to buy such a farfetched story, not when there was a much simpler explanation.  They thought Fry was a mutant. 

Now Leela was standing under the ship’s bow, cradling Farnsworth’s experimental antimatter rifle- her favorite weapon- in one hand, while busily trying to wedge a quintessence pistol into her waistband with the other. 

Turanga Morris, who’d anticipated where Leela’s blind fury was headed, was standing on the ship’s embarkation ramp, blocking Leela’s path.  He had both arms outstretched as he pleaded with his parallel-daughter.

“Wait, Leela.  Think about this.  What are you going to accomplish?  If you try and break your friends out, you’ll just end up dead!”

“So what should I do, just give up on them?  No way!  I should never have let you guys convince me to stay on the sidelines in the first place.  I’m sure as hell not going to just sit around on my ass now.”

“But, even if you manage to rescue your two friends, what will you do then?” Munda asked from her husband’s side.  “You’ll be fugitives forever.”

Leela blinked once.  She hadn’t really thought about what was going to happen after the violence.  Her plan consisted of flying the ship into police headquarters, beating people up until she found Bender and Phil, blasting the door off of their cell, and then…  Well, that was pretty much all she had at the moment.

The PE Captain took a step toward the ship, but Morris stood his ground.  “Please, Dad.  Get out of my way.”  It had been intended as a terrifying growl but, for some reason, it hadn’t come out particularly convincing.  Leela was just no good at standing up to her parents.

Morris, sensing victory, took a cautious step forward.  “Why don’t you come with your Mom and me down to the sewers?  Raoul and I will help you figure out how to fix this once you’ve cooled down a little, right Raoul?”

Raoul, clearly not happy to have been placed in the crossfire, nodded weakly.

Leela mulled over what her father had said for a moment.  Dad’s going to try and stop me if I do this.  Leela realized, finally.  And what am I going to do, shoot him?  “Alright, fine.”  She said aloud.  “I’ll come with you to the sewers to ‘cool down’.”  She held up her rifle.  “But I’m taking this with me.”
-____________________________________________________________________________

 “You did what?!”

“We’re sorry!  Just please, please put down the rifle now, okay?”  Leela, her parallel parents, Vyolet, and Raoul were all standing in the Turangas’ family room.  It was a tight space; there wasn’t nearly enough room for the sewer mutants, Leela, and Leela’s blazing fury.  Although, then again, if someone didn’t take the antimatter rifle from the infuriated starship captain in the next few seconds, there was a good chance the room would get a lot less crowded.

Leela’s eyes burned with a light that Morris and Munda had only seen on one other occasion, the moments before their daughter had discovered their true identities.  That time, all that had kept Tura from shooting them both between the eyes was Phil’s last-second intervention.  Now they faced their daughter’s parallel self, also armed, and with that same glint of borderline insanity in her eye.  Morris was keeping an eye on the rifle.  Leela didn’t have it pointed at the,- she wouldn’t do that, obviously- but she had an awful tight grip on the thing, and that was making him more than a little nervous.  If she didn’t calm down she was liable to blow a six foot hole in the side of the house, and he doubted that the insurance company, MutLife, would be particularly understanding.

Luckily, Leela dropped the weapon, and then kicked it away from her when it landed against her leg.  “How could you have done this without telling me?”  She demanded.  “Do you have any idea what this is going to mean?!”  Her eye fixed on Vyolet; it seemed to bore right through her and into the far wall.  “Well?!”

“Well, somebody had to do it.”  Vyolet replied, and Leela was surprised by the defiance in her voice.  She was used to yelling at Fry and Bender, both of whom melted like butter in a microwave when she gave them the whole wrath-of-Atheismo routine.  Vyolet, though, seemed to have a spine. 

“Yes, and that somebody should have been me, not you!  If I’d gone in there and trashed the place, I would have worn a ski mask, or my old Clobberrella costume.  No one would have known it was me!  But now they have video footage of sewer mutants breaking into a city building- police headquarters for god’s sake!  The news media is going to have a field day!  And you can forget about getting the sewer renovations overturned.  It was a long shot before, but now…”  Leela shook her head and dropped into an armchair.  When she looked up at Vyolet again her face was absolutely drained.  “I wish I smoked, because I think I need a cigarette.”

Vyolet seemed a little less confident now.  Leela’s words had obviously shaken her some.  “But Leela, you said it yourself.  They were going to kill them.”

“Then why, exactly, wasn’t I included in this little scheme?”

Vyolet started to speak, but thought better of it.  She glanced quickly in Morris’s direction, prompting the big cyclops to clear his throat nervously.  “Leela, honey, think about it for a minute.  You were ready to go running in there, guns blazing.  People would have gotten hurt, maybe killed.  Your mother and I didn’t know anything about this- and I’m a bit angry that my wife and I were being used to keep you occupied while this was going on-” Morris shot a glance sideways at Raoul. “-But it makes sense.  Dwayne, Leg Mutant, and Vyolet could sneak through the building’s sewer pipes and the spaces between walls.  All they had to do was pop out at the right spot, grab Phil and the robot, and sneak away.  No one even saw them.”

Leela crossed her arms.  “Yeah, no one except for half a dozen security cameras I’m sure.  Dad, they snuck through the walls of police headquarters, took an air duct to the cell block, burned a hole in the cell door with a plasma torch, rescued two convicts on death row, and then left the way they came.  I can just see the headlines now: ‘Mutants are in your walls!’  This is going to put the mutant cause back by decades, maybe centuries!”

“I don’t understand.”  Raoul said.  “We rescued two prisoners; I can understand why the government will be angry with us about that, but surely we can convince the Mayor that this has just been one big misunderstand–”

“You’re missing the point!”  Leela yelled.  “Breaking Phil and Bender out of prison had to be done.  We all know that.  It was how you went about doing it.  Up until now, people have thought you were all some kind of urban myth, or just some curiosity that didn’t affect their lives in any way.  That’s why we created that Bill, to make people wake up and notice you!  Now, after tonight, everyone in the city will have seen you on µ-tube, and, after they see you come bursting out of the ceiling, they’ll think you’re all horrible monsters, lurking in their walls and under their floors.  They’ll be afraid to let their children sleep alone at night, and’ll warn them to stay away from sewer drains!  This is huge, you guys!  Huge!”

“What’s huge?” Phil asked.  Leela whirled around to find the delivery boy leaning against the railing at the bottom of the stairs.  All of the screaming had woken him up, and he’d come down from the room that he’d been given to see what was going on.  One look at the expression on Leela’s face however, and he was backpedalling out of harm’s way up the stairs with his hands held protectively in front of him.

[Reply #327 on:]

Funny story how I came up with the plot.  I was walking around the campus arboretum trying to come up with a story about colonizing Mars, when I walked straight into an oak tree.  Actually, come to think of it, alot of my stories end with "and then I walked into a [insert unyielding, upright object]"

Impressive.
Well, that object yielded a great story.

Wow, Fry being pegged as a mutant - didn't see that coming. And he and Bender were actually going to be executed?  Heavy.
Now I see what you mean about taking the more Leela's-Homeworld-ish interpretation of the mutants.

a bag of Dinkin Donuts

Intentional?  Mayor Dinkin?

µ-tube

<3


..I see Leela is going over-the-top with her anger again, much like in Bender's Game. But at least you don't have her wearing a collar. And I can gather her point about the mutants exposing themselves too much. I had been thinking:
- If Vyolet's previous reaction, in the preceding sections, perhaps connotes isolation/the isolation felt by the mutants, then probably that's why they would feel they really had to get involved here.  I suppose they strongly wanted to do something.

[Reply #328 on:]

kim: Yes, that was intentional.  I got it from AOI II.  When Bender gets turned into a human and goes out of control, one of the places he goes is Dinkin' Donuts.

[Reply #329 on:]

sorry about the double post, but I've got a new piece of work to show off.  I had a long plane flight the other day, so I had alot of time to write.
_____________________________ _____________________________ __________

                                      Vigil

Warning: the following is rated ‘S’ for shippy, and is therefore not appropriate for persons who identify themselves as antishippers, or for Ralph Snart.  May cause warm fuzzy feelings and or internal bleeding.  If accidentally read, consult your physician immediately.
_____________________________ _____________________________ _____________

“Leela, will you go out with me this weekend?”

It was the question that Leela dreaded more than any other.  Every Friday afternoon he asked it after the delivery.  It didn’t matter how many times she’d rebuffed him, or how mean she’d been to him that day; he asked anyway.  There was no escape

“No.”  There was cold finality in her voice that she hoped would cut the conversation short.  Amy, who happened to be sitting nearby on the lounge couch looked over at her in surprise.  The intern gave Leela a disapproving look, which Leela met with defiance.  Amy could dislike her tone of voice all she wanted; it was none of the intern’s business how she talked to Fry.

Fry either didn’t notice Leela’s tone or chose to ignore it.  “But why?”  He whined, his frustration and confusion plain to see.  “I’m only asking for one date.  That’s all.  Why won’t you go out with me?”

God, how she hated this.  Why couldn’t she make him understand?  They had been through so much together- become so close- and still she couldn’t make him see.  All she could do was hurt him.

“Fry, please.  I don’t want to go through this again.  I can’t go out with you.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?”

Leela winced and tried to ignore the look that Amy was giving her.  He’s done everything for you, her eyes seemed to say.  You owe him.  The words echoed inside her head in the intern’s voice.   

“I- I have to go.”  Leela managed desperately.  She couldn’t quite bring herself to look at Fry as she turned away from him and fled from the Planet Express Building. All the way home she was haunted by Amy’s accusatory stare.  You owe him, the image repeated over and over.  You owe him.
_____________________________ _____________________________ _____________

Leela stormed into her apartment, letting her front door slam behind her.  As she stomped through her front room she threw her purse in the general direction of her armchair.  The purse collided with an armrest and tumbled to the floor.  Leela ignored it and headed straight for her bedroom, where she let herself collapse face-down on her bed.

For a long time, the cyclops just lay there with her face pressed into her pillow while her emotions raged and fought one another in her head.  Sometimes she felt like crying; other times she wanted to break something.  A wave of frustration and anger swept over her and she lurched into a sitting position, hurling her pillow across the small room in the process.  The pillow hit her wooden armoire hard enough to send a framed picture toppling to the ground.

Leela stared at the fallen picture for awhile before fetching it with a sigh.  As she inspected the frame for damage she realized which picture it contained.  It was the photo of Fry that she’d taken right after the incident with the space bee.  Her memories of what she had experienced while she was trapped in her mind had faded with time.  She no longer knew why the picture was important, only that it was.

What’s wrong with me?  Why do I do this to myself, and to him?  Why can’t I just say yes? She asked herself as she stroked the glass with her finger.

You know the answer to that. Came the tired response.

Leela felt her anger flair up against the cynical part of her mind.  Yes, she knew the answer.  It was the same reason that she’d been giving herself every day, every week, every year.  It was the same goddamned excuse every single time, and it rang a little hollower each time she used it.

But he’s not like the others!  Her emotional side replied.

Oh really?  What about what he did to Amy, or to Umbriel? 

He’s changed!  He’s not the same person that he was back then! And besides, he loves me!

Then what about Colleen?

That was hard.  Leela didn’t have an explanation for why Fry had suddenly stopped chasing her and gotten involved with that weird woman with the harem of boyfriends.  I don’t know why he did that.  She reluctantly admitted to herself.

He did it for the same reason that they all do it.  Her cynical side retorted.  Look at yourself, you’re a one-eyed monster.  No man will ever want to be with you.  They just want to use you and discard you, or change you into something they think is better.  Chaz, Doug, Adlai, Alkazar, Sean…  They all took advantage of you.

Lars didn’t! Leela’s emotional side shot back.

But, in the end, he left too, didn’t he? 

Not because he wanted to!

Maybe not, but he left just the same.  If you let someone get close to you, they’ll leave you one way or the other.  Fry can only hurt you, even if he means well.  He’ll leave you, one way or the other. 

Leela’s eye flashed.  “No!” she shouted aloud, setting the picture frame down on her windowsill.  “I refuse to keep doing this to myself!”

The videophone was on a table near the foot of Leela’s bed.  Her fingers stabbed at the buttons; she knew Fry’s number by heart, though she rarely used it.  She entered the first six digits in quick succession, but her hand stopped almost of its own accord as she was about to enter the last number. 

I can’t do it.  She realized sadly.  I just can’t do it.

Leela put the phone’s headset down and walked back over to her window sill to retrieve the picture.  She sat back down on the bed and gazed at the smiling face that it contained.

“I’m sorry Fry.” She said. 

“I love you.” The eyes in the photograph seemed to reply.

_____________________________ _____________________________ ______________

 Fry’s holophoner sounded a solemn tone.  Slowly shifting patterns of grey and blue twisted and merged in the air over Fry’s bed as the instrument shivered eagerly under the delivery boy’s delicate touch.  Fry, eyes closed and lost deep in the recesses of his mind, was not consciously aware of the beautiful melody that was flowing from his instrument into the air around him.  It seemed to spring from the very core of his being, escaping only when he wasn’t hindered by the burdens of consciousness.

Fry was once again thinking about Leela.  Any more, she never strayed far from his thoughts.  Why does she reject me over and over again?  He asked himself in tired desperation.  As if in sympathy, the holophoner gave off a series of soothing chords at the bottom of its range, and the air flashed with tiny spheres of soft violent that shimmered and popped, sending cascades of sparkling purple rain falling toward the floor.  What do I need to do that I haven’t already?  There’s something I can do.  There has to be something.  The patterns of light shifted around Fry’s head.  The colors swirled and merged.  A sphere of dark brown coalesced in front of his face.  I won’t give up.  The tempo of the music increased, and the ball of light began to brighten.  Its colors shifted from brown to red, and then to orange.  The entire room was bathed in a light that continued to grow as the delivery boy’s fingers flew over his instrument.  Leela and I belong together.  Fry told himself.  The truth of it burst from the end of the holophoner as a high note of such purity and force that the very walls vibrated in sympathy.  The ball of light brightened suddenly, exploding into a sun of brilliant white.  Fry opened his eyes.  As he lay his instrument down on the bed beside him he gazed at the image before him.  The sun that he had created began to fade as the music left the holophoner, but, as the light left it something appeared on its surface that had not been visible before, an iris of deep purple.  Fry reached out to touch the eye as it faded away completely.

“I love you, Leela.” He whispered.  “And I’ll wait for you, no matter how long it takes.”

As the last dying echoes of the holophoner dissolved into silence, the delivery boy almost thought he heard a voice whisper something back.  It sounded like “I know.”

[Reply #330 on:]

Beautiful.

[Reply #331 on:]

Goodness gracious, you just don't want me to read all of this, do you? So, starting with GSR, I really liked the last few updates (duh). The only criticism I can think of would be that it seems very rushed between Fry and Bender getting caught, then sentenced, then freed. I know this is becuase we're sort of seeing it from Leela's perspective, but there's still a little bit of a "wait, what?" that went through my head while I was reading. Nothing major at all.

Also a cute little bit of ship. Standard fare, but done far better than most (naturally).

Now, The Oak Tree. Fuck shit, that was fantastic. It was probably the best non-professional story I've read. You should think about applying for some sponsors or something. But seriously, it was good. The metaphors, the technical accuracy, the interpersonal consequences, all of it just too good for me to talk about properly. You really outdid yourself.

[Reply #332 on:]

Oh Atheismo's god, another piece of work, soylent??  Eeep.  Will read this new bit and edit this or post again later/soon, just wanted to acknowledge it now first.

And say -

Now, The Oak Tree. Fuck shit, that was fantastic. ... The metaphors, the technical accuracy, the interpersonal consequences, all of it just too good for me to talk about properly. You really outdid yourself.

That's already more than I could come up with to say about it.  I acquiesce entirely.


And condolences again about your fish.

[Reply #333 on:]

Beautiful. :smile:

  Thanks

 

Goodness gracious, you just don't want me to read all of this, do you? 

  No.  No I don't.  My sole diversion in life is making sure you never have a chance to read everything on this thread.   And you're right, the break-in scene did go by a little fast.  The truth is, this story is going to be of epic proportions when it's over.  I've already got 88 pages written and I seriously doubt I'm halfway through.  Since this was entirely from Leela's perspective and the details of what's going on during the arrest aren't that important, I just decided to cut it and trim away at this monster a little bit.

Now, The Oak Tree. Fuck shit, that was fantastic.

  *bows*  You guys are all much too kind.

Oh Atheismo's god, another piece of work, soylent??

  Well, somebody has to keep the fanfic thread alive.  Archonix is taking a break, JustNibblin is too busy to update, Sine updates once every six months, and all of the great writers of PEEL's golden days have been gone so long that most of the people that read this thread probably wouldn't know who they were if I named them.

[Reply #334 on:]

....and all of the great writers of PEEL's golden days have been gone so long that most of the people that read this thread probably wouldn't know who they were if I named them.

Have faith SO. Venus and Coldy will return one day to deliver us to the promised land.

[Reply #335 on:]

Eh, I do wish coldy would come back...

The truth is, this story is going to be of epic proportions when it's over.  I've already got 88 pages written and I seriously doubt I'm halfway through.

Yay.  I won't quiver again, don't fret, but - Sounds perfectly good to me.       

And now for the new piece. This was like your previous short ship exploration, The Rose, in that it shows Fry and Leela's different points of view, giving the situation from each of their perspectives. You excel at doing that. I also always like Fry playing the holophoner, it's always a lovely metaphor for his feelings and his way of expressing them.
In sum, another fine bit of work, as expected.

Sine updates once every six months

Oh, come now though, that does not compute!  His last one was in October.

[Reply #336 on:]

Did his book get published yet?

[Reply #337 on:]

You mean Coldy's?  Yeah, Coldangel resurfaced on PEEL a few months ago to advertise for it.  There's a link in one of his threads to a website where you can buy it.

[Reply #338 on:]

*bump*  I don't have anything else to post right now (yeah, I know it's been two weeks.  What do I look like, a guy who's not lazy?), but I thought I should take this moment to advertize for a fic that was written by a good friend of mine.  Remember A Red Letter Day by Corvus?  You know how it never got finished because he couldn't figure out where to go with it?  Well, he finally went and finished it, and it's absolutely fantastic.  It can be found here.

[Reply #339 on:]

I agree, awesome job it is.

[Reply #340 on:]

I don't have anything else to post right now (yeah, I know it's been two weeks.  What do I look like, a guy who's not lazy?)

YOU KNOW I THINK YOU'RE A SLACKER! 

But yes, already read the Corvus fic, did think it was very evocative and good. Props to him for finishing it.  He's clearly got some talent.


..While I'm here: I read The Oak Tree once again, and came up with a couple more specific things to say about it... I just want to hug Joanna, she's such a sweet character; you crafted her so finely.  And the whole thing is so plausible -  Liked and admired how you make it sound so plausible to have the society on Mars.  Also the space travel, etc.
At first when Kevin discovered them I thought for sure he was going to try to destroy the plant, and I got tense and perturbed, but you didn't go there; I'm glad you took it in a different direction.
I could single out a few lines that I particularly loved, but I won't, because it's more the overall effect...   Just so beautifully written, all of it; with such exquisite detail. Won't get gloppy, but I would deem it worthy of publication in some kind of literary magazine or something.

[Reply #341 on:]

*bump*  I don't have anything else to post right now (yeah, I know it's been two weeks.  What do I look like, a guy who's not lazy?), but I thought I should take this moment to advertize for a fic that was written by a good friend of mine.  Remember A Red Letter Day by Corvus?  You know how it never got finished because he couldn't figure out where to go with it?  Well, he finally went and finished it, and it's absolutely fantastic.  It can be found here.

Just read it.  He did a good job, and I'm glad he finished it.  I'm always amazed English is his second language.  Maybe he'll finish his other fic, the one with the rabtreiver.  (Corvus, I bet you're lurking!)

[Reply #342 on:]

*bump*  I don't have anything else to post right now (yeah, I know it's been two weeks.  What do I look like, a guy who's not lazy?), but I thought I should take this moment to advertize for a fic that was written by a good friend of mine.  Remember A Red Letter Day by Corvus?  You know how it never got finished because he couldn't figure out where to go with it?  Well, he finally went and finished it, and it's absolutely fantastic.  It can be found here.

Busy times! Gives me something to look forward to after this mini hell is over! Thanks for the link to Corvus work! Hope he updates his First Day fic.

[Reply #343 on:]

..While I'm here: I read The Oak Tree once again, and came up with a couple more specific things to say about it... I just want to hug Joanna, she's such a sweet character; you crafted her so finely.  And the whole thing is so plausible -  Liked and admired how you make it sound so plausible to have the society on Mars.  Also the space travel, etc.
At first when Kevin discovered them I thought for sure he was going to try to destroy the plant, and I got tense and perturbed, but you didn't go there; I'm glad you took it in a different direction.
I could single out a few lines that I particularly loved, but I won't, because it's more the overall effect...   Just so beautifully written, all of it; with such exquisite detail. Won't get gloppy, but I would deem it worthy of publication in some kind of literary magazine or something.

 
Well, I'm not sure its publication worthy, but thank you for the kind words just the same.  I poured a great deal of time into that story that I probably should have been spending on physics homework.  Its good to know people enjoy it

Just read it.  He did a good job, and I'm glad he finished it.  I'm always amazed English is his second language.  Maybe he'll finish his other fic, the one with the rabtreiver.  (Corvus, I bet you're lurking!)

He certainly did do a good job.  Its always been amazing to me how tenacious he is with these fics.  By the time he finally posts something it has usually gone through half a dozen or more drafts.  Like you said, English is a second language for him, so he has alot of trouble with the actual mechanics of writing a story in English, but he's never satisfied until he's corrected every single last minute grammar and spelling mistake in the story.  I'm sorry to say that he doesn't lurk here anymore, though.  I still dont know what happened, but some assholes(s?) managed to drive him away from the board permanently. 

Isn't the rabtriever in the story, Somewhere I Belong?  Because that one was finished quite awhile ago.  It ends on a cliffhanger involving Fry finding Belle in his shower.

Hope he updates his First Day fic

  From what I hear, I'll be getting some more of that fic to beta sometime in the not-too-distant future.  We can only hope...

But, anyway, here's the next chapter of GSR.  Thanks for looking it over, JN.  Hopefully I did enough to clear up the confusion you had about Fry being accepted by the mutants when Leela wasnt? 
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______

When Leela knocked on Phil’s door an hour later, there was no response.  She waited impatiently for a few moments, and then tried again.  The door finally opened, revealing a fully awake- but only half dressed- delivery boy.  Leela pushed her way into the room before her friend could say anything and sat heavily on the disheveled bed.  Somehow it irritated her that he’d only been using the room for a few hours, and yet the place was already trashed.

When Leela made no move to say anything, Phil cleared his throat.  “Umm…?”

“Shut up, Phillip.”  Leela replied dourly.  She knew she was just being spiteful, but that didn’t stop her from being just a little annoyed when Phil didn’t seem at all fazed.

“Okay…  But if you don’t want me to talk to you, then what are you doing in my room?”

Something between a laugh and a snort managed to sneak its way past Leela’s lips.  “Your room.  Nice.  This is my parents’ house, and yet I’ve never had a room here.  But you manage to get yourself arrested for breaking into the Mayor’s office, and now suddenly you’re living here like you own the place.”

Phil blinked twice, frowned, started to speak, and then fell silent again for awhile, brow furrowed as if he were trying to understand why he couldn’t balance a checkbook.  Finally he shook his head and said “Leela, what are you talking about?”

Leela sighed and let herself fall onto the rumpled bedspread.  “I don’t have the slightest idea.”  She rubbed her eye for a moment before speaking again.  “I’m in way over my head, Phil.  I thought I could handle all of this on my own, but it looks like Vyolet was right.  I’m too much of an outsider to understand how things work down here.  I let the mutants completely blindside me and go mount that stupid rescue mission.  I should’ve anticipated that they would try something like that.  They’re so tightly knit down here, and, after you volunteered to help, they consider you to be one of them almost as much as they do me.  They have no understanding of how things work on the surface; of course they were going to try a rescue.  I should have seen it, but I didn’t.  And now we’re all boned.”

“You really think the Mayor cares that much about sewer mutants?”

Leela sat up again.  So he was listening to what I said downstairs.  Not that that was surprising.  Leela had been yelling loud enough that anyone within a city block would have had trouble not listening.  “Phil, as far as the cops are concerned, a gang of sewer mutants just broke into a jail and rescued two suspects involved in some kind of sinister political plot.  It’s just a matter of time before riot police knock down my parents’ front door.”

Phil’s eyes went wide.  “But we went out of our way to make the mutants look peaceful!”

Leela snorted.  “Yeah, and Vy and friends undid all of that in about 30 seconds.”

 To Leela’s surprise, Phil began to pace, as if he was deep in thought.  In her experience, ‘deep’ and ‘thought’ didn’t often appear in the same sentence when one was referring to the delivery boy.  The word ‘thought’ appearing in such a sentence by itself was rare enough as it was.  “Phil, what are you doing?”

“Trying to think.”  He said, distractedly.

“Huh?  Why?  Doesn’t doing that usually give you a headache?”

Phil nodded absently.  “Yeah- Hey, wait a minute.  The cops are after me and Bender, right?”

“Yeah…” 

“So, if we go turn ourselves in, then the mutants will be left alone.”

“You’re forgetting about the part where you and Bender are on death row.”  Leela forced herself to bite off the rest of her sentence, which would have gone something like “which is stupid, even for you.”

“Oh, yeah.  Well, then we should at least get as far away from here as possible.  Bender’ll know a good place where we can hide until the heat is off.  That’s what fugitives say, right?  ‘Until the heat is off’?”

Leela shook her head.  “No way.  Once you step above ground, the police will have homed in on your career chip in two minutes. In the sewers, all the rock and concrete blocks the tracking signal that’s built into everyone’s chips.  You’re safest right here.”

“But, what if the police find me here?  Won’t that make things worse for the mutants?”

Leela sighed, and then stood.  “Phil, when the police finally do find the mutant village, it’s not going to matter one way or the other whether you’re here or not.  The mutants have been treated like the sewage they live in for hundreds of years, and I don’t think they can take the abuse much longer.  They are in danger of losing their entire way of life.  They’re on the brink of something; something bad.  We only got a glimpse of it when they rescued you, but when the cops get here, and they start breaking down peoples’ front doors, the situation is going to get out of hand.”

“But you’re going to stop it, right?”  It was said matter-of-factly.  After all, she always stopped it, no matter what it was.

“No, Phil, I don’t think I can.”  Then she looked squarely in his eyes, and her whole body suddenly went rigid.  “And after what the government was about to do to you and Bender, and just for trying to help these people, I no longer want to.”
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________________

In the other timeline, Fry was awakened in the predawn hours of the next morning by the insistent ring of his telephone.  Bleary eyed and only semiconscious, the delivery boy poked his head out from under the covers.  He was immediately rewarded with a blast of frigid air that quickly found its way into the depths of his blankets and robbed him in an instant of the precious pocket of warm comfiness that he’d been patiently building all night long.

The phone continued to ring. Muttering something obscene under his breath, Fry disentangled himself from his sheets and reached under his bed for the receiver. 

“Ungh?”  He said into the device.

”Fry!  Thank god I got ahold of you!  Amy just called.  She just got back from the other timeline.  You need to get over here quick, there’s been an emergency!”

“Ungh?”  Fry blinked and looked out his window.  He couldn’t even see the outline of the buildings across the street.

The voice on the other end of the line- Fry was just recognizing it as Tura’s now that his brain was starting to function- didn’t even pause for an instant.  “Phil and Bender were caught during the break-in!  Leela let the mutants break them out of prison!  It’s a disaster!”

“T- Tura?  What time is it?”

The question was enough to derail Tura’s monologue and send her train of thought crashing off a suspension bridge.  She sputtered to a halt.  “Huh- what?  It’s 4:37 in the morning, why?”

Fry just let the silence grow between them. 

Finally Tura seemed to catch on.   “Oh.  Oh.  I guess you were sleeping, huh?  Sorry, but like I said, there’s been an emergency over in my timeline, and we need to-”

Fry let Tura rant for awhile while he massaged his eyes with the palms of his hands.  He put the receiver down on the bedspread and waited for a break in the torrent of noise that was flowing out of the phone.  There was really no point in listening to what Tura was saying; the volume would just give him a headache, and, judging by her tone of voice, she was that special kind of angry that Leela got into every once in awhile where he’d get to hear the story several more times anyway.  He’d gotten the important information: namely, ‘emergency’ and ‘come here’.  Maybe someone had gotten hurt, or there had been a fire, or possibly the Earth was under attack again.  At least his name wasn’t being used in conjunction with too many expletives, which hopefully meant that, whatever had happened, it wasn’t his fault this time.

At long last, Tura fell silent.  Fry quickly picked up the phone again.  “Wow, that’s terrible, Tura.  Why don’t I meet you at Planet Express in half an hour?”  It was the only possible response.  Anything else would inevitably end up causing a black boot to kick down his door in a few minutes, and then he’d be dragged to Planet Express anyway..

Some of the edge went out of Tura’s voice.  “Thanks, Fry.  I really appreciate it.  I’ll be waiting in the conference room.”

“Sure, no prob.  Do you want me to bring Bender along?”  No way that jerk gets to sleep in if I don’t.

“Uh, no, let him sleep.  Didn’t you say he tried to sell your organs to the meat grinder the last time you woke him up in the middle of the night?”

“Oh.  Yeah, you’re probably right. Okay, see you in thirty.” 
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________________
 
Fry never liked walking up to the Planet Express building alone after dark.  The security system supposedly knew not to blast him if he tried to get into the building, but Hermes had once told him that the thing had malfunctioned a year and a half before Fry had unfrozen, and accidentally vaporized the company delivery boy.  Actually, now that he thought about it, a lot of Hermes’ stories ended with “and accidentally vaporized the delivery boy.” 

Luckily, the security system wasn’t on the fritz, and it didn’t hesitate to let him in.  Fry worked his way through the darkened building to the conference room.  As he passed through the lounge he noticed a half-finished box of pizza and half a dozen empty Quasarbucks coffee cups sitting on the room’s table.  The television was on, but muted, and was playing an early-morning news special.  Tura’s jacket was draped over the back of the couch.  It looked all the world like his temporary Captain had camped out there all night long. 

Tura was leaning on the conference room railing when Fry arrived.  She stood at the sound of the door and turned to face him.  Fry felt his heart skip a beat.  She looked haggard, like she’d been up all night working.  Judging by the dried grease stains on her tank top, that was a distinct possibility.

“Fry!  Good, you’re here!  We might not have much time!”  Whatever her physical appearance, Tura was, for the moment- wide awake.

Fry allowed himself to be led to the conference table, where he waited while Tura fiddled with the controls to the holographic projector.  When Tura hadn’t spoken for a few seconds, Fry started to say something, but Tura overrode him.

“I can’t believe she let this happen.  How could she have been so stupid?!”

“What?  Who?”

“Leela!  She let Phil convince her to stay behind and let them break into the Mayor’s Office by themselves and gee, surprise, those two morons did something stupid and got caught.”  There was a slight hesitation when Tura realized what she’d just implied by calling Phil a moron, but Fry was careful to make no outward sign that he’d caught the insult, so Tura continued.  “Leela was going to mount a rescue mission, but my parents persuaded her not to.  That’s right, my parents!  She actually invited them to watch the break-in from Planet Express.  That- that bitch put my parents in danger so she could show off for them!”

Fry couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.  A part of him demanded that he defend his Captain’s honor, but another part of him wasn’t sure if he could be angry at one Leela for badmouthing another.  It was all too complicated.

Tura was still talking, and the moment for Fry to say anything quickly passed.  “I still can’t believe she didn’t see that my parents were distracting her so that the mutants could rescue Phil and Bender without her.  Apparently Raoul suggested that Mom and Dad take Leela for a walk through the village so that she could ‘cool down’, and, when they got back, Phil was lounging on the sofa watching television and Bender was asleep in the broom closet.”  Tura shook her head.  “I don’t know what the hell to do with this mess.”  She said, and sank into the Professor’s padded chair. 

The conference table’s holographic display console beeped softly to remind Tura that she hadn’t finished feeding it instructions, but both Fry and Tura ignored it.  Tura just stared at the scuffed green surface of the table while Fry stared at her.  This arrangement lasted for a good ten seconds, at which point the control panel beeped again.   Tura still didn’t move, and Fry grew a little concerned.  Standing, he moved around the table and went to her, and she turned away from him.

“Tura, are you alright?”

Her head whirled to face him, revealing the tears that she’d been trying to hide.  “No, I’m not alright!” She snapped.  “Just about everyone I care about is in danger and I can’t do a damned thing about it.  And, to top it off, my clone from another timeline is over there making things worse, so even though I didn’t do any of this, it’s still sorta all my fault!”

Fry didn’t say anything- he knew he didn’t have the words to make her feel better- but sat down next to her and rested a hand on her shoulder to comfort her while the sobs worked their way out.  Eventually they did, and Fry asked: “Tura, why did you ask me here?”

Tura sighed and gently removed Fry’s hand from her shoulder.  “I don’t know.  I was going to try and come up with some plan to fix things that you could give to Leela, but now I think that was just an excuse to get you here so I could vent at you.  I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”Fry said simply.

A moment passed.  “You’re not angry with me.”  It was more a statement of fact than a question.

Fry shrugged.  “No, not really.  You’d be surprised how many times Leela has made up dumb excuses to get me to meet her, just so she can vent.  I’m pretty much used to it.” 

Tura looked uncomfortable.  “Yeah, right, dumb excuses…”

 “Did you camp out here all night?” Fry asked suddenly.

“Uh-huh.  I haven’t slept much in the past few days.  Leela’s apartment is a constant reminder that this isn’t home.  I mean, Not really.  I knew I wasn’t going to sleep tonight either- not with the break-in happening in my timeline-, so I figured I might as well stay here and work on the ship.  The technobabbleator needed flux-phasing, and working with my hands is a good distraction.”  At Fry’s look, she quickly added “and I’ve had eight cups of coffee and two Red Minotaurs, so I’ll be fine to pilot the ship today.”

“Yeah, sure...”  Fry replied, skeptically.  Even Tura couldn’t stay awake indefinitely on coffee and energy drinks alone, and just what he needed was for her to fall asleep at the wheel during a delivery.  With his luck, the caffeine would wear off right in the middle of the delivery’s ‘run for your lives’ phase. 

A minute passed and neither spoke.  Fry considered asking about what had happened in the other timeline again, but he hesitated to risk upsetting Tura again.  In the end, his stomach decided for him.  “I just realized, I haven’t eaten anything yet.” Fry said.  “I’m gonna go get some donuts, or something.”

Tura was so deep in thought that it took a moment for the delivery boy’s words to register with her.  “Huh, what?  Oh- oh, okay.  Bring me back a couple.”  She yawned.  “And a coffee.  The biggest, blackest coffee you can find.”

When Fry returned half an hour later, Tura was still sitting in the Professor’s chair.  She was fast asleep.

[Reply #344 on:]

Two things:

Vigil was excellent. Short, shippy, and hit the spot. What I liked most is the wistful tone that the two 'solo' sections had; you really get the sense that what little is keeping them apart has mostly to do with Leela's...pride? Intransigence? Self-doubt? (Or all three.) Not only that, but that it's only a matter of time before Leela finally says yes - then again, if she doesn't, it shows what the two of them are going to be like for the forseeable future.

Next part of GSR? Good stuff also.

[Reply #345 on:]

...you really get the sense that what little is keeping them apart has mostly to do with Leela's...pride? Intransigence? Self-doubt? (Or all three.)

Realism.   Or, self-realism.

Anyway, it somewhat seems you're veering slightly into melodrama now with GSR. I know Tura is very emotional about the whole mess, but -

That- that bitch put my parents in danger so she could show off for them!"

Okay, I don't know - I just don't think she would really say something like that.  You've always had a great deal of fidelity to the show in your writing, and you still do, but I just feel that you've started to stray a little into that melodramatic territory you were talking about.

Fry is also being a bit uncharacteristically wise again. That said, I always love creative touches like this:

half a dozen empty Quasarbucks coffee cups

, and this bit

Actually, now that he thought about it, a lot of Hermes' stories ended with "and accidentally vaporized the delivery boy."

reminds me of what you said about a lot of your stories ending with you walking into unyielding objects.   Again, I know you said you're aiming for some character development here, and it's well-written as always, but I wouldn't want to see you start to neglect some of the humor, canonicity and sciencey-ness that always characterizes your writing.        : /

[Reply #346 on:]

@THM: I dunno, considering that something like nine years have passed since Fry was unfrozen by the events of Bender's Game, and Fry and Leela still aren't together- even after the countless amazing things that Fry has done for her- I just have to think that the thing that is keeping them apart is some really deep psychological problem that Leela has.  I mean, in reality its simply that the writer's dont want to change the dynamic of the show, but the only reason I can come up with for a person to act the way Leela has in real life is that she's got some sort of strange fear that Fry will reject her if she lets him get too close.

@kim: Don't worry, I'm not sinking into melodrama.  Not yet, anyway.  I put alot of thought into this section, and I eventually decided that Tura's response was what should be expected.  So far there have been two times in the history of the show when Leela was on the verge of losing it: when she thought she'd killed Fry during The Sting, and when she thought she'd just discovered the two mutants who'd killed her parents.  Clearly, she gets a little unstable when her friends and family are in danger.  In this case, her parents are in danger and she cant do a thing about it, and to top it off, she gets to carry the knowledge around in the back of her head that she's responisble in some sense, because she and Leela are really the same person. 

For weeks now, Tura has been forced to sit around and let Leela handle everything for her, and Tura's need to be in charge can't deal with that.  As the story progresses and Leela makes more decisions that seem like mistakes to Tura because she isn't their and doesnt have the whole picture, Tura will grow to despise Leela more and more, even though she herself would have made all of the same decisions in Leela's place. If you don't like that Tura called her parallel self a bitch, then you won't like what's coming later...

Don't worry, the humor wont dissapear.  The emotional stuff isn't going away either, though.  This whole fic is a thinly-veiled exploration of Leela's flawed psyche.  On the one side we've got Tura, who is removed from the action and is looking at events through her emotional side.  Leela, on the other hand, is thrust right into the middle of the action and is continuously relying on the calm, collected persona she adopts when she is acting as Captain.  And in the middle is Fry, trying to juggle both of them.  For now, he only has to deal with one at a time.  That's going to change.

[Reply #347 on:]

SO, kim:

When I read the section where Tura flames Leela, I too hesitated a moment, surprised, but for the reasons that SO articulated so well in an earlier post, I thought it made sense, considering her character.  As I mentioned to SO offline, my only small concern about the story has been skepticism that Leela would screw up the situation so badly in the "other" timeline, but then I started to think that writers tend to assign superhuman abilities to Leela, so this situation is actually more realistic.

In short, more please.  I think your characterization skills, always strong, are now quite impressive!  That is, Leela/Tura's emotional meltdowns are as well written as your explosions...

He certainly did do a good job.  Its always been amazing to me how tenacious he is with these fics.  By the time he finally posts something it has usually gone through half a dozen or more drafts.  Like you said, English is a second language for him, so he has alot of trouble with the actual mechanics of writing a story in English, but he's never satisfied until he's corrected every single last minute grammar and spelling mistake in the story.  I'm sorry to say that he doesn't lurk here anymore, though.  I still dont know what happened, but some assholes(s?) managed to drive him away from the board permanently.

[/Casablanca]  I am shocked, SHOCKED, to discover that there are assholes on PEEL. [/Casablanca]

[Reply #348 on:]

Hi JN.

Looking forward to the resumption of Rush Moon.

What I came up with, in regards to Tura's psychological state: She's brooding over her ineffectual situation - her emotional matrix is being skewed by not being able to be a part of the action.

As I mentioned to SO offline, my only small concern about the story has been skepticism that Leela would screw up the situation so badly in the "other" timeline

Interesting. Leela's actions so far with the sewer-dwellers have not exactly yielded stellar results, no, but then it wasn't really her fault that they went behind her back to bust Fry and Bender out of prison. Well, should definitely be illuminating to see what those further "decisions that seem like mistakes" will be.

[Reply #349 on:]

[/Casablanca]  I am shocked, SHOCKED, to discover that there are assholes on PEEL. [/Casablanca]

Hey...

It wasn't me this time, I promise!

[Reply #350 on:]

Tura slept all morning and into the early afternoon.  Fry didn’t mind; she could sleep as long as she wanted.  He didn’t mind putting off the moment in which she awoke and found out he’d made up some story about her being too sick to fly so that Hermes would give her the day off.

When Fry had gotten back from the donut place down the street and found Tura snoring softly in the Professor’s padded conference chair, he’d been unable to make himself wake her up.  She just looked so beautiful like that, her body relaxed and her mouth slightly open as she breathed gently in and out.  He knew the moment he said something to wake her that the tension would creep back into her features, and her face would lock into that ever-present half-frown that hid what she was thinking and what she was feeling from the outside world, and from him.  There was no way he was going to ruin her moment of peace by forcing her back to reality.  And so he did what he did best; he acted on impulse without regard to how much trouble it would create for him .

The Professor’s chair had a built in antigrav-pump, which Fry managed to activate by randomly pressing buttons on the chair’s armrest control panel.  When the chair was finally hovering, he carefully guided it through the sliding door into the lounge.  There was probably a button that activated robotic software of some sort that could have guided the chair on its own, but Fry had decided not to look for it when one random button push had deployed a set of nasty looking laser cannons.

When the chair was hovering next to the couch, Fry awkwardly placed his arms around Tura’s back and transferred her as gently as he could to the couch’s worn yellow cushions.  Tura stirred and muttered something unintelligible, but didn’t wake.  She lay there until two in the afternoon while Fry hung around and made sure that no one disturbed her.  With Tura ‘sick’, Amy was acting Captain, and it hadn’t been hard- even for Fry- to get the gullible intern to buy the excuse that he couldn’t go on the day’s delivery because he needed to stay behind and make sure Tura got well.  It hadn’t occurred to him at the time that, when Tura woke up and discovered that she’d slept through the day’s mission- and through whatever events were happening at the same time in the other timeline-, he’d be right there in the crosshairs to take the brunt of her anger.

Fry was lugging a box of tax forms through the lounge on the way to Hermes’s office when Tura’s eye finally snapped open.  Her still-fuzzy brain must have caught the change in her surroundings and overreacted, because she jumped into a sitting position so suddenly that Fry, startled, dropped what he was carrying and sent a stack of carefully sorted papers tumbling all over the floor.  The delivery boy winced, but didn’t even attempt to pick up the pile.  He had a bigger bullet to dodge first.

“How’d I get in here?” Tura asked with a yawn.  “I must’ve dozed off for a couple of minutes.”  The cyclops stood, stretched, and made her way over to one of the coffee cups that was still sitting on the table from that morning.  Fry waited nervously as Tura reached her cup and turned to him.  “So, did you get those donuts- agh, stupid sun.”  She blinked hard against the bright afternoon sunlight that was streaming in through the bay window.  Then she blinked again, and her eye slowly swiveled toward Fry.  The delivery boy coughed and smiled back sheepishly.

“Fry, this is the part where you tell me Proxima Centauri just exploded, and that’s why it’s bright and sunny at 5:00 in the morning, or I kick your ass.”

“Uhh yeah, well you see, the thing about that is…”
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________________

“I still can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

“Oh, come on, Tura.  You can’t just sit around the office and wait for the Professor to come up with a way to send you back to your timeline.  If anyone that’s been over in your timeline shows up with some news, they’ll call you and let you know.  Everybody knows how important this is to you.”

“Yeah, I know.”  Tura frowned and looked down at her drink.

Fry looked around.  He’d always liked this place; it held some good memories.  He’d first discovered that there was a coffee shop right across from Planet Express a couple years earlier.  It had been one of his and Leela’s favorite hangouts until…  Well, maybe the memories weren’t entirely good.  I told her that I loved her.  I tried for so long to find the right moment to say it.  And she almost loved me back.  Almost.  If, only…  “I was so close…” 

“Yes, I remember.”  Tura murmured into her tea, but Fry was staring wistfully off into the distance and didn’t hear.

The two of them sat and chatted well into early evening.  It was only when the sun began to sink behind the nearby buildings that they finally decided to take the waitress’s not-so-subtle hints that it was time for them to go.  Fry offered to pay, as he’d been doing every time he and Leela went anywhere almost automatically for years.  Leela invariably refused, but Fry always got the feeling that she thought it was sweet of him to make the gesture, so he kept on doing it anyway.  It had become sort of a ritual between the two of them, even a game perhaps.  He would offer to pay, smiling to show that he knew what the answer would be, and then she would smile back, thank him, and tell him that it “wouldn’t be necessary”. So when Tura smiled and said “how about next time?” he almost choked on his own tongue.

Tura just stood there and smiled patiently while all of Fry’s synapses tried to fire at once.  Later, he would realize how funny he must have looked, sitting there twitching while he looked at Tura like she’d grown an extra head. “Did, did you just…?”  Fry’s voice trailed off.

To her credit, Tura had managed to keep a straight face this whole time.  “Yes Fry, I did.  I can’t really believe it myself, but I did.  How about Elzar’s, tomorrow night?  Maybe right after work?”

Somehow, Fry managed to agree, say goodbye, and get away without exploding all over the sidewalk under the pressure of the thoughts and feelings that were roaring around inside his skull.  Tura had just asked him out on a date!  He’d been waiting for that to happen for so many years that it didn’t even seem possible that it could have finally happened.  It was the most incredible, most perfect day of his life.  Or at least, it should have been.  So why was there a small part of him that was telling him that this wasn’t right, that it wasn’t what he wanted?

I’ve been trying to get Leela to go out with me ever since that cruise where the ship got sucked into a black hole.  Why am I not happy now that she said yes?  He thought about it for most of the way back to his apartment before he finally figured it out.  Because Tura isn’t Leela.  He shook his head.  But that’s stupid.   The Professor says they’re exactly the same.  They’re both Leela; what difference does it make which timeline Tura came from?

Fry sighed long and hard.  It seemed so typical of his life that something that seemed so wonderful could happen to him, and yet, when it happened, it would turn out not to be what he had expected at all.  What he really needed was a good friend to talk this over with, a friend that wouldn’t try to blackmail him with the information later.  That usually meant Leela, or Scruffy, though the janitor wasn’t really around all that much to talk to, for some reason. 

Fry laughed derisively at himself.  Yeah, that’s just what I need to do, ask Leela for tips on what to do about being asked out by her exact duplicate.  That’d go over well.  Leela was going to find out eventually, though.  Tura would probably tell Aimee, and then everyone else would know ten minutes later.  It’s probably better if I tell Leela in person.  Better for their friendship, anyway.  Probably not for his mental health.  And then there was the other problem.  What about Phil?  Fry tried to think how he himself would react if Leela had offered to go on a date with Phil.  I’d probably want to kill him.  Great.  So I’ll get to be the first person to kill myself on purpose without committing suicide.  Hopefully I’ll at least have some more time in this reality before I get zapped over to Tura’s reality and have to face Leela.  Actually, come to think of it, its been awhile since I was over there in-

Pop.

Suddenly he was running flat out down a dark passageway, guided only by a blur attached to a ponytail.  Damnit. 

[Reply #351 on:]

Aww. I really enjoyed reading this whole part, especially that first section with Fry being so considerate towards Tura... I am actually liking the developments here. You manage to write this kind of stuff without being at all soppy, and it comes across as very sweet. For instance, these few lines -

He knew the moment he said something to wake her that the tension would creep back into her features, and her face would lock into that ever-present half-frown that hid what she was thinking and what she was feeling from the outside world, and from him.  There was no way he was going to ruin her moment of peace by forcing her back to reality.  And so he did what he did best; he acted on impulse without regard to how much trouble it would create for him.

..that illustrates both the particular moment and the dynamics of their relationship so beautifully.   JN is right about your characterization skills.

Also liked this very much, it's quite good:

So I'll get to be the first person to kill myself on purpose without committing suicide.

Ahh, and all right, so Fry is finally back in the alternate timeline now. What a most inopportune time, of course. Fascinating to see what you've got in store now.

[Reply #352 on:]

He knew the moment he said something to wake her that the tension would creep back into her features, and her face would lock into that ever-present half-frown that hid what she was thinking and what she was feeling from the outside world, and from him.  There was no way he was going to ruin her moment of peace by forcing her back to reality.  And so he did what he did best; he acted on impulse without regard to how much trouble it would create for him.

I really liked that line too.

[Reply #353 on:]

First off: another solid chapter. Two Leelas in one timeline you say? That's going to be fun.

@THM: I dunno, considering that something like nine years have passed since Fry was unfrozen by the events of Bender's Game, and Fry and Leela still aren't together- even after the countless amazing things that Fry has done for her- I just have to think that the thing that is keeping them apart is some really deep psychological problem that Leela has.

I think that is a big part of it; Leela just doesn't think she's worth enough to attract a decent guy. Therefore, any guy that she does attract, especially a 'good' one that sticks around a while, has something really wrong with him - the Rumsfeld Rule of Evidence is applied, and she ends up destroying the relatiionship in order to root out the thing that'll destroy the relationship. (Armchair psych degrees are fun, aren't they?) However, I think it's more than that; despite her subconscious desire to sabotage any good relationship she might come across, she has a conscious desire to land a good 'catch' and be seen to have caught a good catch, so as to 'prove' that she has worth (and therefore defeat that mostly unvoiced opinion that she's worthless). Of course, having not so much as taken an undergraduate course in psychology, I could be wrong.

I mean, in reality its simply that the writer's dont want to change the dynamic of the show, but the only reason I can come up with for a person to act the way Leela has in real life is that she's got some sort of strange fear that Fry will reject her if she lets him get too close.

Fear of rejection? Absolutely; also, see what I said above about her (mostly) subconscious idea of unworthiness/worthlessness. I'm sure that both things are there. Kinda sad, really. :/

[Reply #354 on:]

I'm back, and I come bearing updates!
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______

Leela had spent most of her day underground with the mutants, but she’d finally risked a trip up to the surface in the early afternoon, once she realized that the predicament that she, Bender, and Phil had found themselves in would likely spread to everyone at Planet Express, if she didn’t do something to cover the fact that Phil was employed there.  It had taken a lot of willpower to explain to Hermes what was going on, and that she had been using Planet Express as a base of operations for it, but in the end the Jamaican wasn’t as furious as she’d expected.  After a flurry of phrases of the ‘sweet X of Y’ variety, he’d actually thanked her for warning him early enough that the police were likely going to be looking through his office, so that he could ‘dispose of a few things’.  Whatever that meant.  The important thing was that Hermes had changed his books to show that Phil had been fired six months earlier, which ought to clear Planet Express- and its employees- from any suspicion of being involved in any mutant conspiracies.

A sort of reality check had settled in over the mutants during the course of the day.  The adrenaline fueled excitement and self-assuredness had worn off and a hint of uncertainty slowly crept into the atmosphere.  The problem was that nobody really knew what was coming.  The police would respond to what the mutants had done in order to protect their image, everyone agreed on that.  Less certain, however, was what the scale of the response would be.  Would it be a couple of cops in riot gear poking their nightsticks around, hoping to find Fry hiding in a closet somewhere, or, on the other extreme, would they send the national guard into the sewers, and use allegations of a mutant ‘plot’ as an excuse to expel the mutants by force?  Leela expected something somewhere in the middle.  The internet was buzzing with demands for the government to get rid of the ‘monsters under our streets’, but, realistically, that wasn’t going to happen.  It would be up to Poopenmeyer to give the order to clear the sewers.  Leela thought she knew the politician well enough to be reasonably sure that he wouldn’t overreact and send an army into the sewers.  Not when he had no way of knowing whether the mutants could fight back.

The real trouble, Leela knew, wouldn’t come from the above-grounders, but from the mutants themselves.  They had always been peaceful in the past, but then, no one had ever threatened to tear down their homes before.  Now that the mutants had finally made a move against the oppressive Upper City, there was no way she could prevent the retaliation.  Her job now was to make sure it didn’t escalate out of control.  If the mutants overreacted when the retaliation came, things could end up in a downward spiral leading straight to Robot Hell.

Everything really revolved around Phillip Fry, as things seemed to do a disproportionate amount of the time.  To the mutants, the delivery boy had become a symbol of their stand against the Upper City; they wouldn’t give him up without a fight, a fight that could not be allowed to happen.  But, at the same time, Phil had to be protected, or he’d very quickly end up being executed for some combination of fleeing police custody and being some sort of imagined mutant terrorist bent on overthrowing the government. 

 Much of the day had been spent trying to figure out what to do with Phil.  The easiest thing would have been to just put him and Bender somewhere out of harm’s way deep in the sewer where no one would be likely to find them.  The trouble with that approach was that Phil and Bender couldn’t go hide in the sewers alone without ending up hopelessly lost, drowned, eaten, or all of the above, and no one wanted to volunteer to cower around in the tunnels while the Surface Dwellers were threatening to invade their homes.  Leela would have volunteered, but she had to reluctantly admit to herself that she didn’t know the sewers any better than her two friends did.  Finally Vyolet, of all people, was the one who volunteered for the job.  Apparently she still felt guilty for the trouble she’d caused earlier.  Phil hadn’t been too thrilled at the prospect of Vyolet being his tour guide, and neither had Leela, but there wasn’t really any other alternative. 

Another issue was what Leela herself was going to do when the police showed up.  Leela was the mutants’ only link with the world outside the sewers.  It wouldn’t exactly do to have a bunch of New New York’s finest see her below ground.  Of course, with the mayor already close to guessing her true heritage and with two of her coworkers suspected of being involved in sinister mutant plot, it wouldn’t be long before the cops started to turn up the heat on her anyway.  No one had any incriminating evidence that could be used to arrest her yet, but it would not be long before the authorities realized that she was somehow involved in all this.  She would have to be careful when she ventured out to the surface, and never stray too far from the nearest manhole.

Leela arrived at a manhole cover that was suitably far enough from Planet Express and knelt down.  She was in a side alley; there didn’t look to be anyone around but her.  Satisfied, she removed the manhole cover and clambered down the ladder, pausing only long enough to silently slide the cover back into place, relieved at a clean getaway.  All she had to do now was to keep the mutants’ nerves from fraying.  The police had no idea where the mutant village they were looking for was located; everyone agreed on that.  And it would take days for them to figure it out, all the while the mutants would be feeding Leela information.  When the raid finally came, there would be ample warning. 
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______

It happened that evening just before sunset.  Leela was in her parents’ living room, lecturing Phil on why he had to go hide like a sissy and she didn’t, when the lights went out.  In a big way.  The house lights, the streetlights, even the giant floodlights mounted on the rock ceiling far overhead; they all went out in an instant.  It was the agreed upon signal that surface dwellers were on their way.

Leela quickly grabbed her pistol from the flour jar where her mother- who disliked the whole idea of having guns in her house- had forced her to put it.  Her father picked up the big antimatter rifle and hefted it experimentally.  Leela didn’t like the idea of her father having a gun any more than her mother liked her having one, but she couldn’t exactly say no.

As Leela, Morris, Phil, and Bender hurried through the streets toward Undercity Hall- the designated assembly point in case of an armed assault on the town- Leela kept expecting to run into a firefight, but the only people she saw in the almost perfect darkness were nervous faces peering out of windows lit by candlelight or the occasional mutant standing on a porch with a two-by-four held at the ready.

The lights came back on as the group was reaching Undercity Hall.  That was the all-clear signal.  Leela silently hoped that it had just been a false alarm, or maybe even a poorly-timed power failure, but she needed to check things out, just to be sure.  There was a small group of mutants standing in the open at the bottom of Undercity Hall’s wooden staircase.  Curious, Leela jogged up to them to ask if anyone knew what was going on, only to hear a familiar voice desperately call out to her for help from the midst of the mob,

“Leela!”

“Amy?! What are you doing here?!”  In the center of the ring of mutants armed with clubs and metal bars was the Martian intern, covered from head to toe in brown sludge, and looking just about as miserable and scared as humanly possible.

 “Hermes sent me!  The police showed up at Planet Express, I guess to search for Phil.  They asked us a bunch of questions, and one of them wanted Hermes to tell him everything he could about you!”

“Uh, is she, like, a bad guy, or what?”  One of the mutants asked in confusion.  Leela ignored her for the moment.  A little alarm was going off in the back of her head.

“Why did the cops want to know about me?” She asked.

“I don’t know.  They just said they wanted to ask you some questions, but Hermes looked really worried.  He sent me down here to tell you not to risk coming above ground anymore.”

So much for me being the mutants’ connection with the outside world.  Leela thought glumly.  “Okay, but then what was that blackout all about?”

“I can answer that.”  Came Raoul’s voice from down the boardwalk.  The head mutant moved to Amy’s side and guided her out of the middle of the well-armed mob.  “It seems your friend slipped on the ladder when she was descending into the sewer; it’s just a good thing that the only sludge that causes mutation on contact is in the town lake.  Anyway, someone heard the scream and the splash, and sounded the alarm.”

Leela was just about to reply when the Other Bender cleared his throat.  “You know, I probably use this word so often that it’s lost its effect, but...”  He made a noise as if he was clearing his nonexistant throat.  “You’re all a bunch of stupid chumps.”

Leela turned to regard the robot.  Frankly, she’d completely forgotten that he was there.  “What, Bender?”

“Look, the cops are trying to find this place so that they can grab this Fry and me, but they don’t know where it is, right?”

“Yeah, so?”  asked a mutant that Leela didn’t know.

“So, how do you find someone when you don’t know where he is, and the only people that do know where he is ain’t talking?”

There was a moment of confused silence, and then a sudden jolt of electricity shot up Leela’s spine.  You idiot!  Why didn’t you see that?!  “You follow that person’s friends until they lead you to him.”  She cursed loudly.  “Everybody, get back to your homes!  Fry, Bender, you’re with me.  We have to get you out of here!”  Leela pushed Phil and Bender in the direction of the tunnel where they were supposed to meet Vyolet in case the robot and the delivery boy needed to disappear in a hurry.  Hopefully she was already on her way there to meet them. 

Before Leela could take off running, a voice called out to her from behind.  “Leela!” came her father’s voice.  The PE Captain spun around to find Morris watching her from a few meters away.  He had the big antimatter rifle cradled in his arms.  “Be careful, alright?”

Leela ran to him and the two of them embraced.  “I will Dad.  Watch after Mom for me.”

Bender cleared his throat.  “Are you squishy meatsacks about done?  I’d like to be gone before people start shooting at us.  Getting bullet dings out of my ass aint exactly a picnic, you know.”

“Coming Bender.”  Leela let go of her father, squeezed his hand, and rejoined her friends.  They began to run.

  A minute later the lights went out a second time.  This time they stayed out.

[Reply #355 on:]

Whee, more!

... though... I have to confess, I'm having a little trouble reading this. It's uncomfortable reading it in pieces - not because of cliff-hangers or anything like that, it just feels like it's best appreciated as a unified whole. So, with that in mind, I'm going to wait until you're finished and read the whole thing through from start to finish.

Excellently written so far. You're catching details that other writers tend to miss and your pacing is superb.

[Reply #356 on:]

uhh, you might want to reconsider waiting, Arch.  I just finished typing page 100 a few weeks ago, and the story is about half way done...  Estimated finishing date: somewhere between Xmas and never.

[Reply #357 on:]

Oh, that'll tide me over till never, then.            

... Sooo, if it's excellently written and the pacing is superb, why is it a problem reading it in pieces then?   Just saying.

Anyway, I'm not having any trouble reading this in installments, sO. You are doing a good job with the pacing and plot advancement - your outlines n' things probably help with that - and I'm still ponderous about the Vyolet situation..  is she really offering to help here or is there some slightly more sinister motive?  This is a fairly 'serious' section, but probably necessary to the transitional development.

You have a word missing in each of these two sentences:

So, how do you find someone when you don’t know he is, and the only people that do know where he is ain’t talking?

Getting bullet dings out of my aint exactly a picnic, you know.

"Where" in the first one, whichever part you intended in the second.

And Fry popped/is about to pop back into this timeline, no?   Always ready for more of this, at any time.

[Reply #358 on:]

You have a word missing in each of these two sentences:

Well, that doesn't reflect well on the beta, does it?

I can understand how a plot can be hard to understand without frequent posts; sometimes I read the updates, and once the story is finished, read the entire thing over.  Of course, the number of stories that actually finish is depressingly small.

I'm curious about how Phil is going to get involved in this increasingly complex situation, if at all.

Um, is it possible to guess when the next batch of writing is coming, SO?  I'm kinda looking forward to it!

[Reply #359 on:]

sometimes I read the updates, and once the story is finished, read the entire thing over.

Oh, I do that too; but with the very few good stories going on right now, of course I like to read and keep up with the updates.

Well, that doesn't reflect well on the beta, does it?

Eh, I've just kinda been doing that lately; you know I did it to you too.   :P    Don't mind
me.
In any case, I'm glad you two academic-institution-ers are back.