Esso-teric: soylentOrange's Fanfic Thread

[Reply #440 on:]

Well, assuming you're still alive / don't have footballs in your eye sockets to read this, w00t more story. Exposition! Interesting trend here of Fry/Phil having the good ideas and Leela turning more to still focusing on internal matters, ish. Might just be reading things into it. I'm really looking forward to Kif trying to delay Zapp, that seems like a gold mine, and Cubert knowing his place (I actually don't mind Cubert as much as most, I think).

Hehe, degrease.

[Reply #441 on:]

You should've posted a top-of-the-page football wrangle or at least tape measure or something, heh.

Well, assuming you're still alive / don't have footballs in your eye sockets to read this

Assumption indeed , he hasn't been around for several days.

You still all right, Essie?                  ..I'm truly sorry.

(I actually don't mind Cubert as much as most, I think).

Yeah, as I guess you know I don't either.  When used well, he can be quite a humorous addition, and a source of almost Professor-like 'profundity'.

Hehe, degrease.

I know. 

[Reply #442 on:]

yes, I'm still alive.  My boss overrode me and passed the guys.  Hooray for the double standard!  I hate the American school system

[Reply #443 on:]

Ah, crap, yeah, you had a feeling that might happen.  So typical.  Well, screw it, at least that means they won't be coming after you.
Plus you still had the satisfaction of catching them, embarrassing them and failing them.


Still pretty hardcore.

[Reply #444 on:]

so, I've been trying to learn how to use Autodesk's 3ds Max software to do modelling for the research project I'm working on, and I managed to cobble this together over the last few days.  



It's not quite finished yet, (the turret isn't right, and I still need to add some details to the fins and some engine exhaust) but I wanted to post it before I accidentally do something that destroys the whole model... again...

[Reply #445 on:]

Shiny! Looks like you rendered it with a wide angle lens. Not bad given how little time you've had to work on it. Any chance of a few more shots from different angles?

[Reply #446 on:]

sure, give me a couple of days to play with it some more and I'll post some better stills.

[Reply #447 on:]

*bump*

Okay, I'm back.  And I lied.  I won't be posting any more screenshots of that 3d model of the ship, because I threw it out.  Here's something precisely 1.37 jillion times better:

[Reply #448 on:]

Sweet merciful crap! That's fanastic.

[Reply #449 on:]

You're right, it is better.

[Reply #450 on:]

Hey, sO! Well look who dropped by. With ship renderings. Nice; I especially like the second-from-bottom one.. But they're obviously all well-done. I would say they are better, though maybe only by Avogadro's number or something.       About how long did they take you to do?

the research project I'm working on

What research project are you working on?

[Reply #451 on:]

Hi folks.  It'll still be a little while before I get a chance to update GSR, but, in the mean time, here's an upcoming scene:

[Reply #452 on:]

It kinda looks like a plastic baby's toy.

[Reply #453 on:]

  No need to be rude.

[Reply #454 on:]

I didn't say that was bad, babies are cute.

[Reply #455 on:]

Hi folks.  It'll still be a little while before I get a chance to update GSR, but, in the mean time, here's an upcoming scene:

So anyway, it's the green green goop of home?

[Reply #456 on:]

Ohhhhhhhhh Thats the sewers
I couldn't make it out before, Looks nice.

[Reply #457 on:]

Waterfall?

[Reply #458 on:]

... plastic baby's toy? 

yes, it's the sewers.  The camera is in an inlet pipe far overhead.  I know my rendering skillz aren't great, but I thought the glowing green liquid and the stalagmites would be a pretty big giveaway.  The green liquid in the pipe is falling into the lake below.  The searchlights are coming from open manhole covers in the cave ceiling.

[Reply #459 on:]

I meant the ship, The render looked so real at first I thought it was an actual toy.

[Reply #460 on:]

ah, okay, I'll give you that.  The material I used for the hull was called 'metallic paint', but I agree that it looks more like shiny plastic. 

I think I'll give the 3ds max stuff a rest now.  Everyone here knows my time would be better spent writing.  (Or doing something useful?  Nah, I wont go that far.)  Also, the Planet Express that I've been working on in 3ds would look silly posted here alongside what Freak is doing without major work that I just plain dont want to do.

[Reply #461 on:]

Impressive. The newer ones of the ship look so real...hell, with rendering that good, I say that if the new series is a disappointment, f*ck'em! We can make our own shows! In 3D! With blackjack! And hookers!

Well, maybe just the hookers blackjack...

[Reply #462 on:]

with blackjack and hookers, you say? Throw in some free booze and I'll sign up right now!

[Reply #463 on:]

with blackjack and hookers, you say? Throw in some free booze and I'll sign up right now!

Cool!

I mean, those pics are really high quality - they remind me of shots of the Enterprise from several of the Trek movies. Great job!

[Reply #464 on:]

I know my rendering skillz aren't great, but I thought the glowing green liquid and the stalagmites would be a pretty big giveaway.

Your skillz are fine; and it is obviously the sewers.

About how long did they take you to do?

What research project are you working on?

?

[Reply #465 on:]

oh, whoops, did I forget to reply to some questions you had, kim?  Didnt mean to.

The ship took me about 3 days to do.  The sewers took a few hours. 

The research I am doing involves high-energy particles (called cosmic rays) that slam into our atmosphere at large fractions of the speed of light.  A cosmic ray can be anything from an electron to a uranium nucleus.  They're on the atomic scale, but they pack as much kinetic energy as a baseball hit by a major league player.  When they hit us, they create a shower of other particles, like electrons and muons, that rain down onto the surface, and we've built a huge array of detectors down in Argentina to detect them.  The overall goal of the project is to figure out where these things are coming from- whether they're from a nearby object like a neutron star, or whether they're intergalactic in nature.  My little piece of the research is to help figure out how different properties of the particle shower that results from the collision of the cosmic ray relates to the cosmic ray's initial energy.

[Reply #466 on:]

Ah; sounds amazing. Thank you much. I appreciate the detail. As I've said before, I love reading about stuff like that lately.  That did me some good right now.

Hope it goes well.

[Reply #467 on:]

*bump*  Hi folks.  JN is still off somewhere poking whales with a stick or something, so I don't have any more GSR to post (though I've written quite a lot).  I do have another rendering though.  It's a city street that will hopefully end up in the videogame I have planned, as long as I can figure out how to translate it into openGL c++ code.

[Reply #468 on:]

whats the video game going to be about?

[Reply #469 on:]

Well, a long time ago I wrote a little 2D game in visual basic where the player had to get Fry through New York city on his bicycle so that he could deliver a pizza to Applied Cryogenics.  There was lots of dodging cars and pedestrians.  I'm thinking about creating an amped-up, 3d version of that, without the futurama connection.

[Reply #470 on:]

JN is still off somewhere poking whales with a stick or something

You mean, GAINING FOREIGN POLICY EXPERIENCE.


     

You are confoundingly indefatigable, sO...   Writings, renderings, cosmic ray research, and computer video game stuff..     hope you can figure out that code.
I'd figure you can.

Well, a long time ago I wrote a little 2D game in visual basic where the player had to get Fry through New York city on his bicycle so that he could deliver a pizza to Applied Cryogenics.  There was lots of dodging cars and pedestrians.

Haa,  awesome.
Frogger!!

If we're asking questions, how is the research project coming?

[Reply #471 on:]

heh, yeah, it was like frogger on steroids. 

You are confoundingly indefatigable, sO...   Writings, renderings, cosmic ray research, and computer video game stuff..

  Well, truth is, alot of it is related.  I'm rendering things so that I have something for my video game, and the video game programming is practice for the code I have to create for research.  And writing keeps me sane enough to do the rest of it. 

The research is going well, thanks.  I'm not really doing anything interesting; as the new guy, I'm stuck with all of the tedious stuff that nobody else can be bothered with.  When a cosmic ray hits the atmosphere, it kicks off a shower of particles that rain down onto the ground.  There are three mathematical models that help predict the number of particles that should be present at any given height in the atmosphere.  Why we need three, I have no idea- and I don't dare ask- but there you go.  Trouble is, the guy I work for doesn't like the variables that each function is defined by.  He likes things written in terms of other parameters, so I get to do all of the nasty conversions between one set of variables and the other.  But hey, it gives me a way to pay the bills.

[Reply #472 on:]

*devours it up*

Capital.
Luck with everything.  And, uh, variable conversion is still probably better than, say, religious conversion, I guess?   Definitely hope JN gets back soon though, dammit.  I wonder if he even knows about Futurama being renewed yet.


Also a while ago in an e-mail I compared Super Pac-man to 'Pac-man on steroids'.

[Reply #473 on:]

Well, a long time ago I wrote a little 2D game in visual basic where the player had to get Fry through New York city on his bicycle so that he could deliver a pizza to Applied Cryogenics.  There was lots of dodging cars and pedestrians.  I'm thinking about creating an amped-up, 3d version of that, without the futurama connection.

So it's like Paper boy except, Pizza boy

excellent!

[Reply #474 on:]

*devours it up*

Capital.
Luck with everything.  And, uh, variable conversion is still probably better than, say, religious conversion, I guess?   Definitely hope JN gets back soon though, dammit.  I wonder if he even knows about Futurama being renewed yet.

WHAT!  WHAT?!

I'm on shore for a few days--gale winds, 18 foot seas predicted.  Couldn't see Russia from shore.  SO, would you mind sending the complete block of text you've written?  It helps to see as much ahead as possible, and I may have some time to review over next few days.

Seriously, Futurama has been renewed?  Gotta catchu up here...

[Reply #475 on:]

yes. seriously, my friend.  26 new glorious episode are on the way!

[Reply #476 on:]

warning:  the following few updates are rated 'S' for moderate shippiness and intermittent melodrama.  Viewer discretion is advised...
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______

In an entirely different worldline, Tura and Fry were walking back toward what Fry had just caught himself thinking of as Tura’s apartment.  Neither spoke, but a furtive glance in Tura’s direction told Fry that the silence was still an amicable one.  The purple-haired cyclops seemed content to walk at his side and admire the displays in the shop windows as they passed.

Fry was not sharing in his companion’s tranquility.  Something had been eating him up from the inside since the moment that he’d entered Elzar’s, and he was fairly sure that, for once, it wasn’t anything that the Neptunian had cooked for him.  It had started as a little knot of guilt in his stomach, and had slowly grown to the point that he was barely able to conceal his distress from Tura.

This is crazy.  Fry admonished himself.  What’s my problem?  I’m finally on a date with Leela; I’ve been waiting for this date for more than eight years!  And it had been a great evening.  Not even a great evening: a fantastic evening.  So why do I feel like I’m doing something really wrong?  

The answer came back at him with enough force that he almost tripped over his own feet.  Because she’s not Leela!

After first making sure that Tura hadn’t noticed him stumble, Fry turned inward again.  He marveled at his own outburst.  There was no difference between Leela and Tura.  The Professor had told him that time and time again.  It wasn’t even like Tura was a clone or a parallel universe duplicate.  She was Leela.

No, Leela is the woman you left crying in the sewers last night.

 Fry winced at the memory.  That hadn’t been one of his proudest moments.  Not that it was entirely his fault; he’d tried really hard to keep Leela from catching on to his date plans with Tura.  After having the truth about her heritage exposed to the public, Fry really hadn’t thought it a good idea to bring it up, and he had been right.

Leela’s reaction to Fry’s confession about the date had been… strange.  The only thing Fry could think of to compare it to was the game that he and his brother Yancy had played when they were kids.  One of them would sit in the swivel chair in their dad’s makeshift bomb shelter and close his eyes while the other would spin the chair as fast as he could.  Fry remembered trying to stand up afterward and feeling like the world was still reeling madly around him.  That’s how Leela had looked when he’d told her, like everything had been spinning wildly all around her.

She wasn’t mad at him.  That had surprised him- and worried him- most of all.  Maybe it was because she was so shocked, or maybe she’d gotten all her anger out when she’d kicked URL.  One kick wasn’t usually enough to do that, though.      

When Aimee had asked about the conversation, Fry had told her that Leela had yelled at him for ‘managing to find a way to date her without her permission’ and then stormed off, but that isn’t even close to what had happened.  He’d just said that because he’d wanted some time to think about what had transpired.  In reality, after she’d recovered from her apparent dizzy spell, she’d looked up at him with an expression of absolute non-comprehension and asked, simply,

“What?”  

When he repeated himself, she stared blankly at him for so long that it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.   Then she stood, mutely.  Fry reached out to help steady her, and she jerked away and started to walk in the direction of the staircase.  Fry pleaded with her to wait, but she just kept walking mechanically away.  

Later, as he’d passed her room on the way to the one he was sharing with Bender, he could hear sobs emanating from under her door.  He’d been too much of a coward to knock.  

And now, here I am, walking home with Tura like none of that ever happened.  Leela is over there in that other timeline- who knows, she might even be getting shot at right now!- and I’m on a date.  He knew that it was stupid to feel like he was somehow being disloyal- he didn’t exactly have any control over which timeline he happened to be in right now- but the image of Leela crying into her pillow absolutely refused to go away.  

And then, when she’s as miserable as I’ve ever seen her, I go and remind her that, while she’s stuck in some crazy parallel timeline thing, I still get to have a normal life.  Suddenly he remembered Leela accusing him of giving up on her.  She thinks that we’ve all decided that she’s not coming home.  So that’s why she was crying!  It’s not because I’m dating Tura; it’s because I’m dating at all!  It must look to her like all her friends are continuing on with their lives here in our timeline, and slowly forgetting about her!

And maybe I am.  Fry realized with a shock.  I accidentally called Tura ‘Leela’ today, and I’m already thinking of Leela’s apartment as belonging to Tura.  At this rate, even if Leela does get back…

Fry stopped cold in his tracks.  It was a couple of seconds before Tura realized that the delivery boy wasn’t next to her anymore.  She turned, and finding him staring ashen straight ahead, hastened back to his side.  “Fry, are you all right?”  She asked.

The delivery boy didn’t reply.  Even If?   Did I really just think that?  Oh no, Leela was right!  I have started to think that she might never get back to our timeline!  I’m giving up on her!

“Fry?”  When the delivery boy still didn’t say anything, Tura grabbed him by the wrist to try and jerk him out of his funk.  All Fry did was swivel his head to look right through her, which was spookier than Tura would have cared to admit.  

“Hey, Fry, wake up!  What the hell’s wrong with you?”  She shook him again.

This time Fry blinked, and the focus slowly crept back into his eyes.  “Huh?  Oh.  Uh, sorry.”

Tura gave the delivery boy a baffled look.  “Sorry?”  She said, letting go of his arm.  “What do you mean, sorry?  You look like you just saw a ghost!”

Fry’s mind raced to find an excuse for his strange behavior.  Unfortunately, he might as well have been trying to win the Space Daytona 500 with a tricycle.  “No, it was, uhh, nothing.”  

“That was an awfully big nothing.”  Tura replied skeptically.  When Fry just continued looking down at the sidewalk, she shook her head.  “Fine, keep your secrets.”  Then she crossed her arms.  “So, are you coming up, or not?”

Fry’s head snapped up in surprise.  “What?”

“I said, are you coming upstairs?”  Leela repeated.  “You were going to tell me after dinner about what happened in my timeline, remember? And I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to stand around out here in the cold.”

Upstairs?  What the heck is she- With a jolt, Fry realized that they were standing on the sidewalk not ten feet from the entrance to Leela’s apartment building.  He’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t even noticed.  “Oh.”  And then he remembered the conversation that they’d had earlier, and the bad news that he’d promised to deliver.  “Oh!  Right, that.”  He bit his lip, thinking.  “Yeah, maybe we should go upstairs.”  

Tura led the way up the two flights of stairs to Leela’s apartment.  When they reached the entrance, Tura reached for the fingerprint scanner that would unlock the door for her.  She hesitated for a moment before touching the screen.  When she turned and saw Fry’s curious look, her face turned red.  “I know, I know; I’m being stupid.  Every time I open the door I just feel, you know, like I’m breaking in or something.”  The door swished open.  “It’s not really my apartment.”

Fry nodded in agreement as he followed Tura into the apartment.  He still felt a little strange every time he went to sleep in Phil’s apartment, knowing that it wasn’t really his bed that he was lying in.

While Fry stood in the middle of the front room and waited, Tura rummaged through her small pantry.  Soon she was thrusting a glass full of something blue- and, if the smell was to be believed, highly alcoholic- into his hands.  The delivery boy looked at the drink, then at Tura, and then at the drink again.  Cautiously, he raised it to his lips and took an experimental sip.  

He must have made a face, because Tura smiled at him.  “Venusian whiskey.  My dad recommended it to me.  The way you were talking earlier, I don’t think either of us wants to be entirely sober when you tell me what happened in my timeline yesterday.”

Fry thought about that.  Makes sense to me.  He took a long swig of the fiery liquid.

The only real furniture in Leela’s apartment that could be sat on was the overstuffed armchair that sat squarely in front of her television, the bed- and Fry’s brain couldn’t even process the idea of being near that- and two folding chairs that went with the card table that Leela generally ate her meals on.  Fry made his way to the table and sat down, and Tura sat down across from him.

“So,”  Tura said, taking a sip of whiskey and putting her glass on the table.  “What happened?”

Fry nervously cleared his throat.  “Well, you see…”  He stopped himself.  Okay Phillip, now think this through.  He told himself.  Don’t say anything stupid.  Right after Smitty and Url had slunk away from the sewers with their proverbial tails between their legs, Leela had turned to Fry and told him to be very careful when he told Tura what had happened.  She’d said that he needed to make sure to tell her when he was alone with her, to warn her first that there was bad news to lessen the shock, and, above all else, under no circumstances whatsoever just simply blurt out-

“They know!”  Oops.

Tura gave the delivery boy a look of total confusion.  “What?  What do you mean, they kn-”  The cyclops’s brain managed to catch up to her.

As Tura’s face turned dangerously neutral, Fry, knowing he had royally screwed up, started to babble.  “Look Tura, I’m really sorry.  I shouldn’t have said it like that.  Leela told me to be real careful, but I guess I got nervous or something.  But it’s okay, because Leela is going to fix everything so that-“

“Who knows?”  Tura asked coldly, cutting through Fry’s chatter.

Fry gulped.  She’s gonna kill me.  He thought.  I dunno if it’ll be this Leela or the other one, but, either way, Leela is gonna kill me.   “The, umm- the whole government,   and the DOOP.  And the media.  Oh, and-“  Shut up!  His brain ordered.    

Tura grimaced like she was in pain.  Fry noticed that her hands were shaking slightly.  She was obviously trying to hide her emotions from him, and he could only wonder if what she was concealing was grief, or anger.

“How?”  Tura managed through clenched teeth.  

Probably anger, Fry guessed.  “There was nothing anybody could’ve done.”  Fry said hurriedly.  “The police think Phil’s a mutant, and they found out where he works, and that you work there too.  They sorta, you know, pieced everything together from there.”  For some reason, Fry found himself unable to continue.  What are you doing?  That’s only half of the story!  A voice cried out in his head.  That’s not what gave them the proof that Leela was a mutant, and you know it!  But whether it was out of some need to protect his Captain, or simply his own subconscious sense of self-preservation, Fry was unable to mention the ambush in the sewers and Leela’s admission to Smitty and Url.

Seconds ticked by for an eternity while Tura rigidly stared at- or possibly through- the delivery boy.  At some point, Tura had taken hold of her whiskey glass.  Fry could see the tendons in her wrist straining with the force of her grip.

Fry was just about to risk warning her to loosen her grip, lest she shower them both with alcohol and shattered glass, when Tura stirred.  “So then, there was no way anyone could have stopped it?”  She asked, softly.

“No.  No way at all.”  Why am I not telling her the whole story?!

Tura sat back in her chair and exhaled like she was decompressing.  She looked down at the table for a few moments and then back up at the delivery boy.  When her eye met Fry’s, the delivery boy’s heart skipped a beat.  He’d seen this expression once before, just a little more than twenty-four hours earlier.  It was the same look of despair that had descended over Leela soon after the police had left the sewer.  

The last time, Fry had tried to give Leela some space, thinking that his presence would just make her feel worse.   But, this time, he knew that was the wrong answer.  With a silent certainty, Fry stood, picked up his chair, and sat down next to Tura.  She clung to him as a person would cling to a life raft in the middle of a stormy sea.  It’s day-jay-voo-doo all over again, Fry thought to himself as tears silently shed down down Tura’s face.

[Reply #477 on:]

Good that you updated again. This is really getting kind of sad.  I do feel bad for Leela and Tura.  And I can understand Fry being so confused about if Leela/Tura are actually the same person or not, since I still kind of am in a way too, but his conflicted feelings are set off nicely by the way each of them are acting - or reacting - and the knack you have for describing everything.
Guess the intermittent melodrama is necessary for the way you are shaping the storyline.

[Reply #478 on:]

The good news is that the confusion between Leela and Tura is about to go away.  Well, in a couple of updates, anyway.  We're getting to the end of part II, and events are about to take a 90 degree left turn.  That should be a good thing; it's high time something blew up.

[Reply #479 on:]

Guess the intermittent melodrama is necessary for the way you are shaping the storyline.

Well I wouldn't put it quite like that. The Leela/Tura stuff is dramatic, but it's cute and well done (natch) and I've enjoyed / am enjoying it. That said, also looking forward to this radical left turn (lol politics) that is apparently coming. Explosions fock year.