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Author Topic: Esso-teric: soylentOrange's Fanfic Thread  (Read 47656 times)
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JustNibblin

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #400 on: 04-21-2009 20:38 »

I hereby declare, in a public manner, that I did receive the latest update, but have not had a chance to read in detail.  What I have read, I really like.  By writing this here I going to motivate myself to get this to you within a few days, or risk the collective scorn of all the fans of this story.

!
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #401 on: 04-21-2009 21:32 »

just do me a favor and dont send it to me before friday.  I do not want to be tempted to play with that while I have all of this school work hanging over my head.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #402 on: 04-21-2009 22:58 »

And I hereby declare in a public manner that the last three posters in this thread are certified ironically humorous, though two of them have too much cosmic schoolwork.

"Collective ire" would have also been acceptable.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #403 on: 04-22-2009 00:23 »

we're not ironic!  We're just coincidental!

I have no idea what we're talking about
Sine Wave

Liquid Emperor
**
« Reply #404 on: 04-22-2009 00:38 »

I don't either, but I haven't slept in almost 36 hours. On the other hand I just finsihed and gave a presentation on dark matter and galaxy frmation you probably would have known like the back of the asteroid belt.

Everyone back to learning, or something.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #405 on: 04-22-2009 01:29 »

I have an asteroid belt, but it's kind of too heavy to wear.

I have no idea what we're talking about

Neither do I.
That's probably ironic.

Everyone back to learning, or something.

No. No more learning for you. BAD learning.  GO TO SLEEP.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #406 on: 04-22-2009 02:41 »

@Sine: You havent slept in 36 hours, and it's only wednesday?  Yep, sounds like you've been doing physics.  There's a reason why physicists have a reputation of being a little... nutty.  Anyone who routinely tries to do physics at 2am is bound to drive themselves just a little mad.

A presentation on dark matter and galaxy formation, eh?  Well, at least the first part should have been easy.  "I'll start by summarizing everything we know about dark matter...  [awkward silence] ...  And now, moving on to galaxy formation..."

Future Shock

Liquid Emperor
**
« Reply #407 on: 04-24-2009 06:17 »

Hahaha. Dark matter is probably the least understood thing of the universe. Except it's visible when Nibbler does it, for some reason. What's up with that?
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #408 on: 04-24-2009 22:47 »

Quote
Dark matter is probably the least understood thing of the universe
  No, women are tne least understood thing in the universe.  Ba-zing!

_____________________________ _____________________________ _______

“So how’d she take it?”

It was late afternoon the following day, and Fry was back in the original timeline helping Amy complete some minor repairs to the ship.  Fry’s upper body was buried in the guts of the ship’s underbelly, so Amy couldn’t see him grimace.  She didn’t have to see his face to get the message, though.  The two of them had been working together for so long that Amy could easily read the slight deflection in his posture.  The tensing of the muscles in his back and the shift of his weight told her everything that she needed to know.

She winced in sympathy as she imagined just exactly what that situation had to have been like for him.  “That bad, huh?”  She asked.

“Well, I mean, she didn’t actually hurt me, so I guess it could’ve been worse.”  Fry’s head emerged from the hull as the hover platform he was standing on descended to the hangar floor.  The delivery boy thought he caught the very tiniest of twitches in the corner of Amy’s mouth as the platform landed.  No doubt she was thinking that anyone else would have just used the nearby wooden step ladder to get up into the ship, rather than fussing with that old, finicky hovering pile of garbage.  Fry couldn’t be bothered with the ladder though.  Not when there was something cool that floated in the air that he could use instead. 

“You can take a man out of the Stupid Ages-“  Amy said, smiling sweetly.

“-But you can’t take the Stupid Ages out of the man.  Yeah, yeah, I know.”  It was their little private joke, well worn with far too much use.  “Anyway, the repairs are all done.”

“You coupled the primary drive manifold to the autonomous navigation matrix?”

“Uh…  I connected the blue thing to the green thing?”

“Right, and what about the primary weapon power buffer?  Did you remember to re-sequence it?”

“Uhh…”

Amy sighed in frustration.  “The purple thing?”

“Oh!  Yeah, I plugged it back in, just like you said.”

Amy nodded and started to reply, but then cut herself off to wave at someone.  Fry turned around to find Tura standing at the balcony that overlooked the hangar.  She was leaning over the railing, watching them.

“Hi Amy, hi Phil!”  Tura called. 

Huh?  Phil?  Fry thought, a little confused.  Then he remembered.  Oh right, I took my jacket off while I was working on the ship so that I wouldn’t get grease on it.  No jacket is supposed to mean I’m Phil.  “Actually, I’m Fry.”  He called back.

“Oh, okay, good.  If you’re still Fry in three hours, remember that we’re meeting at Elzar’s!”

Fry started to nod, but then hesitated.  “Uhh, actually Tura, we need to talk.”  Oops.  Okay, bad choice of words.

Half a second of absolute silence passed.  Out of the corner of his eye, Fry could see Amy staring at him in absolute disbelief.  And then suddenly Bender was there, as if by magic.  The bending unit could seemingly smell drama unfolding from the other side of the galaxy.

“Ooh, I feel somethin’ juicy coming on!”  Bender muttered excitedly, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

“You’re cancelling our date?”  Tura asked, her expression belying something between incredulity and hurt.

Fry shook his head emphatically.  “No, no, no!  It’s not that at all!  It’s just that- umm-“  The delivery boy glanced at his two other coworkers.  Leela told me to tell her in private so that, if she doesn’t take it well, she won’t have to deal with the shame of having other people see her not taking it well.  That doesn’t make much sense to me, but I guess I’d better listen.  “I uh, I think we’d better talk in private.”

 Amy had time to give both Fry and then Tura a worried look before her brain caught up with her.  She nodded to herself.  “Right.  I guess I’ll go hit the showers, or ask Hermes why I haven’t been paid this month, or otherwise not be here.  Come on, Bender.”  The intern grabbed the robot forcefully by the arm and started hauling him in the direction of the door to the hangar.  Bender tried to resist, of course.  He wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to cash in on whatever information was so sensitive that his pet wouldn’t discuss it in public.  Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for Fry, Amy knew all about the faulty magnetic shielding that surrounded the robot’s inhibition unit.  She’d claimed in the past that she’d started carrying a magnet with her at all times, after the time Bender had glued Kif’s eyelids shut as a joke.  It was probably a bluff, but when Amy’s hand moved pointedly to her front pocket, Bender weighed the probabilities and decided not to take the chance.  For now, he’d have to rely on the bugs he’d planted in the walls and ceiling to record the conversation for him.

Once the intern and the robot were safely out of earshot, Fry climbed the metal ladder that was mounted at the far end of the balcony and joined Tura by the conference table.  Something in his expression must have registered with Tura, because she was now frowning deeply.

“What is it?”  She asked.  “What’s wrong?”

Fry sighed and sat down at the conference table.  Tura sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.  “Come on, Fry.  Out with it.  Whatever it is, I promise I won’t be mad at you.”  Of course, neither of them actually believed that, but Fry appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

“Something really bad happened in your timeline today.  Leela told me not to tell you when everyone else was around so it wouldn’t seem quite as bad.”

That made Tura pause.  No doubt Leela knew that she and Fry were going out on a date; even if Fry had tried to keep it a secret, Leela would have known something was up and wrestled the truth out of him.  Tura knew Leela’s secret, and Leela knew that Tura knew her secret.  Leela could hide her feelings for Fry from the entire universe If she wanted to, but she couldn’t hide them from herself, or, in this case, herselves.  Tura had those same feelings for Phil; it had taken years, but she was finally able to admit it to herself.  She’d never been able to act on those feelings; not with Phil being part of her crew.  But now, here was Fry, and she had her chance. 

 No doubt Leela hated Tura right now almost as much as Tura detested Leela and her incompetent bungling.  Leela would think that Tura was intentionally trying to hurt her in the only way she could, by stealing Fry from her.  Considering that, whatever had happened in Tura’s timeline to convince Leela to coach Fry on how to spare her emotions must have been truly catastrophic.
 
Fry watched Tura’s face as she absorbed his words.  He could imagine a hundred different scenarios flashing through her mind, none of them good, as her brain tried to figure out what could have happened.  Not being very bright did have some advantages, he knew.  One of them was an inability to  summon enough brainpower to contemplate all of the possible horrible things that could happen to him. 

“Are my parents alright?”  Tura asked, fighting for calm. 

Fry wasn’t surprised that that was her first question.  “Yeah, they’re fine.  Your dad borrowed Leela’s big death ray thing, so they’ll be fine unless Cyborg Nixon attacks again.  It’s not-”

“What about the other mutants, and my crew?  Aimee, my Bender, Hermes, the Professor; are they all okay?”

“Yeah, everybody’s fine Tura.  Well, everybody except-“

“Me.”  Tura finished for him.  There were only three situations that she could imagine where Leela would set aside her anger and try to soften the blow to Tura’s psyche.  If nothing had happened to her parents or her friends and loved ones, then that meant something truly awful had happened to her, or at least, to the life that Tura would resume once she returned to her reality. 

Fry was a little nonplussed, having been interrupted twice now.  “Uhh, yeah.”  Until that moment, his eyes had been firmly planted on the scuffed surface of the old conference table, but now he swiveled his chair to look right at her.  “Tura, I dunno how to tell you this.  I know I’m not good with words or stuff, but-“

And Tura interrupted him again, this time by touching her index finger to his mouth.  Startled, the delivery boy fell silent. 

Tura gave her friend a very serious look.  “Fry” she said.  “Wait.”  For a moment the focus seemed to leave her eye as she retreated deep into herself to think.  Fry waited patiently for her to stir, and when she did, she nodded to herself.  “If you tell me right now, will I somehow be able to tell you something that might help the next time you get sent back to my reality?”

Fry thought about that for a moment.  “Uhh, no.  I mean, I don’t think so.”

Tura nodded again, this time with more certainty.  “Then don’t tell me.”

Fry looked at her like she’d just dared him to put a live baboon in his pants.  Which was bad, because the Professor actually had one playing solitaire in his lab at that very moment.  “Umm, what?”

“I said don’t tell me.  Not now.  Do you remember what you said back at the coffee shop?  About how I can’t just sit around and wait for the Professor to find a way to send me home?”  Tura waited for Fry’s acknowledgment.  “Well, I had a lot of time to think about that while the ship was on autopilot today, and I realized that you were exactly right.  If I keep torturing myself over what is going on back in my timeline, well, eventually it will drive me insane.  If there’s nothing I can do that will change anything, and the only person that is going to be affected by whatever happened is me, then don’t tell me right now. “

The redhead looked uneasy.  “I don’t know Tura.  I kinda think you oughtta know.”

“Then tell me tonight, after dinner.  If it’s as bad as it sounds like it is, then I don’t want to hear it right now, not if I can’t do a thing about it.”

 Fry gave Tura a long look, uncertain whether or not he had a right to keep to himself the fact that Tura’s mutant identity had been revealed.  A part of him felt like Tura had the right to not hear the news, but somehow it felt deceitful not to say anything.  It was easy for Tura to ask him to keep her in the dark when she didn’t know what it was that he wanted to tell her, but how would she react when he finally did tell her?  Would she be furious with him that he hadn’t told her earlier, regardless of what her wishes had been at the time?  Eventually, simple mathematics won the delivery boy’s internal war.  Math wasn’t normally his strong suit, but even he was able to figure out that risking the possibility that Tura would be angry with him in the future for not telling him was worth the certainty that Tura would be angry with him right now if he did tell her.  “Well…  Alright.  I mean, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”  Tura said confidently.  Fry really hoped that the confidence was real, and not just faked to make him feel better.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my apartment and change my clothes.  My tank top is still covered with dog hair from today’s delivery to Westminster II, the dog show planet.”  Tura squeezed Fry’s shoulder as she stood.  “I’ll see you at eight.  Oh, and before you go home and shower-“ Fry couldn’t help but notice the slight emphasis on the word shower- “make sure you put the fusion plasma injector back where it goes.  You must have disconnected it when you were helping Amy fix the ship.  It’s still sticking out of your back pocket.”

Alarmed, Fry slapped his right pocket, and sure enough, felt the telltale bulge of the injector, sitting right where he’d put it so that he wouldn’t forget about it.  “Oh, uhh yeah.  Sorry.”  He apologized sheepishly.

“It’s alright.  Just put it back.  I’d rather not explode tomorrow when I turn the ship on.”  She smiled.  “See you in a few hours.”
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______________________

“Yo, meat-sack.  Wake the hell up!”

“Mggf nh hlmm.”

Bender hesitated.  A brief search through his onboard Hitchhiker’s Guide to Human Behavior returned no matches for that sequence of syllables.  He leaned closer to the prostrate mammal, whose face was buried in a pillow.  “What’d you say?”

“Ung snnh, Mggf nh hlmm.”

Bender leaned closer and exhaled a large cloud of cigar smoke.  “What?”

There was a brief pause, and the figure seemed to slump a little bit into the plush bedding.  Then. abruptly, a single fleshy hand flew up out of nowhere and shoved him backward.  He collided with the wall as Leela sat up.

“I said, go to hell.”  She muttered, rubbing her eye.

Bender just took another pull on his cigar and sauntered back over to the bed.  “Been there, done that, stole the t-shirt.”

Leela turned to the robot and favored him with a glare that would have made Fry spontaneously combust.  “Bender, you’d better have a very good explanation for waking me up, not to mention somehow breaking into my room, which I know I locked. “

“Eh, I found the key when I was going through your mom’s purse.”  The bending unit ignored the nuclear bombs that were going off in the back of Leela’s eye.  He knew he was usually safe from physical harm until she’d had a cup of coffee or two.  “Anyway, I woke you up so you’d go fix Phil.  I think somebody broke him.”

The name Phil suddenly brought a maelstrom of memories from the night before to the surface of Leela’s mind.  The mental onslaught was a bit more than her still-groggy mind could process.  Holding her temples, she collapsed back onto the bed with a groan.  “What’s wrong with him?”  She asked finally.

“Oh, he saw some boring news program about how Planet Express is being raided and Hermes and the Professor are fugitives or something.”  Bender waved dismissively.  “Nothing Bender, related.  He won’t stop blabbing on about it.  I figure the only way to shut him up is for you to badger him until he starts to hate himself, you know, like you always do.”

The only solid object that Leela had within arm’s reach was the pistol that she had hidden under her pillow.  In one fluid motion it appeared in her hand and then sailed through the air in a smooth, parabolic trajectory toward Bender’s head.  Leela turned away to climb out from under the sheets, but she was quite pleased to hear the series of clangs that marked each time Bender’s head bounced off the floor behind her.
_____________________________ _____________________________ _____

Thanks to JN, as usual, for ramping up the humor and fixing my lazy grammar mistakes.
JustNibblin

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #409 on: 04-25-2009 00:15 »

Quote
Dark matter is probably the least understood thing of the universe
  No, women are tne least understood thing in the universe.  Ba-zing!

___

At least in terms of mathematics.  I once told my wife not to "go nonlinear" on me, during a disagreement.

She went nonlinear.  I thus concluded that women could not be modeled by mathematics, or at least, I should never say I'm even trying to model them with mathematics.

Anyway, it's always a pleasure to read your story.  I think this one is ringing emotionally true, and it's neat to see the plot elements falling into place.  There are some great scenes coming up too!
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #410 on: 04-25-2009 08:13 »

Why are you so awesome, sO?..                 I only just recently visited your site that you have linked in your profile for the first time; I have no idea why I never did sooner; hee, it's a nice little concoction. I really like some of those edited framegrabs you have up there, especially the ones called 'Nimbus' and 'PE Ship Nebula'. Those backgrounds are amazing. The 'Pirate Zap' one has really good perspective to it too.

A presentation on dark matter and galaxy formation, eh?  Well, at least the first part should have been easy.  "I'll start by summarizing everything we know about dark matter...  [awkward silence] ...  And now, moving on to galaxy formation..."

Nahh, untrue!; I read Sine's presentation - was treated to it - and I can definitely say that I now know more about dark matter than I did before.    Also baryonic matter.

As for this part then, loved the Hitchhiker's Guide to Human Behavior.. And Tura just isn't really acting very much like Leela at all at this point, is she. (Loved your summary over at TLZ too). You know what though?- Not that this is a bad thing, but somehow your writing style lately is starting to remind me more and more of JN. I'm really seeing an influence. Not saying that I know what to make of that or anything. Just an idle observation; don't either of you take it the wrong way or anything. Ok, and so Tura didn't want Fry to tell her yet about her mutantness having been discovered. That's eminently interesting, it should be enticing to see what her reaction will be, once he does finally tell her.

And I posted a link to an astronomy-related article that you might find interesting in the News thread a few hours ago, also; about a massive space blob.          Which might've had something to do with galaxy formation.
It's all interconnected...
Future Shock

Liquid Emperor
**
« Reply #411 on: 04-25-2009 08:19 »

And I posted a link to an astronomy-related article that you might find interesting in the News thread a few hours ago, also; about a massive space blob.          Which might've had something to do with galaxy formation.
It's all interconnected...

They're hiding the real truth, did you know
JustNibblin

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #412 on: 04-27-2009 06:40 »
« Last Edit on: 04-27-2009 07:26 »

Why are you so awesome, sO?..                 I only just recently visited your site that you have linked in your profile for the first time; I have no idea why I never did sooner; hee, it's a nice little concoction.


Thank for pointing that out Kim, I had never seen it before.  SO, you did a nice job there, though I see you haven't bothered to update your fanfic links for a while.  Your music collection is a really valuable resource as well--the last bit of music Fry plays at the end of the original series is one of the most touching melodies I've heard, and I'm glad you have it here.  I'm a little surprised you don't have the holophoner music from the middle and end of 'Parasites Lost'?

You know what though?- Not that this is a bad thing, but somehow your writing style lately is starting to remind me more and more of JN. I'm really seeing an influence. Not saying that I know what to make of that or anything. Just an idle observation; don't either of you take it the wrong way or anything.

Hmmm.  I could see that being taken the wrong way, and I want SO to keep letting me beta for him.  I would phrase it that my writing style is a bit like SO's in the first place--I think we have similar tastes in what we like about the show.  I read a lot of Futurama fan-fiction before trying to write my own, and SO's Talora and Leelazurs Effect were definitely among my favorites, so I'm sure I must have unconsciously mimicked some of his habits as an "immature artist".  As Lionel Trilling said (thank you google!) "Immature artists imitate, mature artists steal."  So if I ever call myself a full fledged writer someday, I'll just be stealing from SO wholesale.

But this is a good opportunity to write a bit about SO's writing style in the first place, esp. since I have a little time tonight (my "PEEL" night).  He's been one of the longest-lasting writers, and most prolific that I've come across (other than perhaps JBERGES or purplefish).  That's GOOD prolific fanfiction--I'm sorry to have to admit there's a lot of prolific bad authors out there.

It's hard to analyze what I like about his stuff exactly, since I've now read it scattered over a period of a couple of years, but he reminds me a bit of Isaac Asimov, one of my favorite sci-fi authors.  Specifically I noticed right away with SO that he was a "hard" science fiction author--someone who strives to get the science in his stories at least technically plausible.  We all joke about how he loves explosions, but his explosions are always generated by things that could actually happen.  He also likes to write good "old-fashioned" sci-fi plots--plenty of action, adventure, fightin', with a touch of romance that avoids too much syrup.  But again, like Asimov, what I found distinctive with SO was that he really loves to work out the interior dialogue of his characters--Leela in particular.  In his writing, you can really see how a competent captain methodically works through all the possible options lying before her, before deciding on the least bad one.  The "Leelazurus effect" shows this tendency most often, but these extended "conversations with the self" appear everywhere.  I remember SO once writing me that he wrote Leela by imagining how he would figure out a situation, then having her go through the same thought process.  So instead of blind action, you really get a sense of a character trying to map out their plans, before the action takes place that invariably ruins the planning.

Finally, besides the plausible science and extensive internal discussions, SO somehow gets the characters of the show down pat, even while making them slightly more intelligent than they actually are on the show.  Especially Fry, although the exact nature of Fry's mind of course remains a bit of a mystery.  The SO Fry is the side of Fry I've always liked on the series, the Fry of "Parasites Lost" and "Leela's Homeworld,"  a lazy klutz with a golden heart, and talents unseen and unknown.  A fellow who in the end will (unfortunately) try anything for his friends.  At least in U.S. culture, this type of character is very appealing, and SO seems to have this talent of making Fry likable, heroic even, while still keeping all his flaws, and not morphing the guy into a generic "action hero."  He also manages to make Leela competent and rational, yet emotionally vulnerable.  Amy's role in an SO fic is actually much more extended than in the series, managing to be sweet, supportive, and shallow simultaneously.  Bender is definitely Bender, although I have noticed he sits on the sidelines quite a bit in the more recent fics; of course he is so overused in the actual show I personally don't mind his being regulated to "guest appearance" status in some stories.

Well, if this were a real essay I'd go back and edit it, but stream-of-consciousness writing has the advantage of spewing a lot of bulk in relatively little time.  I hope this writing makes up a little for all the times SO posted chunks of stories online and I responded with only a few generic comments of support [/HedonismBot] You know the ones that I mean [/HedonismBot]

I think his last two stories are hitting new levels of emotional complexity for his characters, and actually for the majority of Futurama fanfiction I've seen.  I think the subplots of his current story are going to start to tie together very effectively very soon, and I'm looking forward to it!

As a final aside, SO is one of the few politically conservative people I know these days (I used to know a lot more, but I've lived in academia for too long now).  I've always found it interesting that it doesn't seem to color his stories much.  As a contrast, anyone who's read Bill Willingham's FABLES graphic novel series can infer his political leanings fairly easily.  SO has stated his political opinions on other threads on this board in the past (I sure hope I remembered that accurately), so I thought I can get away with mentioning it here.

**WARNING!  Gratuitous political commentary follows*****

 It's good to know that there are conservatives that are actually intelligent out there.  I was starting to wonder  ;)

**end gratuitous political commentary***
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #413 on: 04-27-2009 07:26 »
« Last Edit on: 04-27-2009 07:43 »

Quote
Why are you so awesome, sO?..
  Hmm... Well, my dad did drop me on my head when I was a baby...

Quote
only just recently visited your site that you have linked in your profile for the first time;
  Wait, that thing's still active?  I stopped paying Yahoo for that site two years ago.  I cant say I'm too proud of that site.  It's a testament to how much of an unhealthy obsession I used to have with the show.

Quote
And Tura just isn't really acting very much like Leela at all at this point
  So her actions aren't believable anymore?  That's bad.

 
Quote
I'd just say that my writing style is a bit like SO in the first place.
  That's not very surprising really.  I mean, we're both scientists, right?  We both have a similiar background.  Our writing experience, like Asimov's, comes from preparing articles for scientific journals.  And that's the only comparison you will ever hear me make between myself and the father of modern science fiction.  You and I have also spent so much time reviewing each others work by this point, that we're bound to have picked up some of each other's writing styles.  Also, half of the jokes in GSR were written by you, so its no wonder that kim sees some similarities :D

Quote
Bender, although I have noticed he sits on the sidelines quite a bit in the more recent fics;
  Yeah, I must confess, I suck at writing Bender.  If he doesn't say something clever and hilarious every three lines he seems out of character.  And I just can't write like that.

Quote
Finally, besides the plausible science and extensive internal discussions, he somehow gets the characters of the show down pat
  Aww, now you're just making me blush...

Quote
**WARNING!  Gratuitous political commentary follows*****

 It's good to know that there are conservatives that are actually intelligent out there.  I was starting to wonder 

**end gratuitous political commentary***
Oh my yes, we exist. The bible-thumping, assault weapon-wielding, country music-playing conservatives that you see on the news are just a smoke screen designed to keep you liberals from discovering our sinister plot to take over the world.  Bwuahahaha!
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #414 on: 04-27-2009 09:59 »

Holy...  I'm honored if I somehow at least partially spurred that assiduous voluminous essay, JN. Excellent analysis, and I agree with much of it.  You didn't really have to convince me, Atheismo knows I never need much more of an opportunity to gush about you guys.  You only forgot to mention again how luminously amazing sO's story "The Oak Tree" is, too.

I definitely concur with this,

... what I found distinctive with SO was that he really loves to work out the interior dialogue of his characters--Leela in particular.  In his writing, you can really see how a competent captain methodically works through all the possible options lying before her, before deciding on the least bad one.  The "Leelazurus effect" shows this tendency most often, but these extended "conversations with the self" appear everywhere.
 

and find this very interesting -

Quote
I remember SO once writing me that he wrote Leela by imagining how he would figure out a situation, then having her go through the same thought process.  So instead of blind action, you really get a sense of a character trying to map out their plans, before the action takes place that invariably ruins the planning.

I noticed that while recently rereading The Leelazarus Effect, myself.  It adds depth to the flow and pace of that story while maintaining the believability.
I would add that sO's form of "action" rarely detracts from or hinders the plausibility of a story overall.

It's never just mindless bravado and explosions.

I'm also entirely in accord with what you opined about his treatment of Leela, Fry, Amy; he indeed excels at characterization as I've said many times and is one of the very very few who cares to utilize Amy much; and in a non-annoying manner.

I stopped paying Yahoo for that site two years ago.  I cant say I'm too proud of that site.  It's a testament to how much of an unhealthy obsession I used to have with the show.

You did?  Well, but it's cute though.    :P

Quote
So her actions aren't believable anymore?  That's bad.

Noooooooo, I guess I just meant that she seems to me like a different version of Leela, more 'separate' than you seem to have intended her to be.   But I think you've basically already explained that before, and as I've stated her interactions with Fry are very realistic.

Quote
You and I have also spent so much time reviewing each others work by this point, that we're bound to have picked up some of each other's writing styles.  Also, half of the jokes in GSR were written by you, so its no wonder that kim sees some similarities :D

Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant.  I'm sure you two thrive and feed off each other.

Finally -

As a final aside, SO is one of the few politically conservative people I know these days ... I've always found it interesting that it doesn't seem to color his stories much. ... SO has stated his political opinions on other threads on this board in the past (I sure hope I remembered that accurately), so I thought I can get away with mentioning it here.

**WARNING!  Gratuitous political commentary follows*****

 It's good to know that there are conservatives that are actually intelligent out there.  I was starting to wonder  ;)

**end gratuitous political commentary***

Completely agree with this also :D, and I have to say I've noticed that it doesn't seem to crop up in his fiction to any noticeable extent or degree also.
And it's good to know you aren't one of the above-described varieties?- I guess?- although maybe some of that comes from being sciencey and artistic.        In any case, everyone already knows my opinions, JN nailed a lot of what makes you so enjoyable sO, and I garnered a couple of additional insights from these last posts.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #415 on: 04-28-2009 23:29 »
« Last Edit on: 05-13-2009 20:53 »

Quote
Completely agree with this also , and I have to say I've noticed that it doesn't seem to crop up in his fiction to any noticeable extent or degree also.
  Politics is for the politics thread.  I keep that out of my writing for two reasons.  One, no one wants to hear someone else badmouth their political views. I just want to strangle Seth MacFarland every time one of the characters in Family Guy spouts off some haughty, self-righteous bullshit about how conservatives are 'stupid' and 'backward'.  Your political views have nothing to do with your intelligence or sophistication, no matter what Family Guy, the Daily Show, The Colbert Report, or CNN might want you to believe.  But see, I can't despise them for being the liberal propaganda machines that they are if I do the same thing in my writing.

And that brings me to the other reason why I dont mention politics.  I'm just a tiny bit bitter, as I'm sure you couldn't tell.  No one likes to read the whinings of a bitter conservative :P

Here's another chunk of GSR:
_____________________________ _____________________________ ______

 “Leela!”

At the sound of Phil’s voice, Leela could feel her hands start to ball themselves into fists.  She marveled at her own reaction.  She hadn’t thought that she could have been more devastated than she had been right after blowing Tura’s secret, but then Fry had dropped that bombshell on her.  It’s revenge.  She thought for the thousandth time.  That’s the only reason she’d do it.  She knows this is the only way she can get back at me.  Leela could feel her anger mount, and poor, unwitting Phil had just made the tactical error of appearing along her line of sight.  This is Phil, not Fry.  Remember that.  Phil.  Not Fry.  Don’t lose control of yourself, Turanga. 

Leela was at the top of the stairs in her parents' house, and Phil was at the bottom.  He had been on his way up, probably to check and see if she was awake, when he’d realized that she was on her way down.  However happy he was to see her, his expression turned to stark terror when he saw the look that she was giving him.  When he took an involuntary step backward, and tripped over Nibbler in the process, Leela snapped back to reality.  Phil’s arms pinwheeled for a moment before he tumbled backwards onto the carpet.  Luckily, Phil, like any Fry, seemed unusually hard to injure, probably thanks to a combination of the nannites in their bloodstreams, thick skulls, and just a little excess flab.  By the time Leela made it to the bottom of the stairs, Phil was already trying to stand, and Leela wordlessly held out an arm to help.

“Thanks.”  The delivery boy asmiled sheepishly.

“Sure.  Now, what’s going on?  Bender said something about Hermes and the Professor being fugitives?”

A little light went on in Phil’s eyes.  “Oh, right.”  He nodded.  “Yeah, come on.  I’ll show you.”  He gestured for her to follow him toward the dining room. 

When Leela turned the corner into her parents’ small dining room she was surprised to find her parents, Aimee, and Raoul all sitting, grim-faced, around the table, facing a small television.  In order to see the television, Phil and Leela had to squeeze into the small space between the far wall and the chairs in which everyone else was sitting.  Before she looked at the screen, Leela couldn’t help but think how bizarre the whole situation was.  At some point she, Fry, and Bender had become part of her parents’ household.  It had just sort of happened.  There were plenty of places they could stay down in the sewers while they managed to fix the mess they were all in, but somehow they’d ended up here.  Of course, she knew her parents wouldn’t have had it any other way, but still.  It was weird sleeping in her parent’s house, knowing that Fry and Bender were in the next room.  At least Amy can still go back above ground. Otherwise I’d probably be sharing my room with her, like she was a sister.  Leela shuddered.  The narrow space also meant that Leela and Phil were now squeezed close together.  As close as Fry and Tura will be when they-

The commercial for Torgo’s anti-tentacle powder playing on the television disappeared and was replaced with the bulbous green head of Morbo the anchormonster.

“Good afternoon, puny humans.”  Morbo growled.

Afternoon?  Good grief.  How long was I asleep?

“We now continue our live coverage of the ongoing mutant crisis.  Joining us live is our own insignificant human female, Linda.”

Morbo abruptly disappeared and was replaced with a disturbingly familiar sight.  Linda was standing in the middle of an intersection, just beyond a line of yellow police tape.  In the background was the hulking mass of Planet Express, safely cloaked in its all-but-impenetrable, retractable dolomite shutters.

Leela felt her heart sink.

“Thanks Morbo.”  Linda said,  “Behind me is local package delivery company, Planet Express.  Its owner, Professor Hubert Farnsworth, an upstanding citizen who has claimed for years to have aspirations of taking over the Earth with armies of atomic supermen that he breeds in his basement, recently attracted police attention as a possible conspirator in what our producer advises me to call ‘the ongoing mutant uprising’.”

Uprising?!  When did they start calling it that?!

“Viewers may remember the video recently leaked to the press that featured mutant leader and renowned starship Captain Turanga Leela’s claims that the mutant plot was a figment of the government’s imagination.  This video, ostensibly taken in the mutants’ secret sewer lair, claimed that the mutants are peaceful, and only want the same rights as those of us who live on the surface.   Today we have some developments that seem to make these assertions less believable.  At 11:48 am this morning, police and S.W.A.T. teams attempted to storm the building.  Unfortunately, the building’s occupants were somehow tipped off and attempted to flee in their company starship.  I am told that they didn’t even manage to get their ship out of the hangar before Captain Zapp Brannigan, who had just arrived in his flagship, the Nimbus, stuck their ship- and several nearby apartments- with a volley of heavy laser fire.  The fugitives’ ship did not appear damaged, but the occupants apparently gave up, closing their hangar doors and encasing the entire building in this protective shell that you see behind me.  The DOOP corps of engineers is currently attempting to-“

Linda was interrupted as a blue tentacle thrust itself into the camera’s field of view and handed her a piece of paper.  Linda’s eyes quickly scanned it before she once again looked into the camera.  “This just in.  The DOOP has managed to drill its way into the building, and has found it deserted.  Somehow the fugitives managed to escape, but they appear to have left behind a massive stash of weaponry, including laser rifles, plasma guns, various explosives and- is this right?”  Linda looked off camera for a moment, ostensibly at whoever had handed her the note.  “-and many devices capable of destroying the Earth, the Solar System, and in some cases, large portions of the Galaxy.  This of course sheds a whole new light on the capabilities and aspirations of the subversive sewer mutants…”

The television kept droning on, but nobody was listening to it anymore. 

“W- what…?”  Phil started.  Everyone else just stared at the screen, speechless.

No, no.  This can’t be happening.  They think we were planning to use the Professor’s doomsday weapons on them?!

  And then Bender appeared.  “Hey, I found these chumps standing around outside, and figured I’d let them in before they died of exposure and started to make this place smell even worse than it already does.”

Everyone turned as one to find Hermes, the Professor, and their respective families all standing with Bender at the threshold to the dining room.  The humans looked tired and scared, and they were all covered with brownish-green sludge up to their waists. 
_____________________________ _____________________________ ___________________________

By the time Fry had gone home, reacquainted himself with his shower, changed, and tubed his way over to Elzar’s, he was a nervous wreck.  His palms were sweating profusely, and when he’d had to sit down on a bench at one point to tie his shoe, he found that his foot wouldn’t stop bouncing up and down long enough for him to tie a knot.  Taking a deep breath, he pushed the restaurant’s front door open and went inside.  The beating of his heart seemed louder than the soft Neptunian classical music that was playing in the background.  Calm down.  He silently chided himself.  You’re acting like some dumb teenager who’s never had a date before.  You’ve been on dates to Elzar’s plenty of times.  As he said them he knew the words rang hollow.  Sure, he’d been on other dates to Elzar’s.  But none of those dates had been with Leela.  Although, technically this isn’t Leela either…  That doesn’t matter though.  Right?  Any further self-reflection immediately became an utter impossibility.  He’d just caught sight of Tura, and every last one of his brain cells had stopped firing. 

Tura was sitting at a table near the back of the restaurant.  She was wearing a lime green mini dress with a matching pair of boots that came up almost to her knees. The outfit, though revealing, still managed to be tasteful, and both matched her hair and complemented her ample figure.   In his wildest dreams, Fry would never have imagined that she had owned such a thing as this. 

The sound of a plate crashing to the floor somewhere in the kitchen snapped Fry back to reality.  Sheepishly, he walked over to Tura’s table, thankful that she apparently hadn’t noticed him staring at her like an idiot, his mouth flapping open.  When Fry slid the chair back to sit, Tura looked up at him, surprised.  She’d been staring blankly at the menu, probably lost in thought.  She started blushing before he’d even had a chance to open his mouth.

“Uh, about the outfit…”  She began.

“You look amazing.”  Fry said wholeheartedly.  “I’ve never seen you or Leela wear that before.”

Tura turned a shade redder.  “Thanks.  It was all I had.  Leela’s, er, I mean my apartment has a bit of an owl problem; the landlord keeps promising to get it taken care of, but he never does.  Nibbler found an owl in my closet this evening and he ate it- and my whole wardrobe in the process, except for this.  I’d forgotten I even had this… thing.  I got it for a New Year’s party a few years ago and then never ended up wearing it.”

“Well, it looks great.”

Tura smiled.  There was what looked like real relief in her eye, as if she somehow could have thought that Fry’s reaction would have been anything else but stunned approval.  “Thank you.”

“So, what’ll it be, kids?” 

Fry and Tura both turned to find Elzar standing over them with his trademark grin. 

“Uhh, I guess I’ll have the Neptunian methane pasta.”  Fry replied, handing Elzar his menu. 

“And I’ll have the soup of the day.”  Tura added.

Elzar nodded, scribbled something on his notepad, and bustled away.  Tura watched him go.  “Why do you think they call it methane pasta?”  She asked.  “I mean, Neptune has a lot of methane.  Do you think they somehow make the pasta out of it?”

Fry thought about that for a moment and then shook his head.  “Nah.  I always assumed it was because of what happens after you eat it.”

Tura nodded absently and broke off a piece of the loaf of slightly-moldy bread that had just been thrust at them by a harried-looking waiter.  She chewed on the hunk of bread for a moment, then swallowed.  “So, I hear Leela didn’t take this very well.”

Fry sat back in his chair and frowned.  “No.”  He admitted.  “She didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t really think about what sort of position I was putting you in.”

Somehow, Fry thought that unlikely.  He knew how Tura’s mind worked.  She was a Leela, and Leelas never did anything without trying to think through all of the possible consequences.  Still, he knew what she was trying to say. 

“It’s okay, Tura,” he reassured her.  “Leela was mad.  Real mad.  But I think it helped her forget a little bit about-“  Fry caught himself just in time “-about that other thing that happened."

“Did she tell you why she was mad at you?”  Tura asked.  Fry completely missed the slight hint of apprehension in her voice.

“Well, no, but I mean, it’s gotta be weird for her.  She says no every time I ask her out, but now it’s like I’m dating her anyway without her permission.”

Tura’s face was carefully neutral.  “Yeah, that’s got to be it.”  She looked away for a second.  “But she’s still mad at me?”

“Yeah.  She kept telling me that you’re just using me to get revenge on her.”

Tura nodded.  “I’m not surprised.  I know we’re supposed to be identical and everything, but she seems to be really nasty to everyone.  Not to mention she’s made a mess of my entire timeline.”

Fry’s mouth automatically opened to rush to his Captain’s defense, but Tura put a hand out to stop him.  “Wait, wait.  I’m sorry.”  She said.  “You’re right.  I shouldn’t have brought that up.  Let’s- uhh- let’s talk about something else.”

Fry’s mouth clicked shut.  He nodded.  “Yeah, okay.  So, umm, how did the mission go today?  I was only in this timeline for the ride home.”

Relaxing a little, Tura broke off another piece of bread.  “Same as usual.  Phil misread the navicomputer, and we took the wrong ramp off of space interstate 95i into a really sketchy neighborhood.  We had to pull over so Bender could ask a space hooker for directions-”  Tura was momentarily interrupted as their food arrived.

“That doesn’t sound too bad.” 

“-and then we had to outrun her space pimp’s lowrider when Bender stole her wallet.”

“Oh.”  Fry blinked once.  “Huh.  So, a normal day, then.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

The following silence started to approach being awkward, and Fry desperately fished around for something to say.  He wasn’t good at this small talk, so he finally asked what he had been wondering all day.

“Is Phil mad at you?”

Tura sighed.  “I haven’t told him yet,” she admitted.  “I made the Amys and the Benders promise to keep their mouths shut until I get a chance to talk with him.  Maybe I can find a way to explain it in a way that won’t make him hate me.”

“He won’t hate you.”  Fry said immediately and automatically.  “Not even me.  He’ll just hate himself.”

A little burst of air escaped Tura’s mouth as she choked on her dinner. “Gee, thanks.  That makes me feel much better.”

“No problem.”  Fry replied innocently.  Perhaps it was the Midas sulfite wine, but the questions dammed up inside him were flowing easier now.  “Umm, about Phil.  If you and I are doing, you know, this, does that mean that Phil and Leela are-?”

Tura’s eye went wide as she followed Fry’s line of thought to its conclusion.  “I- I don’t know.” Tura said uncertainly.  “You and Phil are the same, and Leela and I supposedly are too, so, I mean, I guess it might.” 

Fry and Tura now shared what could only be described as a truly awkward moment as they each imagined what their counterparts might be doing at that moment.  Great, Fry thought.  So, on top of everything else, now I have to compete with myself?

“But Leela wouldn’t- I mean, I don’t think-“  Fry’s voice trailed off.

“Why not?  We are.” Tura said defensively.

“Well yeah, but she’s been too busy trying to save the mutants to even have time for a relationship.”

“How do you know?  You’re only over there half the time, and only when Phil isn’t around.”  Tura nodded, her face darkening, but not from embarrassment.  “Yep, I’ll bet that’s exactly what’s going on.  It’s the perfect way for her to get back at me, and it explains why Phil has been screwing up more than usual.”

Fry thought about that.  Phil’s been screwing up more than usual?  That probably meant he was distracted.  But Fry knew his own brain well enough to know that just about anything was enough to distract him.  Having a secret relationship with Leela would certainly do the trick, but so would lack of sleep and stress, both of which he and Phil were experiencing in copious amounts right now, what with the randomly jumping between timelines.  Would Leela really do that to me?  He wondered.  Could she really date his twin in secret?  Tura’s willingness to date Fry certainly seemed to make it a distinct possibility, but Leela’s current situation was nothing like Tura’s.  Leela was stuck managing a war.  And she seemed really surprised when I told her about me and Tura, he remembered. 

“I don’t think Leela is in the mood for relationships right now.”  Fry said after awhile.  “She’s got all of the mutants to take care of.”

Tura looked into her soup.  “Yeah.”  She said, obviously less than convinced.  “Maybe you’re right.”
Archonix

Space Pope
****
« Reply #416 on: 04-28-2009 23:47 »
« Last Edit on: 04-28-2009 23:48 »

Ok I couldn't resist a peek - so much for reading it all in one go... :) It's still going great. personally I have no problem with things being a little more dramatic and less overtly humorous, as long as the characters stay in character and I have absolutely no problem saying you do that far better than most. One day I'll get to that level.

Poor Leela, second-guessing herself in entirely new ways...

Also what's wrong with the whining of bitter conservatives? I do it all the time and everyone loves me! Now where did I put those rose-tinted shades...
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #417 on: 04-29-2009 08:19 »

personally I have no problem with things being a little more dramatic and less overtly humorous

...
:laff:
Of course you don't...

I know I know, to each his own and all that. You do handle it deftly sO, and I admit I was amused by the conversation between Fry and Tura regarding what Phil and Leela might or might not be doing. They have some real dilemmas going on there, don't they.  Hard to be heavy on the drama when you're drinking Midas sulfite wine.  And I love this:

Quote
"He won't hate you."  Fry said immediately and automatically.  "Not even me.  He'll just hate himself."

So true and so stark and candid.
It's true that your Fry showcases some of the more, I suppose, 'sensitive' sides of his character from the series.
Question - Just had been wondering, are we ever going to see or find out more at some point in the future about what that machine/device was that caused the disruption in the space-time continuum in the first place, or was that mishap - the accident where it blew up - more something that's probably not going to crop up again?
Contemplating whether that might be addressed.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #418 on: 05-04-2009 05:50 »

Ok I couldn't resist a peek - so much for reading it all in one go... :) It's still going great. personally I have no problem with things being a little more dramatic and less overtly humorous, as long as the characters stay in character and I have absolutely no problem saying you do that far better than most. One day I'll get to that level.

Good, glad to hear you're liking it.  You've always been good at writing dramatically; I'm sure you can spot some places where I borrowed a little bit from your style.  Not so much the dialogue, but the way in which the characters physical actions during the dramatic scenes mirror their dialogue

Quote
Question - Just had been wondering, are we ever going to see or find out more at some point in the future about what that machine/device was that caused the disruption in the space-time continuum in the first place, or was that mishap - the accident where it blew up - more something that's probably not going to crop up again?

Yep, we'll be hearing more about the mysterious device pretty soon.  I never really go into who built it, but its original purpose and the consequences of what it did will become central to the plot. 
Archonix

Space Pope
****
« Reply #419 on: 05-04-2009 13:30 »
« Last Edit on: 05-04-2009 18:57 »

Ok I couldn't resist a peek - so much for reading it all in one go... :) It's still going great. personally I have no problem with things being a little more dramatic and less overtly humorous, as long as the characters stay in character and I have absolutely no problem saying you do that far better than most. One day I'll get to that level.

Good, glad to hear you're liking it.  You've always been good at writing dramatically; I'm sure you can spot some places where I borrowed a little bit from your style.  Not so much the dialogue, but the way in which the characters physical actions during the dramatic scenes mirror their dialogue

That... *goes back to read* hey, mah stuffs! :laff: Now that's flattering. I have to admit I've been trying the same thing with the comedy side and your fics but it's so much harder to write comedy than drama. Drama is easy. :) Comedy needs brains that I don't have.

Oh well.

soylentOrange

Urban Legend
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« Reply #420 on: 05-04-2009 18:54 »
« Last Edit on: 05-04-2009 20:13 »

Quote

gah! How did you-?  Stop reading my mind!
Archonix

Space Pope
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« Reply #421 on: 05-04-2009 18:59 »
« Last Edit on: 05-04-2009 19:03 »

On the advice of my lawyer I've inserted a spoiler to avoid incriminating myself. Also, stop thinking about Amy like that!
Sine Wave

Liquid Emperor
**
« Reply #422 on: 05-04-2009 19:57 »

Huh, I thought that all possible timelines existing simultaneously, and the machine just opening a sort of "doorway" between two of the made more sense, but it seems I'm wrong. I guess you're not a fan of the many-worlds interpretation, are you.

Well, nice to see a Fry and "Leela" date scene where they do more than have everything go perfectly and fall deeply in love with each other. Nice parallelism between the Leela's assumption of motives, and Leela is basically swimming in a bottomless port-a-john right now, isn't she.

Looking forward to more as always. :)
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #423 on: 05-04-2009 20:20 »

Quote
Well, nice to see a Fry and "Leela" date scene where they do more than have everything go perfectly and fall deeply in love with each other

if I ever write something like that, I'm counting on you guys to immediately put me out of my misery. 

There'll be more soon.  I've got finals coming up, so that ought to mean that I wont do any writing for awhile, but, for some reason, I always do more/better work when I'm stressed out.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #424 on: 05-04-2009 21:36 »

Huh, I thought that all possible timelines existing simultaneously, and the machine just opening a sort of "doorway" between two of the made more sense, but it seems I'm wrong.

Mm, same; if the machine was or had been acting as a fluid/flexible gateway to myriad timelines, that would possibly avoid issues with there being only one static time that somebody ostensibly could become trapped in, like what happened with Leela and Tura; but in any case the accident caused it to malfunction and go awry, regardless.

if I ever write something like that, I'm counting on you guys to immediately put me out of my misery. 

Okay.   I'll volunteer.

Yep, we'll be hearing more about the mysterious device pretty soon.  I never really go into who built it, but its original purpose and the consequences of what it did will become central to the plot. 

That sounds mightily enticing.  The "original purpose" and "consequences of what it did" part is reminiscent of the time device in Leelazarus Effect.  I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing how you're going to tie that in and integrate it with the seemingly dominant mutant storyline.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #425 on: 05-04-2009 22:02 »

Quote
Huh, I thought that all possible timelines existing simultaneously, and the machine just opening a sort of "doorway" between two of the made more sense, but it seems I'm wrong. I guess you're not a fan of the many-worlds interpretation, are you.

Bah, arch, look what you started!  I can't pass up on a chance to discuss weird physics, plot twists be damned!

According to what I've read, there are a few different versions of the 'parallel worlds' theory.  First, out universe is only one piece in an infinite set of universes that run parallel to each other.  No such universe is any less 'real' than any other.  But, at the same time, there is an infinite set of parallel time lines within each universe, one of which is 'real', while the others are just mathematical abstractions that correspond to every single alternate outcome to every single event in that universe's history. 

In GSR, I've invented physics (I'm good at that; it's how I bluffed my way through college) that treats the alternate timelines as quantum-mechanical wave functions.  And, as poor Schroedinger's cat knew all too well, a wave function only takes on a discrete value when some sort of measurement is being made.  In terms of the beta timeline then, it is only 'real' now that there are observers from the alpha timeline there to witness events.  Once everyone gets back to where they're supposed to be, all of the observers (the original PE crew) won't be around to observe, and the beta timeline will revert back to being a mathematical abstraction.  (eg, Tura and everyone else from the beta timeline cease to exist)

Now how's that for technobabble?  SW is probably about ready to strangle me for brutalizing theory like this :D

El-Man

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #426 on: 05-05-2009 00:00 »

Now how's that for technobabble?  SW is probably about ready to strangle me for brutalizing theory like this :D

Makes perfect sense for fanfic set in a cartoon universe, Soylent.  ;)
Archonix

Space Pope
****
« Reply #427 on: 05-05-2009 00:04 »

That's where I run away screaming... I think I'll stick to New Scientist. It may not be new, and it may not be science, but at least I have pretty pictures to look at. Sometimes they're even related to the articles!
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #428 on: 05-05-2009 05:26 »

In GSR, I've invented physics (I'm good at that; it's how I bluffed my way through college) that treats the alternate timelines as quantum-mechanical wave functions.  And, as poor Schroedinger's cat knew all too well, a wave function only takes on a discrete value when some sort of measurement is being made.  In terms of the beta timeline then, it is only 'real' now that there are observers from the alpha timeline there to witness events.  Once everyone gets back to where they're supposed to be, all of the observers (the original PE crew) won't be around to observe, and the beta timeline will revert back to being a mathematical abstraction.  (eg, Tura and everyone else from the beta timeline cease to exist)

That sounds perfectly logical to me yo no soy marinero...
Well, I love love love reading about it, anyway.

Your quantum interpretation of the alternate worlds makes internal intrinsic sense to your fic.

Another query - So it has something to do with collapsing waveforms then?

Quote
Now how's that for technobabble?  SW is probably about ready to strangle me for brutalizing theory like this :D

Nah, not before he does it to me first, due to the fact that I actually have been inundating him with questions of this nature lately  (such as the one above)     :D   :love:
I keep requesting some sagacious information from him.
Archonix

Space Pope
****
« Reply #429 on: 05-05-2009 10:44 »
« Last Edit on: 05-05-2009 11:11 »

It seems like the many worlds theory, but it sounds more like a combination of that and the idea that the multiverse is really an infinitely large collection of 'verses all crammed next to each other and all sourced from the same big bang, but "separated" from each other by barriers that erected themselves during the inflation period, as each patch - for want of a better word - expanded and became it's own little pocket of physics, some of which might be quite weird. It might be theoretically possible to travel between universes just by getting to the edge of one of these bubbles and hopping over - though you'd need to have some way of travelling in 5-dimensional space-time for that. It'd almost make that scene with he parallel universe and the cowboy hats in the series plausible.

Each universe then has n timelines of the sort described, but there's always the possibility that these timelines correspond to actual physical realities somewhere else in the multiverse. Which raises the question, would that physical universe undergo the same timeline flipping adventure if the crew weren't making a visit to that ship? Which raises a further question, but it's making my brain ache so I don't inflict it on anyone else.

There are so many different and often contradictory theories and concepts that anything you come up with could be plausible. Go read The Timeships and see what I mean by that..

Back to the fic for a moment:


As an aside, from a philosophical standpoint, the many worlds theory raises the possibility of a universe where the proposition "there are no parallel universes" becomes true. The "can god make a rock too big" question, brought into the modern age. ;)
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #430 on: 05-05-2009 18:32 »

Quote from: El-Man link=topic=16117.msg1032895#msg1032895
Makes perfect sense for fanfic set in a cartoon universe, Soylent.  ;)

heh, point taken.

Quote
Now I'm curious what will actually happen to our observers when the machine is turned off...
The machine blew itself into tiny fragments back in the prologue.  I wanted to make sure no one could simply turn it off.

Quote
Another query - So it has something to do with collapsing waveforms then?
in the sense that it provides a nice plot device, yes. 
Sine Wave

Liquid Emperor
**
« Reply #431 on: 05-05-2009 20:09 »

Yes, you have an impressively tightly woven web of pseudo-physics here (and at least yours is based on real physics, mine is pseudo-physics to begin with). Also makes sense with the story so far pretty much dealing with the one timeline as being real-er than the other.

It seems like the many worlds theory, but it sounds more like a combination of that and the idea that the multiverse is really an infinitely large collection of 'verses all crammed next to each other and all sourced from the same big bang, but "separated" from each other by barriers that erected themselves during the inflation period, as each patch - for want of a better word - expanded and became it's own little pocket of physics, some of which might be quite weird.

Interesting theory, but to me it seems that only the multiple-timeline aspect is necessary for the fic, as other universes aren't being described by his quantum-timeline interaction.

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Which raises the question, would that physical universe undergo the same timeline flipping adventure if the crew weren't making a visit to that ship? Which raises a further question, but it's making my brain ache so I don't inflict it on anyone else.

I wouldn't think so, as the machine only existed in the "real" timeline, and even if the other timeline existed without real observers to view it, without the trans-timeline/(now trans-universal in this context) machine instigating it it wouldn't happen.

Hooray, we're debating fake science based off fake science in a fanfic!
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #432 on: 05-05-2009 23:07 »

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Interesting theory, but to me it seems that only the multiple-timeline aspect is necessary for the fic, as other universes aren't being described by his quantum-timeline interaction.
  Yeah, I sort of bent over backward to make sure that parallel universes were not involved.  Once I added paraboxes and parallel versions of characters, it wouldn't be long before Tura started dying her hair black and chasing people through the sewers with a revolver.  Which would be awesome, but no.

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Hooray, we're debating fake science based off fake science in a fanfic!
  And this forum's nerd index rises another notch.  Who would have thought such an accomplishment possible?
_____________________________ _____________________________ ______

Leela looked around the room at the faces of her friends, family, and just about everyone whose lives had just been destroyed by their common misfortune: to have become involved in her life.  Some of them- Phil and Hermes- looked angry, but neither of them hesitated to meet her eye.  She could read in their hard expressions that their anger was not directed at her, but at those that had put them in this situation.  Others were scared.  Amy seemed not to know that she had been painting the same fingernail for the past five minutes.  Her cell phone was sitting on the table in front of her.  It had fallen out of her purse when Amy had been rummaging around for the nail polish, and the intern was so distracted that she had never put it back.  LaBarbara’s eyes kept darting back and forth between Leela, her parents, Raoul, and Vyolet- who had joined the group a few minutes after The Farnsworths and the Conrads had arrived.  Labarbara held Dwight’s wrist in a death grip.  Several years ago, Leela had asked her friends to keep her secret confined within the walls of the Planet Express building.  Tura had, of course, made the same request, so this timeline’s Hermes hadn’t told his wife that Leela was a sewer mutant.  She probably thinks we’ll eat her brain.  Leela thought sadly.

“Alright, let’s recap the situation so far.”  Leela said.  She wasn’t entirely able to keep the frustration out of her voice.  She had been crammed into her parents’ tiny dining room with nine other scared people for hours.  With so many bodies compressed into such a confined, un-air conditioned space, the temperature had risen through the roof, and it was a bitter struggle to keep her temper from doing the same.  Supposedly, she was helping to take part in a meeting to help plan their next move.  In reality, there had been a good deal of baseless conjecture, lots of panicking, and very little else.

“Planet Express is being combed over by just about every cop in the city.  Someone found the Professor’s doomsday device collection, and got it into their heads that, because Fry and I work there, and they think we’re both mutants, the devices are part of this stupid imagined plot to take over the government.”

Hermes pounded the table with his fist.  “Has the whole world gone crazy?”  He raged.  “Why do dey keep insistin’ on this Jah-damned conspiracy?”

The question generated a lot of uneasy shuffling of bodies.  Leela was the one to voice everyone’s frustration.  “I wish I knew.”  She replied.  “Sure, there was the botched break-in, and Fry and Bender’s rescue, but it’s like the whole city is suddenly paranoid.”

LaBarbara looked at Hermes, and then at Leela.  It was clear that the woman was terrified.  “So, there really isn’t a plot?”

Hermes jumped in before Leela had time to say anything, which was probably a good thing.  “Jah, no!  How many times do I ‘ave to tell ya?”

“But the newsmen, dey all say that the mutants are tryin’ to…”

“To what, exactly?”  Leela growled. 

LaBarbara hesitated, then looked confused.  “Well, actually, come to think of it, dey don’t actually say for sure what they- you’re- tryin’ to do.  Dey just keep putting up pictures of de attack on the police station and kids playin’ near open manholes.  And they keep calling in experts that say all sorts of scary things.”

So it’s the media.   Of course!   They’ve gotten caught up in their frenzy for ratings, and they’ve been happily working everyone into full-blown paranoia by feeding them sensational half-truths and bogus ‘expert testimony’.   Those bastards.  Millions of years of evolution- and eleven centuries of Hollywood movies- had programmed the human race to fear the dark, the unexplained, the different.   The media had found in the mutants the perfect way to stoke these fears, and now that what looked like evidence to support the media’s sensational claims had been found in the form of the Professor’s doomsday weapons, that dormant fear had erupted into an all-out firestorm.  “LaBarbara, you’ve known me for years.  Have you ever had any reason to think I was trying to take over the world?”

“Well, no.”  Labarbara conceded.  “But den again, I didn’t know you were a… a-“

“A mutant?”  Leela finished for her. 

The Jamaican woman nodded.  “Look, Leela.  I’m real sorry.  This is all new to me.  Hermes didn’t ‘ave much time to explain.”

Leela knew that was true.  Hermes, the Professor, and Cubert had been the ones that had tried to escape Planet Express in the ship.  When they’d been forced to retreat back to the building, they’d put up the protective shutters.  The Professor had built the dolomite armor to repel just about anything, but even his genius was unable to repel a crew of DOOP demolitions experts.  With no other way out, the bureaucrat had tossed the Professor over one shoulder, grabbed the protesting Cubert by an ear, and stolen away into the exhaust channels that ran under the hangar, and from there through a small gap in the crumbling bricks into the sewer system.  After trudging blindly through the sludge for a few blocks, he’d risked sticking his head above ground long enough to call his wife and son.  He hadn’t had time to explain anything, just to tell them to drop what they were doing and meet him at the Fishy Joes that was next to the manhole.  From what Hermes had told her, LaBarbara had heard what had happened at Planet Express on the car radio as she drove to the restaurant.  The two of them had waited in a state of near panic for Dwight to appear, all the while expecting the police to realize that Hermes was no longer at Planet Express, and that they could track his career chip while he was above ground.  Dwight had just made it to the establishment’s front door when the first sirens had started wailing in the distance.  Upon hearing the sound, Hermes had grabbed his wife with one hand and run out of the restaurant, stopping just long enough to grab Dwight as he passed.  But when Hermes ran to the center of the street and removed the manhole cover, LaBarbara had panicked.   Hermes had had about twenty seconds to explain that the mutants were friends before a cloud of police cars descended upon them.  Still, Labarbara refused to enter the circle of darkness.  That is, until a couple of poorly aimed laser rifles kicked up puffs of vaporized concrete a few feet away.

Hermes had led Dwight and Labarbara through the dark tunnels to the spot that he’d left the Professor and his clone on a slab of stained concrete that rose above the mean level of the sludge.  Although both Hermes and the Professor had been to the mutant village several times, they had absolutely no familiarity with the almost endless maze of twisting corridors that ran under the city.  It was lucky for them that one of the spotters that Vyolet had been sending out to report on the condition of the sewers had heard strange voices coming from an unused corridor, and had taken his ramshackle swampboat to go investigate.

Raoul cleared his throat, and all eyes turned to him.  “I know this must all be very confusing and frightening for you right now.”  He addressed the Conrads and the Professor.  “You’ve been forced from your homes, accused of participating in a plot that doesn’t even exist, and there are warrants out for your arrest.  I can’t help but feel like its partially our fault-” he gestured to the mutants in the room- “that you’re in this mess.”  He shook his head sadly, but then he smiled.  “But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  Any friend of Leela’s is a friend of all of ours.  You’re all welcome here as long as you need to stay.”

Raoul extended his right hand- the one that didn’t stick out of the side of his head- and offered it to LaBarbara.  It clearly took all of her strength, but she finally took it.  “Thank you.”  She said tightly.  Leela couldn’t help but notice the look of disdain with which Vyolet favored the exchange.

“-And we promise not to eat your brains.”  Morris added.

“Morris!”  His wife exclaimed, mortified.  She’d missed the pointed look that her husband had given Vyolet when he’d spoken.  Leela, however, had caught the subtext:  I still remember how you acted that day at Undercity Hall.  These people are our guests.  You’ll treat them as such.

“What about me?”  Amy asked abruptly.  Leela was a little surprised to hear the intern’s voice.  The last time she’d looked over in Amy’s directions, the woman had still been nervously painting and repainting her fingernails, seemingly oblivious to what was happening around her.

“You’re welcome to stay here with us.”  Munda replied immediately, which made Leela wince inwardly. 

Looks like I get to share my room with Amy after all.

“Wait a minute.”  Phil interjected.  It was the first time that the delivery boy had spoken since this little impromptu conference had begun.   Something was clearly troubling him, something above and beyond what was happening here.

 I guess Tura hurt you just as much as she hurt me.  Leela thought silently.  I’m so sorry, Phil.  It occurred to her then that it was, by now, late evening.  Which means that Tura is probably sitting all nice and safe at my Elzar’s right now, wearing one of my nice evening gowns.  Eating dinner.  With my Fry

Phil was still speaking.  “Wait, why can’t Amy go back to Mars?  You know, to Aimee- I mean, to her parents’ ranch?”

A dozen pairs of eyes turned to Hermes, the only one among them who knew the slightest thing about the legal system.  The bureaucrat pursed his lips.  “Hmm.  Dat might be possible.”  He said.  “Amy isn’t technically an Earthican citizen.  If she can get to Mars, then de police would ‘ave to get the Martian courts to extradite her, and since The Wongs own all of de courts on the whole planet, that isn’t going ta ‘appen.”

“But how will she get away from Earth?”  Fry asked.

“In her car, genius.”  Bender retorted. 

“But won’t the police have impounded her-“

“I’ll stay here.”  Amy interrupted.  When everyone looked at her in surprise she reddened slightly.  “I want to help.”  The intern’s eyes met Leela’s.  “You shouldn’t have to do this by yourself.”

The two women shared a smile.  Then Cubert came running into the room.  Farnsworth, knowing that his clone was perfectly safe in the Turanga household, had gently encouraged him to go sit in the living room and watch the television after Leela had threatened to put her boot through the little genius’s forehead several minutes earlier.

“Hey, idiots, there’s something on TV that you might want to see.”  Cubert sneered.

Swallowing the sharp reply that was forming on the tip of her tongue, Leela just shot the little jackass a look of pure disdain.

“Why, what’s happening now?”  Munda asked fearfully.

As an answer, Cubert reached across the table- Leela couldn’t help but find some satisfaction in the difficulty he had reaching- and turned on the small television that the group had been watching earlier.  Suddenly Leela found herself compressed by a wall of bodies as everyone that had been sitting in a position where they couldn’t see the screen tried to cram into one corner of the small dining room.  Even LaBarbara, momentarily forgetting her unease, squeezed her way into the group.

Richard Nixon’s flabby head, perched atop a wooden dais decorated with the seal of the Oval Office filled most of the screen.  Apparently a presidential news conference was underway. 

“…will not be tolerated.  The cache of doomsday devices, small arms, miscellaneous explosives, and other weapons found at the Planet Express delivery company headquarters- which my experts tell me was, in reality, a cover for the development and storage of weapons of mass destruction to be used by the mutants, as well as Saddam Hussein’s head- proves that these dangerous terrorists are planning an all out assault on the innocent voters of New New York City. And so, as the first act of my third term as president, I will crush the band of pitiful mutant terrorists that have been secretly preparing to wage war against the city of New New York.”

Gasps and panicked chatter erupted all around Leela.  She cringed at the sudden onslaught of sound.  “Quiet!”  She roared, automatically falling into her accustomed role of command.  “Everyone shut up.   This is important!”  The noise cut off like a switch.

“-to help us remove the mutants from their sludge pits.  And that person is none other than the universe’s most decorated military officer-“

Oh.  Oh, please no.  Leela groaned inwardly.

“-the Hero of Pacifia VII, the man who reduced the home world of the murderous Furbies to a smoking cinder, Captain Zapp Brannigan!”

“Hey Leela, it’s that idiotic-“

“Bender, utter one more syllable and I swear I’ll take a cheese grater to your motherboard.”

The robot fell silent.  On the TV, the secretary of transportation picked the president’s head in a jar up from the top of the podium and carried him away.  A new figure appeared from somewhere off of the right side of the screen and strutted toward the microphone.  The man’s white admiralty uniform, blonde toupee and cocky smile brought up a tide of memories that left a sickening taste in Leela’s mouth.   The fact that the camera was still aimed downward, at Zapp’s crotch level, didn’t help things any.


“Thank you, thank you.”  Brannigan called as he reached the microphone.  His assistant, Lieutenant Kif Kroker, appeared at his side, adjusted the camera upward, and began to roll his eyes in trademark fashion as Zapp continued to wave to the cheering crowd.

Brannigan cleared his throat.  “Fist, let me congratulate President Nixon on winning his third term in office.  What a tragedy that all of the other candidates mysteriously vanished the night before the election…  But I degrease.  As Nixon said, these mutant terrorists must be stopped at all costs.  Now, the mutants live under the streets of New New York City, so a precision surgical strike will be necessary to avoid civilian casualties.  We will use a gentle touch, soft like this velour uniform, and, with my superior war fighting skills, we’re going to carpet bomb these mutants back to whatever planet they came from!”

The roar of the crowd swelled.  Zapp burst out into another grin of confident self-satisfaction.  Kif, however, looked uneasy.  Leela had accidentally impregnated him a few years back, and she’d had to tell him about her secret heritage when she’d later found out herself.  He’d had a right to know that his children were half mutant human.

He must know that Amy and I are involved in this.  Leela realized.  I wonder what he’s been told.

Leela reached out and, with a quick flick of the wrist, shut off the television.  The others turned to look at her, surprised.  Leela let out a deep sigh and looked up at the faces of everyone that was still crowded around her.  She pursed her lips.  “We need to leave.”  She said.

Leela found herself met by nine blank stares.  “Huh?” Phil asked. 

“We have to leave.  You heard the velour jackass.  The DOOP is going to attack the sewers, and there’s no way a few hundred mutants armed with rotting two-by-fours are going to have a chance against soldiers armed with laser guns and positron-shooters.”

Leela’s last remark got nods of assent from Hermes and Fry, but Raoul and Leela’s parents were exchanging looks of confusion and fear. 

“But Leela,” Morris protested, “this whole mess started specifically because we decided not to leave. ”

The PE captain found herself unable to meet her father’s eye when she replied.  “Dad, there’s a big difference between standing up to Mayor Poopenmeyer and his thugs and trying to survive a war with the military.  We had a chance before, but now…  It would be suicide.”

“But Leela, you said-“ 

Leela shook her head, cutting Raoul off.  “Look, I know what I said, okay?  That was when we might have actually had a chance.  If we could have gotten some public sympathy for our cause, then Poopenmeyer might have decided not to risk a financially and politically expensive war removing us from the sewer.  All of us that worked at Planet Express would probably still have been screwed, but there was a chance for the mutants.  But now we’ve got Zapp to deal with.  He doesn’t care about public opinion; as far as the public is concerned, the man walks on water.  He’s got unlimited resources, unlimited men, and he’ll gladly massacre every last one of us without a second thought.  We have to get out of here.  There is no other option.”

“You mean evacuate the entire sewer system? “  Raoul replied, aghast.  “We couldn’t even if we wanted to!  What about the sick, and the elderly?  How would we even get the signal out to everyone in time?  And where would we even go?”

“Old New York.”  Phil said.  Leela shot him a surprised look.  “We can hide out in the ruins.”

The conversation was interrupted with a loud, derisive snort.  “Yeah, I think not.”  Cubert sneered.  “First of all, what part of Zapp Brannigan’s plan to ‘carpet bomb the sewers’ are you morons not getting?  There’s no way the nine of us in this room are going to get away before that happens, let alone every mutant in the sewers.  And even if we did get away, then what?  Hang around in the old ruins until we starve to death?  And even if we somehow managed not to starve to death, the DOOP-“

Bender cleared his throat.  “Excuse me for a moment.”  He said politely.  Before he could stand, however,  Amy put her nail polish down on the table next to her cell phone and motioned for him to take his seat.

“I’ll take care of it, Bender.”  The intern was already looming over the ranting little genius.  She looked down at Cubert, who swallowed uneasily when Amy gripped his left ear.  Cubert’s eyes darted wildly across the room, but the Professor, who was his only potential ally, was fast asleep.

“Be back in a sec.”  Amy said brightly, and proceeded to drag Cubert from the room.  Amy soon reappeared alone.

When Amy retook her seat, Bender rolled his eyes.  “You didn’t even beat him hard enough for us to hear it on the other side of the house?  See, this is why they shouldn’t let humans deal with children.”

Leela let out an exasperated cough.  “Could we please just concentrate on the matter at hand?  You know, that whole ’impending doom’ thing?”  She shook her head, floored at Bender’s ability to be nonchalant in the face of impending disaster.  “Now, what were you saying Phil?”

“What?  Oh, oh right.  We can hide in New York.   There’s got to be all sorts of places we can go where no one will find us, and there’s got to still be stuff to eat, like canned food, and ramen, and twinkies. “

You know, that might actually work.  Leela thought to herself.  “Phil’s right.”  She said.  “We’ll have to head for Old New York.  Fry knows his way around the city; that should give us the advantage we need to stay alive, at least long enough until we can come up with a new plan.  We’ll have to spread out though, so that, if the DOOP spots us, they don’t find everyone.”

“But what about what Cubert said?”  Hermes asked.  “How are we going to keep the DOOP occupied long enough to evacuate all dese people?  They’re probably on their way here right now, getting ready to dice us up like sugar cane in a sugar cane thresher!”

Leela smiled mirthlessly.  “That, at least, I think Amy can prevent.” 

“Buh-huh?  Me?”  Amy asked.  “How?”

“By answering that.”  Leela gestured toward the intern’s cell phone, which was still sitting at the other end of the table, entirely forgotten by its owner.  It was vibrating madly back and forth, causing it to emit a faint buzzing noise that had, until now, been completely drowned out by the conversation.  The word ‘Kif’ was displayed on its tiny videoscreen.
_____________________________ _____________________________ _______

@JN: I know you thought that explanation of Hermes and Farnsworths' escape into the sewers was too long and only tangential to the plot, but it took me forever to write, and I just couldnt bare to hit the 'delete' key.  And anyway, you read it.  You cant un-read it!


JustNibblin

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #433 on: 05-06-2009 07:10 »

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@JN: I know you thought that explanation of Hermes and Farnsworths' escape into the sewers was too long and only tangential to the plot, but it took me forever to write, and I just couldnt bare to hit the 'delete' key.  And anyway, you read it.  You cant un-read it!

Read what?  You're writing a story?  Really?

*reads extremely long passage in question*

OMG.  The entire story is now ruined.  RU-IN-ED, because you didn't follow that one piece of advice.  Impressive brick of a paragraph though. 

And I thought I was your alpha beta...

And you couldn't "bare" to hit the 'delete' key?  Do I dare ask what you were going to press said key with?   
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #434 on: 05-06-2009 22:27 »

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OMG.  The entire story is now ruined.  RU-IN-ED, because you didn't follow that one piece of advice.
  Oh noes!

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And I thought I was your alpha beta...
  Who said you arent? 

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And you couldn't "bare" to hit the 'delete' key?  Do I dare ask what you were going to press said key with?
  That depends on whether or not you can handle the answer ;) 
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #435 on: 05-07-2009 04:53 »

:laff: Saucy, JN...

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Raoul extended his right hand- the one that didn't stick out of the side of his head-
     
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What a tragedy that all of the other candidates mysteriously vanished the night before the election...  But I degrease.
 

Love those. You still scatter in nice little touches of levity... "Degrease", haa.

Technically I doubt Bender would really care about their precarious predicament too much, but hey, nice of him to be down there partaking in it with them.

Also see you again employed the themes of Twinkies, brain-eating and judicious-use-of-Cubert, and I have to say that in general you do Cubert quite well.

As to physics, in regard to the timeline-storyline, I have recently become more aware of how diligently you have formulated and structured this based on what quantum mechanics says about particles, and it definitely deserves commendation.
soylentOrange

Urban Legend
***
« Reply #436 on: 05-09-2009 22:14 »

thanks Kim. 

Btw, if you guys don't hear from me after the end of the semester, its because I got murdered by the UNM football team.  Failing three graduating football players, one of whom is a fucking NFL draftee for cheating is either the bravest things I've ever done, or the stupidist.  We shall see.
km73

Space Pope
****
« Reply #437 on: 05-10-2009 01:07 »

:O

Very very brave. And very good. Right on.
You should get a medal.
Crap though, seriously, I hope you don't somehow end up getting penalized for this.
Chug a Bug

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #438 on: 05-10-2009 02:19 »

Good update. Nice political message too. Oh my, yes.
JustNibblin

Bending Unit
***
« Reply #439 on: 05-10-2009 19:44 »

thanks Kim. 

Btw, if you guys don't hear from me after the end of the semester, its because I got murdered by the UNM football team.  Failing three graduating football players, one of whom is a fucking NFL draftee for cheating is either the bravest things I've ever done, or the stupidist.  We shall see.

There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity.  I think this definitely falls into bravery (or at least probity).  Good luck!
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