John

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

is that Daughter I love Daughter's music Fox have you been stalking my browsing history how do you know all my music crushes

*meanwhile, still rushing papers*

Daughter makes perfect calming background music. Some pretty sounds to help you ignore your day

Random music video info: the video for Dance Clarence Dance video was shot in Taipei. That's the subway system there in parts of the video and I need to say Taipei looks much prettier on tape.

Read through IC again though. Everyone being too adorable.

I'll throw up a post when possible, I guess.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Whooo excited for next chapter. School starts tomorrow though so I'll be focusing on that now and might not post until some time later. If things get frantic I might just need to skip one cycle, but if that happens I'll be sure to report it and I'm sure after one week things should get back on track.

I hope.

ALSO ALL THE MUSIC

Fox dropped so many Bastille songs already so I'll go with another of the bands I admire I guess

music

Should mention that Bastille is a rad cover band as well?

music

EDIT: Just read through the IC. Have only one thing to say.

"next phase". Queenie no.

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The references and foreshadowing in that end to the interlude was not ok.

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Did you just accidentally drop one of my personal favourite contemporary songs.

Apology accepted.

(pffft take your time)

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Read and understood. Thank you for your efforts in writing up that post despite being so busy. Looking forward to the happy chapter.

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So um.

eh

in no particular order.

LOST SOULS

Harper
A book-friends relationship seems to be overwhelmingly likely to be built up given some time for interaction. Leila already has grown quite interested in the boy's character through the last chapter or so, and definitely already cares about him more or less. Harper will probably be the first person she's willing to open up to, so that helps.

Discussed these in a brief skype conversation with Fox:

The two of them looking at stars and comming up with constellations. Harper sharing stories from mythology and Leila enjoys listening to them but being slightly irritated by unlikely chains of events and overwhelming scientific inaccuracies that she'll slowly learn not to make a fuss over under some circumstances. Leila will still be excited about math things and Harper tolerates her fangirling when she talks about those things to him. And books. Probably lots of books.

It's generally agreed that conversations will largely be based around common interests other than personal details.

Not sure if this should develop as a mutual friends relationship or have a sibling-ish tone to it, since Harper's devotion to pretecting everyone's safety so far has led to Leila perceiving more of an older brother figure from him, and it's also mentioned in Fox's Time Skip Discussion post earlier that "wanting to let Leila have a friend" was a factor in trying to approach her, which potentially implies that the protective and worried vibe is much more significant on his side and less on hers, where Leila would be gravitating towards Harper probably out of the simple reason that she enjoys being around him.

When the happy chapters are over and things plummet into the darkness before the eventual ending you know who to hurt if you want to break Leila ok

Riley
The devious side of Riley would likely be an important factor in the relationship, and while Leila is intimidated by that now, it'll probably be through her Leila learns a little sense of humour (I don't see her taking up any of the bad puns though).

The whole 'Dragon Tamer' misunderstanding, with Riley mistaking Leila to be courageous and Leila mistaking Riley to be some kind of Sherlock Holmes was a lot of fun to write, but I think it could be agreed on this one that it ought to be cleared up soon in order for an actual meaningful relationship beyong just the admiration and respect towards each other that is largely based upon inaccurate impressions.

I don't see any disappointment in the "never meet your heroes" sense: given the characteristics of both individuals, the best case scenario in which they accept their mistakes and easily adjust their perceptions and subsequently develop a grounded friendship as who they actually are, is actually likely enough to be favourable.

The dragging around is bound to continue either way.

Inadi
Still intimidated.

He seems to be the protector type like Harper, yet is considered that much less approachable. Leila really doesn't know a lot abot him just yet, though, so a lot of impressions may be wrong. This will be one of the people Leila would be hesitant in reaching out towards at first, so it seems that interaction will be much passive on her side and where it goes largely depends on how Inadi behaves around her when they next get to converse.

Your call on this one.

Jasper
All the blood and tears from the first patch. They can be pessimistic together

Actually, though, I think the analytic side of Leila might be of a bit of benefit to their interaction: perhaps helpful information given on grounded facts would actually work better than the generic "it's gonna be ok keep calm" statement when Jasper goes into one of those lapses of loosing hope or motivation.

Leila will learn from Jasper, once Jasper has the chance to reveal these things, many things about emotion and attatchment. I'm obviously speaking about Jasper's experience of having had to deal with the loss of a loved one and the struggles of everyday life, both aspects in which Leila has little experience. That process might invovlve them finding things hard to relate to and later gradually working their way up to understanding. How fast this goes and where it falls on the scale from healthy to bittersweet to outright tragic depends largely on the circumstances, I believe.

Unsure what effect the various ships that have potential to be sailing here would have to their potential relationship. Probably not much because Leila's interferrence with people's personal lives are almost constantly at a minimum; but interesting things might arise as they are both going out of their own comfort zones and being more open to interactions and the like, but in different ways. If the Jasadi ship goes forward and Leila is comfortable enough around Jasper before that ship sails far Jasper be prepared to be bombarded with questions that you're probably not prepared for. Heh.

I'm so all in for that silent conversation thing though. Sherlock game on.

Ace
The street smarts, maybe?

I heard about Ace teaching Riley about "the things she learnt growing up", as well as running around and causing chaos - and if by any chance Riley decides to drag Leila along on some of those trips, some shenanigans will inevitably occur.

If Ace gets really passionate about these teaching things I believe Leila's physical capabilities might just be on their way to being forced to improve by a great amount. Not falling over that much, at the very least?

What effects Ace bringing up her life will have is to be seen.

Toby
Oh great the hyperactive ball of childish sugar this is going to be intersting.

I...honestly don't know, though. Leila hadn't observed closely enough to formulate an opinion on him, but with the interaction with the shark as the first actual impression, it is likely that Leila will attach to Toby the same ideas that are related with Ace, perhaps moreso: optimism, an outgoing personality, activeness, and the tendency to act before thinking things through - something she'll realize the need to learn how to do. So as far as things go Leila doesn't have a reason to be defensive or hostile towards him, but depending on circumstances it may be plausible that she may unknowingly appear to. That, however, should clear away given enough time - and that time would probably not be long given Toby's personality.

After which I'm not sure what will happen. They'll most likely maintain a friendly relationship, but I think they wouldn't be as closely bonded as Leila would be with some other people? Not exactly sure why I imagine that.

Ran
Ran needs to teach all the people how to dance.

I kid, I kid. But um, Leila doesn't really know Ran that well yet either? Though, I do imagine him being the one she turns to for advice on more detailed, real-life things. I have the sense that Ran's inevitably going to take up the groups adult supervision sort of role, more or less, and that role would likely be what Leila will end up perceiving most out of him. If they were a family Ran is probably on his way to becoming that one cool uncle or something.

Lesley
Bubblegum hair. Lesley developing mother-child bonds with everyone haha.

It's...quite surprising how little Leila has interacted with Lesley. The only instance I could recall was probably the little bit they talked in the last chapter. The impression she had on Lesley was probably like a child of some sort and that made Lesley apparently feel the need to baby her in their conversations somehow? And we might as well make that continue.

Leila will continue to be fascinated by the bubblegum hair indefinitely.

NOBODIES

Songbird
Aesthetic crush continues :>

I can really only see development into, if anything, much like that between Song and Harper when he got upset at the party after the witch. Leila is not exactly intimidated by Song, but is just really likes how he looks and acts and is afraid to approach him only on the basis of "oh wow that look really precious better be careful I don't want to do anything wrong". If they get familiar with each other, howver, I see Leila clinging to the puffy sleeves and/or pants/robes and to what extent Songbird will tolerate or to be irritated by it is up to the player to decide. Healthy distance is to be maintained accordingly.

I imagine perhaps a few interesting conversations between them. A few because neither of them seem to be the type to talk a lot, and interesting because obviously neither of them is really good at dealing with things being brought up that they can't relate to or have knowledge of, and their life experiences differ greatly. If they ever talk the conversation is bound to be nearly always be rather awkward? But I don't see that getting in the way of them being friendly or adorable at the same time, hah.

Brandy
I second the tea/coffee lessons idea as well.

It's mentioned in multiple instances IC that Leila loved both beverages back at home, mostly tea. Then again what they make at home is a consistent single flavour of it, so Leila might just have to redefine the word tea to associate with a...much broader spectrum of tastes. She'll probably enjoy that, though. If this does happen there will be instances of Leila's head being able to deal with the accurate porportions flawlessly and the rest of her body failing miserably to keep up and likely flailing ingredients all over the place. Protection against hot water (or whatever else you might use to make tea in Nowhere that also happens to be dangerous on contact or ingestion) is advised.

But yeah I guess they'll enjoy that time together.

Martini
If Marti doesn't really get along with math then...well.

It might be fun to have Leila do some help with her clothes and all if given the chance. Leila will have her fun working with the the planes and spaces aspect of the work as Marti could perhaps focus more on the designing part if she needs to take a break from the repeatitive/physical labour heavy part of the art. I originally planned for this to be scheduled when I was away and Leila stayed inside Martini's room after she got there, but that was switched out under the circumstances. I don't see why it can't still happen though, since Martini is apparently still recovering and it isn't hard for that to lead to the scenario in which she decides to require help from one or two humans.

Marti's totally not gonna let Leila lay her hands on pen and paper but that won't stop her from just helping to carry cloths and rulers and mannequins around all the while marvelling at all the prettiness that would be Marti's workshop.

If that does happen, Leila will probably learn a lot while being confused a lot as well. Either way though, I see them developing a sisters-ish relationship much like Marti will with Jasper. Only if they grow close enough, though, I'd imagine, might the endless irritation towards Leila's lack of sense for aesthetics show in a way that could just be perceived as friendly and cute to some extent.

GENERAL
In terms of general development, I am looking to write Leila into the direction of a mostly regular person with a quirk or two as opposed to being outright detatched as I started off writing her and continued to for a long time. She'll still not talk much, but I look to conversations to be more sustained, meaningful, and comprehensible; instead of cryptic single-word exchanges (those will still happen tho). She won't be completely open to everyone still - she'll show that she cares about people which develops into a vulnernability and has a better grasp about things so that she isn't that clueless, but that won't tilt the scale all the way to an eternal sunny personality. The best case scenario is a well grounded, balanced, practical mindset; much like a stereotypical scientist? Complete change into that, though, won't be immediate and despite the big leap through the timeskip things will be fleshed out gradually after and development will continue. Tendency to loose her cool over exciting things will persist. Fear will be buried deeper and she'll cope better with things like the dark and death threats don't trigger a breakdown, but they'll still be there for the last chapters. Some traces of being socially challenged will remain, and I imagine her to generally try to be kind towards people but neglecting that more often than would be preferred; interaction will still be mostly passive but refusal over reaching out when necessary will lessen.

That's...about it then.

Please do notify me if you have any further ideas about the proposed interactions, or have anything that you wish to settle or to change. Much thanks.

Meanwhile, just read Toby's IC.

Toby said "I don't wanna go,"

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Goodbye Anon and Lesley ;-; and with you all well with your real life things that have to be dealt with.

@IC:

Everyone in the beach room is so precious.

Harpurr please be ok.

What do we do with IC Lesley?

Also did Ran just.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Posted.

Phew. Mostly a catchup post, but pulled the shark hug thing and all. I only wrote the part from her perspective, which leaves a lot out, so feel free to flesh out that part in place because I'm being lazy thank you very much.

But yeah, Leila be happy right now. She will remember to worry about Harper later. Harpurr please be ok.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Martini’s collection of clothes was intimidating at the very least.

How such large a place is allowed in the structure of the building just to accommodate these clothes was unfathomable. The estimates Leila gave on the size of Marti’s room judging by the door was fairly accurate only up until the mermaid revealed the space behind the door, which, eventually, led to Leila now standing amidst row of after row of hung clothing in a collection that seemed to extend endlessly in all directions, while seriously considering the possibility that since it was mentioned that time didn’t work properly in nowhere, space, perhaps, didn’t either.

Footsteps could be heard, and she saw tips of shadows and moving feet nearby despite most of her vision being obscured by the items of clothing, The walking space used to be decent until she somehow ended up in the section that seemed to feature only dresses that happened to be exceptionally puffy.

“A dress that fits the occasion” was what Martini said. Leila tried to make the most information out through those words, and eventually decided to select something that was visually similar to what she remembered seeing people wearing at these “occasions”, and to hope that doing so would heighten the chances that the decisions her eyes untrained in the sense of fashion could at least land on the safe side of being acceptable; as not to upset the already unwell guide.

She also wondered how Martini was doing. They did bring a lot of food though, and that would supposedly help although Leila suspected whether the invariable overwhelming sweetness found in the confectionery at the feast would actually be appropriate for a patient in recovery. Well, perhaps mermaids had a different mechanism for...

It took quite long, as it usually did for her hesitant, always unnecessarily worried, and constantly side-tracked self, to arrive at a decision.

* * * * *

Hall of doors.

Leila walked along the majestic hallway. The castle never seemed to lack spaces with elevated roofs, and the number of staircases they’ve walked up and down throughout their journey in it as well as the constant reminders from guides and other Nobodies that is is but a small portion of the castle itself that they have seen raises the question of how large and how tall exactly the structure was. Leila told herself to remind herself to get a good look from the outside once she had the chance.

The tall walls on both sides were lined with doors, each decorated elaborately in its own style. As the group marched on she stopped frequently to look at one or two doors that caught her eye, to look at it for moments before having to run a bit to catch up after realizing she was lagging behind. Sometimes she had the courage to touch one. The door with the snowflake patterns engraved over it was actually cold to the touch, as if it was actually snowing on the other side of the door.

Wait, are these…?

She placed her palm onto the metal handle, which was even cooler.

“Are these…” this time out loud. She tried to decide whether to turn it - given the circumstances there was probably no guarantee as for what would happen if she did. And before she had a chance to, the door in front of the group swung open, and the moisture-saturated, blazing seaside air gushed into the hall, into their faces.

The door led to a beach.

“...oh dear.”

Leila ran over to the edge of the door, and looked back. No sign of the doorframe. Beach scenery with a rectangular cut-out that showed the hallway from one side, and hallway of doors with the open one leading to the beach on the other. She wanted to try sticking her hand through it, but then realizing that in excitement she had already done the same with her head. She took one step, and the shoe sunk into a soft layer of sand.

“This is so great! How - how do these -” She looked back at the edge once again to make sure she didn’t see wrong. This was no beach room. It led to an actual beach. An actual beach somewhere else because she could walk around what would be the frame and to the other side of the other side of the door, and still be on the beach. it was a...wormhole? Portal? Quantum space-hole? Even nonsense techno-babble seems to have been exhausted in attempting to describe, or even just appropriately name this device.

“How much energy does it take to open up jUST ONE OF THESE?” She stared for another moment before finally failing to contain the excitement,, “AND THESE ARE ALL STABLE? I NEED TO -”

Eh? Where was everyone?

”Hey! Over here!”

“Oh.”

With that, she shed her shoes, careful to make sure no sand still stuck to them, placed them at the door, and walked back through the door, taking multiple glimpses backward along the way.

* * * * *

Her thoughts twitched a bit with the first few steps, perhaps from the recent memory of being engulfed by the soil - but walking on sand felt rather comfortable, she came to decide.

Leila originally objected to the idea of changing again, but the unbearable heat made her change her mind soon. Besides, she thought it might also be a good idea to not get the clothes dirtied - which became increasingly hard as even on her tiptoes the edge of the long dress still scratched the ground.

These changing rooms were relatively small in size compared to the last one she was in - not that much of a surprise - and the decision this time was easy. She took the one that didn’t require her to figure out all the strings.

She’ll just stay by the side, she told herself. Wasn’t really a fan of the water. The heat and sunlight neither, but there was an umbrella. It’ll be alright.

* * * * *

Moments later.

The water was much cooler in temperature than the sand on the beach. And it didn’t really feel that bad on the skin after all. And while she didn’t swim - she realized that only much later - that it really wasn't that hard to stay afloat in water, especially with a lifebuoy to hold onto.

Seawater was splattered all around the place, breaking up into droplets in mid-air and eventually merging back into the gentle waves on the surface. Leila laughed as Songbird and Brandy as well jumped into the water, and as Toby was flung - through means out of her observation as the splashing water obscured most of her sight - into mid-air before falling back into the water.

She didn’t really know how she ended up there, hair untied and sticking to her face, and paddling...quite helplessly in attempt to drive herself somewhere. She wasn’t exactly sure either why exactly she was laughing. It was not just because the water tickled - she thought as she squinted to see the others in the seawater and under the sunlight. She had never experienced anything like this and, although the few rashes left on her skin still hurt when met with the salty water, whatever was happening was somehow, genuinely enjoyable.

When she needed to, she managed to make her way around by grabbing the floatation device with one hand and pulling onto things with the other, which behaved in a way much more predictable than whatever her legs were doing inside the mess of a fluid. Most of the time, though, she just

Beside the slightest thread of doubt that she was just losing her sanity because of everything that happened, Leila found herself to be happy. And she hadn’t felt like this for a long time.

Toby suggested hugging the shark.

...alright?

With nothing near to grab onto this time, she paddled her way with one hand very inefficiently towards the group, trying to decide what exactly a group hug with a shark implied. Just as she was nearly able to hold onto a hand that she assumed to be that of someone from the group to further propel herself, a spindle-shaped silhouette that was rapidly increasing in size emerged nearby in front of them.

Leila then remembered something. Shark skin was composed of tiny, overlapping scale-like components with rough edges and of a hard material.

She let out a short lived shriek in the late realization, and then brought her arms up and held her breath as the only thing that wasn’t too late to do to alleviate the damage of the collision.

The force of the wave from the shark breaking out of the surface shoved Leila and the other people away from a direct impact. The crash still happened, but as the body of the fish slipped against her arms Leila noticed the texture to be not of sandpaper, but of…rubber? She didn’t know. It was soft, though and between being rough and being too frictionless as that of harder variations of plastic. It felt comfortable, and so Leila wrapped her arms around it since she needed something to grab onto anyway - of course, her arms weren’t long enough to go all the way around, of course, so she ended up grabbing someone’s arm in the process. She couldn’t tell who, but she didn’t have the time to either let go or apologize, so whoever that was would have been dragged down as well as they formed the pile that was indistinguishable between an embrace, a tackle, or a giant collision.

She pushed her head out through the surface again and inhaled with her mouth, tasting drops of seawater in the process. “The shark is okay, people...”She intended that louder, as a notice to those who were fearing the same as she was, yet there seemed to be no necessity. The words were drowned out in the cacophony of giggles and laughter and whatever the sounds made by a shark is supposed to be called, as the lot of them flopped around in the water chaotically in one giant mess.

Nowhere sharks probably had smooth skin. Or maybe just this one. Who knew. Who minded? Her voice faded into a whisper, directed at herself, as she smiled:

“...the shark is okay.”

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

I hath made my return from the land of Pach.

good to see you again folks! Missed you a lot. Just caught up with the IC and the OOC, I missed a lot ;-; will get a post up quickly covering the time I was gone to bring Leila up to date, and we proceed with the next move-on post to the next cycle, I suppose. I'll get the relations sheet on the OOC later.