over easy

Atypicals Anonymous

@SilverPawHey! Sorry, I think I got confused with the character mentions! I can change it if you’d like!

Atypicals Anonymous

Hey all! Given that the day in which we feast over the alter of the proud turkey is nigh, I want to let ya'll know that you don't have to worry about posting this week! (Unless you want to!) Have an awesome time with your family and friends. For all of our non-American friends, sorry you don't get to celebrate the best holiday of the year, but you can definitely celebrate your free healthcare, so have fun with that!

Atypicals Anonymous

Thalia Floros

AA Meeting | Awkwardness Abates | Atypical Therapy is a Bit Unusual

The meeting began as, usual, and I heard people begin to warm up to one another. A cosy room on a cold night, and a stomach full of buttery pastry seemed to be having a cathartic affect on everyone already. People continued introducing one another, and the girls I had been chatting to had begun to eye a lithe looking tom cat who had strolled in behind another attendee, casually - as if he owned the room. Which was hardly unusual for a cat, of course. I looked over at Erina who hadn't even blinked at the sight of the cat, who had rubbed against her shin before settling down into one of the chairs.

There was a new girl who had come who had taken the chair next to me. She was tall and athletic, with a black pixie cut. At first, she had seemed stand-offish, but she had confidently introduced herself as Valeria, and we talked a bit about our day, and the usual small talk involving weather and shitty New York drivers.

After waiting patiently, Erina joined our circle and gave us her reserved smile before ruffling the notebook that was in her hands, finding what looked like a blank page. She then began to speak. She spoke very deliberately, and rarely minced words. She didn't seem like a natural speaker, but she had this almost hypnotic charisma that made you ignore the brief pauses.

"Hello everyone! Welcome to Atypicals Anonymous! There are so many new faces here," she looked around at everyone, as if taking a mental inventory. "As you know, this is a support group for the strange and unusual, and I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you. I am Dr. Erina Slate, though you are all welcome to call me Erina. I started this group to help unite people like us, and form a community. Many of you have abilities that are challenging, difficult to control or understand, and are affecting your ability to live a normal life. It's our goal to help you learn more about yourself, how to control your powers, and how to live up to your fullest potential."

She paused, and brushed her short cropped hair out of her eyes before continuing. She then lowered her voice. "Now, I've noticed some of you have been quiet. And I understand your trepidation. Some of you have never talked about your abilities before. But, I want you to learn how to become comfortable expressing yourself with others, especially in a controlled environment. So, I have developed a new introductory exercise!"

Erina walked across the room, and turned off the light. The entire room was cast in shadow, and only the soft glow of distant street lights and the light of the bright half moon reflecting off the clouds illuminated the room.

Her voice lowered, she rejoined the circle. "Please close your eyes, and imagine yourself deep underground, in a cave that is eerily silent, except for the occasional sound of water dripping from stalactites hundreds of feet above you."

I looked around me, interested in seeing if others were participating. I noted a few reluctant eyebrow raises, especially from Valeria, and a somewhat incredulous look from a large man with a beard. However, there were a few who settled right into the exercise - a young and lanky asian man, as well as an unkempt looking ginger fellow seemed right at home closing their eyes and settling into their chairs. Lan seemed like she had too much energy to fully relax in her seat, but the other girl, Cam, seemed relieved at a break from all of the nervous tension. I was feeling a bit sleepy from my high sugar and carb intake, and settling into Erina's calming, almost hypnotic voice, felt comfortable. I could picture myself in the belly of a dark, damp and desolate cave. One that was so far underground, that one could almost feel the weight of the earth pressing in. And it was true, the sound of water droplets pooling in eroded rock echoed around me.

"The surroundings are almost entirely black, but the occasional blue glow from bioluminescent glow worms paints the ceiling in clusters like stars. The light they emanate seems to grow and fade in rhythm, and the whole room feel likes it's breathing," she continued. Her voice was so relaxing, and I felt myself almost drift off, until I felt my chair slip away, and I began to fall. I gave a sharp shriek and felt myself hit the ground.

But, instead of hitting the ground of the community center, I found myself hitting the freezing cold stone of the cave that Erina had just described. There was no sign of the community center's four walls, and the chair I had fallen from had disappeared. I scrambled to my feet, not believing where I was. I could hardly see a couple feet ahead of me, but I started stumbling forward towards a patch of light that was, as described, being produced by pale blue glow worms that were attached to the side of the cave walls.

My forehead smacked into something soft...like a shirt...someone's shirt.

"Hey!" the person shouted, sounding surprised, and also a bit frightened - like myself.

And then I realized what had happened. Somehow, Erina had mentally transported us to the cave she had been describing. I had heard of Atypicals being able to create mental illusions, for themselves and others. It was something like lucid dreaming. But I had no idea how Erina was doing it, or if she was doing it. But if not her, then who?

But, as if in an answer to my question, Erina's voice drifted through the cave. It was soft and whispery, like an echo or a sigh. "You are in a mental simulation. You must find your way out using any means at your disposal. There are ways that your abilities can both help and hurt your progress. Look for clues and help each other. Good luck."

When her voice faded, I finally felt truly afraid. The warmth of the room had finally worn off and I felt a numbing cold encroaching on my extremities. Then, I tried speaking.

"Is everyone okay?" My voice came out trembling, and unsure. I had no idea what lengths Erina would go through to finish this "mental simulation," but knowing her intensity and eccentricity, I was sure she wouldn't allow us to leave until we had found a way out.

Suddenly, I heard something that made my heart skip a beat, and I jumped in alarm. It was a sound in the far distance, perhaps in a different chamber of the cave. It was both a rumbling and a growl, and what sounded like large claws being dragged across stoney ground. And it was coming closer.

Atypicals Anonymous (Not your average A.A. meeting)

@DeadDrop Hey! Sorry but we have a lot of people already!

Atypicals Anonymous

Hey guys! This weekends been busy but I’ll try to get a new post up either tonight or tomorrow!

Atypicals Anonymous

Hey guys! Thanks for the input! It looks like some people are interested in side stories, so I’d love to make that an optional feature!

Also, after some discussion, I think it would be best to have a rule about posting. I don’t think I want to do post orders that are enforced, but there should be at least two posts made by others before you make another post. Also, collaboration posts are apparently a thing so definitely do those if your situation requires it! (Idea creds @Cio)

Atypicals Anonymous

Hey guys! Great work so far!

So I had kind of idea: a lot of you have very interesting characters with very detailed back stories, and from the discord chat, I can tell that y’all really love talking about them! I wanted to kind of poll you and see if anyone was interested in writing “side stories” while they’re waiting for the main story to move forward. That way, for all of you who have posted and are waiting for the others to contribute to the main plot, you could write a brief post or two about a time in your characters past or like a brief view into their relationship with someone close to them...maybe the time when they discovered their power? You could just post with the heading [Character Name: Side Story #1] or something. Let me know how many of you would participate if I made this a thing!

Atypicals Anonymous

Thalia Floros

Somewhere in Manhattan | Cold hands (warm heart?) | Hungry for dinner

It was difficult to say how much time would have passed, were it not frozen, as I sat in my seat and calculated the odds before me. I had four clubs, and was waiting for the last one to fall on the river so I could win the pot with a flush. There are 13 clubs in a 52-card deck - two of them were in my hand, two were on the board, and nine were god knows where. There were 46 cards that could come on the river, and nine of them would give me a win. The odds were 37 to 9 or about 4 to 1. Not bad. I nervously tucked my curls behind my ear and adjusted the black blazer I was wearing over a low cut velvet blouse. Women in poker had to take any advantage available, and as a rather diminutive, inexperienced, and young looking player, it meant trying to blend in with the confident, well-dressed and expensive looking Manhattan poker club’s attendees.

I looked around the table at the four other players. One woman, and three men. The woman was gorgeous, with glossy black hair that fell in waves down her back and a tiny red cocktail dress. Her elegantly done face was frozen in a slight frown. Of the three men, two had folded. One, tuxedo clad, was side-eyeing the woman’s breasts, which were practically spilling from the top of her tight dress, and the other, an older gentleman, was picking his nose and had been removing his finger when time had stopped. The man who was still playing wore a mask - his face held this self-satisfied smirk for the past three hours that we’d played, and it must have been his default poker face. Picture Justin Bieber’s mug but a million times more punchable.

I calculated the odds again, just to make sure, and reviewed the other player’s faces. The woman most likely had a weak hand, the man - very hard to say. It was freezing in here, even when time was stopped. Though the temperature of the room was a constant, it was eerily silent, and my mind made phantom sounds as my ears tried to hear sounds that weren’t there. Sometimes the whole scene flickered, and my vision went black, before the same frozen world re-appeared around me. My hands felt numb and I set my cards down to rub them together. I tried picking them back up again, but they had become part of the scene, and my hand went right through them, as well the entire table itself. I’d known of this ability of mine for a decade now, but I had come no closer to figuring out how it worked. I wanted to wrap this up quickly though, and I starting focusing on re-animating everything. It was like trying to awake from sleep paralysis; squeezing my eyes open and closed, focusing on breathing steadily, listening for sounds that should be there and watching for movement that was supposed to be happening all around me.

“Your turn, Tiny,” the woman said, her voice was silky, but I could sense a hint of irritation. Good.
“Raise,” I said, confidently, meeting her eyes. My stomach rumbled. Ugh, I just wanted to go. Sometimes I wish I could speed up time instead. Actually, I wished that all the time. Then, I drew a club.

About 20 minutes later I exited the building, $2,500 richer, leaving behind its brightly colored lights and bouts of uproarious conversation, laughter and arguments behind. New York in the winter was devastatingly frigid. It was a wet and clinging cold that made me want to return to my apartment, bundle up in a mountain of blankets and never go outside again.

But... I had an AA meeting to go to. I had promised Erina I’d go tonight, as she seemed confident that there’d be new faces. While I was always excited to meet new people, the high amount of turnover in the past year was concerning. Actually, I was the only one of the original gang left from when AA had started, a little over a year and a half ago. It wasn’t uncommon for people to go to only one or two meetings every once in a while, or just stop appearing, but I had lost touch with nearly everyone who had been in the initial group of eight that spring. Erina had said that people come and go, but I could see that she was concerned as well. And she was supposed to be like a homing beacon for people like us, so what was that supposed to mean?

And yes, I know what you’re thinking. Alcoholics are supposed to get better and move on, that’s what Alcoholics Anonymous is all about. But this wasn’t that AA. It was Atypicals Anonymous, a term Erina had coined, given that it catered to those with strange and unusual abilities. It was meant to be a support group, and while Erina had helped me control my powers, I hadn’t made a single friend who hadn’t disappeared since that first meeting. People just came and went, or, if you were a bit anxious like myself, you could say they vanished. It was kind of funny, in a sad way: the image of myself sitting in the same chair, seemingly frozen in time, as a rotating cast of atypicals appeared and disappeared week after week.

Later

Central Park | Cold Everywhere | Stomach an Empty Void

Erina was...complicated. Even after a year of knowing her through AA meetings, I never felt a single step closer to her. She would arrive dressed like a senioritis plagued college student, which in the Winter mean an oversized fluffy parka over an old sweatshirt and leggings. She was brilliant, I had attended one of her psychology lectures at Brown, and she was almost uncomfortably apt at getting to the root of whatever problem you asked her about. She truly seemed truly committed to building the first Atypical community of its kind. But anyone could tell you that behind that laid-back demeanor and bright mind, there was something weighing on her that she wasn’t ready to open up about, and maybe never would be.

Erina also moved a hundred miles a minute. She would be going on long, unannounced trips to investigate “atypical activity” (in her words), she seemed to be collecting all the info she possibly could on an organization called Obsidian, and she spent a good deal of time on “community outreach,” which is how she described her methods for finding and inviting new atypicals. I was both fascinated, and alarmed, at her dedication.

I was the first to arrive at the meeting, which was typical for me. I was always early to everything, and I felt like the icy wind nearly blew me into the small, cozy building that was the Central Park Community Center. Erina had booked the latest slot in the schedule, and there were no meetings before ours, so this remote area of the park, concealed by a dense stand of trees, was desolate. It was already getting dark, and and the only lights were the ones emanating from the wood and stone structure that seemed in this moment like the only warm place in the universe. Erina was blasting Rush as she set up about twelve folding chairs in a neat ring. She'd turn it off when the meeting started, but it seemed to get her in a contemplative mood or something. Somehow she always knew how many people were coming, even if someone stumbled in late or had seemingly come by accident. It was one of those times when I wondered if she was leaving out some important details about her powers. She was dressed in yoga pants and a grey sweatshirt, and her short brown hair was windblown.

“Thalia! So good to see you!" She said before turning around. When she did, and she saw me, she sighed. "You wore nothing but a blazer and that skirt out in this weather? Poker night?"

"Every night's poker night..." I responded, a little sheepishly. Yeah, we'd talked about poker a lot. She found my gameplay philosophy fascinating. However, I sometimes felt like a lab rat when she asked me all sorts of questions about my thought process and emotional state while playing, and if it effected my abilities. Was I tempted to cheat? Did I consider giving myself extra time to evaluate each hand to be cheating? This time though, she seemed to sense that I wasn't in the mood and shrugged it off.

"We have a lot of new faces tonight! And I believe Lan, from last week, will be returning!” She gave me one of her terse smiles, and then kept setting up. We small-talked a bit as I passed her a couple of chairs.

When she finished, she began setting up the snack table. Danishes, it was always danishes. But for some reason she had also included a carton of whole milk, and a carton of soy milk. That was new. I grabbed a cream cheese danish and settled into my favorite chair, and waited for the others to arrive.

Erina always left about a half an hour in the beginning for socializing. Then, the meeting would start out like usual, with Erina reminding us of the motto of AA (“Benign Anarchy”) and the three pillars (Unity, Stability and Responsibility). Then we would go around in a circle and introduce ourselves. She would usually have interesting prompts, and we would be able to share how we were feeling. Her prompts were sometimes basic, like “What was one good thing, and one bad thing that happened to you this week.” But they could also be incredibly odd, like “What inanimate object do you wish you could eliminate from existence.” Newcomers could ask questions, or just listen. And then, at the end, we would stuff our face with more danishes, and just get to know one another. It could be truly benign anarchy, but what do you expect when you invite a group of atypicals into a small room to talk about feelings?

Atypicals Anonymous

Also, please check the discord at least once tomorrow! I'm trying to get an idea of how people think about their characters in terms of whether the meeting will be their first, how familiar they are with what Atypicals are...etc. It will really help me to know how to talk about your characters individually, from Erina's perspective. Thanks!

Atypicals Anonymous

Hello everyone! Super excited to have everyone, just wanted to let you know that I'm aiming for tomorrow to drop the introductory post, and that it will basically start with the first meeting. I'll kind of go through the initial premise in the post, the setting...etc, but you can definitely be creative about how you want to write your first post. As long as you end up at the meeting, I encourage you to talk about you're character's day, where they were living, what they were up to, their feelings about the meeting...etc. I'll also drop some updates in the discord so you have a better idea of where I'm going with the first post. Now would be a good time to talk how you'd like you're characters to interact before/during/after the meeting...etc. Thanks, hope you're all feeling inspired! Let me know if you have any questions!