We're all Friends here

I have too many thoughts bouncing 'round in my head; this is where I release them. Please don't expect too much consistency

[sophieswundergarten]

New Pinned Post!

Since I've learned some things about how to do one properly

Salutations. You may call me Sophie, and I use she/her pronouns

I am here because I am comfortable with the anonymity, and you aren't going to get any other information from me so please don't ask :)

Also, relatively simple things can be inordinately scary for me. Thus, if you choose to follow me (And thank you so very kindly if you do) and I don't follow you back, that is not because I hate you, or I'm trying to be rude, or because I don't care. It is because I am an anxious mess

Most of what I post here is going to be about various interests of mine, and at the moment my interests are fairly overwhelmingly about The Mysterious Benedict Society!! (There is also beginning to be quite a bit more stuff about Wolf 359!)

Other than that, just be kind! Please remember that you are loved and valued very much

I do have some Rules set up as guidelines of what I'm comfortable with, but they shouldn't be too much of a worry.

Thank you!!

[yes-asil]

Animated Sylvie in celebration of pulling another two friends into the Epithet Erased hole

[homoeroticjunoincident]

reblog to make prev stop having headaches

[codachromes]

thinking about Fourier being the only one to try and get everyone to stop laughing at Lambert during Change of Mind

they're besties fr and I love them

[homoeroticjunoincident]

reblog to make prev stop having headaches

[oflightningandstars]

A Circus of Mollymauks

Thanks to @cobaltsoulsearcher for inspiration/ideas!

[ID: Mixed media (digital and physical) art of Mollymauk Tealeaf from Critical Role. There are five drawings of Molly in different poses with different outfits. In the top left drawing, he is standing with a cane. In the top center and right drawings, he is sitting. In the bottom two drawings, he is standing with a single adaptive crutch while gesturing with the other hand. Behind the drawings are photos of paper with pencil marks visible. /End ID]

[codachromes]

Victoire Fourier's relationship with space

Warning(s): major character death and suicide warning!! be careful with yourself

also I don't format on Tumblr I'm sorry if it sucks... I'll fix it... probably. ------

Space was always the answer for Victoire.

She grew up in the upper class of Brussels. The only daughter of a retired ballerina and an engineer for the Euro Space Center - she was always sure of exactly what she wanted to do, and how she was going to achieve it. Even if she never needed much (she had a butler, after all), she always lacked a steady familial dynamic. When her father wasn’t around, Victoire and her twin brother Luc didn’t speak a word to each other, and the only time their mother spoke to either of them was to berate them or compare the two. 

However, competing with her brother all throughout her schooling didn’t bother her. They had been competing since birth, herself and Luc, always fighting to see who would bring back higher test scores or better book reports in grade school. Her teachers always spoke of them with high regard saying that their fondest memories of the two were how driven the two were, even at the extent of their own relationship. 

Even though Victoire didn’t get along with her mother, she was her father’s carbon copy. While Victoire and Luc both got their looks from their mother - with their light blonde hair and sharp cheekbones, Victoire got her love for everything and everyone around her from her father. She may have never gotten along with her mother and the unachievable expectations she laid down for Victoire and Luc, but she and her father were inseparable. All throughout her childhood, he would take her to work, letting her run around the space center and gawk at the shuttles. That’s where her love for space was born, being nine years old, and her father taking her to work. She even got to help her father repair a test shuttle when it broke. (Was all she did hold the roll of Kapton tape for him? Yes, but that doesn’t matter). 

Victoire and Luc both graduated from secondary school when they were sixteen, while grieving the death of their father a few months prior. Victoire had gotten early admission to The University of Oxford, majoring in astrophysics. She completed her bachelors by the time she was nineteen, and got her masters and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She hadn’t spoken a word to Luc since their graduation. He was at Cambridge, she assumed, probably getting his degree in aerospace engineering, just like their father.

While at MIT, she read a paper, from a graduate student her age at Tsinghua University in China. His name was Kuan Hui, and Victoire was determined to meet him one day to ask about his work with theoretical astrophysics, rather than her own observational astrophysics. So many times before graduating, she had to ask herself if this was even worth it, why she was even doing this in the first place. However, it’s like she always said.

Space was always the answer for her. 

Within months of graduating with her PhD, Victoire was contacted by Goddard Futaristics, having come across many of her papers and even talks she gave in undergrad, impressed by her young age in such a complex field. Going on a space exploration mission was never on her radar, never something she was interested in. However, she knew she would have regretted it if she didn’t accept this opportunity. So, she ended up in Cape Canaveral, Florida, having lunch with her future crew. Her future crew, who happened to include none other than Dr. Kuan Hui himself. 

Desperate to try and impress him, she tried playing it smooth. However, when Dr. Hui told a joke that caused the whole table to laugh – even Samuel Lambert, who Victoire could already tell would be a stickler for rules – she choked on her coffee, and had to walk away to collect herself. Dr. Hui, or Kuan, as he assured her she could call him, joined her outside a few moments later to make sure she was alright, and they were never seen apart after that. 

The mission went on fine for a while. However, things started taking a turn for the worse. Mason Fisher died first, during repairs on the outside of the ship he was caught in a meteor shower. Victoire tried not to blame herself, but she wasn’t trained to deal with crew deaths like anyone with a military background. She and Kuan were just scientists. However, she chalked it up to a horrible accident, and tried to continue on with the mission. 

Lambert was next, a mystery sickness that had spread through his body quickly. Captain Lovelace took it the hardest. Victoire stayed out of the way for the weeks following, trying to figure out how to get them home after the damage from the meteor shower that killed Fisher.

The mission was supposed to end in January, but every time they tried to contact Canaveral, they got no response. So, there they stayed. 

Six months later, Kuan died. Victoire sat in his bunk for days, not wanting him to be alone- not wanting him to die alone. She didn’t know what happened to him with the box, it seemed so long ago- but she knew how it affected him, how he now struggled to be alone. 

Victoire never handled grief well, so she threw herself into her work, determined to get them home. She didn’t expect to figure it out so fast. Victoire was only able to fit one person in the escape pod, and she knew it had to be Captain Lovelace. Isabel would be able to figure everything out- she was smarter than Victoire in that way. 

Rhea had always been loyal to Victoire, always been the one to give Victoire a straight answer when asked a question. So, despite how much Rhea wanted to refuse, when Victoire asked Rhea to open the airlock with Victoire in it, she obeyed.

Victoire needed to die to help save Isabel, and she was always too much of a coward to do it herself. 

After all, space was always the answer for Victoire.

[meefling]

You Aren’t Boring I Just Suck At Conversations I’m Sorry: a novel by me

[phantomcat94]

I’m Not Ignoring You I Just Don’t Know What To Say: a sequel by me

[anartisticanomaly]

I Feel Like I have Nothing Interesting To Say So I Don’t Say Anything At All And I’m Really Sorry Don’t Stop Talking To Me: the trilogy.

[arrgh-whatever]

[yellow-cat]

(voice of a person spiralling) its embarrassing but i still havent figured out if its ok for me to be alive

[pregnanthudsonwilliams]

not naming names but some of you are so creative and talented it's an honor to have you in my phone

[xdarkfaeteethx-deactivated20260]

If you see me like your vent post that is me giving u a lil hug, I do not enjoy your suffering

[delinquentbookworm]

one time I went over to a friend's house and their housemate was making paper in the living room, and we saw this big tub full of water they were using to dissolve old scrap paper into a slurry, and everyone was immediately like "oh, you need scrap paper?" and started turning out their jacket pockets and producing expired coupons and bus tickets and crumpled receipts and old shopping lists and whatever else they'd been carrying round with them for no good reason, and passing it all to the paper-making housemate to make sure it was suitable before it got torn up and dropped into the tub, while people took turns stirring the slurry with a big wooden stick. it was strangely ritualistic, like presenting an offering to some kind of temple elder for inspection before placing it in a watery shrine to be devoured and reformed. pulp for the pulp god.

[vetchtibbles]

there comes a point in scrolling a dash consisting solely of one of your mutuals spamming the same post over and over when you have to check the note count on it in fear

[sophieswundergarten]

get loved, nerd

Hi!! Oh, goodness, I've missed seeing you around! I hope you are doing well. And please don't forget to love yourself, friend!! <3 <3 <3

[kaslynspeaks]

"Be calm," they say. "Be calm, and it will all turn out okay." "Well," says I, looking As they stand there, serene, "Being calm may work for you— But instead, I think I will scream."

[specialagentartemis]

Hi, I just wondered if you'd be up for saying a bit about your OC Rebecca Lambert? Cos I saw you mention her on my post and I am very intrigued...

(Feel free to ignore this if you don't feel like talking about her.)

Absolutely! I love to talk about Rebecca! I originally came up with her when thinking about Lovelace coming back from space and having to go tell her crews’ families what happened. Rebecca was kind of a vehicle for Lovelace Angst. Which is still very good, but she’s also spiralled out into a character of her own.

Rebecca Lambert is Sam Lambert’s older sister. She’s three years older than he is. I usually write them as Potawatomi through their dad's side. They were close when they were kids—she was louder, more outspoken, though they’re both equally argumentative. She would end up punching bullies for him sometimes at school, which he didn’t really appreciate because he’s anxious and self-conscious about everything. As kids, they would spend a lot of time sitting and reading quietly in the Shawnee public library. Rebecca liked to read books about history and contemporary/literary; Sam liked to read sci-fi. Those days in the library instilled in Rebecca a love of libraries, and in Sam a love of space and a desire to get out and see the world.

They were never really anybody special growing up. Rebecca got more political, more interested in community and activism; Sam spent his time reading books and watching the airplanes take off from the airport and dreaming about being somewhere else. At 18 went to college at the University of Oklahoma and then did a Master’s in Library Science. That was kind of the last straw for Sam; his dad was from Shawnee, his mom was from Tulsa, no one in his family had left Oklahoma in a generation or more, he wanted to get out and go places and be somebody.

So he went into the Air Force academy, and he and Rebecca had their first real big fight over that. Rebecca couldn’t understand why he wanted to leave; Sam couldn’t understand why she wanted to stay.

Rebecca grew up to be an avowed socialist/anarcho-syndicalist (depending on who she’s madder at at the moment); she wants to be a community organizer but doesn’t really have the people skills for it. She works at the Shawnee Public Library and it’s her calling, but fighting against conservative town policies and conservative town budgets is a full-time job in its own right.

When Sam told her he was going to be an astronaut, going to go to space, they had a fight about that too. Rebecca didn’t want him to go, didn’t trust Goddard, didn’t understand why he’s always felt the need to get as far away from Shawnee as possible; Sam, anguished and frustrated, responded with “Why can’t you ever just be happy for me?” and her answer was, bluntly, “I don’t want you to die in space, you idiot!” She loves her brother. She really does. Even if she doesn’t understand any of his life choices.

And then he went to space and never came back. And Goddard Futuristics refused to tell her or anyone in her family what happened.

This began her campaign to pry that information out of them. It… didn’t go that well; in their eyes, she was a nobody from nowhere, with no power. And all information about Captain Lovelace’s mission had been scrubbed from the internet.

But Rebecca was angry and determined, and after some years of no responses, she eventually made a small news story in a Florida paper by driving to the Goddard HQ, parking her pickup truck on their lawn, and banging on the door yelling “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BROTHER, YOU BASTARDS?”

And guess who, at that point, was monitoring the news for information about mysterious astronaut deaths connected to Goddard?

So about a week after she was released from jail, threatened by Goddard’s lawyers, kicked out, and returned home to Shawnee, she gets a phone call. “Hello. My name is Dominik Koudelka, and I’m a reporter. Goddard Futuristics killed my wife. I think we might be able to help each other uncover the truth.”

Finally, finally, someone is listening.

Dominik comes to meet her and talk to her. She takes him to the library. See, Goddard can scrub information from the internet… but they can’t touch microfilm. And she has a copy of the local newspaper on microfilm from when Sam’s shuttle launched, which she goes back to every once in a while… to prove to herself that she’s not making this up, that this all really happened. And she shows Dominik. “Here. This was my brother’s mission. They were supposed to come back three years ago, but they never did, and Goddard wants to pretend the whole thing never happened.”

But Dominik is staring at something else.

“Who’s that?” he asks, and points at the older man in the crew photo.

Rebecca has read this article enough times to name everyone in the photo. “That’s the science officer, Elias Selberg.”

“No…” Dominik says, “No, his name is Hilbert, and he was on my wife’s crew.”

They both realize, right then, that there is so much more being kept secret than two missing space crews. And they have a lot more people to find and contact now, and a much bigger investigation.

.

And thus begins Rebecca’s entry into what @geejaysmith and I call The OC Investigation Squad, a collection of OC family members left behind on Earth who band together and have investigations while the main plot of the show is going on, trying to uncover the Truth about Goddard and bring them down.