etraya | CHIRPER

⏵ CHIRPER ⏴Welcome to our bi-monthly CHIRPER post!

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<table style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 2;">
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 <td>NAME ▷</td><td> CHARACTER NAME </td>
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 <td>AGE ▷</td><td> CHARACTER AGE</td>
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 <td>FAVORITE COLOR ▷</td><td> FAVORITE COLOR ANSWER </td>
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 <td>STATUS ▷</td><td> RELATIONSHIP STATUS </td>
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 <div align="justify" style="margin-top: 10px; width:500px"> Getting to know you!

q: What is your proudest accomplishment?
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q: What do you miss most about your home world?
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q: How do you support or encourage others during difficult times?
a:

q: What was the last book you read?
a:

q: What do you do for fun?
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What were your thoughts on Rebecca?

I was very young when I first wrote it, but it left such an impression.

The atmosphere was powerful, and technically, the structure was well-tuned. The anonymity of the narrator really drew me into the story as well.

Hello, Madame Librarian. Congratulations on your posting.

Her and Frankenstein's monsters—never getting their own names for good cause and greater heartbreak. I feel like they're at a toss-up for which is more lamentable. And yet, the second Mrs. de Winter forever carries on being an echo of someone she isn't, but gets to tell her own tale directly.

Thank you. I'm glad to help out Mr. Finch, and everyone here, where I can.

I want to say she shakes off that shadow once the truth about Rebecca comes out. (if you know, you know, as the kids say) As she tells Danvers, she is Mrs. de Winters and will have things her own way. The monster would be my pick. She had to deal with the issues brought up by marrying up, yes, but he was too uncanny to stand a chance in most circumstances.

It has been some time since I have reread, but I was reading a transcript centered on the Shelleys and Lord Byron's getaway during "the year without a summer". The trip that ended with two icons of horror being created. Fascinating stuff.

If you need any assistance, do let me know. I have practical experience in interdimensional librarianship.

[ Oh. She likes you.

But the last part distracts her pretty hard.
(She'll come back to the other, she hopes.) ]

Oh? Really?

What was that like?

I felt very safe there.

[yep, solid start there. She's quick to continue, though.]

I started out in Acquisitions, probably because my parents own and operate an antique bookstore and therefore, I know how to order things? But as more people were sent back to their homes, I assumed more tasks until I was the head. The façade wasn't as large as the building we have here, but the inside.

Well

it was always as big as it needed to be.

[ Barbara always loved that about libraries from a young age, too.
One of the few places she never felt too smart for her age.

Where people were excited to help her learn more,
not threatened by being corrected by a child. ]

Was it a lot different, do you?

Between a normal library and an interdimensional one?
What makes it interdimensional? What does it add to it?

[For Mayuko, it was more that the animated books would tear apart anyone or anything that tried to attack her.]

I was debating between using "interdimensional" or "multidimensional". I think the first fits, because for example we Etrayans are a multidimensional community

(multi-universal? more accurate but awkward to type)

whereas Etraya as a whole exists as a nexus of worlds. Between dimensions. Interdimensional. The structures brought to Etraya could then also be termed "interdimensional" by virtue of being placed here, not due to intrinsic properties.

What are some things that made my library different from a normal one? The only element that was specifically interdimensional: while we were definitely located on Earth, we could receive texts from any world we had residents from. Either through my orders or randomly.

Things that were not normal but could be chalked up to camp being a very weird place: Being larger on the inside than the exterior (a community-building-sized cabin, as opposed to residential, for a summer camp) would otherwise allow for. Having animate books that enjoyed biting people that handled them wrong and reshelving themselves. An ungodly amount of Twilight novels delivered regularly.

That does sound quite a bit different.

And this was all at a camp?

Yes, in Louisiana. We could still follow world events happening outside, we just couldn't contact out.

This must seem even more removed then.

Without the ability to even know what's happening back in your world.

It feels that way. I do appreciate Aurora's attempt at normalcy, with instituting a calendar, bringing over comforts from home, even trying to implement holidays? But it's also... not the same as it would be back home.

How do you manage that feeling, if it comes up?

It does. Being here for longer than a year at this point, it comes and goes in waves mostly. There are a number of things I can predict, and then sometimes the oddest of small things will trip me up, make me wonder how my family and friends are, what—if anything— has changed in the world while I've been gone.

Sometimes I just let myself sit with it, and sometimes I surround myself with those I know best here, when it's happening.

Both very wise strategies as long as neither predominates. I know I'm guilty of that.

Have there been any records kept, from early on? I've gradually been piecing together things, but the missions get in the way.

[ Barbara's mouth contorts for a second. A smile that's more surprise than it is triumph. She hadn't actually been trying for that—here or anywhere else on the Chriper; she's not on here for people to pad her ego—but there's something ... nice.

About it just coming out of this conversation about books and libraries. ]

Officially, no.
[ Unofficially? So many.
So. Many. Mayuko.. ]

What are you looking for?
Maybe I can help with filling in gaps.

I know how that goes.

[says someone who kept handwritten logs on Sidereal's doings from the day she appeared there.]

Mostly curious about the early days. Mission-wise, the earliest I've heard about was something about a spaceship, and one set in the suburbs.

Yeah, I can help with that.

I showed up month two, which was the mission where we were stuck in the labryinth, and the month before it, as some of my family came in the first wave before me, was the dopplegangers. Both of those were, for the most part, still on planet. The one after the labyrinth, but before Moorecroft Village, was the one where everyone got plushies and they turned into your worst nightmare.

[ Babs is trying very hard to not let that eidetic memory surface. ]

There was some other random stuff at the start, too. Rain that changed your mood. Large wild animals roaming through the streets and buildings.

CHIRPER

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augh. that totally was supposed to say 'read.' thank you for getting that.

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