(no subject)
Second commentary for thepodsquad. This one is so cracked out, y'all.
No, seriously. I mean, really, really cracked out. In some fics, you can see vaguely where you were going, but this one had no direction to start with, so honestly. Good luck.
Sydney is in her old house, wearing her Halloween costume from when Francie was alive, a blue dress and a white apron, Alice in Wonderland. Because I, the almighty writer, said so. She has a blonde wig on that feels attached to her head. Um. She even has patent leather Mary Janes on.
It's the house she grew up in, back when her mother was alive. In the green bowl Ha! From that episode! The special one that Sloane made a fuss over! on the counter there is a bowl of small round pebbles. "Eat Me," it says, and the pebble is sugary-sweet and Sydney feels very small. Magic, I say.
Sloane is standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her. Ew, okay. Ew.
"You're not supposed to be here!" Sydney exclaims, smaller than she used to be, and with braids, now brown, on either side of her head. Like Dorothy.
"I'm here to guide you," he replies, his voice smooth as oil, and he takes her hand to lead her upstairs. Ew! Don't hold his hand!
When they arrive, they are no longer in her house, but instead in a museum. Just go with it. There are old things- a dead, stuffed tiger with marble eyes; tribal masks of wood from Africa; a Faberge egg with pink enamel and flowers that crawl up and three pictures of royalty with a crown on the top. That egg exactly exists. Tsar Nicholas had it made for his wife. I did research, guys. Sloane explains: "This is a tiger from the jungles of India, Sydney. The masks come from a tribe in Africa that uses them to scare away beasts so they wouldn't eat their livestock. And this egg is misplaced." I think maybe I was trying for a continental thing here. Just not North or South America. Maybe? I don't know?
Sloane picks up the egg. "This is an heirloom, Sydney. A Romanov Faberge egg, made for the royal family." He leaves his finger prints on the pink enameled egg, and Sydney can feel the ridges of his fingertips on her hand. ... No idea why, though.
Next there is a hallway of portraits, one of which is her father. "That's Daddy!" Sydney exclaims in surprise, and Sloane agrees amiably. "Would you like me to read the inscription?"
Sydney is possessed to say yes. Because he is a liar.
"Odysseus," says Sloane, and that's all wrong, because it's definitely her father, "the man who taunted the gods and could never come home again." Not quite sure why I chose him.
"That's not true," Sydney says, and stomps a small foot, "That's my father." So there.
"Plaques beneath paintings always tell the truth, Sydney," says Sloane, and it does say so beneath the painting, "As do I." I kind of love that. It's so batshit!Sloane.
They walk through an archway, and Sydney looks down to see ruby slippers. See! Dorothy! More about getting home! She looks up at Sloane questioningly, but he is looking at the statues. "Look," Sloane says, "there is your mother."
The statue has a coolly beautiful face, For some reason, I always make women cool and men warm. It's a constant thing. No, I have no real reason why, I just... always do that. I particularly remember doing it with Han and Leia. And I've done it a lot with Syd and Vaughn. It's a thing, okay? with smooth cheeks and horribly vacant eyes. The whole inspiration of that story was a picture of that statue in my TOK's philosophy book. I know after that I made the Odysseus connection after that and built this story, or whatever, around it.
"'Irina, Blind Justice,'" Also the name of that show that I think was on TV for about a week. Sloane reads, and he smiles appreciatively, and Sydney squawks in protest. "She is not blind!"
"Look at her eyes," Sloane says equably, "She can't see a thing!" Sloane is so crazy! <3!
"She can, too, she can see me," And it's true, the statue has just blinked at Sydney. ... Blinked. Did I mean winked? Or... just blinked? Like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz? I don't know. I must've been high. She's as sure of it as she is of the blue ribbons in her hair and the gingham of her dress. Dooooorothy. "She winked at me."
"A trick of the light, Sydney. Why would she do that?" Sloane goes up to a buffet, set between David and Venus de Milo. No idea. None. He pours pink ? tea into a glass teacup and drinks it. "Come, Sydney, have some refreshment."
Sydney looks back to the statue, which is staring ahead blindly, and walks over slowly. There is a blue pitcher that says "Drink me," and so Sydney does. Because Syd is so obediant, right? Always. It's thick and green and looks vile, but Sydney drinks it anyway. Why? Hello? It tastes like maple syrup. Huh.
The next thing she knows she has broken through the roof and is much taller than the house. Alice.
"That was a very foolish thing to do, Sydney!" She can just barely hear Sloane's tinny little voice, aww, his tinny little voice, how cute. Can't you just picture it? and he is standing next to her enormous red shoes, Dorothy "Now you'll never get back home!"
She imagines squashing him, Hee! but thinks it would make a mess, and so she refrains. It's like the bug in that Mickey Mouse Jack and the Beanstalk thing She scans over the tops of the houses surrounding her and steps out of the house. The world lies before her, the countries the same colors they are in the atlas her father bought her, AMERICA is pink, CANADA is blue, Canada's really big. MEXICO orange, and their names are written across in capital letters. Colors were completely arbitrary When she steps out (to walk down the PACIFIC, I loved writing in CAPS, if you couldn't tell) the ocean is hard and blue, with small white ridges like Sloane's fingerprints. ... nope, still don't know why I made a big deal about that. Over in green ARGENTINA, Buenos Aires is lit up. She is now small again, her regular height, but she still has the ruby slippers on. Dorothy. See a pattern emerging here, Scully? Her sister is wearing a shirt with a cartoon on it, and her hair is short and sleek. She is frozen mid-run. Oh, Nadia! Yaaaay!
"Nadia?" she asks, and frozen Nadia doesn't move. Poor frozen Nadia.
"She can't hear you," she hears, and Sydney turns to see an old man in what looks like a robe. Guess whoooooooo? He strides towards her, and he has a pointed beard. Because all crazy prophets do. It's the fashion. Sydney places herself between this man and her sister. Aww, what a good, brave sister.
"Who are you?" she asks, and the man laughs. He has very even teeth. Because all people from the middle ages did
"I am responsible for this all. I created this." Dude, what a bastard! Lie at least!
"What?"
She looks up, and she is now in a field behind a large house. Get it? Where Emily died! From Truth Takes Time! A large rosebush is growing in the middle of the grass, and stone beneath it reads "Emily, the sacrifice." Two yellow orchids flank it on either side. In-joke. Rambaldi's wife's favorite flower, duuuh.
Sydney looks back up at the man. "You're him, aren't you?" Duh.
He nods slowly, staring across the field. He looks tired, and there are worry lines all around his eyes. Poor Rambo. he must totally be like Jesus. "I died for this? Shiiiit." "Why did you do all this?" she asked, and she means the drawings and the inventions and the solutions and the riddles.
"It seemed like a good idea."
"But you were wrong."
He looks at her, and behind him Sydney can see his body being burned for heresy. Awww. "I was very wrong." :-( How lame.
"Fix it."
He sighs, a haunted, heavy sound. "I can't do that." But you're the all-powerful prophet, hello.
"But you can do everything." When he makes no reply, she pressed forward. "Tell me how to, then."
He studies her face for a minute, and from a desk next to him in the green grass, he pulls out a sketch of her face. "Follow this."
She looks at her own face. "This isn't a map." Can't you just see Syd looking at him, all, helloooo? This won't work, duh.
"Go back the way you came, then." And with that, he is gone.
That. Made. No. Sense. NONE.
I have no idea what went on there. Or why I wrote it. Any ideas, guys? Other than I must've been on crack or something. Something highly illegal. What the writers were on, perhaps.
Sydney walks back to the rosebush, which withers and dies as she approaches. Aw. How Beatrice of her. When she returns to Buenos Aires, time has sped up again, and Nadia has run off. Oh, no Nadia! How sad! She's probably doing something illegal now. She walks up the Pacific, which is now slick like ice, and hard to walk on. and back to through the now-empty museum, Why? until she walks downstairs into her old kitchen, where Sloane is drinking his pink tea. Why pink? Why?
"Ah, Sydney," he says from the head of the table, "You made it. We were waiting for you." You were?
He sits at the head of the table, and her father is at the other end, Big Love. It's like Big Love, only with two men and one woman. Heh. reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. Her mother is standing at the stove, scrambling eggs. Domestic!Irina. Yaaaay! Nadia, her hair a shiny black bob, sits at the table, reading the comics and munching on toast. In her glass is a green liquid. Oh no! Bad! On the table besides her plate rests a teabag. PSYCH! The green goo is just a tea! Ha! I had you big time!
Her father folds the paper. "Sit down, Sydney," he says, "And eat your breakfast." So paternal, that man.
Sydney sits down. "Don't kick!" Nadia says sharply, "You can have the comics when I'm done." Calm down, Nadia.
"Now, girls," her mother says smoothly, "Behave." She comes over and puts a box of cereal in front of Sydney. "I got your favorite," her mother whispers conspiratorially, "St. Aidan's flakes. It was hard to find." Oh, St Aidan's Flakes. That collectible cereal. I wonder what the prize in there would be. Ooh, I know, the decoder liquid for his invisible text! And by "his" I mean "Rambaldi." In case you missed that.
Sydney pours the cereal into a red dish. Because... red seemed important at that moment? The clock with the golden disk Rambaldi artefact! Woot! is in the middle of the table, and it chimed thirteen. A reference to Tom's Midnight Garden, where the clock chimed thirteen each night and he went to visit Hattie in the past. It was so cool.
And so, the crack ends. No, I still don't get it.
No, seriously. I mean, really, really cracked out. In some fics, you can see vaguely where you were going, but this one had no direction to start with, so honestly. Good luck.
Sydney is in her old house, wearing her Halloween costume from when Francie was alive, a blue dress and a white apron, Alice in Wonderland. Because I, the almighty writer, said so. She has a blonde wig on that feels attached to her head. Um. She even has patent leather Mary Janes on.
It's the house she grew up in, back when her mother was alive. In the green bowl Ha! From that episode! The special one that Sloane made a fuss over! on the counter there is a bowl of small round pebbles. "Eat Me," it says, and the pebble is sugary-sweet and Sydney feels very small. Magic, I say.
Sloane is standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her. Ew, okay. Ew.
"You're not supposed to be here!" Sydney exclaims, smaller than she used to be, and with braids, now brown, on either side of her head. Like Dorothy.
"I'm here to guide you," he replies, his voice smooth as oil, and he takes her hand to lead her upstairs. Ew! Don't hold his hand!
When they arrive, they are no longer in her house, but instead in a museum. Just go with it. There are old things- a dead, stuffed tiger with marble eyes; tribal masks of wood from Africa; a Faberge egg with pink enamel and flowers that crawl up and three pictures of royalty with a crown on the top. That egg exactly exists. Tsar Nicholas had it made for his wife. I did research, guys. Sloane explains: "This is a tiger from the jungles of India, Sydney. The masks come from a tribe in Africa that uses them to scare away beasts so they wouldn't eat their livestock. And this egg is misplaced." I think maybe I was trying for a continental thing here. Just not North or South America. Maybe? I don't know?
Sloane picks up the egg. "This is an heirloom, Sydney. A Romanov Faberge egg, made for the royal family." He leaves his finger prints on the pink enameled egg, and Sydney can feel the ridges of his fingertips on her hand. ... No idea why, though.
Next there is a hallway of portraits, one of which is her father. "That's Daddy!" Sydney exclaims in surprise, and Sloane agrees amiably. "Would you like me to read the inscription?"
Sydney is possessed to say yes. Because he is a liar.
"Odysseus," says Sloane, and that's all wrong, because it's definitely her father, "the man who taunted the gods and could never come home again." Not quite sure why I chose him.
"That's not true," Sydney says, and stomps a small foot, "That's my father." So there.
"Plaques beneath paintings always tell the truth, Sydney," says Sloane, and it does say so beneath the painting, "As do I." I kind of love that. It's so batshit!Sloane.
They walk through an archway, and Sydney looks down to see ruby slippers. See! Dorothy! More about getting home! She looks up at Sloane questioningly, but he is looking at the statues. "Look," Sloane says, "there is your mother."
The statue has a coolly beautiful face, For some reason, I always make women cool and men warm. It's a constant thing. No, I have no real reason why, I just... always do that. I particularly remember doing it with Han and Leia. And I've done it a lot with Syd and Vaughn. It's a thing, okay? with smooth cheeks and horribly vacant eyes. The whole inspiration of that story was a picture of that statue in my TOK's philosophy book. I know after that I made the Odysseus connection after that and built this story, or whatever, around it.
"'Irina, Blind Justice,'" Also the name of that show that I think was on TV for about a week. Sloane reads, and he smiles appreciatively, and Sydney squawks in protest. "She is not blind!"
"Look at her eyes," Sloane says equably, "She can't see a thing!" Sloane is so crazy! <3!
"She can, too, she can see me," And it's true, the statue has just blinked at Sydney. ... Blinked. Did I mean winked? Or... just blinked? Like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz? I don't know. I must've been high. She's as sure of it as she is of the blue ribbons in her hair and the gingham of her dress. Dooooorothy. "She winked at me."
"A trick of the light, Sydney. Why would she do that?" Sloane goes up to a buffet, set between David and Venus de Milo. No idea. None. He pours pink ? tea into a glass teacup and drinks it. "Come, Sydney, have some refreshment."
Sydney looks back to the statue, which is staring ahead blindly, and walks over slowly. There is a blue pitcher that says "Drink me," and so Sydney does. Because Syd is so obediant, right? Always. It's thick and green and looks vile, but Sydney drinks it anyway. Why? Hello? It tastes like maple syrup. Huh.
The next thing she knows she has broken through the roof and is much taller than the house. Alice.
"That was a very foolish thing to do, Sydney!" She can just barely hear Sloane's tinny little voice, aww, his tinny little voice, how cute. Can't you just picture it? and he is standing next to her enormous red shoes, Dorothy "Now you'll never get back home!"
She imagines squashing him, Hee! but thinks it would make a mess, and so she refrains. It's like the bug in that Mickey Mouse Jack and the Beanstalk thing She scans over the tops of the houses surrounding her and steps out of the house. The world lies before her, the countries the same colors they are in the atlas her father bought her, AMERICA is pink, CANADA is blue, Canada's really big. MEXICO orange, and their names are written across in capital letters. Colors were completely arbitrary When she steps out (to walk down the PACIFIC, I loved writing in CAPS, if you couldn't tell) the ocean is hard and blue, with small white ridges like Sloane's fingerprints. ... nope, still don't know why I made a big deal about that. Over in green ARGENTINA, Buenos Aires is lit up. She is now small again, her regular height, but she still has the ruby slippers on. Dorothy. See a pattern emerging here, Scully? Her sister is wearing a shirt with a cartoon on it, and her hair is short and sleek. She is frozen mid-run. Oh, Nadia! Yaaaay!
"Nadia?" she asks, and frozen Nadia doesn't move. Poor frozen Nadia.
"She can't hear you," she hears, and Sydney turns to see an old man in what looks like a robe. Guess whoooooooo? He strides towards her, and he has a pointed beard. Because all crazy prophets do. It's the fashion. Sydney places herself between this man and her sister. Aww, what a good, brave sister.
"Who are you?" she asks, and the man laughs. He has very even teeth. Because all people from the middle ages did
"I am responsible for this all. I created this." Dude, what a bastard! Lie at least!
"What?"
She looks up, and she is now in a field behind a large house. Get it? Where Emily died! From Truth Takes Time! A large rosebush is growing in the middle of the grass, and stone beneath it reads "Emily, the sacrifice." Two yellow orchids flank it on either side. In-joke. Rambaldi's wife's favorite flower, duuuh.
Sydney looks back up at the man. "You're him, aren't you?" Duh.
He nods slowly, staring across the field. He looks tired, and there are worry lines all around his eyes. Poor Rambo. he must totally be like Jesus. "I died for this? Shiiiit." "Why did you do all this?" she asked, and she means the drawings and the inventions and the solutions and the riddles.
"It seemed like a good idea."
"But you were wrong."
He looks at her, and behind him Sydney can see his body being burned for heresy. Awww. "I was very wrong." :-( How lame.
"Fix it."
He sighs, a haunted, heavy sound. "I can't do that." But you're the all-powerful prophet, hello.
"But you can do everything." When he makes no reply, she pressed forward. "Tell me how to, then."
He studies her face for a minute, and from a desk next to him in the green grass, he pulls out a sketch of her face. "Follow this."
She looks at her own face. "This isn't a map." Can't you just see Syd looking at him, all, helloooo? This won't work, duh.
"Go back the way you came, then." And with that, he is gone.
That. Made. No. Sense. NONE.
I have no idea what went on there. Or why I wrote it. Any ideas, guys? Other than I must've been on crack or something. Something highly illegal. What the writers were on, perhaps.
Sydney walks back to the rosebush, which withers and dies as she approaches. Aw. How Beatrice of her. When she returns to Buenos Aires, time has sped up again, and Nadia has run off. Oh, no Nadia! How sad! She's probably doing something illegal now. She walks up the Pacific, which is now slick like ice, and hard to walk on. and back to through the now-empty museum, Why? until she walks downstairs into her old kitchen, where Sloane is drinking his pink tea. Why pink? Why?
"Ah, Sydney," he says from the head of the table, "You made it. We were waiting for you." You were?
He sits at the head of the table, and her father is at the other end, Big Love. It's like Big Love, only with two men and one woman. Heh. reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. Her mother is standing at the stove, scrambling eggs. Domestic!Irina. Yaaaay! Nadia, her hair a shiny black bob, sits at the table, reading the comics and munching on toast. In her glass is a green liquid. Oh no! Bad! On the table besides her plate rests a teabag. PSYCH! The green goo is just a tea! Ha! I had you big time!
Her father folds the paper. "Sit down, Sydney," he says, "And eat your breakfast." So paternal, that man.
Sydney sits down. "Don't kick!" Nadia says sharply, "You can have the comics when I'm done." Calm down, Nadia.
"Now, girls," her mother says smoothly, "Behave." She comes over and puts a box of cereal in front of Sydney. "I got your favorite," her mother whispers conspiratorially, "St. Aidan's flakes. It was hard to find." Oh, St Aidan's Flakes. That collectible cereal. I wonder what the prize in there would be. Ooh, I know, the decoder liquid for his invisible text! And by "his" I mean "Rambaldi." In case you missed that.
Sydney pours the cereal into a red dish. Because... red seemed important at that moment? The clock with the golden disk Rambaldi artefact! Woot! is in the middle of the table, and it chimed thirteen. A reference to Tom's Midnight Garden, where the clock chimed thirteen each night and he went to visit Hattie in the past. It was so cool.
And so, the crack ends. No, I still don't get it.