markwatney: (003)
Mark Watney ([personal profile] markwatney) wrote in [community profile] sixthiterationlogs2018-09-06 06:54 pm

[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: Town Hall & Inn
WHEN: 6 September 2018, Evening
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Warn on your threads, please. PTSD is probably a given.
NOTES: Support group mingle! If your character needs some support after the latest meta plot or just generally, send them on over to Town Hall. Also, feel free to do top levels having to do with signing up for a tube monitoring shift. Please let me know if you want a Mark thread, I have notifs off for the post.

So, I have been down to what we all seem to be collectively calling the Bunker. It is... something, to say the least.

For some people it feels like hope and for others despair, and I can honestly see both sides of it. Some people need to feel like they have some control, even if it's illusory — Having a puzzle to possibly solve makes them feel less adrift. For others, it's too much reality, or the perception of, anyway. I can't say I'm personally convinced by any of it.

See, I've been here since the start of whatever this is, with a group that's almost entirely gone now. It's been five months since we were birthed into this expanded world, and I don't know if it's any more real than the last. That isn't me putting on a tin foil hat, that's just respecting the environment. Mars was the same way: You do what you need to do to eke out a life, to survive or even thrive, but it's dangerous to think you have any real control. Everything can go to shit in the blink of eye, and then you're tumbling around in an airlock while your entire food supply is turned to dust.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people should stop hoping to get home, stop trying to figure it all out. I'm just saying we might all be a little easier mentally if we could express how scary it is to know, deep down, that the rug can be pulled out from under us at any moment... And then to accept that feeling that way is okay.

With that in mind, after a little meditating during my daily work in the fields, I put up two notices on the blackboard in the South Village inn:

Volunteers to monitor the bunker tubes for new arrivals, please sign up for a shift on the paper on the bar.


That's one thing we can do, at least. Just the illusion of control, but still important to some people, and definitely helpful for anybody new.

Below that:

Support Group Tonight
Town Hall - 7:00 PM
Everyone Welcome


I don't know how many people will actually show — We've got a surprisingly stubborn, resilient group, in my experience. But even if it helps just one person, it's worth doing.
cannily: (caelicon11)

[personal profile] cannily 2018-09-21 10:14 pm (UTC)(link)
"I don't mean for chores." Let them both stand accused, if the appropriateness of the conversation can be judged. When the worst wrung of the ladder was sacrificial death, no one really called for the prisoners to take over the cleaning, or the fields. Labor was a use that required the living, a safeguard for as long as one could perform it.

But what a thing it would be, if your body could die and all of you--memories, scars, skills--could wake up in another, a gap of sleep between.

He doesn't even recall the pain or shock of death--only those near misses along the way. "It feels like it means something," he adds, tapping the pen to the edge of his journal. "That we remember. That we know who we are or were at all. They don't just need people, in a place, performing tasks."
fwips: (Image31)

[personal profile] fwips 2018-09-28 04:48 am (UTC)(link)
"That's what I've been saying," Peter says, and flaps an emphatic hand the guy's way. "It just doesn't fit. That's why I don't really buy into clones as the most likely theory. Or it's part of why, anyway."

Less scientifically, it's difficult for him to believe his life never happened, that the sacrifices he and others made that led them to this place was all just fiction. But also, Thanos explains a whole heck of a lot even if he doesn't explain everything.

"This is all pretty new to us," he adds, in case it wasn't obvious by the need for the support group. "We didn't have a lot of answers before we found that underground complex, and now we just have more questions."
cannily: (caelicon)

[personal profile] cannily 2018-09-28 09:39 pm (UTC)(link)
The sudden enthusiasm brooks a smile, perhaps the first of anything but polite greeting since he swam ashore. It's--charming, despite the subject. The boy leans into the discussion without guile, and be it from his old life or this, Cael can appreciate that the village hasn't pressed him into it.

"It's generally better to have questions than answers," he says--and not to appease. "Few of them live up to the journey, and when we let them be the ending--well, everything ends.

"Perhaps that's what this is, mechanics and magic aside. A refusal of an ending."
fwips: (Image42)

[personal profile] fwips 2018-10-04 06:41 am (UTC)(link)
Somehow, this conversation took a sharp turn away from science and into philosophy before Peter knew what was happening. One of those things he's good at; the other not so much. Cael isn't necessarily wrong, but Peter also can't keep himself from thinking the guy sounds a lot like something that would be on one of May's 'Quote a Day' calendars.

Peter falters, and then lifts both hands in a hapless shrug. "I kind of need to be doing things. Trying to answer questions."