In The Modern Sense That One Pretends Their Life Is Original

[Spindarene]

((Julia Raymond pregame START))

Julia took another swig of whiskey, hoping that the burn in her throat would somehow cancel out the burn of shame and humiliation in her gut.

She thought that Tanvir had liked her. She’d really thought that he had liked her. She’d hoped that they would embark on this journey of scientific discovery together, and that maybe, just maybe, they would grow closer to each other in the process.

God, she’d been so stupid. She could hear Mia’s voice in her head right now, saying “Babe…you can’t be friends with your teacher. It just doesn’t work that way.” Julia had so wanted to prove her wrong, just this once, because of how badly she’d wanted this. In fact, she’d wanted it so badly that maybe she’d actually needed it. She took another burning gulp of whiskey to wash away the pain that twisted her insides at the thought. She hated needing people. She hated needing friends. She’d had too many friendships go belly-up in the worst way because she was lonely and had tried to make something out of nothing, but Tanvir was different. That was why this hurt so much.

Julia had been ghosted before. Unfortunately it was just part of living in the digital age, and especially when you tended to make friends with other people who were just as emotionally immature and fucked up as you are, things didn’t always end well. Every time Julia had been ghosted it had hurt, but she’d eventually been able to rationalize it away by saying to herself, “Well, I didn’t really know them super well. What was I thinking? I latched onto this person because they were nice to me, and I put all of these expectations on them and that wasn’t really fair of me to do. So, no, it wasn’t good that they ghosted me, but I barely knew them anyway and in retrospect we weren’t really all that compatible with each other, so it’s probably for the best.” She couldn’t do that with Tanvir, because the truth was that she had really liked Tanvir, and she knew that he had liked her. She wasn’t just making something out of nothing this time. She knew that he had genuinely liked her, maybe even as much as she’d liked him, and that was the problem.

While she was currently in her last year at Cascadia, she was still a student, and moreover she was a student in Tanvir’s class. She knew that it was weird for her to show up to Tanvir’s office hours to have conversations that sometimes lasted for hours, conversations that most of the time had nothing to do with the subject material. She was aware that she knew way more about Tanvir’s personal life than was generally considered appropriate for a college student to know about their teacher, and even though it was fairly common for psychology students to share personal details about themselves with their teachers, the way she talked about her life and her feelings with Tanvir was very different from the way that she shared those details with her other psychology teachers–including her clinical teacher who had been trained as a therapist. She knew that she wouldn’t have been this heartbroken over being ghosted by any of her other teachers, and she also knew that Tanvir had probably ghosted her for this exact reason.

She tilted her head back and downed the rest of the whiskey, then set the glass down and gestured for another.

[Applesintime]

((Charlie Vandermeyer Pregame: Start))

So, y'know, Charlie wasn't old enough to drink and you had to be 21 and all that jazz. Of course, it wasn't like the beer wasn't freely flowing at all the parties she went to, but she couldn't just walk into a bar and go "Yo, can I have some beer?". Kinda weird that she was allowed to learn all this nuclear stuff and join the army and shoot guns and stuff if she wanted to, but drinking a beer was like, totally off-limits!

Fortunately, the dude here didn't really seem to care about that! Maybe they were in like, international waters or something cool like that, or maybe the NRV Frontier bartender just assumed you were old enough to drink if you were here. Charlie had kinda thought that drinking would be discouraged here, what with the super cool nuclear reactor and all the science equipment and expensive looking stuff in case you were the kinda drunk who got all pissed off and started trashing shit like one of the guys they'd invited from the AFROTC.

Sipping her beer, Charlie wondered whatever happened to that guy. Maybe he got kicked out or something because he smashed one of the dorm windows. And then she shrugged because hey, didn't matter! She was on one of the coolest goddamn ships in the world, one of like, five or six civvie ships with a nuclear reactor in it, and she was worrying about some random guy who she hadn't even spoke to before he went totally berserk?

She did wish they'd let her see the nuclear reactor, though. They spun some bullshit about how it was off limits to those who weren't the assigned technicians and that people could get hurt down there, but psh, come on Charlie had literally served on a nuclear submarine over the summer! The USS John Warner, which had been a pretty fucking cool summer. They'd even let her look at the reactor once when she wasn't following her enlisted buddy Wycinski around so she knew what it was like to be one of them.

To make stuff even worse, she'd left her Airpods back in her dorm. She still had a laptop and some actual headphones, but she couldn't exactly vibe and drink beer with a laptop on her well, lap.

Charlie glanced over at the other girl, who was called Julie or Julia or something with a Ju sound. She didn't actually know many people outsidea NROTC or the nuke engineering class, so maybe now was her chance to make friends! Plus, Ju looked like she was just kinda moping in the corner there and kinda looked like she needed a shoulder to rest on! Grabbing her beer glass and shifting over to the same table, Charlie greeted the girl with a grin. "Sup?"

[Spindarene]

Julia was staring at the amber-colored liquid in her glass when a young, friendly-looking blonde woman came over to her table and said hi. When Julia glanced up at her she did a double-take, because even though this girl was younger and had a slightly more muscular build, in the light of the galley to Julia’s alcohol-fuzzed eyes she looked a lot like Mia. She had a similar hairstyle, and something about her friendly but no-nonsense vibe was reminiscent of Mia. She felt a small pang in her stomach for her girlfriend, the one person who she could always talk to about anything and who would know the right thing to say to comfort her, even though she would have every right to say “I told you so.”

The blonde girl in front of her was not Mia, but she was a friendly face and since Tanvir had ditched Julia and she was here anyway, she might as well get to know the people who were actually on the ship with her.

“Hi,” Julia said, giving the girl a small smile. She’d initially planned to stop there, but something about the way the girl reminded Julia of Mia and the way she seemed to be looking at Julia slightly quizzically or expectantly combined with the alcohol meant that more words tumbled out of Julia’s mouth than she’d intended. “I uh…I was going to meet a friend here. Well, not here,” she gestured to the bar around her, “but on the ship and then he decided he couldn’t make it or well, didn’t want to make it or…something, so I’m here.” She was just sober enough to realize that she was rambling like a drunk idiot, so she stopped herself and took a deep breath.

She tried to think of something that would be socially acceptable to say, like some sort of getting-to-know-you question. She knew that this girl wasn’t in the psychology program, but she thought that she’d seen her walking around campus in a military uniform once or twice.

“Are you, uh, are you in the army or something?”

[Applesintime]

Ju did a double take when Charlie sat down, and for a moment she wondered if maybe Ju just wanted to be left alone? Charlie got it - well, she didn't get it get it, she always liked having someone to vibe with - but eventually the other girl relaxed and Charlie relaxed in turn. The beer probably helped, as well!

Listening to the girl talk about her buddy who couldn't make it, Charlie felt like she should probably chime in once she was done. "Man, that sucks." Smooth. "Janus-Hayes approached a couple of my course buddies, but they were all busy with other stuff or were worried about missing training. I had to get like, a waiver written up and even then I gotta do my exercises and record them on my laptop." It sucked! Like, c'mon, she was doing stuff that could be really vital to her career and the guy in charge of her program still wanted her to jump around her cabin and stuff? Speaking of NROTC stuff, Ju was asking her about it!

"Navy, uh, kinda!" Charlie chirped, taking another swig of her beer. "I'm in the NROTC - the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corp, so once I get outta college I'll be on a ship! Well, hopefully a submarine rather than a surface ship." In her first NROTC summer, all the rookies had been given some time in all of the Navy's divisions: submarines, surface ships, aviation and the Marines for some reason! Charlie figured that the Marine officers would come from a Marine ROTC, because that made a bunch more sense than pulling some dude or dudette who wanted to be on a ship and letting them command a bunch of crayon eaters, but apparently not!

"What's your major? I'm doing nuke engineering. Oh, and I'm Charlotte. But everyone calls me Charlie!" A question with a question seemed fair.

[Spindarene]

Julia stared intently at her whiskey while the other girl made a gallant effort to sympathize with her plight. She appreciated the effort, but she was really hoping they could get off the subject, especially since the other girl seemed to have assumed that the friend Julia was referring to was one of her classmates.

However, the other girl did then answer Julia’s question about being in the military, and Julia felt herself relaxing a little bit. Julia had never particularly liked the military, and found herself generally in political opposition to those that did, but this girl was pretty obviously a fellow queer who also happened to be training as a naval reserve officer. Plus, she needed something to take her mind off of Tanvir’s betrayal and this girl happened to be a convenient distraction. Julia raised her eyebrows slightly in intrigue as the other girl told her that she hoped to be stationed on a submarine once she graduated from college, and that she’s majoring in nuke engineering. She also learned that the other girl’s name was Charlotte, although she goes by Charlie.

She hesitated slightly when Charlie asked her what her major was. Even though psychology is a science, she always felt a little insecure about telling people in hardcore STEM fields about her field of study. Charlie seemed nice enough, though.

“I’m studying psychology,” Julia replied. “I’m in my final year, but I’m not quite sure what I want to do after I graduate. I want to go to graduate school, but I’m not quite sure where or what I want to study.” This wasn’t quite true. Julia was pretty sure that she still wanted to go into social psychology research, but since Tanvir had been her teacher for both research methods and social psychology she couldn’t bring herself to say it, at least not tonight. She decided to shift the topic away from herself for a while.

“So, what’s nuke engineering like? It sounds complicated.”

Great job defending the intelligence of psych majors, a snide little voice in her head remarked. She told the little voice in her head to stuff it and downed the rest of her drink.

Setting her empty glass down, she smiled at Charlie.

“I’m Julia, by the way,” she added.

[Applesintime]

Ju hesitated when Charlie asked her about what she was doing for a major, and in general seemed a little hesitant to talk about it. She was doing psychology, and didn't have a clue what she wanted to do. From the way she shifted the conversation back towards Charlie, it seemed like she wanted to step away from that topic. Fortunately, Charlie was all too happy to oblige with rambling about nuke engineering!

"Oh yeah, it's really complicated. Lotsa time spent in the library reading up about all the old Soviet and American reactors, and then about the reactors that the Navy use in their ships and how to manage them and make sure they don't go kaboom and all that stuff. 's the reason I came, actually! This ship," Charlie gestured around herself and Ju "is like one of five civilian ships in the world that has a nuke reactor on it. And like, two of those are Chinese and one's Russian so this one's probably gonna be the only one I ever get a chance to be in!" Sippy beer. "Have to wait until they get to the island to look at it, though."

Julia! She knew it was Ju-something.

"So, what's your reason for stepping aboard?" Charlotte finished her drink, setting it down gently on the table.

[Spindarene]

Julia nodded slightly as Charlie talked, listening with interest as Charlie elaborated on what kinds of knowledge and expertise went into nuclear engineering; it did sound complicated.

When Charlie mentioned that the ship they were currently on had a nuclear reactor, Julia said “Huh. I didn’t know that, that’s interesting,” keeping her tone as light and neutral as possible.

To be honest, the fact that they were all currently sitting on a ship equipped with a nuclear reactor in the middle of the ocean unsettled her and made her feel a bit less safe, but she didn’t want to say that and rain on Charlie’s parade. The other girl was clearly enthusiastic about this stuff, and while Julia did not see herself as the type of person who would ever get excited about a nuclear reactor, she enjoyed talking to people who were different from her and getting their perspectives. She smiled politely as Charlie finished talking about the reactor.

However, Charlie then asked a question that Julia was really hoping they could avoid, but was such a simple getting-to-know-you question that Julia should have expected it, which was what, exactly, had brought her onto the ship.

Whatever emotional composure Julia had tried to maintain finally gave way as she groaned and buried her face in her hands, mumbling her response into her palms.

“Oh god, I don’t even know. I was going to do some work on my honor’s thesis, a study about attitudes and behaviors and all that, and I was going to have help with that but then he decided that he had better things to do or some shit, and so now I’m here by myself and I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

Julia took one of her hands off her face, grabbed her glass and tilted it towards her mouth, before realizing belatedly that it was empty.

Goddammit.

[Applesintime]

Oh jeez. As soon as she asked that one little question, Julia buried her face into her hands and vented about how she was gonna do some work with a friend but then he had other stuff to do and she had no idea what she was gonna do. Charlie opened her mouth for a second, but then closed it, realising that she didn't really have anything else to say at the moment! Julia trying to drink alcohol that wasn't there anymore gave her a good idea!

"Hey, uh, can you get us another?" Charlie kinda mumbled in the direction of the bartender. Without waiting for any reply from him, she rested her arms on the table and then put her head on top of it, watching Julia while she tried to think of what to say. "Well, uh... screw him! You already know what you're gonna do for your thesis, so you don't need him! And, like, I'm sure there's tons of stuff you can write about the people on the island and their attitudes and behaviour to being stuck on some cold ass island in the middle of nowhere!" It probably wasn't that dissimilar from being stuck in a submarine or on a ship, actually.

Charlie found herself wanting to say that she'd help Julia, but at the same time she didn't know jack shit about psychology or attitudes or any of that stuff. And if like, this was a thesis or something she didn't wanna accidentally fuck something up for Julia and get it rejected or something like that. So she let sleeping dogs lie, taking another drink of her beer as another glass of whatever Julia was having arrived.

[Spindarene]

Julia stared morosely off into space as Charlie ordered another round of drinks, but then startled slightly at Charlie’s change in tone as the other girl tried (a little forcefully) to cheer her up. Julia initially felt a slight pang of sadness or defensiveness at Charlie’s “fuck him” attitude, but as Charlie finished talking (and as Julia’s third whiskey arrived), her mood began to shift.

She was silent for a moment, taking a small sip of her whiskey, then as she sat it down she spoke.

“Yeah. You know what? You’re right. Fuck him. It’s my honor’s thesis, I don’t need him for that! He’s the one who stuck me on some damn ship in the middle of nowhere, but it’s my fucking research! I own this shit.” She took a bigger swig of her whiskey and sat the glass down, smiling over at Charlie.

“You know what, girl? I like you. You’re alright.”

[Applesintime]

"Yeah! It's like, feminism and girl power and all that jazz!" Charlie responded with a grin and a chug of her beer. Julia — although she actually kinda liked the idea of calling her Ju at least in her little inner monologue thing — seemed a lot better now. "And hey, you're not so bad yourself." Taking the time to savour her next sip of beer, Charlie swished it around her mouth, thinking.

"Hey, you never know, maybe there's someone else here with a major like yours! You'd probably know if there was someone from your classes here, but there might be like a... I dunno, but there'll probably be someone willing to help you out!" Come to think of it, Charlie hadn't really talked to many of the dudes and dudettes here. She'd admittedly spent a lot more time than someone should trying to pester people to let her see the nuke reactor, but they wouldn't let her, which is kinda bullshit! Come to think of it times two, Charlie didn't really know anyone else here apart from Julia! There was the headcount once they'd gotten aboard complete with names, so she kinda knew names, but apart from that she knew nothing.

"Man, I wish some of my buddies were here, from class. I tried to convince them but they didn't really have much interest in coming to the crack of nowhere to get cold and maybe look at a reactor! And then I tried to get some of my dormmates from the navy to come with me, but they didn't wanna miss training and shit." Letting out a little huffy sigh, Charlie shrugged. "Guess I just gotta get familiar with the people already here, then."

Like Ju, maybe!

[Sh4dE]

((Thaddäus Wiegand, START))

The first word Thad had to hear when entering the bar, was "feminism". Retch.

Thaddäus just came from a pleasant talk with Peter freaking Harris! Man, he still couldn't believe that he was on a cruiser with Prof. Harris. He was definitely going to brag about that once he returns. They talked about plenty of subjects, but Thad shyed away early because he didn't want to annoy him.

Thad wasn't really interested in these girls talking about feminism at a bar. Instead, he looked at the menu to wisely pick his poison.

[Spindarene]

Julia shrugged slightly at Charlie’s suggestion of finding someone else on the ship to help her with her honor’s thesis. She wasn’t really looking for anyone else to help her with her research. She’d wanted to work on it with Tanvir, but he wasn’t here.

She nodded in sympathy as Charlie told her about trying to get some of her own friends to accompany her onto the ship, but how none of them had wanted to. That hadn’t seemed to dampen Charlie’s spirits, though, and even though Julia couldn’t feel the same way about the situation with Tanvir, she liked Charlie’s “make the best of it” attitude. She nodded along in affirmation as Charlie finished talking.

Julia took another gulp of whiskey, knowing somewhere in the back of her mind that she should stop drinking soon, because the room was starting to feel unstable and her body was feeling fuzzy, a tell-tale sign that she was close to exceeding her limit to how much alcohol her body could hold. She noticed belatedly that a guy she didn’t know had sat down at the bar, but she had mostly noticed it because the room was starting to seem wobbly to her and that was concerning. Setting her glass down, she spoke, with a notably slurred quality to her speech.

“I dunno. It’s not like I really need help, it’s just more…I thought we were going to work on it together, kinda. But fuck it. Fuck him. I don’t need his help, I don’t care if he’s my teacher and he knows more than me, it’s my fucking research and I’m a grown-ass woman and I can do this!”

[Applesintime]

Charlie just kinda nodded and ahhed and oohed in sympathy, taking another sip from her beer. So her teacher was the dude who was gonna help her with her work? Being real, she kinda got why the dude might not come. No offense to Ju, but maybe he just had more priorities than freezing his balls off in the middle of the Bering Strait or wherever they were now! At least in submarines you had heating.

Still, she agreed with Ju anywya. "Yeah! It's your research, you don't need another dude to help you with anything!" Taking another sip of her beer, she glanced over at the new arrival.

Oh hey, there's the uh, European guy. Thaddeus or something like that. He was Dutch or Greek or something maybe, Charlie hadn't ever seen him before. But ya know what, the more the merrier. "Hey, dude, come sit with us!" With a grin, she waved him over. Maybe having another person to chime in would help cheer Ju up. Judging by how she was slurring and the faint flush in her cheeks, though, she looked like she'd probably had a little too much to drink. On the contrary, Charlie was sitting at a pleasant buzz right now. The pros of being a lightweight: simple damn beer can get you drunk and you get drunk a hell of a lot easier than a bigger dude.

[Sh4dE]

Oh. They wanted to drink with him? Hm, okay, there was no reason to decline that offer. It wouldn't hurt to get to know the people he'd do the research with.

So he sat himself to their table and offered a handshake.

"My name is Thaddäus, but you can call me Thad."

[Spindarene]

Before Julia knew it, Charlie had called the guy sitting over at the bar to come sit with them. Julia was feeling a little apprehensive about this–she liked the girl talk that she was having with Charlie–but she didn’t want to seem rude, and she felt like she should give this new guy a chance.

She gave him a slightly sloppy half-wave and smiled at him a little as she spoke.

“Hi, Thad. I’m Julia.”