(no subject)

[no_sanity_clause]

"Ever have someone really surprise you?" This brightly dressed person just grins as they lean against the Sign and look around to see if anyone's here today.

Comments

[museicalmarty]

"Yeah -- some of the heroes had real sticks up their butts about some stuff, didn't they?" Marty muses. "Wonder what it says about people that the more uptight somebody is, the more 'good' we think they are."

Marty laughs. "You'd think more people would remember she was a shrink before the villain stuff. I mean, you gotta go through med school for that, right?" He's pretty sure, anyway.

[no_sanity_clause]

"Well, y'know, downside of the whole Comics Code and all that. Can't have their good guys doing anything scandalous! Might affect the ratings!"

Jokester shakes his head. "Pretty sure some just thought she cheated, or slept her way through school. Stupid of them to think that would work on every teacher every time, though. I mean, even if you're flexible about it, sooner or later you run into someone who doesn't swing that way."

"Besides, the way Arkham was... if she'd been a fraud, she wouldn't have lasted long enough to get to me. Or for me to get to her, depending on how you look at it."

[museicalmarty]

"Right, that thing." Marty had forgotten about it for a bit. "'Course, that brings up the whole 'it's okay for the villains to kill people, but God forbid anybody have sex' thing. People are weird."

"Ah. Yeah, I bet, even if she took advantage of it a lot, that must have really pissed her off sometimes. I know I'd be ticked if I were in her shoes."

Marty grimaces and nods. "Yeah. . .Arkham probably went through a lot of staff, didn't it? I never really paid attention in the comics. . ."

[no_sanity_clause]

"Don't I know it! Maybe there'd have been a little less killing if some of us got laid a little more often."

"It's honestly hard to remember all the names and faces when it comes to everyday Arkham staff..," Jack admits. "Not sure if that's was because of the meds or because the writers didn't bother to give most of 'em any. Usually anyone important... well, more than half the time they'd eventually end up joining us in the cells."

[museicalmarty]

"Uh -- no offense, but it's hard thinking of the 'old' you as having sex," Marty admits, rubbing the back of his head. "I mean, I assume Joker and Harley. . .but I never. . ." He shrugs, unsure where he was even going with that.

"Probably both," he says. "And yeah, I noticed. Everybody likes to give Harley shit for going loopy, but she wasn't the first or the last, was she?"

[no_sanity_clause]

"S'ok, kid, I get it. Nobody really needs to know if we were making ha-ha between the pages... It wasn't that kind of magazine!" Sure, there were a couple kids' worth of evidence around, but those had both happened during saner times... at least in most timelines.

Moving along to the other topic, since that one just got awkward... "Hah, nowhere near. The founder of the place, Amadeus Arkham, went bonkers and ended up one of the first patients, And I'm pretty sure the last director was part of a cult and killed her whole family. Scarecrow, the later Black Mask, and Hugo Strange all used to be on the staff at some point or other. Heck, even one of the groundskeepers turned into a serial killer! And then there was that Shark guy... He was from out of town, so thought he was pulling a smart one when he managed to dodge jail with a bogus insanity defense that got swallowed like so much cheap bait. Didn't take too long before it wasn't a lie. Arkham just wasn't a place for sane people."

[museicalmarty]

Marty raises an eyebrow. "Making 'ha-ha?' Seriously?" He knows you're dedicated to the clown thing for good or bad, Jokester, but sheesh.

He's happy enough to continue on with the other topic of conversation. Or, well, maybe "happy" is the wrong word, given what they're talking about. . . "Christ. . .so Arkham's basically been fucked up since day one. Greaaaat." Marty rubs his face. "The last thing that place needs is cults coming in to help mess everything up further. . .you gotta wonder why no one tried closing the place down. Or did I miss that storyline? I'm nowhere near caught up." And probably never will be, given how many comics DC has put out.

[no_sanity_clause]

"I think it's been blown up, or something, at least a couple times... but someone keeps rebuilding it." Jokester shrugs. "The place could almost be a mascot for our old timeline, if locations can be mascots. We're a whole lot better off now with it's gone."

He laughs at the rest. "Don't worry about that too much. I don't know if I'll ever be caught up either, and I have all the bits I was there for scrambled up in my head! Granted, I'm not really trying too hard to sort them out... past is past, I say, and it can stay there. But it's easy enough to spot that my baby girl's right when she mentions there being way more Christmases than birthdays."

[museicalmarty]

"Or it just gets retconned back into existence, yeah." Marty shrugs back. "I think they can -- I mean, it's like one of the best-known places in DC comics, so. . .but yeah, you're way better without it."

"Heh, yeah, true. I guess if the people who lived there aren't too worried about it. . ." He frowns a little. "How are things with Duela? I haven't seen her in a bit."

[no_sanity_clause]

"Hey, it's going to make eventually setting up history classes fun. Imagine being handed a stack of comic books to read for school!"

"I think she's been checking out some of the portals for fun..." This worries him a bit, in a vague sort of way... but popping into other timelines was just something Duela did, and at least she's usually leaving notes now.

[museicalmarty]

"Now that would have been awesome," Marty agrees, grinning. "Probably would have paid more attention in that class then."

"Ah -- yeah, that's kind of her thing, isn't it? Hey, as long as she's having fun. . ." Marty shrugs. "If she ever wants to pop over our way, she's welcome. Not a lot of people to talk to, but we can show her some of the sights. She might like the giant mirror bean."

[no_sanity_clause]

"Giant mirror bean..?" Jokester seems distracted from everything else in favor of puzzling that one out. "Waitasec... the Cloud Gate 'Mirror Bean'? You're in Chicago?" He wonders if that's already been mentioned and slipped his mind or not. It's not like his mind is a very organized place, after all.

[museicalmarty]

"Yeah -- I mean, me and Doc and Dee started out in California, and obviously Victor and Alice are from England, but we're all in Chicago right now," Marty confirms. "You see -- okay, this is complicated, but Doc and Victor both ended up in a weird alternate Chicago with 'angels' and 'demons' and stuff when something called the 'Rift' opened up and sucked 'em in. They found the Nexus and each other, then I found the Nexus from Hill Valley, Alice found it from -- um, Wonderland, technically -- and we all sort of formed a little family. And then another Rift opened and dropped Doc and Victor into what Doc calls a 'pocket universe' -- it's a world that looks like the Chicago they were living in, but it doesn't have any of the people. They can't get back to the first Chicago, so we've just all kinda moved into a house in the pocket one and called it home. A third Rift dumped Dee into the pocket verse when Doc tried out a time travel experiment for the first time." Pause. "You were around to hear Dee's actually a car, right?"

[no_sanity_clause]

"I might've heard something about that," Jokester replies, though with his memories as they usually are he's not exactly certain when or where. He's just not in the habit of bothering to remember little details unless they seem important... which might factor into why the remaining amnesia gaps don't bother him half so much as it might someone else. "I'm half suprised this place hasn't spawned some kind of racetrack for the kid to play on yet."

[museicalmarty]

"Yeah -- Dee's short for 'DeLorean,'" Marty says with a little nod. "And huh, that's a point. . ." He looks around, as if one might have popped into existence just now. "Then again, Dee doesn't like to spend too long here when she visits. She likes the people, but all the different timelines crashing up against each other -- it can make her kinda sick, sometimes. Downside of being a time machine and sensitive to all of that."

[no_sanity_clause]

"Like putting someone with inner ear problems on a roller coaster. Duela's said time near the Sign here even goes in loops so that all the conversations don't happen all at once... and do happen all at once at the same time." Duela was sensitive to that kind of thing too, just in a different way.

[museicalmarty]

"Huh -- I'll have to tell that one to Dee," Marty comments. "Sounds like a good way to explain it to people. . .and yeah, I think she mentioned something like that to me too. I mean, makes sense with what I remember from asking my own questions here. . ." He scratches his head. "Guess it's better than the alternative -- five people answering your question at the same time, and not being able to really talk to any of them."

[no_sanity_clause]

"Hey, if nothing else, just asking questions here will help everyone get used to any multiple-memory issues!" He laughs at this, because it is something like the same thing, just not alternates and for much much shorter periods of time.

[museicalmarty]

Marty chuckles along. "Yeah, true enough! The Nexus is handy like that. I certainly think I get the whole 'fourth-dimensional' thing better than the movie me thanks to coming here." Maybe not MUCH better, but -- some improvement.

[no_sanity_clause]

"I think this place is going to be handy for a lot of things... especially while we're still getting something approximating civilization up and running back home." After all, they couldn't just keep pestering Jeannie to pull things out of nowhere. Ok, they could, technically... but she had a lot of other things to do. "Have you seen the glow in the dark ice cream place yet?"

[museicalmarty]

"I bet," Marty agrees. "Just gotta make sure the place doesn't get in a LOL-y mood." It's been behaving itself for a while, but -- well. A few early incidents means Marty's not going to let down his guard anytime soon. "And no, I haven't! Sounds awesome, though. Though, is it the shop that glows, or the ice cream? Or both?"

[no_sanity_clause]

"Parts of the shop, but mostly the ice cream. And sherbet," Jokester replies. "And Ed had his daughter's dog check it out after he got worried it might be radioactive, so we know it's not. I think someone said it was magic."

[museicalmarty]

"Okay, that's good to know," Marty says, who hadn't even considered that possibility. Would have been a rather unpleasant trip to the shop otherwise! "Magic is okay with me -- so long as it doesn't twist me around so my organs are on the outside." He grimaces -- he saw a few things in Arcadia.

[no_sanity_clause]

"Haven't seen anything in the Nexus do that yet," he says. "Though I haven't really been here that long."

[museicalmarty]

"Neither have I -- probably goes against the anti-violence field," Marty admits. "And I'm perfectly happy with things staying that way. So where's this ice cream shop then? It got a fixed location, or. . . ?"