![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
x-tarot.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsDoug discovers Marie-Ange upset at her tarot collection - and then learns how much the universe being rebuilt has affected her powers, and ripple effects are seen, down to the organizational level.
Upon walking into the suite Marie-Ange and Amanda shared, Doug had heard rather vehement swearing coming from his French...was she his girlfriend again? Words were difficult for him to describe his situation with Laurie and Wade and Marie-Ange - even with his power. Anyways. The swearing was coming from Marie-Ange's room, so he peeked in to see what was going on.
Her room was dominated by the large four-poster bed with heavy curtains that she kept because of her insomniac tendencies, with several large sturdy matching bookcases in a row along a wall. The bookcases contained very few books, though, and largely held the huge variety of customized tarot cards that Marie-Ange had collected or drawn herself over her years at Xavier's. Presently, though, most of the cards were scattered on the floor around the seated precognitive, who was leveling imprecations as she sorted through them.
"Stupid godlike Chinese wanker?" Doug asked from the doorway.
"Godlike power does not lend itself to not completely turning my entire organization system...." Marie-Ange glanced out the doorway, long enough to make sure no one else was in hearing distance. "to shit. I take back all the nice things I said about his concern for the cat. Xorn is an asshole."
"I never said any nice things to be able to take back, so I guess you're still one up on me?" Doug said with a wry grin before moving into the room and seating himself at the edge of the pile of cards. "Do you need help reorganizing?"
Marie-Ange pointed with one deck of cards at the scattered cards still on the shelves "I do not even understand this sorting system! It references things I do not remember." She picked up a card to show to Doug. "Look, this used to be my Tower card with Cain on it. Now it is some sort of rock monster. I never fought a rock monster!" And another - unlabeled, with a photograph of an amusement park - the card itself was water damaged. "And this? There was a hurricane in New Orleans. We never stopped it. How am I supposed to use these? I do not even remember this."
Doug blinked. Up until now he'd just been thinking about how they all dealt with familiar names having unfamiliar faces in the frankenberrycat universe. He hadn't even considered how it might affect Marie-Ange's powers. "Like, they all just changed as a result of M-Day?" Better to stay in the habit of referring to it in the publicly acceptable (and non-reality-threatening) way. "That's...thorough."
"All of the cards - all of the ones that referenced people who died, are gone." Marie-Ange said. "Or different. I have cards for Wanda, hers are almost the same." She held up a card that Doug had seen - dozens of times. A card that Marie-Ange had drawn while Doug and Marie-Ange were dating. Once it was Wanda, and her brother - and their father - and now it had a smaller figure in the background, hair coloured in green and brown pencil. "Mostly."
"How many cards have changed?" Doug asked, looking at the extreme chaos on the shelves and floor, trying to figure out how to even begin to make sense of such a radical shift. "Perhaps we start by separating them into what has remained the same versus what has changed?" Start by eliminating the familiar, then attempt to make sense of the new.
Marie-Ange waved a hand at the floor and piles and piles and piles of cards and then leaned back against the side of her bed and let her head flop back to hit the top of the mattress. "That is what I was trying to do, and I had this one in the 'not changed' pile until I saw the tiny Lorna. Even the ones that have not changed might have changed, and I have to look at every single card ever, even the ones I did not make, because..." She pawed through the piles, and picked up a deck that used to be based on Doug's comics collection. "Doug. Doug, Spider-Man is a real person here. What else might have changed."
She paused, and poked at him with a finger. "If you tell me Ronald Reagan starred in Casablanca here, I am kicking you in the shin."
"Of course not. It was Cary Grant." Doug's eyes twinkled, and he danced backward as Marie-Ange pivoted up onto one knee to scythe the promised kick at him. He moved cautiously back toward her and sat on the floor. "How about we sort by person, then? Cards that relate to you, me, Wade...and then work forward from that." Cards for people who had not changed in the frankenberrycat transition would be less likely to change dramatically, he thought.
"Doug." Marie-Ange rubbed at her eye and picked up a loose pile of cards. "Doug this deck never even existed before, and it is - it is every bit your family."
"Well, I guess that's a good thing?" Doug's voice was a bit hoarse from tension, even though he was trying not to let it take over. "Means Katie never got abducted or anything." He paused, then sighed. "I haven't tried to contact them yet."
The deck was set on the bed - carefully, with a gentle pat to align all the cards. "We can put this one aside for now," Marie-Ange said, "But you see my problem? Where to start, when even the people who did not change, have changed? I thought to just bin the entire lot, but I drew so many of these. Some are beautiful. I do not want to destroy my art."
Doug nodded. "Yeah, I can see the problem." It was daunting, to say the least - Marie-Ange had created a lot of cards in the years since she had first come to the mansion. "And you can't throw them out - even if you don't use them for anything, the art is too good to waste." She was a talented artist in general, but there always seemed to be something a little extra in the cards she created - perhaps some minor benefit of her power. "I think we can still sort by person?" he asked. "That ought to give us an idea of things that have changed or not."
"What about groups? I still have cards for - us, for Garrison and Adrienne, for my cousin and Angelo - for couples and families and friends - how do we sort that?"
"Separate piles, I think. So cards with just one person on them go in the pile for that person - and if the only other people on the card are people who don't live here, let's just count those as belonging to the one person." Doug pursed his lips, clearly in his element - making sense of things, creating patterns, was what he did. "Then, if there are multiple cards for, say, a couple or group, they get their own pile. Any group that is a one-off with no repeats goes in a separate pile for now to be dealt with later."
The slightly unfocused look on Doug's face told Marie-Ange everything she needed to know - she reached blindly under the bed and pulled out a cardboard box full of card blanks and post-it notes, and handed them over, followed by another box of colored ballpoint pens. "I think we are going to have to entirely discard sorting by history. It was already troublesome when the cards did not fit, so perhaps I should just stop trying. Maybe by theme, or topic?" She wrote names on the post-its and peeled them off the stack to hand to Doug. "Except - no, I do not even understand some of the themes. Just person for now?"
"Just person for now," Doug agreed. "Don't over-complicate - you sort very broadly at first, then narrow down." He described an inverted triangle with his fingers in midair. He set the name post-its in a rough grid as Marie-Ange handed them to him, then made a space off to one side for couples and groups, and put one post-it labeled "SINGLETONS" on the other side of the grid. "Okay, now we sort," he said once they were done making post-its and setting aside the supplies in case they needed to make more.
"Can I whine for ten seconds about how we are going to disassemble all my decks and have to put them back and I have so many first?" Marie-Ange said, again leaning her head against the mattress of her bed. "This is daunting."
"But once it's done, upkeep will be a lot easier." Doug was already mulling sub-codes and colored labels, but he stayed true to his instruction and kept things simple in sorting the cards out. Unsurprisingly, the piles labeled "WADE" "DOUG" and "MA" were the tallest.
Marie-Ange held out the Tower card that used to be Cain Marko and now was a rock monster. "What do we do with cards that used to be for people but are not anymore?" She asked. "A big pile of "who knows?" To be honest, she sort of wanted a label that said "Who the fuck knows?" but she was certainly not going to write that herself. Someone might recognize the handwriting and realize she swore sometimes.
Doug took a pen and made a post-it labeled "WTF I DON'T EVEN" and set it aside, with the Tower card on top of it. "There you go," he said brightly. If they couldn't be a little silly with this project, it was going to drag them down.
"Today you are my favourite." Marie-Ange said, patting the pile - and then Doug's hand. "This is still too big for just us. Shall we call in reinforcements? Wade, and Amanda and Amanda's little gemstone student with the library kink and Laurie for her obsessive need to be tidy? Perhaps get take-in?" She had three bookshelves of cards, and had barely touched most of them when she'd gotten overwhelmed by the changes. "Perhaps we do not tell Topaz that I know her name or mention that I think she likes libraries too much."
"How about we start with Wade and Laurie?" Doug asked, a bit hesitantly, with a shy half-smile. Having a quiet opportunity to be the four of them together and find their way through their...his brain even now shied away from using the actual word 'relationship', but settling into things seemed like a nice idea. "And oh my god, we absolutely need take-in. Especially if Wade is coming, we'll need to call more than one place."
Marie-Ange already had her phone out and on the grubhub app. "I just assume if Wade is on his way over, to get pizza and chinese delivered, since even if he does not want those specifically, they last." She tapped at the screen. "If you text quickly I can even take requests from them."
Upon walking into the suite Marie-Ange and Amanda shared, Doug had heard rather vehement swearing coming from his French...was she his girlfriend again? Words were difficult for him to describe his situation with Laurie and Wade and Marie-Ange - even with his power. Anyways. The swearing was coming from Marie-Ange's room, so he peeked in to see what was going on.
Her room was dominated by the large four-poster bed with heavy curtains that she kept because of her insomniac tendencies, with several large sturdy matching bookcases in a row along a wall. The bookcases contained very few books, though, and largely held the huge variety of customized tarot cards that Marie-Ange had collected or drawn herself over her years at Xavier's. Presently, though, most of the cards were scattered on the floor around the seated precognitive, who was leveling imprecations as she sorted through them.
"Stupid godlike Chinese wanker?" Doug asked from the doorway.
"Godlike power does not lend itself to not completely turning my entire organization system...." Marie-Ange glanced out the doorway, long enough to make sure no one else was in hearing distance. "to shit. I take back all the nice things I said about his concern for the cat. Xorn is an asshole."
"I never said any nice things to be able to take back, so I guess you're still one up on me?" Doug said with a wry grin before moving into the room and seating himself at the edge of the pile of cards. "Do you need help reorganizing?"
Marie-Ange pointed with one deck of cards at the scattered cards still on the shelves "I do not even understand this sorting system! It references things I do not remember." She picked up a card to show to Doug. "Look, this used to be my Tower card with Cain on it. Now it is some sort of rock monster. I never fought a rock monster!" And another - unlabeled, with a photograph of an amusement park - the card itself was water damaged. "And this? There was a hurricane in New Orleans. We never stopped it. How am I supposed to use these? I do not even remember this."
Doug blinked. Up until now he'd just been thinking about how they all dealt with familiar names having unfamiliar faces in the frankenberrycat universe. He hadn't even considered how it might affect Marie-Ange's powers. "Like, they all just changed as a result of M-Day?" Better to stay in the habit of referring to it in the publicly acceptable (and non-reality-threatening) way. "That's...thorough."
"All of the cards - all of the ones that referenced people who died, are gone." Marie-Ange said. "Or different. I have cards for Wanda, hers are almost the same." She held up a card that Doug had seen - dozens of times. A card that Marie-Ange had drawn while Doug and Marie-Ange were dating. Once it was Wanda, and her brother - and their father - and now it had a smaller figure in the background, hair coloured in green and brown pencil. "Mostly."
"How many cards have changed?" Doug asked, looking at the extreme chaos on the shelves and floor, trying to figure out how to even begin to make sense of such a radical shift. "Perhaps we start by separating them into what has remained the same versus what has changed?" Start by eliminating the familiar, then attempt to make sense of the new.
Marie-Ange waved a hand at the floor and piles and piles and piles of cards and then leaned back against the side of her bed and let her head flop back to hit the top of the mattress. "That is what I was trying to do, and I had this one in the 'not changed' pile until I saw the tiny Lorna. Even the ones that have not changed might have changed, and I have to look at every single card ever, even the ones I did not make, because..." She pawed through the piles, and picked up a deck that used to be based on Doug's comics collection. "Doug. Doug, Spider-Man is a real person here. What else might have changed."
She paused, and poked at him with a finger. "If you tell me Ronald Reagan starred in Casablanca here, I am kicking you in the shin."
"Of course not. It was Cary Grant." Doug's eyes twinkled, and he danced backward as Marie-Ange pivoted up onto one knee to scythe the promised kick at him. He moved cautiously back toward her and sat on the floor. "How about we sort by person, then? Cards that relate to you, me, Wade...and then work forward from that." Cards for people who had not changed in the frankenberrycat transition would be less likely to change dramatically, he thought.
"Doug." Marie-Ange rubbed at her eye and picked up a loose pile of cards. "Doug this deck never even existed before, and it is - it is every bit your family."
"Well, I guess that's a good thing?" Doug's voice was a bit hoarse from tension, even though he was trying not to let it take over. "Means Katie never got abducted or anything." He paused, then sighed. "I haven't tried to contact them yet."
The deck was set on the bed - carefully, with a gentle pat to align all the cards. "We can put this one aside for now," Marie-Ange said, "But you see my problem? Where to start, when even the people who did not change, have changed? I thought to just bin the entire lot, but I drew so many of these. Some are beautiful. I do not want to destroy my art."
Doug nodded. "Yeah, I can see the problem." It was daunting, to say the least - Marie-Ange had created a lot of cards in the years since she had first come to the mansion. "And you can't throw them out - even if you don't use them for anything, the art is too good to waste." She was a talented artist in general, but there always seemed to be something a little extra in the cards she created - perhaps some minor benefit of her power. "I think we can still sort by person?" he asked. "That ought to give us an idea of things that have changed or not."
"What about groups? I still have cards for - us, for Garrison and Adrienne, for my cousin and Angelo - for couples and families and friends - how do we sort that?"
"Separate piles, I think. So cards with just one person on them go in the pile for that person - and if the only other people on the card are people who don't live here, let's just count those as belonging to the one person." Doug pursed his lips, clearly in his element - making sense of things, creating patterns, was what he did. "Then, if there are multiple cards for, say, a couple or group, they get their own pile. Any group that is a one-off with no repeats goes in a separate pile for now to be dealt with later."
The slightly unfocused look on Doug's face told Marie-Ange everything she needed to know - she reached blindly under the bed and pulled out a cardboard box full of card blanks and post-it notes, and handed them over, followed by another box of colored ballpoint pens. "I think we are going to have to entirely discard sorting by history. It was already troublesome when the cards did not fit, so perhaps I should just stop trying. Maybe by theme, or topic?" She wrote names on the post-its and peeled them off the stack to hand to Doug. "Except - no, I do not even understand some of the themes. Just person for now?"
"Just person for now," Doug agreed. "Don't over-complicate - you sort very broadly at first, then narrow down." He described an inverted triangle with his fingers in midair. He set the name post-its in a rough grid as Marie-Ange handed them to him, then made a space off to one side for couples and groups, and put one post-it labeled "SINGLETONS" on the other side of the grid. "Okay, now we sort," he said once they were done making post-its and setting aside the supplies in case they needed to make more.
"Can I whine for ten seconds about how we are going to disassemble all my decks and have to put them back and I have so many first?" Marie-Ange said, again leaning her head against the mattress of her bed. "This is daunting."
"But once it's done, upkeep will be a lot easier." Doug was already mulling sub-codes and colored labels, but he stayed true to his instruction and kept things simple in sorting the cards out. Unsurprisingly, the piles labeled "WADE" "DOUG" and "MA" were the tallest.
Marie-Ange held out the Tower card that used to be Cain Marko and now was a rock monster. "What do we do with cards that used to be for people but are not anymore?" She asked. "A big pile of "who knows?" To be honest, she sort of wanted a label that said "Who the fuck knows?" but she was certainly not going to write that herself. Someone might recognize the handwriting and realize she swore sometimes.
Doug took a pen and made a post-it labeled "WTF I DON'T EVEN" and set it aside, with the Tower card on top of it. "There you go," he said brightly. If they couldn't be a little silly with this project, it was going to drag them down.
"Today you are my favourite." Marie-Ange said, patting the pile - and then Doug's hand. "This is still too big for just us. Shall we call in reinforcements? Wade, and Amanda and Amanda's little gemstone student with the library kink and Laurie for her obsessive need to be tidy? Perhaps get take-in?" She had three bookshelves of cards, and had barely touched most of them when she'd gotten overwhelmed by the changes. "Perhaps we do not tell Topaz that I know her name or mention that I think she likes libraries too much."
"How about we start with Wade and Laurie?" Doug asked, a bit hesitantly, with a shy half-smile. Having a quiet opportunity to be the four of them together and find their way through their...his brain even now shied away from using the actual word 'relationship', but settling into things seemed like a nice idea. "And oh my god, we absolutely need take-in. Especially if Wade is coming, we'll need to call more than one place."
Marie-Ange already had her phone out and on the grubhub app. "I just assume if Wade is on his way over, to get pizza and chinese delivered, since even if he does not want those specifically, they last." She tapped at the screen. "If you text quickly I can even take requests from them."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}