Okay, So this is something i've come across a few times now, and its got me thinking.

How do people feel about the Drive? By this i mean fighting? or Tea? Cause I know of three things.
1. People who say their going to fight the drive
2. People who say they are 'Going to have Tea with Horatio' *wink wink nudge nudge* (aka meaning their going to kill the drive)
3. People whose characters ACTUALLY have tea with Horatio. (or believe they do)

So What is it? Can it be any of the three? Or has the code word for fighting the drive become a bit to literal?

Wolf

Dave goes into the lab to have a nice philosophical discussion on the Meaning of Life and such with the Drive, he usually brings refreshments.

but inevitably, the discussion turns to politics, and that always turns out bad...

---

Isn't sanity just a one-trick pony anyway? All you get is one trick: rational thinking. But when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, the sky's the limit.

I like to imagine that Kel has an intense match of chess. Does she? Who knows.

I think here we have a situation which is completely in line with the jokes in Improbable Island. If my guess is correct, first we had people referring to the fighting of the Drive as "Tea Time with Horatio" in order to discuss killing the drive without spoiling the fact that you kill the Improbability Drive repeatedly to new players. But then, some of us so cleverly subverted the euphemism to literally drinking tea and having an all-around social event with the Improbability Drive.

And as such, methinks if you want to use it to mean either thing, it's fine.

In Dwarf Fortress, we used to refer to adamantite and the frog/tentacle/fire demons as "HFS (happy fun stuff)". Eventually, someone called the demons "clowns", not knowing the previous spoiler terminology, and so now...

"I dug to the funhouse to get some party favors, but the clowns came up and killed all the legendary craftsmen and children of my fort."

Bob never knows what the hell he's doing.
I sometimes never know what the hell he's doing.
But do I ever know? ...No. No, I do not.

It usually ends up one of these ways:
-He goes and has tea & brunch. [Because Bob wouldn't go for just tea. He's a foodoholic.*]
-He actually fights with it.
-He actually fights with it, and it dumps lava all over him. [This usually ends up with a visit or...eighteen, if the Drive's deciding to be a Dick, to the Boat.]
-They get in an argument over something, and it leads to a little scuffle. No big deal. Except to maybe that one camera who caught it, and decided to broadcast it as another DK.
-They...dance? Honestly, he's got so many what else are they going to do. I bet they have a lovely party with...Failors and STUFF. Everybody gets roaring drunk and doesn't know what happens until the Drive explodes from over-intake of alcohol or SOMETHING RIDICULOUS. [Just think, you're still reading the ridiculousness.]
-Bob and the Drive just sort of see each other, and then they simply stand there. It may end up in a staring contest, until Bob decides to cheat his way out of it.
-Something else that is more ridiculous than what I've already stated.

Again, I'll repeat myself. He never knows what the hell he's doing.
But it still adds up, I suppose.

Maybe that's more fun for me to just make bullshit up instead of actually having him GO FIGHT and then LOSE HIS MEMORY CONSTANTLY.
That'd be a horror.
Plus, he forgets enough already on my own account of having an awful memory. 8\

*Actually he's fueling Icy. He's got to eat enough for the both of them. Hello huge bills at Steak N' Shake!

This was fun to write while I'm incredibly tired.

Bart's last (Or was it the one before that? Can't remember.) experience was, quite literally, being thrown at the drive by a mob who didn't appreciate his wandering into the Spiderkitty while drunk on every beverage available to contestants. There is also a slight possibility that he was on fire during this. Whether that had anything to do with it is still up for debate.

There was also a tattoo involved somewhere in there. I don't think anyone (himself included) has found it yet.

---

Goat Collector

I imagine that Makiwa and Horatio have debates and arguments which inevitable end the same way. Makiwa loses the debate or argument but wins the physical fight. Also, the drive decides Makiwa's fate vis races. "You've become too big for your boots so try midget on for size. Now your boots are too big for you!"

Stuff like that.

---

It's not an optical illusion. It just looks like one.

Val is in that third group. She believes that she's having tea with a "Gentleman," sometimes getting poisoned, knocked out, or into long arguments about something-or-another that end in hissy-fits.

I personally love how the Drive is different for everyone.

Anything, really. My own take is that Harris (mistakenly) sees himself as a "Mighty Hunter", and that the Drive is the most elusive, and dangerous prey ever! So he hunts it, finds it, fights it, no matter the cost! Why? Because it is a battle that is the ultimate test of Man versus Machine That Spits Yodeling Cockatoos at You.

But the code word for fighting the Drive HAS become too literal.
Not that it's not funny, but that "ACTUALLY having tea with it" is done as a joke so bloody often that it's getting boring. If it's humor- VARY, dammit!!

---

"Ain't nothin' left to do but smile, smile, smile." -The Grateful Dead

I give anybody permission to use my idea that you fight a Cup of Tea wielding the Improbability Drive.

Fred @#$%&ing wins.

---

"Ain't nothin' left to do but smile, smile, smile." -The Grateful Dead

I've personally never that "tea with Horatio" was anything more than a code.

With Cura, she'll tell Mack or those around that it's "tea time," but when annoyed about something she'll speak of wanting to bash his face in. Though, that does seem to be a common, if sometimes joking, problem solving method for her.

Aysel? She'd probably use the code "tea" as well. She and Cura tend to have long chats that often don't get RPed. (I should do that more, I tend to enjoy their interactions, even if it is just me.)

Damara? Her I'm not sure about. She's extremely pacifistic, but probably feels that while she's here it's her duty to at least try to bring down the drive.

For me, I consider 'teatime' to be very much code as well, mostly because I think it's poor form to let any newer players that might be watching know what happens before it... happens. When it comes to fighting the Drive, I consider it just that- a fight to the death (or boating) that (usually) ends in the machine's destruction-and-rebirth, starting the cycle anew.

Then again, I tend to be a bit more SRSBIZNUS than a lot of players on the Island, as this thread has played a part in showing me. The whole hunt for the Drive, the War on Improbability- I tend to play those pretty straight.

NO FUN AT ALL, I KNOW

Yeh, I'm as not-fun as Mathrude.

Dex would rant something about how the Network wants it to signify the futility of resistance. That is, you can't beat it.
She is also curious how an Improbable event seems to yield (largely) predictable results. Most of the people she knows remain pretty static after a DK.

I don't know what happens in there, but what with him not losing his memory, I imagine the experience, for Dizzy, goes something along the lines of "Another Goddamn Monster". Not that it does for me, but some of the prep isn't something Dizzy'd do IC (namely, mixing together every brew on the island and going to fight something). Far as he knows, he just shuffles in and punches it once or something.

Yay, no-fun club

Yes, I'd have to say I join the list of the not-fun people. Darcy's Drive times usually involve a lot of crying, angry yelling and improbability bursts out of her stump.

I do play the whole war on Improbability quite grim as well! Huzzah!

I just feel quite a bit better that apparently a LOT of people DON'T actually have tea with the Drive.


<...serves it some soda instead>

---

"Ain't nothin' left to do but smile, smile, smile." -The Grateful Dead

Since Rosin is, well.. Rosin, I often picture her as actually going to the laboratory and chatting up the Drive like it's an old friend (or at least trying to.) Tea is sometimes involved, on her part, though it's rather often spilled because even though my character is a bit too relaxed to be entirely sane when it comes to Things That Can Easily Kill You, the Drive still shoots crackling bolts of Improbability, flames, puppies, NES controllers, and random bits of mathematical code her way. And that means lots of dodging and spilled tea (such a waste!)

I'm of two worlds with it. Rosin is crazy enough to try having tea with the Drive literally (Fun/silly world. It's a happy place!) I also realize that the Drive is most definitely trying to inflict harm upon her and keep her from destroying it. Which she inevitably does after the conversation has dried up and her cup is empty. (Srs bznz/logical world. It has lots of varying hues and shades of brown!)

---

A magpie's work is never done.

I usually play it as pretty close to the 'island canon' but that's just cause I freakin ADORE the writing that is the basis of the island canon stuff. The only thing I've actively started skipping is the memory reboot on EVERY SINGLE DK. I can't do it. It's hard enough to play my spastic char without losing her memory each time.

That said, I think most of us skip that. so meh.

I'm a no-fun club girl, but I will be moving into the fun club one day I think. Maybe after she goes Joker?



-Rose

---

moooooooooo Visit and help me finish the monster list: goo.gl/rpBGe (Ya'll mostly know me as CLOG, fyi)