This Used to Be the Life but I Don't Need Another One

[stenchus_rodentus]

[Well Ratigan couldn't care less about what happened, but he really didn't get his fill of partying from the bar and everyone simpering wasn't how he wanted it to go down. Soon after the trial little notes are slipped beneath each door.]

You are cordially invited to a mourning party in the lobby. RVSP ASAP.

[In the lobby Thalia will have moved some tables to the lobby and provide her choice dish of cheeseburgers along with a smattering of bread, fruits, and vegetables. Reyna will have brought along hot chocolate galore.

For those that aren't your thing? Well in honor of the recently departed there's pine tree shaped cookies (Thanks Thalia.) and triangle crackers with cheese (thanks...Ratigan?). And there's a helping of drinks if the bar wasn't enough for you wink wink. Ratigan has every intention of making this a party.]

Comments

[fairlypushy]

I don't like to forget people. [There's something layered in that statement, but she doesn't dwell on it.] Um. If you're not busy, could you teach me how to do something?

[She figures Tadashi is the one person here who could teach her how to make a fancy mobius strip.]

[tadaishi]

[And he's not going to point it out.]

That's a good thing. I'm sure they would appreciate it. Except Northwest...I feel he might not even find a memorial not set up by him to be substandard.

[Especially one set up by anyone here.]

I'm not busy right now, what can I help with?

[fairlypushy]

That's why I just left a candle for him. [Also he doesn't deserve a memorial but.] I was wondering you if you knew how to make a mobius strip? I think I'm doing it wrong and I figured that would be better for Dipper than this.

Haha, I just noticed an extra 'not' in that last tag.

[tadaishi]

Oh, yeah. I can definitely help with that. Möbius strips are pretty cool...what were you thinking of making it out of?

[Paper's easiest, but if she wants it to be fancier, cloth is an acceptable substitute. If she wants a real challenge, she's welcome to try to physically represent Euclidean space.]

i didn't even notice so clearly you're good

[fairlypushy]

Um, whatever's easiest?

[Amanda is like, the opposite of someone who is good at making things, actually. She only knows how to cook because she and Jess lived by themselves for like. Three years.]

My friend Terry tried to teach me how to make paper airplanes once and by the end of it he was just texting group chat pictures of all my failed airplanes.

[tadaishi]

Paper is. It's a lot easier to make a möbius strip than it is a plane.

[Excuse him while he goes to get some paper and tape.]

So there's two steps. Take a strip of paper. [Holds up a sheet of paper, tearing off a strip.] Then bring the ends together like you're making a loop, but twist the paper, like this. Then tape it together. [He does so, then hands her the paper loop.]

You can actually twist it more than once, as long as the number is odd.

[fairlypushy]

Ohhh, it has to be an odd number. [She places the mobius strip near the branch, because she's going to make like eighty more this week to match Vanellope's candy.] I think I was thinking of it, like, a twist is all the way around so I was twisting it twice.

I'm really bad at making stuff, it's more Jess' thing.

[tadaishi]

Yep. See, it's a loop, but it only has one side. If you start drawing a line around it, you'll end up right back where you started with one line around the whole loop. The twist you put in it reduces it to one continuous side, but if you add a second twist, you get two sides again. Does that make sense?

[fairlypushy]

. . . Sort of? [She's good with weird concepts, given that her life is full of "by the way you're a hologram but you're also human," but it still takes her a moment.] Oh! Because if you put the second side against the first, it makes one side but if you do it twice then you're just making regular loop.

[tadaishi]

Exactly.

[There's also more math involved, but she didn't ask for that, so he's not going to dump it on her.]

If you make more, you can join them to make interesting paper chains.