[ Wow, that's a quick trip down memory lane - he had blurted something about that, hadn't he? He'd been so nervous. Thinking back on the memory is bitter and unpleasant, but for different reasons. ]
god i really said that didn't i? disaster.
okay, yeah, see, h.wells aka harry isn't actually the guy from that memory he's the version of harrison wells from a universe that's a very near parallel to mine. we call it earth-2. i did know him before we both came here, but we met a couple years later and the wells you saw in that interview is not the same guy
[ ...and he's just going to leave out the part where that other Wells was a boysnatching psycho murderer from the future because he really doesn't know Tyler well enough to get into any of that, if his life isn't in imminent danger from Eobard. ]
doppelganger bullshit is inescapable as far as i can tell. unfortunately. (i met mine once. he was evil. there was leather and 'come to the dark side' speeches. it was embarrassing.)
Okay, so the guy you met PRETENDED to be Dr. Wells but wasn't actually Dr. Wells. ngl, that sounds like a Tuesday. Is his doppelganger here? Or was this a crazy thing that happened back home?
You don't need to tell me more, btw. Evil doppelgangers are super common.
(I'm so sorry. Did he have cookies? Because that speech is pointless without cookies.)
cute's not really what they tell you to aim for in a job interview. but thanks, dude.
[ A few months ago, he would have already made up his mind not to tell Tyler anything. But now... things are changing. He's got no intention of keeping Eobard's secrets for him for much longer. ]
i can tell you more if you want, but if i do i gotta warn you, it could put you in danger if i do so just bear that in mind
no, there were no cookies. like if i switched teams and became a bad guy i would definitely include cookies with the pitch. no need to lose your sense of humor. but no it was just guyliner and fully unironic 'together you and i could rule the world' shit
I can handle it. If we're sharing secrets around a metaphorical campfire, I used to be a werewolf. It's a long story. REALLY long story. But I promise, his (your?) secret's safe with me.
Ow. That's rough. See, in my world, when most people turn evil, they just become an asshole. The guyliner sounds worse.
USED to be? i'd love to hear that story sometime, if you feel like telling it. we definitely don't have werewolves where i'm from.
this one's a long story too but i'll try to keep it brief. dude named eobard from the future has superpowers that let him travel in time dude travels back 170 years ish, bodysnatches famous scientist named harrison wells dude pretends to be harrison wells for the next decade and a half for creepy nefarious reasons because he's a creepy nefarious guy at some point in there, he interviews me and hires me for a job, which is what you saw. now the harry you know IS harrison wells, just from a mirror universe, where he didn't get murdered by a psycho from the future.
i only warned you because eobard is here and he has a history of murdering people who find out his real identity so you know since you probably wanna NOT let that happen, best not mention any of this, especially on the network.
he had a stupid hairdo, too. he looked like a rejected extra from the matrix.
I don't mind. It's just "How I Met Your Mother" long.
[He's half-right; technically, it's a five-season story versus nine.]
Shit. I've heard of a lot, but time travel?? That's new. I don't have a death wish or anything, so don't worry. The warning's super appreciated, though. I didn't even realize they were both here.
Just so we're clear: you mean doppelgangers like people from other universes, and not "identical copies of a person born every 500 years?"
call it a spinoff? 'how i met my lycanthropy'? you can always tell it to me over coffee sometime if your fingers will literally fall off.
yeah they're both here it's pretty easy to spot the difference in person harry's got an undercut & he's 'a little formal' i.e. he's a real dick sometimes. but he's a good person. eobard's polite and charming and a stone cold irredeemably evil monster so hopefully that'll help you tell them apart
other universes, not the 500 years kind, though caroline told me you guys have those, which is totally wild to me. guess what you're used to just depends where you're from see to me werewolves is mind boggling but time travel like stopped being anything to write home about months ago
Thanks. I think I'll take you up on that. 👍 I've tried to come up with a short version and it's still tl;dr.
Noted. I've definitely only met Dr. Wells. I'd remember the charming types. They're usually worse than assholes.
She brought up Katherine already??? I'm kinda surprised. Katherine's a bitch, but we haven't had to worry about her in a while.
I wish werewolves were mind boggling. It runs in my family. I don't know a ton about genetics, but I turned my gene off. I want it to stay that way. I'd offer a trade but it doesn't sound like either of us are rolling in sunshine and rainbows.
[ When Tyler says that about 'charming types', Cisco thinks about Eobard, then about Jay, and quickly fires back: ]
you're not wrong
[ The question about Katherine is easy enough to answer in theory, but Cisco does feel slightly awkward about it. ]
yeah see so funnily enough what happened was that doppelganger i told you about showed up here briefly and sorta took over my body, and he was a total dick to caroline so she vamped out and shut it down hard but that meant that when he was gone i remembered so she and i had a nice chat where i apologized about my evil twin's cameo and she explained how she died.
so it's purely genetic? i guess that shouldn't surprise me. on my world, metahumans got their powers because of the way a dark matter explosion from a particle accelerator altered their dna
i don't know. things aren't always great in central city but we've got some sunshine and some rainbows, if you know the right way to look. sure there are supervillains and that sucks but there are superheroes, too and even before there were superheroes there were still murderers and kidnappers and gangsters and awful people doing awful things. so really i think of it as a glass half full either way.
Shit.... Sorry you got to experience that first-hand. Caroline's super badass.
[He is also the proudest boyfriend, if that's not even remotely clear yet.]
But yeah, it wasn't a pretty story. I remember more of it too, and Katherine's only the beginning of evil doppelgangers. Her best friend ALSO has an evil twin. I haven't told her yet. Not because it's a secret but because there hasn't been a need. Also btw it's hard to go "yo, your best friend's got an evil twin, just keep an eye out."
100% genetic. It's triggered by violence, and while I'm glad this place is peaceful I don't want to get in a situation where I need to wolf out.
That's true. You've got a better outlook on things than half the people on my life. Think we could move that coffee date up to whenever you're free?
no need to apologize. i'm glad she is. she put reverb in his place, and i just wish i'd been there to watch it.
not exactly the easiest thing to work into a conversation, nope. do you know what causes doppelgangers in your world? wait this girl has a doppelganger AND an evil twin? like separate ones? and by evil twin you mean like, a twin twin. born at the same time to the same mom, not a clone or enchantment or... i don't know.
what do you mean triggered by violence? is it a magic thing or a brain chemistry thing?
I do. Very long story short: A warlock named Silas was supposed to marry a witch named Qetsiyah. Silas asked Qetsiyah to make an immortality elixir so that they'd live together forever. Qetsiyah agreed. What she didn't know?
Silas actually loved her handmaiden Amara, and Silas and Amara drank the potion together. When Qetsiyah found out, she was pissed. So pissed that she killed Amara before Amara could drink it and "anchored" her to the Other Side (or supernatural purgatory). Silas wandered the earth alone, never to find his lover because she was neither alive nor dead.
Since nature loves finding a balance, a doppelganger is born from Silas's line and from Amara's line every 500 years. Elena and Katherine are from Amara's line, and Caroline's best friend is from Silas's.
Nooooo. Not separate, sorry. Katherine and Silas are grade-A douchebags and identical copies of Elena and Caroline's best friend. Hence "evil twin."
IDK. I want to say brain chemistry but I'm not good with science. If you know someone who is? I'm willing to test that theory.
well we can just file that under 'reasons not to cheat on a witch' the whole story kinda reminds me of my ex, but for her it was a reincarnation thing, not a doppelganger thing. is there any way of distinguishing between doppelgangers? i mean apart from how they act. do you have any kind of spell, or device...?
[ Tyler might not be good with science, may not think that such a solution would be possible, but Cisco is used to using science to navigate deep, strange, mysterious weirdness. That's like, 70% of his life these days. ]
me and harry and caitlin have got some experience in investigating powers okay a lot of experience if you ever wanted to come by and let us run a couple tests, you could maybe we should get that coffee first though
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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b) which dr. wells are you talking about?
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b) There's more than one????
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no dude i appreciate the heads up
one of those weird doors into nothing, right?
b) it's complicated. there's a doppelganger situation. do you know which username he uses? like for the network.
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Don't hate me: it was your job interview at STAR Labs. Your very first "real job" interview.
b) Shit. I thought I'd escaped the doppelgangers. His username is h.wells.
I met him in person first. He seemed a little formal?
[The word Tyler wants is "stuffy." But that seems rude when Cisco admires the guy more than anything.]
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god i really said that didn't i? disaster.
okay, yeah, see, h.wells aka harry isn't actually the guy from that memory
he's the version of harrison wells from a universe that's a very near parallel to mine. we call it earth-2.
i did know him before we both came here, but we met a couple years later and the wells you saw in that interview is not the same guy
[ ...and he's just going to leave out the part where that other Wells was a boysnatching psycho murderer from the future because he really doesn't know Tyler well enough to get into any of that, if his life isn't in imminent danger from Eobard. ]
doppelganger bullshit is inescapable as far as i can tell.
unfortunately.
(i met mine once. he was evil. there was leather and 'come to the dark side' speeches. it was embarrassing.)
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[It probably doesn't. Sorry, Cisco.]
Okay, so the guy you met PRETENDED to be Dr. Wells but wasn't actually Dr. Wells. ngl, that sounds like a Tuesday.
Is his doppelganger here? Or was this a crazy thing that happened back home?
You don't need to tell me more, btw. Evil doppelgangers are super common.
(I'm so sorry. Did he have cookies? Because that speech is pointless without cookies.)
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[ A few months ago, he would have already made up his mind not to tell Tyler anything. But now... things are changing. He's got no intention of keeping Eobard's secrets for him for much longer. ]
i can tell you more if you want, but if i do i gotta warn you, it could put you in danger if i do
so
just bear that in mind
no, there were no cookies. like if i switched teams and became a bad guy i would definitely include cookies with the pitch. no need to lose your sense of humor. but no it was just guyliner and fully unironic 'together you and i could rule the world' shit
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It's a long story.
REALLY long story.
But I promise, his (your?) secret's safe with me.
Ow. That's rough. See, in my world, when most people turn evil, they just become an asshole. The guyliner sounds worse.
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i'd love to hear that story sometime, if you feel like telling it. we definitely don't have werewolves where i'm from.
this one's a long story too but i'll try to keep it brief.
dude named eobard from the future has superpowers that let him travel in time
dude travels back 170 years ish, bodysnatches famous scientist named harrison wells
dude pretends to be harrison wells for the next decade and a half for creepy nefarious reasons because he's a creepy nefarious guy
at some point in there, he interviews me and hires me for a job, which is what you saw.
now the harry you know IS harrison wells, just from a mirror universe, where he didn't get murdered by a psycho from the future.
i only warned you because eobard is here and he has a history of murdering people who find out his real identity
so you know
since you probably wanna NOT let that happen, best not mention any of this, especially on the network.
he had a stupid hairdo, too. he looked like a rejected extra from the matrix.
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[He's half-right; technically, it's a five-season story versus nine.]
Shit. I've heard of a lot, but time travel??
That's new.
I don't have a death wish or anything, so don't worry.
The warning's super appreciated, though. I didn't even realize they were both here.
Just so we're clear: you mean doppelgangers like people from other universes, and not "identical copies of a person born every 500 years?"
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you can always tell it to me over coffee sometime if your fingers will literally fall off.
yeah they're both here
it's pretty easy to spot the difference in person
harry's got an undercut & he's 'a little formal' i.e. he's a real dick sometimes. but he's a good person.
eobard's polite and charming and a stone cold irredeemably evil monster
so hopefully that'll help you tell them apart
other universes, not the 500 years kind, though caroline told me you guys have those, which is totally wild to me.
guess what you're used to just depends where you're from
see to me werewolves is mind boggling but time travel like
stopped being anything to write home about months ago
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I've tried to come up with a short version and it's still tl;dr.
Noted. I've definitely only met Dr. Wells.
I'd remember the charming types. They're usually worse than assholes.
She brought up Katherine already??? I'm kinda surprised. Katherine's a bitch, but we haven't had to worry about her in a while.
I wish werewolves were mind boggling. It runs in my family.
I don't know a ton about genetics, but I turned my gene off.
I want it to stay that way.
I'd offer a trade but it doesn't sound like either of us are rolling in sunshine and rainbows.
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you're not wrong
[ The question about Katherine is easy enough to answer in theory, but Cisco does feel slightly awkward about it. ]
yeah see so funnily enough what happened was
that doppelganger i told you about showed up here briefly and sorta took over my body, and he was a total dick to caroline so she vamped out and shut it down hard
but that meant that when he was gone i remembered so she and i had a nice chat where i apologized about my evil twin's cameo and she explained how she died.
so it's purely genetic?
i guess that shouldn't surprise me.
on my world, metahumans got their powers because of the way a dark matter explosion from a particle accelerator altered their dna
i don't know. things aren't always great in central city but we've got some sunshine and some rainbows, if you know the right way to look.
sure there are supervillains and that sucks but
there are superheroes, too
and even before there were superheroes there were still murderers and kidnappers and gangsters and awful people doing awful things.
so really i think of it as a glass half full either way.
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Sorry you got to experience that first-hand. Caroline's super badass.
[He is also the proudest boyfriend, if that's not even remotely clear yet.]
But yeah, it wasn't a pretty story. I remember more of it too, and Katherine's only the beginning of evil doppelgangers.
Her best friend ALSO has an evil twin. I haven't told her yet.
Not because it's a secret but because there hasn't been a need.
Also btw it's hard to go "yo, your best friend's got an evil twin, just keep an eye out."
100% genetic.
It's triggered by violence, and while I'm glad this place is peaceful
I don't want to get in a situation where I need to wolf out.
That's true. You've got a better outlook on things than half the people on my life.
Think we could move that coffee date up to whenever you're free?
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i'm glad she is.
she put reverb in his place, and i just wish i'd been there to watch it.
not exactly the easiest thing to work into a conversation, nope.
do you know what causes doppelgangers in your world?
wait this girl has a doppelganger AND an evil twin? like separate ones?
and by evil twin you mean like, a twin twin. born at the same time to the same mom, not a clone or enchantment or... i don't know.
what do you mean triggered by violence?
is it a magic thing or a brain chemistry thing?
anytime man.
incoming wall of text
Silas actually loved her handmaiden Amara, and Silas and Amara drank the potion together. When Qetsiyah found out, she was pissed. So pissed that she killed Amara before Amara could drink it and "anchored" her to the Other Side (or supernatural purgatory). Silas wandered the earth alone, never to find his lover because she was neither alive nor dead.
Since nature loves finding a balance, a doppelganger is born from Silas's line and from Amara's line every 500 years. Elena and Katherine are from Amara's line, and Caroline's best friend is from Silas's.
Nooooo. Not separate, sorry. Katherine and Silas are grade-A douchebags and identical copies of Elena and Caroline's best friend. Hence "evil twin."
IDK. I want to say brain chemistry but I'm not good with science.
If you know someone who is? I'm willing to test that theory.
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the whole story kinda reminds me of my ex, but for her it was a reincarnation thing, not a doppelganger thing.
is there any way of distinguishing between doppelgangers? i mean apart from how they act. do you have any kind of spell, or device...?
[ Tyler might not be good with science, may not think that such a solution would be possible, but Cisco is used to using science to navigate deep, strange, mysterious weirdness. That's like, 70% of his life these days. ]
me and harry and caitlin have got some experience in investigating powers
okay a lot of experience
if you ever wanted to come by and let us run a couple tests, you could
maybe we should get that coffee first though
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[He's not doubting the possibility of one. He's just never seen it.]
!!!!
That would be really great, if you're all okay with it.
Coffee sounds good. We can talk more then?