🦋 Team Butterfly Forever 🦋

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open_sketch said:
"That sucks. I bet Kimmy would love to know about Butterfly Sage." Ward paused on the stairs, frowning. "Hey Andy, who's the one from LA Prince Thornheart mentioned? Is that her?"
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"Did you know, Kimmy? Her eyes were so warm and gentle, even when she was being all strict and all like 'go home, this is no place for you'. I think she must be a really kindhearted girl deep down, you know? Oh, and (proceeds to go into way too much detail about Butterfly Sage's appearance)..."

"..."

"Also, I had a really weird dream last night! Instead of the creepy guy it was her telling me 'on your knees' and it made my stomach feel all funny and fluttery. Do you know what that might mean?"

Much later, after being kissed:

"Oh. Ohhhh."
 
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open_sketch said:
"Umbra IV, report," he said. The woman snapped a fist to her chest and bowed.
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Girl, you could do so much better.

open_sketch said:
Ward pivoted on her armoured heel, tearing apart the flooring as she brought the shield around with a heavy thump and a shower of blue sparks. Umbra span away onto all fours, her head snapping up to expose the hideous ruin made of her youthful face. The skin and muscle was torn away to expose a metallic, inhuman skull under it, the surface unworked and raw, eye glowing with teal fire. It hissed and scrambled forward again, fingers distorting into lengthening blades.
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nice, Terminator vibes.
 
Story Background & Butterfly Rampart
  • Informational
    • oh real quick, i wanna give a huge shout-out to @Karlito. back when we were testing my old magical girl RPG 5 Across the Heart, he regularly played a character called Butterfly Rampant, whose armoured dress and tower shield basically defined the game's tank archetype, and which stuck in my head super hard. Eve and Butterfly Ward owes a lot to that character.

    Additional fun fact: This is actually the second incarnation of this project! The first, which was just called Happily Ever After, written on my phone purely for my own gratification, was actually a light-hearted parody?

    Proto-Eve was Butterfly Knight, living with Princess Rose in her unironic happily ever after when the Dark Queen returned. It was much sillier, like them having to take a cursed train to hell to confront her and ending up running into one of their old demon opponents (who went back to evil school for her evil degree after world conquest fell through). There was a subplot about how Hell was getting gentrified.

    The entirety of the actual Team Butterfly Forever emerged from one scene where proto-Eve, training for the fight, blows up at the cat about how she never wanted to do any of this, which included her listing all the awful things she and her absent friends experienced as magical girls. "Emily lost an arm! Like gone forever!"

    This ended up being, to me, way more compelling. the original basically gave excuses for why the team couldn't go along because it was a limited scope short story; i found myself thinking the tale of going and talking them all into coming back for one last job way more compelling, and that developed into this story about the difficulties of adult friendships and what it's like being woven into lives that are out of anyone's control.

    I wrote a lot of stuff on my phone last year as the stress mounted; Buried in Steel also had series of prototypes (its earliest version was a rookie and a veteran stuck alone inside an NBC protected tank after the Federation carpet-nuked their planet, and I ended up becoming increasingly interested in the "stuck in the tank" part over the "and there was only one crew compartment!" romance angle). it's cool getting to develop these ideas properly

    also, do not write novels on your phone. i fucked my shoulder up doing it lol.
     
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    • ...oh wow, now I kinda want to read this prototype version!

    It doesn't matter much if there are a lot of surface-level similarities between it and this -- after all, I see enough remarks about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility being similar, and people love her work!

    And yes, writing on phones is a bad time. No keyboard give means lots of joint fatigue even if I'm trying to use good posture and all that, and the less screaming about autokoREKT the better. Only thing (in the category of electronics First World Problems) worse than trying to write on a touchscreen is gaming on a touchscreen.
     
    BethofDeath said:
    ...oh wow, now I kinda want to read this prototype version!

    It doesn't matter much if there are a lot of surface-level similarities between it and this -- after all, I see enough remarks about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility being similar, and people love her work!

    And yes, writing on phones is a bad time. No keyboard give means lots of joint fatigue even if I'm trying to use good posture and all that, and the less screaming about autokoREKT the better. Only thing (in the category of electronics First World Problems) worse than trying to write on a touchscreen is gaming on a touchscreen.
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    Like all of my Written On My Phone stories, they are staying in The Vault where they belong. The goal of that writing was to do it knowing I wouldn't ever show anyone so that I could do it without anxiety; one of the things that slows down my modern work is my need to constantly check, recheck, and research every single detail. That kind of compulsive scrupulosity is incredibly slow and incredibly stressful, so private writing let me (mostly) bypass that.

    That no longer works if I ever share any of it; it'll make me too anxious to use this writing the way I want to!

    (Also, a lot of those stories were intensely pornographic in ways that will get me Super Cancelled, as opposed to this story which will be tastefully erotic in a way that will get me Super Cancelled).
     
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    open_sketch said:
    Like all of my Written On My Phone stories, they are staying in The Vault where they belong. The goal of that writing was to do it knowing I wouldn't ever show anyone so that I could do it without anxiety; one of the things that slows down my modern work is my need to constantly check, recheck, and research every single detail. That kind of compulsive scrupulosity is incredibly slow and incredibly stressful, so private writing let me (mostly) bypass that.

    That no longer works if I ever share any of it; it'll make me too anxious to use this writing the way I want to!
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    Operation Steal Phone...begins...
     
    open_sketch said:
    Like all of my Written On My Phone stories, they are staying in The Vault where they belong. ...it'll make me too anxious to use this writing the way I want to!

    (Also, a lot of those stories were intensely pornographic in ways that will get me Super Cancelled, as opposed to this story which will be tastefully erotic in a way that will get me Super Cancelled).
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    Completely understandable, even as I now kinda wanna read it even harder haha! I completely get the anxiety thing, I've had similar problems about what little I've gotten written over the issues of my untreated ADHD. :)

    DragonCobolt said:
    Operation Steal Phone...begins...
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    Oi, don't do that! /lh

    I'm sure the NSA has a backdoor into whatever iCloud or Google Docs storage anyway, but that's extra-spicy illegal so please don't do that either. (I am not a lawyer, and this does not constitute legal advice.)

    (Meant as playing along with joke)
     
    WhatIf said:
    Is there a current way to get a hold of this RPG? I've liked your other work in the tRPG space.
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    Speaking as one of the play testers for 5AtH all those years ago, (2017? 2019, iirc? Correct me if I'm wrong, Sketch.) it remains and will likely remain unpublished.
    Pixie Punk, my foul mouthed beloved who ran through six walls to kill a haunted mansion, ye shall missed.
     
    open_sketch said:
    Buried in Steel also had series of prototypes (its earliest version was a rookie and a veteran stuck alone inside an NBC protected tank after the Federation carpet-nuked their planet, and I ended up becoming increasingly interested in the "stuck in the tank" part over the "and there was only one crew compartment!" romance angle). it's cool getting to develop these ideas properly
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    INTERIOR: The Coyosaphbunker, evening. Distant howls of third-generation jets and John Fogerty.

    Coyosapph Niff, her armies crushed, mad dreams of conquest and forcefem destroyed by a righteous tide of leftist intersectionalists, lies dying of an inoperable stab wound rendered by Special Fiction Group (SFG) Captain Wattpad, sent by the Military Sufficient Command-Velocity (MSC-V) to the mad soldier's base in the urban river-jungles of Misery. As a scarred Wattpad steers her PT-boat downriver, the Coyosapph's final ravings broadcast on a dead channel to the fleeing denizens of her cult as the napalm rains down:

    CSH. Niff: (faintly, breath rattling) The yuri...the yuri...



    real talk i would read that SO BAD. @open_sketch is it ok if i were to theoretically steal this idea.
     
    🦋 Chapter 3 - At Home in Limbo (Part 1)
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    • Chapter 3 - At Home in Limbo

    It was surprisingly easy to sleep on a plane. Admittedly, you'd found you had a knack for sleeping just about anywhere or any time; if anything you had the opposite problem. But after dinner, and with the aid of a plastic cup of complementary souchu, you snuggled up in the little blanket with your airplane slippers on and you were out like a light.

    You didn't dream, at least not in a way you could remember, but the lingering sense of nostalgia chased you into wakefulness This was brought about with some external effort from the man seated beside you, apparently at the behest of a flight attendant; it seemed like you were landing soon, and you had some paperwork to do.

    Groggy, you folded down the little tray table and filled in the two little cards. You had to list the address you were going to stay at, and that gave you pause; you fished out your phone to try and scroll back through the Skype logs to the address she told you, but of course you didn't have a connection and the wi-fi didn't work. Finally, you gave up and listed one of the hotels from your notes, which you'd at least had the foresight to write down properly formatted. "Purpose of visit" wasn't easy either; you should have just checked Tourism, but your anxious honesty won out.

    At least the customs form was easy, given you'd accidently left all your illegal drugs, agricultural products, and commercial samples at home. Oh well, next time!

    You dozed off again the moment you were finished, and awoke to the jolt of the wheels hitting tarmac. In a daze, you rose with the other passengers, grabbed your bag out of the overhead compartment, and just remembered to grab your shoes of the ground before shuffling out. You were hoping for a spot to pause and switch them for your slippers, but everything was moving rather quickly and nobody was slowing down, which meant you kind of ended up standing in line at passport control still holding your shoes.

    They were, of course, the first thing the passport control officer noticed. He cocked an eyebrow at the as you fished around in your purse and pockets for your passport and forms, then scanned over them.

    "Purpose of visit, other?" the man inquired, looking over the sheet You nodded.

    "Yeeeah. Um, I'm visiting a, um, a friend. Checking in on her," you explained, poorly.

    "I see. For five days?" You'd penciled in a longer estimate, just in case. He typed something into the computer.

    "We might leave before then," you said, and he stopped typing.

    "Do you have a return ticket?" he asked pointedly. Shit.

    "No, but I have the money set aside for one?" you explained hastily. He nodded.

    "Is your friend a Japanese citizen?" the man asked. You opened your mouth to answer and then found yourself not quite able to remember how that worked. You dimly remembered Kimiyo saying something about how she'd have to give up her Japanese citizenship for an American one, but she still had a Green Card, and something about her 21st birthday…

    "Um, she has a Japanese passport?" you offered. That at least you remembered, the bright red booklet clutched tight in her hand when she'd left.

    You got grilled with a few more questions, and then had a photo and fingerprints taken; you weren't sure if that was a universal thing or if it was because you were so terrible at answering questions. But you were let through into the brightly lit airport, and you finally found a table, sat down, and got to change out of your slippers. A lady with a little kid stared at you from the next table over as you did so.

    That done, you leaned back over the chair and stared up at the ceiling. That sucked. You had a new Queen of the World priority; no more passport control. They should just stamp your hand or something.

    You pulled out your phone and clicked off airplane mode, and after a few seconds received a barrage of texts from multiple sources. You ignored the AT&T one (probably trying to get you to upgrade your plan) to check the ones from your friends.

    Brigid had sent "what's going on" and nothing else about eight hours ago. You didn't have to deal with that yourself, though, because Amara was on it; she sent a flurry of texts explaining that she'd finally called Brigid and had been met with long stretches of unsettling silence and the claim that she was 'too busy' to save the world. No contact since. Fuck.

    You couldn't deal with that now. You had just one more text, from Kimiyo, which must have been sent just minutes after you put your phone in airplane mode.

    "♥️"

    At least she knew you were coming.

    You spent a few minutes checking your emails, then double-checked your route on Google Maps a few times. Keisei Narita to Daimon Station, Toei Ōedo to Azuba-Juban station, then you wandered around until you saw the building from Streetview. Easy!

    Frustratingly, presumably due to Travel, your credit card was declined at the ticket desk, so you had to find an ATM and pay five dollars to remove your own money, albeit transmuted into a stack of brown ¥5000 bills by some kind of Bank Alchemy. The fact you now fully understood that bank alchemy and the inner workings of international currency exchange markets didn't make it any less alchemy-y; most of your conclusions from your 9/10ths of an economics degree came back around to money being stupid and fake. It wasn't going to stop you from minting giant gold coins with your face on it, but still.

    You had just sat down on the train and were midway through googling "who's the lady on the 5000 yen bill" when you got yet another text from AT&T, and you made the extremely fortunate mistake of opening this one.

    AT&T FREE MSG: Eve, your current roaming data usage is 31MB.​

    With a slowly creeping sense of dread, you scrolled up past the half-dozen ignored messages from the last hour.

    AT&T FREE MSG: Welcome to Japan! Your International Data Plan rate is $20.08/MB. Texts are $0.50, Phone $2.50 per minute. For details, att.com/wirelessinternational.​

    You felt a kind of cold chill come over you that you usually associated with serious injury. In a daze, you opened settings, turned on airplane mode, turned off your phone just in case, and stuck it as deep into the lower strata of your purse as you could get it.

    Cool.

    You sat back and tried to will yourself into a state of perfect calm. What was done was done; despair wouldn't help anything. You had a job to do, and nothing you could do now would make anything better. Once this was managed, you could contact the phone company and your bank and get this sorted, and in the worst case this just bit into savings you still had, however fast they might be dwindling. Last thing you needed was to break down in tears on the train.

    You got your breathing under control and tried to focus on something else, on the city roll by out the window. The scale of it seemed unimaginable; it wasn't like the monolithic core of San Francisco, Sacramento's grid, or the endless sprawl of LA; it felt like somebody had taken the transitional zone between suburb and skyscrapers and just stretched it out into eternity. Every time you felt like you'd passed through the densest part of the city, it started building up again, like the landscape outside was being played in a loop.

    Your previous trip to Japan had been when you were 13. You were visiting Kimiyo's place just after school had ended for the summer, you stayed for dinner as you often did, and you offhandedly mentioned how much you were going to miss her when she left and how much you were dreading it. Presumably, her parents had talked to your parents and some kind of arrangement was made, and you were invited along that year, and it was without a doubt the best month of your life.

    The city you'd seen then was three days doing tourist stuff in Kyoto, which in retrospect was a bit like learning about life in the United States by heading to Disneyland and studying Main Street USA. You really hadn't seen much of it, though, and only in a tourist-y sort of way, looking at big castles and old shrines and museums. You mostly remember taking pictures of Old Stuff while Kimiyo translated various signs as best she could for you, though she needed a lot of help with the kanji in turn.

    This was nothing like that. Once you crossed the river, the density started to feel almost artificial somehow, like the city was a drawing by somebody who had mistaken complexity for realism and just kept putting in more signs, bike paths, and wires wherever there was negative space on all the rectangles. It, in fact, looked exactly like the cities Kimiyo used to draw from her How to Draw Manga books, a fact that did something funny to your brain.

    Your July in Japan had mostly been spent at Kimiyo's grandfather's house and in the surrounding town. It was a tiny middle-of-nowhere place which had felt timeless probably because it was largely forgotten, a town clinging to life by its fingertips. To you at the time, that just meant it was filled with amazing curiosities, funny little shops, and the old arcade you and Kimiyo spent whole afternoons filled with games you'd never seen before or since.

    The house itself had been incredible too, old and traditional and sprawling. You knew your memory probably made it look bigger than it was, but it still had to be pretty big; the two of you had slept in a little side building which had been converted into a guest room. That had been special too; neither of you really understood back then quite what it was, but the duration and the surreal unreality of a foreign locale had made it different, not just another sleepover. Your first halting, awkward kiss had been in the dark room, lying on the floor; you'd asked her to grab your glasses and she'd put them on your face for you and just sort of leaned in.

    Brain overwhelmed with not-yet-understood feelings of sublime happiness, you'd said "That was weird." In retrospect, those three words were a magical spell which had transported both of you to the back of the closet for the next two years.

    The train pulled in at Diamon Station after what seemed like an eternity, a low grey subway station whose signage fortunately had enough English for you to find your way. Unfortunately, it was also some kind of maze, and there was something of a crowd. You took the escalator toward what you thought was the Toei Ōedo line, followed another sign that seemed to be pointing the way, passed through what in retrospect was an exit gate, and then you were standing on the street nestled between glass skyscrapers and construction cranes.

    You stood there on the sidewalk, right in the middle of everyone, for what must have been a minute or two, just sort of staring up at it. Internally, you were fighting a battle between the reality that you could probably just turn around and pay closer attention to the signs, and the growing fuzzy jetlag feelings battling your ritalin for dominance and winning.

    You remembered enough from the map to know you were close. If you could find Tokyo Tower you could figure it out from there. You couldn't see it from where you were, but there were an awful lot of buildings in the way, and you had a solution to that.

    You crossed the street and walked on through the narrow midrises, glancing down the tight alleys until you found one wide enough that you didn't think you'd get stuck. Glancing around to make sure nobody was paying too much attention, you ducked inside and walked down the strange, dark hallway until there was a niche between two support pillars you could hide behind. Carefully hanging your travel bag from a power meter, you undid the latch on your necklace, and held the tiny gold butterfly in your palm. Even in the darkened alley, the amber stones seemed to glimmer with a light of their own.

    You took a deep breath, glanced one last time down the alley to be sure, then thrust your hand in the air.

    "For the Kaleidoscope Crown! Transform!"

    The world didn't so much fade as it was drowned out by light that came from everywhere, swirling like bubbles in a liquid, like falling glass. You were lifted off your feet, not propelled but floating, untethered by gravity. You closed your eyes, but the light remained.

    It didn't feel like putting on armour. It was like falling into silk bedsheets, like sinking into a warm bath, your motions guided by a gentle force that suggested more than compelled, and you felt so comfortable in that cocoon of love and light that you moved without resistance. The dress assembled itself bolt by bolt, thread dancing and leaping over one another down seams, laces elegantly knotting themselves, ribbons pulling taut. Even the steel plate fell into place gently, around your chest and shoulders and hips, each piece weighing nothing, moving smoothly, the buckles snapping and tightening until they fit perfectly. The gauntlets could have been made of satin and you'd not be able to tell the difference.

    As your hair brushed and styled itself, as a delicate pair of round, brass spectacles replaced your plastic frames, you felt that gentle pull of fluttering wings guiding your hand out in front of you. Your fingers found the sword, and it felt heavy. As you always used to do, you kept your hand open as long as you could, wanting to stay just one more safe moment in this private place, where there was no pain, no exhaustion, no missed bills or roaming charges.

    You drew the sword to your chest, cradled it, and it pulled you down like an anchor. Out of this place, away from the orchestra, out of the light.

    The you that set back down in the dark alleyway was not the one who had left it. You shared a perspective, yes, memories and opinions and loves and sorrows, but Eve was still there, in the light. Safe.

    Your name is Butterfly Ward, and you are her shield.
     
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    • open_sketch said:
    You had just sat down on the train and were midway through googling "who's the lady on the 5000 yen bill" when you got yet another text from AT&T, and you made the extremely fortunate mistake of opening this one.

    AT&T FREE MSG: Eve, your current roaming data usage is 31MB.
    With a slowly creeping sense of dread, you scrolled up past the half-dozen ignored messages from the last hour.

    AT&T FREE MSG: Welcome to Japan! Your International Data Plan rate is $20.08/MB. Texts are $0.50, Phone $2.50 per minute. For details, att.com/wirelessinternational.
    You felt a kind of cold chill come over you that you usually associated with serious injury. In a daze, you opened settings, turned on airplane mode, turned off your phone just in case, and stuck it as deep into the lower strata of your purse as you could get it.
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    Pain. Suffering. Agony. All the adult ADHD stuff is this story is so painfully relatable holy shit.

    open_sketch said:
    You couldn't deal with that now. You had just one more text, from Kimiyo, which must have been sent just minutes after you put your phone in airplane mode.

    "♥️"
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    The Kimiyo mystery deepens.... I'm growing less convinced that it's just a case of Kimiyo wanting to break up but putting it off.
     
    open_sketch said:
    You remembered enough from the map to know you were close. If you could find Tokyo Tower you could figure it out from there. You couldn't see it from where you were, but there were an awful lot of buildings in the way, and you had a solution to that.
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    thank goodness for magical girl super jumpy powers.
    wonder how the learning curve for those went?
    wonder if she can fly as well?
     
    open_sketch said:
    AT&T FREE MSG: Welcome to Japan! Your International Data Plan rate is $20.08/MB. Texts are $0.50, Phone $2.50 per minute. For details, att.com/wirelessinternational
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    ah, the message I got in a similar situation was "We've automatically upgraded you with an international day pass for the privilege of recieving this message".

    Of course, that was 10 years later, so the price was sn altoghether more affordable 10 euros, but still.
     
    open_sketch said:
    It, in fact, looked exactly like the cities Kimiyo used to draw from her How to Draw Manga books, a fact that did something funny to your brain.
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    This line makes me very suspicious that some kind of illusion is active here.
    The you that set back down in the dark alleyway was not the one who had left it. You shared a perspective, yes, memories and opinions and loves and sorrows, but Eve was still there, in the light. Safe.

    Your name is Butterfly Ward, and you are her shield.
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    I don't know what's going on here, but whatever it is, this makes me sad.
     
    open_sketch said:
    Brigid had sent "what's going on" and nothing else about eight hours ago. You didn't have to deal with that yourself, though, because Amara was on it; she sent a flurry of texts explaining that she'd finally called Brigid and had been met with long stretches of unsettling silence and the claim that she was 'too busy' to save the world. No contact since. Fuck.
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    The fuck do you mean 'too busy' to save the world? I mean sure, this time around the Shadow Queen sounds weaker, but this is still the world-ending threat building up! Hopefully, this is just her holding back until its a "wait till it's confirmed I'm needed" type thing, where if the big bad is weak enough that the rest of the team can handle it, she won't ditch her dissertation or whatever. But still, end of the world scenario, you know?
     
    a pathetic record of anxious failure New
  • Informational
    • no update today, i'm heading off to play An RPGs, but i want to show off something that's pretty silly and should show you how disproportionately seriously i'm taking this extremely stupid thing

    see this?



    that's not the wordcount of Team Butterfly Forever's draft

    that's the wordcount of the synopsis and character profile document. which isn't my research file *or* the file where i figured out a timeline of their old adventures *or* my random notes file. in it is not just a complete plot breakdown scene by scene, but complete character profiles for every named character that will appear, including education, everywhere they've lived, work history, family histories that are usually several generations deep, and fashion notes.

    to be clear; this isn't me bragging. it's me apologizing for how long the updates take. i know its a frivolous, stupid, and shallow story that doesn't deserve this, but i don't normally write things set in the modern day with stuff i can be outright wrong about, so i basically have to stop and do research every other sentence. i know its activtely making the work worse because i keep having these pathetic little details intrude when the narrative should be more focused, but i'm doing my best. hopefully once i get the first draft in front of a proper editor it can be made more readable.

    if you can tolerate this bullshit, update tomorrow or monday. my apologies for how short they are; if i don't post what i have when i have it, i'll stop writing.
     
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