esotericist
A Weary Hand
- Location
- Lacey, WA
i feel attacked by a fictional character
srs that's pretty much how i pronounce it, and i'm from georgia.
was that prompted by an interaction you actually had with someone at some point?
Companion Chronicles [Jumpchain/Multicross SI] [Currently visiting: INTERMISSION]
- Thread starter Tempestuous
- Start date
i feel attacked by a fictional character
srs that's pretty much how i pronounce it, and i'm from georgia.
was that prompted by an interaction you actually had with someone at some point?
- Location
- Colorado
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Fuck this was a good chapter but this line caught me off guard JUST how good it was...
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Loving how this has just gone full Slice-of-Life, reading it feels… comfortable? Idk that's a weird description but it's what my brain provided me so 🤷🏼♀️
If you're willing to continue putting in the effort for this, I know I'd love to have someone other than @Pittauro doing this on something I'm actually reading for its own sake.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
I feel the story Ashali wrote over on Questionable Questing (Heavenly Monkey Fist) was pretty good, as jumpchain go, although it's also unfinished. And occasionally sexual, as expected from a tale on that site.
But yeah, due to the structure of jumpchain lots of the stories tend towards wish fulfilment and summerisation of plotlines. Temp here has managed to mostly avoid that, having a solid plot for each world, only using timeskip at the end of said plotlines or to connect from X event to Y.
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
...I would recommend Cliffc999 on SB. They're not completely exempt from the standard Chain fix flaws, but for all that it is a power fantasy, they do spend dozens of thousands of words on each jump, and have pretty high quality in their writing.
- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
Cliffc999 is hit or miss on their jumpchain stuff. I've liked a few of theirs, but some of the others ones aren't much better. There's also nowhere land, a sort of SCP / Jumpchain thing on SB, but I think that one's on Hiatus.
The thing that these and companion chronicles have that set them apart is, IMO, that they don't play the jumpchain straight. Jumpchain RAW is not just a power fantasy, but a boring one. There's no combat drama, because every jump doc gives you more than enough firepower to throw down with the big leagues of the setting, even if it's a high powered setting and it's your first jump. There's no existential drama, because Jump-chan (ugh) is friendly and so much more powerful than the settings that there's no risk to them either, so you don't have to worry about anything interfering with the jump mechanism. There's no character drama, because they never spend enough time in any jump to really get invested. Etcetera.
In order to make an interesting story out of this, you need to trim that down. Nowhere land has the jumpchain itself not fully functional, the character not in control of what's going on, an overarching meta plot on the same scale as the jumpchain, and limits the obtainable powers. As a consequence of your actions (IMO Cliff's best Jumpchain) has a semi-hostile jump admin, forced drawbacks and jump end conditions, and really spends a lot of time on each jump; there was some serious discussion about how their first jump was long enough and detailed enough that you probably could have made it into a full fanfic on its own merits.
And here in companion chronicles, we have the same traits. Cass is not the jumper, management is not on your side, you don't control what jumps you go to, there are universal drawbacks to somewhat slow down the power growth, and a lot of time is devoted to each relevant Jump. Cass is an interesting character, but she'd be half as interesting at best without her interactions with Homura, Zero, Tess, Zeke, and Max. I'm not sure I'm as onboard with the current jump as I was for some of the previous, but I can guarantee you that if the majority of jumpchain fics tried to sustain an arc on character interactions it would fall at the first hurdle.
The thing that these and companion chronicles have that set them apart is, IMO, that they don't play the jumpchain straight. Jumpchain RAW is not just a power fantasy, but a boring one. There's no combat drama, because every jump doc gives you more than enough firepower to throw down with the big leagues of the setting, even if it's a high powered setting and it's your first jump. There's no existential drama, because Jump-chan (ugh) is friendly and so much more powerful than the settings that there's no risk to them either, so you don't have to worry about anything interfering with the jump mechanism. There's no character drama, because they never spend enough time in any jump to really get invested. Etcetera.
In order to make an interesting story out of this, you need to trim that down. Nowhere land has the jumpchain itself not fully functional, the character not in control of what's going on, an overarching meta plot on the same scale as the jumpchain, and limits the obtainable powers. As a consequence of your actions (IMO Cliff's best Jumpchain) has a semi-hostile jump admin, forced drawbacks and jump end conditions, and really spends a lot of time on each jump; there was some serious discussion about how their first jump was long enough and detailed enough that you probably could have made it into a full fanfic on its own merits.
And here in companion chronicles, we have the same traits. Cass is not the jumper, management is not on your side, you don't control what jumps you go to, there are universal drawbacks to somewhat slow down the power growth, and a lot of time is devoted to each relevant Jump. Cass is an interesting character, but she'd be half as interesting at best without her interactions with Homura, Zero, Tess, Zeke, and Max. I'm not sure I'm as onboard with the current jump as I was for some of the previous, but I can guarantee you that if the majority of jumpchain fics tried to sustain an arc on character interactions it would fall at the first hurdle.
Endorfinator
Awkwardly Social
- Location
- California
- Pronouns
- He/Him
SJ-Chan's jumpchain is also pretty good. A lot of chapters are mediocre but there is a lot of character interactions and her Light of Terra and Honor Harrington jumps are beyond fantastic.
Maybe there are some later parts that are better but I really have to disagree. Her jumpchain is a prime example of the type that spends most of its wordcount talking about their purchases before having a paragraph or two of the jump in question getting steamrolled.
redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
Alright, had a spare *checks time* couple hours?!? so here's my response to the second segment. Dang these things are long.
Warping into an alternate reality seems relatively simple. Ok I can't believe I just said that, but hear me out. You figure out all the necessary calculations, then you apply a burst of energy of the right sort at the right place at the right time to create the magical equivalent of a wormhole. Punch through the universe to end up someplace else. Boom, you invented hyperdrive. A jumpchain is just activating your magical hyperdrive to warp to another world instead of another star. But randomly reorganizing the warehouse with every jump? Somehow that almost seems more difficult, because it feels more personal. Like building a house instead of moving a starship across the galaxy. One is far more impressive, but ask a pilot which is actually more difficult, see if he's willing to pick up a hammer.
I guess they invented a house-moving button, because magic. Hmm, maybe somehow using or redirecting the energy of the jump...? Man I dunno, even if I was smart I couldn't figure out the background magical process of a system that hasn't even begun to be explained yet. What am I even doing?
Hmm. I sense shenanigans. Why bother with such a detail otherwise? But is it in Max's past or Cass' future?
Alternatively, it could just be trying to pre-emptively stop you from starting up a clothing empire with unlimited product. They'll give you reality warping magic powers for teh lulz but the second you try to sell shirts you've gone too far.
Also Management sounds like a dick. Give your employee's some notice before they have to come in to work.
I, too, have thought about how I'd write about myself reacting to being a self-insert. At first I thought I'd get more philosophical, maybe battle for a bit with existential dread, but in the end I figure I'd probably pretend that I'd react pretty similarly to how you just did.
Oh right, meeting people. Yeah that part could be rough. But there's a chance one of those people could by Harry Potter or Aang or something so... worth the risk.
She's a girl. That narrows it down by about 50%. Actually, I've never stopped to consider whether the sexes are evenly represented or not, but given the prevalence of fanservice I'm gonna revise my estimate. I'd say... idk, maybe 65% of anime characters are girls?
Age probably doesn't matter, if Max is any indication. She could be younger or older than her canon self, since late teens or early twenties is usually where somebody who can choose their age would want to be.
Black hair tied with a ribbon? Hmm. Doesn't ring any bells, not by itself.
Striking Indigo eyes? Hmm.
White shirt, black skirt. Hmmmmm.
Ok, full disclosure, I already know that Homura exists in this fic due to some comment or other I read before this. Is this her with Madoka's ribbon? Do we meet her in chapter one? I admit I picture her with more purple-ish hair, but I can see it being described as black if ported over to reality.
otherwise gonna just move along...
Hmm, I wonder how this'll affect Cass.
That's a strange home. Personally, I'd just cram all the games in existence into a single system and design a room around it for maximum comfort, but different folks. Or it's not actually anybody's home, dang. Better luck invading the next one.
Yeah. Same. Run while you still can, Cass.
... Can you use magic to make everything better? It seems to be able to do everything else.
Not sure I'd actually want to go there though, seems like a nasty place to live. Great big storms, guys are mocked for being able to read, everybody wants to fight and there's a desolation coming. I guess the shards are rather neat.
Actually, fuck the shards, those are just weaponized corpses. I'd want to bond with a spren. No idea which one though, I guess it'd have to find me.
Is Max the one and only Earthling then?
My first guess when hearing the name was Queen Maeve from 'The Boys'. A much weaker Wonder Woman Ripoff, but she's kinda cool.
Alternatively: "Joe? Joe who?"
"Joe Mama heyooooo gottem."
So there's part one of the meet n' greet, time to follow it up with who knows how many more chapters filled with introductions before we go anywhere.
And then that setting is going to be absolutely flooded with powerful, bored, heroes aliens adventurers and other assorted entities. Hmm. Apprehension rising, so many companions already being established here makes me worried about the stakes of wherever we're going next. Or first, I guess I should say.
Well the story is fine so far so no reason to worry about what may or may not be.
SAME. Even if you had described it, I'd absorb barely any of. as proof, I'll absorb almost nothing of the next few paragraphs!
Oh it's not just impossibly huge. its mega impossibly huge! Well I admit I just don't know how to handle that information. so I wont. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Ok. This part, THIS interests me. It's got me going off on a tangent about how even magic typically costs energy, constrained by mana or qi or other fundamental forces fantasy-land humans haven't figured out how to measure yet.
Warping into an alternate reality seems relatively simple. Ok I can't believe I just said that, but hear me out. You figure out all the necessary calculations, then you apply a burst of energy of the right sort at the right place at the right time to create the magical equivalent of a wormhole. Punch through the universe to end up someplace else. Boom, you invented hyperdrive. A jumpchain is just activating your magical hyperdrive to warp to another world instead of another star. But randomly reorganizing the warehouse with every jump? Somehow that almost seems more difficult, because it feels more personal. Like building a house instead of moving a starship across the galaxy. One is far more impressive, but ask a pilot which is actually more difficult, see if he's willing to pick up a hammer.
I guess they invented a house-moving button, because magic. Hmm, maybe somehow using or redirecting the energy of the jump...? Man I dunno, even if I was smart I couldn't figure out the background magical process of a system that hasn't even begun to be explained yet. What am I even doing?
"I'm not an architect, but I played minecraft once so I'm probably qualified for this."
Because of course it is, why wouldn't it be?
*squints*
Hmm. I sense shenanigans. Why bother with such a detail otherwise? But is it in Max's past or Cass' future?
Alternatively, it could just be trying to pre-emptively stop you from starting up a clothing empire with unlimited product. They'll give you reality warping magic powers for teh lulz but the second you try to sell shirts you've gone too far.
Oh right, multiple buildings belonging to multiple people. In an impossibly large pocket dimension where walking distance is a serious concern. If this Max guy is the Jumper, then he's picked up a loooot of companions over the years. We know he's been to Harry Potter, is the bloke himself around? Or knowing Jumpchains, its probably a Hermione who is for some unknowable reason madly in love with him. Wait, this isn't QQ, maybe there's still hope for decency.
Hah, same. Wonder if me saying that will become a meme.
"So you can own an entire hotel chain, but I can't sell T-shirts? What a rip-off."
Should I be concerned about the ethical ramifications of this? ... naaaah. It's fine.
For the edgy training montage of course!
Ooooh, so that's why he's on Earth. I'm sure there are better Vay-cay spots. Wait, how long was his earth vacation if he got old and grey but he's young everytime he returns to the warehouse?!?
Also Management sounds like a dick. Give your employee's some notice before they have to come in to work.
more shenanigans?
huh. Nice detail. That's the kind of thing you rarely consider while reading or writing fiction, but it totally makes the experience more immersive. Good job.
Hey, at least you're potentially the main character. Interesting fun things happen to main characters and nothing bad ever.
Nope! We've probably all heard of simulation theory at this point, but the only sane response is to shrug and keep living your life as if you're real. Same thing applies here. Evidence is a bit harder to brush aside, but ultimately the conclusion doesn't change.
I, too, have thought about how I'd write about myself reacting to being a self-insert. At first I thought I'd get more philosophical, maybe battle for a bit with existential dread, but in the end I figure I'd probably pretend that I'd react pretty similarly to how you just did.
I know the buildings are in all likelihood another companion's personal home, but if the door is unlocked then you're apparently in the clear! just go barging in, what could go wrong?!?
Oh right, meeting people. Yeah that part could be rough. But there's a chance one of those people could by Harry Potter or Aang or something so... worth the risk.
You wandered around for a bit, saw some stuff, the Terry Pratchett quote with the tree was neat. I failed to absorb it all again. I'm terrible at descriptions, just terrible. Oh look, things are happening! Time to pay attention again.
Ok, time to guess who this is!
She's a girl. That narrows it down by about 50%. Actually, I've never stopped to consider whether the sexes are evenly represented or not, but given the prevalence of fanservice I'm gonna revise my estimate. I'd say... idk, maybe 65% of anime characters are girls?
Age probably doesn't matter, if Max is any indication. She could be younger or older than her canon self, since late teens or early twenties is usually where somebody who can choose their age would want to be.
Black hair tied with a ribbon? Hmm. Doesn't ring any bells, not by itself.
Striking Indigo eyes? Hmm.
White shirt, black skirt. Hmmmmm.
Ok, full disclosure, I already know that Homura exists in this fic due to some comment or other I read before this. Is this her with Madoka's ribbon? Do we meet her in chapter one? I admit I picture her with more purple-ish hair, but I can see it being described as black if ported over to reality.
Am I allowed to laugh at this scene? Too late, I did it anyways.
otherwise gonna just move along...
That's an option? Of course that's an option. It's magic, why not.
Hmm, I wonder how this'll affect Cass.
Oof, Homura. smh fam. Also yes, I read ahead to confirm that his is in fact Homura.
Ayup. And everybody else is an OC that a different version of yourself created, so treat them well, you're kinda like their mom.
Ok, Max is referred to as 'she' for the rest of this paragraph. I now have questions. Is (was?) Max trans, or gender fluid, or is this sort of gender fluidity learned as a result of being able to swap your sex on a jump? Is this just a Max thing, or does Homura also go by, idk, Homuro(?) and masculine pronouns just as easily? I guess we'll figure this stuff out later.
Oh come on! You're apparently the main character of Earth! inquiring readers want to know what our plot is!
Oh. Hmm. Maxine made things better, but what does that actually mean? If Madoka is still alive, then why/how would Homura agree to leave her for who knows how long?!? And if she's not alive, then how exactly did Max make things any better? Is the hair ribbon tragic or heartwarming?
Wordplay is fun! But most people don't put that much thought into the things they say. Then again, I once lectured my mom about when and how I find it appropriate to use sarcasm, so... glass houses.
My experience with PMAS is telling me now is the time to deploy hugs, but I'm not piloting Sabrina's body. heck.
Finally, home invading!
That's a strange home. Personally, I'd just cram all the games in existence into a single system and design a room around it for maximum comfort, but different folks. Or it's not actually anybody's home, dang. Better luck invading the next one.
More animays. Who will it be this time?
Seriously. Why isn't it?
Well that describes pretty much every albino woman ever, give or take some hair length. Idk, first anime that comes to mind is that one about the guy in prison who shoots blood out of his hand. I thiiiiiink the girl from that one is albino? I don't remember any names so I can't even google it to check. She was kinda simple-minded though, iirc.
Well that just seems unnecessary. I'm not entirely sure if I'm talking about her being rude, or you writing her that way. Seriously, she was apparently told about you enough to expect you and know your name, but still makes a slip like that?
Nope, no idea who this is. I was way off though.
Haha nice. I'd totally do that. Seeing myself in a video game would be awesome.
Thats uhhhh... kinda disturbing. I'm reconsidering the playing myself in a video game thing now.
.........
Yeah. Same. Run while you still can, Cass.
Good.
Oh. Hmm. Why bother with a pharmacy when you can just use magic to make everything better?
... Can you use magic to make everything better? It seems to be able to do everything else.
Can we not and say we did? Cool.
Alright, that's pretty funny. Thankfully, I've never been bothered feeling underdressed, but maybe I've just never been anywhere fancy enough.
I once started a speech in class by telling everybody I was really shy, but lets just pretend I'm not for a minute and see how things go. It worked out pretty well imo.
Sigh. Same.
...The builder? I have no idea who this is supposed to be. Are linebackers supposed to be sexy, is that why he's here? Also swallow your food before talking dude.
Holy shit. Same. I swear I'm not forcing this we just keep having similar reactions to things. Who wouldn't react that way to IRL Garrus?
I've never been a collector of figures of any kind, but if they were of myself... maybe? Video games still sound cooler, violent associations aside.
He's Garrus fucking Vakarian. Who the hell are you, Bob? Why would you expect your ego to be larger than Archangel's?
That sounds familiar...
I, too, love that series! Way of kings, no... that's just the first book. Stormlight Archives, that's the one.
Not sure I'd actually want to go there though, seems like a nasty place to live. Great big storms, guys are mocked for being able to read, everybody wants to fight and there's a desolation coming. I guess the shards are rather neat.
Actually, fuck the shards, those are just weaponized corpses. I'd want to bond with a spren. No idea which one though, I guess it'd have to find me.
Who? Is that WHO? The suspense is mildly irritating me! I simply must know! It's like an itch.
Actually forget Bob, this is way more important! Finally, some real answers!
... Is he?
Bwahahaha! That had to happen at least once given the size of this crossover.
I guess you're not actually from Earth Earth after all. You're from American Mecha Anime Earth. Totally different.
Is Max the one and only Earthling then?
See I was gonna quote his line and respond with 'Obviously', but then you went and did it first so I'm just left saying Same again.
No kidding, you're writing about a character you're familiar with. Shocker.
My first guess when hearing the name was Queen Maeve from 'The Boys'. A much weaker Wonder Woman Ripoff, but she's kinda cool.
Is dat me? Accent must be Canadian eh? Don't worry aboot it.
Alternatively: "Joe? Joe who?"
"Joe Mama heyooooo gottem."
Well that's not any Canadian language I'm familiar with. Joe Mama it is.
Even magic should have rules damn it!
There's still hope for a home invasion yet!
It just makes me think of Naruto. Sorry.
So there's part one of the meet n' greet, time to follow it up with who knows how many more chapters filled with introductions before we go anywhere.
And then that setting is going to be absolutely flooded with powerful, bored, heroes aliens adventurers and other assorted entities. Hmm. Apprehension rising, so many companions already being established here makes me worried about the stakes of wherever we're going next. Or first, I guess I should say.
Well the story is fine so far so no reason to worry about what may or may not be.
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dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Warehouse generates clothing, so it could just incinerate your clothes and give you new ones. It's a way to keep you near the Warehouse — all your clothing is replaced with stuff that vanishes if you're away too long, muhahahahaha!
I mean, the ineffable being that uses humans as playthings says it's ethically fine. That's good enough for me!
redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
Holy Macaroni I was just divinely inspired by the probability that Bob the builder is actually king Robert Baratheon. The love of hammers could make it go either way, but only one of them would be rude enough to talk with their mouth full!
I've got back to this story and found this in Chapter 61, and feel some one somewhere has entirely missed the point and actually text of the gospels that are the center of Christianity. At its core Jesus has two core messages that are new to the Jewish religion its based on. First is a reflection of the second, 'Wouldn't it be great if people stopped being walls of expletives to each other for fifteen minutes at a time?' This is the one people remember. Its relatively inoffensive and preached constantly... even if people ignore it constantly. Those people are bad at the religion they claim to follow.
The second message is the one that actually got him crucified and is ignored by the people it should really apply to. This is true to the point that Jesus would actually be happy with the point, if not necessarily the violence levels, of many many JRPGs. Corrupt clergy is to be derided and removed from power. This was because he lived in a time when the Jewish clergy were complete tools of the conquering Romans of the time. The started dehumanizing random groups they didn't like. Jesus responded hanging out with the condemned people... notably prostitutes and tax collectors, just to prove they were actually still people.
The clergy proclaimed sickness the 'physical manifestation of sin' (I think that was the phrase) and therefore the ill are 'sinners' and not to be healed as that would be a sin or something. Jesus went around healing the sick and raising the dead and such. He literally did this to declare them full of noxious biological goo and inherently wrong. At one point he walked into a major temple, saw that they were doing and literally started flipping the tables and screaming at them about what a dumpster fire of corruption this was. Why? Because the clergy had decided that people's sacrifices were unclean so you could only sacrifice the clean sacrifices(birds) the clergy were selling... then declared that the your money is 'unclean' so you have to buy 'clean' temple money to buy the sacrifices. Ergo the table flipping episode.
Hell, the protestant movement started when a fanboy Christian priest from Germany finally got the funds together to go on that pilgrimage to Rome and was extremely disenfranchised. The things I remember most were city blocks of market stalls selling pieces of the 'True Cross' that were something like an entire cross worth every few stall and the same in 'pairs of sandals Jesus actually wore' to the point Jesus would have needed to swap sandals every step of his life on each block. So he went home and nailed a list of complaints to the church door and after he didn't get smited down to a charred skeleton for it. At which point new variants of Christianity started popping up like man.' Then people printed out the Bible in languages that didn't take going to a Catholic church approved schools that taught 'how to interpret the Bible' and people started to really notice how divorced from the source material things like 'indulgences' really were.
Basically the reason people can be Christian and against organized religion at the same time without issue... so I have to wonder if Zero spent time only with official schools of religion instead of just reading the source book. You'd think the idea of a religion that has a primary tenet of removing corrupt clergy is the duty of righteous man would be some she could get behind. Then again she is from a world where it never ends well... only in different tiers of 'WTF??!?! was that even?' so her standards may be vastly different most people's standards.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
While I actually find this quite interesting and wouldn't mind talking about this elsewhere.... Is this really on topic?
Like okay, one character in a fic with a lot of characters who is not neccessarily a reliable source of information does not have theology quite correct. I'm pretty sure that's not really a cue for an essay on theology. The story isn't about theology.
Like, you could have said "hey, you can have Christianity without the 'organized' part of religion, ya know?" if you really needed to comment on this without posting (what strikes me as functionally) an invitation to debate theology. I like debating theology, but like, not in this thread?
redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
Next chapter review. I feel like I'm progressing hella slowly, but I'm having fun. And as long as I'm outpacing the actual chapter uploads then I'll catch up to the present eventually!
No proper name is given to this particular board game, but you start talking about the imperium a bit later so I guess we can infer from that.
It's convenient that Cass, who is a new companion coming from an American Mecha-Anime world, happens to be intimately familiar with all the other companions that have been picked up so far. Will we ever find somebody she completely fails to recognize? Who knows!
Yes of course, this is Ace. Got it right. EZ-PZ.
Ace who? From where? What is this a math test? I already gave the right answer I refuse to be bullied into showing my work.
Look, if you can move buildings through space without anybody noticing, can't you just, idk, stand in a building and will it to move 'next to the ice-rink' or something and let magic do the rest? It does everything else around here.
Sorry implies regret, but I don't think you regret shit, or you wouldn't have done it in the first place. Sorry to you is just the "somebody is mad so now I'm obligated to say this" response, it's about as sincere as anything any politician has ever said.
For somebody with potentially hundreds of years turning entire civilizations upside down, you kinda really suck at social.
... And now I'm thinking of wrestling. Anyways I'll drop this joke, but it does bother me a tiny bit every time I read it. Just feels off.
Obviously, Cass likes one of these people more than the other. Mr. OC, your preexisting fictional companions are the point of a jumpchain, you're just the vehicle we use to get around. You are hereby demoted to side character of your own story.
Isn't Jennifer the name of the girl from that post-apocalyptic future? The one who stayed for Max?
Is this gonna be a "Max isn't all that bad once you get to know him" angle?
See, this is why I'm getting burnt out about magic. Grumble grumble.
Well Jennifer hasn't tried to apologize for Max yet, and possibly doesn't know anything about what just happened, so hopefully my earlier suspicions about this situation were wrong. But the bulk of their interaction seems to be waiting for the next chapter, so I guess we'll see then.
Home Invasion do-over! Lets bust down some doors!
Door number one isn't a home. Failure.
Door number 2 isn't a home. But it's kinda cozy, so... progress?
Big Bobby B vs... Karl with a K. Who? Karl Marx? Somehow I doubt it.
Well then it's not the full treatment is it? Wizarding chess pieces will talk to you. Usually to insult you. Still, sounds like quite a spectacle.
No proper name is given to this particular board game, but you start talking about the imperium a bit later so I guess we can infer from that.
Skipping over most of the board game. Cass bonds with Bob and Karl. Karl is the better strategist, at least for board games. I have no idea what this maxim list is supposed to be, maybe a Warhammer reference? I've never been big into that universe. But Cass proves appropriately geeky and scores relationship points or whatever, good for her.
Yeah, definitely no idea who this guy is or anything about his setting.
It's convenient that Cass, who is a new companion coming from an American Mecha-Anime world, happens to be intimately familiar with all the other companions that have been picked up so far. Will we ever find somebody she completely fails to recognize? Who knows!
I admit, my first thought when meeting a new character is to think of the fate series, just in case. But yeah, calling people Saber or Archer would definitely make things more confusing. Would Garrus be an archer on account of his sniping skills? By that reasoning, would everybody else from modern/futuristic settings with guns be classified as Archers? Anyways, moving on.
Geez, you're not even trying to invade any homes are you? I am disappoint.
This whole guessing the new fictional character game is kinda lame when you offer no descriptions and just go straight to the name.
Yes of course, this is Ace. Got it right. EZ-PZ.
Ace who? From where? What is this a math test? I already gave the right answer I refuse to be bullied into showing my work.
Miss RAWlins. not Ro, Raw. Rawlins. Damn names not being spelled right I tell ya hwat.
Aren't you somewhere between 80 - 10,000 years old by now? Juvenile humor I can forgive, but this? This is just weak.
Wow, the tiniest clue and she figures out whoever the fuck this Ace Rimmer guy is. gee, she sure is lucky that all of the universes Max has visited are all her favorites. Well except for her top 10 favorites, probably, she'll want to visit those in person.
If you don't want to become a trope, you shouldn't have been fictional, dummy. Just be real, so easy even babies can do it. Probably.
Well that answers that question I didn't really care about earlier. It makes me mad about the lack of rules or effort of the magic in this system though.
Look, if you can move buildings through space without anybody noticing, can't you just, idk, stand in a building and will it to move 'next to the ice-rink' or something and let magic do the rest? It does everything else around here.
Oh I see, there are rules they're just completely arbitrary and only exist to inconvenience bit characters. Got it. See I wouldn't even have bothered asking because at this point I'm just washing my hands of trying to understand this magic crap.
Interesting subjects, but probably best not to go into detail about them. I suppose it'll come up again as similar choices need to be made in the future.
So you talked until you stopped talking... and the Max immediately asks you a question? From the perspective of the reader, is kinda seems like the conversation is still ongoing. You just felt like cutting out some of the crap in the middle.
This seems like a great idea and nothing will go wrong at all.
"Oopsie Woopsie! Uwu we made a fucky wucky!! a wittle fucko boingo! The code monkeys at our headquarters are working VEWY HAWD to fix this!"
This was a totally unexpected development, nobody could possibly have guessed about this outcome, Max. Entirely unforeseeable. /s
Is that so? You seemed to react with anger when Homura called you a trap. You can call it bitter resentment, but it reads a lot like anger from where I'm sitting. Like the difference between Crimson and Scarlet, I guess. Most people just throw up their hands and call it red. Maybe one of them can be dark red, but it's still red.
Bah. I sincerely don't believe you. The slightest bit of forethought would have made it obvious that it was a bad idea. Ace was trying to mitigate the damage you were doing, but you just blew right over him. You brought it up earlier, then had an entire amicable conversation of time to think about it before you decided to press the issue.
Sorry implies regret, but I don't think you regret shit, or you wouldn't have done it in the first place. Sorry to you is just the "somebody is mad so now I'm obligated to say this" response, it's about as sincere as anything any politician has ever said.
For somebody with potentially hundreds of years turning entire civilizations upside down, you kinda really suck at social.
Ah, so that's why you had this conversation about accepting apologies earlier. To give this scene more meaning. Very nice.
Again: Max kinda really sucks.
Who is Rolins? I'm only familiar with a Miss Rawlins. RAWWWWWWWW
... And now I'm thinking of wrestling. Anyways I'll drop this joke, but it does bother me a tiny bit every time I read it. Just feels off.
Akemi... calling her Akemi is weird. Homura continues to address max with feminine pronouns. Interesting. Also references the previous conversation in case readers stupider than I missed the point of that exchange with Max.
Took you a minute, huh? I would have figured your own gender identity situation would have made you more sensitive to the issue, but instead it took you longer to pick up on the difference than expected? Or, as a writer, you wanted to give the reader a chance to have their own thoughts on the subject before you cut in with yours, maybe?
Homura called Cass a trap out of ignorance. Max fucked around with Cass' fictional existence out of what can best be presumed as malice. Cass accepted Homura's apology, and rejected Max's. Cass tells Max to go away, but hops up to join Homura without hesitation.
Obviously, Cass likes one of these people more than the other. Mr. OC, your preexisting fictional companions are the point of a jumpchain, you're just the vehicle we use to get around. You are hereby demoted to side character of your own story.
That seems like a safe assumption, yes.
Isn't Jennifer the name of the girl from that post-apocalyptic future? The one who stayed for Max?
Is this gonna be a "Max isn't all that bad once you get to know him" angle?
That would certainly make for an interesting experience, yes.
The 100 year old er... I'm gonna say child, is another popular trope. or was it 700 years old? Anyways chances are she's been around for a while.
It already has for me. Sad.
Doesn't that require like, dancing? Or at least motion of some sort? If it's from Avatar, bending is supposed to be a very physical kind of magic. From this description Jen just lifted her arm and mentally willed all the nearby water to do whatever.
See, this is why I'm getting burnt out about magic. Grumble grumble.
Not really a child, but really leaning on that perception here. I can't help but see this as highly manipulative, unless her mind is actually stunted somehow to keep her childlike.
As will I. Er, starting from this moment only. Definitely not doing that earlier. Nope.
Well Jennifer hasn't tried to apologize for Max yet, and possibly doesn't know anything about what just happened, so hopefully my earlier suspicions about this situation were wrong. But the bulk of their interaction seems to be waiting for the next chapter, so I guess we'll see then.
The Many Faces of Cassandra
Sharkijism
Bubble noises*
- Location
- Southeast Asia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm feeling a bit nervous to share, but here's just some fan art.
Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
Oh my goodness! I love these! I had to hold in a squeal because other people are sleeping.
Threadmarked, and thank you so much for sharing!
Chapter 93: Summer Break
Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
AN: Beta-read by Carbohydratos, Did I?, Gaia, Linedoffice, Zephyrosis, and Mizu.
School ended for the year in early June, which I mostly noticed because teenage foot traffic past the shop went from a 7:30 am thing to an all-day thing. Nothing in my life revolved around the school year, so my summer wasn't much different from my winter or spring, including continued baking practice after hours. I hadn't branched out from cookies yet, and some of the new recipes turned out poorly, but it was a good 'sisterly' activity no matter how well I did. Board games and the Wii were nice, but I knew full well that I was more invested in those hobbies than Homura was; even Go was something of a compromise. Baking was the opposite: something she really cared about, which made it fun in and of itself.
On second thought, 'practice' may have been overstating things; I was participating more for its own sake than trying to improve my skills. That didn't mean I wasn't having learning or fun, of course, and it was also a good time to talk as long as neither of us were using any of the noisier equipment.
"Have you been experimenting with your shape-shifting much?" Homura asked as she measured out cake flour. She was actually using a scale this time, rather than eyeballing it the way she had with the Christmas cookies. Different tolerances for different recipes, or just in less of a rush? I could've asked, but I was busy worrying about my project.
"Not really." I was currently making a mess on the other side of the island, trying out a chocolate chip peanut butter cookie recipe. "I went through all my Alt-Forms not long after we got here, so I have the full 'catalog', but I haven't experimented with it much."
"Why not?"
"I just haven't put in the time. Shape-shifting was my dream superpower, but all this crazy wish-fulfillment… craziness already took care of the main reasons I'd wanted it."
Homura let out a timid, "Oh."
"That's not a bad thing!" I clarified. "It's just, well, more of a good thing than I strictly need. And I've played with it a little. It's cool being able to use the RPG-form without the, uh, excessiveness." To put it lightly. "Really, I'm more interested in training up my local magic to the point I'll start earning spells."
"Flexing your shape-shifting might help with that."
"Really?" I leveled the cup of white sugar and transferred it to a bowl, then began packing another measuring cup with brown sugar. "I thought I had to not use that sort of magic. That's what that power dampening thing Max gave me was for, right?"
"That is true. However, using that magic for its own purpose might help you not use it when you're 'training', even with the dampener in place."
"Ah."
"Besides," she continued, "you're only holding back out of some misguided sense that doing so would be 'giving into temptation', despite there being no logical reason to abstain from the activity."
Am I?
"I am not!"
Oh hell, I totally am.
"You didn't accept my suggestion that we use your Form-Copy ability on my other alt-forms," Homura reminded me, "even though it could offset the diminishing returns you've been seeing in your magic training lately."
"You said it wouldn't."
"I said that it might not, but magic likes drama, and copying the same thing over and over again is the opposite of dramatic." She removed the bowl of flour from the scale and replaced it with an empty bowl, which she began filling with sugar. "The fact that you didn't bother to check makes me believe you are avoiding things."
"Not pursuing something isn't the same as avoiding it."
Homura didn't even dignify my excuse with a huff.
"I'll think about it," I whined. "We've only just passed the one year mark, so it's not like I don't have plenty of time to get bored of all my mundane activities. Do I measure peanut butter with a dry measure or a liquid measure?" I waved a jar of peanut butter for emphasis. "It's not liquid, but it's not solid, either; it's kinda gooey."
"Which measuring cup do you think is easier to get the peanut butter out of?"
"Uh… liquid?"
"Really?"
I picked up the Pyrex measuring cup I'd grabbed and looked at it, turning it over in my hands. "That's what my intuition says."
"I'm afraid your intuition is wrong. You can't pour peanut butter."
"Oh."
"It's easier to get something 'gooey' out of a squat cylinder with low sides. You'd need a spatula either way."
"If you say so."
Drawer two provided a metal dry-measure cup.
"This is why I hate the Socratic Method," I grumbled. "Guessing wrong just wastes everyone's time."
"Then one should endeavor to guess right."
I rolled my eyes and began spooning peanut butter into the measuring cup with a spatula.
"What about you?" I asked. "Are you still having fun baking?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"I don't know. I enjoy doing it every so often as a hobby, but I don't think I'd like it as a job."
"I think I like it more, actually," Homura said. "Making things is nice for its own sake, but there's something special about making things for other people."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Do you bake for people in the Warehouse, as well?"
She shook her head. "Anyone who wants dessert gets it from the Palace, and even the biggest eaters would get tired of my baking if I tried to feed them the volume I'm making now."
"I've never actually tried the Palace's desserts, but I'll grant you the latter."
"They're very close to what I make here."
"Very close, huh?" I joked. "Very confident of you."
"I'm speaking literally. The restaurant uses my baking as its basis for pastry."
"Really? Why's—ah, damn it, the butter got too soft while I was measuring the rest of the ingredients."
"It's not a huge problem if the butter is slightly softer than you want, as long as it hasn't melted."
"I'll hold you to that." I brought the butter and sugar over to one of the mixers and set about fitting the paddle attachment into the socket. "Why are you the model pastry chef?"
"Because of how we earned the restaurant."
"Oh."
I dropped the butter into the bowl and cranked it into position, but didn't turn the mixer on just yet. "You know, I never stopped to ask where all the upgrades to the Warehouse came from."
"A lot of them are from Gauntlets. One of them tasked us with earning three Michelin Stars in a set amount of time, and the prize for succeeding was a copy of our own restaurant."
"Sounds like a pretty easy challenge if you're serving food that good."
"The food you're used to is far better than what we were serving at the time," Homura explained. "A lot of crafting perks are general enough to improve cooking as well as whatever they were intended to work on, and with all those effects, the food you get there is beyond perfect in every way, from the basic ingredients to the finishing touches on the final product. The Gauntlets removed those bonuses."
"Ah. Right."
"I don't have as many crafting perks as some people, but I could still produce better food than what we're selling. The problem would be that they would be too good."
"Like, 'suspicious levels of good' or 'mind-destroying levels of good'?"
"I meant the former, though I might be able to manage the latter." She shrugged. "But there's a more important reason to hold back."
"Yes?"
Homura set her project aside to face me directly, hands on her hips. "There's no satisfaction in being able to fiat a cake into existence by throwing milk, sugar, wheat, and an egg onto the counter, and there's just as little satisfaction to be had in making a great cake without any of the work or care required to achieve that quality."
Made sense to me. "I imagine that's not an uncommon opinion."
She nodded, her face set. "It is not. Some people don't care, but many of us who took the time to learn a craft the hard way take too much pride in our work to abuse perks unless we really need them, either for the quality, quantity, or haste."
"You mentioned not boosting the quality of the food, so what about quantity?"
"I may be cheating a little on quantity." There was just a touch of smug about that statement.
"I don't think it's cheating to make sure there's enough to go around."
Homura smiled and shook her head. "I suppose that is one way to think of it."
I turned to start the mixer, then turned back with another question.
"You needed to get three stars, but you only have two?"
"I have two stars personally," she clarified. "The restaurant earned three."
"Ah. Going for three for yourself this Jump?"
"I wouldn't mind, but it's not of particular concern."
"Cool. No pressure." I almost turned the mixer on again, but I still had questions. "That explains the restaurant, but what about the hotel? I mean, the rest of it? Where did that come from?"
"That's slightly more complicated because there are multiple Jumps involved. Max earned the 'hotel chain' wealth-import item from Monopoly—"
"There's a Monopoly Jump."
"A Monopoly Gauntlet, to be precise," Homura said. "And it involves playing the board game, not the real estate market."
"But you get to keep a real luxury hotel chain."
"And a quantity of land wealth based on how much of the board you control at the end. Max went for one hundred percent completion."
"Of course he did," I muttered. "This shop is part of that land wealth, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And the 'more complicated' bit?"
"That's why Max owns the Traveler's Palace chain," she explained. "Most of the improvements that make it as amazing as it is come from work we put in during Hotel Tycoon, and getting one in the Warehouse was a reward from the Generic Vacation Gauntlet."
"There is a Vacation Gauntlet," I said, exasperation dripping from every word. "What the hell do you do in a Vacation Gauntlet?"
"Relax without any of your perks."
"Oh, of course, how silly of me. Who thinks of these things?"
Homura could damn well recognize a rhetorical question when she heard one, but she answered it anyway. "Management, obviously."
"Yes, obviously. Was it really just a vacation?"
"Yes, albeit in the same way that the Traveler's Palace in the Warehouse is 'just' a hotel."
"Wow." That was saying a lot. "What did you survive to convince Management to give you a break?"
"Amnesia: The Dark Descent."
"Ah."
Once it became clear neither of us had another topic to segue to, I turned on the mixer and poured the sugar in. The sound of the motor made further conversation difficult.
The peanut butter cookies came out far too dry, and I crossed the recipe off the list as a failure.
Paul sent me the first draft of his manuscript in May, though I didn't start reading it until June. He'd expressed a desire to hear my feedback 'directly' rather than through email, so we met at the picnic tables outside the Strawfield Public Library.
I'd more or less ignored the library thus far—the Warehouse's Library offered an infinitely wider selection and had no overdraft fees to worry about—so this was my first real look at the place. It wasn't an ugly building, per se, but it wasn't exactly beautiful either: an old, utilitarian red-brick building, squat and sprawling. Being only a single story, it was built wide, with a wing reaching 'forward' towards the street at either end to frame the large lawn that held the picnic tables. The layout reminded me oddly of Lego bricks in proportions—or rather, Lego plates, the thinner type of brick. The ratio of length to depth to height for the wings, and their ratio to the building itself, were about right for someone placing a pair of corner plates tip-to-tip to make half a hollow square, assuming you ignored the studs that would be sticking up from the top.
Was it weird to look at a building and immediately think, "This is just the right shape to build in Lego"? Maybe, but I already knew I was weird.
The lawn in front of the library was prettier than the library itself. The grass was vibrant and green, and large, flourishing trees provided shade for a collection of picnic tables that were much newer than the building behind them: all shiny green plastic that was, if not exactly comfortable, at least not going to give anyone splinters. It amused me how serious we'd managed to make this; I had a notepad I'd copied the gist of my reading notes onto, while Paul had brought what looked like an entire printed copy of the manuscript, held together with large binder clips, and three colors of pen.
"Okay, so, first," I began, "there are a lot of things I like about your book—uh, do you have a title yet?"
He sighed. "No."
"That's fine. So, good things. Uh, well, there are the obvious ones: the English is correct, the plot makes sense, et cetera. That all sounds like faint praise, but those are good things and I wanted to point them out because there are probably a hundred thousand amateur novelists who can't even manage that much.
"Then, uh, there are the things I like about this story. You did a good job implying a world rather than describing it—I mean, you conveyed all the important bits without needing to stop the plot for large amounts of exposition. That's good. I liked the gaslamp fantasy-influenced desert punk. That's cool. I liked the subversion you did with the twist—the whole 'the villain's shocking reveal that forces the protagonist to reevaluate everything' trope is foreshadowed plainly enough that I was absolutely expecting it, so it was fun when the Man in Red's whole story turned out to be a lie he made up to throw the protagonist off. That was great."
I stopped to give Paul a smile. He'd jotted down a couple things on the cover page of his manuscript, but mostly, he'd looked increasingly nervous as the praise went on.
"You're probably just waiting for the 'but'," I said. "Well, uh, there are a bunch of things I didn't like, but they all kind of come back to the same thing, which is that… okay, there's no real gentle way to put this. Your writing is kind of… misogynistic?"
That was clearly not what he'd expected to hear. I wasn't sure if he was more surprised or insulted.
"What?" Paul demanded. "Why? How? How are you reading misogyny into this?"
"Well, it's subtle," I began, "and to be clear, I'm not accusing you of being misogynistic—"
"But my writing is?"
"Yes—"
"How?"
"Because of—look, how about I just get to the problems?" I flipped the first two pages of the notepad—labeled 'the good' and 'the bad'—up to reveal the set of bullet points under 'the ugly'. "Okay, first, the blind girl, Elspeth, contributes pretty much nothing to the plot except giving Alexander something to angst about every time he puts avenging his dead family ahead of caring for his living family—which isn't a great look for him, either, but that's its own issue." I flipped back to 'the bad' just long enough to tap that bullet point with one finger. "The only times Elspeth's presence actually affects his actions, it's because she's a load—she's sick, she's injured, she's kidnapped, whatever. You could replace her with a goldfish and pretty much nothing would need to change, and that's, uh, not a great sign?
"Second, the female lead, Loraine, is… well, it seems like you were trying to write a 'strong female character' but weren't quite sure how. She's described as being tough, smart, capable, et cetera, but not only does she barely demonstrate those things, she's pretty much only in the narrative for the protagonist's sake. Her character development is entirely based on Alexander doing or saying things rather than her doing or saying things. 'Strong female character' doesn't mean they need to be literally 'strong', it means they have agency—that they have their own desires and can take action to get those things without relying on a male character to make it happen—and speaking of which, having a female character insist that she doesn't want a man doesn't count for anything if she ends up getting together with one in the end."
I glanced up from the notepad at Paul, who was scowling into the middle distance, then back down to the last major bullet point.
"And lastly, the descriptions. Look, I get that you've seen published authors do this kind of thing and are trying to imitate it, but, uh… don't? It's not something you should be trying to emulate. It's not something they should be doing in the first place. Even putting aside the over-sexualization and objectification of women in passages like that—which are not small issues and should honestly be enough reason to avoid that kind of thing—it's just ridiculous. See, boobs are… they're mostly fat. They don't do much of anything ninety percent of the time, they're just there, so if you're using active verbs with them, you should probably reevaluate what's going on in that scene.
"In fact, unless the viewpoint character is directly interacting with them, you probably don't need to mention them at all, and if you do, don't try to be fancy. No flowery metaphors or anything, just… if you need to describe a girl's rack—which, again, only necessary if it is directly relevant to the action—just use a nice, simple adjective. You don't need to be artistic about it; I guarantee you, everyone who has a vested interest in tits can imagine a pair perfectly fine from just a few words."
I flipped the page up to check if I'd written anything on the next one and found that I had. "Oh, and while I'm complaining about descriptions, I want to specifically call out the 'wandering swordswoman' the cast runs into late in the second half of the story, who is, if I understood correctly, an albino woman carrying a 'two-handed katana'—the word you're looking for there is 'odachi', by the way—and wearing what sounds an awful lot like a black leather cat-suit and matching trenchcoat in a desert."
"I just thought it was a cool image," Paul muttered.
"I'm not saying you have to change it—it is kinda badass—but the way you describe it is… uh, not good."
He sighed and dropped his eyes to the manuscript, twisting his mouth back and forth behind his beard. "Okay," Paul said at last. "I did ask you to be harsh."
"Sorry—"
"No, it's fine." He didn't sound like it was fine. "Anyway, descriptions aside, the story's still misogynistic, uh, structurally?"
"That's… sort of correct? The problem is the male characters do the doing, while the women are just sort of… there? They're more plot devices than people—Elspeth in particular, though Loraine isn't that much better. The fact that her primary motivation for joining Alexander in going after the Man in Red is 'a bad past breakup' is a pretty bad take, too."
"That's not—" He stopped and facepalmed. "Okay, maybe that's technically not an incorrect description, but that's not the whole story, either. I wanted to have more varied reasons for people wanting to deal with the guy than 'dead family members', okay?"
"Okay, but why did you go straight to 'romantic entanglement' for the only other woman in the party?"
"Uh…"
Paul went back to scowling, or perhaps glowering, for a few seconds as he failed to find an answer to that question.
"Okay." He picked up the red pen and clicked the point out. "How would you fix it, if it were up to you?"
"That depends on which parts you think are important and which parts can be changed," I replied, flipping back to the page labeled 'the bad'. "Like, you could completely remove Elspeth from the narrative and the plot would barely change."
"What if I want to fix her character, rather than delete it?"
"Uh, well, that's definitely the harder option. She doesn't really have a lot of character in your first draft—her defining feature is helplessness, which is a problem in itself."
Paul made a note of that on his cover sheet. "Right. It's not great to show a disabled character as useless, is it?"
"No, it is not."
"Right. And you said Loraine doesn't get to demonstrate the skills she does have."
"Yeah," I agreed. "She gets saved by male characters three times, but never solves a problem on her own during the whole book."
"What about at the very end?"
"Alexander has to tell her what to do."
He jotted another note, then put the pen down and rubbed at his forehead. "I'll need to think about this."
"Well, I'm glad you're willing to try. I half-expected you to tell me I was being too sensitive or something."
"I was thinking it," Paul admitted, "but I've been begging people for feedback, so it'd be pretty dumb to ignore it now that I've got it. Besides, I think I'm pretty good at taking criticism."
"No argument there. I know you felt attacked by the misogyny thing, so props for hearing me out." I set my notepad down and focused on the man across from me. "That said, not all feedback is going to be correct."
"Are you telling me to doubt you?"
"Honestly? Yes. I mean, I think all the things I mentioned are problems, and I hope that you'll come to the conclusion that they're problems, but you shouldn't assume every bit of critique you get is one-hundred-percent insightful, either."
"So I should take everything with a grain of salt," he said. "I already knew that."
"Well, I also know it, so I'm not expecting you to accept everything I say. It's okay to push back."
"'Kay."
He didn't, so I moved on. "Do you want my notes for reference? Or should I send you back the annotated document?"
"Which do you think would be more helpful?"
"Depends how much you plan to change things. The comments on the document are less useful the more you plan to change, right?"
"Ah. Yeah, I guess."
"So how about both, then?" I suggested, offering him the notepad.
"Sure."
Paul took the notepad and scribbled something on the front page—probably a label, something like 'Cass's notes'—then tore off the relevant pages and handed the pad back to me. "Well, I've got work in a couple hours, so I'll be on my way."
"Let me know if you want me to take a look at your next draft."
His face shifted through a couple different grimaces before settling on a simple frown. "To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm actually gonna revise this or just treat it as a learning experience and try again with a fresh idea."
"Revision is also a learning experience."
Paul's reaction was an unhappy grunt.
"But deciding this didn't work the way you wanted is fair too," I added. "Good luck either way."
"Thanks."
We closed Home Sweet Home for the Fourth of July so we could spend it with Max, Gary, and Zeke at a neighborhood barbecue in one of Moperville's parks near the edge of the city. Max met us at the curb to direct us to our contribution to the barbecue—cookies and pies, obviously—would join the rest of the food near the grill.
Once we'd put the pies down, I took a moment to see how many people I recognized. The man I'd seen in Tina's photo I knew to be Mr. Redding; he was talking to Gary while the latter grilled hamburgers. Mrs. Redding was minding Zeke and Tedd, who sat at a battered, decade-old picnic table staring at the roughly weathered wood between them in sullen silence. I'd fled town the moment we'd arrived, so he was the first person I'd been able to recognize from the comic, and Tedd Verres was more or less exactly what I'd expect at this point in his life: a slender, effeminate boy wearing plain clothes and thick glasses that hid his eyes. His chin-length purple hair made him look even more like a girl than he otherwise would, but I suppose it did obscure the fact that it wasn't the only 'girly' thing about his appearance.
That moment of recognition was quickly followed by more. Mr. Verres—Tedd's father, a fit middle-aged man with a short, unruly shock of blue hair—was sitting in a lawn chair, looking over the gathering with a satisfied smile; his sister-in-law Mrs. Kitsune, a short, motherly Japanese woman around the same age, was keeping a close eye on her younger daughter with her incredibly nondescript husband while her eldest played some sort of yard-tennis game with Tina. The resemblance the latter had to her mother and sister was dampened by the fact that her hair was a shade of red that, in most worlds, would only be possible with copious amounts of hair dye.
Max took us through the introductions, starting with the Kitsunes by virtue of them being the closest. She'd just finished introducing us to Angela Redding—again, since we'd met last winter—when another group arrived.
"Ah, that would be the Dunkels," Max said. "Be right back!"
"Hear that, Tedd?" Angela asked the boy. "Your friend's here. Shall we?"
Tedd nodded stiffly, mumbled, "'Scuse me," and slid off the bench before hurrying away. Angela gave me a look, angled her head towards the table, and headed off after the boy once I'd nodded in understanding.
Zeke didn't exactly need 'looking after', but I settled onto the bench across from him anyway, taking the seat Tedd had vacated.
"Something wrong, Zeke?"
"There are too many people here," he complained. "I don't like being around this many people I don't know."
"You could fix that by getting to know them."
"What's the point? We'll be gone in a decade."
"The point is that you'd have friends in the present."
"You mean other people my age?" Zeke shook his head. "Strangers are erratic and unpredictable, and the children are even worse."
"You're also a kid, you know."
"I don't feel like one."
"Yeah, people always told me I was an 'old soul' too," I said wistfully. "Of course, what they meant was 'Wow, your serotonin system is wrecked already?'"
"My serotonin system is in perfect working order!" Zeke protested. "Stop laughing! It is!"
"Sorry! I didn't expect you to be defensive about it!"
He harrumphed, crossed his arms, and pouted.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
"You ask that every time we talk."
"Because I'm always curious if anything's different. So, how are you doing?"
Zeke shrugged. "Well enough. I'm more or less used to how things work here."
"Started messing with magic yet?"
"Not yet. You?"
"Yeah, Zero gave me a Magic Mark as a housewarming gift," I said. "It's a bit inconvenient to practice because it's targeted at other people and not subtle—"
"Should I be concerned?"
"Not unless 'being able to look like someone else' is a potential prob—oh, right, it is."
"Not for me," Zeke said. "Or rather, I am not alarmed by the security risk the ability poses."
"Because you know how to deal with Master/Stranger threats?"
"Because I don't expect you to use it against me. What does it do, exactly?"
"It lets me copy the appearance of other people or animals. I'd offer to show you, but this is a little too public."
"And it's not subtle," he repeated. "Maybe another time. Have you used it on a raven yet?"
"No."
"You should. I still think it's a better fit for you than a fox."
"Well, maybe I will," I said. "What've you been doing?"
"Very little."
"Enjoying your summer break, at least?"
"It is not unpleasant," he said, "but it isn't particularly interesting, either. Well, this is 'interesting', relatively speaking."
"Barbecuing?"
"It's another first for me. Not fascinating, but at least it's fresh."
"Well, fresh is something, at least."
Zeke shrugged again.
"So there's nothing else new in your life at all?"
Zeke started to shake his head, then stopped as he remembered something. "Oh. We got a cat."
"A cat?"
"Yes. She followed me home and Max let me keep her."
Adorable. "What kind of cat? What's her name?"
"A gray one, and I don't know."
"You haven't given her one?"
"That seems a little rude," he said, his brow furrowing in disapproval. "What if she already has one?"
"Does that matter?"
"Of course it matters. I'm not going to give her a new name if she already has one."
"How would you find out, though?"
"I can't, which is why I haven't given her a name."
That was internally consistent in a very 'Zeke' way.
"Do you know how old she is?" I asked.
"Max said she's eleven."
"That's about middle age for a housecat, I think, though I don't know about a stray."
"She's too comfortable around humans to have always been a stray. She likely escaped an irresponsible owner when she was younger."
"Just because a cat gets out doesn't mean the owner is irresponsible. It can happen to the best of us."
"She's had kittens," he countered, which was fair: not spaying your cat was definitely irresponsible. "We had to get her fixed or we would be in violation of local pet ownership laws."
"Which would be bad."
"Clearly."
That was also very 'Zeke'.
"How's her health otherwise?" I asked.
"It was poor when I met her, but she's healthy now. Max saw to that."
"Of course."
"She fits in," Zeke continued. "I do not think I would enjoy a younger, more energetic cat, but I'm happy to have her."
"What's she like? Cuddly?"
"Very."
"Awesome."
Our conversation had run out of steam, so I turned to people-watching. The Kitsunes had moved over to talk to Max. Mr. Redding and Mr. Verres had switched places, the former standing near the edge of the picnic with Mr. Dunkel and the latter making small talk with Gary. The tennis game had run its course, and the girls were now helping themselves to the desserts that had arrived while they were busy. Mrs. Dunkel had dragged Homura into a conversation. Angela was heading back towards our table. And Tedd and Elliot were whispering while they waited near the grill, eyes on the hamburgers.
Just thinking about hamburgers prompted an audible grumble from my stomach, so I made my excuses to Zeke—who did me the service of pretending he hadn't heard anything—before heading to the grill myself, passing Angela on the way.
"Got enough for me too?" I asked Gary.
"We've only got another five pounds of meat," he told me. "I thought that would be enough, but with you here—"
I rolled my eyes and socked him in the arm. "I work in a bakery, Goofus," I told him. "A bakery selling the most amazing desserts in the county. Appetite jokes have no sway over me."
Mr. Verres coughed, drawing Gary's attention back to his previous conversation partner. "Oh, Max didn't get around to introducing you yet, did she?" Gary looked back and forth between me and Mr. Verres—what was his first name, anyway?—with a grin. "Awesome, that means I get to do it. Edward, Cassandra Kyogen, my cousin-in-law and the face of Strawfield's number one bakery. Cassandra, Edward Verres, Max's boss and the reason she's going gray."
"A pleasure to meet you, Edward," I said, offering my hand.
"And you, Cassandra," Edward replied, taking it. "I've heard a lot about you."
"Only good things, I hope."
"Well, she did have a few choice things to say about your sense of humor…"
I chuckled at his 'joke' the bare minimum needed for politeness' sake.
"Have you met my son?" he asked. "Tedd, say hello to Cassandra."
"Hello," Tedd mumbled.
"Hello, Tedd," I said. "And you must be Elliot Dunkel."
"Hello, Miss Cassandra," Elliot said.
"Right, these are done." Gary put a couple of buns and burgers on a pair of plates. "Sorry Cass, kids got here first."
"I know the rules of barbecue." I stepped aside to let the boys collect their plates and head over to the condiments and toppings table. "How long for mine?"
"Getting it started right now." He moved a raw patty to the grill. "So, now you've met Tedd and Elliot."
"So I have."
"Tedd's a good kid," Edward said. "He's always been shy, but he's been getting better with people lately."
"That's good," I said. "He and Zeke don't seem to get along, though."
"Zeke is… difficult," Gary said. "He's still insisting he doesn't want friends."
"He dislikes strangers enough that he doesn't give anyone a chance to become friends."
"And he doesn't put much value in making friends in this universe when he's not planning to stay."
Edward noticed when I glanced at him. "I'm aware of Zeke's situation, of course," he said (incorrectly, as it would turn out). "That's the reason Mrs. Vahn transferred to my department in the first place." He turned a pointed look towards Gary and added, "I was not aware you two had shared his origins with anyone else."
"Akemi is a wizard herself, and Cass is a seyunolu."
The latter surprised him, but not enough to distract him from his original complaint. "Having access to some secrets does not imply one should have all of them. It's important to compartmentalize."
"They're Max's closest living family, while mine are totally out-of-the-know. If something happened to us…"
"Oh." Edward coughed into his fist to clear his throat. "Of course, I should have realized. My apologies."
The burger sizzled in silence. The thought of 'something happening' had made things awkward—which might have been Gary's intent.
"You want cheese, Cass?" he asked.
"Ye—wait, it's not American cheese, is it?"
"It is."
I eyed the slicedplastic cheese suspiciously.
"Eh, sure, I'll give it a shot."
"One cheeseburger, coming right up." He flipped the patty and added the slice of cheese. I took the opportunity to lean in and breathe a noseful of wonderful grill smells before Gary shooed me away from his workspace.
"So, Cass," he said, "what are you up to these days?"
"Oh, you know, the usual. Baking, running the shop, working on Awakening." I shrugged. "Not much to say."
"Working on Awakening?" Edward asked. "As a seyunolu?"
"Yeah. It's slow going, but I'm sticking with it."
"What method are you using?"
"I've got a mark and a power suppressor."
"Ahhh," he said. "I was wondering why Max asked for that design…"
I'd been serious when I told Gary that I was working on Awakening. My 'consideration' of Homura's words regarding my use of magic had led me to the inevitable conclusion that she was correct—both about me 'holding back' and why I was doing so. It was a decision I hadn't realized I'd made, and one that—when I stopped to think about it—didn't make much sense.
And so I'd resolved to train up my magic in earnest.
The first item on the agenda was going through Homura's alt-forms—the ones she had slotted, anyway. We could have gotten them all done in a couple days, even with my extremely low 'casting stamina', but I wasn't in a hurry, so we did one a day until we ran out. Then I started calling on my friends in the Warehouse—still at a rate of one per day—which got me a pretty thorough cross-section of human shapes and colors. By this point, I could put together just about any human form one could think of.
I'd decided to leave non-human forms for later.
From there, Homura and I started 'trading'. She'd learned my magic mark's spell, so I could create a blended form, have her copy that, and then copy it off her. The exercise meant that I wasn't copying the same form over and over again, which may have been the cause of my previous 'plateau' in magical progress.
Progress was a self-reinforcing process because my increasing 'affinity' with magic meant a steady increase in how many times I could use the spell per day. Measuring my process by how many times I could cast each day made me feel like I was slowly gaining more spell slots—not that I'd encountered a magic system that used spell slots in whatever the phrase 'real life' meant for me nowadays, but the association was there.
The 4th of July celebration gave me a push to try something new: I took Zeke's advice and set out to tag one of Strawfield's plentiful corvid population with the spell. The transformation would leave my clothes behind, since there were no 'bird clothes' to turn into, so my plan was to 'shoot' out my bedroom window and transform in the privacy of my home.
Unfortunately, that didn't work.
Testing confirmed my suspicion that it was a range problem: the power lines visible from my window were simply too far away. A bit more experimenting revealed that I could still use the spell while in my fox form, though aiming my paw was harder than just pointing my palm at someone, which gave me my new (and in hindsight, terrible) plan: running around town as a fox, looking for birds.
Homura let me out when she noticed me struggling with the doorknob; I would have gotten it eventually, but I graciously accepted her help all the same. Then I was on the small landing at the top of the exterior stairs, where I quickly noticed three things.
The first thing I noticed was the noise—not unpleasantly loud, but more intense than it was behind closed doors. The second thing I noticed was that a one-story drop looked a lot scarier at this size. The third thing I noticed was that I'd had to notice the first two now because, despite having spent almost eighteen months in Strawfield, I had never been outside as a fox before.
Well, no time like the present. The stairs were easy enough to navigate, though more daunting than I'd readily admit, and the odors of car exhaust and sun-heated rubber grew more intense as I approached ground level. I could have probably tracked every car within several blocks by sound alone, but I still looked carefully around the parking lot before making my way to the base of the nearest telephone pole and looking up at the ravens on the wires.
"Look," one cawed to the others, followed by a morpheme best translated as 'small mammalian predator (derogatory)'. A half-dozen beady eyes turned baleful looks my way.
"I'm not a [small mammalian predator (derogatory)]," I called. "I want to be friends."
"Talking [small mammalian predator (derogatory)]!" another raven exclaimed, puffing their feathers up in surprise.
"Lying [small mammalian predator (derogatory)]," the first raven corrected them. The others voiced agreement, and the whole flock flew off. Damn it, I'd been so distracted by the novelty of being outside as a fox—and being able to talk to animals without looking like a crazy person—that I'd missed my shot.
Well, I had a plan B. I hadn't been sure how well I'd be able to aim a paw at something directly above me even if it was standing still—the answer was 'not very well'—so my backup plan was heading down to the park nearby. It was early morning on a Sunday, so hopefully there wouldn't be anyone there to get in my way.
Reaching Main Street showed me that I'd underestimated the amount of foot traffic on Sundays, the attentiveness of that traffic, and its willingness to drop what it was doing because it saw something interesting. I hadn't even stuck my nose out of the alley I'd used before people started paying attention to me.
"Oh, look!" a girl in her early teens exclaimed to her friends. "Is that a fox?"
One man turned to another and said, with some concern, "I didn't know there were foxes in town."
"Where did it come from?"
"Do you think it's someone's pet?"
"Is it dangerous?"
None of them were pulling out phones—smartphones weren't quite ubiquitous enough for that to be the default response to something interesting—but neither did they seem particularly concerned, so I headed out onto the sidewalk. This was evidently not what the onlookers had expected, as many of them shouted in alarm and flinched away. I felt a little bad about how much I'd startled them, but hopefully my relatively unthreatening size and the curiosity of seeing a fox at all would leave them more amused than annoyed. It'd suck to have ruined people's days for this little escapade.
Only a couple minutes later, I arrived at my destination and realized I'd forgotten something important. The park nearer the freeway was a picnic spot. The park closer to our apartment was a dog park, and the dogs were not happy to see me, nor I them. And if people were startled by a fox running by them, they were alarmed by a fox being near their dogs. Owners began snatching up their pets to protect them from a wild, potentially diseased fox, though in practice it mostly protected me from them. I didn't need a perk to know that the dogs were equally unhappy; there was so much barking I couldn't understand any of it. Days were definitely being ruined now.
I'd caused all this distress for nothing, too, because the chaos set even the boldest birds to flight before I had a chance to try and hit them with the spell. As a quadruped, it wasn't something I could do while running, and I wasn't about to stop in the middle of the mess.
I apologized to them—the dogs, at least, since I was a fox at the moment—as I dashed across the park to the base of a large oak tree and hid behind it as best I could. Then I ditched the tree, which stank like twenty years of accumulated dog urine, and left the park entirely, running down the street towards the high school. It was fortunate I'd done this before the end of summer break; the empty campus gave me somewhere I could rest from my mad sprint down the street.
Now that I finally had a moment to myself, I set about searching the campus for birds. A few swallows took flight as I approached, shrieking 'Danger!' as they went, but for the most part the campus was empty. Of course, I thought as I wandered the field bordering the parking lot. No students means no discarded food. As far as the various feathered scavengers were concerned, the school was out of season. Still, wandering around as a fox was a fun way to experience a new place; everything looked so big!
And then the animal control van pulled up.
I returned to the apartment barely an hour after I'd left, wearing one of the animal control officers' face and uniform—minus the hat and plus a great deal of mud, twigs, and other debris.
"Looks like you had an adventure," Homura said blandly. "Where did you get the clothes?"
"I stole the hat."
"What hat?"
"The hat I copied into the rest of the uniform. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a shower. Badly." I did my best not to let my bad mood land on her as I stalked off towards the bathroom.
"Going out again next week?" Homura called after me.
"Nevermore!"
Chapter 93: Summer Break
School ended for the year in early June, which I mostly noticed because teenage foot traffic past the shop went from a 7:30 am thing to an all-day thing. Nothing in my life revolved around the school year, so my summer wasn't much different from my winter or spring, including continued baking practice after hours. I hadn't branched out from cookies yet, and some of the new recipes turned out poorly, but it was a good 'sisterly' activity no matter how well I did. Board games and the Wii were nice, but I knew full well that I was more invested in those hobbies than Homura was; even Go was something of a compromise. Baking was the opposite: something she really cared about, which made it fun in and of itself.
On second thought, 'practice' may have been overstating things; I was participating more for its own sake than trying to improve my skills. That didn't mean I wasn't having learning or fun, of course, and it was also a good time to talk as long as neither of us were using any of the noisier equipment.
"Have you been experimenting with your shape-shifting much?" Homura asked as she measured out cake flour. She was actually using a scale this time, rather than eyeballing it the way she had with the Christmas cookies. Different tolerances for different recipes, or just in less of a rush? I could've asked, but I was busy worrying about my project.
"Not really." I was currently making a mess on the other side of the island, trying out a chocolate chip peanut butter cookie recipe. "I went through all my Alt-Forms not long after we got here, so I have the full 'catalog', but I haven't experimented with it much."
"Why not?"
"I just haven't put in the time. Shape-shifting was my dream superpower, but all this crazy wish-fulfillment… craziness already took care of the main reasons I'd wanted it."
Homura let out a timid, "Oh."
"That's not a bad thing!" I clarified. "It's just, well, more of a good thing than I strictly need. And I've played with it a little. It's cool being able to use the RPG-form without the, uh, excessiveness." To put it lightly. "Really, I'm more interested in training up my local magic to the point I'll start earning spells."
"Flexing your shape-shifting might help with that."
"Really?" I leveled the cup of white sugar and transferred it to a bowl, then began packing another measuring cup with brown sugar. "I thought I had to not use that sort of magic. That's what that power dampening thing Max gave me was for, right?"
"That is true. However, using that magic for its own purpose might help you not use it when you're 'training', even with the dampener in place."
"Ah."
"Besides," she continued, "you're only holding back out of some misguided sense that doing so would be 'giving into temptation', despite there being no logical reason to abstain from the activity."
Am I?
"I am not!"
Oh hell, I totally am.
"You didn't accept my suggestion that we use your Form-Copy ability on my other alt-forms," Homura reminded me, "even though it could offset the diminishing returns you've been seeing in your magic training lately."
"You said it wouldn't."
"I said that it might not, but magic likes drama, and copying the same thing over and over again is the opposite of dramatic." She removed the bowl of flour from the scale and replaced it with an empty bowl, which she began filling with sugar. "The fact that you didn't bother to check makes me believe you are avoiding things."
"Not pursuing something isn't the same as avoiding it."
Homura didn't even dignify my excuse with a huff.
"I'll think about it," I whined. "We've only just passed the one year mark, so it's not like I don't have plenty of time to get bored of all my mundane activities. Do I measure peanut butter with a dry measure or a liquid measure?" I waved a jar of peanut butter for emphasis. "It's not liquid, but it's not solid, either; it's kinda gooey."
"Which measuring cup do you think is easier to get the peanut butter out of?"
"Uh… liquid?"
"Really?"
I picked up the Pyrex measuring cup I'd grabbed and looked at it, turning it over in my hands. "That's what my intuition says."
"I'm afraid your intuition is wrong. You can't pour peanut butter."
"Oh."
"It's easier to get something 'gooey' out of a squat cylinder with low sides. You'd need a spatula either way."
"If you say so."
Drawer two provided a metal dry-measure cup.
"This is why I hate the Socratic Method," I grumbled. "Guessing wrong just wastes everyone's time."
"Then one should endeavor to guess right."
I rolled my eyes and began spooning peanut butter into the measuring cup with a spatula.
"What about you?" I asked. "Are you still having fun baking?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"I don't know. I enjoy doing it every so often as a hobby, but I don't think I'd like it as a job."
"I think I like it more, actually," Homura said. "Making things is nice for its own sake, but there's something special about making things for other people."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Do you bake for people in the Warehouse, as well?"
She shook her head. "Anyone who wants dessert gets it from the Palace, and even the biggest eaters would get tired of my baking if I tried to feed them the volume I'm making now."
"I've never actually tried the Palace's desserts, but I'll grant you the latter."
"They're very close to what I make here."
"Very close, huh?" I joked. "Very confident of you."
"I'm speaking literally. The restaurant uses my baking as its basis for pastry."
"Really? Why's—ah, damn it, the butter got too soft while I was measuring the rest of the ingredients."
"It's not a huge problem if the butter is slightly softer than you want, as long as it hasn't melted."
"I'll hold you to that." I brought the butter and sugar over to one of the mixers and set about fitting the paddle attachment into the socket. "Why are you the model pastry chef?"
"Because of how we earned the restaurant."
"Oh."
I dropped the butter into the bowl and cranked it into position, but didn't turn the mixer on just yet. "You know, I never stopped to ask where all the upgrades to the Warehouse came from."
"A lot of them are from Gauntlets. One of them tasked us with earning three Michelin Stars in a set amount of time, and the prize for succeeding was a copy of our own restaurant."
"Sounds like a pretty easy challenge if you're serving food that good."
"The food you're used to is far better than what we were serving at the time," Homura explained. "A lot of crafting perks are general enough to improve cooking as well as whatever they were intended to work on, and with all those effects, the food you get there is beyond perfect in every way, from the basic ingredients to the finishing touches on the final product. The Gauntlets removed those bonuses."
"Ah. Right."
"I don't have as many crafting perks as some people, but I could still produce better food than what we're selling. The problem would be that they would be too good."
"Like, 'suspicious levels of good' or 'mind-destroying levels of good'?"
"I meant the former, though I might be able to manage the latter." She shrugged. "But there's a more important reason to hold back."
"Yes?"
Homura set her project aside to face me directly, hands on her hips. "There's no satisfaction in being able to fiat a cake into existence by throwing milk, sugar, wheat, and an egg onto the counter, and there's just as little satisfaction to be had in making a great cake without any of the work or care required to achieve that quality."
Made sense to me. "I imagine that's not an uncommon opinion."
She nodded, her face set. "It is not. Some people don't care, but many of us who took the time to learn a craft the hard way take too much pride in our work to abuse perks unless we really need them, either for the quality, quantity, or haste."
"You mentioned not boosting the quality of the food, so what about quantity?"
"I may be cheating a little on quantity." There was just a touch of smug about that statement.
"I don't think it's cheating to make sure there's enough to go around."
Homura smiled and shook her head. "I suppose that is one way to think of it."
I turned to start the mixer, then turned back with another question.
"You needed to get three stars, but you only have two?"
"I have two stars personally," she clarified. "The restaurant earned three."
"Ah. Going for three for yourself this Jump?"
"I wouldn't mind, but it's not of particular concern."
"Cool. No pressure." I almost turned the mixer on again, but I still had questions. "That explains the restaurant, but what about the hotel? I mean, the rest of it? Where did that come from?"
"That's slightly more complicated because there are multiple Jumps involved. Max earned the 'hotel chain' wealth-import item from Monopoly—"
"There's a Monopoly Jump."
"A Monopoly Gauntlet, to be precise," Homura said. "And it involves playing the board game, not the real estate market."
"But you get to keep a real luxury hotel chain."
"And a quantity of land wealth based on how much of the board you control at the end. Max went for one hundred percent completion."
"Of course he did," I muttered. "This shop is part of that land wealth, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And the 'more complicated' bit?"
"That's why Max owns the Traveler's Palace chain," she explained. "Most of the improvements that make it as amazing as it is come from work we put in during Hotel Tycoon, and getting one in the Warehouse was a reward from the Generic Vacation Gauntlet."
"There is a Vacation Gauntlet," I said, exasperation dripping from every word. "What the hell do you do in a Vacation Gauntlet?"
"Relax without any of your perks."
"Oh, of course, how silly of me. Who thinks of these things?"
Homura could damn well recognize a rhetorical question when she heard one, but she answered it anyway. "Management, obviously."
"Yes, obviously. Was it really just a vacation?"
"Yes, albeit in the same way that the Traveler's Palace in the Warehouse is 'just' a hotel."
"Wow." That was saying a lot. "What did you survive to convince Management to give you a break?"
"Amnesia: The Dark Descent."
"Ah."
Once it became clear neither of us had another topic to segue to, I turned on the mixer and poured the sugar in. The sound of the motor made further conversation difficult.
The peanut butter cookies came out far too dry, and I crossed the recipe off the list as a failure.
———X==X==X———
Paul sent me the first draft of his manuscript in May, though I didn't start reading it until June. He'd expressed a desire to hear my feedback 'directly' rather than through email, so we met at the picnic tables outside the Strawfield Public Library.
I'd more or less ignored the library thus far—the Warehouse's Library offered an infinitely wider selection and had no overdraft fees to worry about—so this was my first real look at the place. It wasn't an ugly building, per se, but it wasn't exactly beautiful either: an old, utilitarian red-brick building, squat and sprawling. Being only a single story, it was built wide, with a wing reaching 'forward' towards the street at either end to frame the large lawn that held the picnic tables. The layout reminded me oddly of Lego bricks in proportions—or rather, Lego plates, the thinner type of brick. The ratio of length to depth to height for the wings, and their ratio to the building itself, were about right for someone placing a pair of corner plates tip-to-tip to make half a hollow square, assuming you ignored the studs that would be sticking up from the top.
Was it weird to look at a building and immediately think, "This is just the right shape to build in Lego"? Maybe, but I already knew I was weird.
The lawn in front of the library was prettier than the library itself. The grass was vibrant and green, and large, flourishing trees provided shade for a collection of picnic tables that were much newer than the building behind them: all shiny green plastic that was, if not exactly comfortable, at least not going to give anyone splinters. It amused me how serious we'd managed to make this; I had a notepad I'd copied the gist of my reading notes onto, while Paul had brought what looked like an entire printed copy of the manuscript, held together with large binder clips, and three colors of pen.
"Okay, so, first," I began, "there are a lot of things I like about your book—uh, do you have a title yet?"
He sighed. "No."
"That's fine. So, good things. Uh, well, there are the obvious ones: the English is correct, the plot makes sense, et cetera. That all sounds like faint praise, but those are good things and I wanted to point them out because there are probably a hundred thousand amateur novelists who can't even manage that much.
"Then, uh, there are the things I like about this story. You did a good job implying a world rather than describing it—I mean, you conveyed all the important bits without needing to stop the plot for large amounts of exposition. That's good. I liked the gaslamp fantasy-influenced desert punk. That's cool. I liked the subversion you did with the twist—the whole 'the villain's shocking reveal that forces the protagonist to reevaluate everything' trope is foreshadowed plainly enough that I was absolutely expecting it, so it was fun when the Man in Red's whole story turned out to be a lie he made up to throw the protagonist off. That was great."
I stopped to give Paul a smile. He'd jotted down a couple things on the cover page of his manuscript, but mostly, he'd looked increasingly nervous as the praise went on.
"You're probably just waiting for the 'but'," I said. "Well, uh, there are a bunch of things I didn't like, but they all kind of come back to the same thing, which is that… okay, there's no real gentle way to put this. Your writing is kind of… misogynistic?"
That was clearly not what he'd expected to hear. I wasn't sure if he was more surprised or insulted.
"What?" Paul demanded. "Why? How? How are you reading misogyny into this?"
"Well, it's subtle," I began, "and to be clear, I'm not accusing you of being misogynistic—"
"But my writing is?"
"Yes—"
"How?"
"Because of—look, how about I just get to the problems?" I flipped the first two pages of the notepad—labeled 'the good' and 'the bad'—up to reveal the set of bullet points under 'the ugly'. "Okay, first, the blind girl, Elspeth, contributes pretty much nothing to the plot except giving Alexander something to angst about every time he puts avenging his dead family ahead of caring for his living family—which isn't a great look for him, either, but that's its own issue." I flipped back to 'the bad' just long enough to tap that bullet point with one finger. "The only times Elspeth's presence actually affects his actions, it's because she's a load—she's sick, she's injured, she's kidnapped, whatever. You could replace her with a goldfish and pretty much nothing would need to change, and that's, uh, not a great sign?
"Second, the female lead, Loraine, is… well, it seems like you were trying to write a 'strong female character' but weren't quite sure how. She's described as being tough, smart, capable, et cetera, but not only does she barely demonstrate those things, she's pretty much only in the narrative for the protagonist's sake. Her character development is entirely based on Alexander doing or saying things rather than her doing or saying things. 'Strong female character' doesn't mean they need to be literally 'strong', it means they have agency—that they have their own desires and can take action to get those things without relying on a male character to make it happen—and speaking of which, having a female character insist that she doesn't want a man doesn't count for anything if she ends up getting together with one in the end."
I glanced up from the notepad at Paul, who was scowling into the middle distance, then back down to the last major bullet point.
"And lastly, the descriptions. Look, I get that you've seen published authors do this kind of thing and are trying to imitate it, but, uh… don't? It's not something you should be trying to emulate. It's not something they should be doing in the first place. Even putting aside the over-sexualization and objectification of women in passages like that—which are not small issues and should honestly be enough reason to avoid that kind of thing—it's just ridiculous. See, boobs are… they're mostly fat. They don't do much of anything ninety percent of the time, they're just there, so if you're using active verbs with them, you should probably reevaluate what's going on in that scene.
"In fact, unless the viewpoint character is directly interacting with them, you probably don't need to mention them at all, and if you do, don't try to be fancy. No flowery metaphors or anything, just… if you need to describe a girl's rack—which, again, only necessary if it is directly relevant to the action—just use a nice, simple adjective. You don't need to be artistic about it; I guarantee you, everyone who has a vested interest in tits can imagine a pair perfectly fine from just a few words."
I flipped the page up to check if I'd written anything on the next one and found that I had. "Oh, and while I'm complaining about descriptions, I want to specifically call out the 'wandering swordswoman' the cast runs into late in the second half of the story, who is, if I understood correctly, an albino woman carrying a 'two-handed katana'—the word you're looking for there is 'odachi', by the way—and wearing what sounds an awful lot like a black leather cat-suit and matching trenchcoat in a desert."
"I just thought it was a cool image," Paul muttered.
"I'm not saying you have to change it—it is kinda badass—but the way you describe it is… uh, not good."
He sighed and dropped his eyes to the manuscript, twisting his mouth back and forth behind his beard. "Okay," Paul said at last. "I did ask you to be harsh."
"Sorry—"
"No, it's fine." He didn't sound like it was fine. "Anyway, descriptions aside, the story's still misogynistic, uh, structurally?"
"That's… sort of correct? The problem is the male characters do the doing, while the women are just sort of… there? They're more plot devices than people—Elspeth in particular, though Loraine isn't that much better. The fact that her primary motivation for joining Alexander in going after the Man in Red is 'a bad past breakup' is a pretty bad take, too."
"That's not—" He stopped and facepalmed. "Okay, maybe that's technically not an incorrect description, but that's not the whole story, either. I wanted to have more varied reasons for people wanting to deal with the guy than 'dead family members', okay?"
"Okay, but why did you go straight to 'romantic entanglement' for the only other woman in the party?"
"Uh…"
Paul went back to scowling, or perhaps glowering, for a few seconds as he failed to find an answer to that question.
"Okay." He picked up the red pen and clicked the point out. "How would you fix it, if it were up to you?"
"That depends on which parts you think are important and which parts can be changed," I replied, flipping back to the page labeled 'the bad'. "Like, you could completely remove Elspeth from the narrative and the plot would barely change."
"What if I want to fix her character, rather than delete it?"
"Uh, well, that's definitely the harder option. She doesn't really have a lot of character in your first draft—her defining feature is helplessness, which is a problem in itself."
Paul made a note of that on his cover sheet. "Right. It's not great to show a disabled character as useless, is it?"
"No, it is not."
"Right. And you said Loraine doesn't get to demonstrate the skills she does have."
"Yeah," I agreed. "She gets saved by male characters three times, but never solves a problem on her own during the whole book."
"What about at the very end?"
"Alexander has to tell her what to do."
He jotted another note, then put the pen down and rubbed at his forehead. "I'll need to think about this."
"Well, I'm glad you're willing to try. I half-expected you to tell me I was being too sensitive or something."
"I was thinking it," Paul admitted, "but I've been begging people for feedback, so it'd be pretty dumb to ignore it now that I've got it. Besides, I think I'm pretty good at taking criticism."
"No argument there. I know you felt attacked by the misogyny thing, so props for hearing me out." I set my notepad down and focused on the man across from me. "That said, not all feedback is going to be correct."
"Are you telling me to doubt you?"
"Honestly? Yes. I mean, I think all the things I mentioned are problems, and I hope that you'll come to the conclusion that they're problems, but you shouldn't assume every bit of critique you get is one-hundred-percent insightful, either."
"So I should take everything with a grain of salt," he said. "I already knew that."
"Well, I also know it, so I'm not expecting you to accept everything I say. It's okay to push back."
"'Kay."
He didn't, so I moved on. "Do you want my notes for reference? Or should I send you back the annotated document?"
"Which do you think would be more helpful?"
"Depends how much you plan to change things. The comments on the document are less useful the more you plan to change, right?"
"Ah. Yeah, I guess."
"So how about both, then?" I suggested, offering him the notepad.
"Sure."
Paul took the notepad and scribbled something on the front page—probably a label, something like 'Cass's notes'—then tore off the relevant pages and handed the pad back to me. "Well, I've got work in a couple hours, so I'll be on my way."
"Let me know if you want me to take a look at your next draft."
His face shifted through a couple different grimaces before settling on a simple frown. "To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm actually gonna revise this or just treat it as a learning experience and try again with a fresh idea."
"Revision is also a learning experience."
Paul's reaction was an unhappy grunt.
"But deciding this didn't work the way you wanted is fair too," I added. "Good luck either way."
"Thanks."
———X==X==X———
We closed Home Sweet Home for the Fourth of July so we could spend it with Max, Gary, and Zeke at a neighborhood barbecue in one of Moperville's parks near the edge of the city. Max met us at the curb to direct us to our contribution to the barbecue—cookies and pies, obviously—would join the rest of the food near the grill.
Once we'd put the pies down, I took a moment to see how many people I recognized. The man I'd seen in Tina's photo I knew to be Mr. Redding; he was talking to Gary while the latter grilled hamburgers. Mrs. Redding was minding Zeke and Tedd, who sat at a battered, decade-old picnic table staring at the roughly weathered wood between them in sullen silence. I'd fled town the moment we'd arrived, so he was the first person I'd been able to recognize from the comic, and Tedd Verres was more or less exactly what I'd expect at this point in his life: a slender, effeminate boy wearing plain clothes and thick glasses that hid his eyes. His chin-length purple hair made him look even more like a girl than he otherwise would, but I suppose it did obscure the fact that it wasn't the only 'girly' thing about his appearance.
That moment of recognition was quickly followed by more. Mr. Verres—Tedd's father, a fit middle-aged man with a short, unruly shock of blue hair—was sitting in a lawn chair, looking over the gathering with a satisfied smile; his sister-in-law Mrs. Kitsune, a short, motherly Japanese woman around the same age, was keeping a close eye on her younger daughter with her incredibly nondescript husband while her eldest played some sort of yard-tennis game with Tina. The resemblance the latter had to her mother and sister was dampened by the fact that her hair was a shade of red that, in most worlds, would only be possible with copious amounts of hair dye.
Max took us through the introductions, starting with the Kitsunes by virtue of them being the closest. She'd just finished introducing us to Angela Redding—again, since we'd met last winter—when another group arrived.
"Ah, that would be the Dunkels," Max said. "Be right back!"
"Hear that, Tedd?" Angela asked the boy. "Your friend's here. Shall we?"
Tedd nodded stiffly, mumbled, "'Scuse me," and slid off the bench before hurrying away. Angela gave me a look, angled her head towards the table, and headed off after the boy once I'd nodded in understanding.
Zeke didn't exactly need 'looking after', but I settled onto the bench across from him anyway, taking the seat Tedd had vacated.
"Something wrong, Zeke?"
"There are too many people here," he complained. "I don't like being around this many people I don't know."
"You could fix that by getting to know them."
"What's the point? We'll be gone in a decade."
"The point is that you'd have friends in the present."
"You mean other people my age?" Zeke shook his head. "Strangers are erratic and unpredictable, and the children are even worse."
"You're also a kid, you know."
"I don't feel like one."
"Yeah, people always told me I was an 'old soul' too," I said wistfully. "Of course, what they meant was 'Wow, your serotonin system is wrecked already?'"
"My serotonin system is in perfect working order!" Zeke protested. "Stop laughing! It is!"
"Sorry! I didn't expect you to be defensive about it!"
He harrumphed, crossed his arms, and pouted.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
"You ask that every time we talk."
"Because I'm always curious if anything's different. So, how are you doing?"
Zeke shrugged. "Well enough. I'm more or less used to how things work here."
"Started messing with magic yet?"
"Not yet. You?"
"Yeah, Zero gave me a Magic Mark as a housewarming gift," I said. "It's a bit inconvenient to practice because it's targeted at other people and not subtle—"
"Should I be concerned?"
"Not unless 'being able to look like someone else' is a potential prob—oh, right, it is."
"Not for me," Zeke said. "Or rather, I am not alarmed by the security risk the ability poses."
"Because you know how to deal with Master/Stranger threats?"
"Because I don't expect you to use it against me. What does it do, exactly?"
"It lets me copy the appearance of other people or animals. I'd offer to show you, but this is a little too public."
"And it's not subtle," he repeated. "Maybe another time. Have you used it on a raven yet?"
"No."
"You should. I still think it's a better fit for you than a fox."
"Well, maybe I will," I said. "What've you been doing?"
"Very little."
"Enjoying your summer break, at least?"
"It is not unpleasant," he said, "but it isn't particularly interesting, either. Well, this is 'interesting', relatively speaking."
"Barbecuing?"
"It's another first for me. Not fascinating, but at least it's fresh."
"Well, fresh is something, at least."
Zeke shrugged again.
"So there's nothing else new in your life at all?"
Zeke started to shake his head, then stopped as he remembered something. "Oh. We got a cat."
"A cat?"
"Yes. She followed me home and Max let me keep her."
Adorable. "What kind of cat? What's her name?"
"A gray one, and I don't know."
"You haven't given her one?"
"That seems a little rude," he said, his brow furrowing in disapproval. "What if she already has one?"
"Does that matter?"
"Of course it matters. I'm not going to give her a new name if she already has one."
"How would you find out, though?"
"I can't, which is why I haven't given her a name."
That was internally consistent in a very 'Zeke' way.
"Do you know how old she is?" I asked.
"Max said she's eleven."
"That's about middle age for a housecat, I think, though I don't know about a stray."
"She's too comfortable around humans to have always been a stray. She likely escaped an irresponsible owner when she was younger."
"Just because a cat gets out doesn't mean the owner is irresponsible. It can happen to the best of us."
"She's had kittens," he countered, which was fair: not spaying your cat was definitely irresponsible. "We had to get her fixed or we would be in violation of local pet ownership laws."
"Which would be bad."
"Clearly."
That was also very 'Zeke'.
"How's her health otherwise?" I asked.
"It was poor when I met her, but she's healthy now. Max saw to that."
"Of course."
"She fits in," Zeke continued. "I do not think I would enjoy a younger, more energetic cat, but I'm happy to have her."
"What's she like? Cuddly?"
"Very."
"Awesome."
Our conversation had run out of steam, so I turned to people-watching. The Kitsunes had moved over to talk to Max. Mr. Redding and Mr. Verres had switched places, the former standing near the edge of the picnic with Mr. Dunkel and the latter making small talk with Gary. The tennis game had run its course, and the girls were now helping themselves to the desserts that had arrived while they were busy. Mrs. Dunkel had dragged Homura into a conversation. Angela was heading back towards our table. And Tedd and Elliot were whispering while they waited near the grill, eyes on the hamburgers.
Just thinking about hamburgers prompted an audible grumble from my stomach, so I made my excuses to Zeke—who did me the service of pretending he hadn't heard anything—before heading to the grill myself, passing Angela on the way.
"Got enough for me too?" I asked Gary.
"We've only got another five pounds of meat," he told me. "I thought that would be enough, but with you here—"
I rolled my eyes and socked him in the arm. "I work in a bakery, Goofus," I told him. "A bakery selling the most amazing desserts in the county. Appetite jokes have no sway over me."
Mr. Verres coughed, drawing Gary's attention back to his previous conversation partner. "Oh, Max didn't get around to introducing you yet, did she?" Gary looked back and forth between me and Mr. Verres—what was his first name, anyway?—with a grin. "Awesome, that means I get to do it. Edward, Cassandra Kyogen, my cousin-in-law and the face of Strawfield's number one bakery. Cassandra, Edward Verres, Max's boss and the reason she's going gray."
"A pleasure to meet you, Edward," I said, offering my hand.
"And you, Cassandra," Edward replied, taking it. "I've heard a lot about you."
"Only good things, I hope."
"Well, she did have a few choice things to say about your sense of humor…"
I chuckled at his 'joke' the bare minimum needed for politeness' sake.
"Have you met my son?" he asked. "Tedd, say hello to Cassandra."
"Hello," Tedd mumbled.
"Hello, Tedd," I said. "And you must be Elliot Dunkel."
"Hello, Miss Cassandra," Elliot said.
"Right, these are done." Gary put a couple of buns and burgers on a pair of plates. "Sorry Cass, kids got here first."
"I know the rules of barbecue." I stepped aside to let the boys collect their plates and head over to the condiments and toppings table. "How long for mine?"
"Getting it started right now." He moved a raw patty to the grill. "So, now you've met Tedd and Elliot."
"So I have."
"Tedd's a good kid," Edward said. "He's always been shy, but he's been getting better with people lately."
"That's good," I said. "He and Zeke don't seem to get along, though."
"Zeke is… difficult," Gary said. "He's still insisting he doesn't want friends."
"He dislikes strangers enough that he doesn't give anyone a chance to become friends."
"And he doesn't put much value in making friends in this universe when he's not planning to stay."
Edward noticed when I glanced at him. "I'm aware of Zeke's situation, of course," he said (incorrectly, as it would turn out). "That's the reason Mrs. Vahn transferred to my department in the first place." He turned a pointed look towards Gary and added, "I was not aware you two had shared his origins with anyone else."
"Akemi is a wizard herself, and Cass is a seyunolu."
The latter surprised him, but not enough to distract him from his original complaint. "Having access to some secrets does not imply one should have all of them. It's important to compartmentalize."
"They're Max's closest living family, while mine are totally out-of-the-know. If something happened to us…"
"Oh." Edward coughed into his fist to clear his throat. "Of course, I should have realized. My apologies."
The burger sizzled in silence. The thought of 'something happening' had made things awkward—which might have been Gary's intent.
"You want cheese, Cass?" he asked.
"Ye—wait, it's not American cheese, is it?"
"It is."
I eyed the sliced
"Eh, sure, I'll give it a shot."
"One cheeseburger, coming right up." He flipped the patty and added the slice of cheese. I took the opportunity to lean in and breathe a noseful of wonderful grill smells before Gary shooed me away from his workspace.
"So, Cass," he said, "what are you up to these days?"
"Oh, you know, the usual. Baking, running the shop, working on Awakening." I shrugged. "Not much to say."
"Working on Awakening?" Edward asked. "As a seyunolu?"
"Yeah. It's slow going, but I'm sticking with it."
"What method are you using?"
"I've got a mark and a power suppressor."
"Ahhh," he said. "I was wondering why Max asked for that design…"
———X==X==X———
I'd been serious when I told Gary that I was working on Awakening. My 'consideration' of Homura's words regarding my use of magic had led me to the inevitable conclusion that she was correct—both about me 'holding back' and why I was doing so. It was a decision I hadn't realized I'd made, and one that—when I stopped to think about it—didn't make much sense.
And so I'd resolved to train up my magic in earnest.
The first item on the agenda was going through Homura's alt-forms—the ones she had slotted, anyway. We could have gotten them all done in a couple days, even with my extremely low 'casting stamina', but I wasn't in a hurry, so we did one a day until we ran out. Then I started calling on my friends in the Warehouse—still at a rate of one per day—which got me a pretty thorough cross-section of human shapes and colors. By this point, I could put together just about any human form one could think of.
I'd decided to leave non-human forms for later.
From there, Homura and I started 'trading'. She'd learned my magic mark's spell, so I could create a blended form, have her copy that, and then copy it off her. The exercise meant that I wasn't copying the same form over and over again, which may have been the cause of my previous 'plateau' in magical progress.
Progress was a self-reinforcing process because my increasing 'affinity' with magic meant a steady increase in how many times I could use the spell per day. Measuring my process by how many times I could cast each day made me feel like I was slowly gaining more spell slots—not that I'd encountered a magic system that used spell slots in whatever the phrase 'real life' meant for me nowadays, but the association was there.
The 4th of July celebration gave me a push to try something new: I took Zeke's advice and set out to tag one of Strawfield's plentiful corvid population with the spell. The transformation would leave my clothes behind, since there were no 'bird clothes' to turn into, so my plan was to 'shoot' out my bedroom window and transform in the privacy of my home.
Unfortunately, that didn't work.
Testing confirmed my suspicion that it was a range problem: the power lines visible from my window were simply too far away. A bit more experimenting revealed that I could still use the spell while in my fox form, though aiming my paw was harder than just pointing my palm at someone, which gave me my new (and in hindsight, terrible) plan: running around town as a fox, looking for birds.
Homura let me out when she noticed me struggling with the doorknob; I would have gotten it eventually, but I graciously accepted her help all the same. Then I was on the small landing at the top of the exterior stairs, where I quickly noticed three things.
The first thing I noticed was the noise—not unpleasantly loud, but more intense than it was behind closed doors. The second thing I noticed was that a one-story drop looked a lot scarier at this size. The third thing I noticed was that I'd had to notice the first two now because, despite having spent almost eighteen months in Strawfield, I had never been outside as a fox before.
Well, no time like the present. The stairs were easy enough to navigate, though more daunting than I'd readily admit, and the odors of car exhaust and sun-heated rubber grew more intense as I approached ground level. I could have probably tracked every car within several blocks by sound alone, but I still looked carefully around the parking lot before making my way to the base of the nearest telephone pole and looking up at the ravens on the wires.
"Look," one cawed to the others, followed by a morpheme best translated as 'small mammalian predator (derogatory)'. A half-dozen beady eyes turned baleful looks my way.
"I'm not a [small mammalian predator (derogatory)]," I called. "I want to be friends."
"Talking [small mammalian predator (derogatory)]!" another raven exclaimed, puffing their feathers up in surprise.
"Lying [small mammalian predator (derogatory)]," the first raven corrected them. The others voiced agreement, and the whole flock flew off. Damn it, I'd been so distracted by the novelty of being outside as a fox—and being able to talk to animals without looking like a crazy person—that I'd missed my shot.
Well, I had a plan B. I hadn't been sure how well I'd be able to aim a paw at something directly above me even if it was standing still—the answer was 'not very well'—so my backup plan was heading down to the park nearby. It was early morning on a Sunday, so hopefully there wouldn't be anyone there to get in my way.
Reaching Main Street showed me that I'd underestimated the amount of foot traffic on Sundays, the attentiveness of that traffic, and its willingness to drop what it was doing because it saw something interesting. I hadn't even stuck my nose out of the alley I'd used before people started paying attention to me.
"Oh, look!" a girl in her early teens exclaimed to her friends. "Is that a fox?"
One man turned to another and said, with some concern, "I didn't know there were foxes in town."
"Where did it come from?"
"Do you think it's someone's pet?"
"Is it dangerous?"
None of them were pulling out phones—smartphones weren't quite ubiquitous enough for that to be the default response to something interesting—but neither did they seem particularly concerned, so I headed out onto the sidewalk. This was evidently not what the onlookers had expected, as many of them shouted in alarm and flinched away. I felt a little bad about how much I'd startled them, but hopefully my relatively unthreatening size and the curiosity of seeing a fox at all would leave them more amused than annoyed. It'd suck to have ruined people's days for this little escapade.
Only a couple minutes later, I arrived at my destination and realized I'd forgotten something important. The park nearer the freeway was a picnic spot. The park closer to our apartment was a dog park, and the dogs were not happy to see me, nor I them. And if people were startled by a fox running by them, they were alarmed by a fox being near their dogs. Owners began snatching up their pets to protect them from a wild, potentially diseased fox, though in practice it mostly protected me from them. I didn't need a perk to know that the dogs were equally unhappy; there was so much barking I couldn't understand any of it. Days were definitely being ruined now.
I'd caused all this distress for nothing, too, because the chaos set even the boldest birds to flight before I had a chance to try and hit them with the spell. As a quadruped, it wasn't something I could do while running, and I wasn't about to stop in the middle of the mess.
I apologized to them—the dogs, at least, since I was a fox at the moment—as I dashed across the park to the base of a large oak tree and hid behind it as best I could. Then I ditched the tree, which stank like twenty years of accumulated dog urine, and left the park entirely, running down the street towards the high school. It was fortunate I'd done this before the end of summer break; the empty campus gave me somewhere I could rest from my mad sprint down the street.
Now that I finally had a moment to myself, I set about searching the campus for birds. A few swallows took flight as I approached, shrieking 'Danger!' as they went, but for the most part the campus was empty. Of course, I thought as I wandered the field bordering the parking lot. No students means no discarded food. As far as the various feathered scavengers were concerned, the school was out of season. Still, wandering around as a fox was a fun way to experience a new place; everything looked so big!
And then the animal control van pulled up.
———X==X==X———
I returned to the apartment barely an hour after I'd left, wearing one of the animal control officers' face and uniform—minus the hat and plus a great deal of mud, twigs, and other debris.
"Looks like you had an adventure," Homura said blandly. "Where did you get the clothes?"
"I stole the hat."
"What hat?"
"The hat I copied into the rest of the uniform. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a shower. Badly." I did my best not to let my bad mood land on her as I stalked off towards the bathroom.
"Going out again next week?" Homura called after me.
"Nevermore!"
———X==X==X———
Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
AN: Truly, the core conceit of Companions Chronicles is walking up to strawman facsimiles of other fiction and yelling at them like a drunkard starting a fight with a street sign.
On a related note, those who found this story through means other than the Jumpchain community might not know that I was the one to write the Vacation Gauntlet, so the joke is the same mood as having a character ask, "Who writes this crap?"
On a related note, those who found this story through means other than the Jumpchain community might not know that I was the one to write the Vacation Gauntlet, so the joke is the same mood as having a character ask, "Who writes this crap?"
- Location
- Elsewhere
Hey, America makes the best flavored plastic in the world!
All those fancy European plastics just aren't the same.
esotericist
A Weary Hand
- Location
- Lacey, WA
there's this particular store brand microwavable burger i really like. it's cheap, and astonishingly tasty for what it is.
the problem is, they mislabel it as a 'cheeseburger', and there's this yellow-orange shipping insert between the patty and the bun that i have to remove before heating the food. they should really be more careful with those, someone might eat it by mistake.
i do, of course, add cheese, since they don't provide any.