So it came down to me either tossing back half a bottle of Nyquil and some big red pills in an effort to sleep the rest of the day away or writing this in hopes it will distract me from the figurative lobotomy currently occupying the right side of my brain. Which is what it feels like when atmospheric pressure fronts change and my sinuses flip the vack out about it. My mom calls me the family barometer. Haha. She also says she grew out of it. I do my best to be only fleetingly hopeful about this possibility. No sense in setting oneself up for disappointment, and my body has for the past seven years run a flawless track record in favour of disappointment.
Sidenote: watching funny videos on Youtube also helps. The Skylander Spyro gameplay trailer should probably count as one of these, considering I laughed(then cried) at one they've done to poor Spyro. He looks like a pug with a sneeze stuck up its nose that just ate a bushel of lemons.
Anyway, I suppose you're expecting me to get on with it. Relax. I'm getting on.
I know this has been long awaited(by one person in the entire world) and I know it's taken me a long time to figure it out. And I think I can tell which stories are most important to me because those are the ones that I have the hardest time figuring out how to begin.
Dollface
Opening pieces
Won't be close to a whole chapter, so don't get excited
Also I just saw Source Code today with a bro and a cousin
It was good
I won't tell you anything about it at all because I want you to go see it
Man I need to put another hat on
I walked around the corner just in time to see my boss kick her store window in.
I kind of didn't want to ask, but I knew I was going to, mainly because I didn't want it coming out of MY paycheck.
"Um?" I said, walking up as fauxglass was still tinkling around her feet. Sil kicked her boots together to knock off the pebbles of dULTRAble hyperplexiplastic. "What are you doing?"
"Fixing it." She glanced at the holoclock across the street. "You're late," she growled. I glanced at the clock myself.
"By like two minutes."
"Late is late."
"Okay, well, that aside...why did you just break our store window?"
"I didn't." Sil turned on me and jabbed a finger right between my eyes. "This did." She held up a brick, which replaced her finger in the space between my eyes. "Buncha kids last night came and vandalized the store. Smashed in the window with this. It was broke when we got here."
"Why are we prepping a lie?"
"Why do you think." Sil took a step back, hefted the brick, and aimed. Then she threw it into the store. It landed with a loud smack on the linoleum, leaving a dent that sprouted spiderline cracks like the roots of a weed.
"Well, you never involve the polies, so I have no idea." Sil just climbed in through the broken window, nothing left of it as fauxglass was built to dissolve completely into pebbles when it was shattered. I swept them aside with my foot before I opened the store door, which Sil had already unlocked from the inside.
"What are we going to tell customers?" I asked.
"Same thing I just told you."
I raised my eyebrows at her.
"Sil, these people know you. They're going to know--"
"They're also going to know not to /push it./" She shot me a pointed look.
"Fine. So should I clean up the glass, or..."
"Leave it. Insurance is gonna need to see evidence. Hence me throwing the brick in here."
"You're calling insurance, but not the polies?"
"Polies can't do anything. Insurance can replace me a window."
"You want me to lie to your insurance company?"
"Just if they ask."
"Sil, of course they're going to ask."
Sil paused as she opened up the register to calibrate it for the day.
"Then yeah, I want you to lie to my insurance company."
"What if they find out--"
"Julian. God." She punched in the password code with all the gentleness of a vengeful nailgun. "Vacking drop it already."
She was using that voice she used when she was seriously threatening to fire me, so I dropped it already. Whatever.
Sil headed back to set up the ink wells and clean the tattoo guns while I finished opening up the register and fed the giant guard spiders. The white one snapped at me like it always did, and I kicked it in the fangs like I always did. It hissed, chittering pissily before attacking its pile of Arachnikibble.
"I hate your spiders," I muttered when Sil poked her head back up front.
"Good. If they were loveable, I'd take them back and trade them in. Let me know when Vitch gets in."
"Is she the one with the blue hair and funny eyes?"
"They're not funny."
"They have eight pupils that move. And at least three of them change colour."
"And you're a guy that wears makeup and miniskirts."
"That's not weird," I snapped defensively after her as she disappeared into the back again.
"It's all in the perspective."
Sil's pet deinonychus, Dewey, started scratching and hissing at her pet flap in the shop's door. Apparently Sil had forgotten to unlock it. The living fossil's vivid gold-orange eyes glowered up at me as I let her in. She slunk back behind the counter, threatening one of the spiders out of her spot in the corner with a flash of vicious teeth.
Vitch came in while I was touching up my mascara.
"What happened here?" she asked, jerking a thumb at the shattered window. I shrugged.
"Ask Sil." If I was going to lie convincingly to someone I had to look them in the eye, and I couldn't look at Vitch's eyes. "She's in the back," I added when Vitch still hadn't moved. She grunted and brushed past me.
I always itched to know what went on back there, what they were talking about. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd try to eavesdrop, but I knew the second I did something would go horribly wrong. Because that was how my life worked.
My life worked in a lot of interesting ways. For instance, this was the first time I'd ever gotten a job by running into my not-yet-employer in an underground masc/fem club, entirely shitfaced, vomited on her, outright invited her to vack in the filthy bathroom, fired back six shots and then promptly passed out in front of her.
She says she caught me, though I'm entirely certain she didn't, because I woke up with an additional throbbing that wasn't part of the hangover and stuck around long after the pounding alcohol-induced migraine had faded. I wasn't bleeding from anywhere on my head, but I'm sure I felt a bump. Sil says I was imagining things. I don't see why she gets to brush off the possibility of me having a concussion just because I regularly do six different kinds of drugs and consistently have mild hallucinations. Mild ones. I'm not, like, crazy or anything. I'm almost completely positive that they're probably most likely caused pretty much by my drug use.
Probably.
Anyway, Sil says she caught me(despite also being kind of drunk herself, at least I'm pretty sure she was, why else would she be in a club if not to get drunk)and when I wouldn't wake up, she didn't want to leave me there alone. People don't like to think about fems getting taken advantage of--let's call it what it is. Raped. People don't like to think about the possibility of a guy like me getting raped by a woman like Sil. Because women don't rape men, right?
Well obviously not a woman like Sil, since for whatever reason she had a mild lapse of sanity(that's Sil's term for when she feels kindness towards fellow human beings)and actually took me back to her apartment. You know like took me back with her and didn't violate me in sixteen different ways before dumping me in the alleyway outside with a ratty bath towel barely covering the unmentionables.
I had my ID on me and everything but Sil doesn't have a car and the slums I live in with my mom are so epicly shitty cabs have been programmed to not go into them.
Waking up in Sil's apartment was another first because it was the first time I'd woken up in a strange place after hard shitfacing and not been either bruised, sore in the tender place, wobbly and weak from drug use, tasting several things I couldn't identify, or all of the above together.
I felt a hangover and that additional headache that Sil denies existed and some confusion about where I was. I checked myself over and realized I was dressed in entirely strange clothes, right down to the vacking underwear, which would have disturbed me more if my brain hadn't been trying to pinball its way out of my skull at the time.
"The...what?" I muttered, plucking at the baggy shirt and shorts, then pulling the hem away from my hips and staring down at a pair of boxers two sizes too big. "...What?" I repeated.
I meant shit at the time but the thing with my brain trying to pinball and all was making it hard to say words, much less think of them.
I looked around myself and slowly pushed myself to my feet, gritting my teeth against the nailguns pounding in my head.
"...What."
It was nicer than most places I woke up in. It wasn't, you know, tidy, in the way that a bachelor's home isn't tidy when they aren't expecting to bring anyone home. There were random clothes like shirts and socks tossed over the arm of a sofa and piled in the corner, a few empty pizza boxes were stacked on the coffee table next to a half-empty mug, and what probably used to be a very nice duvet before whatever animal had gotten to it had gotten to it was piled in an armchair...under the animal that had gotten it. A deinonychus, standard size, lay with its head propped up on an arm rest, large hindlegs gathered under it, the massive scythe claws trimmed down to regulation length, the long, rigid tail resting on the other arm rest. It was a dark red with a lighter mottled red along its spine, with some white patches on its legs.
Velociraptors weren't rich people pets, but you had to have good money to afford one--and by good money I mean you can afford to pay more than five bronze monthly rent and have more than two pieces of furniture in your dinky two-room apartment. I was definitely not in the sort of place I usually woke up in.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Dreamings.
I don't often tell people about my dreams, partly in the interest of preserving a reputation of (somewhat consistent) sanity, or at least the illusion of it, and because usually all my dreams are so freakin awesome and crazy insane that there's not much point in sharing them. They also tend to be intricately detailed, and I'm simply too lazy to go over all of it with someone every time I have one.
But this one has been in my head all day, which doesn't usually happen when it didn't involve some form of sexual intercourse.
It was a really nice dream in the sense that it was oddly fully satisfying. I think that's why it's stuck with me. I knew from the moment it started what I was trying to accomplish, and unlike many of those dreams where I start out with that goal and have to reach it in the particular manner required, I managed to do what I had to do.
I was in a school. I hesitate boarding school, but the more I think about it the more that's the term that comes to mind. There were uniforms, though at the time I wasn't in one. It was the end of the schoolday and I had to very urgently get somewhere. It was probably a Friday, because that fits in my head.
I don't want to say it was another world entirely. That wouldn't be correct. Not for the dream.
I need to gather my words very carefully on this, because I want to effectively convey the FEELINGS I experienced in this dream, and I very rarely feel things in dreams.
The environment surrounding me was one of those days in spring that probably belongs in summer and means summer is very, very close--though not quite here, obviously, since I was still in school. The air was thick with humidity, but it was a rich, warm humidity combined with a steady, strong spring breeze that made you feel sleepy and incredibly active at the same time. Not exactly awake. Or alert. Your mind doesn't need to be working. It's a feeling where your mind can take a backseat to whatever you're doing and you engage in a purely physical activity that you know you can do for as long as you want without getting tired out.
And that's exactly what I was doing. I was in normal clothes and running through school hallways, down on a first level. I was in a gym area, just entering into the area behind it where there are gym lockers and gym showers. I was right behind the school stadium that sat on the school football field. I hung a sharp right into the long, broad hallway of concrete, where the shower rooms were located on either side. I darted into the girl showers, or rather the long locker room right beside it.
Dream distortion kicked in here and that room was ridiculously long, though only in perception. I SAW that it was long, but passed through it in a very short amount of time.
This whole time I knew exactly where I was going, and the wonderful thing about it was there was no specific TIME LIMIT. There are those dreams where you have to get something done within this amount of time or the world is going to end or you'll be eaten or something. There was none of that. My urgency arose purely from excitement, excitement at getting out of there and getting to where I was going.
As I passed through the locker room behind the girl showers, the air thick now with shower humidity, but still with a strong breeze from the door I'd left open, I passed a friend who actually exists in real life and who actually behaved in the dream convincingly as she does in real life.
She asked where I was going in such a hurry. And, since this person is actually someone I don't hang out with anymore, as they've turned out to be an unhealthy individual, I outright told her it was none of her business. She laughed off my smirking rudeness, as I imagine she would in life, and repeated her inquiry. I proceeded to ignore it and kept running.
I do enjoy running about in life, but the problem is I'm stupidly out of shape and my lungs begin to burn within minutes. /A/ minute, in fact. In the dream, my lungs felt constantly full of refreshing air. I could run around the world if I wanted. This felt, in the dream, not implausible, but actually due to adrenaline from excitement. This added to the vividness of it.
My friend, or ex-friend, whatever have you, had just gotten dressed herself and started pursuing me, which is where her similarity to her irl ended--I doubt she'd literally drop everything and just run after me without knowing more about wherever I was going.
Instead of being irritated, I actually welcomed the challenge, because I knew the environment I was heading into and I knew I could easily ditch her.
At the end of the girls' shower locker room was another door I darted through, and this lead to a back hallway no one ever used. This was another long, long hallway, and at the end of it was rich green and golden light.
I knew my pursuer was still behind me and would discover this place, but it didn't matter. I ran for the light, another round of adrenaline pumping through me as I did so.
My dreams usually can't hold up under significant environment changes, so this was the moment of truth for me--I was in a sense slightly conscious for this. I knew that getting through that opening would decide whether or not I would actually get where I was going.
It held. It was wonderful.
The world opened up in what turned out to be the back of the school, which was slap up against a few blocks of just dead city. These blocks lead into the slums immediately nearby.
These slums were covered in flora. I have no idea why or how and it didn't matter. There were thick vines and trees and bushes and all sorts of life blanketing whole walls, devouring foundations and sidewalks and fences, grass punching through the carpeting in ground-floor apartments--nature had completely infiltrated this place. And it was like it was just accepted. Normal. People lived here and lived with it.
I loved it.
I kept running, and running, and I could smell and feel the coming of summer everywhere, in my lungs, on my skin, ruffling through my clothes. Still aware of the girl pursuing me, I started pulling some ridiculous athletics that I was completely capable of in my dream. Other than just running a lot faster and better than I actually can, I vaulted fences, ran along the tops of them, basically screwed her over with agility and superior knowledge of the environment.
I knew exactly who I was going to see and where I was going to get to him.
I unfortunately didn't finish the dream and actually reach him. But the point was, I knew I WAS going to reach him. I was absolutely certain of this, and despite waking up before I could, I felt no disappointment.
He had the familiarity and importance of an old friend, but I have the feeling I had only known him several months to a year, only however long I'd actually been attending the boarding school. I don't know how he met or what his name was. I just know I was going to get there and see him and we'd hang out during the weekend and have a good time, and breathe in the thick, warm, sleepy spring air together.
He was a sort of punk with a questionable lifestyle and his head was shaved except for one hank of fuschia hair that hang over the right side of his face, from about the top of his ear to his right eyebrow. He wore a fishnet shirt, tight black jeans, had some piercings, and was a sweet, interesting, sexy guy. I've taken to calling him Ian.
As I've thought about it through the day I've given him an occupation--club owner and he tends his own bar in it--and as for background, he was a prostitute for some time and got out of it by starting his own business and the bouncers he hired for his club do a good job of looking after him. He's considering hiring a body guard as sometimes bits of his past try to catch up with him.
I doubt my part in the dream or any of that would have anything to do with an actual story, were he to get one. Then again, maybe it might.
Also, here. Have some bits of my brainspace.
These are to share, Mek. LOOK AT ME. TO SHARE.
But this one has been in my head all day, which doesn't usually happen when it didn't involve some form of sexual intercourse.
It was a really nice dream in the sense that it was oddly fully satisfying. I think that's why it's stuck with me. I knew from the moment it started what I was trying to accomplish, and unlike many of those dreams where I start out with that goal and have to reach it in the particular manner required, I managed to do what I had to do.
I was in a school. I hesitate boarding school, but the more I think about it the more that's the term that comes to mind. There were uniforms, though at the time I wasn't in one. It was the end of the schoolday and I had to very urgently get somewhere. It was probably a Friday, because that fits in my head.
I don't want to say it was another world entirely. That wouldn't be correct. Not for the dream.
I need to gather my words very carefully on this, because I want to effectively convey the FEELINGS I experienced in this dream, and I very rarely feel things in dreams.
The environment surrounding me was one of those days in spring that probably belongs in summer and means summer is very, very close--though not quite here, obviously, since I was still in school. The air was thick with humidity, but it was a rich, warm humidity combined with a steady, strong spring breeze that made you feel sleepy and incredibly active at the same time. Not exactly awake. Or alert. Your mind doesn't need to be working. It's a feeling where your mind can take a backseat to whatever you're doing and you engage in a purely physical activity that you know you can do for as long as you want without getting tired out.
And that's exactly what I was doing. I was in normal clothes and running through school hallways, down on a first level. I was in a gym area, just entering into the area behind it where there are gym lockers and gym showers. I was right behind the school stadium that sat on the school football field. I hung a sharp right into the long, broad hallway of concrete, where the shower rooms were located on either side. I darted into the girl showers, or rather the long locker room right beside it.
Dream distortion kicked in here and that room was ridiculously long, though only in perception. I SAW that it was long, but passed through it in a very short amount of time.
This whole time I knew exactly where I was going, and the wonderful thing about it was there was no specific TIME LIMIT. There are those dreams where you have to get something done within this amount of time or the world is going to end or you'll be eaten or something. There was none of that. My urgency arose purely from excitement, excitement at getting out of there and getting to where I was going.
As I passed through the locker room behind the girl showers, the air thick now with shower humidity, but still with a strong breeze from the door I'd left open, I passed a friend who actually exists in real life and who actually behaved in the dream convincingly as she does in real life.
She asked where I was going in such a hurry. And, since this person is actually someone I don't hang out with anymore, as they've turned out to be an unhealthy individual, I outright told her it was none of her business. She laughed off my smirking rudeness, as I imagine she would in life, and repeated her inquiry. I proceeded to ignore it and kept running.
I do enjoy running about in life, but the problem is I'm stupidly out of shape and my lungs begin to burn within minutes. /A/ minute, in fact. In the dream, my lungs felt constantly full of refreshing air. I could run around the world if I wanted. This felt, in the dream, not implausible, but actually due to adrenaline from excitement. This added to the vividness of it.
My friend, or ex-friend, whatever have you, had just gotten dressed herself and started pursuing me, which is where her similarity to her irl ended--I doubt she'd literally drop everything and just run after me without knowing more about wherever I was going.
Instead of being irritated, I actually welcomed the challenge, because I knew the environment I was heading into and I knew I could easily ditch her.
At the end of the girls' shower locker room was another door I darted through, and this lead to a back hallway no one ever used. This was another long, long hallway, and at the end of it was rich green and golden light.
I knew my pursuer was still behind me and would discover this place, but it didn't matter. I ran for the light, another round of adrenaline pumping through me as I did so.
My dreams usually can't hold up under significant environment changes, so this was the moment of truth for me--I was in a sense slightly conscious for this. I knew that getting through that opening would decide whether or not I would actually get where I was going.
It held. It was wonderful.
The world opened up in what turned out to be the back of the school, which was slap up against a few blocks of just dead city. These blocks lead into the slums immediately nearby.
These slums were covered in flora. I have no idea why or how and it didn't matter. There were thick vines and trees and bushes and all sorts of life blanketing whole walls, devouring foundations and sidewalks and fences, grass punching through the carpeting in ground-floor apartments--nature had completely infiltrated this place. And it was like it was just accepted. Normal. People lived here and lived with it.
I loved it.
I kept running, and running, and I could smell and feel the coming of summer everywhere, in my lungs, on my skin, ruffling through my clothes. Still aware of the girl pursuing me, I started pulling some ridiculous athletics that I was completely capable of in my dream. Other than just running a lot faster and better than I actually can, I vaulted fences, ran along the tops of them, basically screwed her over with agility and superior knowledge of the environment.
I knew exactly who I was going to see and where I was going to get to him.
I unfortunately didn't finish the dream and actually reach him. But the point was, I knew I WAS going to reach him. I was absolutely certain of this, and despite waking up before I could, I felt no disappointment.
He had the familiarity and importance of an old friend, but I have the feeling I had only known him several months to a year, only however long I'd actually been attending the boarding school. I don't know how he met or what his name was. I just know I was going to get there and see him and we'd hang out during the weekend and have a good time, and breathe in the thick, warm, sleepy spring air together.
He was a sort of punk with a questionable lifestyle and his head was shaved except for one hank of fuschia hair that hang over the right side of his face, from about the top of his ear to his right eyebrow. He wore a fishnet shirt, tight black jeans, had some piercings, and was a sweet, interesting, sexy guy. I've taken to calling him Ian.
As I've thought about it through the day I've given him an occupation--club owner and he tends his own bar in it--and as for background, he was a prostitute for some time and got out of it by starting his own business and the bouncers he hired for his club do a good job of looking after him. He's considering hiring a body guard as sometimes bits of his past try to catch up with him.
I doubt my part in the dream or any of that would have anything to do with an actual story, were he to get one. Then again, maybe it might.
Also, here. Have some bits of my brainspace.
These are to share, Mek. LOOK AT ME. TO SHARE.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
I really need to sketch regularly again
So I'm going to make this quick because Mek's my buddy and it's hard for him to read a lot of things on a screen.
HAHA NO. NO. THAT'S NOT WHY.
But I got you for a second didn't I.
Actually I need to go to bed. About half an hour ago. And like this isn't even a real ANYTHING it's just a really vague idea.
I have too many manwhores, like, seriously. I don't even know if this guy is going to be a manwhore, but he probably is, because it's both convenient and sexual appealing. In my opinion. I apparently have a dirty opinion.
I don't even--yeah.
Anyway. There's a guy and a girl. Isn't there always? No, it's not always, I know that but I know that, just go with it okay it's late(I'm saying this because I know if I was actually saying this to Mek he'd be pointing out that no it's not and sometimes there's even more than two MOVING ON).
Dude. And a dudette(I actually hate that word, but can't think of a better female version of dude off the top of my head. Generally I just called women dudes too, but that would give the wrong impression in this case.) DUDES. ONE OF THEM IS A GIRL. GO WITH IT.
I have writ like two paragraphs and said absolutely nothing yet. I guess I felt like practicing my impression of a politician.
(ba-dump-chshh)
I have no idea how they meet. You know I've been wanting to do this thing for a while where there's this guy and he's all badass withdrawn mysterious assassin and he likes this totally normal girl who's got a normal life and is a normal person and everything, and then turns out to be not actually normal at all in a FANTASTICAL way. Like he's actually the normal person living in a normal world but she's a mage or a Librarian or just a part of Engine Tree in some way.
But I dunno if I'm gonna do that. Because how would a badass mysterious assassin meet a totally normal girl person in such a way that they meet again and again and get familiar and go out on a date? And I don't want to do a one-night stand thing because she's the kind of normal person that does relationships not flings.
Maybe instead of a little prostitute he's just a party whore and they meet a rave or something.
Stiiiill not even really saying what I mean to say.
This girl is a race of Engine Tree called constructs. They're not a race in the sense they're a consistent, reproducing sentient class of life forms. They're called constructs because they're constructed. They're like golems, except golems aren't sentient(or generally not humanoid intelligent.) Constructs were invented for the purpose of tasks requiring intelligence, basically high-level servants. Instead of just keeping your house clean, they could also look after personal needs, from maintaining conversations with their owners and serving as their personal assistant at work to working actual jobs for their owners, like looking after stock, managing stores, all sorts of things.
However, as time has passed, constructs have become less strictly servants and more a part of the general population. When the next model comes out(generally new models come out every decade or so), the older is turned loose, usually with a very high recommendation that will easily get them the same job they held before in a business that can't afford custom-made constructs.
What about people who are born, not made? Well, Engine Tree's a big place. And it leads to billions of other places. They can go find jobs elsewhere.
Constructs are made of cloth, machinery, they run on energy crystals(crystallized sap from the Tree, dyed different colours to tell them apart as different sap veins contain different energy)some VERY watered down Tree sap runs in their veins(sap at its full potency has a LOT of pow that would overload anything smaller than a planet)and custom constructs often have other bits and pieces in there that aren't necessarily metal.
So the girl's a custom, and she's got things in there like coils of thorny vines, different sets of eyeballs, some spiders(explain in a minute), some tentacles, different sets of teeth(shark teeth, eel teeth, cat teeth, etc)some rodent skeletons. That's about it. Vines and teeth are basic defense mechanisms, pretty standard.
Construct "cloth" is actually a type of spider silk from a special type of spider in Engine Tree. Constructs keep a few(several dozen to a couple hundred) of the smaller(ranging from the size of a rat to flea-sized) variety on their person at all times for maintenance purposes. The rodent skeletons are generally used by the flea-sized spiders. They spin intricate webs to serve as muscle structures and cover the outside in a "skin" just like the construct's, while a slightly larger spider resides in the middle of the body controlling a set of puppet threads.
These rodent mini-constructs are used for gathering materials when a few silk patches aren't enough to repair damages. Mostly because a mouse or a rat or two snatching bits and pieces of things and running off with them are often, in most worlds, considerably more common occurrences than a small hoard of spiders snatching bits and pieces and running of with them. They also have other uses for higher performance constructs doing IMPORTANT GOVERNMENT THINGS. Like spying. Construct spiders have ten legs and two sets of fangs. They are definitely spiders, but large groups of them have seen to be acting out hive mind behaviour, with a queen and everything. "Worker" spiders are fat-bodied, whereas the queen is very long.
And all this happened in my head because I had some image in my head of this construct girl getting repaired and sewn up by a SPECIAL special spider because she got damaged so bad her own spiders couldn't repair her, meanwhile a normal human guy who liked her is looking on trying to keep his brain from exploding because this is the first he's hearing about giant spiders and Engine Tree and the girl he likes being made out of spider silk, tree sap, and machinery.
AUGH NOW IT'S EVEN LATER. GALLDAGGIT. I AM DISPLEASED WITH MYSELF. BAD, THADDEUS. BA--ow. Self-hurt is a bad thing.
HAHA NO. NO. THAT'S NOT WHY.
But I got you for a second didn't I.
Actually I need to go to bed. About half an hour ago. And like this isn't even a real ANYTHING it's just a really vague idea.
I have too many manwhores, like, seriously. I don't even know if this guy is going to be a manwhore, but he probably is, because it's both convenient and sexual appealing. In my opinion. I apparently have a dirty opinion.
I don't even--yeah.
Anyway. There's a guy and a girl. Isn't there always? No, it's not always, I know that but I know that, just go with it okay it's late(I'm saying this because I know if I was actually saying this to Mek he'd be pointing out that no it's not and sometimes there's even more than two MOVING ON).
Dude. And a dudette(I actually hate that word, but can't think of a better female version of dude off the top of my head. Generally I just called women dudes too, but that would give the wrong impression in this case.) DUDES. ONE OF THEM IS A GIRL. GO WITH IT.
I have writ like two paragraphs and said absolutely nothing yet. I guess I felt like practicing my impression of a politician.
(ba-dump-chshh)
I have no idea how they meet. You know I've been wanting to do this thing for a while where there's this guy and he's all badass withdrawn mysterious assassin and he likes this totally normal girl who's got a normal life and is a normal person and everything, and then turns out to be not actually normal at all in a FANTASTICAL way. Like he's actually the normal person living in a normal world but she's a mage or a Librarian or just a part of Engine Tree in some way.
But I dunno if I'm gonna do that. Because how would a badass mysterious assassin meet a totally normal girl person in such a way that they meet again and again and get familiar and go out on a date? And I don't want to do a one-night stand thing because she's the kind of normal person that does relationships not flings.
Maybe instead of a little prostitute he's just a party whore and they meet a rave or something.
Stiiiill not even really saying what I mean to say.
This girl is a race of Engine Tree called constructs. They're not a race in the sense they're a consistent, reproducing sentient class of life forms. They're called constructs because they're constructed. They're like golems, except golems aren't sentient(or generally not humanoid intelligent.) Constructs were invented for the purpose of tasks requiring intelligence, basically high-level servants. Instead of just keeping your house clean, they could also look after personal needs, from maintaining conversations with their owners and serving as their personal assistant at work to working actual jobs for their owners, like looking after stock, managing stores, all sorts of things.
However, as time has passed, constructs have become less strictly servants and more a part of the general population. When the next model comes out(generally new models come out every decade or so), the older is turned loose, usually with a very high recommendation that will easily get them the same job they held before in a business that can't afford custom-made constructs.
What about people who are born, not made? Well, Engine Tree's a big place. And it leads to billions of other places. They can go find jobs elsewhere.
Constructs are made of cloth, machinery, they run on energy crystals(crystallized sap from the Tree, dyed different colours to tell them apart as different sap veins contain different energy)some VERY watered down Tree sap runs in their veins(sap at its full potency has a LOT of pow that would overload anything smaller than a planet)and custom constructs often have other bits and pieces in there that aren't necessarily metal.
So the girl's a custom, and she's got things in there like coils of thorny vines, different sets of eyeballs, some spiders(explain in a minute), some tentacles, different sets of teeth(shark teeth, eel teeth, cat teeth, etc)some rodent skeletons. That's about it. Vines and teeth are basic defense mechanisms, pretty standard.
Construct "cloth" is actually a type of spider silk from a special type of spider in Engine Tree. Constructs keep a few(several dozen to a couple hundred) of the smaller(ranging from the size of a rat to flea-sized) variety on their person at all times for maintenance purposes. The rodent skeletons are generally used by the flea-sized spiders. They spin intricate webs to serve as muscle structures and cover the outside in a "skin" just like the construct's, while a slightly larger spider resides in the middle of the body controlling a set of puppet threads.
These rodent mini-constructs are used for gathering materials when a few silk patches aren't enough to repair damages. Mostly because a mouse or a rat or two snatching bits and pieces of things and running off with them are often, in most worlds, considerably more common occurrences than a small hoard of spiders snatching bits and pieces and running of with them. They also have other uses for higher performance constructs doing IMPORTANT GOVERNMENT THINGS. Like spying. Construct spiders have ten legs and two sets of fangs. They are definitely spiders, but large groups of them have seen to be acting out hive mind behaviour, with a queen and everything. "Worker" spiders are fat-bodied, whereas the queen is very long.
And all this happened in my head because I had some image in my head of this construct girl getting repaired and sewn up by a SPECIAL special spider because she got damaged so bad her own spiders couldn't repair her, meanwhile a normal human guy who liked her is looking on trying to keep his brain from exploding because this is the first he's hearing about giant spiders and Engine Tree and the girl he likes being made out of spider silk, tree sap, and machinery.
AUGH NOW IT'S EVEN LATER. GALLDAGGIT. I AM DISPLEASED WITH MYSELF. BAD, THADDEUS. BA--ow. Self-hurt is a bad thing.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Talking to three people at once while watching an NC review makes me write notably slower
RANDOM CHARACTER IDEA
So there's enough out there about the brilliant insane genius who experiments physically on children--you know, genetics, all that racket. Let's have some PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTATION.
A genius psychologist renown for her progress and having written books and hosted tv show advice, professed to having helped millions with their lives, is arrested and put in a mental institution herself after it's discovered that she's been subjecting her son to a sort of psychological experimentation. She's been purposely trying to create in him phobias of totally ridiculous things--like butterflies, neckties, blue cars, pigeons, and acronyms. She then intends to help him overcome them and record it FOR SCIENCE.
For years people don't even believe him when he tries to tell them "Mommy is making me scared of things" until he finally is just about out of highschool and manages to hack her computer
OH GOSH THIS WILL BE WES'S BACKSTORY YAY
gotta wrap this up.
So Wes hacked his mom's computer, which contains her journals on his progress as well as actual video footage she records of the processes she uses to create his phobias when he's a little kid. He published it on the internet in a blog he creates for this purpose and hacks into police and puts the videos on loop on their computers.
After some chaos, his mom is locked up and NOW people try to help him. Wes isn't interested in everyone's pity now, though, so he drops down to lower levels(because of his mom's psycho skills they lived pretty high up the ladder) and keeps developing his computer skills. He creates a new identity for himself (Wes BEING the new identity) and his hacker skills increase in prowess over time. After some odd jobs he's able to rely solely on his mad computer skills to keep himself supported.
He does try to overcome the more crippling phobias--like fear of blue cars and acronyms--but the other ones he just does his best to totally avoid. He also has a deeply rooted distrust of therapists and psychologists and whatnot. His own methods involve listening to podcast things of that man or woman saying encouraging things, reading self-help books, and making himself watch movies that involve his phobias.
It's really not very successful, but Wes isn't very good at facing things. Avoiding conflict is really his specialty.
Anyway, I feel like this is an interesting backstory for a character who's not actually important enough for it to be explained. So Wes is probably gonna have to get his own story at some pointif I want this dealt with.
Yeah it's bedtime.
So there's enough out there about the brilliant insane genius who experiments physically on children--you know, genetics, all that racket. Let's have some PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTATION.
A genius psychologist renown for her progress and having written books and hosted tv show advice, professed to having helped millions with their lives, is arrested and put in a mental institution herself after it's discovered that she's been subjecting her son to a sort of psychological experimentation. She's been purposely trying to create in him phobias of totally ridiculous things--like butterflies, neckties, blue cars, pigeons, and acronyms. She then intends to help him overcome them and record it FOR SCIENCE.
For years people don't even believe him when he tries to tell them "Mommy is making me scared of things" until he finally is just about out of highschool and manages to hack her computer
OH GOSH THIS WILL BE WES'S BACKSTORY YAY
gotta wrap this up.
So Wes hacked his mom's computer, which contains her journals on his progress as well as actual video footage she records of the processes she uses to create his phobias when he's a little kid. He published it on the internet in a blog he creates for this purpose and hacks into police and puts the videos on loop on their computers.
After some chaos, his mom is locked up and NOW people try to help him. Wes isn't interested in everyone's pity now, though, so he drops down to lower levels(because of his mom's psycho skills they lived pretty high up the ladder) and keeps developing his computer skills. He creates a new identity for himself (Wes BEING the new identity) and his hacker skills increase in prowess over time. After some odd jobs he's able to rely solely on his mad computer skills to keep himself supported.
He does try to overcome the more crippling phobias--like fear of blue cars and acronyms--but the other ones he just does his best to totally avoid. He also has a deeply rooted distrust of therapists and psychologists and whatnot. His own methods involve listening to podcast things of that man or woman saying encouraging things, reading self-help books, and making himself watch movies that involve his phobias.
It's really not very successful, but Wes isn't very good at facing things. Avoiding conflict is really his specialty.
Anyway, I feel like this is an interesting backstory for a character who's not actually important enough for it to be explained. So Wes is probably gonna have to get his own story at some pointif I want this dealt with.
Yeah it's bedtime.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
I wonder if Brett has to go around naked or something since there are probably no clothes that would work for him
So I gotta get this out my head.
Past couple days I've been back on a Chaos kick. In case no one remembers or I never told you, there's this bit I had going forever ago called the Blacktop Kids that took place in a world where chaos was an actual physical substance. Basically it just fucks around for the hell of it, altering people with dramatic transformations, sweeping across countries in giant "storms", hanging around in puddles and oceans, and some people, "mediums" are given the power to manipulate chaos--and thus ANYTHING EVER--how they choose, according to what chaos wants them to do(or doesn't care.)
The whole idea behind chaos is that people just can't pin it down. They don't know whether it is sentient or is a collection of sentient consciousnesses, or completely mindless in its random actions, or if it has an agenda or just genuinely wants to fuck around because it can.
You can probably skip this next part, it's ADHD rambling
"Your Favourite Drug" by Porcelain and the Tramps is not a bad song. Ooooh, "Fuck Like A Star." That sounds Julian-esque, even if he's not a rockstar anymore. Let's check that one out.
Yeah that was an interesting beginning of the song, interesting in the sense it's rather in poor taste and I'd skip over it if I added this song to my collection. Censored or not.
Where was I. Oh yeah, why is some chick losing weight in a video in the related videos list for this band? I have news for you--THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICA IS OBSESSED WITH LOSING WEIGHT. NO ONE FINDS IT SPECIAL THAT YOU MADE A VIDEO ABOUT IT.
Anyway.
Oh for--can this woman not just leave me alone for half an hour?
...the hell is even going on in this. This is not a time lapse of her losing weight, which is what I was expecting. She's fucking jiggling her thighs and ass. Get off the internet, there's enough of this pointless shit around already.
"King of the World" by the same band is a good one.
Yeah. Hello my name is ADHD, I'll be your pilot for today. If we suddenly careen off-route don't be alarmed, it's totally normal. Expect extreme turbulence and random detours.
Okay seriously it is impossible to resolve a conversation with this woman. Just. Let it. Go. When someone takes over five minutes to respond to you, THEY ARE BUSY OR JUST DON'T WANT TO TALK. EITHER WAY. TAKE THE HINT.
End ADHD rambling--SERIOUSLY? WAY TO NOT TAKE THE HINT. ALL I SAID WAS HAHA THANKS, HOW ARE YOU STILL--YOU ARE BEATING A DEAD HORSE. IT'S BEYOND DEAD. IT'S FUCKING BONES AND MAGGOTS. JUST BURY IT ALREADY.
Anyway. There is a slightly more certain idea around that chaos, regardless of whether it's sentient or not, will actually LIKE certain people. People it deems interesting or useful, people that can utilize its properties in ways that entertain it.
The thing about chaos is that it seems to just be pretty damn infinite and its sense of humour is similar to that of a small, easily amused child and a schizophrenic serial killer. Mediums that are pretty close to it will describe it as being the "ultimate innocence"--it has no grasp of right and wrong or humanity. If its "entertainment" hurts people, it doesn't understand that that's bad or anything. Chaos, in essence, just wants to have a good time, regardless of everything and everyone else ever.
The thing about Chaos is that it will experiment. You know evolution? It's fun stuff. Now imagine evolution on acid with a side of opiates and several bottles of whiskey--you know, that stage of drunk where the craziest shit seems like total genius?
The outcome of that sort of mindset is often what happens to humans that are exposed to chaos that AREN'T meant to be mediums. Mediums can channel and manipulate chaos without being altered, and they CAN alter themselves IF they want and HOW they want. Others, aptly named the "Altered", have no control over their transformations and it will always be random every time.
Hence one of my favourites: I'm calling him Brett at the moment, but eh(makes me think of a frat boy.) You know centaurs? Body of a man on a body of a horse, connected at the torso and neck? He's like that. Except instead of him being a horse from the waist down, he's MORE HUMAN. His lower body is a second human body, attacked at the neck, inhumanly large and proportioned to function on hands and feet. It's kind of hard to describe and I don't know why I'm bothering, I have a sketch I'm going to post with this.
Buckle in folks, looks like we've got some ADHD turbulence up ahead.
Oh look at that another journal baww from a teenager about how much her life sucks and her friend's life sucks. OH NO HE SAID HE'S GOING TO KILL HIMSELF. 'Scuse me for being a dick but I've heard that too many times as an attention whore-out to believe it if I can't judge the person's suicidalness for myself.
Plus I like how she writes GUYS HELP MY FRIEND IS GOING TO KILL HIMSELF and then immediately after I'M NEVER GOING TO FIND TRUE LOVE BECAUSE LIFE HATES ME.
Way to subtlely(haha not really at all)suddenly make a potentially tragic issue about YOU. I mean she gave no indication she had feelings for him like that, so I can really only assume she used another person's serious issue to get you to read on about her own serious insecurities? Good job.
Well that was a bit shakey, but things seem to have calmed down now.
ANYWAY. This thing I've had kicking around in my brainspace. It involves Brett and others like him, though he's not the main--the completely normal human friend that keeps them all sane through their crazy weird shit is the main character.
It's got two possible plots, which may or may not mesh together depending on how well I can work them and whether I can decided or not between them. One is just a vague story beginning and the other is something I may just categorize under Backstory and formulate a real plot for. But if that's the case, why NOT just mesh them? Well the first takes place in a totally different time period of the world, after chaos has brought on an apocalypse jsut to see what would happen. The other happens in the very beginning days of chaos, when Altered are still freaky shit and are still a minority.
The first is after-backstory, after the human kid who got mixed up in a small gang of Altered kids on the run from haters is all growed up and they're all growed up and(this being the post-apocalypse) she's living on her own in a remote part of the country hidden by what's left of the Rocky Mountains. Someone of the freaks' group(now scattered across the country) puts the word out to her that a few
of them have banded together on the east coast to start trying to help rebuild society. Since she's in the far west, they want her to start out across the country and hit up the rest of their scattered members on the way to ask them to come help.
Disregard of HER ability to help is why she finally ditched them like two years before the apocalypse. In the earlier days(this being when the Altered ARE somewhat commonplace)she was stuck in a walled city, separated from her family with no idea what city THEY were in, after the world is convinced it's developed technology capable of sealing out chaos. The walled cities were built for people to gradually move into in an orderly fashion, but chaos was curious about what would happen if people panicked, so it dropped a bigass piece of itself in the middle of America. The government rushed people into underground bunkers, and in the confusion thousands were separated from the loved ones, and when they came out the government assigned them cities based on age groups and level of contamination of chaos(they were still trying to "cure" Altered back then, though only the lesser altered were being considered for treatment. People like Brett had no shot in hell at any help like that.)
So there was basically a city of mostly kids with one adult supervisor to about every ten kids to keep things running. The cities were meant to be self-sufficient to avoid contact with the outside world as much as possible to lower chances of chaos contamination.
After about year of trying and trying and trying to get in touch with her parents and people in charge to help her find them, the main character, Sage, got pissed. Like to the point she just wasn't going to take it anymore.
The cities were built to keep stuff OUT, not keep people IN, because who would WANT to leave? Oh sure, there were curfews and everything, but just a year after the huge scare things still aren't totally organized and airtight. It wasn't easy for Sage to get out, but she did it with the help of an Altered--a guy called Jace, who actually looked totally normal except for his eyes, which supposedly made people insane if they looked into them for too long(they were supposedly the colour of chaos itself or something idk.) Jace's eyes let him see chaos THROUGH things, basically X-ray vision especially tuned to pick up chaos, but they also saw whatever chaos touched, or just whatever chaos felt like letting him see at the moment. Chaos apparently was curious about what would happen if Sage escaped, so Jace was able to see their escape route without even planning it.
Sage DID have something of a plan, though. She knew there were still plenty of Altered outside the cities and because of Jace's abilities, he could pick them out via "trails" of chaos they left behind them. Together they track down Brett, who's pretty much violently reclusive at this point because even the Altered don't like him--his lower half, somehow human and yet weirdly distorted, really freaks even THEM out.
Violently reclusive is when someone will shoot you for being on their property but doesn't put up signs warning you that they will shoot you. Or even showing you were their property begins.
Brett's pretty much that, but he doesn't have a gun or anything. For the most part he just avoids people when he sees them, but Jace and Sage are actually tracking him, and when they corner him in his little hidey hole(an abandoned mall, specifically the basement)he attacks them.
Jace can do some shit with his eyes, like he can freeze people like a snake can freeze its prey. So he tries that but for whatever reason it doesn't work on Brett(possibly doesn't affect Altered as much as humans) and Brett, assuming(reasonably enough) that Sage is also Altered, he goes after her after he's pinned Jace. Jace manages to yell out that Sage is only human, though, before Brett actually kills her.
Brett feels pretty bad about what he DOES to her though, which is throw her a dozen feet where she slammed into a concrete wall and snapped a rib with enough force that it busted out of her skin. And Jace manages to explain they want him to help them find their families--Jace was also separated, hence his motivation for helping Sage.
Brett takes them to another Altered, a strange guy, also a kid, who's kind of indescribable at the moment cause my attention span for this is running out. Basically he's glowy, yellowish, semi-transparent, and has something like a jellyfish for hair whose tentacles float on their own(doesn't sting you though, totally harmless.) He's good at knitting skin back together, which makes him very useful, which means a lot of Altered know about him and are in contact with him(his alteration actually makes him very pretty to look at, like those light-up jellyfish, and Sage crushes a little on him, though it doesn't go anywhere.) Through him, Jace and Sage gather a group of other people--kids like them--who want to find their families.
Anyway, they do that, and then years later they've dispersed and whatnot and that's when that plot starts.
The other plot was the group of the freak kids had already gathered together, and then when a couple of them got caught stealing clothes in a mall and were surrounded by mall cops, with Chaos Response on the way to lock them up, they randomly grabbed Sage out of the onlookers and held her hostage until they got out and away to their hideout at the time.
Sage at the time is convinced like most people that Altered totally hate humans(though it's mostly in reciprocation to humans hating on THEM first) so, convinced they're going to kill her or leave her in their cave and let her starve or something she offers to trade her knowledge of uncommon trails in the surrounding woods to help them get out of the area.
However, during their journey through the woods they run into a Chaos storm, which severely distorts time and reality around them, transporting them to they don't know where--another part of the world, or another WORLD altogether. There's monsters and everything. During this time Sage realizes they don't really hate her, they're just a bunch of scared, desperate, lonely kids. So when they get out, she offers to stick with them and help them--like go in stores and buy clothes and fast food places and buy food, which she can get away with cause she's just a normal human kid and all.
She does this for a couple years until after some heroics people are liking this ragtag band of monster kids. The kids are able to settle down and are left alone after they save the son of the country's leading presidential candidate from kidnappers. She's not elected, but she still has a lot of pull and people leave them alone.
Then Sage starts to realize she's really not needed anymore, and because the kids get busy with more heroics, heroics she can't help with, she gets pretty much left at "home" all the time and when they get back they're exhausted and have no time to be kids. So she's feeling neglected and all and no one has time for her anymore.
So Sage nuts up and just leaves. She goes home to South Carolina, finishes highschool, gets into college, gets out with a writing degree and joins a New York City newspaper to write in the defense of Altered.(She emailed her parents regularly during the two years she spent with the Altered kids, and after they started putting the updates on a blog when people found out about Sage and the kids, Sage took over the blog herself to try and give people the facts about the Altered kids and her relationship with them.)
Sage also helps co-found some efforts for Altered kids and people in general, and donates a good chunk of her yearly salary to them. She's actually pretty detached from her old friends and doesn't talk to them much--they feel really bad about neglecting her to the point she left, but they also know it's for the best, and they're still pretty busy as they become adults and people start wanting more responsibilities out of them. Like even though these Altered kids(now adults) can't get jobs, they're still living in a city sort of working as on-call heroes to deal with the more violent Altereds, so people expect them to pay taxes, even though they have to spend the bounties they bring in on Altereds entirely on food and clothing for themselves. They also don't get healthcare or any sort of insurance or anything from the government since they aren't considered human or have human rights.
But like I said. Taxes and whatnot. Which they have no way of actually paying, since the government doesn't recognize them as citizens or anything.
So it's complicated.
Anyway. I feel like the first one has more potential for plot right now, and I don't know if Backstory one does. I need to think on it some more but now it's finally out of my head I can think about other stuff.
SO I HAD THIS OTHER IDEA after I wrote all this where the world is chaotic(hahaha) and the country is sort of falling apart. It's at the stage where central government is all but dissolved, martial law is imposed, and while big cities live in tension with soldiers in the street, smaller towns have to deal with vandalizing, bandits, gangs, etc.
During this time a larger town sets up a sort of refugee camp for people fleeing smaller towns where order has completely dissolved. This camp also takes in Altered, less to help them than because helping them means they may stay and help back--and the town is kept safe largely by reputation of them being there. That reputation is not unfounded, though, which any gangs that attack will soon find out.
Sage is in college and wants to get back in to the city to see her family. But she's attacked on the road by a gang while in the country and they drag her out of her car. She manages to escape and run into the woods nearby. A gunshot clips her side and she barely makes it to the town, which her family used to visit from the city when she was young.
When she makes it to the town she finds out the city is in total lockdown and she can't get in. Sage decides to stay in the town and help out in the refugee camp until she can find a way to get to her family.
While there she ends up befriending the gang of Altered kids who stick around to help keep the town safe.
Past couple days I've been back on a Chaos kick. In case no one remembers or I never told you, there's this bit I had going forever ago called the Blacktop Kids that took place in a world where chaos was an actual physical substance. Basically it just fucks around for the hell of it, altering people with dramatic transformations, sweeping across countries in giant "storms", hanging around in puddles and oceans, and some people, "mediums" are given the power to manipulate chaos--and thus ANYTHING EVER--how they choose, according to what chaos wants them to do(or doesn't care.)
The whole idea behind chaos is that people just can't pin it down. They don't know whether it is sentient or is a collection of sentient consciousnesses, or completely mindless in its random actions, or if it has an agenda or just genuinely wants to fuck around because it can.
You can probably skip this next part, it's ADHD rambling
"Your Favourite Drug" by Porcelain and the Tramps is not a bad song. Ooooh, "Fuck Like A Star." That sounds Julian-esque, even if he's not a rockstar anymore. Let's check that one out.
Yeah that was an interesting beginning of the song, interesting in the sense it's rather in poor taste and I'd skip over it if I added this song to my collection. Censored or not.
Where was I. Oh yeah, why is some chick losing weight in a video in the related videos list for this band? I have news for you--THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICA IS OBSESSED WITH LOSING WEIGHT. NO ONE FINDS IT SPECIAL THAT YOU MADE A VIDEO ABOUT IT.
Anyway.
Oh for--can this woman not just leave me alone for half an hour?
...the hell is even going on in this. This is not a time lapse of her losing weight, which is what I was expecting. She's fucking jiggling her thighs and ass. Get off the internet, there's enough of this pointless shit around already.
"King of the World" by the same band is a good one.
Yeah. Hello my name is ADHD, I'll be your pilot for today. If we suddenly careen off-route don't be alarmed, it's totally normal. Expect extreme turbulence and random detours.
Okay seriously it is impossible to resolve a conversation with this woman. Just. Let it. Go. When someone takes over five minutes to respond to you, THEY ARE BUSY OR JUST DON'T WANT TO TALK. EITHER WAY. TAKE THE HINT.
End ADHD rambling--SERIOUSLY? WAY TO NOT TAKE THE HINT. ALL I SAID WAS HAHA THANKS, HOW ARE YOU STILL--YOU ARE BEATING A DEAD HORSE. IT'S BEYOND DEAD. IT'S FUCKING BONES AND MAGGOTS. JUST BURY IT ALREADY.
Anyway. There is a slightly more certain idea around that chaos, regardless of whether it's sentient or not, will actually LIKE certain people. People it deems interesting or useful, people that can utilize its properties in ways that entertain it.
The thing about chaos is that it seems to just be pretty damn infinite and its sense of humour is similar to that of a small, easily amused child and a schizophrenic serial killer. Mediums that are pretty close to it will describe it as being the "ultimate innocence"--it has no grasp of right and wrong or humanity. If its "entertainment" hurts people, it doesn't understand that that's bad or anything. Chaos, in essence, just wants to have a good time, regardless of everything and everyone else ever.
The thing about Chaos is that it will experiment. You know evolution? It's fun stuff. Now imagine evolution on acid with a side of opiates and several bottles of whiskey--you know, that stage of drunk where the craziest shit seems like total genius?
The outcome of that sort of mindset is often what happens to humans that are exposed to chaos that AREN'T meant to be mediums. Mediums can channel and manipulate chaos without being altered, and they CAN alter themselves IF they want and HOW they want. Others, aptly named the "Altered", have no control over their transformations and it will always be random every time.
Hence one of my favourites: I'm calling him Brett at the moment, but eh(makes me think of a frat boy.) You know centaurs? Body of a man on a body of a horse, connected at the torso and neck? He's like that. Except instead of him being a horse from the waist down, he's MORE HUMAN. His lower body is a second human body, attacked at the neck, inhumanly large and proportioned to function on hands and feet. It's kind of hard to describe and I don't know why I'm bothering, I have a sketch I'm going to post with this.
Buckle in folks, looks like we've got some ADHD turbulence up ahead.
Oh look at that another journal baww from a teenager about how much her life sucks and her friend's life sucks. OH NO HE SAID HE'S GOING TO KILL HIMSELF. 'Scuse me for being a dick but I've heard that too many times as an attention whore-out to believe it if I can't judge the person's suicidalness for myself.
Plus I like how she writes GUYS HELP MY FRIEND IS GOING TO KILL HIMSELF and then immediately after I'M NEVER GOING TO FIND TRUE LOVE BECAUSE LIFE HATES ME.
Way to subtlely(haha not really at all)suddenly make a potentially tragic issue about YOU. I mean she gave no indication she had feelings for him like that, so I can really only assume she used another person's serious issue to get you to read on about her own serious insecurities? Good job.
Well that was a bit shakey, but things seem to have calmed down now.
ANYWAY. This thing I've had kicking around in my brainspace. It involves Brett and others like him, though he's not the main--the completely normal human friend that keeps them all sane through their crazy weird shit is the main character.
It's got two possible plots, which may or may not mesh together depending on how well I can work them and whether I can decided or not between them. One is just a vague story beginning and the other is something I may just categorize under Backstory and formulate a real plot for. But if that's the case, why NOT just mesh them? Well the first takes place in a totally different time period of the world, after chaos has brought on an apocalypse jsut to see what would happen. The other happens in the very beginning days of chaos, when Altered are still freaky shit and are still a minority.
The first is after-backstory, after the human kid who got mixed up in a small gang of Altered kids on the run from haters is all growed up and they're all growed up and(this being the post-apocalypse) she's living on her own in a remote part of the country hidden by what's left of the Rocky Mountains. Someone of the freaks' group(now scattered across the country) puts the word out to her that a few
of them have banded together on the east coast to start trying to help rebuild society. Since she's in the far west, they want her to start out across the country and hit up the rest of their scattered members on the way to ask them to come help.
Disregard of HER ability to help is why she finally ditched them like two years before the apocalypse. In the earlier days(this being when the Altered ARE somewhat commonplace)she was stuck in a walled city, separated from her family with no idea what city THEY were in, after the world is convinced it's developed technology capable of sealing out chaos. The walled cities were built for people to gradually move into in an orderly fashion, but chaos was curious about what would happen if people panicked, so it dropped a bigass piece of itself in the middle of America. The government rushed people into underground bunkers, and in the confusion thousands were separated from the loved ones, and when they came out the government assigned them cities based on age groups and level of contamination of chaos(they were still trying to "cure" Altered back then, though only the lesser altered were being considered for treatment. People like Brett had no shot in hell at any help like that.)
So there was basically a city of mostly kids with one adult supervisor to about every ten kids to keep things running. The cities were meant to be self-sufficient to avoid contact with the outside world as much as possible to lower chances of chaos contamination.
After about year of trying and trying and trying to get in touch with her parents and people in charge to help her find them, the main character, Sage, got pissed. Like to the point she just wasn't going to take it anymore.
The cities were built to keep stuff OUT, not keep people IN, because who would WANT to leave? Oh sure, there were curfews and everything, but just a year after the huge scare things still aren't totally organized and airtight. It wasn't easy for Sage to get out, but she did it with the help of an Altered--a guy called Jace, who actually looked totally normal except for his eyes, which supposedly made people insane if they looked into them for too long(they were supposedly the colour of chaos itself or something idk.) Jace's eyes let him see chaos THROUGH things, basically X-ray vision especially tuned to pick up chaos, but they also saw whatever chaos touched, or just whatever chaos felt like letting him see at the moment. Chaos apparently was curious about what would happen if Sage escaped, so Jace was able to see their escape route without even planning it.
Sage DID have something of a plan, though. She knew there were still plenty of Altered outside the cities and because of Jace's abilities, he could pick them out via "trails" of chaos they left behind them. Together they track down Brett, who's pretty much violently reclusive at this point because even the Altered don't like him--his lower half, somehow human and yet weirdly distorted, really freaks even THEM out.
Violently reclusive is when someone will shoot you for being on their property but doesn't put up signs warning you that they will shoot you. Or even showing you were their property begins.
Brett's pretty much that, but he doesn't have a gun or anything. For the most part he just avoids people when he sees them, but Jace and Sage are actually tracking him, and when they corner him in his little hidey hole(an abandoned mall, specifically the basement)he attacks them.
Jace can do some shit with his eyes, like he can freeze people like a snake can freeze its prey. So he tries that but for whatever reason it doesn't work on Brett(possibly doesn't affect Altered as much as humans) and Brett, assuming(reasonably enough) that Sage is also Altered, he goes after her after he's pinned Jace. Jace manages to yell out that Sage is only human, though, before Brett actually kills her.
Brett feels pretty bad about what he DOES to her though, which is throw her a dozen feet where she slammed into a concrete wall and snapped a rib with enough force that it busted out of her skin. And Jace manages to explain they want him to help them find their families--Jace was also separated, hence his motivation for helping Sage.
Brett takes them to another Altered, a strange guy, also a kid, who's kind of indescribable at the moment cause my attention span for this is running out. Basically he's glowy, yellowish, semi-transparent, and has something like a jellyfish for hair whose tentacles float on their own(doesn't sting you though, totally harmless.) He's good at knitting skin back together, which makes him very useful, which means a lot of Altered know about him and are in contact with him(his alteration actually makes him very pretty to look at, like those light-up jellyfish, and Sage crushes a little on him, though it doesn't go anywhere.) Through him, Jace and Sage gather a group of other people--kids like them--who want to find their families.
Anyway, they do that, and then years later they've dispersed and whatnot and that's when that plot starts.
The other plot was the group of the freak kids had already gathered together, and then when a couple of them got caught stealing clothes in a mall and were surrounded by mall cops, with Chaos Response on the way to lock them up, they randomly grabbed Sage out of the onlookers and held her hostage until they got out and away to their hideout at the time.
Sage at the time is convinced like most people that Altered totally hate humans(though it's mostly in reciprocation to humans hating on THEM first) so, convinced they're going to kill her or leave her in their cave and let her starve or something she offers to trade her knowledge of uncommon trails in the surrounding woods to help them get out of the area.
However, during their journey through the woods they run into a Chaos storm, which severely distorts time and reality around them, transporting them to they don't know where--another part of the world, or another WORLD altogether. There's monsters and everything. During this time Sage realizes they don't really hate her, they're just a bunch of scared, desperate, lonely kids. So when they get out, she offers to stick with them and help them--like go in stores and buy clothes and fast food places and buy food, which she can get away with cause she's just a normal human kid and all.
She does this for a couple years until after some heroics people are liking this ragtag band of monster kids. The kids are able to settle down and are left alone after they save the son of the country's leading presidential candidate from kidnappers. She's not elected, but she still has a lot of pull and people leave them alone.
Then Sage starts to realize she's really not needed anymore, and because the kids get busy with more heroics, heroics she can't help with, she gets pretty much left at "home" all the time and when they get back they're exhausted and have no time to be kids. So she's feeling neglected and all and no one has time for her anymore.
So Sage nuts up and just leaves. She goes home to South Carolina, finishes highschool, gets into college, gets out with a writing degree and joins a New York City newspaper to write in the defense of Altered.(She emailed her parents regularly during the two years she spent with the Altered kids, and after they started putting the updates on a blog when people found out about Sage and the kids, Sage took over the blog herself to try and give people the facts about the Altered kids and her relationship with them.)
Sage also helps co-found some efforts for Altered kids and people in general, and donates a good chunk of her yearly salary to them. She's actually pretty detached from her old friends and doesn't talk to them much--they feel really bad about neglecting her to the point she left, but they also know it's for the best, and they're still pretty busy as they become adults and people start wanting more responsibilities out of them. Like even though these Altered kids(now adults) can't get jobs, they're still living in a city sort of working as on-call heroes to deal with the more violent Altereds, so people expect them to pay taxes, even though they have to spend the bounties they bring in on Altereds entirely on food and clothing for themselves. They also don't get healthcare or any sort of insurance or anything from the government since they aren't considered human or have human rights.
But like I said. Taxes and whatnot. Which they have no way of actually paying, since the government doesn't recognize them as citizens or anything.
So it's complicated.
Anyway. I feel like the first one has more potential for plot right now, and I don't know if Backstory one does. I need to think on it some more but now it's finally out of my head I can think about other stuff.
SO I HAD THIS OTHER IDEA after I wrote all this where the world is chaotic(hahaha) and the country is sort of falling apart. It's at the stage where central government is all but dissolved, martial law is imposed, and while big cities live in tension with soldiers in the street, smaller towns have to deal with vandalizing, bandits, gangs, etc.
During this time a larger town sets up a sort of refugee camp for people fleeing smaller towns where order has completely dissolved. This camp also takes in Altered, less to help them than because helping them means they may stay and help back--and the town is kept safe largely by reputation of them being there. That reputation is not unfounded, though, which any gangs that attack will soon find out.
Sage is in college and wants to get back in to the city to see her family. But she's attacked on the road by a gang while in the country and they drag her out of her car. She manages to escape and run into the woods nearby. A gunshot clips her side and she barely makes it to the town, which her family used to visit from the city when she was young.
When she makes it to the town she finds out the city is in total lockdown and she can't get in. Sage decides to stay in the town and help out in the refugee camp until she can find a way to get to her family.
While there she ends up befriending the gang of Altered kids who stick around to help keep the town safe.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)