This is how it feels in my head a lot
"Okay, so this is the RPG lot," shadowravyn said, gesturing to what appeared to be a giant campground. “"This is where you will be staying.”
However, instead of a collection of tents, there was a series of walled compounds of various sizes. There were four distinctive enclosures up front, close to the entrance of the lot, with others further away. The others seemed smaller, almost faded in the distance, compared to the size and sharp detail of the four up close. Each compound was markedly different from its neighbors; the first had a massive stone wall with murder holes cut into the side and gargoyles perched on turrets above. The second wasn’t so much a wall as an opaque barrier; it pulsed with magic and occasionally different flashes of color would shoot across the surface. The third was a simple stockade made from stout wooden beams. This wall clearly showed signs of battle: claw-marks and chemical burns pitted the surface. The fourth was a wrought-iron fence; patterns of dragons, hawks, and wolves could be seen worked into the metal. “This here," shadowravyn pointed to the enclosure behind the wrought-iron fence, “is your compound.” The word 'Scion' was emblazoned over the gated entrance, through which they could see a long paved lane, surrounded by lush greenery. An appreciative murmur rippled through the crowd behind her. "You'll notice, it's currently the largest on the lot. There are so many of you already, and I know for a fact that more will show up as the game progresses." There were nods of agreement and knowing smiles from some of the assembled.
A young man in a red shirt tentatively raised his hand. "Excuse me, miss, but why are they all walled? It seems a bit...forbidding."
shadowravyn gave a long-suffering sigh, and gestured to the other three enclosures. “That’s a good question, Red-Shirt Number 27. Some of your neighbors can be a bit…feisty. Walls are the easiest way to make sure that you don’t all start to bleed into one another. It can be hard enough juggling three or four RPGs at a time; with no way to keep you all separated, it’d be damn near impossible.”
As the tour continued inside the lot, the signs for the other three compounds became visible. ‘Burning Wheel’ was carved in stone above a rusting portcullis, ‘Shadowrun’ was held by two bored-looking air elementals, and ‘Deadlands’ was fashioned out of the bones of some impossibly large and dangerous animal, if the fangs and claws it sported were any indication. “Believe me,” shadowravyn continued, “these walls aren’t going to keep you locked in. You guys will get out more often than I’d like, distracting me with all sorts of ideas and plans and bits of dialogue. In fact, I’m a little surprised by how quiet it is now. Usually there’s someone around.”
No sooner than she’d finished speaking, a tunnel appeared in the swirling walls of the ‘Shadowrun’ compound, and a petite Asian girl walked out. The bright blue knitted cap with kitty ears gave her the appearance of a young girl barely in her teens, but that was at odds with the easy way she wore both guns and grenades. She was leading a mixed group of humans and dwarves, chattering away at them a mile a minute.
“Speak of the devil…” shadowravyn sighed. “Hello, K-Nyan.”
Nyan glanced up, noticed shadowravyn, and came trotting over, leaving her friends at the mouth of the tunnel. “Oh, shadowravyn! Just the person I was looking for! I realized that I’d never figured out who my siblings are, and I figure that with my birthday coming up, that’s something I should know. So I decided on their ages and races and whatnot, and so, there they are.” She waved at the six people behind her; they returned the gesture with slightly less enthusiasm. “I know game starts in just a few hours, but that should give you plenty of time to come up with extensive backgrounds and personalities for them, right?” She gave shadowravyn a grin that could only be described as ‘unsure-but-game.’
“Now, Nyan, I doubt-”
“You ain’t about t’spend time on a buncha one-time NPCs when y’still owe me another post, are you?” The door to the stockade opened, slamming into the wall behind it with enough force to make the ‘Deadlands’ sign tremble. Emma-Lorelei Elizabeth leaned casually against the wall, the single lock of pure white hair almost blazing in the sun. “Y’do remember you were gonna write one last post, right?”
“Well, yes, I was-”
“I’m sorry,” Nyan interrupted, “-but shadowravyn’s got stuff to do for games that are still going. Yours is done and over with. Whatever she promised to do for you can wait. It’s not like it matters anymore.” Her tone was saccharine; her expression smug.
“Little girl, I am not someone you wanna fuck with,” Emily said, sauntering over to where Nyan and shadowravyn were standing. Her guns were slung low on her hips, and she wore them with an air of cool competence. “Now shut up. Grown-ups are talkin’.” Clearly dismissing the other girl, she turned and focused on shadowravyn, “Like I was sayin’, you planned on writin’ one last post right? When you gonna get it done?”
“Don’t see the rush,” Nyan muttered. “S’not like you’ll get a response.”
Without even turning around, Emily reached back and smacked Nyan in the head, knocking her kitty hat to the ground. “Thought I told you to shut it.”
“All right, ladies, let’s take it easy,” shadowravyn said, moving to stand between the two. “There’s no call for violence. We can sort this out, no problems.”
“Oh, of course! Let’s work on stuff for them! Never mind that we’ve never worked on anything extra for Ali!” A third voice echoed across the courtyard, able to be heard even above the grinding noise made by the rising portcullis. “Let’s spend hours writing posts and backstory for these other characters. Who cares about what Ali is doing when game isn’t on?” A short, wiry woman, nondescript to the point of plainness, headed over to join them. With anyone else, the strident tone and body language would have resulted in an angry march; with Ali, there was still too much of an element of stealth to make it anything other than a skulk.
shadowravyn looked beseechingly up at the sky, pleading for a lightning bolt or some other disastrous occurrence to free her from this headache of her own making. The skies above remained blue and cheerful.
Ali kept up her running monologue of complaints as she closed the distance. “Both of you are selfish, that’s the problem. I mean, the spoiled twelve-year old can’t be satisfied with still having a game, and the trampy gunslinger can’t be satisfied with everything else that’s been written. By all the dead gods, it’s enough to make me sick.”
“Twelve?! I’m almost eighteen!”
“Oh, y’don’t wanna take that tone with me, you arrogant bitch. I’ll shoot your ass so quick…”
“Bring it. I’m faster than both of you put together.” Ali loosened her rapier in its sheath at her side. “I don’t have to wait for the right card to come up.”
Spotting her chance, shadowravyn slunk away, leaving the three women squabbling over initiative. People were streaming out of the compounds, drawn to the sound of raised voices. “Why don’t I show you the next lot,” she suggested to her tour group. “It’s just over there. And let’s pick up the pace, shall we?”
“Over here, we have the Story lot.” It looked a lot like the RPG lot, complete with enclosures, except it was much bigger. There were whole sections of cities that could be seen; to one side, there was a bustling Regency London street, complete with prostitutes, vendors hawking their wares, and the choking scent of coal fog. To another was a bit of mid-90’s Tokyo, the electric lights from hundreds of different stores and arcades splashing against the backdrop of Tokyo Tower.
However, shadowravyn wasn’t even able to begin to direct their attention to anything specific before being accosted by a group of leggy girls, showcased by their incredibly tiny skirts. “We want to talk to you,” said the dark-haired one. Except for her purple eyes, she was the only one who could pass for the traditional Japanese schoolgirl that she and her friends claimed to be.
“Perhaps this isn’t the best time…?” This from the shy, blue-haired girl at the back. Her protest was ignored by her friends.
“For the longest time, we had the run of this place. We really only had to share it with that female cop from New York and her flying boyfriend. But suddenly, you get all these brand new ideas and suddenly, we get nothing! You haven’t written a drabble in months, haven’t put out a new chapter in any of your fics since 2006 and yet can still grind out 20K words for your new, fancy, original ideas.”
“Oh, don’t think that being an original idea gets you anywhere!” A carriage had stopped on the side of the Regency streetscape, and a young woman’s head appeared in the window. “shadowravyn came up with my story idea over three years ago, and I only have a prologue and half of a first chapter!”
“You’ll get written, Willow, don’t worry.” shadowravyn assured the lady in the carriage. And to the group of girls in sailor suits: “I already have some ideas for this year’s Anniversary Challenge. They’re even outlined. I just need some spare time to actually write them…”
“Three years is nothing!” Another new group on the scene, this time made up of four girls and two boys; their leader was a teenager with long black hair in two braids down to the small of her back. “She started our story back in high school. Guess how long we’ve been languishing in a back drawer. So don’t trust her when she promises she’ll write you-she lies!”
“Cassie, you know you guys were supposed to be a manga,” shadowravyn said feebly, flinching back from the angry young woman. “Once I find an artist, you guys’ll get your story.”
“And have you been looking for this artist who will magically lead to our manga?” Cassie demanded, hands on hips.
“Well, I haven’t not been looking…” shadowravyn was spared from Cassie’s blistering response by the sound of a gunshot, followed by a scream of pain, back on the RPG lot. Her temper, already brittle, snapped. “Oh, that just fuckin’ tears it! Everybody, back to your compounds! Now!” Several of the girls looked inclined to argue, but they were drawn away by their smarter comrades. shadowravyn turned to the group of Scion NPCs. “Go ahead and start exploring your compound. I’ll be in as soon as I finish taking care of this bullshit over here.” Without waiting for a reply, she spun on her heel and marched back into the RPG lot.
Ali and Nyan were still standing where she had left them, both of them staring at the gun in Ali’s hand with something akin to amazement. Emma was a few yards away, holding a piece of cloth to a man’s bleeding stomach. “Jesus, Eli, it’s like you’ve got a magnet in your gut or somethin’. How’d you even get hit?”
“I dunno,” he gasped. “I was just standin’ on the corner, mindin’ my own fuckin’ business…”
“What. The. Hell. Happened.” shadowravyn was not amused.
Nyan and Ali exchanged uneasy glances, and eventually Nyan answered. “Well, we finally decided that Alara was the quickest, and that’s she’d probably go first. She stole my gun, but she didn’t understand how to use it, and it accidentally went off. Emily dodged, and I guess her boyfriend got hit ‘cause the next thing we hear is him cursing up a storm.”
“Put the gun away,” shadowravyn said through clenched teeth. “Ali, go back inside.”
“But-”
“Now is not the time for you to be protesting anything. I will write you a goddamned post if and when I feel so inclined. Now get back to your compound.”
Ali, realizing the relationship between discretion and valor, chose to comply. “Nyan, go Treat Eli, and then take your siblings back into Seattle. They can get names, races, maybe even ages, but I am not writing each one of them a complex backstory. I have better things to do.”
“I don’t wanna get treated by no fuckin’ Celestial huckster!” Eli gasped out. “Where’s the preacher?”
shadowravyn whirled on him. “I can’t even tell you how many levels of offensive that was. Fine. Walk your ass back into town and find Preacher Sam. I hope every step reminds you how stupid that comment was. And you, Emma,” she said, fixing the dark-haired woman with a steely glare. “You’ll get your final post when I chose to write it. Until then, shut the hell up. Nyan wasn’t wrong-your game is over. Deal with it and move on.”
She stood, hands on hips and hackles raised, until all of the various characters had returned to their respective enclosures. Then, with a sigh of relief, sank to the ground. Judging by the bloodstain, she was sitting on the same corner where Eli had been shot. She couldn’t bring herself to care.
I am so tired… she thought, holding her head in her hands. I’d really like a nap right now. Yeah, a nap would be glorious.
“Excuse me?”
Wearily, shadowravyn raised her head. Nepthys, the ‘Helpful Goddess’, stood in front of her. “We’re all inside and making ourselves comfortable. Did you want to come in and start working?”
“No. I think I’m gonna go play a few rounds of Freecell and catch up on LJ. Someone has to have posted a meme by now.”
“But it’s barely been an hour! There’s so much work to be done!”
“And I’ll get to it, I promise. Just a brief check of my email, maybe another shower, lunch so shogunhb doesn’t get mad at me, some Spider Solitaire-I’ll be back before you miss me.” And with that, shadowravyn was gone.
“And there goes another wasted day,” Nepthys sighed.
Of course, even though I banged this out quite quickly (hence the incredibly unpolished nature of the piece), it still represents time when I should have been working on other stuff. Ah well, it amused me.
Does anyone else ever feel this way?