Madison Rye Progress

Her smile hid around every corner. It was kept in dusty boxes. It showed up in shadow and reflection in equal measure.

Her smile was there on May Then My Name's face, there during that monologue. That wild laughter. That glint in her eye that spoke to something either mischievous or as though it were covering some hidden ache, and she could never tell which. Her smile and her proud defiance in the heat of the lamps, as though daring the world to take her as anything other than her true self.

Her smile was there on her little Dot's face, when the light hit just right or the skunklet had just gotten the perfect idea for a painting. Her smile and that look of concentration, the way her brow furrowed when hunting down just the right sound or just the right brush.

And her smile was there on her own face, whenever she presented as a skunk. That sad smile that spoke of weariness and devotion both as Motes once more begged to sleep in bed with her. Her smile and that look of utter wounding, utter despair that had shown itself so rarely, and yet which had still shown itself. She knew it had graced her own face when first she realized that Beholden simply was not there. Not anymore.

Her smile hid around every corner, flying in her face like so much spider-silk in autumn, leaving its presence known in the faint tingle of afterimages.

Her smile was tucked away into dusty boxes, exocortices devoted to their years together, their centuries, mere afterimages to be brought up and held like wrinkled photos, remembered with new context.

Her smile was in her reflection in the mirror when she wakes up and it was there on the face of so many of her cocladists, an afterimage as they stood in the dark backstage, waiting for their cue.

Afterimages were all she had left, and so it was her job, her duty to Motes — who had not been the same since — and to the troupe — still reeling — to be their custodian. It was her role to cherish every one of these afterimages of a smile, to remember her for them.

Changing it up from the hand labeler today~ I am on the right side of the second picture with a bee plush as a hat and a moth wing cape, and that is True Name standing just above it!

This is the coolest thing that has happened to me in ages.

THIS PLACE HAS SWINGS AND THE VULP WHO WAS GIVING THE CONCERT GAVE ME A PUSH

Look at how cute my winter coat is!

That was by far my favorite shift ever. I kept 'forgetting' to eat (I would get a meal and feed it to an animal or the dragon or someone else) so that I kept getting slower and slower over time time like I was getting worn out. It ended with another person with vaguely kid vibes and I making a 'slide' by spilling space lube in a line and running at it really fast to slip really far, before True Name (@hamratza) had to literally drag me off the playground to the evac shuttle to make it home.

That was just so fulfilling.

A Finger Pointing made her lunch (grill chee, tomato soup, a rainbow snowcone, and a plushie) and also Mirischaev, the one who gave the concert yesterday, finished the snowman!

@hamratza has been such an unrelentingly positive force in my life, from giving me this lovely roleplay venue to encouraging me in my skunkery to just plain making me feel good. Hff.

Motes got too stressed because of $PLOT and started pulling out her fur, so the story is someone prescribed her a benzo to chill her out, which manifested in-game as having narcolepsy, which I played by waiting until others woke her rather than waking her myself. I could emote things, but not speak, so I kept emoting her curling around a plushie or hugging her own tail or whatever.

I did so in the bar by Silas, who has a habit of being a bit of a clown, and he just latched onto it as the cutest thing, replacing the steel flooring beneath Motes with carpet, and then slowly building an altar of plushies (and, for some reason, Black Russians) around her, putting out calls on the radio for everyone to hunt down or buy plushies to pile on top of her, trying to convince logistics to buy crates of plushes, even putting a blanket cape on her. Soon, there was a whole, like...Motes Donation Center complete with Silas and Mirischaev standing guard to keep anyone from waking her for nearly two hours. Since she wound up starving and dehydrated, she moved at quarter speed, so they even carried her to the escape shuttle.

Funnest shift in a while, and I spent 90% of it asleep. Things have been really bad the last few days, but this was a bit of brightness.

Today's shenanigans (and a bit of yesterday's):

• Motes, still dealing with narcolepsy, picks up a janitor shift anyway, asks the crew to wake her if they find her passed out. The paramedic, an android, asks what level of force is authorized, and Motes, joking, said 'Violence!' and the end results from the paramedic were:
  • being injected with a bit of epinephrine
  • being laid down in the puddle she was supposed to be mopping
  • being dragged off to the morgue and stuffed tht freezer. When Motes woke up, the paramedic said, "There are some who say that psychological torture is more effective than physical torture. Good day," and showed her out of the med bay
  • being dragged to a little altar of dead bodies the paramedic had built in corpse disposal
• Motes renaming the annoying side quest bot with tags like ENEMY and KILL ON SIGHT and WILL PERISH SAD AND ALONE, UNLOVED, UNWANTED
• Motes, despite being a narcoleptic pacifist, taking on a security cadet job, but when the captain refused refugees, she went Big Motes and quit very dramatically in front of him and went to go work in medical where they actually care
• mime Motes having an execution performed in front of her then getting drugged by the CMO
• Motes and True Name dying together hand on hand because the shuttle was spaced by a bomb (not canon, since that was kind of rule-breaking, and also that would be permadeath). There is a video (3:20 for the meat of it, sorry for discord link).
• May being a therapist and working in the med bay, and at one point calling all the station to the central plaza to award the clown and two doctors certificates of merit for "ABSOLUTELY rescuing the person who was VERY DEFINITELY VERY DEAD and not just pretending to die most dramatically."
• May helping out someone who was cloned into a different species and was overwhelmed with frantic dysphoria leading to them trying to steal her old body back.

A good chunk of the station was "Definitely Motes's!" by the end, with several things being "Definitely NOT Motes's!"

10 year old head of personnel winds up as acting CO on her second day dealing with syndies, winds up burned to death beyond recoverability in a plasma fire set by an agent while trying to rescue one of two total sec officers.

(from drafts, forgot to post :P)

They tried blowing up my office four times! It was so much! The janitor rescued my puppy (and won a medal for that!), and I never saw so much as a scratch. So traumatized by the end that I started crying on comms and the psychologist told me to come to their office, where they had covered the floor with plushies. Just rolled around in soft toys, sobbing, for like ten minutes. It was great.

A playlist of replays of Motes dying or going crit in interesting ways :P Click through for the actual playlist.

(Was too lazy to record with sound for most of them, which is fine. SS14 sound is not really too exciting)

This is the coolest thing that has happened to me in ages.

THIS PLACE HAS SWINGS AND THE VULP WHO WAS GIVING THE CONCERT GAVE ME A PUSH

Look at how cute my winter coat is!

That was by far my favorite shift ever. I kept 'forgetting' to eat (I would get a meal and feed it to an animal or the dragon or someone else) so that I kept getting slower and slower over time time like I was getting worn out. It ended with another person with vaguely kid vibes and I making a 'slide' by spilling space lube in a line and running at it really fast to slip really far, before True Name (@hamratza) had to literally drag me off the playground to the evac shuttle to make it home.

That was just so fulfilling.

A Finger Pointing made her lunch (grill chee, tomato soup, a rainbow snowcone, and a plushie) and also Mirischaev, the one who gave the concert yesterday, finished the snowman!

@hamratza has been such an unrelentingly positive force in my life, from giving me this lovely roleplay venue to encouraging me in my skunkery to just plain making me feel good. Hff.

Motes got too stressed because of $PLOT and started pulling out her fur, so the story is someone prescribed her a benzo to chill her out, which manifested in-game as having narcolepsy, which I played by waiting until others woke her rather than waking her myself. I could emote things, but not speak, so I kept emoting her curling around a plushie or hugging her own tail or whatever.

I did so in the bar by Silas, who has a habit of being a bit of a clown, and he just latched onto it as the cutest thing, replacing the steel flooring beneath Motes with carpet, and then slowly building an altar of plushies (and, for some reason, Black Russians) around her, putting out calls on the radio for everyone to hunt down or buy plushies to pile on top of her, trying to convince logistics to buy crates of plushes, even putting a blanket cape on her. Soon, there was a whole, like...Motes Donation Center complete with Silas and Mirischaev standing guard to keep anyone from waking her for nearly two hours. Since she wound up starving and dehydrated, she moved at quarter speed, so they even carried her to the escape shuttle.

Funnest shift in a while, and I spent 90% of it asleep. Things have been really bad the last few days, but this was a bit of brightness.

Today's shenanigans (and a bit of yesterday's):

• Motes, still dealing with narcolepsy, picks up a janitor shift anyway, asks the crew to wake her if they find her passed out. The paramedic, an android, asks what level of force is authorized, and Motes, joking, said 'Violence!' and the end results from the paramedic were:
  • being injected with a bit of epinephrine
  • being laid down in the puddle she was supposed to be mopping
  • being dragged off to the morgue and stuffed tht freezer. When Motes woke up, the paramedic said, "There are some who say that psychological torture is more effective than physical torture. Good day," and showed her out of the med bay
  • being dragged to a little altar of dead bodies the paramedic had built in corpse disposal
• Motes renaming the annoying side quest bot with tags like ENEMY and KILL ON SIGHT and WILL PERISH SAD AND ALONE, UNLOVED, UNWANTED
• Motes, despite being a narcoleptic pacifist, taking on a security cadet job, but when the captain refused refugees, she went Big Motes and quit very dramatically in front of him and went to go work in medical where they actually care
• mime Motes having an execution performed in front of her then getting drugged by the CMO
• Motes and True Name dying together hand on hand because the shuttle was spaced by a bomb (not canon, since that was kind of rule-breaking, and also that would be permadeath). There is a video (3:20 for the meat of it, sorry for discord link).
• May being a therapist and working in the med bay, and at one point calling all the station to the central plaza to award the clown and two doctors certificates of merit for "ABSOLUTELY rescuing the person who was VERY DEFINITELY VERY DEAD and not just pretending to die most dramatically."
• May helping out someone who was cloned into a different species and was overwhelmed with frantic dysphoria leading to them trying to steal her old body back.

A good chunk of the station was "Definitely Motes's!" by the end, with several things being "Definitely NOT Motes's!"

10 year old head of personnel winds up as acting CO on her second day dealing with syndies, winds up burned to death beyond recoverability in a plasma fire set by an agent while trying to rescue one of two total sec officers.

(from drafts, forgot to post :P)

They tried blowing up my office four times! It was so much! The janitor rescued my puppy (and won a medal for that!), and I never saw so much as a scratch. So traumatized by the end that I started crying on comms and the psychologist told me to come to their office, where they had covered the floor with plushies. Just rolled around in soft toys, sobbing, for like ten minutes. It was great.