merlestories - Tumblr blog

[merlestories]

Transformers OC concept: Wheelbug

Female decepticon scout, primary colors black and lime green

Turns from a three-wheeler (two in front, one in back) into a chunky little bot with one wheel sticking up a little behind her head, giving her a hunchbacked look

Infiltration specialist, equipped with a stealth module and integrated electrovenom punch daggers. Carries a silenced EMP rifle for long range and a short-barrel, overpowered shotgun for if things get sticky. Other gear includes climbing claws and a grappling hook.

Three-optics configuration, Sam Fisher style, because some looks are just too cool. Beak-like mouthplate covers most of the lower half of her face most of the time, even outside of combat; she has a baby face underneath.

Despite herself, she is a complete Earth culture fangirl, matched only by her devotion to Megatron - though she far prefers his older writing to his later despotism, she doggedly clings to faith in the Decepticon cause. Even if she really does love those Earth movies and songs...

[merlestories]

Upon reanimating, he is immediately mistaken for a supervillain. A naked supervillain who can't stop setting everything around him on fire.

... I may be having some issues nailing down the tone I'm going for.

Blackstone

Mob mook in the 20s accidentally cuts himself on an ancient obsidian statue. This allows the volcano god trapped within to steal his body, leaving him trapped within for decades.

Modern day, a museum robbery gone wrong leaves someone’s dying blood on the statue - freeing his mind to inhabit the statue itself, and the god’s power locked within it.

Now, trapped in the modern day with a body of volcanic glass and molten stone, he has to figure out how to get his body back from the being that stole it, now a king of the seedy underworld…

[merlestories]

Blackstone

Mob mook in the 20s accidentally cuts himself on an ancient obsidian statue. This allows the volcano god trapped within to steal his body, leaving him trapped within for decades.

Modern day, a museum robbery gone wrong leaves someone's dying blood on the statue - freeing his mind to inhabit the statue itself, and the god's power locked within it.

Now, trapped in the modern day with a body of volcanic glass and molten stone, he has to figure out how to get his body back from the being that stole it, now a king of the seedy underworld...

[merlestories]

It’s time for copyright to die.

Now that I have your attention: we need to burn the legal concept of “copyright” down to the ground and start over.

Not because writers, musicians, and other creatives don’t deserve remuneration for their work, but because copyright has become much more a yoke around the neck of creators than a shield in their hand.

Article 13 shows the potential harm of this, but it’s only one example in a long list. Fanfic writers, music remixers, meme-makers, filmmakers and reviewers on YouTube and off of it - they are all creators, but they fear what the law may do to them, and for good reason.

Musicians see only the barest fraction of what their work earns, while middlemen take the lion’s share and turn around to claim they need to protect creative freedoms when they do the exact opposite.

Peaceful action is necessary, and on a massive scale.

[merlestories]

Gemini

The doctors thought they were twins, at first.

Two babies, born healthy and strong, one boy, one girl. Their mother was exhausted but happy, and as both infants gave their first cry, everything seemed perfect.

The oddness crept in subtly, as they grew. They only ever cried at the same time, never singly - but how strange would it be for one infant to not react to the other's moods? As they learned to toddle, they were close. Of course, they were close, two twins being raised together. They were always playing together and sharing toys, as so many siblings do - but all the time? The two never wanted to play different games, not once. And even the most loving siblings fight now and again - but they didn't. Not once in their first few years of life.

It was only when they learned to speak that their oddity became once and for all too obvious to ignore.

[merlestories]

For a Good Time, Call

Any other stall would have worked as well.

Gene wondered about that, after the fact. Was it really all down to a roll of the dice, or was he doomed, even then?

The bar was just the kind of dive he liked. Dim, run-down, with the kind of bartender who knew that his job was to serve drinks, not to be your best friend or your therapist. In short, a place where he could get blind drunk and not have anybody bother him about it.

It was Gene's birthday - which one had gotten a little hazy after enough drinks, but he thought it was somewhere in the thirties - and he was in a bar, doing his best to punish his liver. It was the closest he'd come to a social occasion in weeks, and that was the way he liked it. As far as Gene was concerned, as long as he had food and a place to sleep, the rest of humanity could go hang.

In due time, of course, the beers took their toll, and Gene stumbled unsteadily into the back of the half-empty bar. His balance was too untrustworthy for a urinal, so he stumbled into the first stall that caught his eye and settled down to his business.

According to universal law, he let his eyes wander the scrawled graffiti adorning the walls of the stall - mostly the same old kind of thing, lewd poetry and an obscene doodle or two from the more creatively-minded bar patrons of times past - until one patch caught his attention.

It was small, neat script, on a patch of stall wall that was strangely clear. The other graffiti stopped dead before impinging on it, leaving an empty space several inches' wide around the message on all sides, as though steering clear of its own accord.

"For a good time, call ###-####."

Gene blinked a few times, then looked again. The numbers were right there on the wall, in black ink, clear as crystal, but as soon as he looked away, he couldn't remember what they had been.

Another try, with the same results. He couldn't be THAT drunk, could he? Not if he were still staying mostly upright.

No way could he stop here. Keeping his eyes carefully on the message, Gene pulled out his phone and dialed in the number, one digit at a time. He couldn't look away from it to make sure he was getting it right, but when he hit the "Send" button, his phone started dialing. After two rings, it picked up.

"Hello, Gene." The voice on the other end was cultured, precise, and unquestionably female. Gene perked up, and opened his mouth, but before he could get out a word, she cut him off. "You would like a good time, we understand. It will be delivered shortly."

Without another word, she hung up, and the connection went dead. Gene gaped at his phone - and saw to his surprise that it showed the home screen, no sign of an ended call. He opened up the log and saw no record of the number he had dialed - no calls made that day at all. Even the redial just called the pizza place he'd ordered from the night before. Gene was damn sure he wasn't drunk enough to imagine a whole phone call.

He was just about to try calling the number again when a bolt of lightning struck, and everything went away.

---

Gene opened his eyes, and his first thought was that he'd died and gone to Heaven. The most beautiful woman he'd ever seen was straddling him, wearing nothing but a smile, just drawing back from what must have been one hell of a kiss - and as she rolled her hips, it became immediately clear to him that he was dressed to match her.

His first impulse had been to bolt upright, but she had his arms pinned with her hands and his hips pinned with the rest of her, and despite his confusion, the urgency to leave the bed seemed suddenly far less pressing.

"Happy birthday, Mr. President..." she murmured in a soft, melodious voice, and laughed to herself. Gene could only gasp and arch, rising to meet her, words beyond him as she tormented him in the most enjoyable way.

The small fraction of his brain not otherwise occupied agreed that it certainly was "a good time".

Afterward, as she lay cuddled against him, Gene finally mustered the energy to talk - and realized that he didn't even know her name, though her face seemed vaguely familiar.

"So, uh. I told you it's my birthday?" It sounded lame even as he said it, and he winced in anticipation, but she just made a happy-sounding little noise and snuggled closer against him.

"Of course I know. You told me a month ago." Her voice was barely audible, sliding towards a satisfied sleep, but her words kicked some part of his brain back into gear, and he shifted, sitting up straighter against the pillows.

"A month ago? We've been," Gene mentally flailed, settling on a hopefully-neutral enough word, "together for a month?"

"A month?" The woman stretched, threatening to distract Gene entirely from the prospect of talking, and moved so she could look over at him. "Gene, we've been dating for almost two years. Did you hit your head?"

"Two years..." he muttered to himself, and the memory rose in his mind's eye. He had seen her from across the room, when his parents had insisted on taking him out for dinner - they were in town to see some show or other, and he hadn't been able to find an excuse. She had been sitting at the bar of the restaurant, and his parents had seen him staring and urged him to go over and talk to her. But he'd waved it off, knowing he had no chance. Knowing she'd never be interested in talking to someone like him. Hadn't he?

No, the memories rising in the back of Gene's mind informed him, he hadn't. He had gotten up at his parents' urging and gone to talk to her - to Fey, the name came easily now. And to his surprise, the two of them had hit it off. Made a date for the next weekend. One date had turned into two, and two into more, and now he had the ring he'd saved up for stashed in his desk, waiting for just the right evening.

Why had he blanked on her name there? Must have been more tired than he realized. Of course he knew Fey's name. He'd loved the sound of it from the first moment she told him.

---

And Gene was sitting in the stall of that dingy little bar, phone in one hand, staring at a patch on the wall that held a neat little message and an unknowable number. Fey had chosen that bar because one of his favorite bands was playing there - playing a genre of music he'd never heard before meeting her, but which had opened up a whole new world of sounds to him that he never would have encountered before she came into his life.

That ring was in his pocket, now. He could feel the weight of it in its little velvet case. He had been thinking of giving it to her, wasn't sure if it was the right time yet, had walked into the bathroom and into a stall to gather his courage, had seen a curious number written on a wall, had called it, and -

Gene had both sets of memories. He had come to this bar to drink himself blind, alone, and he had come to it with Fey, to spend his birthday with the woman he loved. Both were impossible, and both were true.

With shaking hands, he stared at the number on the wall and dialed it, carefully, not wanting to miss a digit. He had to know what was going on, whether he was going insane or if the world had gone mad around him. The phone rang three times, and a familiar voice spoke in his ear.

"Hello again, Gene. I hope you've enjoyed your good time."

"Listen, who- what are you? I came in here, and - "

"And you had a good time, I am sure? I hope you have found it satisfying. You had best get back outside. She is waiting for you." The voice was precise, every syllable impossible not to hear, though he was used to hearing it in a far warmer cadence. Fey's voice. He knew it better than he knew his own. "If you are in any way unhappy, then please do not hesitate to call back."

The phone disconnected with that final word, the click of that "back" indistinguishable from the sound of the call ending.

Gene sat and stared at the phone. He could hear the music from outside. It was the first few notes of his favorite song; Fey would want to dance with him to it. He could spend years, just watching her dance.

Gene looked at the number on the wall one last time, and made his choice.

[merlestories]

Magic generated by life Maybe by stars? It flows from stars to planets along space-born ley lines and naturally concentrates in humans, giving them a small reserve of their own power, mostly just enough to light a candle, but some have more potential.

Maybe not.

Magical Starfighter

Sci-fi-esque setting driven by magic. Warring planets defended by transforming spacecraft - flight controls turn into a G-Gundam-style setup for robot mode.

Macguffins being fought over - the resources to produce new starfighters, or maybe the attunement gizmos to allow people to pilot them.

[merlestories]

Witches of Things

Book witch: Many witches like books, but some take it a step further. They hoard beloved tomes, or go so far as to live in libraries, carving out spaces that can only be reached by walking just the right path through the stacks. Many of them find daytime work in these very libraries, and woe unto any who return a library book with water-damaged pages.

Forest witch: a love for nature is found in most witches’ hearts, and none more so than these. Sometimes mistaken for druids, these witches practice their craft among the trees, tending hidden herb gardens and often living in ivy-covered houses not built, but grown of living wood.

Forge witch: an unusual breed, these witches hear the song of hammer and anvil, working charms directly into the glowing metal they work. The products of their craft last as long as they are loved by their owners, never wearing out - lucky is the family to own a witch-forged heirloom. Those who would use it for ill should beware, however - a witch-made sword can turn back to strike its owner if used against a cousin in the craft. Witches are many things, but rarely foolish.

[merlestories]

Arthur Dunwoody saw cats, and it worried him.

On the face of it, seeing cats was a pefectly normal thing to do; the sleepy town of Kettersdal-on-Woods had its fair share of them, from fat pampered squash-faced duchesses looking imperiously out of windows to the clans of moggies keeping the nighttime alleyways full of yowling until someone, sleepily grumbling, threw open a window and a shoe or two.

No, what worried Arthur was that the cats he saw weren’t there. They weren’t there at all hours of the day; he saw them at breakfast, walking about at lunchtime when the weather was clear, even saw them padding along the bookshelves in the little library where he spent much of his free time, searching rows of books he’d read a dozen times or more in hopes of finding one that had eluded his notice.

These cats were all colors of the rainbow, all patterns of cat-kind, and they walked through doors and walls as if they weren’t there - ignoring everyone but Arthur, as if they walked in a world empty but for him and themselves.

[merlestories]

Magical Starfighter

Sci-fi-esque setting driven by magic. Warring planets defended by transforming spacecraft - flight controls turn into a G-Gundam-style setup for robot mode.

Macguffins being fought over - the resources to produce new starfighters, or maybe the attunement gizmos to allow people to pilot them.

[merlestories]

Wizard Cops

The night was dark and full of eyes. Sadiq could feel them looking at him.

He hurried through the crowded streets, unnoticeable. Just a vague shape in a coat and hat like so many others, fleeing the freezing drizzle that snuck around clutched umbrellas and past upturned collars, eager to leach heat from its scurrying prey.