#I've had this song lodged in my brain all week

[theycallmeratt]

A little something for Wyll week :)

Date

Many years had passed since Wyll left his hometown, and while he hadn't planned on returning with horns he was glad to be back. Glad, too, that most people weren't as hostile here as he'd feared they could be, and glad to be sleeping in the finest (cleanest) room in Elfsong, Karlach alive and ready to play cards whenever they weren't needed. He could nearly pretend they weren't gearing up to fight a giant brain. A monster hunter's pinnacle! That was how he would think about it.

Bird song filled the morning air, his tea steamed, Karlach had claimed the table they liked outside and he'd just opened to the crossword when a familiar tickling hit his frontal lobe and a voice like rotten treacle cooed, "Wylly!"

Twenty-four. He didn't answer. He never answered when Mizora used his sending stone. If she wanted an answer, she could talk to him out loud, not through his eye, in a voice that didn't sound like she was trying to cover up poison with honey.

"It's her, isn't it?" Karlach said. "You always get this look like you're going to vomit out of your ears."

"Glad I've finally taught the pup not to jump all over me when I call," Mizora crooned.

Nine. Nine more words until the stone stopped working for the day and she would be out of his brain.

"Today's a special date."

Five. Gods, whatever she was going to say would be awful.

"Why don't you just—" Karlach tapped the side of her eye.

Excellent idea. He popped his eye out and set it on the table, catching a faint, "Happy—" before she was gone. Only four words left in the spell, but they were probably vile.

"She's reminding me that today the anniversary of the day I signed," he explained.

"Really? The day you single-handedly saved the city? That calls for celebration. We should make a day of it! We could buy you an eye. A shut-up eye."

"Or go to the circus again. This time without a deranged clown attack. We could get more makeup and sneak it into Astarion's bag."

"One day he's going to kill us."

"Nah, it's all in good fun. Now, if we put it on him while he was trancing…"

"Wyll. I thought you were a good guy!"

Wyll held up his hands, palms out. "I am! I am."

Karlach picked up the eye and made a face. "Gods, she is so mean in only four words. How do I work this again?"

"You simply think—"

"Fuck you, too!"

"No, you think… wait. I have a better idea."

Wyll took it. He wasn't a musician, but he did currently room with a bard who loved to come up with the most earworm-y diddies and even Mizora had lost her cool over the most recent song. In his thoughts he sang, "Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, you know my lodgings, call on me, maybe."

Just to give Mizora something to mull over. Enrichment was very important for devilish contract holders.

Karlach leaned back, looking up at their room. A tenday ago Tav finally hit a breaking point—Tav, of all people!—and turned Mizora to stone. Luckily the spell didn't trigger anything in their contract, which made sense; Mizora was technically still alive and technically able to communicate. "Wanna go dress her up? What would she hate more? Clashing pinks or something that actually covers skin?"

"According to her, I have the worst taste in fashion. So, my clothes."

"Your clothes in pink!"

Wyll could do that. He looked good in pink.

"All of the above, with clown makeup," he suggested.

"It's a date."

[laundrybiscuits]

Director's Commentary: what will today's adventure be

Wrote this on the bus even though absolutely nobody asked for or needed it! Posting because why not. It's 1300 words of commentary for a 3100 word story. WHY NOT.

I've had the vague idea of Erica running a MLP game for a while, but seeing her little speech in Hellfire absolutely locked in her potential as a DM for me. I jotted this down in my ST scratchpad a few weeks back:

I desperately want Erica Sinclair running a MLP GURPS game. Dustin and Eddie are 10000% on board and wildly delighted. Mike is a massive dick about it the entire time. Lucas is in agony between acknowledging that it’s a pretty fucking well-designed game and he’s kind of proud of her but also HIS LITTLE SISTER HAS INFILTRATED HIS NERD GROUP WITH HER GIRLY CARTOON PONY SHIT. If Will’s around, he’s a little skeptical but quickly gets into it; it’s not his genre/style, but he can have fun trying something new. It’s ruthless, and clever, and slightly unbalanced because she hasn’t figured out how to calibrate on the fly for dumbass player decisions yet. She’ll get there. She’s got the taste for it now. The campaign ends when the party ends up luring the innocent Sea Ponies into a blood sacrifice to defeat the demon lord through necromancy and take over his dark reign. Steve shows up for the last fifteen minutes to drive the kids home, just in time to hear Erica describe the incredibly gory showdown, and tries to telepathically communicate to Eddie that this is NOT APPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN; Eddie just grins back like hell yeah, baby, you got that right.

Obviously it has changed a bit since that initial thought, but not a huge amount, dynamic-wise. I was somewhat hampered by the fact that I remembered absolutely nothing about my brief stint with GURPS a billion years ago, and also the fact that I have literally never consumed any MLP media whatsoever. No, not even Friendship is Magic, although I was on tumblr during that initial era so I picked up a thing or two via cultural osmosis. To write this ficlet, I ended up spending a very instructive hour or two on YT watching old clips and commercials, and now the G1 theme song is permanently lodged in my brain.

This has more or less been my first time writing Erica, so I tried to put a lot of thought and care into it. In fact, I based her primarily on what my own little sister was like at that age—my sister was a regular player in my D&D games growing up, but she also went on to be a wildly popular homecoming queen, and is a very politically active adult. She's the coolest person I know, and it was an honor to be lovingly bullied by her all throughout our childhoods.

One thing I really hope I get across in this fic is that this Erica is the type to double down when she's uncertain. She's smart and funny enough to get away with it most of the time, and it's actually a big part of what makes me so sure she'll be a great DM; that's definitely a core DM skill, spinning up some off-the-cuff bullshit with the kind of authoritative tone that makes it sound like you've been masterminding this twist for months.

I wanted her to be somewhat uncertain and insecure in this fic, because running a game for the first time, in a (VERY dense) system you've never played before, is kind of a big deal! I've done something similar myself when I wasn't that much older than Erica is in this fic, and you absolutely need nerves of steel to pull it off.

I also wanted her to be fully resolved not to let that uncertainty show, because Erica strikes me as the kind of person who haaaaates being vulnerable. Given her vocab (i.e. probable reading level) and practical inclinations, I think she'd probably deal with it all by over-prepping, which experienced DM Eddie obviously clocks.

She wouldn't have gone to Eddie for advice or help. That's not how she rolls. She'd rather work through the difficult stuff on her own and show up triumphant and already perfect. It's probably something she's going to have to unpack in therapy later in life, but it is also actually a pretty solid DM instinct. Smoke and mirrors, baby.

So anything Erica says can and should be taken with a grain of salt. She's working very hard to have her audience believe she's in charge and absolutely correct about all things. (I also just thought it was pretty funny to include that bit about GURPS being the future of TTRPGs, given the wild ascendancy of DnD and the relatively low profile of GURPS nowadays, but in retrospect I'm not sure that came across.)

By the way: I know it can get confusing when actual kid-acquisition is sort of a trope, but I hope everyone knows that this Eddie's not being serious/literal when he makes the internal comment about adopting Erica! He just loves her a lot and wants to be in her life in a permanent kind of way, and he's a dramatic dork. If he had to pin down a specific extant familial role he literally wanted with Erica, it would probably be "weird gay uncle." The Sinclair fam seems relatively stable/healthy which is a rarity for these kids, but family can always expand, and Eddie is definitely angling to be another part of Erica's familial-type support network. That's just way too awkward and serious a thing to say, hence: joke about adoption.

I actually didn't mean for the Steddie part to come on so strong, but I put them in Steve's house because I thought it'd be funny to have a bit about Dustin casually breaking in to all their houses, and then it became instantly clear when Steve opened the door that the whole setup would be some kind of wild domestic fantasy for him. Like, in his head Eddie is already 100% wifed up. (Not that I think that would be a particularly comfortable dynamic for Eddie, but Steve's allowed to have his little fantasies.)

And then I just wanted to write a little bit about them being really comfortable with each other and being a team, taking care of each other as they deal with the minor inconveniences of everyday life, working together to look out for kids who are their friends but not quite their peers.

I don't think I got too deep into that particular dynamic, but it's one I'm pretty invested in; they're really only a few years older than the kids, but they're also responsible for the kids' care, and it's a very nuanced thing. I've been on both sides of that, and it's an absolutely incredible gift either way. Having friends who are a little further along their paths than you is amazing; having friends who you can provide for and support is amazing. It gives you so much perspective. I don't think of my mentees (for lack of a better word) as anything like my children, and I don't think Steve and Eddie think of the Party that way either. It's a very specific dynamic that I might need to spend more time on in a later fic.

As for the ending...normally I go hard on the pining, as y'all know by now, but this just felt like a very different thing was happening. Also, one time a girl did pull that "talk about what? lol jk come here" thing on me IRL and it was very cute.

Finally, just because I did in fact come up with them, here are the Party names and pony types:

Dustin: Jester the Pegasus Pony

Lucas: Nettle the Pegasus Pony

Mike: Skullcrusher the Earth Pony

Will: Glint the Unicorn

Eddie: Belladonna the Flutter Pony

[merge-conflict]

Tag People You Want to Get To Know Better!

Tagged by @nananarc and @another-corpo-rat :3

Favorite Color: I love all colors, but the one I want to eat most consistently is green. What can't green do?

Currently Reading: Comfort re-reading Fire Logic because it's nice to read a story where the answer to making things better is community.

Last Song: I've had a a different song lodged deep into my brain about every hour today, but Diablo Rojo by Rodrigo y Gabriela stayed there the longest today and also it fucks.

Last Movie: It was more than two weeks ago, and so is lost to the ether. It might have been Prey (2022)? Which was fantastic, and well worth the effort to sit still for movie length time to watch.

Last Series: I am usually in the middle of re-watching several TV shows as background, but the last one I actually stopped to watch for periods of time was Ozark.

Sweet, Savory, or Spicy: Eating sweet foods usually makes me sick (bearer of the curse)- currently... savory. My digestive system is currently a WIP so I am unable to enjoy spicy as much as I want.

Craving: It's spring, what aren't I craving? Another year I have missed my fat tuesday packzi, and I am left staring at the low-tier jelly filled doughnuts in Safe's Way with a sense of loss.

Tea or Coffee: Yes. More coffee than tea these days, usually with just a little bit of oatmilk and no sugar. I'll enjoy most non-herbal teas but I'm not a big hot beverage drinker in general.

Currently Working On: Like a lot of people, too much! Longfic. Self-indulgent fic. Each day I grow closer to sitting down and writing a parody of modern tech documentation, which only I and 3 of my friends would find funny. About 20 more fic ideas, and about 3 or 4 original experimental writing projects that are only in the ideas stage. I've got a binder. :3

Tagging: @gamerkitten, @ghostoffuturespast, @juststayquiete, @corpocyborg, @corphoe if you want, no pressure <3