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who-likes-cake · 4 years

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world building planning sheet

Creatures places weapons people doladillo and businesses ——————————————— CREATURES -globule -night crawler/nalusa falaya -kitsume/three tailed fox -gnomes -sea serpent -Ground dwellers/caritanian -helminth -keythong -sewer goblin/krelkin -Dorian -derian -frost spider -sewer slug/corget -blood knights -giant rat -nymph -spirits -dragons -teo cican -Amagi -inferno wolf -grime wolf -breeze wolf -highlight wolf -zorph -seer -shadow orb -shadow dactyl -Corpse flower -heat dragon -gloom dragon -luster dragon ———————————- PLACES -neurotic dessert -trees of atheria -sagacity tree -candor tree -loath tree -burden tree -ring of senitarian -shelfin lake -darlin forest -corajin spikes -the seniterian mines -the keythongs nest -touren city -town of everlock -the state of corslen -chakra village(inside of corslen) -Huchsen canyon -ceptin town -nymph fields -island creed -the country of lusus -trifling village -flock mountain -soni mountain -arrowhead hill -hollow city -gyoza city -trifling city -rogue towers -black jack mountain -tubes(home to torpedo) -bashari -cheatinfude forest -southern cove -Easter cove -Western cove -northern cove -Gunmar -meekem -mourlin -deem -gourm -gerim -gnome tunnels -fallen kingdom (dorment) -prisen -go go cave -green basin swamp -gloverdon -abyss of gloverdon ————————- DOLADILLO -scarlet bones -amagi -sludge -gloom -brick bourne -woodland -blaze -gem -luster light ———————— PLANETS -zorgon -freidmill -fusion -claudius -gigatron _______________ GROUPS/TRIBES -arrowheads -torpedos -the black jacks -the springtails -the nymph pack -the four swordsmen -society of the swords -shadow nation -knights of courslen ________________ WEAPONS -shock glove -cobalt spear -copper axe -titanium sword -mace -obsidian shurikens -argon Nunchucks -stone gloves -throwing knives -the sword of lost souls -ford blade -blaze sword -sword staff -immortal magic -ford stone magic -inferno magic -spike barrel -shield -throwing knife ————————— FOOD -shroud -nightmare shroud -shroud soup -nightmare soup -modela berry's -silver plum -Stitch melon -gnome meat -zorph meat -rat meat -Dorian meat -derian meat -teo cican meat -amagi meat -grilled corpse flower -cannibalism -cyanogenic glycosides` ————————— BUSINESSES -bread and batter(bakery) _________________ PEOPLE -Asher napoleon(main character) -ada Stewart (friend) -marlo freiden (friend) -ethra Napoleon (sister) -nalusa Frazer(super villain) -regan red(blood knight ruler and senitaren king) -desnock canmore (ruler) -trement iglesias(farmer) -aria sassin (assassin) -norma stewart(arrow head leader) -dominique turner (arrow head swordsman) -lee stewart (arrow head member) -oxatan charter (arrowhead archer) - harvey church (arrowhead member) -ruben dorian (dorian friend) -turf freiden (marlos dad) -malakye hollow (owner of hollow city) -quint ourtege (black jack leader) -isais humberlut (black jack member) -nya meyers (black jack swordsmen) -oliver tent (black jack archer) -stig jodi (black jack member) -hazel iglesias(farmer daughter) -tiago grey (trifling guard son) -church sage (floating house owner) -Amagi man (bad guy but he's actually good) -aaron jojoni (rogue tower raider) -zeek shinshigai(random bad guy) -zutara kutenfin (rogue tower raider) -Orion surten (good guy but he’s actually bad) -ardal shein (sorcerer) -worrin shein (SIT) -Verin deedlock (SOTS member) -tzu carton (chiefs niece) -chief (the chief) -smiley knight (dark magic sorcerer) -king nightnes (shadow nation leader) -the ripper (shadow nation enemy) -sinsaura (insane villain) -callum Napoleon (main character dad) -herbie napoleon (ashers grandpa) -laurie napoleon (ashers aunt) -auntie lin (ashers second aunt)

#worldbulding #planning

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tristan-forester · 6 years

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Helriel’s Dream: Olivia’s Nightmare

[The following is part two of a Collaborative RP involving @tristan-forester @alas-ward @allebeithloch and @sayaadoftheforest (Stig). Part one can be found here. In this portion of the scene the party enters Silver Dawn Sanitarium to find @olivia-lovecraft and retrieve her soulstone. They are traveling the halls of the sanitarium as Olivia remembers them, in all their surreal horror. WARNING: Brief depictions of abuse and the implied death of a minor.]

The large, feathery flakes of snow fell against exposed cheeks and felt real. From the cold to the melting wetness, it felt as if they had stepped outside rather than falling asleep.

Before them, trapped in the white purity of fresh snowfall, Silver Dawn Sanitarium looked like a peaceful manor house for a wealthy noble, rather than a place of terror and torture.

"We won't meet anyone walking into the hospital. There are no groundskeepers here because I didn't think to add them," Tristan offered as he joined the others.

He held out coats to everyone, though if they had dreamt up a particular outfit for the cold, they would wear that instead.

"There is a guard at the door. He will ask if any of you are patients. We are all visitors. We are here to see Helena Reel. It is like a password. Anyone who tries to stop you will ignore you if they think you are here for Helena. It isn't pretty in there, though. I have painted it as Olivia remembers it."

Alle was still dressed in her nightgown, but for a moment as she thought about how cold it was, she was dressed in a black winter dress with a caplet. Beside her was a hulking beast, one that Tristan had seen in another life when Alle had piloted the creature. It looked at itself then at its owner. There seemed to be a small exchange internally as it tried to think what to do. Alle tapped her shoulder and it turned into the rolling ball of fur that became her cloak.

Stig didn't looked bothered by the cold at all. His ability to know he was in a dream let him believe enough that he didn't feel the chill. He instead added a pair of boots, so he didn't look like he was walking around without fully proper clothing.

"Sound fun. Helena Reel. Was that you?"

Alice's attire was that of someone in the desert, layers of light fabric to shield pale skin from the sun and wick away moisture while also breathing. She struggled for a moment to conjure something more suitable for the weather, but ultimately failed and took the coat from Tristan.

"Yea. Some of the patients knew me as Helriel, but the name I used, just to be cheeky was Helena Reel. Human female, black hair and slender physique. You'll know her if we see her."

He turned and headed for the front doors. As he had mentioned, there was a guard there waiting. Dressed in regalia like that of a Scarlet crusader, the guard stood at attention until they were within a polite conversation distance.

"What brings you by the hospital today ladies and gents?"

Stig offered an arm around Alice to keep her warm. He would be unimaginably warm here, it was like he was utterly real inside the dream. Rubbing her arm a bit he would look to Alle.

She didn't mean to, but Alle stepped forward with her normal calm quiet demeanor. Cloak shivered a little, but it looked like the wind was rustling it.

"We're here to see Helena Reel. All of us are just visiting."

The guard smiled fondly to the group, as if he suddenly recognized each of them.

"Of course you are! Go on in. She'll likely be on rounds still, but you can find her in the eastern wing with the female patients," he reported cheerily.

Tristan muttered his grattitude before stepping in beside Alle. He watched her carefully, because beyond that point, it went from a dream to a nightmare fast.

Meanwhile, Alice leaned against Stig. She wasn't as good with cold as others, but her desire for the contact was more seated in the need for some grounding. She stared wide eyed at everything, as if she could not comprehend reality any longer.

Once inside, the hospital was dimly lit by sputtering oil lamps. The hallway floors were streaked in blood and filth, but the smell was strong of cleaning chemicals. There was a cacaphony of screams and laughter down the eastern hall, women in all states crying out for attention and aid.

"If you go to the west, you will be brought back here. I didn't bother populating the parts of the hospital she would not know."

Coming into the hospital Alle kept a quiet look about her. This was so far, horrible, but not the most horrible thing she had ever seen. It could be much worse, and she didn't doubt that they were probably going to see much more before the day was through. The dream was starting to work on her, as if she swore she had traveled through the snow to get to the asylum.

"What sort of physical horrors are we in store for?"

Stig looked down at Alice, he was a hulking man so he still had to bend his head a little to look at her.

"Are you alright?"

Tristan winced, keeping his eyes sweeping the halls as they went. The first room they passed had its door open a crack, so he stepped aside to pull it shut completely.

"There are people being 'treated' in some of these rooms. Olivia remembered the treatments as torture, and she wasn't wrong. So, anything you see that looks like torture is unaltered. It is a dream, though. None of these people are alive today, Helena included."

Alice smiled weakly to Stig.

"I just feel off balance and out of touch. I know that this is a place society would like to see me in," she chuckled wryly.

Tristan offered a sympathetic look back to Alice, knowing it was true. The entire reason she never sought aide from the offices in Stormwind was because she knew she would slip up and they would assume she was mad.

While Tristan was distracted, a pair of large male orderlies emerged from a room dragging a shrieking woman along. They were startled by the presence of the 'visitors' but didn't stop to question them as they struggled to keep the woman from throwing herself to the floor.

"Save me! They're gonna kill me this time. I swear it!" The patient wailed as they roughly tugged her along.

It was her lack of empathy when she allowed herself to remember she wasn't like everyone in the area. The woman's cries brought little remorse for Alle, instead she detached herself from the human she was working on and allowed the beast to take her for now.

"I doubt your mate would let you end up somewhere like here," She said it quietly as she looked to Alice.

Stig was nodding in agreement. He could tell it was a dream more and the woman's outcries weren't even a blip for him, instead he stayed close to who he deemed the more fragile of the group.

Alice.

"Let’s keep moving, these horrors aren't for us."

Tristan winced again. He knew Stig didn't mean it the way he took it, but it pained the Incubus to know that he had selected these horrors for one person.

Olivia.

This was all a place and time when she had needed him the most, the budding growth of their strange relationship.

"That is about the extent of it, so long as we evade Helena," Tristan whispered.

He picked up his pace. The hall was abnormally long, which was another distortion of Olivia's personal memory. They passed more screaming women, a few of which who were being held down and force fed or beaten. None of them looked truly sick or mad, but they were all afraid.

"We're just about there," Tristan announced softly.

Just as soon as he said it, though, Alice stopped cold at one of the rooms. A man was doing chest compressions on a small blonde girl. She couldn't have been more than fifteen years old. Beside her, on the bed, was the apparatus used to force feed patients and her throat was bulging, black and blue, from the force they had used to insert the tube prior to her respiratory arrest or pulmonary aspiration.

The screams were harder for Alle than she thought. While she could tell herself that the monsters in these halls weren't for her. There was one or two who were being beaten that caused her to nearly grind her teeth. She slowly went through her normal checkups she did. She was so much taller than she was as a girl. She was stronger. She had Cloak wrapped around her, the quiet protector would never let anything bad happen to her.

Stig had paused with Alice looking into the room. While the scene was enough to put other people on edge, the incubus dreamwalker shook his head.

"Don't look, she isn't here. This means she's free, but it is here to horrify others. This one is free."

“They’re all free,” Tristan added. “No one is truly here. You need to steel yourself now.” He looked to Alle before walking to block Alice’s view of the room. “I killed the man who killed this girl. He didn’t die a peaceful death in the fire. I killed him for savage sport and for his barbarism against the helpless. I had no heart, but in these women, I saw my brothers. I saw them break like my brothers. So, when I killed the men you see hurting them, I did so with great pleasure.”

Alice was staring numbly at Tristan’s forehead when he spoke. However, whether it was his words or Stig’s touch, she snapped back to the false sense of reality around them.

“Right. Sorry. Just…its harder to see this as a dream. I will do better,” she replied.

“You better…because…Olivia’s up next,” Tristan sighed as he returned to Alle’s side. “Are you ready, Miss?”

Taking a slow breath Alle nodded. She might not be fully ready, but she was as ready as she could possibly be. Later on, she could be prepared for the backlash that was going to happen.

Stig looked at himself, remembering being told Olivia wouldn't be able to trust men. He shifted form from his large male form to an equally sturdy female form. Still keeping his blond features, he didn't seem to have full mastery of the face yet, but it would work in a pinch. When he spoke, his voice was a lower sultry sound.

"I think this will work," he nudged Alice with a smile. "We get out of here and your lover can snuggle you all you want."

Tristan nodded but kept an eye on Alle a moment longer before steeling himself and closing the distance to Olivia's room. It was the only room that was completely silent. In fact, as they approached, the screaming around them all stopped. Everything seemed to drop away.

"I am waiting out here. I will keep watch for Helriel," he murmured as he knocked and stepped aside.

Beyond the door, the rapid patting of bare feet retreating and then the sound of bed springs adjusting under sudden weight.

"Just go in. She won't say much. You need her hair comb, though. Once it is in your hand, Alice, we walk out. We can't just leave from here, unfortunately."

Alle and Stig both nodded. Out of the two of them Alle was the more determined. Making her way to the door she would open it slowly. If she was at her worst, sudden movement would have been the worst thing possible. As she peered in Alle made sure to be careful to not scare the woman even more.

"Olivia," she said quietly and in as innocent a tone as she could. Rolling up the sleeves of her dress, so that her scars could show, she hoped it would give the shadow version of the woman she knew some show that she was sympathetic to her.

"There are three ladies who wish to talk to you.”

#long read #long post #Collaberative RP #Helriels Dream #part 2 #soul searching

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gaiatheorist · 7 years

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Testing boundaries.

OK, I did it, I went ‘out’. No big deal for most people, but I’m not most people. I’m socially awkward, and have, historically, had a tendency to get catastrophically drunk, to avoid just lurking in the corner, like an unwanted ginger standard-lamp. As it turns out, I don’t ‘need’ the booze, which was fortunate, because it was quite expensive.

I’d seen the ‘flyer’ for the Twitter meet-up a few weeks ago, and just dismissed it with “Can’t go.”, because it was 2 hours travel away, and an unnecessary expenditure. Some time on Thursday, I’m not entirely sure when, I started looking at train-prices, and dabbling in the arena of ‘could go, if...’ That’s abnormal behaviour for me, and I’m still not entirely certain whether it was turning-away-from this episode of poor emotional well-being, or holding my nose, and jumping straight into it.

Crowds freak me out, unfamiliar locations make me uneasy, I don’t cope well with excessive noise, flashing lights, and the proximity of unknown-people. I know, let’s travel to another city, alone, and spend a few hours in a pub, with a bunch of strangers! Add to that the facts that I’m probably more neurotic-protective than most, and never really went ‘out’ much on my own for 20 years, and my anxiety probably burned off the three glasses of wine before I eventually threw myself back in through my front door. (Without falling out of the taxi, which I did last time I was ‘out’. No, for anyone familiar with my back-story, or PIP-assessors, I didn’t fall off the toilet, either.)

Yesterday, I went ‘out’, this waffly-blog is likely to be the very dull story of how I didn’t get murdered, or wake up in a gutter with my pants on inside-out. I know I ‘should’ have saved the money I drew out of the cash-point, but, in my off-centre logic, it was ‘spare’ money, left over from last month’s salary, and I virtually never do anything for myself. (Yes, there was a really weird side-thought about ‘What if the washing machine breaks, and I have to do my laundry in the bath for a month?’ I wouldn’t be doing my laundry in the bath, washing machines are relatively easy to reverse-diagnostic repair.) Welcome to the less than wonderful world of ‘What if?’

First up “What if somebody takes a photo, and I look half-dead?” Well, that’s easy, I DO look half-dead, but I tend to dye my roots on pay-day anyway, so I’ll at least look less like I’ve walked through cobwebs if I do show up in the background of someone else’s photo. I’m not ‘big’ Twitter, nobody’s going to want to snap a selfie with me to prove they’ve met me.

Next, “I have NOTHING to wear.” Don’t be an idiot, you have cupboards full of clothes, as was demonstrated by pulling EVERYTHING out of said cupboards, and raging at myself for putting things ‘out of the way’ instead of ‘away’. I’d wanted a particular top, I’m not as emaciated as I was this time last year, but I didn’t want the glockenspiel look, people have a tendency to try to make you eat pies when they can see your ribs, and if you complain that wheat doesn’t suit you, the automatic assumption is an eating disorder. I’m a pain in my own arse, because once I’d found ‘that’ top, I decided I didn’t want to wear it, and settled on another one.

“Is that going to be enough money?” It’s going to have to be, and that will ensure you don’t go overboard with the drinks. (Half-grinning, because it turned out to be exactly the right amount of money to cover my slight miscalculation.)

“Where’s my make-up?” Ah, remember when you threw a tizz about the ‘expectation’ that women should tart themselves up, and smear tonnes of crap on their faces to be deemed acceptable? Remember your ‘refusing to be aesthetically objectified’ tantrum, when you threw the make-up in the bin? It’s in the bin. Your entire make-up collection now consists of the one mascara that hasn’t completely dried out, a black eyeliner pencil that needs sharpening, and the boy has had off with the sharpener, and several red lipsticks. Challenging.

“Why is my hair so shit? Why won’t it behave?” It’s shit because you’re overwhelmingly stressed, which in turn leads to you not eating properly, the combination of stress and poor diet is responsible for the fragile hair, and the hair-loss. It won’t ‘behave’ because it’s part of you, it is ‘behaving’ entirely as it always does, which is like a dead ginger mop. (Interesting couple of minutes on the train, where I realised I’d used some gel the boy had left here to stop the frizzy-cloud effect, but not scrunched it through, leading to stiff tendrils here and there, and a very difficult to manage urge to shout “It’s not spunk!”)

“What if I miss the train?” Just get the next one, you nine-tonne mega-idiot, you’ve already allowed additional time for when you invariably get lost. “What if there are no seats on the train?” In that case, you’ll regret wearing five inch heels a bit sooner, won’t you? “What if I get on the WRONG train?” Seriously? This was getting tedious, bearing in mind I hadn’t even left the house. Occam’s razor is applied to my thought process even less often than razors are applied to my skin. I’m Stig of the Dump, and I ALWAYS start at the most ridiculous-unlikely, and work my way back from there. I’ve generally completely forgotten what the ‘problem’ was, by the time I’ve explored all the disturbing tangents my brain likes to send me off on. “What if I trip over something?” can very quickly morph into “What if I’m murdered, I don’t think I closed the living room curtains, and next door will assume I’m ‘in’, and nobody will realise I’m missing.”

Given the cyclic nature of my peculiar anxieties, and the fact that I’d imagined myself murdered and dumped in the canal about seventeen times before I even put my impractical boots on, the logical thing to do would have been not to go. I’m not logical, and I’d set myself the ‘task’ of travelling, alone, from the arse-end-of-nowhere to Leeds, having a couple of drinks with a load of strangers, and then finding my way back without my head being discovered in a bin, and my body only being identifiable by my tattoos. No, I don’t know why, either.

Neurotic-protective. I’d let different people know where I was going, which is awkward, because of the cross-over. I was ‘going’ as @GaiaTheorist but I’d also notified two real-world people, and alluded to my plans on my tiny, locked Twitter account. (Not Fakebook, though, the ex is on there, and the boy would flip shit if he knew I was trotting off out unsupervised. Oh, and there’s the “Well, she can’t be THAT ill if she can go out!” tangent.) Welcome to the messy web that is me, remembering to use the hashtag on the Gaia Twitter so I could be ‘tracked’, but not mentioning the # on my quiet-Twitter in case I was cross-referenced-outed. I’m like a really shit James Bond.

I set off earlier than I’d originally intended, and stood, freezing cold, wearing make-up in the day-time at the bus stop. (DID I lock the door?) The USB charger-point on the bus didn’t actually increase the battery-power on my phone, because I kept flicking between screens, checking routes that I knew I wouldn’t remember. (What if the battery completely dies?) Two kids on the bus appeared to be having a game of “Who can make the most annoying noise?”, and I had an intense desire to bang their heads together. The man on the seat in front of me for half of the journey had appalling body odour, and I could smell wee from somewhere else. I realised I’d forgotten to put any painkillers in my bag, and hoped that I wouldn’t have to use the hospital codeine, that’s probably expired by now.

The reason for setting off early was to make sure I didn’t get stuck in a queue for the automated train-ticket machine. I didn’t actually know where the ticket machines were, and had a bit of a panic about “What if I buy the wrong ticket, or the machine over-charges me?” I walked into the ticket-office instead, and managed to ask the man behind the counter for the right ticket. No biggie for most people, but, when I’m anxious, I sometimes muddle my words. I was anxious. I didn’t however end up with a yearly Oyster card or anything, so that’s a bonus. I’d also set off early so I could empty my bladder in the interchange toilets. I’d already walked past the toilets, and my fucking stupid head won’t let me ‘walk backwards’. I was half an hour early for the train, standing outside, in the cold, concentrating so hard on not ‘jiggling’ because I sort-of needed a wee that my thigh decided to do that weird tremble-spasm thing it does sometimes. Nice. In those heels, I’m a touch over 6ft, I’d just re-dyed my hair a fairly intense shade of auburn, I was wearing scarlet lipstick and heavy eyeliner, and my leg wouldn’t stop shaking. I had sufficient personal space.

Train. OK, there are seats, so I wouldn’t have to stand for an hour and four minutes, with my left thigh having its own personal disco, I also didn’t use the toilet on the train, due to five inch heels, and the aforementioned disobedient thigh. About ten minutes before Leeds, I found all the stiff bits in my hair, the person behind me might have thought I had headlice with all the fluffing and scrunching going on. (I’m SO 1990s, ‘scrunching’ my hair is still pretty much the only thing I do to it.)

Train station. In a very boring aside, the last time I alighted from a train in Leeds, I walked in the wrong direction for 20 minutes, completely lost, and alone, in a city I didn’t know. It was bad enough then, when I was trying to find a training venue in the daylight, it was dark by the time I hit Leeds, and I was wearing heels and lipstick. I excelled myself by getting lost IN the bus station, which didn’t help with the general panic situation. That tripped-out to me not text-messaging the person I was going to contact, because I ‘had to’ save my phone battery for emergencies. I’m a knob. After several laps around the train station, becoming increasingly aware that 5-inch heels don’t make stairs or escalators easy, I found the right exit. I also ‘found’ a probable homeless man, who offered me the use of his cigarette lighter. Then he asked me if I had a boyfriend. Of COURSE I do. Would I go out with him if I didn’t have a boyfriend? Well, I couldn’t answer that, because I DO have a boyfriend, but thank you very much for the light. Yes, I have a spare cigarette for you. Yes, enjoy your evening too, I’m going to meet some friends now. At that point, I pulled a ballpoint pen out of my bag, and stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans, in case of needing to stab sex fiends/muggers in the eye. Off I strutted, in my impractical heels, with my imaginary boyfriend. In the wrong direction.

I don’t know Leeds at all. I had a vague idea of where I should be going, but I have no sense of direction, and irrational anxiety about being mugged for my phone, so I’d wandered about, trying not to look lost for a while before I caved in, and tried to get Google maps to work. I CAN read a map, but reading a map in stilettos, on cobbles, while you’re having a massive panic about being mugged for your phone is a whole different kettle of fish. I’d saved the photos of the maps on my phone in case I didn’t have enough signal for Google maps, but a static map is only any use if you know which direction you’re walking in, and I didn’t. I managed to get the voice-directions working on Google maps, but couldn’t really hear it over the traffic, cursing myself for not bringing the earphones, but aware that wearing earphones, on your own, in the dark, makes you more vulnerable to muggers, sex-pests, and people who might cut your head off and put it in a bin. I then had an irrational burst of anger at the bits of the instructions I could hear “Walk east...” Which way is east? The sun had already set, so I couldn’t walk away from west to ascertain east. There’s a compass feature on the phone, but that would mean coming out of the ‘map’ app. I had many strange and interesting things in my bag, but not a compass, I only went to Brownies twice, remember?

I found the bar about half an hour before the thing was scheduled to start, and ‘stuck’. I accidentally tweeted a photo of the outside of the bar on the wrong account, in a desperate “Somebody come out and get me?” panic, and then deleted the bloody thing, because I like my quiet Twitter as it is. I didn’t know if I ‘could’ go into the bar before the thing was due to start, so I stood outside, like an absolute pillock, absolutely resolute that I WASN’T going into another bar to sit on my own with a drink, in case someone mistook me for a prostitute. So I stood on a street corner. Like a prostitute.

I eventually made my stupid legs take me inside the bar, and realised I didn’t ‘know’ anyone in there. Well, of course I didn’t not everyone has their face as their avi, do they, and the ‘function’ was in a back area. 17 million people pushed in front of me at the bar, and, when I eventually was served, I didn’t count the change from my allocated £20 for drinks, but it looked like a glass of wine was over £6. (I’m SO Yorkshire-stingy.) Shitsticks, not counting fire-escapes, that I’d have no idea where they came out, there was only one entrance/exit, which disturbed my not-claustrophobia PTSD ‘knowing where the exits are’ thing, and would have led to a panic-loop if I didn’t MOVE.

I moved. I found the event organiser, and introduced myself with “See my comfort zone? It’s all the way back over there.” I babble when I’m anxious, and I was very anxious. I wrote my @-name on a sticky label, and wondered where to put it, not wanting to draw attention to my ‘impressive rack’, but the alternative being my forehead. Then I stood in a corner, like a 6ft ginger spider. Some boys rescued me, and I didn’t realise I was talking to a man I’d followed, and interacted with for years, because I didn’t want to stare at his sticky-label. I drank my wine slowly, because I was only ‘allowing’ myself two drinks, then had a minor panic about ‘spacing’ alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic ones, and wetting myself on the train home, which was lovely.

Other than Venus’ funeral, that was the first Tweet-up thing I’d been to. Contrary to popular misconception, we didn’t all stand about staring at our phones, but it was still weird. Not in a bad way, in an “Oh, I don’t think I follow you, do you know so-and-so?” way. Pointless fact about me: when placed in a situation where I feel uncomfortable, my default-setting is to make it MORE uncomfortable, which makes the initial uncomfortable-thing more bearable. I used to think that was the alcohol-impulsivity, that would often see me presenting strangers with teaspoons, sweets, or all manner of jumble from my bag, but it’s not, it’s just ‘me’. By the time the only other person there I’d ever met arrived, and asked me to hold her cut-out-ferrets-on-a-stick, and her drink, I’d already produced a neon pink bra from my bag, and was wondering who to give the vibrating cock-ring to. You can’t take me anywhere.

I drifted about, giving people bouncy-balls, and yo-yos, and spinning tops, and mini-slinkies from my bag and pockets, I let lots of complete strangers put their fingers in my craniotomy scar, and I was generally a bit of an arse. Not a complete arse, because I couldn’t risk missing the train home, and ending up sleeping on someone else’s hotel floor. I sleepwalk, and talk in my sleep, and I hadn’t brought a change of pants. I only hugged a handful of people, and I didn’t lick anyone, if I am in any of the pictures, it will only be in the background. I didn’t fall over, and, when I showed one of my tattoos to someone, I did it out of the way, around a corner.

I knew I couldn’t walk back to the train station, so one of my babysitters took me outside, and managed to phone me a taxi. I missed the train I was supposed to catch, and had to get the next one. A gaggle of drunks boarded, and one sat next to me, it was bad enough when she started to do the drunk-wobble-falling asleep thing, it was hideous when she vomited into the aisle, but at least it didn’t splash on me. I’ve been in that state myself, and I don’t ever want to be that drunk again. Her ‘friends’ weren’t interested, which shook me up, and made me wonder where I’d be able to put my phone if I had to perform CPR if she asphyxiated on the vomit, after they just hauled her into the toilet and left her there.

Missing the ‘right’ train also meant I missed the last bus from the city centre, and had to phone a taxi. Warpy-wrap-around-head phoned one from a company that DBS checks their drivers, and text-messages you the registration plate for the car. I had my ballpoint pen in my hand, and was ready to send the text-message out onto Twitter if the driver started going the wrong way. He didn’t, but that’s a worrying train of thought to have when you’re on your own, and going back to an empty house. I managed to cobble together enough money for the fare and a small tip, so had stayed within-budget for the night. I tweeted a photo, to let people know I was home safe, and I’ll periodically flick onto Twitter today, to check if I’m in the background of any photos scratching that spot inside my left nostril.

I did it. There was no real point to doing it, other than to prove I could. I have no unexplained bruises, I won’t be the subject of any gossip, and I managed to get myself there and back without incident. There’s something to be said for going out and not getting drunk.

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