#I KNOW SHES SCARY BUT I DIDNT THINK SHE WOULD TRAP AN EMPLOYEE IN A TINY BOX

[indaventswithrat]

''hello, little guy, nice to see you!''

I suppose this vent rat is the only person who's ever seen them.

makes sense, though, they both only know these...weird floors.

-P.A.F/Caller/@phone-a-friend

jsyk p.a.f's blog is glitched, refer to intro post for info :3

“ squeak squeak? “

[Other various rat noises]

[ its trying to have a conversation but it is a rat so you won’t be able to understand it ]

[ but my gut says he’s never used a phone before and is trying to “ get you out” of the phone ]

[fruit-salad-ship]

Plum and gray fully con peach into a spa day? Maybe she lost a bet and was forced to let them pamper her, or maybe it l was an absurd fake emergency call/lockdown where they try to trap her in the spa center to get cleaned up but she's trying to macguyver her way out?

The bet was 'whoever wins picks the activity' both Grey and Plum setting up the situation so there was no way Peach could win. In all honesty she expected them to pick something more normal for their wins, often it was going to some new place, or the others doing chores or tasks for the winner. She didnt even try to win, too tired to actually care what she did, so long as they were happy. As usual her work burnt her out, she had no real motivation in her by the end of the day. Upon losing, she shrugged, looking over some exchange forms, making notes, only half paying attention to the demands of her duo. Only when Plum mentioned 'spa' did she double take, look at her confused, somewhat irked by it. Like...she mant it just for her right? Grey and Peach wuld stay back and carry on working, and she could duck out and have a nice day out being pampered. Only upon having it reitterated that they would ALL go, did it sink in that she'd have to stop doing her job, and have strangers near her, hell even touching her? Made her skin crawl. She tried to barter to get out of it, suggesting she do extra jobs or whatever in exchange, but neither of the other two listened, and so her anxiety rose while the days ticked down to the vist. She had to just do it...right? Wrong. By the time they'd coaxed her away from the office, all the way over to the mainland, late because of her delaying and fussing, it was starting to get scary. She didnt want a stranger near her, didnt want their hands anywhere on her, didnt like to be touched by random people at all. maybe it was the issue with recognising faces, maybe it was something in her childhood, maybe it was a problem with personal space, but it just made her feel sick. They had to coax her into the building, she really was digging her heels in, it was only the other two pleading that forced her hand, made her very cautiously go inside, clearly uncomfortable. While Grey and Plum relaxed, had massages, mud masks, soaked in nice smelling waters, got nails done, had foot rubs, peach spent the entire time tense. Every employee who put their hands on her made her want to run, just get up and start sprinting. But she said she'd just do this for her loved ones, so she had to just bite the bullet. When they asked she would grin and lie, say it was fine. It was not.

She left the place tense and exhausted from social interaction, but never once told them that. They looked so happy, she wasnt about to say anything to ruin it. I think they saw her pretending, as subtle as it was, she didnt look rested or calmed by it, but the second they got home, she seemed to slump into a chair and finally stop holding all her stress. Grey found a loophole about a week later, after mulling over the event and knowing she was struggling with stranger human contact, he would look at her, several pokemon hanging off her, didnt even pause what she was doing, fine with it. He proceeded to ask for an Accupressure medicham to come in and give her a massage, and finally they found a way to relax the big idiot. She didnt have the same issue with pokemon at all. He learnt a few tricks from it to help her when she had a knot or two that caused her pain.

Plum knew she likes doing her nails, often seeing her fuss over them when she had five minutes at the end of a day, so they'd instead of going and getting them done where someone would have to touch her, would have a day at home where they'd watch movies and do each others, mud masks, fancy moisturisers, all that junk. Peach seemed totally fine with it compared to the actual spa, and could even accept putting her work down for the time once she knew it was at home and free of strangers. Their realisation that she let them put their hands on her any time became quietly special, seeing as she loathed everyone else in her personal space, and recoield from stranger contact. They were the special few allowed in.

[tumblunni]

I had a really weird dream involving Dr Maddiman. Its a shame i can barely remember any of it and also it seems i woke up before it ended? Like i just had this overwhelming sense that allll the plot threads were gonna be wrapped up any second now and then BOOM awake. So just a whole bunch of random stuff happened with no real explanation at all.

It was some sort of post apocolyptic setting i think? Humanity was in these small isolated cities fighting against some sort of invading army but we never actually saw the aliens themselves. And some part of my brain was like "it makes sense its the same rules as a hairdresser and the design takes cues from a pack of AAA batteries". I have NO idea what that means! So basically everythibg was super vague and undescribed and dream-me just had a sense of already being a long time fan of this series and knowing enough to fill in the gaps. Apparantoy this was some sort of adaptation of a thing id already seen, but id been told the ending was different and more accurate to the manga? Also i wasnt actually a person watching this show i was still the protagonist of the show yet i acted like i'd been reincarnated and relived this week a million times or something

ANYWAY the way dr maddiman comes in is that he was some sort of 'brilliant but dangerous' expert the government had hired to help our fight against the aliens. It wasnt really explained why he was.. yknow.. maddiman. Like is this meant to be that ghosts also exist in this sci fi universe? Was he a half alien hybrid instead of a yokai? Was it just human maddiman with the personality of yokai maddiman due to ptsd...? In any case he didnt seem entirely tethered to the laws of reality and nobody knew exactly how he pulled off all his scientific miracles. He was treated as the only guy who could understand the mindset of the aliens, but that also made him dangerous because he trapped in the delusion of everything being okay and fun and happy and he often did evil things by accident while having good intentions. But they didnt have anyone else who'd cracked the code of the alien weaponry so they had to put up with him. He was just sorta assigned a crack team of secret agents whose job was Be The Old Man's Friend So We Dont All Die. Dont let him realise how the world is all destroyed and such, just play along with his goofyness and try and remind him to do his important work while dancing around why its important. it was super creepy how he was locked up and gaslighted like this!! And he was all 'oh im sure when im done with my ultimate experiment i can go home to my wife and kids' and yeah it was implied here that the same backstory applied :( 'distract the old man and validate his false opinion that his family is still alive and waiting for him' :( poor sci fi madds :(

Oh also for some reason he seemed to be wearing elements of Adventure era Dr Eggman's outfit? But just the general style of the coat and the wearing goggles that he never actually uses. And he had a very warm and cuddly autumnal colourscheme

Anyway i was part of the Super Secret Grampa Cherishing Division whose job was to act as his assistant but also secretly be packing a bazillion weapons to neutralize him if he poses a danger to humanity. But i started to genuinely care for the guy and question the 'any atrocity is permitted for the sake of saving the world' philosophy of my bosses. Also it was just very weird how it was this post apocolypse alien fighting action thing yet i didnt see ANY OF IT cos this story was confined to this one laboratory. It was surreal hearing about all this stuff happening offscreen!

I think Maddiman's main project was some sort of dimensional transport thing using salvaged alien tech? It was just a door in his lab that usually led to a closet but if he got it working itd teleport us straight to the alien base and save the world. And a lot of it wasnt explained but i got this great sense that itd all come together with a great twist ending evebtually but then i woke up before i got that far. Same for the reveal of this maddiman's new sci fi backstory and soooo many other dropped plot threads. Alas!

So anyway: closet. Closet with one of those bead curtain things cos i was thinking about them when i fell asleep. It was supposed to be a teleport but when it malfunctioned it had really scary negative effects warping people's biology and stuff. I remember one of the test subjects was sent in for a five day trip to a specific alternate dimension but then when they came back itd been several years and theyd had to survive in a deadly wasteland and been mutated into a hellbeast. And maddiman had a huge breakdown because he felt like his recklessness and optimism towards this experiment had caused this mistake to happen, and he'd never realized just how awful the consequences could be. He was babbling motor mouth discussing theories for where it went wrong and there was something like 'we'd only tested it for one day trips and assumed that just programming two of them would equal two days but actually with each additional number on the screen it multiplies the days by 3" And there was something about like...the bead curtain was the machine rather than the door itself? Like trying it on a bunch of different doors around the lab to try and find a way to cure this person.

And there was some sort of artificial intelligence computer with the personality of an adorable lil girl, who helped maddiman do calculations and stuff. She missed the mistake in this calculation cos her concept of linear time and the limits of human organs was kinda undeveloped. She only existed within the realm of numbers after all, and didbt even have functionality to record footage of her human friends's faces. No idea wtf a human looks like! So maddiman was lost in his desperate grief of potentially accidebtally killing or at least mentally scarring a person and the government would probably kill them now if they saw they were a super mutant. And he was sobbing and begging this AI to help, his last resort was her maybe being able to see a brainwave that he'd missed. But she was freaking out cos she didnt even fully understand why maddiman was crying let alone what to do to fix it. Eventually she did manage to find a solution theough some simple different logic thing that she had from her perspective as a computer. And that person was saved but still traumatized and maddiman had a moment of realizing just how high stakes everything was and freaking out. He was like 'whats wrong with my head, why didnt i notice that, why was i so reckless, why cant i seem to grasp basic human logic that i need right now" Having a big existential crisis of 'wait how did i even get in this lab, where's my family and why do i seem to have superpowers'. Protagonist mission: hide all the goddamn mirrors to avoid this weird ghostgramp (...aliengramp??) from realizing he's dead (..or an alien??) and losing control of himself. And everyone was running around talking about 'containment procedures' and poor maddiman didnt know that if his panic attack continued he might just straight up be killed for outliving his usefulness. So the protagonist was desperate to help him calm down and it sucked SO MUCH cos they had to lie about his past and weave the web of deception around him again for his own safety. In the end they just hugged him close until he calmed down, and all the other employees were like GASP THEY ACTUALLY TOUCHED THE EVIL DANGEROUS SUPER EVIL MAN and protag was like 'i am 1% away from slapping the next bitch who insults this grandpa'. And it was super depressing cos once he'd calmed down he seemed to start forgetting that anything bad had ever happened?? And he was really panicking and scared cos he didnt understand why he was forgetting, and he knew he had to cling onto something important but he didnt know what. And then five minutes later he was back to haha cheerful nothing is wrong and i love doing my fun science in this room im never allowed to leave. And protagonist was crying the tears that this poor gramp wasnt allowed to cry :(

Also actually i think maybe he was a ghost AND an alien? Like he was a scientist who died in some sort of tragedy back when the aliens first invaded, but along the way he'd been infected so his body got back up as a twisted combination of human and inhuman. And this was something unique to him, like he just happened to have a genetic mutation in his blood that was totally undetectable in life but happened to mix unpredictably with this alien virus to turn him into a hybrid instead of just killing him. So the government was very interested in finding a way to replicate this and create new supersoldiers, as well as just taking advantage of this dude's confused mental state that granted him a unique understanding of alien tech that made him more effective than other scientists. And, of course, also made him easy to manipulate :(

And i also had a feeling that maybe his backstory was mixed up with Adventure dr eggman? Like here it seemed he had a daughter instead of a son, and she had a similar death to Maria Robotnik where she was assasinated by the government he worked for, and it tipped him over the edge. I think Maddiman-alien-scifi-dude originally died trying to save her from being used in some sort of experiment? Like she was already dying of a disease and thats why maddiman took this job to have access to powerful government technology to try and look for a cure. But when the whole alien apocolypse happened, the evil government decided to use her for experiments cos she was 'basically dead anyway'. Theyd just lie and tell maddiman she died of her illness. So this was how they found out that this particular family's bloodline had a mutation that let them form a viable hybrid with alien dna. They were turning this poor kid into a monster in the basement while lying to her dad about her being dead! And maddiman was about to commit suicide from having no reason to live anymore, with the hell of this apocolypse world and the false impression that his kid was already dead. But somehow monster-daughter sensed this or something and broke out of containment to try and save him, and when he saw her he was able to recognise her even in her twisted state. So when the soldiers gunned her down in front of him and fed him some lies about this not being his daughter, he just completely snapped. He tried in vain to fight back and take down as many of them as possible in revenge, but well he was just a simple round dad with no ability to fight a government. So he was unceremoniously executed along with his kid and they shoved the bodies back in the lab to continue testing. "Damn that overemotional science dad, he made us execute our most valable test subject! But at least this way we can analyze his corpse to see if the mutation is passed down on the patrilineal side." But at some point during the fight, monster-daughter's blood had splashed on her dad and gotten into his bloodstream. So the seemingly dead body suddenly got up out of the morgue and started sucking people's blood or something. And this led to the current situation where they have him locked up cos he's a valuable test subject but also hey he has 100% reason to kill all of us and we're screwed if he remembers his past. Also i think the computer AI thing was his subconcious attempt to recreate the personality of his daughter even if he couldnt remember she'd ever existed :(

Anyway at some point things escalated and there was this final showdown versus both the invading aliens and the evil governmebt guys. I think there was some corrupt greedy politician dude who stole maddiman's teleporter tech and sold us out to the aliens cos he wanted money and power or something. And probably predictably the aliens just threw him off a bridge after he gave them the thing, because seriously even this evil army thinks these government dudes are too evil!

So this big actiony event was happening and Maddiman was freaking out like 'no no no i cant leave the lab everyone wpuld be mad at me, i dont even know what its like outside this room' even when he was in the middle of being attacked by aliens. He was forced to face his repressed memories to survive, and he naturally had a massive fuckin freakout! And i think maybe when protagonist character was trying to protect him he accidentally lashed out with his powers and hurt them, and he was so horrified thinking another person he cared about was gonna die because of him. Protagonist was like 'dont worry gramps its just a scratch' but he'd already freaked out and run away into the battlefield to his heavily implied death.

BUT THEN at some sort of moment of dire need, he came back all powered up and re-memoried and was like 'i have every reason to despise humanity but im not gonna let more children die because of these damn corporate monsters (and also literal monsters which are infinately less scary)" And he did some sort of great sacrifice to save the protagonist at the cost of his own life, and it was super dramatic falling from a building into a lake of fire or something. While sobbing and smiling peacefully thinkibg "did i atone for my sins? Will i be able to see my family again?" As his smiling face sunk beneath the flames and the protagonist cried out into the abyss...

Aaaaand then i dont really know what happened in the big battle and i also never found out wtf the solution was to fixing the transporter thing or how the aliens invaded or any of the million plot points that were non gramp related.

I just remember that when we all saved the day and defeated the baddies we found that maddiman had actually survived and it was a big hugs reunion. He was like "OH YEAH i totally forgot i literally already died once and regenerated from it, and this was the entire start to my story. My bad!" *shrugs inexplicably not dead arms*

So yeah in summary im glad my brain summoned up a universe where my favourite sad granddad is literally immortal now, but also why did it torment him with an even sadder plot than his original one

[tumblunni]

Let’s ramble a bit more about Changeling Sim ideas! This time a bit about the awkward lil royal family and their interlocking relationships~!

Kiddo

It our deuteroganist! Hello! The protagonist’s cute little daughter is actually the next heir to the faerie throne, sent to be raised by her as a challenge to prove that the human world has good in it and is worth saving. And also secretly because Xana Mega is pretty awkward and cute under her scary facade, and was worried she was too distant to make a good mother to her child. In the golden ending you can help patch up their relationship, even though Jackie is still the one Kiddo knows as her true mother, and her biological parent becomes more like the family’s aunt. Kiddo is technically half human, but it’s not because Xana Mega married a human or anything. Fairies don’t follow biological genetics, theyre grown from giant flowers after all! Xana created Kiddo entirely by herself, and she acquired her human side solely from being given to Jackie to raise. Baby fae are more metaphysically squishy than their older counterparts, the classic changeling ploy is simply to replace a human child with a fae baby and it’ll naturally shift into the shape of the human. For a time they’ll be just that- a fairy wearing a disguise. But if they don’t know theyre not human, they’ll grow into what they’re taught and completely transform into a real mortal around puberty. Changelings do tend to retain a heightened sense to the supernatural and occasionally a few odd abilities, but generally they’ll never return to what they once were. Traditionally nobody had a choice in this whole matter, it was a very sketchy and horrid practise of ancient fae who didnt even respect humans as real sentient people. But in this case Kiddo wasn’t replacing an existing human, and she’s being raised knowing of her origins. Eventually she’ll face the question of whether she wants to stay or return to being a fairy, but it’ll be 100% her own choice. Similarly, it’s her own choice whether she wants to take the throne or if she finds a different career choice during her adventures in this other world. Many endings for you, the player!

Xana Mega

The current queen of Mag Mell, an ominous towering figure who rules with strict efficiency and commands the current anti-human war. Everyone’s pretty damn scared of her, and she lives a very lonely life disconnected from her own people. Despite her frightening persona and dedication to all things rational, she’s called for this mysterious truce for the next 18 years, and is permitting certain humans to enter our realm?? Truly the queen works in mysterious ways... but is she going soft...? Deep down she’s really a kind person who feels she has to put up this front deliberately in order to retain order. Its half that and half not really knowing how to function well socially, since she’s been groomed to be a ruler from a young age and had to live with a distant father. Because she was scared she’d repeat his mistakes, she gave her child to somebody else... but ultimately has she just become the same absent parent? It doesnt matter, because at least the kid will have a good mother, even if it isn’t her. But the decision does haunt her, and she’s both excited and terrified of the day she’ll see the child again on her 18th birthday and she won’t recognise her. But hopefully (if the player does well) she’ll be able to see that Kiddo has grown up into a wonderful young woman and had a fullfilling life that makes it all worthwhile ^_^ Ultimately if you’d ever get to know the real Xana beneath the royal role, she’s a slightly adorable awkward dork with a weary sadness yet a childish joy for experiencing new things. When you’d given up hope on this stuff, its hard to restrain yourself! Its possible to get a super secret route where Jackie romances Xana and Kiddo acquires DOUBLEMUMS~! And they’re super cute going out together on Real Authentic Human World Dates while Xana flails happily like this small hotdog stand is disneyland. Who’da thought that after the war ended, the old queen would become a human world weeaboo as soon as she set foot in our dimension? ^_^

Alberich

Xana’s father and previous ruler. Known as the Good King, he was responsible for starting the grand reforms of society that Xana continues nowadays. If peace is ever achieved between humans and fae, he was the one who sewed the first seed even if he didn’t live to see it sprout. Despite his success as a ruler, he was pretty flawed as a father, and passed that on to his daughter. He couldn’t completely escape the trappings of ancient fairy tradition, and his daughter was mostly raised by maids and tutors while he remained just this distant silent figure she could never reach no matter how hard she tried. She never even knew very much about him since he died when she was young. The young queen was just left with a million different opinions everybody else had on him, coalescing into an abstract cluster of an unknowable, empty pillar of ideal regal emotionlessness. .....Of course, the real Alberich was just as far from this as she is! To those who personally knew him, he was a complete softhearted goofball whose overidealistic ramblings would surely doom the whole country. And isn’t that just why he’s so loveable? Ultimately, his failure as a father was just that... a failure. Xana tried to justify it as if he’d made the right decision to be distant, and she should become the same sort of person, and take it further to become distant to even her own citizens. But Alberich never pretended his decision was the right one, he was a good man who despite his best efforts didn’t know how to raise a child. He had no-one to learn from, and his fear of messing up is what caused him to flee from the concept of parenthood entirely. He thought that hiring the best educators and minders would help compensate for the ways he was lacking as a dad, never knowing that all his daughter wanted was the one thing he could give- love. :( In the end he perished sadly to a simple disease that could have been cured if the country’s infrastructure wasn’t so ravaged by the war with the humans. His decision to prioritize the remaining money towards protecting the citizens was what caused him to waste away from a simple fever. While a certain someone raced against the clock to fetch the medicine on foot, arriving just late enough to miss the chance to hold his hand as he passed away...

Rafferty

A simple court jester who was promoted to the king’s butler and eventually promoted/demoted (?) to the finance minister after the new queen took the throne. Why is he even in the royal family section...? He’s always been sort of a stuffy grumpy neat freak, but he used to be a symbol of fun amoungst the court once. Now he’s just become bitter and hateful, leading the anti-human sentiment and questioning the country’s leadership at every turn. He’s globally hated by all of his coworkers and suspected of being corrupt- he was the major scapegoat for the culprit in the king’s death, and never managed to shake the stigma. He’s only really here and has any sort of power because the king’s will secured his position for the foreseeable future. He’s also hated because (GASP!) he’s a disgusting former human turned fairy! In his former life he was a homeless peasant in the 1800s that Alberich brought home one day and hired as a servant. Everyone humoured the king with his new pet, but it started to get ridiculous when he gave the thing legal rights and a career! It’s tradition to just consider a fairy a fairy when they become one, and forget about whoever they were in their past life, but gossipping housewives like to ignore this rule and hold it against him anyway. Its also kinda why Rafferty has such a personal hate of humans, he used to be one and he’s seen nothing but the worst side of them... His role in the current story is really just to be a small obstacle in plotlines, and a possible befriendable character. I’m an optimistic person so I like stories of cliche ‘evil vizier’ type guys having more complex motives and being able to be redeemed in the end. In the end you can discover that the real secret behind him and the king was that they were actually dating, and Rafferty really was loyal to the kingdom all along. And he endured all this hate for so long because he doesn’t want to tarnish Alberich’s memory by letting people know about their affair. Xana is actually his biological daughter from when he was human, making him Kiddo’s grandpa. Neither of them knew this fact though, and in fact Xana was one of the people who hated him the most. She just knew him as her funny friend who kept her company when she was lonely as a child, one of her father’s servants who seemed to care about her more than the rest. So she took it as a personal betrayal when he was suspected of killing the king, and kept believing it well into her adult years. Its gonna be a messy reunion for them when the misunderstanding is all sorted out, but a happy one too, hopefully...

+++

A slightly unrelated side note but I ideally wanna make a full cast of court employees and lesser nobility! At the moment all I have is Rafferty, unnamed scribe dad and kiiiinda a cupid type figure I dont know much about yet? I dunno, I just got that concept in my brain while I was thinking about Raffles and Ritchi’s past back when he was king. I imagined maybe Rafferty did have at least one friend amoung the royal court who knew about his relationship with the king and supported them. And it sorta came together in my brain as some sort of champion of love and justice, and maybe designed around a traditional valentine’s day fairy cliche. But like a world weary chain smoker one? BUT still one that really is a kind loving figure, not a dark subversion or anything. I just feel like they’re someone worn down by seeing injustice in the world, and questioning other people’s definitions of love that’re being forced upon them. Someone who was doubting this country... I get the feeling they’ve left the plot by the time we get to the present, but I don’t know if they died or maybe they just left the country after the king died and they’d lost their last hope the place could change. But I do generally think maybe everyone who was in the fairy court back when Rafferty was jester is now dead and/or gone, he was the youngest member then and he’s the oldest one now. And he was hated by all his former friends, they died, and now he’s left being hated by all new people... But yeah I just have this good image of some broken but kind person finding a tiny bit of happiness realizing grumpy old rafferty found love, and reassuring him that they dont hold the same stupid homophobic ‘no dating humans’ views that everyone else is pushing. A brief bit of calm before the storm, making it even sadder that cupid just wasnt strong enough to keep trying after that hope died, and ran out even on rafferty, their last friend... I guess... a Nanu cupid?