#chUmbra stuff

[uracilcherubs]

> Be the Hivecrasher Limeblood

Yeah, done. Though, does it really count as hivecrashing just because you don’t pay rent? 

Your name is CALLIOPE. You are a lime blood cherub of … well, if you’re honest, you aren’t quite sure how old you are. You’ve tossed around ages in the past, but – as you have also mentioned in the past – time has never really been your strong suit. The whole mess is hardly helped by the multiple sets of memories you have, each one from a different instance of yourself, each one living out longer or shorter lives. Things got…weird…in the Medium, and you try not to think on it for too long.

Suffice it to say, you are OLDER THAN HUMAN THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, and that WORKS ENOUGH FOR YOU. Better to roll with the punches and let the time players sort it out; though the age scale on Umbrage is even more fraught with complications, time travel, extended alternate universes and heaps of sloppy writing.

“i hope that wasn’t sUbtly laid bait for a compliment, “ you say to the open air. “i’m afraid yoU won’t find me an Unbiased critic – or a favoUrable one.”

Kind and sweet and lovable as you are (you chuckle softly at that), you can’t say you have much in the way of fond regard for the life you’ve led , or the unlife for that matter. No, looking back on things, you spent quite a lot of time moping around: moping on your meteor, moping in your session, moping in the dream bubbles, almost 15 times over. So much of your life has been spent moping, moping, moping,  playing the sad, second fiddle to your brother, who hogged more spotlight than any thief of light could hope for.

“we can’t help where oUr mUse takes Us – or oUr lord, as it were!”

You pull a hefty book from the shelf. It’s a new book, of sorts; a reprint of a tome you already own, polished and made new for a brand new audience in a brand new hardcover.  You flip through the pages, delighting at familiar passages. It’s a story you have mixed feelings for, and you can’t say you agree with every direction it took, but in the end it’s a story you devoted years to, and you are content with the fun you had along the way.  You snap the book shut, a look of realization sweeping over your face.

“oh ho,” you start. “perhaps…yes!”

You place the book back on its shelf and rush over to your desk. From a heavy drawer your pull out another book, one heftier and, you admit, a little more worn than some of your others, but one you’ve no less fondness for. You take no care pulling it open (leaving the mystery of its condition apparent to all), making a mad scramble toward its middle. 

You stop not at a fresh page, but one covered in notes and illustrations. A drawing of a large imposing adult cherub dominates the page, his false eye matching his false leg matching his false arm. You don’t particularly care for this chapter of your book—here is where the ties of your shared story really start to tangle and knot – but you can’t help yourself when a previously unconsidered angle dawns on you.

You begin to scribble in what little free space you have on the page, reading your work aloud to the room.

“perhaps, beyond a simple black infatUation, he collected so many serkets for their classpect!”

You scribble in a small sun – the symbol of light players everywhere – into the margin, replacing the center circle with an eight-ball.

“it would certainly sUit Umbrage’s ego, having so many light thieves in one spot…his ship would have made for a veritable narrative magnet!”

You smile at your work and close your unabridged journal, returning it to its place in the desk. You don’t really buy the theory for a second, and you’ve maintained a healthy skepticism of post-canonical word of god, but themes are fun to bring out, even if they’re happy coincidences and even if you just made them up just now.

“bUt i think that’s qUite enoUgh reflecting on the past,” you say, to yourself this time. “we woUldn’t want to get too self indUlgent.”

Anyway.

You stand from your desk and stretch, extending your wings out as you look around your room, which contains a great many deal of your INTERESTS, almost all of them revolving around a WEBCOMIC YOU CANNOT DISCUSS WITH YOUR FRIENDS. Lovely posters line the wall, looking down on figures and plushes you might have abused your powers just a little bit to secure. But  not everything in your room treads into the realm of metatextUal discourse; the walls beam a bright blue, with painted white clouds lazily drifting here and there, all above a carefully (carefUlish!) tiled floor of your design.

It was a thrill, getting to build your own room.  For a brief and chaotic moment, you were able to imagine yourself a troll, out on her own and building her very own hive. And what a hive Callie Ohpeee would live in! With all the books she could ever dream of reading, and divided into hallways of shining gold and striking purple, with free balcony access so she could see the stars and admire the constellations,  and maybe, perhaps, feel a bond with the long-forgotten ancestor she would never know, and-

Ahem.

All that to say, though you didn’t quite follow the design documents of your…fictions… it was a joy being able to put your own direct spin on your living space, just like you were a real troll girl. Though, you recognize, if you were a real real troll girl, you likely wouldn’t live long enough to build your hive palace – barring, of course, all the unculled spinoff au’s where Callie lives long enough to incite a rebellion and lead the lowbloods and forgotten castes into uprising and…okay, look.

You know how this sounds. You do! It is not just for their clumsily written narratives that you look back on your Callie Ohpeee adventures with a grimace. A limeblood messiah rising up and swaying the oppressed into freedom is just less problematic when you’re a naïve cherub who has yet to meet any of the several dear friends who actually lived on Alternian soil, and would take some exception to your…generous interpretation of its actual, real world social dynamics.  It’s just something you had to grow out of!

You’re just grateful it’s an idealism you managed to put a clamp on before you were ever able to enter on a loving treatise about how romantic it would have been to be born on Alternia proper, with an actual lusus and getting to actually navigate the quadrants and…ugh. Okay, that’s enough of that. 

You see what’s happening? All your old fan fictions are coming back to haunt you, and all you wanted to do was think about your cool skaia-inspired room. And it is a very cool room indeed, IN YOUR HUMBLE OPINION.

But despite your best efforts, you fail your attempt at an elegant segue, and your embarrassing trollsona just keeps haunting your think pan brain. You close your eyes and frown as you look back on the life and times of miss Ohpeee. You were so absorbed in your own fantasy version of Alternia, where you were a hero, and didn’t have a hateful brother ruining your life, and you weren’t chained in a small room, and you weren’t ug

You give your head a shake and politely but firmly ask those thoughts to leave. You have, as previously mentioned, spent entirely too much of your life moping, and you are very well not going to let some long-standing insecurities intrude upon your narration anymore!

“and besides,” you say, a smile creeping on your face, “what part of that is fiction anymore? i am very mUch a hero, my brother is qUite dealt with, this room is notably chain-free – and, dear brain, yoU seem to have not caUght onto the fact that we are wonderfully fashionable these days!”

You breathe out the negative feelings with a sigh and give your body another stretch. You take a few more breaths, but the last one slips out as a grumble. Even with the old thoughts shown the door, you find it harder to shake off the discomfort crawling up you, from clawed foot to horned skull. You cannot ignore how aware you are, in this instant, of your own body – the sharpness of your claws, the toughness of your skin, the broadness of your shoulders; the way your cheeks curve out in almost, but by no means exactly, the way the rest of you doesn’t.

You let out another sigh, and while the discomfort doesn’t leave you, you successfully shoo out the heated comments from your brain – commentary you pointedly decide not to dignify with narration. Your smile is somewhat labored, but still sincrere.

It’s been a process, getting to where you are now, and you think you’ve got a long way to go before you can say you’re done. And, perhaps, maybe you’ll never be done – but you know that you aren’t planning on stopping anytime soon.

“i’m sUre i’ll be alright,” you say, and you very much mean it.