#he's also packed with alll sorts of stuff

[astros-arts-inthestars]

DUDE I JUST REMEMBERED I MADE THIS GUY AGESSSS AGO WHEN I WAS STILL BIG INTO MURDER DRONES!!! Hes my oc!!He's based off a piece of lore from the Pilot: J saying "Once we're done with this colony," which I interpreted as there being different colonies. So Kenny was the product of that!

He's a worker drone that's part of a small surviving economy going off of massive offensive defense, unlike Khan's defensive door...

They're underground and Kenny is quite the runt to them, and finds him quite weak, so that's why he installed a [Super Tough And Badass.exe] when he's really a dork.

[evilhorses]

FRIEND

Tell us about your dystopian au pleeeaase!

Ok so basics!

My apocalypse is sort of a radiation but it's affecting everything in a kind of Annihilation (2018) sort of way. Things are mutating and melding, new creatures are being born that the world Hadn’t even dreamed of. The exact cause is unclear but the effects spread fast and wide, consuming the planet within a few months.

A lot of people were transformed immediately, others it took some time, and the rest were left pretty much unaffected. Some were turned into/ melded with objects, some became mindless animals, some were mutated but retained their consciousness.

It's been around 150-200 years since the event, humanity has lost track of when exactly it happened. Most people travel in small groups but there are a few larger ones that exist. Its very dangerous to travel alone and in some cases it can be just as dangerous to have someone else with you. Always keep your pack tight to your back, never go to the voice at night, think twice before you decide to go in that group of trees.

The Gang!

Cp9 is mostly just a group of people that either got separated from their original groups or have pretty much always been alone.

Lucci was lost at a very young age and would jump from group to group, eventually he went out on his own, he became a sort of legend/cryptid at one point. He started attracting other lost and unfortunate travelers and now has a big weird family. High alert hyper aggressive feral man learning to be a person again. A good jack of all trades as far as skills but is a little scary when confronted with a fight.

Blueno was surprisingly the first to join Lucci, they just ran into eachother, didn't say anything for the first week, then blueno finally said "are you gonna eat that" and pointed at a half eaten rabbit. He doesn't talk about where he's from, the most he said was that hes from somewhere up north. He cooks second to most in the group (right after Kumadori)

Spandam joins not to long after blueno and lucci start acting like an actual team. Pretty much useless, he came from a large settlement and was the son of some important guy there but got separated while trying to go on a scouting mission “to prove he’s brave to everyone”. They aren’t sure why they keep him around really but he does make good bait when needed. He keeps saying he’s gonna go back to his home someday but every time he’s presented with the opportunity he always makes an excuse to not go 🤔

Jabra is also a pretty feral guy but he came from a small group so he’s more social then lucci, more feral in the way of he just likes fighting. Grew up with Fukurou so they get along alright, even though they’re constantly bickering. He was traveling with kumadori and fukuro when they ran across lucci and the others and decided that even though he really didn’t like lucci or spandam it would be best to stick around. Ends up not hating lucci as much and in a poly relationship.

Kumadori, still very dramatic and over the top, came from a weird almost cult? Decided to leave after his mother “died” to go find a cave to die in but was found by jabra and fukuro. He decided living was more admirable then dying alone in a hole he craved out of hill (couldn’t find a suitable cave), still feigns suicide attempts though much to everyone’s annoyance. He’s surprisingly really good at stealth recon and scouting though! In charge of cooking most of the time.

Fukuro grew up in the same group as jabra and just kind of followed him. He’s really good at identifying plants and mushrooms so he’s the main forager. He usually hangs out with khalifa when they have to separate, tells her alll the embarrassing stuff jabra used to do as a kid when they were growing up. He misses his old family and friends but he’s happy he was able to find a new one. Also has the most medical know how.

Khalifa! She was also from a large settlement but wasn’t from an important family like spandam 👀 she ran away from her family because they were trying to sell her to pay some debts they had and ended up running into Kaku when they were kids. Sees him as a little brother. They didn’t hop groups though and kind of stuck to one place ina different settlement. The settlement was attacked by a large roaming band of raiders or “pirates” when they were older so they had to leave. They ran into the cp9 gang pretty soon though. She likes talking with Fukurou and blueno about different places they’ve seen and heard of. Good at staff and whip fighting.

Kaku was orphaned veryyy young and has no memory of who his parents are, doesn’t really wanna know what happened to them either. Little street urchin that everyone loved. Before the settlement was raided he grew to be very proficient with making things and taught himself how to sword fight. Acted as an unofficial guard but knew when to stay out of trouble….usually. After he and khalifa fled though he went into a depression over not being able to help the people back at the city he grew up in. When they met the gang though he put on a facade to seem much less depressed , lucci was able to see right through it though but didn’t say anything for a long time. Eventually they have a heart to heart and connect. They kiss and start being sad and gay together. Jabra doesn’t join for awhile. Really good at scouting and making improvised weapons. Fast as fuck boyyy.

One piece OC

Val! My sweet beloved. Came from a medium sized roaming group but was separated recently, only her and her little 2 year old son Theo. She thinks the others were killed in a mutation event that caused an explosion, spoiler they didn’t die they were somewhere else. So she does what she can and starts wandering looking for anywhere to go to keep her baby safe. Is extremely depressed. Has to go hunting and sets Theo in a safe baby hole. The gang find him and are like “yo who left this whole ass baby in a hole” so they take him and Val sort of freaks out. She stalks them for days trying to sneak him back but they know she’s following them (but they think she’s a creature/mutant) so there isn’t really a chance for her. She eventually just has to go up to them and say “hey! Give me my fucking kid back you stole him!!” Then she’s sees jabra and is like, wait, turns out they had a run in 2 years ago and spent a night together 😏 so he pony’s up and is like ok shes gonna run with us so I can help raise my kid. After about a year she starts foolin around with Kaku, then lucci and now the 4 of them are dating and whatnot. The twins happen soon and so on and so forth. Knows the land really well and is an expert with dealing with mutated animals/humans/objects. Is almost always part of the hunting party.

The cp9 gang are looking for a place to settle possibly permanently and happen across an old abandoned missel cilo! They manage to get inside and start fixing it to suit their needs. I wanna draw up a kind of layout of how they get things set up 👀

Other groups of people start joining in and they have to get used to other people again, it’s especially hard for lucci. Tempers flare and fights are fought but they manage to make it work…at least for the time being

[katyjustso]

It is my first post of the year so I shall begin with the obligatory…

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Yes, it’s the fucking 19th alright?

New Year, New Me.

Except it’s less an Emphatic Statement of Intent and more a Bewildered Question.

New Year, New Me…?

Erm….perhaps next year.

Listen, you’re going to have to excuse me for a minute because I’ve reached that age (and weight) where I can no longer blithely dismiss sudden chest pain as ‘just trapped wind’ and it feels like someone just dropped a breeze-block on my sternum.  I better go and investigate.  I’ll be back (I hope).

Yup.  Just a massive fart.  Yet more of the anxiety wind which is currently blowing through my life. Anxiety, you say? This early on in the year? Even with the kids safely installed back at school?

Well, yes.

Sadly, I haven’t had the kick-ass start to the year I was dreaming about.  More a massive kick you UP the ass kind of start to the year that I could not have anticipated in a billion years.

The wank start to 2017 comes hot on the heels of a fairly dog-shit end to 2016 which left me uncharacteristically desperate for the festivities to end and gagging for the 1st of January.

I use the term dog-shit advisedly (believe it or not) because that’s what our festive period felt like tbh.  Like, if Christmas 2016 was a spanking new pair of white Nike Tn’s, then I spent the majority of it trying to scrape off a steaming turd only to find I’d walked through it again.

But, much like a shit-covered shoe, our Christmas troubles were mere trifles; annoying inconveniences which rather threatened to spoil everything than actually doing so.

The main culprit was sickness and disease.  Having swerved such things at Christmas for the last 16 years or so, I guess we were due a turn.  But it’s always crap when your kids are poorly and it’s even crapper at Christmas.

A particular highlight (for me, not him) was Thom’s impeccable sick-etiquette on Christmas morning.  Not wanting to spoil the splendour of the occasion, Thom repeatedly asked to be accompanied to the kitchen between opening his own gifts so he could chuck up what was left of his little guts.  Bless.

Although between MTV’s Bangin’ Bassline Christmas Hits (absolutely no fucking sign of Bing Crosby at alll) blaring out of the TV and the frenzied ripping of wrapping paper by his siblings, his bile-only retching would doubtless have gone unnoticed.

The real highlight of my Christmas morning is still telling the kids not to worry about dropping all the wrapping paper on the floor cos we don’t live with your anti-mess freak father anymore.

The smug satisfaction I still get from saying this after five years is quite shameful but in my defence, as a single mum at Christmas you’ll take any little win you can get.

I might have to chalk it up as a loss though, cos it’s one thing to let the kids open presents without following them around the room brandishing a carrier bag for the rubbish but when you use it as an excuse to leave the room strewn with wrapping paper and ribbon for about 10 days, you start to look less care-free and more lazy bastard.

So yeah.  The ‘Noro-Virus’ did the rounds over Christmas.  Noro-Virus sounds more sympathy evoking than 24hr bug. Also, I don’t think 24 hours carries sufficient gravitas when you’re 8 and the 24 hours in question starts at 11pm on Christmas Eve  and lasts right the way through your Christmas dinner.

And, whilst I felt dreadfully sorry for Thom and his khaki coloured sick, my Christmas Eve wasn’t exactly all wine and wassail.  Well, it wasn’t wine cos, recovering alcoholic obvs, so yeah that bit of Christmas has gone out of the window.  But as is my Christmas custom, I still had about 80% of the wrapping to do once the little ones finally lost consciousness.

But no sooner had I rolled up my sleeves and attached my snazzy new ‘On-hand Sellotape dispenser” than I was interrupted by Thom’s tired and tremulous crying.  Actually, to my shame (just add it to the fucking list shall we?), I sent the teen upstairs the first time I heard him crying and that was only after there was a break in the carols I had blaring out from the TV.  The teen has even less patience than me, if that is even possible, so when he came downstairs after fifteen seconds armed with the considered conclusion that Thom was ‘over-excited’, I took him at his word and carried on with my frantic wrapping.

By 8am Christmas morning, there was a pile of presents under the tree that might as well have been wrapped by an 18 month old.  I was so tired with darting up and down stairs to hold back Thom’s hair (oh, hang on, I don’t do that with him do I – so why does he need me?) as he was sick every half an hour that I’d barely bothered to hide all the tape and left over bows.  Not that anyone noticed.

Boxing Day saw the girl fall foul of the wretched bug and the day after that had me dashing between bathroom and bedroom all day.

*Sigh*

God.

With all this festive digression, I have quite forgotten the subject of my post.  Which is a relief actually, cos it’s fucking painful to think about.

The reason I have entitled this post The Moving Memoirs #1 is not because I believe these posts will be moving in any emotional sense.  Whatsoever. They will be filled with a shit load of whingeing and bitching about various stuff going on but this is not a sympathy seeking exercise. I can’t be arsed. No, I shan’t be moving anyone to tears.

For you eagle-eyed readers, the #1 is not accidental.  The thread of this blog will probably take at least three months to exhaust itself and so I may manage to write a few more posts.  That’s not a threat, nor am I making any promises.  I am struggling to write at the moment.  I am struggling to do most things.  Functioning is at an all-time low.

So. Not trying to ‘move’ anybody emotionally and it might be a three month long series.  Dunt take a genius to work out that the moving in question is a house move and I shall be blogging about this for the foreseeable future.

I have moved house before but in the five years that we’ve lived where we live now, so much has changed, and I fear this move is going to be pretty different to any I’ve done before.

So. I remember seeing something on Pinterest once – like a ‘countdown to moving day’ list or something like that.  I must have read it cos I sort of remember it saying shit like this:

Three months before you move

Begin to compile a list of removal companies you could use

Make an inventory of each room

Invest in some ‘packing boxes’ and begin to label them by room

One month before you move

Inform the relevant phone and cable TV companies of your impending move

Start wrapping your breakables in newspaper

The day before you move

Make sure you have left the kettle and other essentials out for your last day

Have your gas and electric meters read (my mother just told me this…seriously I have no idea about this shit.)

The day of the move

Get up early

Blah

Blah

Fucking blah

  Right.  You get the picture.

Here is how my list thus far with my confident predictions for the next few months:

Three months before (eviction notice served)

Spend 36 hours in a stunned stupor because you can’t believe your home will no longer be your actual home in ninety days

Say ‘fuck’. A lot

Cry

Hide under a duvet

Desperately call parents and incomprehensibly wail about impending homelessness

Two months before

Still say fuck. A lot.  Also shit, wanker, twat and bastard.  For example:

(a) “What the fuck are we actually going to do though?”

(b) “You tell me where we’re going to fucking live then you stupid fucking twat.”

(c) “What sort of wanker calls that a third fucking bedroom?”

And so on.

More crying

Spend excessive amounts of time on sofa whilst permanently hiding under a blanket that now hasn’t been washed for six weeks and is covered in tears, snot, chocolate and crumbs

Eat everything you see that is in the sugar/carbs group

Stop cleaning the house in a kind of half-assed protest over being evicted

Continue to barrage those close to you with totally inappropriate over-emotional calls about your ‘desperate’ predicament

One week before

Resign yourself to fact that you are absolutely fucked and you’re going to end up moving you and your three children into your mother’s house

Start hurling random things in Morrison’s carrier bags whilst telling everyone how you’ve ‘nearly finished packing’

Panic and start throwing away things you need simply cos you don’t know what box to put them in. Seriously, do tea-lights go in the box marked kitchen or living room? You fucking tell me.

Order a massive skip that you can’t afford whilst kidding yourself (but actually nobody else) that THIS time you mean it when you say you are going to de-clutter. Then spend two of the three days you’ve hired it for watching inconspicuous members of the public (seriously, they may as well put on a comedy moustache and glasses) surreptitiously chucking all manner of shit into YOUR skip because THEY’RE too fucking tight to hire one themselves.

On the evening before the skip is due to be collected, gaze in wonder and horror at how little space there is left to put your own mountain of crap into now the skip-jackers have filled it.

Try to remedy this problem by shifting all the contraband crap to one corner of the skip.

Stumble upon at least four priceless pieces of other people’s crap you can’t believe has been thrown away and now you can’t possibly live without. Like, we could be talking about a fucking lava lamp or a scabby nest of tables that you just know you could upcycle with that tin of Annie Sloane pain that has been gathering dust in your garage for the last three years.  Y’know, ever since you abandoned upcycling that old book shelf you had and ordered a brand spanking new one off ov Very instead.

Seriously, you are genuinely thinking how unbelievable it is what people will throw away as you cradle your new free treasures (one man’s trash etc..) and take them into your already shit laden abode.  At this point, it is fair to say that the balance of your mind is clearly disturbed because the child’s manky old bicycle you’ve picked up has only got one wheel and is clearly for a four year old.  Your youngest child is 8.

  OK.  I’m majorly rambling now but are you getting the diabolical picture?

Moving house is a great big pile of shitty turd.  Moving house is something you don’t want to do even when you do want to do it.  As in, when you’ve chosen to move out, onwards and upwards in your life.

But when your only reason for moving is a big fat eviction notice that couldn’t have been any less expected if it had parachuted through the letter-box and kicked you in the fanny, well, the prospect of moving is bloody, fucking, shitting, bastard horrible.

So.  There you go.

My blogging raison d’etre for the next ninety days – give or take.

If the last fortnight is anything to go by there will be tears, tantrums and possibly some hilarious moments – like when I tell my kids that two of them are going to have to share a bedroom (jokes. It’ll obviously be me hunkering down on the sofa until one of the little bleeders moves out).

Arm yourself.

It ain’t gonna be pretty.

The Moving Memoirs #1 It is my first post of the year so I shall begin with the obligatory… New Year, New Me.