#tofusquad

[hellmouth-manor]

Scuttlebug Jamboree | micah | ch3 body rx

One of Micah's best friends in the whole world is dead, so let's do a normal human thing and take a break to talk about the concept of speedrunning.

Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Speedrunning often involves following planned routes, which may incorporate sequence breaking and can exploit glitches that allow sections to be skipped or completed more quickly than intended. It is also the epitome of esoteric nerd shit that alienates any normal person you try to tell about it, and as such it's a great summary of how Micah has interfaced with everything in his whole life up until about two weeks ago.

Micah knew why he was in Sloth from the moment he saw his lounge key no matter what half-baked lies he tried to tell anyone else in the early stages of their confinement. His mask of stoicism had now been ripped off in the most embarrassing way possible, his character flaws laid bare; here was a man who had let his life go to waste in the pursuit of unproductive turbonerd bullshit, a man who had given up on himself before he'd even tried to get anywhere. Micah had no friends. Micah wasted his life between asinine jobs watching VTubers with jiggle physics playing Five Nights at Freddies and projecting parasocial friendships onto women who didn't care about his existence beyond the obscene amounts of money he gave to them.

Even though Micah had no interest in trying his hand at speedrunning video games himself, he had mastered his own form of the art. In every situation where anything remotely bad ever happened to him, no matter what it was, he blew through every stage of grief at a pace that would turn GDQ champions green with envy and landed on acceptance. Micah rolled over and accepted whatever happened, no matter what. He always had. He accepted he was the most worthless motherfucker on the face of the planet. He accepted he was never going to have a single friend. He accepted that he was destined for a life of mockery and that was how it was always going to be. Sure, he'd been given two fellow 'Sloths', but they both seemed like completely normal people. They weren't as bad as him. They weren't...

...well. That's what he thought.

And then the photo of everything including the Cinnamoroll 'bed' came out and suddenly Micah was experiencing the peculiar sensation of going from casual terms to the absolute best of friends with someone in the space of two weeks. All it took was one embarrassing text message chain to realise that him and Miri were, in fact, two little peas in a pod. That they had so much in common that it'd forced him to re-evaluate his entire world view, to take a step back and realise that he'd been making so many assumptions about everything that simply just weren't true.

Miri was like him. She was also kind, and brave, and even-tempered. She thought of herself as a monster, but in her shoes Micah would do everything she'd done and more. (Except date Shoji. Sorry, Shoji. It's nothing personal, you just don't have enough autistic failgirl swag for Micah's tastes.) Miri got his humor in a way few people did. Miri got his jokes. She understood most, if not almost all of his stupid nerd shit references. She was patient with him. Chastised him for his faults in a way that made him- not want to curl up and accept his failure, but actually try to improve. Miri was his Pompompurin oomfie. His mutual. His White Girl Wednesday. His ally in the metaphorical Posting Trenches. A member of his #TOFUSQUAD. And so many other things that he couldn't remember them all, even though it'd basically all happened in the course of those two weeks.

Miri made Micah happy. Genuinely happy. And it wasn't like Micah didn't suddenly have other friends! He did- he even had another best friend, a little sister, not to mention a girlfriend- but they weren't like Miri. They weren't Sloth. Micah would protect them all with his life, sure! But, again, it was different with Miri. She'd been there- since the beginning. By his side. On the same team. The same as him. Strong, but a little lazy, and certainly as dumb as him when it came to romance too. He'd never thought someone would kill her. Could kill her. Why? The concept baffles him. For a wish? Really? What wish could be more important than her? 

Miri had become his friend in an instant. And now she had her life snatched away in an instant. So- Micah guesses he could do what he did for Raoul. For Poppy. For Wakako. Even, in a different way, for Olwin. He could close his eyes and accept what had happened, that there was no fighting against it, that all there was to do was take a stab at the whodunnits and numb yourself the best you could against the guilt. That everything was going to happen no matter what, so what's the point in anything but skipping right to acceptance? My Best Friend's Corpse Is Floating In A Pool, Let's Get Over It in 5 Minutes, Any% Category No Glitches, first on the leaderboard? Sounds about right for Micah. That's how he's always dealt with things. Maybe have a cry and go back to playing Pokemon Platinum.

...but of course he can't do that. Because Miri had told him not to. Because she had told him that he had worth, actual worth. Because if he treats this like he's treated everything else in his life, it's- it's not right. Not for one of his first friends in the world. Not for someone who meant the world to him. Micah will take his time. He will grieve. And he will, in his own way- perhaps not the most clever or successful of fashions, but his own way- figure out how to do this properly, not just cut to the end. Because he's done with accepting things that get handed to him. And because Miri deserves effort put in, not just his usual slothful repose.

Even if she did make fun of him for being a Vriska simp. Even then.