As another one of those people who is uncomfortable writing other's characters, I'm beginning to wish you hung out on IRC... '.'
Parts of this are based on the assumption that there is a fight while at the mall, and it happens in a way that I can work in an idea for something I've been thinking about. '.'
As it turned out, the Schroecks *did* have a sewing machine, and didn't mind me borrowing it for a while. It may have seemed like an odd thing to do under the circumstances, but I wanted some time to think over the days events.
One obvious thing was that several of my assumptions about how I'd changed had been wrong. The biggest one, wrong in a way that turned out good for me. But I also had a lot more Alexis in me than I'd at first realized.
At some point I'd decided that several decades had passed between the events of the IRC RP and Alexis showing up in Paragon City. It wasn't *that* much of a stretch that Confusion could do an aging freeze on her, and that would give plenty of time for any continuing RP, not to mention the whole "Morgan & Antares" business.
But now, I was feeling the impact of those decades. I'd never detailed what happened there, so I didn't have real memories. What I did have, though, was some of the skills accumulated during those years... and some of the emotions too. Not necessarily very much depth to any of it, but the sheer breadth of it had an impact.
It wasn't just my previous RP and my pretty straightforward desire to be a part-time girl that caused me to take this all in stride. Mind you, I don't think I'd have totally flown off the handle if I'd ended up as, say, Anire Goldenfeather, but it'd at least have thrown me off balance for a bit. But Alexis didn't just have experience at being a girl, she had experience of changing genders once or more a day for the majority of her adult life.
(And now that I thought about it, there were some damned good reasons to do it every day too. Bweh. Another thing for the morning routine.)
I didn't really 'feel' that much different as a girl than I did as a boy. This wasn't too surprising. When Morgan was going around casually zapping everyone (including himself) with the Gender Buster, it was mostly being done for comedy. Thus, it ended up being pretty much a hot swap - instant change, no downtime, no hormonal surges, all the signals going right to the places they should. I'd never even imagined it working differently until I read "I Was A Teeenaged Dummy Plug". And of course there's no reason for magical starlight transformations to make biological sense anyway.
The downside I was discovering to this was, basically, that all the signals were going right to the places they should. Specifically, the ones telling me that I was really, really horny. What did I think, that I'd *not notice* that a critical element of hundreds of my fantasies had suddenly come true? Nor did it help that Alexis had been sexually active for those decades, and as of the 'present' in CoH, in a relationship. (I'd pretty much known from the start that Alexis would give in to Mirami's advances... Maybe not the way she was at the start, but more and more of Confusion had been seeping into her as time went on. Sometimes I wonder what that says about *me*...) It was probably not going to help matters that neither I nor Alexis had ever been involved in a normal relationship, with things like *dating*... but that was getting a bit ahead of things.
What mattered for now was that I was in a house that wasn't my own, full of people I wasn't that close to, and in general it wasn't the appropriate time or place to go off and know myself. (I didn't even want to think about the possibility that somewhere in here might be someone who could actually smell my hormones...)
So. For the most part, appearances of my female side where my being female mattered could be broken down into three categories. Smiting evil, we had done earlier, and it undeniably had it's charms, but there wasn't any evil available just then. H, not an option at the moment. So I was focusing my energy on the third.
One of my other fiction avatars shared a house with an alternate universe version of Tomoyo Daidouji. Alexis did not have such a resource available to her. And so, instead of just having a somewhat irregular skill for quilting, I was now very good at making clothes... for myself. I didn't think I could do it for anyone else, since I was relying almost entirely on that strange sense of what would and wouldn't fit me. I didn't have to measure, or even really plan. I just held the image of what I wanted in my head, and I could see what I needed to do to make it happen. It made the process go surprisingly quickly, and kept me from being too distracted by... well, me.
(I would later realize that this plan had one critical flaw in it, but by that point it had ceased to be a major issue.)
Time passed. I supposed I wasn't being a terribly good guest by now, but when I get going on a major project, it takes a lot to tear me away from it. Besides, I should still be finished by dinner.
The trickiest part was the ribbons. Not even magic can help you when you aren't sure exactly what you want to happen, but I eventually worked out something that looked decent. Besides, perfection would be boring.
Finally, the time came for the fun part - showing off!
"So, how do I look?"
This may be revised some when I've, oh, had sleep... I know I put some things in a totally different order than I'd originally thought, I just have to figure out if it's a good idea...
-Morgan, cosplay!
"Would God I were the tender apple blossom
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
To be made honest by an act of Parliament
Call up the bloody Territorials."
-Steven Matuchek
Parts of this are based on the assumption that there is a fight while at the mall, and it happens in a way that I can work in an idea for something I've been thinking about. '.'
As it turned out, the Schroecks *did* have a sewing machine, and didn't mind me borrowing it for a while. It may have seemed like an odd thing to do under the circumstances, but I wanted some time to think over the days events.
One obvious thing was that several of my assumptions about how I'd changed had been wrong. The biggest one, wrong in a way that turned out good for me. But I also had a lot more Alexis in me than I'd at first realized.
At some point I'd decided that several decades had passed between the events of the IRC RP and Alexis showing up in Paragon City. It wasn't *that* much of a stretch that Confusion could do an aging freeze on her, and that would give plenty of time for any continuing RP, not to mention the whole "Morgan & Antares" business.
But now, I was feeling the impact of those decades. I'd never detailed what happened there, so I didn't have real memories. What I did have, though, was some of the skills accumulated during those years... and some of the emotions too. Not necessarily very much depth to any of it, but the sheer breadth of it had an impact.
It wasn't just my previous RP and my pretty straightforward desire to be a part-time girl that caused me to take this all in stride. Mind you, I don't think I'd have totally flown off the handle if I'd ended up as, say, Anire Goldenfeather, but it'd at least have thrown me off balance for a bit. But Alexis didn't just have experience at being a girl, she had experience of changing genders once or more a day for the majority of her adult life.
(And now that I thought about it, there were some damned good reasons to do it every day too. Bweh. Another thing for the morning routine.)
I didn't really 'feel' that much different as a girl than I did as a boy. This wasn't too surprising. When Morgan was going around casually zapping everyone (including himself) with the Gender Buster, it was mostly being done for comedy. Thus, it ended up being pretty much a hot swap - instant change, no downtime, no hormonal surges, all the signals going right to the places they should. I'd never even imagined it working differently until I read "I Was A Teeenaged Dummy Plug". And of course there's no reason for magical starlight transformations to make biological sense anyway.
The downside I was discovering to this was, basically, that all the signals were going right to the places they should. Specifically, the ones telling me that I was really, really horny. What did I think, that I'd *not notice* that a critical element of hundreds of my fantasies had suddenly come true? Nor did it help that Alexis had been sexually active for those decades, and as of the 'present' in CoH, in a relationship. (I'd pretty much known from the start that Alexis would give in to Mirami's advances... Maybe not the way she was at the start, but more and more of Confusion had been seeping into her as time went on. Sometimes I wonder what that says about *me*...) It was probably not going to help matters that neither I nor Alexis had ever been involved in a normal relationship, with things like *dating*... but that was getting a bit ahead of things.
What mattered for now was that I was in a house that wasn't my own, full of people I wasn't that close to, and in general it wasn't the appropriate time or place to go off and know myself. (I didn't even want to think about the possibility that somewhere in here might be someone who could actually smell my hormones...)
So. For the most part, appearances of my female side where my being female mattered could be broken down into three categories. Smiting evil, we had done earlier, and it undeniably had it's charms, but there wasn't any evil available just then. H, not an option at the moment. So I was focusing my energy on the third.
One of my other fiction avatars shared a house with an alternate universe version of Tomoyo Daidouji. Alexis did not have such a resource available to her. And so, instead of just having a somewhat irregular skill for quilting, I was now very good at making clothes... for myself. I didn't think I could do it for anyone else, since I was relying almost entirely on that strange sense of what would and wouldn't fit me. I didn't have to measure, or even really plan. I just held the image of what I wanted in my head, and I could see what I needed to do to make it happen. It made the process go surprisingly quickly, and kept me from being too distracted by... well, me.
(I would later realize that this plan had one critical flaw in it, but by that point it had ceased to be a major issue.)
Time passed. I supposed I wasn't being a terribly good guest by now, but when I get going on a major project, it takes a lot to tear me away from it. Besides, I should still be finished by dinner.
The trickiest part was the ribbons. Not even magic can help you when you aren't sure exactly what you want to happen, but I eventually worked out something that looked decent. Besides, perfection would be boring.
Finally, the time came for the fun part - showing off!
"So, how do I look?"
This may be revised some when I've, oh, had sleep... I know I put some things in a totally different order than I'd originally thought, I just have to figure out if it's a good idea...
-Morgan, cosplay!
"Would God I were the tender apple blossom
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
To be made honest by an act of Parliament
Call up the bloody Territorials."
-Steven Matuchek