LNH/LUNA: The Liminals #7: Motivationquest part 2: The Big Burnout

[Drew Nilium]

On 11/23/20 11:13 AM, Jeanne Morningstar wrote:
> THE LIMINALS
> #7 (of ?): "Motivationquest part 2: The Big Burnout"
> A tale of [I'll get around to writing this blurb later] by Jeanne Morningstar

X3 There it is.

> Masterplan Lad, guardian of the narrative; Victoria Arden--Forsaken Lass, 
> survivor of Limbo; Alice Ashdown--Net.Access, champion of crossovers; and Manga 
> Girl, synthetic senshi of creativity!  They are four young net.heroes who fight 
> to understand themselves and the worlds they inhabit, moving between the heroism 
> of the LNH and the uncanny strangeness of the Lunaverse--the Liminals!

Love it, love it

> "I'm afraid so," said Masterplan Lad. The reaction to issue four's cliffhanger 
> took him a moment to catch up to, since that had been a while ago now, 
> relatively speaking.

X3

> "That sounds... really rad but also kind of terrifying!"

:3 Agreed.

> "Well, I was really hoping I could be spending time with Doug in his mech anime 
> RPG campaign thing. [Doug being the friend who MPL and Alice had met in Just 
> Another Cascade Freindgame--ed.] I just..."
> 
> "Yeah?"
> 
> "It's a lot harder for me to make friends with people than it is for you. I 
> worry that without you people don't actually want me around."

Awwwwww, sweetie.


> Just then, a new person popped up on the meeting screen. She waved wildly at the 
> camera.

D'awwww

> Her apartment, stuffed full of books and occult materials (including the 
> stuffed ceiling crocodile she'd ganked from the Wizard Mafia's headquarters, 
> stuffing it into the magic money sack while no one was looking),

X3

> "Hi. I'm Maria," she said. The ostrich leaned in from behind her and looked 
> distrustfully at the screen. "And that's my familiar, Sunny. I used my magic to 
> hack into the LNH comm system. Neat, huh?"

:3

> "Yeah..." Victoria's eyes were wide. "Yeah, she... really, really is."
> 
> Alice frowned.
> 
> Masterplan Lad looked at how the two reacted and tapped his umbrella. He knew 
> that Alice was someone who strongly identify herself with the role of The Hero 
> so she was always a bit on edge around antihero types. He also knew his writer 
> wasn't particularly fond of love triangles, but Morrison's New X-Men was one of 
> their favorite comics runs.

Oh my. ``;

> "That's one way of putting it," said Victoria. "Our writer is going to explode."
> 
> "Oh," said Maria. "Ouch."

[quietly] Yikes.

> The meeting came to a halt for a bit while everyone rummaged around for candles. 

X3

> Masterplan Lad grimaced while he used his narrative-shaping powers to ensure 
> that everyone had one lying around.

Of course. :3

> Victoria's was a very aesthetic black 
> candle, Manga Girl's was a sparkly purple-pink one, Masterplan Lad's was a plain 
> white long tapered church candle, and Alice's was a green Mister 
> Paprika-flavored candle. "Where did this even come from?" she asked.

I love all of them~

> "Wait!" Manga Girl gestured and pointed sharply into the air. "Maria, I have a 
> question."
> 
> "Yeah?"
> 
> "What do you think of Victoria so far? She was was having a depressive episode 
> and she was wondering if anyone really wanted her around..."

This is an incredibly me thing to do. X3

> "Thanks, I like yours too," she said, looking at Maria's sparkly pink nails. 
> (Her movements were extremely animated, and she was always waving her hands at 
> the screen.)

D'awwww

> "Yep. Mangas is a greek name, and my moms are Greek. And it's a valid Homestuck 
> troll name!"

 >:D

> "I mean," said Victoria, "honestly I'm in favor of people calling themselves 
> whatever they want but... Will you still want to be called that in ten years?"
> 
> "Well, if I don't..." Manga Girl thrust her fist up in the air. "I'll just 
> change my name again!"

YEAH!! That's the spirit

> "Yep! If there's three things queers who grew up Catholic love, it's candles, 
> guilt and being slutty."

:3

> "Drama," said Maria. "That's literally how magic works, lol."
> 
> "Did you just say 'lol' out loud?" said Alice.
> 
> "Lmfao," said Maria.

X3

> "People," said Manga Girl, "I know we're all feeling quarantense--tense from 
> being in quarantine, that's a word I just coined--

X3

> Trenchcoater magic has 
> been known to result in the deaths of the people involved as a result of the 
> Drama it relies on, but since none of us are background characters who haven't 
> appeared in decades, or old friends who were introduced out of nowhere for this 
> story, we should be fine."

X3 Indeed.

> "All right," said Maria. "Now everyone, look at the candle flame in front of 
> you, and repeat after me. Eko eko eko, wossamotta u!"
> 
> "Eko eko eko, wossamotta u!"

XD XD XD <3

> And then before they knew it, they were on the other side.
> 
> The place was mundane enough, but everything here seemed strangely, 
> disorientingly solid.
Oh, I know that feeling

> "Oh, er," said Masterplan Lad. "What are we supposed to do?"
> 
> "Hmm, maybe you should kiss them," said Manga Girl.
> 
> "What? This isn't Writer's Block Person."
> 
> "Too bad, that series owns," said Manga GIrl.

YEAH

> She bent over and whispered 
> in their ear: "Covered in scorpions~ *Covered in scorpions~*"
> 
> "Gaaah! Covered in scorpions!" The Writer woke up hastily from their sleep.

X3 X3 X3 I love this so much

> "Then again, I don't know why I'm surprised you 
> showed up here when I planned this out a while ago. I guess I'm mainly surprised 
> I actually wrote it."

I mean, valid

> "Yeah..." said Jeanne, sighing and burying their head in their hands. "Yeah. 
> Sorry about... everything, I guess."

Also valid.

> No one really knew what to say. It was Manga Girl who spoke first. "Do you know 
> what happened to Ultimate Mercenary?" said Manga Girl.
> 
> "He's dead."

GASP! SHOCK!

> "So when *is* Just Imagine going to be done?" said Alice, after a moment.

X3 X3 X3

> They laughed hollowly. "TBQH, it's a miracle 
> I wrote anything this year at all. I've had to deal with finishing my 
> dissertation and then before I could really recover from that, the pandemic 
> happened... I had this huge burst of creativity but it's mostly gone now."
> 
> "So you're going to just let me keep suffering like this with no way out?"

Oh sweeties. ^^; Man, you're really dealing with a lotta guilt here, huh

> Even though he knew, he was shocked to see that the Writer was a person just 
> like himself, with the same kind of uncertainty and limitations.

Haha yeah. @.@

> "I mean, the thing is that I have to work with what I've 
> been given. When I created you, I used bits of my life, things I've been through 
> and things I've suffered.

Yeah, familiar.

> I guess working through all that 
> is something we've all done together.

Yeah. <3

> Looking back at Ultimate Mercenary 
> V1, all the trans gay elements are super obvious. I have no idea how I ever 
> thought I was cis."

Big mood! X3

> They looked at Victoria. "You were the part of me that was obviously an 
> extremely gay trans girl from the beginning. You pushed back at the story I 
> wanted to tell and defined your own narrative. A narrative defined by emotional 
> vulnerability, desire and fear, by loss and trauma and building something new on 
> the foundation of that."

Yesssssss.

> They looked at MPL. "You were the character I created to express my philosophy 
> on storytelling and life, but you were uncomfortable with who and what you were 
> since the very beginning. You redefined yourself and created a new understanding 
> of yourself and your role as I did."

Yesssssss! :D

> They looked at Manga Girl. "You were a character I introduced just when was 
> figuring out I was trans. You represent joy and euphoria and imagination, the 
> wonder of self-discovery, the passion and gleeful excess of desire."
> 
> "Hell yeah I do!" She fist-pumped.

HELL YEAH!

> "You, Maria, represent new ideas that I'm just now learning to deal with, things 
> that intrigue and frustrate me about queer communities I've interacted with, 
> feelings about being trans I'm just starting to process. "

Super valid.

> "And you--" they turned to Net.Access.
> 
> She smiled and shook her head. "I'm a Saxon Brenton character who showed up in 
> your stories as a weird continuity point. You don't have to make a big speech 
> about me. I mean, thanks for saying all that, but we came here for a reason--to 
> figure out how to keep you from blowing up."
> 
> "Ah, that Brentonian practicality.

Legit. X3

> I feel like that unlocked all the creative energy that I was holding 
> back for years and years and then I wrote more in a couple weeks than I did in 
> the whole year previously. But once I had to put my part of the story on pause 
> to work out certain characters and plotlines, I got hit by all the feelings of 
> depression and anxiety that I was putting off, and now I'm starting to 
> crash--just like I said I would.

*hugs tight* Yeah, valid.

> I had to make a deal with an even 
> greater demonic power to defeat it. So I summoned the demon Calceus in order to 
> finish the dissertation--you know him as the Shoe Devil. I sold him my motivation."

DUN DUN DUNNNNN!

(I love this so much)

> Jeanne pointed at a big green counter floating above their head, which the 
> net.heroes had all missed previously somehow.

X3

> "When that counter comes down to 
> zero, I will burn out and go to Net.Hell," they said. "And with all the writing 
> I've been doing, it's just about there.

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNN!

Drew "you can do it!!!!" Nilium