Rusted Dreams Stories

I’m rebloging this because I’ve been getting more empty, default looking accounts following me again. And this me again telling you to change it.

For the last year, you’ve been enjoying the life of adventure and heroism in a fantasy world that you’ve always dreamed of. That is, until the healer in your party accidentally removed a perception curse that’s been with you since the day of your summoning.

Awake Tiff’s hand shook and her grip slackened on the hilt of her sword.  It dropped to the ground with a dull thump in the dust and ashes.   The weapon was a simple arming-sword, easy to use for a novice from another world, although its edges glowed brilliant white when unsheathed and it was imbued with supernatural power. Supposedly, it could only be wielded by someone from another world – the Plane of the Creators.   When she’d arrived in this place, waking up groggy after being nearly hit by a truck when being a city-tourist with a couple of friends, Tiffany Prescott had been told that her work-boredom daydreams had a hand in fueling the ambient magic present all over Avaris.  In her day to day life, she was a grill-jockey at a burger joint, a soulless job that didn’t pay the bills, but was her best option after college for the time being as she sought better.  In Avaris, she had a place as the world’s Chosen Heroine.  She wasn’t some inanely-named random “Tiffany” here.  She was “Tiff of Shining Justice,” wielder of the ironically-named “Great Mercy” and of the sacred bow “The Light-Stag’s Heart.”   It was a good gig – like any number of video games she had played and books she’d read. She didn’t want to go back, even if a way was made for her.  She missed her family and friends, but as many an isekai anime went, she’d probably been hit by that errant truck and had been buried or burnt and scattered by now. (She’d never written up funeral plans, feeling that her family would do whatever comforted them the most).  This was her life now, or her afterlife, or whatever it was.  Not that she couldn’t die here, as well, and she did not know where she’d go if she did. But this world needed saving, so it was said, and after Myrna and the group had found her and gotten her healed up and oriented, the tales of the Litch Queen made her burn with a sense of justice. The powerful sorceress had been bringing plague upon plague upon the land, driving people from their homes and farms and murdering countless good beings with her armies of the undead. That was the Litch Queen’s goal – to make the living world into a death world, to destroy the color and the life and to render everything to reflect the darkness of her heart.  She wanted to create a world where only bones wandered. And so Tiff had seen.  Many of the places her group had taken back under the kind rule of Good King Rupert for the sake of resettlement had to be fully burned out to get rid of the zombies, skeletons and assorted amalgamations. Myrna assured Tiffany that their job was not only to create spaces for the living, but to put violated souls to rest. Tiff had been awash in the sheer beauty of Avaris – it was a world abundant in magic, in color and had such gentle people in it.  There was the funny little man in his little pony-drawn traveling wagon that she met every now and again who peddled potions and other arcane wares… There were the people in her party, Myrna, the healer, Lindis, the Knight, Orcus the elemental mage, Trapta who crafted armors and automata and hailed from a great technological city to the north.  Trapta was the only person unimpressed by Tiff’s tales of home.  The city of Gears had flying cars, after all.  Tiff’s Philadelphia did not have flying cars.   Tiff, as well as the Chosen Heroine, “Tiff of Shining Justice,” was also known as “Tiff the Human” here, or “Tiff the Man” until she’d corrected her companions to please, please address her as a woman.  They used “Man” as a catch-all term for human, with no differentiation between the genders, but it felt incredibly awkward.  Everyone else here was somewhat deer-like or goat-like – having long ears that ended in points and horns, usually small, but powerful mages like Orcus and Myrna sported some impressive headgear.  Orcus had branching antlers crowning a head that seemed too thin to carry them and Myrna had horns more like those of an ibex, long, swept back and ornamented with a white gem in the center.  They had long tails tipped in flags of hair – like old illustrations of unicorns.   Tiff was taller than them, too.  She made the perfect Warrior From Another World, mighty and strong.  Trapta had outfitted her and Lindis taught her how to handle weapons. She had taken to them as quickly as if she were a character in a video game.  She had no magic whatsoever and so had no aptitude for anything that Orcus knew and often – too often – partook in Myrna’s healing skills.   She’d been hurt badly the last time they’d liberated a town from the Litch Queen’s forces.  She’d felt funny after Myrna had healed her.  Her wounds were mended, even though they’d left marks, but something felt off.  In the back of her mind, Tiff hoped that she hadn’t contracted tetanus or some other grave infection from the rusty swords that the skeleton-marauders had wielded. She’d’ gotten stabbed through pretty good as well as some fierce slices and Myrna had taken a full day and a half to stave off her death.  Had she been clocked upside the head, too and did not remember it?  Something felt strange with her vision, as if the world was brighter – the difference between a summer day and a winter day.   The group returned to the village.  The orders from Good King Rupert were to make sure that all of the villages they had retaken recently had been fully cleared out.  The Litch Queen’s monsters were re-settling in some areas, making the return of the local populace impossible.   And that is where we find Tiff, shaking and dropping her sword.  The ground among the ruins was colored in drying blood.  A small person hugged their child and looked up at her. Wait.  A moment before, they were both monsters!  Their skull-faces kept shifting back and forth between undead warriors and people – just regular… the regular people of this world.   And these people scattered to the various buildings that were broken but still standing.  “The Man-Beast is back!  Arm yourselves or run!”   The mother held her young one close, curling her arms and her tail protectively around them.  She looked up at Tiff with watery eyes.  “Take my life, if you must, Just as you did my husband’s, but spare my child…”   “You’re…you’re not already dead!” Tiff of Shining Justice gasped. “Of course we aren’t!”  some impetuous young one shouted, stomping up the road. They put their hands on their hips and glared at Tiffany.  “Not yet, anyway!  You’re obviously here to finish the job!  We’ll give you an even harder fight than last time!  This is OUR land and the asshole that you work for cannot have it!”   “No…no…” Tiffany said, stepping back, leaving the “sacred sword” in the dust. She heard her party riding up behind her. “Dammit, Myrna!  I think you overworked the spell!” Lindis groused as he brought his horse to a stop and dismounted.  “When you were healing her head-wound you must have taken off the Cloud!” “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”  Myrna cried.   “Is there a way to go back?  I could always remove her brain and put it in a Machine-Knight,” Trapta suggested. “No going back,” Orcus groused.  “Good old propaganda might be in order?”   “Godsdammit,” Lindis growled.  “How are we going to drive out the natives now?”  

“Well, it just doesn’t seem…ethical.” Your friend slowly says to you. “Ethical?” You yell back at him. “Who cares about morals when I have created a masterpiece! A book that learns what the reader likes and changes its script accordingly. Imagine that, the perfect book!”

But Have You Thought About…  Here was Matthew trying to harsh my buzz.  I knew that I was going to have a best-seller on my hands.   “We. Will. Finally. Have. Money.”  I iterated to him. “Me, your uncle, you… we’ll have so much fuck-off-money that we will not have to worry about our health care or bill collectors or unexpected expenses ever again!  We can get the food you want all the time!  I’ll be famous!  Not that I care about the fame, I just… want us to not have to WORRY about things anymore!  And with a bestseller… Oh, Matt, it’s going to be the ULTIMATE best-seller!”   I danced around, throwing out my arms. “It’s for us, too!  Have you ever read a book with a disappointing ending?  Or one where a character you loved died and it made no friggin’ sense?”   “Don’t you torture and kill your characters all the time?” Matt contended, “You brag about it!”   “Enough about me and my dark writer’s tastes and my love of drinking up salty reader-tears!” I shouted.  I’d pinned a towel to the shoulders of my tee-shirt like a superhero cape - or a villain-cape.  I felt like I needed a cape for this moment for some reason, and since capes were not exactly fashionable, a towel would have to do.  “Anyway… I kill off characters when it makes sense!   But, you know what? I’ll concede this.  Some readers may not think it makes sense.  They won’t have to say goodbye to their favorite characters anymore!  It’s perfect for everyone!”   “Do you know how much porn you just created?”   “I live on the Internet, of course I do.  This shores up one of my weaknesses!  You know my asexual, sex-repulsed ass cannot write good porn!  And I know from being in fanfiction circles that it’s what soooo many people want!  This book will read their thoughts and if they want it, they get it!  And I do not have to worry about my lack of skill!”   “Uh… you do remember that toy-commercial we just saw on Nostalgia Critic about the dancing unicorn-toddlers singing about poop, right?  You’re just going to unleash more of THAT into the world!”   I sighed.  “As long as it keeps people in their weird little corners. If a reader wants that, it will happen in their heads.  The book is not universal.”   “YOU JUST CREATED AN SCP!!!!”   “Um… It’s not designed to literally suck anyone into the story and give them a life that they never want to come back from.  The Story that Writes Itself will remain words on the page.”   “IT’S STILL AN SCP!”   “The SCP Foundation is not real.”   Matt sat down heavily in the gamer-chair in the living-room.  “What happens when someone wants to make a movie out of your book, Shads?  No one will agree on what movie to make!”   “I told you about tumblr and ‘Goncharav,” right?  It’ll be like that! It’ll be fun!”   “People will fight about it!  You’ve been in fandom!  You’ve been cyberbullied in fandom!  You know what fandom is like!  It’s crazy!”   I briefly contemplated the concept of “Misery.”  I’d never seen the film in whole, nor had I read the book, but I knew of the concept.  I mean, my book would be absolutely made to prevent such happenings by crazy fans because what happens to the characters are exactly what they want to happen, and perhaps, for a few readers, the story would be neverending.  You know, not like that movie I loved from my childhood that actually frickin’ ended and had the most horrific, low-budget sequels imaginable.  False advertising and the eventual ending of the franchise was a mercy.  Crazy-evil ladies with sledgehammers would be safely ensconced in reading my book, with no need to come after me or to engage in the crazy fandom behavior that characterizes most fandoms when they disagree on interpretations of characters and plots.   But Matt was right… A book that was different for every reader WOULD cause untold arguments and fandom-fights.   “What if people are so interested in reading it that they stop working?”   “Work sucks,” I said.  “You know I’m a socialist at heart.  Maybe my book will worm its way into the hearts of people who secretly feel the same way as i do and inspire them to overthrow the ruling class and create a more equitable society.”   “You’re crazy, Shads… well, crazier than usual.  Also, what if it doesn’t go that way?  If people read what they want? What if the book is about Donald Trump being a superhero for some of them?”  Oh shit.  Oh shit, oh, shit, oh shit!   I had been following a Let’s Read on Youtube in which the reader was subjecting himself to a book someone had written arguing that Donald Trump was the true Messiah.   Oh, no, no, no….  My book… indeed would belong in the halls of the SCP, if it existed.  I would inspire its fandom to tear each other apart!  It would keep people reading, reading, reading to the point where they’d forget to feed themselves!  They’d be trapped in their own ideas instead of being exposed to the fresh ideas of fresh authors!  It might deify horrible, horrible people because, let’s face it, many people in the world are horrible…  I couldn’t publish this book.  At least…not until I’d worked out the kinks!  

Wow.  Re-reading this makes me wistful.   This is one of my fiction-autobiographical pieces - like, literally imagining myself and my people in the situation.  Matthew referenced here is (was) a real person.  He had read this and approved of my shenanigans - deeming that I had written him in-character.  It is full of so many references to things we enjoyed together, such as the SCP Foundation.   Matthew died suddenly and unexpectedly in January 2023.   We were close.  I’ve been...dealing with it... but I look over my old posts like this, things of which he was a part and thoughts and the feelings of loss just come barreling back.  

Fantasy authors are now banned from titling their books anything to do with crowns, thorns, precious metals, roses, blood or bones. You hauve to think of something else now.

The world has ended. The Waffle House still stands. Describe a customer, wandering in from the wastelands, and I’ll tell you their story.

A little blonde girl. She cannot be more than eight or nine years old.  She is desperately skinny.  She is wearing a pink “Barbie” themed backpack and is clutching a dirty plush of an Eevee.  

Deity who's unacquainted with concept of evolution creating a world with, like, twelve different kinds of creatures, thinking "yes, that's a good number – nice and symmetrical", then going on vacation for a couple million years and being very upset at what's waiting for them when they get back.

They were not pleased. The world was meant to be unchanging with the Twelve Breeds replicating each according to their Kind.  As it was, there was only one of the original Kind left and a few of them that were not at least mildly altered, at that.  (The Last of Original Kind was a brainless ocean-drifter to whom the Deity had gifted immortality because They thought it was funny. Certainly it was a type of being that would not be able to appreciate the gift, given it anyway, therein was the joke).  Even that Kind had birthed other Kinds, however, some of which had inexplicably developed central nervous systems and minds and might have appreciated the gift that only their still-living ancestors retained.   There were Terrestrial Flyers that had lost their wings and had become fully terrestrial!  Some were even quadrupeds now!  The Deity didn’t even know what to make of the Furry Water-Paddler that had developed venom! And, then, of course, were the Clever Ones. What were they DOING?  They were penning up other creatures?  Not only hunting them, but cutting them up and stuffing them into other creatures and mixing them up with plants and putting them to mild fire to make entirely new things before they ate them?  And they were RIDING other creatures! And wandering into environments the Deity had never meant their ancestors to occupy because they were sewing together skins and weaving plants to protect themselves and they were just… what were they DOING?   Were they trying to talk to Them, too? What was this?!  They were meant to be content beings dancing among the trees with simple minds and now they were all… angsty!  Even edgier than the Toothed Swimmers (which had diverged and changed little, but had done enough to be obnoxious, too)!   Twelve was a nice, even number.  Now there were millions and the Deity didn’t even know how to count them, much less what to make of this…warped creation.   And yet, They didn’t have the heart to wipe it all out and start again.  There was something charming in this…unforeseen mess.

You are constantly mocked for having such a weird superpower by all the other heroes. “The power to make anything into perfectly cooked soup”… One day, a massive meteor is barreling towards earth. As all the other heroes are panicking, you wait perfectly calm, at the impact zone, bowl in hand.

Soup-er Power  Stella Campbell had been laughed out of her city’s League of Heroes’ Hall long ago when she’d attempted to join. She’d been interviewed by Ten-Ton Man (whose power was that he could lift anything and everything up to ten-tons in weight) and he’d suggested that she’d go work in a charity kitchen - that her power wasn’t impressive enough to become one of Metrovania’s stalwart protectors.   So, that’s what she did.  It was doing good, right?  After all, Metrovania still had impoverished people on its hands - people who hadn’t quite benefited from Truth, Justice and the American Way.  She suspected it was because most of the American Way involved Capitalism, which, in excess, always guaranteed freezing bodies coming in from the cold into the city’s soup-kitchens for a hot meal - provided that they were not too ashamed of their lot in life to do so.  It’s not like the kitchens didn’t serve more than soup, but it was the age-old claim to a name and Stella’s specialty, ever since she’d learned how to boil down a picked-over poultry-carcass into a fine broth by her mother.  Perhaps it was a superpower enough to know how to cook and to feed one’s family and friends, and because she was so community-minded, to apply her skills to a charity.  She’d thought of joining one of those mobile chefs’ organizations, the ones that went to war zones and disaster areas to provide hot meals.  She certainly had great skill in taking simple and inexpensive ingredients - a few potatoes and a little milk, perhaps, and making the “best soup I ever had!” according to people she’d fed.   Campbell had discovered early on that she’d had a genuine superpower, too - the kind that could be registered among “Emergent Anomalous Properties” as they were being called on a census-list.  It had happened when she was ten years old or so.  She’d been helping her mother make the family-recipe for stone soup.  Anyone who’s ever heard of it knows that it’s generally a vegetable stew made with just about anything one can find in one’s garden or pantry (an old country recipe) and that the special ingredient is a smooth, clean stone - preferably one from a river - to be cooked in the soup.  The idea of it is that the stone has some magic in it and will impart a special flavor.  (No one expected to eat the actual stone).  It was a way for a poor family to make a pot of soup look bigger, she supposed, or to give a child a special role in making dinner.   When little Stella had added the freshly-scrubbed stone into the pot of broth bubbling with carrots and turnips, an amazing thing happened:  The stone itself had melted and incorporated itself into the soup!   Both her mother and her father had screamed and shouted “Don’t eat it!” but she had already grabbed a large spoon to taste the results.  Instead of getting some kind of mineral-poisoning or broken teeth... the soup was good.  Really, really good!   Stella Campbell’s subsequent experiments with making little pots of stone soup yielded actual meals.  She could get anything out of the stones.  Sometimes they turned into beef meatballs when thrown into the pot.  Sometimes they’d turned into a hearty grain, such as rice or a pasta.  Her parents arranged for her powers to be tested.  Anything she threw into a pot with a little water - scraps of wood, rusty nails, bits of plastic... it all turned into food - actual, real food - usually a protein of some kind, meat or beans.   Her tire-chunks and broken glass chili was to die for.   It wasn’t entirely predictable what bits and bobs would turn into, but it was always, always delicious.  And it always seemed to turn into whatever soup someone wanted.  She could feed vegetarians and omnivores alike out of the same kinds of trash thrown into different pots!  Her family was never hungry, although they did get rather bored of soup.   As she grew into a young woman, instead of seeking college, she thought that she might just join the League right away.  After all, didn’t she have a power that could solve world hunger?  It turns out that they valued the flashier powers - things that were more marketable.  Ten-Ton Man had marketing deals for a cleaning-products company and frequented commercials where the carpet-shampoo and dishwashing detergent were “as strong as he was” and “as tough on dirt as he was on the bad guys.”  Monsoon Mike always provided good shots for the local news when he streaked across the sky. He movie and fashion deals.  The same with Rocketeer, although she didn’t even actually have any natural superpowers!  She was just a wealthy engineer who made a lot of flashy inventions!   Making soup out of trash was just...unglamorous, she supposed, but Campbell grew to enjoy her charity-work.   And then the reports of the Meteor came.  It was, supposedly, a world-ender, like the Dinosaur-Killer. It was headed straight for the central park of Metrovania! The DART-project had detected it too late to deflect it.  The League had been called in to deal with it, but none of their powers would suffice.  Ten-Ton Man was too weak, ironically - the meteor was estimated to weigh in-excess of ten tons.  None of Rocketeer’s rockets, including the jet packs she flew around on had enough thrust to get rid of it.  Monsson Mike could only electrocute the thing with his lightning, which would have done nothing at all.  Everyone else assessed their powers and all came up short.   Until Stella Campbell stood alone in the estimated Ground Zero of impact, an enormous cookpot full of fresh water carried in both her hands. Bags of pasta, beans and spices were at her feet.   The only thing she saw was a nice, spicy meatball, perfect for a pasta soup!   The entire city of Metrovania was going to love it! 

"Well, it just doesn't seem…ethical." Your friend slowly says to you. "Ethical?" You yell back at him. "Who cares about morals when I have created a masterpiece! A book that learns what the reader likes and changes its script accordingly. Imagine that, the perfect book!"

But Have You Thought About...  Here was Matthew trying to harsh my buzz.  I knew that I was going to have a best-seller on my hands.   “We. Will. Finally. Have. Money.”  I iterated to him. “Me, your uncle, you... we’ll have so much fuck-off-money that we will not have to worry about our health care or bill collectors or unexpected expenses ever again!  We can get the food you want all the time!  I’ll be famous!  Not that I care about the fame, I just... want us to not have to WORRY about things anymore!  And with a bestseller... Oh, Matt, it’s going to be the ULTIMATE best-seller!”   I danced around, throwing out my arms. “It’s for us, too!  Have you ever read a book with a disappointing ending?  Or one where a character you loved died and it made no friggin’ sense?”   “Don’t you torture and kill your characters all the time?” Matt contended, “You brag about it!”   “Enough about me and my dark writer’s tastes and my love of drinking up salty reader-tears!” I shouted.  I’d pinned a towel to the shoulders of my tee-shirt like a superhero cape - or a villain-cape.  I felt like I needed a cape for this moment for some reason, and since capes were not exactly fashionable, a towel would have to do.  “Anyway... I kill off characters when it makes sense!   But, you know what? I’ll concede this.  Some readers may not think it makes sense.  They won’t have to say goodbye to their favorite characters anymore!  It’s perfect for everyone!”   “Do you know how much porn you just created?”   “I live on the Internet, of course I do.  This shores up one of my weaknesses!  You know my asexual, sex-repulsed ass cannot write good porn!  And I know from being in fanfiction circles that it’s what soooo many people want!  This book will read their thoughts and if they want it, they get it!  And I do not have to worry about my lack of skill!”   “Uh... you do remember that toy-commercial we just saw on Nostalgia Critic about the dancing unicorn-toddlers singing about poop, right?  You’re just going to unleash more of THAT into the world!”   I sighed.  “As long as it keeps people in their weird little corners. If a reader wants that, it will happen in their heads.  The book is not universal.”   “YOU JUST CREATED AN SCP!!!!”   “Um... It’s not designed to literally suck anyone into the story and give them a life that they never want to come back from.  The Story that Writes Itself will remain words on the page.”   “IT’S STILL AN SCP!”   “The SCP Foundation is not real.”   Matt sat down heavily in the gamer-chair in the living-room.  “What happens when someone wants to make a movie out of your book, Shads?  No one will agree on what movie to make!”   “I told you about tumblr and ‘Goncharav,” right?  It’ll be like that! It’ll be fun!”   “People will fight about it!  You’ve been in fandom!  You’ve been cyberbullied in fandom!  You know what fandom is like!  It’s crazy!”   I briefly contemplated the concept of “Misery.”  I’d never seen the film in whole, nor had I read the book, but I knew of the concept.  I mean, my book would be absolutely made to prevent such happenings by crazy fans because what happens to the characters are exactly what they want to happen, and perhaps, for a few readers, the story would be neverending.  You know, not like that movie I loved from my childhood that actually frickin’ ended and had the most horrific, low-budget sequels imaginable.  False advertising and the eventual ending of the franchise was a mercy.  Crazy-evil ladies with sledgehammers would be safely ensconced in reading my book, with no need to come after me or to engage in the crazy fandom behavior that characterizes most fandoms when they disagree on interpretations of characters and plots.   But Matt was right... A book that was different for every reader WOULD cause untold arguments and fandom-fights.   “What if people are so interested in reading it that they stop working?”   “Work sucks,” I said.  “You know I’m a socialist at heart.  Maybe my book will worm its way into the hearts of people who secretly feel the same way as i do and inspire them to overthrow the ruling class and create a more equitable society.”   “You’re crazy, Shads... well, crazier than usual.  Also, what if it doesn’t go that way?  If people read what they want? What if the book is about Donald Trump being a superhero for some of them?”  Oh shit.  Oh shit, oh, shit, oh shit!   I had been following a Let’s Read on Youtube in which the reader was subjecting himself to a book someone had written arguing that Donald Trump was the true Messiah.   Oh, no, no, no....  My book... indeed would belong in the halls of the SCP, if it existed.  I would inspire its fandom to tear each other apart!  It would keep people reading, reading, reading to the point where they’d forget to feed themselves!  They’d be trapped in their own ideas instead of being exposed to the fresh ideas of fresh authors!  It might deify horrible, horrible people because, let’s face it, many people in the world are horrible...  I couldn’t publish this book.  At least...not until I’d worked out the kinks!