466: When It Rains…

on November 4, 2010 in Book 16

In Which Puddy Goes Through Some Changes

“There are two names right there that I don’t ever want to hear from you, even in a dream,” Puddy said. “It’s Puddy Banks to you… or Ms. Puddy to you,” she said, turning to me. “Since that’s your idea of respect, apparently.”

Of course my ex-roommate would be the next one to show up. Her blood was supposed to contain a smidgen of just about everything, including giants and sidhe. None of it could possibly be in a very large proportion to her human blood, but she’d have ties to more planes than anyone else on the floor, and possibly in the whole dorm.

She was wearing an indistinct, shimmering mix of outfits… she seemed to be cycling between her showy gladiator get-up, plaid boxers and a dirty gray t-shirt, and shorts and a collared shirt with coordinating neckerchief. There were flashes of other things in between them, and her strawberry blonde hair was also shifting styles and lengths. None of the outfits quite formed all the way before another one took its place.

“This is a new one,” she said. She sounded half-asleep, which I supposed was a bit of an accomplishment given that she was in fact all the way asleep. She was still looking at me. I was a little bit surprised at how easily I could meet her gaze. “Can’t say I’ve ever dreamed about you before.” She looked up at the owl-turtle thing. “Or you. Whatever you are.”

“That’s some sort of ridiculous owl-turtle thing,” Two said. “I like it better than I like you.”

“Well, that’s just real fucking special, isn’t it?” Puddy said.

“Y’know, I’m all about encouraging self-awareness, but I think I know when I’ve met my match,” the owl-turtle thing said, and disappeared.

“This isn’t like my dreams,” Puddy said. “This is more like… when someone falls asleep and dreams on a TV show, and they just bring out the same actors they always use on a dark set or something.”

“”It’s not your dream,” Two said. “It’s mine. I was here first, and I put my name on it.”

“You weren’t here first,” I said.

“Tied first is still first,” she said. “My friend Hazel said so.”

“Or like limbo,” Puddy said, looking around at the lack of surroundings. “Big empty space, confronted with my past failures… well, some of them. Maybe my most recent ones?” She looked at Two like she was studying a menu on the wall. “I’m not sure where you’d figure in there. Unless it’s because you took my place.”

“You don’t think we’re really here,” I realized. “You think this is just you, dreaming.”

“No fucking shit,” she said. “I know you’re not here because the real Mack wouldn’t dare look me in the eye. And also because it’s a dream. But even when you stand up to people, you shake like a leaf.”

“You caught me,” I said. I felt the urge to giggle and didn’t quite suppress it, and though I didn’t appear to giggle in the dream I had the feeling of doing so. “I’m not Mackenzie, I’m the dream incarnation of all your past sins remembered. Or a third of them, anyway. The non-blonde portion of your sins. I’m all your dark-haired sins remembered.”

Things had been weird and surreal before, but we’d all been coping with it pretty well. Somehow Puddy’s presence, and her blase approach to it all, was making me more aware of the strangeness of things.

“Oh, you aren’t even,” she said with a snort. “You’re just the one nice thing I tried to do that went wrong.”

“You can’t seriously believe that,” I said.

“You know what? You wouldn’t be worth arguing with even if you were here,” she said. “So why should I waste a dream on you?”

“You weren’t nice to me, Puddy,” I said. “I could almost buy that you were treating me like a friend, but that just means you’ve got a seriously skewed idea about what friendship means.”

Puddy’s face reddened and her eyes went big, but she clenched her jaw and squared her shoulders and with an almost exaggeratedly visible level of effort she forced herself to be calm. Her shifting clothing coalesced into what looked like a private school uniform now.

“Whatever the hell my subconscious is pulling, it’s a nice break from the usual routine,” Puddy said. “So I don’t even really care if you want to stand there running your mouth at me like you’ve got anything to say to me. Go right ahead. Feel free. I’ll enjoy it.”

“You know what? You’re the one who’s not worth it,” I said.

“Go ahead and think that,” she said, her outfit slowly drifting back to the shorts and neckerchief. It kind of reminded me of a girl ranger uniform, but not quite. “But you don’t even know the first thing about me. You just judge. That’s all you’ve ever done. You judged me for being a lesbian until you came out…”

“I never did that,” I said.

“… and now you treat me like I’m a rapist or something even though I never laid a finger on you.”

“Puddy… you hit me. You manhandled me. You beat me. You laid several fingers on me.”

“I meant I never laid a figurative finger on you!”

“Literal fingers are worse,” I said.

“I meant I didn’t rape you. Khersis Fucking Dei, you’ve got to twist everything around…”

“Puddy, I was so far from judgmental of you when we first met,” I said. “If I’d had any judgment in my head I would have seen what you were doing the first time we met and started making other plans immediately instead of waiting for things to come to a head.”

“What was I doing?” she asked. “I was just hanging out, trying to get to know you. You were the one who was being all secretive and untrusting while I was trying to make friends.”

“You were being a bully,” I said. “Manipulative. Right from the start, you were trying to get me under your thumb, using emotional blackmail…”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t,” I said. “You never see yourself doing anything wrong.”

“You never see me doing anything right… and you have no fucking idea how I see myself, so seriously don’t even start.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea, actually,” I said.

“You’ve known me for a few weeks,” she said. “And you haven’t really spent any time with me for most of them. During that time I helped you make friends… who all stayed with you rather than me… come out of the closet, come out of your shell, get involved in campus politics… not that most of that stuck after you kicked me to the curb.”

“You moved out,” I pointed out.

“Because I know when I’m not wanted,” she said. “And you’ve treated me like I’m dead or a criminal or something ever since.”

“I’ve reached out to you.”

“For money to fix the TV you broke,” she said. “And let’s not even get into how I saved your ass after the fight in the bathroom.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Your skills in intimidating people and disposing of evidence really came in handy there.”

“See? Ungrateful,” she said. “This is what I meant when I said you’re not worth arguing with. Nothing I do is enough. You decided I was one of the bad guys and now you’ll never see anything I do as good. It’s no wonder you hang out with Princess Mecha Fox or whatever she calls herself. This is what happens when you grow up watching kiddy shows… or you watch kiddy shows and you never grow up. You end up seeing things all black and white.”

“Like your ‘top dog’ routine is the height of maturity,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s mature. I see the world as it is and I pick out the place I want to have in it. That’s realistic, not a fantasy like you try to live,” she said. “That’s not just me. Everybody does it, even if they don’t admit it. Who doesn’t want to be the best? Who doesn’t want to be the most popular? It’s why sports are so popular. It’s why you look down your nose at them… because you know you wouldn’t measure up, so you don’t want them to be used as a measurement.”

“That’s not… necessarily the only reason,” I said, though it did seem like she might have a bit of a point there. “The main reason that I don’t like sports is because they steal away focus from more important things.”

“The things you’re good at,” she said. “The stuff that would put you on the top of the shit heap, if they were the things that everybody idolized.”

“No, the things that matter,” I said. “The things that let you make something of yourself or make the world a better place. Anyway, it’s not that I don’t think you have some good qualities but they don’t change the fact that you lie, you push people around physically and emotionally, you cheat…”

“When do I cheat?”

“In the arena,” I said. “You were buffed to hell and back.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. Her garb faded into her armor. “Do you think that bitch Callahan would have let me get away with anything?” She pointed at Pala. “She threw a ringer at me anyway.”

“Oh, I’m not a ringer,” Pala said. “I’m a spear-maiden. They don’t trust me with the rings.”

“Whatever,” Puddy said. “I’m surprised anyone has the gall to accuse me of cheating while you’re around. That was a real dirty trick with your spear.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Pala tricked you into thinking you’d tricked her into throwing her weapon aside so you could grab it and turn the tables on her. It was the kind of complex, multi-layered plot that only a true mastermind could have devised.”

“I am just happy that you weren’t badly hurt,” Pala said. “If I had known that its protective qualities were mocked so perfectly, I would not have used even a phantasmal duplicate of the spear in the ring.”

“Don’t play innocent,” Puddy sad, right as a huge gout of water hit her from the side. We both spun around to see Two standing there, holding a large, old-fashioned wooden bucket… the kind that looks like the bottom of a barrel. “What the fuck?” Puddy roared.

“Oh. I was hoping that would wake you up,” Two said, just before the enraged Puddy grabbed the bucket and yanked it out of her hands. Or at least, that’s what I had expected to happen, but Two retained her grip on the handle and didn’t do more than stagger a bit. She let go with a shove and Puddy fell over backwards with a wordless shriek of rage.

“Oh, that is fucking it!” Puddy screamed, throwing the heavy bucket aside with much less force than I would have imagined. Her hair was up in pigtails now and she was wearing a set of faded and worn teddy bear pajamas.

“I think you would have to throw the water on her in real life to wake her up,” Pala said. Then she got a panicked look on her face. “What if throwing water on someone when she’s dreaming makes her body go poofing away in real life?”

“I’m not poofing anywhere,” Puddy said, getting to her feet. “But if I could wake up right now, I would. I don’t have to take this kind of abuse from anyone… much less an uppity golem and the resident good girl gone bad.”

“Is that really how you see me?” I asked.

“Well, I’d call you the campus slut but I don’t think you’ve got enough guts to really go all-out like that,” Puddy said. “You’ll have a couple of girlfriends and a boyfriend so you can revel in all the naughtiness of it, but you won’t relax and just have fun. Sluts don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. You probably think your little lesbian liaisons are like delightfully sinful or something.”

“I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong, either,” I said. “And now you’re the one who’s talking about stuff she doesn’t know anything about. I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with my relationships.”

“So you don’t get all hot and flushed with shame when you go doughnut-delving with Amaranth?” Puddy said.

“I get hot and flushed… and yeah, okay, maybe I do have some ingrained shame issues,” I said. “But I know it’s bullshit. I get the feeling that in your mind, anyone who’s not having casual sex is repressed or a hypocrite. I suppose whether or not they want to have sex with you makes a handy test for that.”

“You think that this is all because you won’t have sex with me?” Puddy asked. “You must think you’re pretty hot shit. I’ve got so many chicks crawling into my pussy, I’m not even sure I could squeeze you in if I tried. Pun fucking intended.”

“Even if that’s actually true… I think the more girls who say yes to you, the more it’s going to bother you that I won’t,” I said.

“Yeah, here’s your problem… or one of them,” Puddy said. “You’ve got me confused with Barley. You always have. I might have come on a little strong, but she’s the one who actually tried to get your clothes off when you said no. She’s the one who’s gone absolutely bugbear insane because you fuck everyone else and not her. Me? I don’t care that much. I care that you ignored my friendship. I care that you kept up your shrinking violet routine just long enough to steal the spotlight from everyone around you. I care that people look at you like you’re the fucking face of Harlowe Hall when you didn’t even want to admit you were non-human until I dragged it out of you.”

“I think Sooni actually has that position,” I said. “She gets in the paper often enough.”

“Talking about you, most of the time,” Puddy said.

“Are you going to be talking about sex much more?” Pala said. “I am supposed to talk to the druids if I have dreams like this.”

“Yeah, I think we’re done,” I said. “I really can’t think of anything else I’d care to talk about less with Puddy.”

“Yeah, well I can’t think of anyone else I’d want to talk about sex with less than you,” Puddy said. She turned away. “This is a weird fucking dream, you know? And it’s coming on the heels of a weird fucking night, which probably explains where it came from but gives me that much less fucking patience for it. Sleep is supposed to be restful, last time I checked.”

“You said this was better than your usual dreams.”

“I said it was a nice break from them,” Puddy said. “But it’s like having a break from having pine cones shoved up my ass so I can eat them instead. The break’s wearing a little thin.”

“I thought you don’t eat anything you don’t like,” I said.

“I’m in charge of my life. I’m not in charge of my dreams. People can’t control what they dream.”

“I can,” Pala and Two said at the same time. “Sort of,” Two added. “I’m learning.”

“Whoop de do, good for you,” Puddy said. “But you are dreams, so that’s about as impressive as wind being able to control air.”

“Puddy, you should know… this isn’t a regular dream,” I said.

I just couldn’t keep it from her any more. I wasn’t entirely sure why… at least part of it was the way that the owl-turtle thing had been going on about missed opportunities. Puddy and I probably couldn’t have had a productive conversation in real life, and we weren’t having one in the dream… but I kind of wondered what might happen if she knew that I was actually there hearing her, and wasn’t just a reflection of some facet of her subconscious.

“No shit,” Puddy said. “I said that already. This is nothing like my normal dreams.”

“It’s not your dream,” Two said.

“It’s all of… we’re all dreaming,” I said, changing my intended sentence to avoid a side argument with Two. “The four of us are sharing a dream. The rest of the dorm might be sort of overlapping with us, too.”

Puddy looked at me, and I expected doubt or disagreement.

“So you brought me here?” she asked. “What gives you the right?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “It’s something in the air… that eyeless fish-beast that’s an emissary of the underworld. Our extraplanar blood makes us a little more susceptible, that’s why we’re all sharing a dream.”

“Yeah? Then why’s she here?” Puddy asked, jerking a thumb at Two. “Extraplanar mud?”

“I think everybody else is getting a more subtle version of what we’re experiencing,” I said. “And she hasn’t really mastered the subtleties of dreaming, I guess.”

“I’m learning,” Two said.”I practice every night.. They are very well-organized dreams.”

“So this fish… whatever… thing… is just invading our minds and disturbing our sleep?” Puddy said. “Fucking typical.”

“Um… I’m pretty sure this the least typical thing that’s ever happened to me,” I said. “And considering the semester I’ve been having, I think that’s saying a lot.”

“I just mean the lack of basic fucking consideration,” Puddy said. “Did anybody ask me if I want to have sharing and caring time with my former roommate and some of her groupies? Did I give my fucking consent to be dragged out of my bed… or my head, or whatever… and dumped into your dream?”

“It’s not her dream, it’s my…” Two said.

Fucking shut your mouth!” Puddy screamed, loud enough and with enough force that even Pala was rocked back on her heels. Two just blinked.

“Okay,” she said, and then clenched her jaw shut. It seemed that her desire to obey orders was still strong enough to kick in if she was addressed forcefully enough, or if she was too shocked to do anything else.

Or maybe that was just the most obvious way for her to avoid a screaming match with Puddy.

“That’s not going to fly, Puddy,” I said.

“What? I didn’t touch her. But on the subject of touching, let’s talk about your best friend Sooni,” Puddy said. “Because you know what? She’s laid plenty of fingers on you, and you don’t seem to mind being her sidekick. She’s manipulative. She’s a bully. She put you into a freaking coma.”

“I passed out from energy loss,” I said. “That’s a little different.”

“You passed out from energy loss fighting her,” Puddy said. “And if we’re talking about, you know, imposing your will on people or whatever… I’m pretty sure her pussy posse isn’t strictly an all-volunteer force.”

“Well… she tries,” was all I could manage to come up with. It sounded horrifically inaccurate.

“Oh, she tries? Well, that makes a load of… fuck you! I try!” Puddy screamed. “And I try hard enough that I don’t own slaves and I never put you in the healing center. I don’t make you go on dates with me, I don’t inflict my company on you when it’s not wanted. Maybe what I really did wrong was give up too easily.”

“What Sooni does in the heat of anger is one thing,” I said. “I’m not excusing it but… well, okay, maybe I’m excusing it a little. But I woke up with you standing over me, holding a pillow down on my face. The day after I met you. That’s not a temper tantrum, Puddy. That’s not being the product of a fucked-up culture…”

“Bullshit, we are all products of fucked-up cultures,” she said. “Don’t act like you’re trying to understand me now when…”

“I am trying to understand you, Puddy!” I said. “I have been. You were the first person to call me a friend in a decade. Maybe you don’t know how huge that is…”

“Oh, so the problem is that I don’t value my friendly gestures enough,” she said. “Oh. Wow. Glad that’s cleared up! I’m really glad you could invade my sleep so I could find out that’s what the problem is…”

“I didn’t invade anything!” I said. “This is just happening. I’m not doing it any more than you are.”

“Well, at least you’re not blaming me for this,” Puddy said. “I suppose I should be grateful for that…”

“What’s the shouting about?” Ian’s voice said, sounding sleepy and distant behind me. I turned and saw him, looking somewhat indistinct… but quite distinctly naked. And pretty obviously aroused.

Weirdly, his dick was not only longer in the dream than it is in real life, but it also looked thinner… though the extent of that might have been exaggerated by the way he’d mentally lengthened it.

“Oh, fucking great,” Puddy said. “It’s the new coach’s pet.”

“What the hell are you doing in my room?” Ian asked.

“We’re not in the room,” I told him. “We’re dreaming.”

He looked around at the blankness.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “What do you see when you look around?”

“I see… okay, I don’t see anything,” he said. “But I’m thinking my room. Well, no. I’m thinking my room but thinking of the stuff that’s in your room. Which I’m thinking of as mine. Fuck. I hate dream imagery. Like when I have a dream about here but all the classes are in my old elementary building and it’s only when I wake up that I realize that, because while I was sleeping it was just ‘college’.”

“Is everybody going to show up here before the night is over?” Puddy asked.

“I really don’t know,” I said. “The owl-turtle thing made it sound kind of like the effect was based on physical proximity to extradimensional beings. If you’re sleeping with anyone tonight, they’ll probably be next.”

“Could you please be putting on some pants?” Pala said, her voice frantic and high pitched. She was covering her eyes, as was her stuffed pig. Two wordlessly held out a pair of baggy cotton shorts to Ian.

“Huh? Oh,” he said, accepting them sheepishly. He turned around and stepped into them. They disappeared as they slid up his legs. “Um… sorry. I guess I’m usually kind of naked in my dreams.”

“Are you always that hard up?” Puddy asked.

“You would be, too, if you were up against what I am,” he said, putting an arm around me.

“I need a druid!” Pala cried. “I need a druid!”

“Puddy?” a sleepy voice buzzed. Mariel came into focus. She was also naked, though nudity differed from the sylph concept of clothing by a mere technicality. Her blue hair was down to the space where a floor would have been, like it had been before her recent cut. “Why are all of these people in your room? You said we didn’t have to… oh.” Her big silver-blue eyes focused on Ian’s groin. “You told me that human guys were half the size of sylphs.”

“They are, babe,” Puddy said. “This is just a fucked-up dream. Go back to sleep.”

“Oh, okay,” Mariel said. “Wait… what?”

“Hold on,” Ian said. “That’s actual size, I’ll have you know.”

“Um…” I said, before thinking better of it. My thoughts were pretty close to the surface in the dream.

“What?” he said. “You know it, Mackenzie. Tell them.”

“Really don’t care about your wang, dude,” Puddy said.

“I don’t care about it-care about it,” Mariel said. “But it’s just that you said…”

“Hold the image, are you calling me a liar?” Puddy asked. “Because guys lie about their schlongs all the time.”

“I’m not lying,” Ian said. “I’m not even saying anything. I’m just… here.”

“It’s probably the right volume, more or less,” I said. “It’s just off a bit in the specific… shape?”

“I think I know my own dick a little bit better than you do, Mackenzie,” Ian said.

“You said it, not us,” Puddy said.

A sign appeared hovering in front of Ian’s crotch that read “Inappropriate For Some Audiences”. He jumped backwards like he’d been bitten, but it moved with him.

“Two… you can talk,” I said.

“I’m not good at all dreaming, but I’m pretty good at signs,” she said.

“Thank all the gods,” Pala said, calming down a bit.

“You know, this is a lot fucking zanier than I thought my night was going to be, after the day I had,” Ian said. “I mean, after… wait. This is actually happening? I mean… it’s real?”

“Yes. Well, it’s a real dream,” I said. “Except not with what that usually implies. Yes. It’s real. It’s happening.”

“Okay,” he said. “I guess it’s possible we won’t remember any of this when we wake up, but I don’t want to go blurting stuff out.”

“If this is about you knowing the shape of your dick better than your dyke of a girlfriend, it’s a little late for that,” Puddy said.

“Hey, I’ve had a longer acquaintanceship but she’s getting to know it pretty damn well, if I say so myself,” Ian said. “I mean, if it’s not enough that she’s pressed up against it all night, I pretty much fucked her silly earlier. We did everything, a lot more than you’ve done… I’m talking…”

Exactly what he was talking got lost as Pala finally just burst out crying. Well, not just… the three of us who were in the room with her all woke up at once a moment later when we found out what happens when a storm giant wets the bed.


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39 Responses to “466: When It Rains…”

  1. Kevin says:

    Announcement about the future? I hope it’s announcing the return of MU books I have welcome weekend and like knowing that every few chapters become a single book.

    Current score: 0
  2. DaManRando says:

    Oh dear….. Poor Ian just shoved his foot in his mouth….

    Current score: 0
    • Helen Rees says:

      Really? That was his *foot* you saw…?

      h.

      Current score: 1
  3. niall says:

    I love the way you make Puddy able to defend her position believably. I still don’t like her, but can understand her point of view a little better. I feel bad for Pala too, her society sounds quite controlling if there are druids she has to report to if she dreams about something she’s not supposed to. Something on the future of tales of mu? Why does that sound a little omenous?

    Current score: 0
    • DieKatzchen says:

      I think it’s more in the sense of “I’m gonna need to tell my therapist about this.”

      Current score: 2
      • Rey d`Tutto says:

        re: Puddy Evil.

        No one within the demisphere of “Sanity” believes their actions to be wrong, and only a smaller subset of those who do not “enjoy” the largest consensual hallucination think they are the “Villain”. We sentients have a great facility for justification, explaining the circumstances, etc., in order to maintain our self image.

        Current score: 0
        • chinni says:

          haven’t known anyone whose killed innocent children in cold blood, eh?
          Kant would have a fit…

          Some things that are evil can be ameliorated by enough good… I don’t know how many lives he’s saved, but it’s a lot of those too.

          I doubt the people overthrowing a democratic Chilean gov’t — doing the copper bosses bidding, thought they were doing GOOD. Unless the only good thing is profit.

          Current score: 0
          • Gorgonopsid says:

            You’d be amazed at the amount of self-justification and rationalization people are capable of doing.

            Puddy’s feet are wet and she can see the Pyramids- that girl is knee-deep in De Nile.

            Current score: 0
        • mia says:

          quite easy to do the wrong thing. Like eating a gallon of ice cream in one sitting. it’s wrong, it’s self destructive, and yet tons of people do it.
          devil’s advocate will now eat her horns.

          Current score: 0
        • Anthony says:

          Not really. I’d say the exact opposite, in fact. No sane person believes their actions to be *right*, at least not all the time. We all make mistakes, we all screw things up sometimes, and sometimes we just flat out do something we know is wrong, generally due to giving in to petty emotions. Anyone who doesn’t recognize this… is usually a lot like Puddy.

          Current score: 0
    • JS says:

      Oh no, she’s still an abuser, just one who’s very good at sounding believable, and makes everyone doubt the victim.

      Current score: 1
  4. zeel says:

    I love how Two took care if Ian’s nudity.

    Current score: 3
    • Zergonapal says:

      Oh yes, an absolute laugh out loud moment 😀

      Current score: 0
  5. Billy Bob says:

    It’s not a black-n-white world, and Puddy’s not all bad. She wanted Mack to love her but just didn’t understand how to interact with her normally. That’s why she can defend herself plausibly. In her mind she was not attempting to rape Mack, but instead she was seducing someone who wanted it and was just unsure of her feelings. It’s like Sooni in a way: there is a story of how things are supposed to go and she’s confused when the story does not work the way she’s expecting. It don’t make it right or excuse anything, it just explains what’s in her head.

    Current score: 0
  6. Zathras IX says:

    Something in the air
    Has given Pala trouble
    Holding her water

    Current score: 2
  7. Miss Lynx says:

    I love how this went from serious to laugh-out-loud funny. I think my favourite bits were:

    * “This is just a fucked-up dream. Go back to sleep.” “Oh, okay. Wait… what?”
    * Two’s sign
    * ““I need a druid! I need a druid!”

    Actually, I think the latter is going to be my new phrase of choice every time anyone starts telling me more than I want to know about their sex lives.

    Current score: 5
    • Zergonapal says:

      Except people would be like “WTF mate?” which makes me wonder what the RL equivalent would be, a shrink?

      Current score: 0
      • Kevin says:

        I need a priest

        Current score: 0
      • themann1086 says:

        I think it’s a reference to Chris Griffin from Family Guy in the episode where Peter gets liposuction and plastic surgery, when he’s suspected of being a shoplifter and the cop starts frisking him. “I need an adult! I need an adult!” “Those aren’t hams; you’re just a fat kid!” etc etc. I could be wrong though!

        Current score: 1
        • Durragh says:

          lol thats what i was thinking, not that it was a reference, but thats the image that popped into my head.

          Current score: 2
    • Growling says:

      “Are you always that hard up?” Puddy asked.
      “You would be, too, if you were up against what I am,” he said, putting an arm around me.
      “I need a druid!” Pala cried. “I need a druid!”

      This one had me rolling too xD

      Current score: 1
  8. VoidHamlet says:

    For the record: Mentioning Khersis F***ing Dei in a dream does not seem to ring even a minor alarm in Mackenzie’s demonic nature?

    Current score: 0
    • Lunaroki says:

      Never seems to bother her when she’s awake.

      Current score: 0
    • bramble says:

      I’d say that there’s probably an important difference between “mentioning” and “invoking.” Mack tends to be a little jumpy, but I don’t think it actually hurts her unless someone’s trying to actively call on Khersis’ power.

      Current score: 0
    • Zukira Phaera says:

      If there isn’t any faith behind it the words don’t pack as much punch.

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  9. Dave says:

    I’m a bit surprised at Ian being so insensitive to Pala’s need to preserve her sexual innocence; usually he’s more considerate than that. I guess he got wound up by Puddy – and also, he’s dreaming, so not really in control of his thoughts.

    And thanks for that /non-ominous/

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  10. Bov says:

    cracked me up…

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  11. Helen Rees says:

    typo report:

    “I’m learning,” Two said.”I practice every night.. They are very well-organized dreams.”

    I think if you put a space after ‘said.’ the quotes following will turn from closing quotes to opening quotes.

    Much easier done than said…

    h.

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  12. Pyra says:

    and in “Don’t play innocent,” Puddy sad, right as a huge gout of water…

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  13. Kaila says:

    I want a Two in my dreams. For all the parts I could REALLY do without.

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  14. GreenGlass says:

    Laughing so hard…

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  15. zeel says:

    woot! new theme, I like it way better.

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  16. Rin says:

    I have to agree with zeel; this new theme rocks.

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    • Oni says:

      Really? I’m not so fussed. Not bad, but I think I’m seeing another sign that I’m in the “High Res Readers” minority; case in point, the text here in the comment box is tiny. “A”= about 4 pixels high. Heck, it’s shrunk so much that the “=” only shows as a “-“. I wouldn’t mind seeing that tweaked a little, pretty please.

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      • Kevin says:

        Your not alone in the tiny text club I had to enlarge the text to about four times the size it was at so that I could read it.

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  17. NatalieF says:

    I did not notice the new theme until I went to comment because I have to use Readability ( http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ ) to read anything in a serif script.

    That said, this dream sharing is getting to be a useful plot point with it being a great way to share feelings with other people, e.g. hopefully letting Puddy and Mack know how the other feels about everything that went on between them.

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  18. Faeflitt says:

    “Oh, I’m not a ringer,” Pala said. “I’m a spear-maiden. They don’t trust me with the rings.”
    This totally had me laughing out loud! I now feel assured in my perception of Pala as the Valkyrie who went to University. I love her a little more everytime we see her!

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  19. pedestrian says:

    Other historians have pointed out that the term seduction originally meant rape. What Casanova did was not consensual, was not love, was not sex but was predation. Most often against female children, who are incompetent to give consent.

    While my next opinion will not be popular, the same could be said of the Marquise De Sade and Nietzsche. Though their victims were often prostitutes. Who had no control of their lives and were basically treated as sub-human slaves. That is why the modern campaigns against sex-slave trade is still relevant.

    Before modern birth control methods, before antibiotics and blood transfusions and public sanitation; becoming pregnant was often a death sentence for the mother and child.

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