For mature audiences, I'm aphyray on tumblr now. I finally managed to edit and publish that book I was working on. It's about an exiled faerie and a doomed scientist falling in love. Definitely inspired a bit by my post-canon starvs fanfic stuff, particularly the earliest designs and personality for the character of Nicole.
I have however hidden the first draft samples that were floating around here and AO3. But there's a PDF sample of the published draft on my website, so if you're curious, go check that out.
(Mutuals, if you want to catch up a bit, please don't be shy about messaging me on the new blog.)
P1-Beanbag, Flying pig
P2-Susan(the octopus), Cloudy
P3-Flying snail, Glowworm
P4-Narwhals (Richard, Billy), Makeup
P5-Warnicorns
P6-Spider with a Top Hat
Hey. So uh. Gosh this is really awkward. It’s not you, it’s me.
I got inspired and started writing a novel. Like a real one, not a novel-sized fanfic. I’ve never tried this before and it’s taking up a lot of my focus. And I actually like that it’s taking up a lot of my focus. I don’t usually have this much passion about stuff, believe it or not.
So... I’m taking what may well end up being an indefinite hiatus from writing fanfics. Which sucks because I love these characters and the stories I’m telling about them, and it’s been neat discovering that other people like those stories too. Real cool of you to share that experience with me.
I hope I’ll be back one day. All the best. And thanks for reading.
Marco got roped into helping Star out with a mission. Nothing could go wrong with this one, not with Star at the helm. Yup. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Hope you'll forgive me. I kind of blasted through this one and did very minimal editing. The dialogue and story flow is bad. But it is what it is. I also took some liberties with the idea of 'accidentally discovering' the stuff.
This is in the Rainbow Latte Blast universe, however it is not canon.
Also I probably won't be putting it on AO3. Secret content.
Neglected Magic
“He he… Marco’s room…” Star was visiting Marco that afternoon for a little adventure planning session. She’d been over a few times before already, but this was the first time he’d actually invited her up to his room. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so stupidly giddy. Seeing a friend’s room for the first time is always a weird thrill. She was finally getting a peek at the real guy under that stern professional mask.
She was startled to find that it may not have been a mask at all.
“Oh. Wow. It looks like a hotel in here.”
Even the smell was… well it was definitely Marco. Floral, crisp and clean, but not acrid… it was like… a fancy library? But with a touch of stale coffee and the tiniest hint of bleach. The whole room felt like another world from the rest of the house, a world where everything had its place, and everything was in that place, under punishment of law. The only disorder she could find was on his walls, where there were signed posters of pop bands taped up haphazardly – though she suspected there was still some careful system involved in their arrangement.
Marco didn’t seem to know if that was a compliment or not. “Thanks?”
Star sat down on Marco’s bed and ran her hand over the perfectly made, wrinkle-free comforter. “This must take forever. You do this every day? How do you find the time?”
“Uh I don’t know, it’s just part of my morning routine,” Marco said while getting settled in his office chair. He set his latte on the desk – the one Star made for him before their walk over. The special drink was still sparkling, fragrant, and energizing, even from across the room. “You know,” he continued, spinning around to face her, “Wake up, make the bed, lay out my clothes, have a shower—”
“You pick out your clothes out before you shower??”
“You… you don’t?”
“No that’s crazy! I just dig my clothes out of the pile and run out the door!”
“Oh. You know that explains the wrinkles. I thought that was just a Mewni fashion thing.”
“What’s wrong with wrinkles? Who wants plain flat clothes? That’s boring.”
“Well, I didn’t want to say anything that might be… culturally insensitive, but… As your friend, I have to tell you: you kind of look like a mess sometimes. Maybe I could show you how an iron works—?”
“Wow the truth comes out, huh? Anything else you want to say about my look? Mr. Judgey?”
“Uh. I mean, your hair is amazing. I have no idea how you keep it looking so good when it’s so long. I tried to grow mine out once and it got all knotted and crispy before it even got to my shoulders.”
Star didn’t want to admit that she had a little help from her spells. Part of the magic of her morning coffee was a little fresher-upper that fixed her hair for the day. He didn’t need to know that, though.
She tried to imagine Marco with long hair. Might be cute.
“Well. Thank you,” she said. “Maybe I could show you how to fix your terrible hair if you’re going to butt in and make my clothes straight.”
“Deal.”
Yeah, okay, Star was hoping he would say no. Oh well.
He offered to get Star a cup of coffee from downstairs, and she happily agreed.
It would be an excellent opportunity to snoop.
Or… it would have been if Marco didn’t come back less than a minute later, catching Star elbow-deep in his bedside dresser searching for embarrassing secrets.
“Uh Star, what are you doing?”
“Oh! Marco!” Star slammed the drawer shut – and caught her finger in it. “Ow.” She shook her hand and sucked on her finger before she continued, “Uh. I dropped… my… ring?”
“You don’t wear rings,” Marco pointed out matter-of-factly.
“I know! Because I always drop them! Big klutz ha ha…”
Star was a little heartbroken to see Marco had returned with two cups of coffee. One for her and one for himself. She glanced over at the tall paper cup that was already sitting on his desk.
Marco sighed and handed Star her cup before he sat down at the desk. Next to the rapidly cooling drink Star had made for him. Ignoring the poor neglected thing.
“I don’t keep anything embarrassing in my drawers,” Marco calmly explained, “Because, you know, Janna.”
“Oh. Right. Janna.”
“Not that it helps,” he sighed and heaved his shoulders with frustration, “I’ve tried hiding my notes under my bed, in the floor boards, in a safe, in my sister’s closet… Somehow she always finds them.”
Star smirked, “Your ‘notes’?”
“Yes, my notes! On… on life. And the things that… happen… to me…”
Star raised a knowing eyebrow at him until he caved.
“Fine! Yes! It’s a diary. Is that better?”
“No no, you know I like the ‘notes’ thing. Makes you sound like a wizard or something.”
“I am a wizard. The master of self-aware arcana – powerful healing and emotional buff spells.”
“My ‘notes’ are full of rants about my landlord and crush-gush about the regulars at the café.”
“Okay. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“What? You don’t have a little crush on any of the cuties that come in?”
Marco shook his head.
“Stone cold, Marco. There’s so many. Your standards must be up in the clouds.”
“No no no, it’s not like that. It’s just… unprofessional.”
“I don’t tell them about it! It’s just for me.” Star paused for a moment before she let Marco know she was concerned about him, “You know, it can’t be healthy repressing all your happy thoughts, Marco. You gotta let go and have fun sometimes. Doesn’t hurt anyone to smile at a pretty shirt.”
“I’m not repressing anything, though. I just don’t have those kinds of thoughts about people. Like, I know what cute looks like. Lots of cute people in Echo Creek. Lots at the university and the café and everything. I just don’t… care?”
“Huh. Weird.”
Marco shrugged, “You know, you’re not the first person to say that, but I guess I’m just built different.”
“But you were crushing on Jackie forever.”
“Well that’s… that’s different.”
Marco started explaining why exactly Jackie was an exceptional outlier, but Star was only half paying attention to the conversation now. She found it hard to avoid staring at her fingers while they idly rotated the cup of coffee in her hands. She was wondering how Marco got back so fast with these drinks. No one can make a cup of coffee in thirty seconds from scratch, and from the smell of it when they came in the front door, there definitely wasn’t a pot ready to go. Had he been hiding some kind of magic from her all this time?
After he was done defending his affections, Marco changed the subject and reminded Star why they were there in the first place: drawing up plans for their next ingredient hunt. She set her coffee down on the end table beside Marco’s bed without taking a sip, then grabbed a chair from the corner and sat beside him at his desk.
They had drawn up a few diagrams, maps, and notes about the dimension they were heading into. There were some blanks they needed to fill in – like, what does the creature they’re looking for even look like?
“Kind of a big gap there,” Marco pointed out.
Star agreed. They opened a blind portal to the unfamiliar dimension – and found they’d ended up in a dense, mountainous jungle. According to what little Star knew about their target, that seemed to be around where they needed to be. They clamored out of the foliage to find some high ground under the dim blue sun there. From that vantage point, Marco started taking notes about the terrain while Star scouted for the creature’s nest. After a harrowing helter-skelter down the slope of the hill to shelter from the aggressively territorial beast, they caught their breath and decided they had enough info.
Star would have preferred to just bust into the thing’s cave and start kicking anything that fought back, but Marco always insisted on having some kind of itinerary before they left for real. All these preparation slowed things down, but it was better than going alone.
Sitting next to Marco at the desk, Star was stuck still as a statue holding the pen to the paper. She was struggling to remember the name of the razor-taloned, winged laser creature that they had narrowly escaped – the creature they were going to be stealing some feathers from next time they were there. She was struggling not just because her memory was terrible, but also because she was extremely distracted by the now-cold latte sitting on Marco’s desk, next to his empty mug.
What was wrong with it? No one… no one would prefer some regular old coffee over one of her drinks, right? So, she must have messed something up about it.
Or… it wasn’t just regular old coffee.
She smiled at Marco and excused herself to use the washroom.
The kitchen was empty, lucky for her. She started digging through cupboards and garbage to figure out where that coffee came from. There must be a clue somewhere. How did he do it? He wasn’t magic. He wasn’t really a wizard. But if he was… No wonder he was sick of her coffee. Had he just been humoring her the whole time while hiding that he was a powerful coffee mage himself?
She found something hidden at the back of a cupboard full of dusty, rarely-used kitchen appliances. Her eyes went wide. A plastic container filled with… “Instant… Coffee…”?
Marco’s name was written on the box along with a bunch of notes – notes that put a glum look on Star’s face.
“Star?”
“Marco!” Star whirled around and hid the box behind her, but since she’d left every drawer and cupboard wide open in her search, it didn’t do much to disguise what she’d been up to. How did he keep sneaking up on her like this?
Marco was a little bewildered, “My diary’s not in the kitchen either, you know. Look if you’re that desperate to read it—”
Star frowned, then defiantly held out her discovery. “Have you been hiding your magic this whole time, Marco?”
“What?”
“What is this!?”
“Coffee?”
“Instant Coffee?? Even I can’t make coffee instantly Marco! You really are a wizard, aren’t you?”
“Star that’s not… It’s not magic. It’s barely coffee. It’s just heavily processed grounds turned into a powder. You just mix it with water, and it turns… into… coffee… Actually no you know what, that does sound like magic when I say it out loud.”
Star’s shoulders sunk. “Oh,” she said, deflated. It was just some weird human thing. Fake coffee? Gross. Why would they even do that? She was glad she didn’t drink any.
Her face was warm with embarrassment, definitely turning red, but she wasn’t done with her interrogation. She aggressively stepped up to Marco and shoved the container in his face, “Okay fine, it’s not magic, but how do you explain this?”
Star directed Marco’s attention to the messages he’d written there on the side of the container.
Marco’s do not touch
Seriously this is my favorite coffee don’t take this from me
At least get some more if you finish it!
Dad. I know it’s you. I installed a camera
Okay where is the camera dad put it back
Marco put his hands in the air defensively, “Look, I know it’s passive aggressive, but he keeps stealing it! It’s hard to find this brand! I even got him his own coffee, Star. He just won’t stop…”
“I don’t care about that! This coffee is your favorite? This stuff?? Heavily processed, mix it with water, fake coffee?”
Marco blinked. He didn’t know what to say. Then a look of realization hit him that quickly turned to a look of sympathy, “Star… are you… jealous?”
“No!” Okay maybe. Yes.
“Star. I love your coffee,” Marco insisted.
The warmth and sincerity of his words shook Star a bit. He’d given her compliments before, but he’d never said that before.
“Why… why didn’t you drink it then?” she asked, most of the indignant rage drained from her voice, replaced with a sadness she was not expecting to come out of herself.
“That’s what this is about?”
Star wasn’t about to be put on the defensive here. “Well? Why didn’t you drink it? I worked hard on that latte Marco. I know I make it look easy but it’s still my heart and soul in there. That’s my art. You’re just going to throw away my art?”
Marco had a look on his face like he had accidentally stepped on a puppy’s tail. “I didn’t know it meant that much to you. I’m sorry. I just like to have a little comfort drink at home sometimes.”
“My drinks aren’t comfortable enough?”
Marco was taking his time putting together his response – which obviously meant the answer was ‘no’.
“Your stuff is more like an adventure,” he explained – carefully, “Exciting and energizing and otherworldly. What you do is amazing. But sometimes I just want to relax with something familiar. If you saw fireworks every night, wouldn’t they kind of lose their charm?”
Star crossed her arms and huffed, “No, that’s stupid. They’d still be crazy explosions in the sky no matter how many times you saw them.”
Marco rubbed the back of his head and apologized, “If it means that much to you, I’ll go finish it right now. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Wow that was embarrassing to hear. Star immediately got her hackles up, preparing to defend herself, ready to insist she didn’t even have feelings to hurt.
But she did, and she was, and it felt kind of silly now.
And it wouldn’t do any good to force him if it wasn’t going to make him happy.
She sighed and relented, “You don’t have to.”
“You sure? I could just put some ice in it.”
“No, that’ll probably make it explode or something. It’s fine.” She smiled, “Thanks though. Sorry for being weird about it.”
When they got back to Marco’s room, he asked her if she really didn’t like the instant stuff. “I think it tastes pretty good,” he insisted.
“I didn’t even try it,” Star admitted. “And I don’t really want to. It sounds like a crime against everything that good coffee stands for.”
“Aw come on, just one sip. Maybe it’s amazing.”
Star grumbled, ‘Doubt it.” Maybe she was still feeling a little bitter about the stuff stealing Marco’s affection. But she put that aside and caved in to give it a try.
After taking a swig of it, she cursed under her breath.
Marco’s face sunk with disappointment, “That bad?”
“…No,” she mumbled, “It’s actually… good. Damn it.”
This blasphemous fake coffee had stolen Marco’s heart, and now even she was coming around on it.
Marco gloated, “I told you.” Then he cheerfully informed Star that there are some fancy drinks that can only be made with instant coffee. He pumped his fist and grinned proudly, “I can finally show you something magical that only exists on Earth.”
Star realized the Pamphlet had no spells that used the stuff. This could be… an entirely new family of magic. And it was hers to play with.
“Yes,” she smiled mischievously, “Yes you should do that.”
She completely lost interest in their ingredient hunting plans. After all, she might have the most interesting ingredient in the multiverse to play with right here. She got Marco talking about everything he knew about its secret recipes, and Star’s imagination soared with possibilities.
Janna and Star committing just, like, the *pettiest* of crimes to 'stick it to the man' (for examples: jaywalking, loitering, trespassing, not staying off the grass, rollerskating-but-very-badly near 'no skating' signs, refusing to beware of dog, etc.)
Teenagers these days😩
Btw janna isnt actually smoking my girls a minor is prolly just a lollipop lmao
Oh my gosh! This is adorable and amazing!!! Star getting rescued by Marco! The lil heart at the end! I would play this version of the game just to see cute stuff like this!!!
So uh, apparently there are people other than me with overlapping interest in Noita and Star vs the Forces of Evil. Who knew?
I never got around to publishing this mod like... a year ago? But I dusted it off and put it up for public consumption due to inexplicably renewed interest. I also added in a fully functional* Dimensional Scissors wand.
*You may possibly get stuck in a wand wall forever
The Café at the End of the Coffeeverse - Part III: What Matters
The collected stories of Star’s Tuesday clone as she escapes the ticking clock counting down the hours of her short and miserable life, where she discovers... what matters.
-
Yes. Good. Great title there Aphy very creative. Very sharp. Really just... slamming that hammer right into the nail’s head there.
I rewrote this thing at least 5 times trying to find the right tone from the perspective of Star’s clone, and in the end I was just sick of depressing internal dialogue, so here’s a fun experiment in storytelling.
Janna settled on going to Tufferton University, enrolled in the Keats courses she had her heart set on, and did her best to avoid talking to Star Butterfly.
