BIOS

I like fantasy and mechposting. 23

[bios-0307]

woag, pinned post. come check out the stuff i write, it's all tagged "#my writing"

it's good i promise

edit: I also now have an AO3! I’m going to Eventually™ upload everything I’ve written here to there as well.

https://archiveofourown.org/users/BIOS_0307/pseuds/BIOS_0307

[computerwitch]

Environmentally conscious robot girl who has gone fully solar. She needs to sunbathe for about 2h like a lizard every day to recharge.

Highly tactile robot girl who upgraded to a piezo-electric charging system. Needs to be hugged and squeezed every day to recharge.

Completely insane robot girl who has gotten rid of her batteries and replaced them with a massive flywheel, half of which is precariously poking out of the back of her chassis. Needs somebody to let her rip like a beyblade to recharge.

[depressedbean0618]

another trope i love is SHAPESHIFTER VILLAIN. and now i'm going to go on and on because I DON'T SEE THIS ENOUGH. imagine villain who doesn't remember their own face, villain who grew up in an orphanage learning that the tall boys got fed first and the pretty girls got adopted and so they changed, shifted, became whatever the room needed them to be, became the strong one and the sweet one and the invisible one and the loud one, became so many people that the mirror stopped showing anyone back, and as they got older the shifts got faster, hair flicking through colors, eyes changing at will, skin tone rising and falling, and sometimes the world gets too loud, too demanding, too full of faces they have to wear, and they shift and shift and shift until their body can't keep up, and some days they stand there with their face still trying to settle, still searching for something that feels like home, and it just never works, never never never...

one day villain escapes from hero again, heart hammering, and the moment they think they're safe their body betrays them, starts cycling through faces faster and faster and faster, hair bleeding from black to blonde to red to nothing, eyes shifting from brown to green to gray to gold, skin flickering through every tone they've ever worn, every person they've ever been, and they press their hands to their own cheeks trying to hold something still but their fingers sink into features that are already changing, already becoming someone else, becoming the orphanage bully and the kindly nurse and the hero's mother and the hero themself, faces layering over each other like ghosts fighting for the same body, and they can't breathe, can't think, can't find the off switch because there never was one, there was only performance and survival and becoming whatever kept them alive one more day, and now they're alone in the dark with no audience, no threat, no reason to be anyone, and the faces keep coming, keep blurring, keep cycling through strangers they've used and discarded and forgotten until there's nothing left but static, nothing left but the raw terrified animal underneath all the masks, gasping and shaking and wishing for a face that won't run away from them.

and then, in the middle of the chaos, in the middle of the blur, a thought cuts through like a blade: the hero, the hero who finally caught them, who tore off their mask and saw someone, who looked at them with something that wasn't fear or hatred but confusion, and the villain's shifting slows, just for a second, because they remember how the hero is loved, how the hero is held, how people reach for the hero like they're something worth keeping, and the villain thinks, what if, what if they stopped running, what if they stopped being the monster everyone expects, what if they built a face so good, so bright, so heroic that no one would ever look away, that no one would ever leave, that the hero themself would reach out and pull them close and say stay, and the shifting slows more, settles more, features locking into place one by one, not the face of a stranger this time but something calculated, something chosen, something with kind eyes and a soft smile and the exact bone structure that makes people trust before they think, and the villain looks in a window reflection and sees not a villain, not a victim, but a hero, a face that could be loved, that will be loved, because they will make it so, they will wear it so perfectly that no one will ever know the difference.

and the worst part is they almost believe it themselves, almost feel the warmth of it, almost forget that underneath this beautiful borrowed goodness is the same hollow thing that learned long ago that love is just another mask you put on, another face you perform until the audience stops clapping, and they step out of the alley with their new face and their old hunger and they don't know yet whether they're going to save the hero or consume them, whether this is redemption or the most elaborate trap they've ever built, and maybe, in the end, even they won't be able to tell the difference-

anyway.

[strangerconnection]

you know, i don't remember

[whirligig-girl]

I had noticed these strange little occurrences all my life. A bird would fly past my window and it'd sorta look like it was half there, half not. I'd glance up at a clock and for a moment, the second hand would be in two places at once. Never really thought much about it. I thought it was just normal. Someone told me once about the clock hand illusion where you flick your eyes and it looks like time stops for a half second or so, I figured it was something weird like that.

But one day, I think it was August 2021, I flipped a coin. Thinking back, I think it might have been the first time in my life I'd ever flipped a coin. But we were deciding where to eat, me and my friends.

And then it happened. The coin landed on the table, heads... and also on the floor, tails. I tracked the coin with my eyes, but suddenly realized I was looking at two things at the same time. It was like crossing your eyes, and seeing things kinda overlaid on top of eachother, kinda mixing and fading in and out, but with four eyes instead of two.

It was such a weird experience. At first I just stood there kinda motionless, trying to figure out what was going on. Then my friend bent down and picked up the coin off the floor, and said "Hah! Tails! Pizza!" and also she just stood there and said "Damnit. Heads. Guess we're gonna get burgers after all."

And I looked down at her and up at her at the same time.

That's really when the desynch started. I reached for the coin on the table and held a fuzzy, half-there, transparent coin in my hand.

I began to feel kinda sick. We got in the car and things got more and more confusing. Thank goodness I wasn't driving that day. My friends were having two increasingly different conversations and I just sat there kinda dissociating. By the time we got to the two different restaurants I was nauseated and I had a bad headache. I stayed in the car in the parking lot at the pizza place for a few minutes until the other car going to the burger place parked. One of my friends was worried and stayed with me, so that was nice. But when I tried getting out of the car, everything went wrong.

One of my bodies walked right into another car and fell down on the ground, while the other stopped and froze in place. The completely different sense of proprioception completely broke me.

I was basically bedridden for a week. Slowly I relearned how to move, and walk, and talk. I had two bodies, in two timelines, connected by a single consciousness. My brain(s?) had to learn how to control two bodies at the same time.

It's like, pretty weird, but I'm used to it these days. My two sets of eyes no longer overlay on top of one another, they're kinda separate. It's hard to describe. I think my brain got better at multitasking too, I can walk in one timeline and draw in the other, for example.

Things kept getting more and more different, as much as I tried to enforce keeping things the same. Finally I started seeing my therapist again.

I had to convince her that what I was experiencing was real. So I asked her to think of her favorite food and her favorite color. Then in the "Burger" timeline I asked her to tell me her favorite food, and in the "Pizza" timelines I asked her to tell me her favorite color. And I told her her favorite color in the burger timeline and her favorite food in the pizza timeline (Spaghetti and Red, btw.)

She quizzed me on a few other things and sometimes her answers differed between the two timelines which was pretty frustrating, and I don't think she really believed me at first, but she was nice enough to play along at least. And like, not have me committed.

I ended up scheduling my therapy so that I have meetings on pizza tuesday and burger friday, so they're kinda spaced out more evenly. It also just makes the meetings a little less confusing. Ironically doing the same thing in both timelines is actually more distracting than doing different things.

In late 2022 I transitioned. I decided to come out in the burger timeline and stay in the closet in the pizza timeline, so if everything fell apart I'd still have one normal timeline. And like, my parents did not support me. Most of my friends did, but some of them drifted away. And I found that just made me resentful of my parents and those friends in the pizza timeline. And the dysphoria of being a guy in the pizza timeline while living as a woman in the burger timeline was killing me. So when I got on HRT in early 2023 I decided I couldn't take it anymore, I had to transition in both timelines. So I did. Ironically things went a little smoother in the pizza timeline, probably because I was already more confident about presenting female.

I ended up making some transfem friends in the burger timeline, and I sought them out in the pizza timeline too.

It's kind of a mixed bag, this phenomenon. You know like, pain is a lot worse. One week I had a bad tummy ache in the pizza timeline and a bad toothache in the burger timeline. Or like, if I have back pain in one timeline, not having back pain in the other timeline doesn't relieve the feeling at all.

It's such a cool thing, like. When I first started out I had all these conflicting signals in my limbs and body and stuff. But now it's just like. Yeah I have a pizza arm and a burger arm, just like I have a left arm and a right arm. They're the same, but different.

When I make a drawing in one timeline, I don't have access to it in the other timeline, which is really annoying because I keep wanting to show people art I made in the other timeline. One day I'll figure out some kind of interdimensional data transfer protocol. I mean I guess I could like, convert the file into hexadecimal text, and then manually type it out and hope I don't make any mistakes. I'd have to compress the hell out of the file though. Maybe I'll try that one of these days when I don't have anything to do in either timeline.

But I get to spend more time with my friends, because I can schedule hanging out on different days of the same week. Does get kinda confusing when I confuse things that happened in one timeline for another.

Because like, ever since that coin flip, the timelines have been steadily moving further apart. You'd be surprised how little the weather has changed. Like, sometimes there's a little rain shower in one timeline a few minutes earlier than in the other, but all the big storms and hurricanes and stuff are basically the same. I guess it's harder to influence these continent-scale systems than the butterfly effect predicts.

I get to see almost twice as much meteors during meteor showers because I can look in two directions at once. Meteors hit the atmosphere in exactly the same way at exactly the same time.

But it does affect a lot of other little things. Even when you don't realize it, you affect the lives of everyone you come into contact with in little ways, and that spreads. I know people with different jobs in each timeline, people who have different relationships. Even people I don't know that well.

I wasn't quick enough in the pizza timeline to keep my friend from. Well. To save my friend's life. But I rushed over to her house in the burger timeline and talked her down. It's so weird, grieving a person you still talk to every week. Because it ended up being this kind of abstract pain. Everyone else is missing her and you're standing there like. Yeah. I have plans to see a movie with her on burger tuesday. I went to her funeral just to make sure that I saw the dead body so I could really internalize that she was gone. And I still didn't cry. It made me feel like a terrible person.

My friends never really take me all that seriously when I talk about being split like this. They kinda play along but I can tell they think it's a joke. It's whatever. But my friend's girlfriend came into my DMs one night sobbing and cry-typing and begging me to let her talk to her gf one last time. I wasn't sure it was a good idea. But I relented, and made plans to have a sort of interdimensional seance.

I could tell my friend--we'll call her Elsie, and we'll call her girlfriend Robin. I could tell Elsie was pretty awkward about it. I think she felt guilty on behalf of her other, dead self. Robin kept saying stuff like "how could you kill yourself, how could you do this to me," and I would have to say that, and Elsie was just like "I'm sorry." And it was really hard to get Robin to understand that we weren't talking to Elsie's dead spirit, we were talking to her in another timeline. I told her she didn't have to apologize, and I told Robin that guilt tripping the dead was kind of rude.

After that things went a little more smoothly, Robin asked about how Elsie's life had gone, how their relationship had progressed you know like if they were still together, things like that. Elsie said some stuff that I wouldn't have known, and Robin was like. Wow you really are talking to Elsie aren't you?

And I was just like :| yep.

Ever since then my friends keep trying to get my help with stuff. Like they'll ask me what their other self is doing, like, ok, for instance, my friend, we'll call her Jane, she wanted to ask out her crush, and she was like ok. Can you ask the burger version of my crush if she likes me back. Which kinda throws the burger version of her under the bus doesn't it!

And another of my friends wanted to know if she'd regret quitting her job, so she told me to ask the other her to quit her job, and then if it went well she'd do the same. I did ask, and she said no, obviously.

The kinda scary thing is, every once in a while I'll see some of those artifacts that I used to see, like, little tiny desynchs within each timeline. I only recently got used to being in two timelines at the same time, I don't think I can handle being in three or four. My brain's already better at handling the desynch, like, one time I managed to move my finger in two directions at once all in the pizza timeline. But I'm really scared of the desynch multiplying over time. Maybe it's inevitable, but my main strategy is just to not flip any coins for the rest of my life.

[biblicallyaccuratemoth]

Lesbian couple one girl is an ancient robot who can continue indefinitely with enough repairs and part swaps the other is an immortal who reincarnates in different bodies across the aeons call that the Ship of Theseus

[super-ion]

Cinderella goes to the ball but she can't stop seeing all of the servants, and the massive palace that *somebody* has to clean, and all the food that *somebody* has to cook (not too mention all the carriages and horses and what have you that also need maintenance)

[super-ion]

Anyway, Cinderella is now Secretary General of the People's Socialist Party and her stepsisters are being shipped to the cpuntryside for re-education

[super-ion]

I push through the doors into blessedly cool night.

"You lost, sweetheart?" comes a voice behind me.

I whirl to see a figure in the shadows. An ember lights up, but the puff of smoke smells nothing like the cigarettes my stepsisters sneak sometimes. It's... somehow foul and cloying all at once.

"I think I might be," I admit.

The figure steps out of the shadows, a footman wasting time while his master enjoys the party.

"Are all balls like this?" I ask, grateful for the prospect of a conversation with someone who isn't a simpering backstabbing noble.

"Somethin' like that," the voice replies.

In the moonlight I realize it's not a man, but a woman, dressed in men's clothing. Her eyes sweep over my dress and those awful shoes, my perfect makeup and hair. Her eyes catch on my hands, chipped nails and calluses that no magic could hide.

She offers me the cigarette.

"What's your story?" she asks. "Steal your mistress's gown and sneak off to the party?"

My response is somewhat delayed as I cough and hack the awful smoke that I've inhaled too much of. My suffering is met with a snicker, a rough sound so unlike the tittering girls inside vying for the attention of the prince.

It's a sound that fills me with a curious warmth to accompany the light airy feeling rising in my head.

"Would you believe me if I told you a demon wrapped an illusion around me?" I ask. "And that I have until midnight to find my one true love before the spell is broken?"

"I'd probably say you're full of shit," she replies.

One more puff and the little glowing ember is flicked to the flagstones. I watch on fascination as she grinds it into oblivion under her heel.

Then she offers me her arm... as if she wants to take a turn around the estate gardens.

But we're not in the garden, this is a horse yard.

She's watching me with a bemused expression, one eyebrow hiked up towards slicked back hair that barely hangs past her ears.

Sure... why the hell not?

I take her arm graciously, wondering why the world has gone so fuzzy.

"It's true, you know?" I say, whatever was in that smoke has loosened my tongue.

"Hm?"

"I befriended a demon. A little one. Got caught in a rat trap in the basement and I nursed it back to health. In exchange it wrapped me up in an enchantment to make me look like..."

I gesture at myself with my free hand. My companion is still looking skeptical.

"Let me guess," she muses. "You're also secretly a princess."

"Heiress," I reply. "Or I was until my father died and my stepmother took everything and made me a servant. Not that there was much to begin with..."

"And your demon sends you to the ball to... what? Dance with the prince? Fall in love and have your story book ending?"

"I don't think the real world works that way," I reply sullenly.

We step out of the horse yard into a garden. Not one of the perfectly manicured ones meant for romantic strolls, but a crowded herb garden, utilitarian and hidden away.

"What was I thinking coming here?" I ask as I brush my hands through the rosemary. "I thought... I don't know. I thought things would be different outside of the house, but it's more of the same... just bigger than I thought it was."

My thoughts drift to all of the servants drifting around the ballroom. And all of the maids and cooks that wouldn't be seen, but toiled away nonetheless.

"Yeah, shit's fucked," my companion says.

"I wish things could be different."

"Yeah, well, in my experience, wishing is less than worthless if you aren't willing to do anything about it."

I turn that over in my head.

"Indigo," my companion says.

"Huh?"

"My name," she says. "But my friends call me Indy."

"Are we friends?" I ask.

She makes that rough laugh again my heart starts racing at the sound of it.

"I don't know, you tell me," she replies with her sideways grin.

"I wouldn't know," I tell her. "I've only ever had one friend before."

"Your demon?"

I nod.

***

"Rabbit!" I hiss into the gloom.

I can barely keep my voice down from excitement.

My conversation with Indigo lasted well past midnight and my head is so full of thoughts I feel as though I am about to burst.

The little demon pokes its head up from it's pillow. Its hare's face regards the two of us with narrowed eyes.

I once asked it its name and it politely informed me that it's true name was unpronounceable my human tongues. So I had settled for just calling it Rabbit.

"When I sent you off to find true love, I expected something somewhat different," it says, eying Indigo. "Can't say I'm particularly surprised though."

My train of thought falters. What...? I cast a glance at Indigo, who's biting her lip in amusement.

"She's not... I mean... we didn't..." I stammer. "We had one conversation. That's hardly the basis for any kind of relationship."

"Mhmm."

"You know," Indigo says before I can respond, "I expected it to be bigger."

Rabbit huffs and sits up on its hind legs, raising itself up to full height, but even with its antlers, it barely tops two feet.

"Rabbit!" I say, regaining my footing. "We need your help."

It fixes me in its eye again.

"And what help can this minor demon offer you? Remember that magic comes at a cost."

"You told me once that demons are creatures of entropy," I say cautiously, saying the words I've been turning over in my head during the entire ride back her. "You feed on transformation and change?"

I have Rabbit's full attention now.

"What manner of change?" it asks cautiously, almost hungrily.

I suck in a breath and let the air carry the word through my throat and past my lips before cowardice can hold me back.

"Revolution," I say.

[petalframe]

my mech and i have a relationship that is frankly none of your business

[tkatsuro]

I want the perspiration I want the nausea I want to be sick I want to feel the hot piquant nuggets I want it to find passage through my cold figure I want to make a mess I want the odour I want the spectacle And I want it again I want it all And I would like to die A noble death Or a coward's death A hero's death Or a lonely death To die in the arms of a lover Or the arms of an alien I desire my cache of experience to pulsate through my quasi-synapses And then to be gone Expired Perish Fallen Dead For evermore

[longstringofnumbersandletters]

Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.

So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.

He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.

Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.

There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.

There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.

When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.

He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.

I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.

Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.

He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.

One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.

I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.

It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.

—

I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!

[inkskinned]

she is a princess and you are a dragon. she will be married tonight. do not keep standing outside of her room like that, go inside. go get her. that is what proper dragons do.

not that you have ever been a good or proper dragon. when you hatched out of your egg, your eggtooth was too smooth. the other dragons were rough with you, put little holes in your wings.

you were not bold. you were odd. you liked rippling water and the shine of chitin when bugs scuttle and of course the movement of the stars. those were all acceptable interests albeit maybe not traditional. perhaps you had inherited these through some great-great-uncle or something. certainly a dragon may be wise, or clever, if they are not bold.

yes, you have been a great deal of a puzzle to the other dragons. your body is smaller and rather more soft than it ought to be. so speed should have been yours, perhaps - your mother said it would be like fighting a shadow. if a dragon is not aggressive, it may instead be cruel, sly; a backstab. but alas your scales - so iridescent that they almost shine like the moon at night, a glow from within - you are not a shadow, you are a beacon like the flash of a knight's blade. your father has said at least you would make a fine egglayer, a nice mate to a good male. a dragon like you may still be a good mother perhaps; and that is a fine thing to be; although of course it would have been better if you'd been a trove-hoarder instead.

what a dragon must not be is kind.

you have watched her now for six moons. what a good and proper dragon would do is to go inside and to snatch her. a very proper dragon would have kidnapped her many times over, but you will be the delight of your brood to princess-snatch even at all. when you catch her in your jaws and bring her home, they will love you, then. they don't think you're capable of it, but you are, because you're a proper dragon. you can show them that. if you go in, now, right now.

you are rather too glossy to hide in the shadows, so instead you have learned how to appear flat and round, a puddle of light. (how your siblings would mock you! a dragon should be matte, to blend with the night). you dapple your flank with mud. you perch in odd angles atop of trees, scuttle like the bugs you love - hither, tither, frantic.

what you must not do is fly with your wings full-out. alight, you will be limned by the moon's corona. you will be a beacon. you must remember this when (not if) you snatch her.

____

you found her because of the lake. this lake in particular was your favorite - nestled deep in the woods, between two mountains. it is very quiet; there is nothing to horde there so no other dragon bothers you. a gentle waterfall spills over into a deep cove, and there are many mossy caves you've spent your afternoons napping in. while it is not proper for a dragon to prefer such things, you like to lay in rolling tenure just under the water. you have become excellent at holding your breath, can do it for hours. it is the easiest way to appear as a patch of sunlight.

she was not sunlight. she was the night's joy. the dark press of water. her face at first concealed by many diaphanous layers. her breathing quick and quiet.

she had pulled them back to drink from her water flask. and there she had been: a princess. your first very-real princess. right there, only the reach of a single talon from you. if you had simply lunged then, you would have been able to take her easily, in one single movement.

but you did not take her.

she had startled you a bit; you'd been daydreaming about music, which you'd just discovered, and rather liked. you'd heard it from a little house while you snuck in and stole their sheep.

but you knew the sound of fear, of being followed. you'd been chased too many times, you knew what it looked like. the rapid jolt of fear.

you smelled her then; cinnamon and onyx, and perhaps that was what had blinded you. perhaps your mouth was just watering. whatever the case, you waited until she had fled back into the forest; and then you waited a bit longer. in her wake, a garrison of men, their hands rough.

oh. so they were not knights. they were just men chasing a young woman through the woods. perhaps they did not even know a real princess had been running from them. well, that was a relief. you are not good at fighting with knights, who have swords instead of cudgels. these were just men, so you rose from the water in the quiet way you'd learned from the fish. they did not hear you coming.

and besides. proper dragons do violence so well.

___

once you had smelled her you could find her, although such things have always been easier for you than for the others. you spend a great deal of time studying things - it allows you to analyze them. you have tried to explain to the other dragons that sometimes it is best to slow down, but of course no dragon should be slow.

at first you did not understand the confusion of the people's umwelt. they relied so much on their communication (only words and actions!) and what they could see with their eyes. you and the other dragons did not use these as much; but you liked prying out the little sonic differences between hello that means "i like you" and hello that means "i don't like you."

so it took you a while to learn that you were responsible for what had happened to her. men had gone missing, and even bad men going missing makes a big fuss. (you know that if it had been girls missing, it would be okay. many proper dragons steal girls because it will not bring a knight to their door). for a while she had been trapped on the palace grounds. it was determined that it was no longer safe for her to be just a princess, she must undergo some human transformation and become a wife.

even so. you had gone looking for her (only to study, of course, so you may know how to snatch her best). but that night you saw her descending from the window of a castle, quick and agile, moving like a whisper, clad almost entirely in black. you could see her quite well of course, although you were not seeing her; but instead her heat and her smell and her sound and all the other sensory noise all humans give off.

you followed her, keeping yourself in a cloud so you appeared as if mist. she stole off into the woods. you were interested in that, and watched her scuttle - although of course you could have taken her then, you wanted to study your prey as best as you could. she did not seem to do much in the woods, only run around cry into her little hands.

she appeared to be looking for something. she did not get far that first night; scurried back to her bed. over and over this happened - she would run as far as she could, only to go back again. it seemed rather boring to you, but of course you had been free your whole life.

and then one night - finally, she arrived at the lake. she sank to her knees then, her hands pressing into the water. her head tilted to the sky. her dark hair spilling in a caught breath behind her.

this is how you heard her voice for the first time. when she came again the next night, she did so more quickly, more assured. straight to the lake, as if it had called her.

she had skipped a pebble over the surface of the water. this action was dangerous, because it almost hit the sail of your wing. you had structured yourself very finely to look like a rockslide.

"three months." her voice was like her: it was deep and smooth and dark, a low violin string. "they want me to marry that bastard in three months."

and then she cried into her hands again, and the sound of it almost broke you.

you followed her maybe more than a proper dragon should, after this. more than just back to the castle and her bed. you hid along her daily walks and watched her in the throne room and saw her out riding horses. she was good with dogs and nice to her people and very much a proper princess, although you had heard it said a proper princess ought not to slip out at night and run around barefoot through the woods.

you discovered she is terrible with directions. you have often had to make a path more clear so she could get home again. she cannot hunt better than an egg; you have had to kill fish and push them subtly up to the shore.

but she appears to love the lake as much as you do. you have seen her read by candlelight (how foolish. the entire woods saw her each time). you have seen her build little paper boats to float along the surface. you have seen her strip her many layers and dive in, have seen her lay with her belly to the sky, floating like she is suspended by the hands of darkness itself.

oh. so she loves the stars, as well, then.

__

you must go in. she will be married tonight. that is a human thing, but you have since learned what it has meant. she will go to somewhere else, and you will not see her again, maybe ever. and then how will you be a proper dragon? go!

you have made yourself in the form of a gargoyle, hiding in the white stone. you can see into her room; and the tapestries that seem unlike her. everything in her room is very bright, which is bad for a proper dragon. there are many knights in the hallways and in their rooms, and their smell is itchy and repugnant to you.

her dress is white, which does not seem like her. you have only seen her wear black. she is sitting at some kind of desk, and she is crying again. she smells of cinnamon still, but moreso of grief. you can feel the heartbreak in her as if it was inside of you.

you cannot watch her cry anymore. you have watched too often without moving. that is shameful.

you nose the door open. you can move quiet, because you are not very big. she is within a cave of you, then a wingtip, and then she is standing up, looking into your eyes.

"it's you." her hand on your jaw is warm. "i thought i was imagining you, you know. i turned around that day. i saw what you did to those men. i have been looking for you since. i told everyone that i had an angel to protect me. they locked me in here anyway."

you are not an angel, you are a dragon. you have to keep your wings locked tight or you would explode the walls of this place. it makes you feel big, suddenly. you are not used to that sensation. you do not like to be locked in a tower. you believe maybe the princess does not like to be locked in a tower either.

you take her in your jaws. she is very small, and does not resist you. although you are not a strong flyer, you must take off in a single push. any other movement would be too slow. you must also hold your breath so you do not smell her, the clove and cinnamon and little bird of hope. your mouth would water and you would drop her.

against the full moon, you do the thing that is impossible. you stretch yourself out all the way, a bold and beaming arrow, and you fly. you can hear them cry about you now, loudly. a banner that would strike pride even into your father: dragon. dragon. dragon.

on the eve of her wedding, you snatch the princess from her tower.

an arrow whisks for you, and then dozens, and then hundreds. you are not afraid of pain. you have learned long ago how to fly with holes in your wings. you hold her very gently still, and you push past the smell of your blood.

in the night you are a star. someone somewhere could look up and see you and make a wish.

there will be another lake, you decide. you can find another lake. somewhere very, very far from here. however long you must fly, however long you must hold your breath: you will take her home, because you are a proper dragon.

___

sometimes they come for her, your treasure. you have built her a little castle here, deep in the forests off the map. and of course for you: a silver round lake like the shift of her iris. you bring her books and she brings you bugs to study. you let her saddle you, and together you ride through the clouds and fog banks. she is a shadow on your back; a warm and velvet thing. she makes you music and lives the way she should; free in the night like a promise.

but they do come. you have stolen a real princess, and they do not want her to be a princess. they want to make her into a brood mother, or into bait, or into prey. they always look into the caves first; into the places proper dragons stay. they are real knights, not just men with sticks. they are loud and their smell still makes you itch.

but she has made you brave now, and cunning. if a dragon is not big, it should be cunning. and since you are a proper dragon, and since your treasure is your most precious thing, you lay in wait.

let them come. you will let the light drip off of you, and then you will pour through them.

afterwards, your princess will tell you a story around the fire. she will patch your wounds as she did that first time. she will sing to you.

and in that moment, neither of you will be a title nor a story. she will just be herself, and you will just be you.

[super-ion]

I don't like this.

That's the first coherent thought that enters my head. My head is full of thoughts. To many thoughts. Noisy thoughts. Noise and noise and noise.

I don't like it.

Two of the primates are chattering at each other. Urgent little creatures, them. These two seem more urgent than normal.

"... not her ..."

Two words snag in my mind. I turn them over in my mind with a detached sort of fascination.

I try rise to my feet. My skin slips on the wet surface and my body slams painfully on the smooth stone... or not stone. I don't know. These primates like their smooth not stone.

My shoulder smarts where it struck. No fur to cushion the fall. No...

I can see my paw.

It's not my paw.

It's one of those horrible little primate paws with wiggling, grasping little toes.

Not her. not her. not her.

A noise escapes my throat, some horrible moan that vibrates past fleshy alien tongue and cheeks.

The primate chatter cuts off abruptly and they look at me.

I look at them. I'm horrible and wet like a newborn covered in afterbirth. I have to blink the awful scum out of my eyes, but everything is focussing wrong. Contrast and sharpness are wrong. Colors are... there are too many fucking colors.

"Um... hello, yes?" one of the primates stammers.

"What." I rasp, words somehow finding their way from brain to throat to lips. "the fuck?"

The primate makes a face. A sort of abstract horror.

It crouches down. No, she crouches down.

"Hi," she repeats. "So... um... I can imagine you're a bit disoriented right now... and well, we're not quite sure how to put this gently-"

"What the fuck did you do to me??" I half moan, half snarl.

"Our friend got transformed into a tiger," the other one says in a rush. "We um... well, we were trying to turn her back... but it seems there's been a little bit of a mixup."

[bespangeled]

In the 1960′s Legally a woman couldn’t

Open a bank account or get a credit card without signed permission from her father or hr husband.

Serve on a jury - because it might inconvenience the family not to have the woman at home being her husband’s helpmate.

Obtain any form of birth control without her husband’s permission. You had to be married, and your hub and had to agree to postpone having children.

Get an Ivy League education. Ivy League schools were men’s colleges ntil the 70′s and 80′s. When they opened their doors to women it was agree that women went there for their MRS. Degee.

Experience equality in the workplace: Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women produced a report in 1963 that revealed, among other things, that women earned 59 cents for every dollar that men earned and were kept out of the more lucrative professional positions.

Keep her job if she was pregnant.Until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, women were regularly fired from their workplace for being pregnant.

Refuse to have sex with her husband.The mid 70s saw most states recognize marital rape and in 1993 it became criminalized in all 50 states. Nevertheless, marital rape is still often treated differently to other forms of rape in some states even today.

Get a divorce with some degree of ease.Before the No Fault Divorce law in 1969, spouses had to show the faults of the other party, such as adultery, and could easily be overturned by recrimination.

Have a legal abortion in most states.The Roe v. Wade case in 1973 protected a woman’s right to abortion until viability.

Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. According to The Week, the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for legal action was in 1977.

Play college sports Title IX of the  Education Amendments of protects people from discrimination  based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial  assistance It was nt until this statute that colleges had teams for women’s sports

Apply for men’s Jobs   The EEOC rules that sex-segregated help wanted ads in newspapers are illegal.  This ruling is upheld in 1973 by the Supreme Court, opening the way for women to apply for higher-paying jobs hitherto open only to men.

This is why we needed feminism - this is why we know that feminism works

[galacticdrift]

I just want to reiterate this stuff, because I legit get the feeling there are a lot of younger women for whom it hasn’t really sunk in what it is today’s GOP is actively trying to return to.

Did you go to a good college? Shame on you, you took a college placement that could have gone to a man who deserves and needs it to support or prepare for his wife & children. But if you really must attend college, well, some men like that, you can still get married if you focus on finding the right man.

Got a job? Why? A man could be doing that job. You should be at home caring for a family. You shouldn’t be taking that job away from a man who needs it (see college, above). You definitely don’t have a career – you’ll be pregnant and raising children soon, so no need to worry about promoting you.

This shit was within living memory.  I’M A MILLENIAL and my mother was in the second class that allowed women at an Ivy League school. Men who are alive today either personally remember shit like this or have parents/family who have raised them into thinking this was the way America functioned back in the blissful Good Old Days. There are literally dudes in the GOP old enough to remember when it was like this and yearn for those days to return.

When people talk about resisting conservativism and the GOP, we’re not just talking about whether the wage gap is a myth or not. We’re talking about whether women even have the fundamental right to exist as individuals, to run their own households and compete for jobs and be considered on an equal footing with men in any arena at all in the first place.

[gehayi]

I was a child in the 1960s, a teenager in the 1970s, a young adult in the 1980s. This is what it was like: When I was growing up, it was considered unfortunate if a girl was good at sports. Girls were not allowed in Little League. Girls’ teams didn’t exist in high school, except at all-girls’ high schools. Boys played sports, and girls were the cheerleaders. People used to ask me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a brain surgeon or the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. Everyone told me it was impossible–those just weren’t realistic goals for a girl–the latter, especially, because you couldn’t trust women to judge fairly and rationally, after all. In the 1960s and 1970s, all women were identified by their marital status, even in arrest reports and obituaries. In elementary school, my science teacher referred to Pierre Curie as DOCTOR Curie and Marie Curie as MRS. Curie…because, as he put it, “she was just his wife.” (Both had doctorates and both were Nobel prize winners, so you would think that both would be accorded respect.) Companies could and did require women to wear dresses and skirts. Failure to do could and did get women fired. And it was legal. It was also legal to fire women for getting married or getting pregnant. The rationale was that a woman who was married or who had a child had no business working; that was what her husband was for. Aetna Insurance, the biggest insurance company in America, fired women for all of the above. A man could rape his wife. Legally. I can remember being twelve years old and reading about legal experts actually debating whether or not a man could actually be said to coerce his wife into having sex. This was a serious debate in 1974. The debate about marital rape came up in my law school, too, in 1984. Could a woman be raped by her husband? The guys all said no–a woman got married, so she was consenting to sex at all times. So I turned it around. I asked them if, since a man had gotten married, that meant that his wife could shove a dildo or a stick or something up his ass any time she wanted to for HER sexual pleasure. (Hey, I thought it was reasonable. If one gender was legally entitled to force sex on the other, then obviously the reverse should also be true.) The male law students didn’t like the idea. Interestingly, they commented that being treated like that would make them feel like a woman. My reaction was, “Thank you for proving my point…” The concept of date rape, when first proposed, was considered laughable. If a woman went out on a date, the argument of legal experts ran, sexual consent was implied. Even more sickening was the fact that in some states–even in the early 1980s–a man could rape his daughter…and it was no worse than a misdemeanor. Women taking self-defense classes in the 1970s and 1980s were frequently described in books and on TV as “cute.” The implication was that it was absurd for a woman to attempt to defend herself, but wasn’t it just adorable for her to try? I was expressly forbidden to take computer classes in junior and senior years of high school–1978-79 and 1979-80–because, as the principal told me, “Only boys have to know that kind of thing. You girls are going to get married, and you won’t use it.” When I was in college–from 1980 to 1984–there were no womens’ studies. The idea hadn’t occurred in many places because the presumption was that there was nothing TO study. My history professor–a man who had a doctorate in history–informed me quite seriously that women had never produced a noted painter, sculptor, composer, architect or scientist because…wait for it…womens’ brains were too small. (He was very surprised when I came up with a list of fifty women gifted in the arts and science, most of whom he had never heard of before.) When Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate in 1984, the press hailed it as a disaster. What would happen, they asked fearfully, if Mondale died and Ferraro became president? What if an international crisis arose and she was menstruating? She could push the nuclear button in a fit of PMS! It would be the end of the WORLD!! …No, they WEREN’T kidding. On the surface, things are very different now than they were when I was a child, a teen and a young adult. But I’m afraid that people now do not realize what it was like then. I’ve read a lot of posts from young women who say that they are not feminists. If the only exposure to feminism they have is the work of extremists, I cannot blame them overmuch. I wish that I could tell them what feminism was like when it was new–when the dream of legal equality was just a dream, and hadn’t even begun to come true. When “woman’s work” was a sneer–and an overt putdown. When people tut-tutted over bright and athletic girls with the words, “Really, it’s a shame she’s not a boy.” That lack of feminism wasn’t all men opening doors and picking up checks. A lot of it was an attitude of patronizing contempt that hasn’t entirely died out, but which has become less publicly acceptable. I wish I could make them feel what it was like…when grown men were called “men” and grown women were “girls.”

[drst]

Know your history.

[hedwig-dordt]

So this, too, is what they mean saying “make America great again” and/or the good old days.

[shatterpath]

REBLOG FOREVER.

[toooldforthissh--stuff]

I am 70. I remember all those things. I was a student nurse from 64 to 67 and we were not permitted to “finish” a bed bath on a male or insert a catheter in a male. Seeing male genitals might cause us “harm” or upset our delicate sensibilities. Imagine when we graduated and were “thrown” to the wolves. Imagine if you were a male patient who had to be the first to be “practiced” on by a graduate nurse. (Ha!) At the school I attended no student nurse could be married. Only one school in my city (Atlanta) would even admit married women and Male Nurses weren’t even thought of. What man would want to be a nurse when he could be a Doctor. In all my training I only remember 3 or 4 Women who were Doctor’s and a very few, (less than 5 or 6) female interns or residents (and this was a teaching hospital) and most of those were OB/Gyns and one was a pediatrician.

When I graduated and was going to get married I wanted to go on birth control pills. You needed to be on them for a least one cycle before they were effective. I won’t go into what hoops I had to jump through to get a prescription from my Dr. (a man, natch) but when i went to the drug store to get the prescription filled I ended up having to get my future husband to “accompany” me so the pharmacist “interview” him and see if it was okay with him for me to be on the pill.

Even when we went to get a marriage license I had to get my Father’s signature and we had to go before a Judge because I was not yet 21 (I was 20 and 9 months).

I could go on and on, getting a credit card in MY name, etc., but I will tell you that WE MUST RESIST.

[casper-the-friendly-being-blog]

The number of people I know who romanticize gender inequality is frankly terrifying. A world never existed in which the lives of women were simplified by benevolent men who saw to her every want and need. That was not a thing. A world never existed in which women were all ladies, men were all gentlemen, & everything was some great big cishet fairytale. Feminists aren’t a bunch of upstarts who want to destroy a perfectly wholesome and non-harmful system. Just…look at history. Look at the posts above. We. Must. Resist..

[rivergst-deactivated20191102]

About 8: The State of New York only added No-Fault Divorce as an option in 2010 (!!!)

[systlin]

I want to repeat here. 

This is what they mean, when they say “Old-fashioned values”

When conservatives start waxing lyrical about the ‘good old days’, this is what they mean. They are fully aware how much things blew for women, and they would like to return to that. 

[whatbigotspost]

At first I re-blogged this with no commentary added because it’s already so thorough and good.

But then I realized I actually do want to add something. This was written nine years ago. In the 9 years that have come to pass the white nationalist Christian fascism ultra right agenda of misogyny has had many victories.

In the United States just off the top of my head a very few examples: there’s no longer a legally protected right to abortion. Countless laws across our country police, how woman you must look or be to enter a public bathroom. We know with certainty the president and countless people around him are pedophiles and rapists. Women’s participation in the workforce has been rolled back to 1980s levels. The pressure to be thin is higher now than 10 years ago.

[homunculus-argument]

Random worldbuilding: there's a region in the country with a strong culture of offering homecooked dishes as gifts for all occasion. And over time, they have accumulated an entire category of dishware that aren't any particular individual's property - they are constantly in rotation, being gifted and re-gifted as the dish holding a pie, a casserole, loaf of bread, the list goes on. Once a gift dish is in your possession, you need to make something in it as a gift in return - not necessarily to the one you received it from, but to someone nonetheless.

They're called lovers' dishes, but not for any romantic reasons. The name was adopted after people started deeming the previous name, courtesan bowls, inappropriate. The term courtesan bowl was also a slightly more cleaned-up term replacing a previous one, as the dishware were originally known as slut cups. As they, you understand, they get around.

[frostgears]

She'd been with the Valkyries for six months. In the aftermath of the defense of Neyant Scraptown, once the infantry had finished sweeping the plaza and the big radial streets for mines, stay-behind drones, and wounded Feds, Hesper leaned against a wall and considered herself, for the moment, safe.

Then the merc pilot she'd later learn was called Dieciséis had popped her cockpit, descended from her mech like a vengeful angel on a dropline, got in her face, close enough to see the sweat beaded on the pilot's short spikes of hair, close enough to smell musty cockpit stink and fresh exertion, blended with the faintest incongruous hint of rose perfume. She'd thought, this was it, I fouled her line of sight or committed some other sin in battle, now things are quiet she's going to settle my account. At least the woman who killed me is gorgeous.

"Hey, militia girl," the pilot had said. "I had half an eye on you. You did okay out there — for small moon talent. Want to learn to handle a bigger gun?"

Days in the simulator, that voice purring instructions in her ear, hours in the Yurukuma Arashi stomping around cones and crates in Bay 4 and learning not to fall on her ass when she fired a simulated rail rifle. Dieciséis laughed the first time. Less the second. There wasn't a third.

Then they put her on the line. Six deployments that turned out to be drills, two tense standoffs, five real skirmishes, and one multi-day bloody mess later. Hesper was finally starting to feel like a Valkyrie and not just Dieciséis's pet. Except:

"All this," she swept a hand across the gym locker room, "really makes a girl feel inadequate."

"Shut the fuck up," Violet told her. The small femme had a nasty mouth, out of the cockpit or in it. "You don't get to save my ass like you did on Atosa and talk shit about yourself."

"You don't get it, V," she sighed. "They're all real women."

"You busting into that formation with a plasma lance felt pretty fucking real to me. Felt the charge from that goddamn thing in my skeleton. Saw that Fed vanguard armor pinning me down go off like the devil was making popcorn…"

With the gymnastic precision of someone who piloted a close-quarters urban assault mech for a living, Violet dropped her towel, spun close under Hesper's guard, and put a finger to Hesper's chin, tilting the taller woman's head up. "Spit it out. Tell me what's rattling around your skull."

"Well," Hesper stammered, blushing, "Everyone in the unit is so fit, and pretty, and friendly… but they're my competition! H-how's a girl supposed to get any attention from the Commander? He's so… uh… smart… and uh… quiet… and… tactical…? and basically the only guy…"

"Oh. Yeah. That's fucking tough. But it's important that you try, because he's really…" The puzzled Violet closed her eyes, furrowed her brow. "mysterious… and uh… strategically… male…"

It was then, watching her incredibly attractive and emotionally involved and also naked close friend and roommate Violet try to conceive of how the allegedly useful Commander's vague masculinity was relevant to anyone in the blatantly sapphic stew of her mercenary company, that Hesper looked in a direction she hadn't realized existed. There was a pane of glass at the side of the world. There was a coin floating near an edge, and a gem, numbers next to them. Icons on another edge. And stabbing towards the glass was the finger of what could only be the devil himself. □

[teaboot]

How people get nicknames:

Recipient of a third-degree burn in front of witnesses. IE, "I won't take that shit from a man dressed like a ghostbuster"= "Gostbuster" or "Buster"

A distinctive personal feature or quirk. IE, "Have you noticed how that new guy is always eating bell peppers?" = "Peppers", or "That chick has a massive forehead" = "Forehead".

An embarrassing thing you said or did. IE, "Did you seriously call Dale "Dad"?" = "Junior", "Baby boy", "Sport"

A game of name-mutation telephone. IE, "Donny Clyde" = "Bonnie 'n' Clyde" = "Bonnie" = "Bon-bon".

Irony. IE, calling a tall person "short stack" or a particularly dour person "sunshine".

A 'wrong place wrong time' one-off incident. IE, "He spilled oil on his pants and had to borrow a pair that were way too big and Jim saw him with the waistband pulled up to his nipples and called him 'Parachute'"

A batman-style origin story but not in a cool way: "One time she hit a deer with the company car and when she called the boss to tell her she was crying so hard we thought she was dying" = "Bambi"

The incredibly rare 'admiration' nickname, bourne only once a millennia under the light of the blood moon: "We saw him lift a truck once so now we call him 'iron man'"

+ How Nicknames Stick:

Your fate is determined by The Counsel

You hate it

It's accurate

[puppygirl-sage]

I find it really interesting how well some mechsploitation writing captures the feeling of a machine being an extension of the body.

I'm a full-time wheelchair user and can say from experience, it *is* my legs. After a while the brain just registers it as part of you.

If something is damaged or calibrated wrong, it feels like walking with a limp. Unusual noises feel like they're coming from your joints. It's deeply intimate and sometimes unsettling when someone reaches into the mechanisms you can't see to adjust something or make repairs.

While obviously it has no sense of touch, someone laying their hands on it feels deeply personal, and invasive if they do so without permission.

Even when I'm not in it, seeing people handle it feels strange, like an out-of-body experience seeing someone handling your limp form.

I can't stay in my chair all the time. It doesn't recline and has little padding so I get sore after long periods, and my country is also quite bad for wheelchair access. With help and a cane I can walk very short distances and transfer to a regular chair. But it's a strange kind of nakedness and helplessness without it. I've seen no better description of that feeling than the way pilots are portrayed outside of their mechs.

[themechnamedashley]

There is an actual term for this, and it is one of my obsessions!!! It is called "Homuncular Flexibility". Its this thing where human beings will see the tools and aides used as extensions of themselves, quite literally, within a *really* short period of time. Precisely as you stated, your wheelchair really *IS* a part of you! Your mind and brain has brought it into its model, and integrated it *directly* into your proprioception! I have a paper that goes into it REALLY well, though it concentrates more on non-human avatars within virtual spaces. The same mechanisms are 100000% at play with tools and aides! https://vhil.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj29011/files/media/file/won-etsbs-homuncular-flexibility.pdf

Human sense of self and body is *INCREDIBLY* flexible, and it allows us to function and exist in contexts that would otherwise be difficult or impossible! The mechsplo and other mech stories that have the machine as an extension of self are *absolutely* describing a real, tangible, measurable process!