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Dec. 30th, 2017 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsLast night, genarti and I went to go pay a call upon shati and wakeupnew. Unrelatedly, but relevantly to the story I'm about to relate, shati and wakeupnew had been up until 4 AM the night before dealing with a frozen pipe situation and had gotten less than four hours of sleep apiece.
After some initial conversation that ranged from Roman butt sanitation habits to Kafka's Metamorphosis to the required formulas of Hallmark Original Christmas Movies,shati became possessed by the muse and began to relate to us her own Hallmark Original Christmas Movie. This was an experience that honestly cannot be replicated in text form. Nonetheless I felt like it deserved to be preserved for posterity and so I have done my humble best to recount the key elements of the plot. We all hope it will be a Yuletide fandom next year.
(Note: anything in brackets is ashati edit on my initial attempt to reconstruct her masterwork.)
Our Story Begins in a small town where a humble Christmas tree farmer has woken up as a cockroach. He knocks on the door of his next-door neighbor for help, because he hasn't quite figured out what happened but knows that he needs help to water his Christmas trees due to his tiny cockroach arms. She's just moved here, and, when she sees a giant cockroach at the door, shrieks "THIS IS WHY I LEFT!" This is because the town is prone to cockroaches. However, she is also our hero's ex-girlfriend, so he assumes that she meant their former relationship and goes back to his own apartment in dismay.
Our heroine now gets on the phone to her ex-boyfriend in the big city to explain that she just saw a six-foot-tall cockroach. Our hero, listening through the walls, realizes for the first time that he's a six-foot-tall cockroach! Meanwhile, the ex-boyfriend is like, "are you on drugs again?"
BACKSTORY TIME: the charming small town where this story takes place is known for meth as well as cockroaches. In fact, the town's name is Chrismeth Town. Our heroine moved here as a child because her father got a job offer which turned out to be a cover for all the meth. They symbolically read Metamorphosis together, and then the father died [and was found with cockroaches in the room]. Our heroine then also did a lot of meth, and grew distant from her friends and family, and then moved to the big city and attempted to start up a business selling mail-order instant soup [organic soup mixes] in mason jars. Alas, her boyfriend, Mason Jarlsman, was not supportive, and was also himself preoccupied with fighting over parking spaces. [He has left lawn chairs, their kitchen table, and our heroine herself as space savers, and recently shot a man in a parking dispute. But unforgivably, he has also started leaving her mason jars as space savers.] After the last time in which Mason Jarlsman used our heroine's mason jars to save a parking spot, she decided to move back to her town. She missed the cockroaches and the three played-out quarries. (
ANYWAY. Our hero -- whose name is Chris Roach -- manages to flail out a note using his mandibles and chocolate sauce and slide it under the door. The note says something along the lines of AM ROACH, NEED HELP. (genarti very importantly later corrected this to its original, superior form of I NOW ROACH, PLS HLP.) He's not very good at spelling because of the limitations of roach brains. With the encouragement of her perhaps unduly supportive best friend, our heroine knocks on the door. They have an earnest snapchat communication and our heroine shares her backstory, and then they go out into the frozen Christmas tree farm [at 4 am] and pour some water on the trees. Unfortunately, the water freezes and thus doesn't help the trees at all, but our protagonists are so caught up in the magical moment that they don't notice. At the end of the night, Chris Roach's hand is human again!
Then the heroine goes back to her apartment and the [KITCHEN] POT OF METH she keeps on her bedside table.
However, the next morning, when Chris Roach knocks on her door, she screams. Maybe she doesn't remember yesterday! Maybe she was high on too much meth! Chris Roach wanders the streets, distraught. He is more distraught to find out that HIS CHRISTMAS TREES ARE DYING. With nothing left for him in this town, he bundles himself up in sweaters and gets on a [midnight] train going anywhere, in this case the big city. The conductor assumes his roach condition is a symptom of global warming and does not question it. [I actually meant for the conductor to be assuming he was a normal cockroach who was huge because of global warming]
When they get to the city, Chris Roach's poor roach brain is so confused that he wanders around aimlessly until he finds some mason jars that smell like our heroine and accidentally ends up at Mason Jarlman's house. Mason Jarlman, alarmed to find a six-foot-tall roach in his living room, calls our heroine to apologize for accusing her of being on meth now that he's seen a giant roach with his own eyes, and explains that he's called an exterminator. "THAT'S MY FRIEND!" our heroine shrieks. "...OK, maybe you are on meth," says Mason Jarlman, but it doesn't matter, because our heroine (whom at about this point was named Addie Kate - "we name every random object that comes into our house," saidwakeupnew, "but the heroine doesn't have a name yet??") is getting on the train! The exterminators are coming in 45 minutes!
(Addie Kate has determined that the exterminators are coming in 45 minutes via yelp, which provides helpful averages for how long it takes big city exterminators to get anywhere.)
Addie Kate asks the conductor if he's seen a giant cockroach, and the conductor is like, sure? Addie Kate asks [demands] the conductor to book [gun] it, and the conductor is like, it's a public train, we only have the one speed, but she looks SO distraught that the conductor kindly tells her that he will, in fact, book it, and starts making 'choo choo' noises so she'll believe that the train is going faster than usual. Addie Kate totally buys this. She also leans forward in the expectation that this too will make the train go faster.
Meanwhile, up in the big city, Chris Roach and Mason Jarlman have accidentally ended up playing chess at one of those two-person Sim chess tables. Chris Roach [plays skillfully despite the capacitative differences in his current roach brain, but] loses the chess game, which also endears him to Mason Jarlman. Chris Roach's [human hand is becoming more firmly human], thanks to the combined powers of chess friendship and the healing purrs of Mason Jarlman's [two nice] cats [which make his human bones more powerful]. Now Mason Jarlman is feeling guilty about having called the exterminators, but once you call the exterminators, they're ON THE HUNT and CANNOT BE CALLED OFF.
Mason Jarlman leaves the room and comes back to find that one of his cats (the asshole cat) is trying to eat Chris Roach! Mason Jarlman saves him, [but is distraught that he allowed his own pets to injure a total stranger who he kind of bonded over chess with, and feels responsible. He tries to clean Chris Roach's bleeding wounds, but his human first aid products do nothing! He begins to cry out of guilt. As his tears fall into the open wound, it begins to transform into human flesh.] Now [Chris Roach] has one human hand and one naked human leg and one human butt cheek and is, overall, is Just Enough Dude. It's a Chrismeth miracle! (Although, in fact,shati was very careful to specify that it is in fact February.) But the exterminators are on their way, so Chris Roach and Mason Jarlman flee out the fire escape. Mason Jarlman [loses his balance and falls], when Chris Roach [leaps from the fire escape,] grabs him up [midair,] and scuttles with him up a wall, using his four roach legs and cradling Mason Jarlman in his one human hand with his human leg and butt dangling behind.
At some point in here, some small children in the apartment across the way look out the window and clamoring, and their mother is like "I'VE TOLD YOU A MILLION TIMES, SANTA ISN'T REAL AND ALSO IT'S FEBRUARY," and the kids are like "well maybe Santa isn't real but..."
Meanwhile, the Exterminators have got the scent of human blood and are pursuing, except for the one Exterminator they left in the car to try and find parking, who is running low on gas and generally in a stressful situation.
Meanwhile meanwhile, Addie Kate has finally reached the city! She somehow gets to the wall with Chris Roach and Mason Jarlman. Chris Roach is trying to communicate, but he still doesn't have a human mouth. However, thinking quickly, he grabs a plate of spaghetti and brings the three of them together into a three-way spaghetti kiss. Now that he has a mouth, he explains that the cure for cockroach transformation ... IS LOVE. To cure the rest of him, they have to have sex. On the wall. Which they do.
As a result, when the Exterminators bust in, all they see is three naked humans. In frustration, they go back to the car, where they turn on the weakest link: the Exterminator who was left to find parking. All that we know of what happens in that car are screams.
(It's possible that at this point the Exterminators might have turned out to be time-displaced ancient Romans, but it's all very unclear.)
Our happy threesome sit down and have a talk [heart to heart to heart] where they resolve all their issues. Addie Kate says that she left Mason Jarlman because he wasn't supportive of her small business, and Mason Jarlman says that she didn't have any customers, and Addie Kate is like "I had one customer!" and Mason Jarlman explains that the one customer ... was ADDIE KATE'S ESTRANGED [MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHED] MOTHER. She bought all her soup, far more soup than any one person could eat. Anyway, now they are going to move back to Chrismeth Town and sell small Christmas trees in mason jars. Addie Kate leaves her estranged mother a tearful voicemail explaining how sorry she is that they've grown apart and how much she loves and appreciates her and then they all go to bed.
In the last scene, we go to Addie Kate's mother's apartment. It's a huge mess. Meth [Did she have meth?? I actually thought she was just a cockroach but I'm not even sure...] and soup jars everywhere. Addie Kate's mother, it turns out, is a cockroach, a really sad, lonely cockroach, even sadder than Chris Roach -- but when she listens to Addie Kate's message, one hand starts to become human. A HAPPY ENDING.
PS:genarti also provided some additional notes on this from her own memories of the event. They are:
1) You should probably clarify that her boyfriend, Mason Jarlsman, pronounces his last name with a hard J. So the reader can mentally pronounce it correctly. You should definitely clarify that he's preoccupied with fighting over parking spaces because he's a city dweller, and that's what city people do all day long.
2) At the end, Shati did retcon in that Mason Jarlman's apartment building is made out of stones from the quarry, so it also smells like Chrismeth Town, and it's not just Our Heroine's mason jars that smell homey and familiar.
3) About the sex, I believewakeupnew specified that you needed to say that the original story's phrasing was, "So they do that."
4) You never did explain that the kitchen pot of meth is a red herring
There was another title for this besides 'A New App-Roach: Simply Having A Wonderful Chris Meth Time' but I've now forgotten it.
genarti and I went to go pay a call upon shati and wakeupnew. Unrelatedly, but relevantly to the story I'm about to relate, shati and wakeupnew had been up until 4 AM the night before dealing with a frozen pipe situation and had gotten less than four hours of sleep apiece.After some initial conversation that ranged from Roman butt sanitation habits to Kafka's Metamorphosis to the required formulas of Hallmark Original Christmas Movies,
shati became possessed by the muse and began to relate to us her own Hallmark Original Christmas Movie. This was an experience that honestly cannot be replicated in text form. Nonetheless I felt like it deserved to be preserved for posterity and so I have done my humble best to recount the key elements of the plot. We all hope it will be a Yuletide fandom next year. (Note: anything in brackets is a
shati edit on my initial attempt to reconstruct her masterwork.)Our Story Begins in a small town where a humble Christmas tree farmer has woken up as a cockroach. He knocks on the door of his next-door neighbor for help, because he hasn't quite figured out what happened but knows that he needs help to water his Christmas trees due to his tiny cockroach arms. She's just moved here, and, when she sees a giant cockroach at the door, shrieks "THIS IS WHY I LEFT!" This is because the town is prone to cockroaches. However, she is also our hero's ex-girlfriend, so he assumes that she meant their former relationship and goes back to his own apartment in dismay.
Our heroine now gets on the phone to her ex-boyfriend in the big city to explain that she just saw a six-foot-tall cockroach. Our hero, listening through the walls, realizes for the first time that he's a six-foot-tall cockroach! Meanwhile, the ex-boyfriend is like, "are you on drugs again?"
BACKSTORY TIME: the charming small town where this story takes place is known for meth as well as cockroaches. In fact, the town's name is Chrismeth Town. Our heroine moved here as a child because her father got a job offer which turned out to be a cover for all the meth. They symbolically read Metamorphosis together, and then the father died [and was found with cockroaches in the room]. Our heroine then also did a lot of meth, and grew distant from her friends and family, and then moved to the big city and attempted to start up a business selling mail-order instant soup [organic soup mixes] in mason jars. Alas, her boyfriend, Mason Jarlsman, was not supportive, and was also himself preoccupied with fighting over parking spaces. [He has left lawn chairs, their kitchen table, and our heroine herself as space savers, and recently shot a man in a parking dispute. But unforgivably, he has also started leaving her mason jars as space savers.] After the last time in which Mason Jarlsman used our heroine's mason jars to save a parking spot, she decided to move back to her town. She missed the cockroaches and the three played-out quarries. (
ANYWAY. Our hero -- whose name is Chris Roach -- manages to flail out a note using his mandibles and chocolate sauce and slide it under the door. The note says something along the lines of AM ROACH, NEED HELP. (
genarti very importantly later corrected this to its original, superior form of I NOW ROACH, PLS HLP.) He's not very good at spelling because of the limitations of roach brains. With the encouragement of her perhaps unduly supportive best friend, our heroine knocks on the door. They have an earnest snapchat communication and our heroine shares her backstory, and then they go out into the frozen Christmas tree farm [at 4 am] and pour some water on the trees. Unfortunately, the water freezes and thus doesn't help the trees at all, but our protagonists are so caught up in the magical moment that they don't notice. At the end of the night, Chris Roach's hand is human again!Then the heroine goes back to her apartment and the [KITCHEN] POT OF METH she keeps on her bedside table.
However, the next morning, when Chris Roach knocks on her door, she screams. Maybe she doesn't remember yesterday! Maybe she was high on too much meth! Chris Roach wanders the streets, distraught. He is more distraught to find out that HIS CHRISTMAS TREES ARE DYING. With nothing left for him in this town, he bundles himself up in sweaters and gets on a [midnight] train going anywhere, in this case the big city. The conductor assumes his roach condition is a symptom of global warming and does not question it. [I actually meant for the conductor to be assuming he was a normal cockroach who was huge because of global warming]
When they get to the city, Chris Roach's poor roach brain is so confused that he wanders around aimlessly until he finds some mason jars that smell like our heroine and accidentally ends up at Mason Jarlman's house. Mason Jarlman, alarmed to find a six-foot-tall roach in his living room, calls our heroine to apologize for accusing her of being on meth now that he's seen a giant roach with his own eyes, and explains that he's called an exterminator. "THAT'S MY FRIEND!" our heroine shrieks. "...OK, maybe you are on meth," says Mason Jarlman, but it doesn't matter, because our heroine (whom at about this point was named Addie Kate - "we name every random object that comes into our house," said
wakeupnew, "but the heroine doesn't have a name yet??") is getting on the train! The exterminators are coming in 45 minutes!(Addie Kate has determined that the exterminators are coming in 45 minutes via yelp, which provides helpful averages for how long it takes big city exterminators to get anywhere.)
Addie Kate asks the conductor if he's seen a giant cockroach, and the conductor is like, sure? Addie Kate asks [demands] the conductor to book [gun] it, and the conductor is like, it's a public train, we only have the one speed, but she looks SO distraught that the conductor kindly tells her that he will, in fact, book it, and starts making 'choo choo' noises so she'll believe that the train is going faster than usual. Addie Kate totally buys this. She also leans forward in the expectation that this too will make the train go faster.
Meanwhile, up in the big city, Chris Roach and Mason Jarlman have accidentally ended up playing chess at one of those two-person Sim chess tables. Chris Roach [plays skillfully despite the capacitative differences in his current roach brain, but] loses the chess game, which also endears him to Mason Jarlman. Chris Roach's [human hand is becoming more firmly human], thanks to the combined powers of chess friendship and the healing purrs of Mason Jarlman's [two nice] cats [which make his human bones more powerful]. Now Mason Jarlman is feeling guilty about having called the exterminators, but once you call the exterminators, they're ON THE HUNT and CANNOT BE CALLED OFF.
Mason Jarlman leaves the room and comes back to find that one of his cats (the asshole cat) is trying to eat Chris Roach! Mason Jarlman saves him, [but is distraught that he allowed his own pets to injure a total stranger who he kind of bonded over chess with, and feels responsible. He tries to clean Chris Roach's bleeding wounds, but his human first aid products do nothing! He begins to cry out of guilt. As his tears fall into the open wound, it begins to transform into human flesh.] Now [Chris Roach] has one human hand and one naked human leg and one human butt cheek and is, overall, is Just Enough Dude. It's a Chrismeth miracle! (Although, in fact,
shati was very careful to specify that it is in fact February.) But the exterminators are on their way, so Chris Roach and Mason Jarlman flee out the fire escape. Mason Jarlman [loses his balance and falls], when Chris Roach [leaps from the fire escape,] grabs him up [midair,] and scuttles with him up a wall, using his four roach legs and cradling Mason Jarlman in his one human hand with his human leg and butt dangling behind.At some point in here, some small children in the apartment across the way look out the window and clamoring, and their mother is like "I'VE TOLD YOU A MILLION TIMES, SANTA ISN'T REAL AND ALSO IT'S FEBRUARY," and the kids are like "well maybe Santa isn't real but..."
Meanwhile, the Exterminators have got the scent of human blood and are pursuing, except for the one Exterminator they left in the car to try and find parking, who is running low on gas and generally in a stressful situation.
Meanwhile meanwhile, Addie Kate has finally reached the city! She somehow gets to the wall with Chris Roach and Mason Jarlman. Chris Roach is trying to communicate, but he still doesn't have a human mouth. However, thinking quickly, he grabs a plate of spaghetti and brings the three of them together into a three-way spaghetti kiss. Now that he has a mouth, he explains that the cure for cockroach transformation ... IS LOVE. To cure the rest of him, they have to have sex. On the wall. Which they do.
As a result, when the Exterminators bust in, all they see is three naked humans. In frustration, they go back to the car, where they turn on the weakest link: the Exterminator who was left to find parking. All that we know of what happens in that car are screams.
(It's possible that at this point the Exterminators might have turned out to be time-displaced ancient Romans, but it's all very unclear.)
Our happy threesome sit down and have a talk [heart to heart to heart] where they resolve all their issues. Addie Kate says that she left Mason Jarlman because he wasn't supportive of her small business, and Mason Jarlman says that she didn't have any customers, and Addie Kate is like "I had one customer!" and Mason Jarlman explains that the one customer ... was ADDIE KATE'S ESTRANGED [MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHED] MOTHER. She bought all her soup, far more soup than any one person could eat. Anyway, now they are going to move back to Chrismeth Town and sell small Christmas trees in mason jars. Addie Kate leaves her estranged mother a tearful voicemail explaining how sorry she is that they've grown apart and how much she loves and appreciates her and then they all go to bed.
In the last scene, we go to Addie Kate's mother's apartment. It's a huge mess. Meth [Did she have meth?? I actually thought she was just a cockroach but I'm not even sure...] and soup jars everywhere. Addie Kate's mother, it turns out, is a cockroach, a really sad, lonely cockroach, even sadder than Chris Roach -- but when she listens to Addie Kate's message, one hand starts to become human. A HAPPY ENDING.
PS:
genarti also provided some additional notes on this from her own memories of the event. They are:1) You should probably clarify that her boyfriend, Mason Jarlsman, pronounces his last name with a hard J. So the reader can mentally pronounce it correctly. You should definitely clarify that he's preoccupied with fighting over parking spaces because he's a city dweller, and that's what city people do all day long.
2) At the end, Shati did retcon in that Mason Jarlman's apartment building is made out of stones from the quarry, so it also smells like Chrismeth Town, and it's not just Our Heroine's mason jars that smell homey and familiar.
3) About the sex, I believe
wakeupnew specified that you needed to say that the original story's phrasing was, "So they do that."4) You never did explain that the kitchen pot of meth is a red herring
There was another title for this besides 'A New App-Roach: Simply Having A Wonderful Chris Meth Time' but I've now forgotten it.
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Date: 2017-12-30 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-30 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-12-30 04:11 pm (UTC):D?
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Date: 2017-12-31 05:24 am (UTC)(Afterwards on the drive home, both Becca and I were like, "MY DIAPHRAGM IS SORE FROM LAUGHING HELP"
and then one of us would go "CHOO CHOO" or something again and we'd start laughing all over again anyway)
no subject
Date: 2017-12-30 08:03 pm (UTC)Considering the sexual equipment of cockroaches, I am not in fact sure about this!
There was another title for this besides 'A New App-Roach: Simply Having A Wonderful Chris Meth Time' but I've now forgotten it.
Tell Netflix and you'll all be rich.
Thank you for documenting this experience.
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Date: 2017-12-30 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2018-01-04 12:18 am (UTC)OMG, all of you. Which I say with so much love. :D