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Gangle didn’t consider herself someone who hates, but even she had things she greatly disliked. Her current situation – being trapped in a deranged virtual circus at the mercy of an adventure-obsessed AI ringmaster – was at the top of the list. The bullying she endured at the hands of fellow Circus attendee Jax was also high up there.
Just below both of those things was something comparatively minor, but no less fun for her to deal with; artist’s block.
Gangle sat on one of the couches in the Tent’s common area. A sketchpad lay open to a blank page on her lap, and the end of the ribbon that formed her arm wrapped around a pencil. Gangle’s mouth curled into a frown as she tapped the eraser against the cheek of her mask, the tiny thumps echoing in the silence.
For almost an hour Gangle had been trying to draw, but the inspiration simply wouldn’t come. So far all she’d done was scribble quick doodles of random items from around the Circus as a warm-up. Since then, she’d tried to some actual drawing but found herself at a loss for what to draw. The paper in her lap bore the ghosts of erased pencil markings from several false starts, seeming to mock her with its emptiness.
Gangle let out a long sigh, slumping back on the couch. Being stuck in the Circus was bad enough, having to deal with Caine’s adventures and Jax’s abuse. Drawing was one of the few ways Gangle had of mitigating at least some of the stress she faced on a daily basis. (Or at least, what seemed like daily – it was always hard to tell the passage of time in the game world.)
More than that, drawing was Gangle’s passion. It had been for her entire life, long before coming to the Circus. The act of creating via the visual arts was one of the few things Gangle considered herself to be genuinely good at. At one point, it had even been her dream to launch her own webcomic. A dream she, at times, thought she might take another shot at if when she finally escaped this digital nightmare.
To go through these periods where she wanted to draw, but simply couldn’t… in some ways, it made her feel worse than when she suffered through Caine’s adventures or Jax’s harassment. At least those were outside forces, rather than her traitorous brain simply refusing to give her the motivation to create.
Gangle let her mind wander away from drawing, and the found herself thinking of everyone else currently trapped in the Circus with her. No one had seen Zooble for quite some time; they were probably in their room, swapping out their interchangeable body parts. Kinger had sequestered himself in his pillow fort, as he usually did. Jax, Pomni and Ragatha were in a different part of the Tent, the former having challenged the latter two to a round of the Circus’s minigolf minigame. Ragatha had offered Gangle to come, but she’d politely declined – the last time Gangle played minigolf with Jax, the putter “accidentally” slipped from his hands to shatter her comedy mask.
From there, Gangle’s thoughts drifted to Caine, their host/jailer. Knowing him, he was likely cooking up yet another adventure for the player’s “entertainment.” These excursions were a coin toss for Gangle. Sometimes she found them pleasant, even a little fun, like the trip to a haunted mansion where she and Ragatha had enjoyed tea with a friendly ghost. More often than not, though, they left her terrified and or miserable, due to circumstances in the adventure itself and/or Jax’s being… well, Jax.
Their most recent adventure in running a fast food restaurant had brought Gangle to the very edge of a nervous breakdown. She shuddered at the memory of feeling so close to the brink. The hopelessness, the despair, the numbness.
After that, Gangle found herself hoping the next adventure would be something a bit more traditional. She thought about the many exotic locals Caine had sent them too: a dessert-themed desert, a haunted house, snow-capped mountains, the farthest reaches of space, dungeons filled with booby traps, and many more. In her reminiscing, Gangle realized it had been a while since they’d been on a seafaring adventure – the last one had been well over a dozen adventures ago, when the players had been assigned as security on a merchant vessel which they then had to protect from bloodthirsty pirates.
Gangle wondered what kind of ocean-based adventure Caine would have in store for them if and when he revisited the setting. Maybe he’d have them do battle against a sort of sea monster or kraken. She envisioned the scene: a classic wooden sailing ship at sea, surrounded by enormous writhing tentacles that shot up from the churning waters.
As she clearly pictured the adventure in her head, Gangle felt a spark.
Her hand started moving, pencil flying across the page. First, she sketched some swirling lines to represent the ocean waves. From there, several quick strokes produced the hull of the ship, followed by squares and triangles for the sails as well as straight lines for the masts and rigging. Finally, wavy lines to create towering tentacles that shot up from the water to attack the boat.
When she was done, Gangle looked over her sketch. It wasn’t neat, but at least it was something. She found herself starting to smile, a familiar warm pride welling up inside of her that accompanied a finished drawing.
Siezing the momentum, Gangle flipped to a new page and started to draw again. She revisited the epic battle playing out in her mind, imagining what she and the rest of the players would be doing and sketching what she saw. Even in her own fantasies Gangle couldn’t picture herself fighting a giant monster head-on. Instead, she drew herself armed with flintlock pistols firing at the beast’s appendages, a holster at her waist and bandolier draped across her ribbon body.
She thought of Kinger, the oldest of the players and the one who’d been in the circus the longest. A bit scatterbrained most of the time, but overall a good guy, who always seemed to be more lucid in low-light conditions. As such, she imagined him below deck, the darkness helping him concentrate on loading and operating the canons. She drew him with a tricorn hat atop his chess piece head, canon aimed out of a porthole to launch a cannonball point-blank into a tentacle.
She thought of Jax, her frequent tormentor. The man who took sick delight in other’s misfortune, particularly Gangle’s. The one who’d been responsible for more than half the instances of Gangle’s comedy mask getting lost or broken, and who’d made her cry more times than she could count. Gangle found herself smirking as she drew the rabbit being seized and squeezed by one of the tentacles, eyes popping out of his head like a squeaky toy.
She thought of Ragatha, by far the kindest member of the circus. Outwardly at least. As much as Gangle enjoyed Ragatha’s optimism, her near-constant positivity made it hard to tell just how genuine she was being. Especially after the fast food adventure. Gangle felt her smile slip as she recalled Ragatha flat-out call her “annoying” with her new manic mask. She’d been inebriated at the time – Why did Caine think “stupid sauce” was appropriate for a restaurant? Gangle idly wondered – but the fact that she thought that deep down spoke volumes to Ragatha’s true feelings, in a way that Gangle was still processing.
Regardless of all that, Gangle at least appreciated Ragatha trying to keep an upbeat attitude for the sake of everyone trapped in the game. Gangle drew the doll woman in a long coat with her frizzy hair sticking out from a bandana around her head, slashing at one of the tentacles with a cutlass.
She thought of Pomni, the Circus’s newest member. Someone who had (understandably) been very closed off when she first arrived, but had gradually been warming up to the others. In the last adventure alone she’d reached out to Gangle without any prompting, twice; once to listen when Gangle briefly vented about Ragatha’s disingenuous positivity, and later offering to close up the restaurant and let her leave early. A small gesture, but it had been enough to pull Gangle back when she’d been dangerously close to the edge.
Slowly but surely Pomni seemed to be finding her place within their Circus family. Still, she hadn’t quite gotten used to the craziness of Caine’s adventures. Gangle drew the jester in an outfit similar to Ragatha’s, looking panicked as she frantically swiped at reaching tentacles with a pair of daggers.
By now Gangle had filled the entire page with drawings. She turned to a fresh page and was about to put the pencil to paper when she paused.
The only one left was Zooble, who wasn’t likely to go on an adventure. Gangle thought for a moment, then shrugged. It was her imagination; she could picture them coming along if she wanted.
Gangle let her thoughts drift to Zooble as she began a new sketch. In many ways, they were one of the most mysterious of the players. They hung out with others during the downtime between adventures, but rarely talked about themselves or who they were before coming to the Circus. Between their reserved nature and penchant for sarcasm, Zooble came off to many as cold and aloof, which wasn’t entirely inaccurate.
But Gangle knew Zooble had a softer side. Each time they lost a player to abstraction, Zooble was the one who organized the funerals when they stayed behind from adventures, and they weren't afraid to bare their feelings during the wakes. They didn’t take any of Jax’s crap and had stuck up for Gangle against him on more than one occasion.
Not to mention everything Zooble had done for her just recently. First they’d gifted her a new mask from their bottomless box of spare parts. Plastic too, that wouldn’t break as easily as her comedy masks. It… hadn’t exactly worked out, but Gangle appreciated the gesture.
And after the fast food fiasco, when Gangle was sure no one wanted to speak to her ever again after how she acted as a manager, it was Zooble who reached out. Who assured her that they still liked talking to her. Who consoled her over the new mask being a bust, and insisted they’d someday find something that worked. Who told her they liked her drawings.
“I don’t deserve a friend like you…”
“Well, you’ve got one.”
Gangle smiled at the memory of Zooble’s warm tone. A softer side they didn’t often show, which made seeing it all the sweeter.
Realizing she’d drifted off, Gangle blinked and looked down at her paper. So far she’d sketched Zooble’s triangular head and bean-shaped body. For a moment Gangle felt stuck as she wondered what kind of limbs they should have. Then she remembered the setting and the answer came instantly.
Gangle drew the left arm and leg as normal, noodle thin and ending with a hand and foot. Then came the right limbs, the leg ending in a wooden peg and the arm topped off with a hook. She added a parrot to the shoulder, followed by a tricorn hat with a tiny jolly roger.
As Gangle started sketching the rest of the scene playing out in her head, she idly realized this drawing was coming out much bigger than the others, almost taking up the full page. More detailed, too: she sketched out a sky of rolling storm clouds, the ship’s wheel Zooble steered with her hook, and the kraken tentacle reeling back from their blunderbuss shot.
The background complete, Gangle returned to Zooble. She added shade long the limbs and torso for depth. On reaching their face, Gangle touched up the eyes, subtly narrowing them and furrowing the eyebrows to convey intensity.
Gangle thought of the real Zooble while she drew. Specifically their eyes, and how kind they looked in Zooble’s softer moments. Like yesterday, when Zooble assured her that everything was okay, and they still liked her even after-
“Gangle?”
The high-pitched yelp echoed through the cavernous Tent. Gangle leapt out of her seat and twisted, sketchbook flying away as both hit the floor.
“Whoa!” Zooble said from beside the couch. Quick as a flash they stepped over to offer a hand. A human-shaped one – the other was currently a tiger’s paw. “Sorry, I’m so sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Oh! Zooble!” Gangle said, ribbon chest rising and falling. She let out a shaky laugh and allowed Zooble to help her up. “T-that’s okay, I’m fine. I just didn’t hear you come in. I was uh, really into my drawing…”
“I can tell.” Zooble gave a small chuckle of their own, then their mismatched eyes fell on the sketchbook at their feet. “Oh, lemme get that for you.”
Before Gangle could reply, Zooble reached down to pick it up. They started to give it back, paused, and stared at the sketch of themselves as a pirate fighting a kraken. As always when showing someone her art, Gangle froze and waited for a reaction. Only a second passed, but it felt like an eternity.
Finally, Zooble hummed thoughtfully. “You know, I don’t look half-bad as a pirate.”
Gangle let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Y-you think so?”
“Yeah. The whole hook and peg leg thing does kinda fit the mix-and-match deal I’ve got going on.” Zooble nodded in approval. “Helps that you drew me pretty bad%$# too.”
Gangle chuckled bashfully. “Heh, thanks. Glad I could do you justice.”
Curious, Zooble flipped to the previous page. They chuckled at the drawing of Jax being squeezed like a toothpaste tube, and Gangle could see a twinkle of amusement in their eyes.
“So, what’s the story with these?” Zooble asked, sitting down on the couch. “You starting some new comic starring us as pirates? Maybe give some of us superpowers send us on a search for a pirate king’s treasure that lasts for a thousand chapters?”
“Nothing that ambitious,” Gangle said with a giggle, and sat down beside them. “I was trying to come up with something to draw, thought about how Caine hadn’t sent us on an ocean adventure in a while…”