Princess in a tower.

She gets out of the elevator on a floor that earns its double digits. This was part of the early design ethos for the system, a floor like this: a floor with a view straight down the middle and broad across the skyline in every other direction, the kind of view for cackling and patting a white cat; switch out the pleasantly muted lighting for harsh red and it'd be pretty good diabolical lair material. And instead it's open to the public, because that's what government's supposed to be, right? Open and welcoming, because it represents you, yes, [i]you[/i], everyday person. So the ground floor's all meeting halls and sports team offices and statues, and then it's official offices and servers all the way up until you're [i]here[/i], and you can take a seat and stare out at the whole entire thing, sprawling and busy and all criss-crossed with roads, and--

Well, you're technically not supposed to bring your own food up here anymore. There was a policy shift last year, and now the security guard is supposed to wearily point out the sign; if you don't get it from the vending machines or the cafe on the other side of the floor, you're not supposed to have it up here. It's supposedly about being considerate of other guests, and, yeah, 3V's seen some (smelled some) [i]meals[/i] up here. But it's also about that little shift in norms: you can't have food that's not part of the ecosystem of purchase here. And, yeah, the vending machines haven't had their prices hiked yet. But what was that about the frog in the pot? Water's only slowly heated up.

View's real hard to beat, though. Decent company, too; lots of old folks treat it as their big adventure for the day, coming up here to sit and watch the station move all around them. So it's easy enough for her to toss a bag on one of the big plush corner couches and put her hands behind her head to consider things more. She hasn't really had to filter herself in any of her pieces for [i]Anthro[/i] yet, but what's she really had to say (barring issues like Ferris's, which-- she's still working on turning that into [i]content[/i] beyond just hitting up folks who know folks to get Ferris some help directly; making it about the failure of memory would be too cruel, but she's still not entirely satisfied with the take about how games help us make sense of the world through play) hasn't particularly been controversial. Little love letters to hidden corners of the station. "Here's someone I got to know the other day and their perspective helped me understand our station better." Little stretches, slowly coming out of her shell to where the [i]wild[/i] folks play.

Like, say, writing a story about going rather furry at Sirius Drinks. And attaching her name to it. There it is! No more 3V as someone to make gifsets about or send RPF to! Taking control of her life with both those shiny hands of hers! And that's a thrill of its own, isn't it? The instincts screaming at her about it are old, obsolete, outdated! So she can just make an attempt to relax, and then write the whole thing on one trip up here, bring the laptop and then do most of it on the phone anyway, aware that nobody's looking over her shoulder but still hyperaware of her surroundings, aware she's crossing boundaries and waving people over.

Oh, there's a hook. The kids who are too shy to jump in. Folks wondering if they're like that but not quite mustering up the courage to even try. She's never been [i]that[/i] sort of shy; getting her to try something was never the issue. How's it go? I'll do anything once? It's the commitment. Getting pinned down. But she's thought that enough, too. And she's not going to stop, but maybe she can cram it down long enough to get it written because it's worth doing.

As for who at Gensoukyo reads [i]Anthro[/i]? Not the employees; she's not going to make them read it for the sake of her ego, and Cygnus isn't quite ready to be the target audience no matter what star says, and Luisa's too busy, and Oscar, uh, if he does read it he hasn't brought it up yet. It's probably uncharitable to assume that he doesn't have the bandwidth for it. But Errant doesn't just read it, she's submitted pieces before, and her wife definitely does, [i]she[/i] has about a billion opinions and 3V's only half joking about banning her if she's going to toss empty soda cans to punctuate her argument, and what[i]ever[/i] you had more subs, 3V stuck to gaming and didn't branch out all the fuck over the place. Uh, and Sunny, the GM who's there on Wednesday afternoons and has really fun chats before and after the session.