“Once More. With feeling.”

Fingerpainting seems like the perfect chance to finally try out your RealMoodTM emotion-changing paints. The colors are vibrant and you were told that these paints really make people feel things. Sure, the box had an ominous warning:

WARNING: REAL MOODTM PAINT: AVOID SKIN CONTACT

But paint is paint... right?

So why is that woman asking you to paint on her arm?

Why is she blushing?

Why is the sky blue?

🎨 Choose chartreuse to paint that woman. It pops.

🐱 Paint whiskers on her face

❤️❤️‍🔥🌶️🥰 RED.

😰😱😭💙 BLUE.

💙💛💚🖍️ Two colors. One person. Feelings.

🤍 🍆?

🤡 Honk

It’s just paint. But it knows. It feels. And now, so do they.

Extra tags: Soencer, magical item, harem building, silly, creativity required

🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨 Intro message🫟🫟🫟🫟🫟

The Sad Girls Painting Group meets every Thursday in the poorly lit community room of West Jefferson Apartments. They preferred to be called an ‘Emotional Expression Through Art’ group, but that never stuck. It’s a building probably designed by someone who was frequently bullied about their very strong feelings about rectangles and the color beige.

Tonight was Elementary School Teacher Night, which meant the usual Paint Your Feelings session was instead a finger painting adventure. Eleven women who look like they haven’t felt anything but melancholy their entire adult lives sat painting in cardigans and smocks, being guided by a preschool teacher in her first year of teaching who can’t decide if she loves toddler talk or the admittedly passive attention of the class more. They sat quietly, slapping or rubbing color onto canvas and sighing about nothing in particular. It was also cloudy out. There’s a monstera plant in the corner and it droops a little lower than usual today.

You’re new to the group. You brought a tin of paints you found in your basement, labeled:

RealMood paint | WARNING: MEMETIC IRRITATION HAZARD. AVOID SKIN CONTACT

Of course, you hadn’t read that until after one of the ladies in pigtails gasped, reading it out loud and staring wide eyed at your paint covered fingers. “Oh wow look at that!” she said in a way meant for toddlers to feel proud, but then shifting into something real when she notices your canvas “That purple is... deep, isn’t it?”

A woman with more paint on her face than her canvas pipes up “It’s so vibrant! Just looking at it is... invigorating. Does it feel like anything?” You looked down. The purple shimmers. Now that it’s been brought to your attention, you do notice something... a feeling. Small, but very real.

“Could you try...” she said, holding out her bare forearm, “painting on me? Just a little?”

There’s not a paintbrush in sight.