Chris Onstad, creater of Achewood, logs on to the Something Awful Forums and tells why he has such a way with things.

I've been promising myself to share this story with you guys for a while, and I suppose now is the perfect time since the subject has come up. Here you go:

It was the grand and glorious year of 2000. She was a SCAdian, a Wiccan, an old-skool POE exhibit sprung to marvelous Technicolor life, and she had a terminal crush on me. It was not fun.

She and I were both graduate students in our mathematics department. My school was kind of unusual, in that almost 75% of the students enrolled were female, and even the math, physics and computer science departments were by majority female. The math grad students were 7 males to 6 females at the time. It was practically a girls' school.

My first memories of her were passing her in the hallway. She would be dressed in her SCAdian "medieval" costumes (she wore them almost every day), wearing long, goofy looking nightgown garments and wooden beads and flowers in her hair. She wore thick glasses (which hardly helped the renaissance festival effect) and was usually barefoot. As I passed, she would wave enthusiastically and shout "hi, Chris!" She'd then smile wildly, exposing a full complement of braces. I didn't even know her as anything but the new grad student; she had transferred in from another school. But she knew my name. I chalked that up, at first, to putting my studies over socializing, and promised to make it up over the weekend.

Then, one day as I was doing some combinatorics, Feonia (shit you not, that was her name) stopped by my little office and asked for a minute. She sat on a chair next to me, introduced herself briefly, and then sat silent for a while, watching over my shoulder at my work. She didn't smell very nice. I don't know if this was part of the filthy SCAdian thing or being a poor student who never properly washed herself, but I deemed it impolite to ask.

Finally, she asked if I'd like to go outside with her and take a walk. I had been inside for hours and hours, and I had been thinking about getting up for a stretch anyway, and I was uncomfortable with Feonia looking over my shoulder. So, I agreed. I decided that we would walk on a trail that led through the woods on the east side of campus. It was a pretty good walk, up a little mountain and down, and I figured we'd be able to make it before dark.

Off we went. Feonia was not particularly good company. You know those joke posts I do as WyldWomyn? Whenever I write them, I think of her. On the way up, she talked at great lengths about the sanctity of the womb, and the wonder of being a womyn, and the proper way to meditate on one's genitals, and the great mother goddess and moon worship and so on. It really was almost intolerable. She confided in me that the reason she came here was in the first place was because it was a mostly-female school, and because she hoped to find a loyal life partner here, and she wanted to study mathematics among womyn instead of men.

It was a dull walk up, and I of course thought Feonia was a bit of a dip for all the pagan womyn worship talk, but it absolutely did not prepare me for what was going to follow.

The path led to the top of a small mountain, and there was a watchtower. From the tower you could look all ways: in the west was the city, and the ocean in the distance; in the east was the rolling mountains and a beautiful lake. You could watch the sunset over the sea from there, or rise over the mountains if you were early in the morning.

We sat on a bench on that tower and watched the gorgeous sunset. The wind would blow in gently from over the water. We could see stars come on in the sky above, and lights in the city below.

We sat silently for a few minutes, then Feonia turned to me, looking like a nervous child. "Do you like Chip and Dale?" she asked, out of the blue.

I was puzzled at the question, honestly. I didn't answer her for almost a minute. I could not believe that a twenty-five year old mathematician would go on a tirade about womynhood for thirty minutes and then do an about-face and start jibbering about children's cartoons. I refused to believe she had asked it.

After pondering her utterly absurd query, I realized I had to make something clear. "Do you mean, like, old Chip and Dale cartoons?"

"No, I mean like the Rescue Rangers." Ah, that sealed it.

"They were okay." Actually, I disliked the show, but I didn't want to upset her. This woman was a few years older than I was, which meant she was a teenager when the Rescue Rangers were on television. Obviously, she was damaged, and Chip and Dale were important to her.

It was shortly getting dark, and I thought dryly to myself it was nearing Feonia's bedtime, so we climbed down from the tower and began the walk back to the mathematics building.

"I loved the Rescue Rangers. And I still do," said Feonia, once we were on our way down the hill.

I sighed, barely audibly.

"Gadget was always my favorite. I always liked Gadget when I was a kid."

I was blushing; I couldn't help it. Just being with this person embarrassed me to my individual atoms. I tried to concentrate on the beautiful woods surrounding us. I hoped, perhaps, to see some interesting mushrooms.

"She was such a strong woman and smart."

I didn't argue. I didn't really want to be part of this conversation at all.

"You're a strong woman and smart," she cooed, wrapping her arms around my arm, latching on just under my right armpit, and nearly pushing me over.

Something about that made my stomach sour. She wasn't seriously comparing me to a cartoon rodent, and expecting me to like it, was she? And good God, she was forward. And gross. I shook my arm, hoping she would let go. Instead, she hung on like a tick.

"Do you want to, um...?"

She squeezed my arm painfully and gave me puppy-eyes.

"What... what? And here? Let me get this straight." She giggled; I guess because I said the word straight. What a moron. "You want to perform Sapphistic acts on my person, here on a public path where anybody in the world might walk by, because I make you think of a fictional mouse?"

"You don't want to?"

"No, I absolutely do not," I said, a little angrily. "I'm sorry if I didn't make this manifestly clear before, but I do not find you attractive. Besides, I have somebody at home who would be livid at me if I cheated, even with another girl." She seemed unhappy at that revelation. "And what in the hell brought up the Rescue Rangers anyway? I hated that show."

Shouldn't have said it. That freak of nature pouted, her fat lower lip quivering piteously. A few tears ran down her cheeks, and her twig-skinny form wavered in the wind. Despite myself, I felt sad for her, and thought perhaps I had been too hard. "DuckTales was much better anyway," I said, hoping to perhaps soften the blow. God have pity on my soul.

"Webbagail was not as strong a woman as Gadget," she promptly returned, in all seriousness. I tried my damnedest not to burst out laughing -- and good thing, too, for she indignantly searched me for any sign of it.

We walked most of the rest of the way in silence. Once in a while, Feonia would try to take my hand, but I shook her off.

Finally, we reached the mathematics building, and we had to part, I to my little office, and she to her dormitory.

"I don't like you because of Gadget," she said, mounting her bicycle. "I just wanted to share, that's all."

"Well, you did. I appreciate the frankness and the honesty, I guess. I'm sorry, I just don't feel quite the same way that you do. That's all."

She bicycled off the campus without saying a word more.

The next couple of weeks were some of the worst of my college career. She came by every day, and twice every day, with tea, and coffee, and little cakes. Every day she wanted to walk up the hill with me again, or have lunch with me, or "study" with me in her dormitory room (the thought of what might have awaited me there still shoots shivers up my spine.) She showed me her new pendants and jousting equipment and ankle bracelets and it was just terrible. And when she was done talking about everything she had done and all the new crap she was adorned with to appropriately retardify herself, she would just walk into my office, sit on the couch, and gaze at me. She did that once for an hour, not saying one word. I protested to her, I locked my door, I put up a Post-It note saying "GO AWAY FEONIA", but nothing put her off. I needed a plan.

How could I cast her off? How could I spray myself in permanent non-removable Feonia repellant? I turned away from my combinatorics and my differential geometry and concentrated my perverse mutant mind to that task. Instead of meditating on my genitals, in my little office I hatched a plot to scare Feonia away forever. And finally, I realized, like the old song, that I'd get by with a little help from my friends.

The friend I turned to in this case was the Reverend Berry, a local highly liberal Lutheran pastor who was active on campus, spoke fluent ancient Coptic and ran a shelter for homeless LGBT youths. I went to him in his office in a little chapel just off campus. We discussed some papers in textual criticism the Reverend was writing for a journal, we laughed and ate some ginger snaps and coffee. Then, niceties done, I explained carefully the situation, and I outlined my plan for putting Feonia off for good and always. The Reverend always liked a good snookering, was very pleased with the idea and glad to help me out. He agreed to make the arrangements. The gears were set and in motion, now all I had to do was lay the bait and lure in my Gadget-loving lesbian friend.

That week, I agreed to go to dinner with Feonia, at the place of my choosing. There was one condition: the dinner was to be on Wednesday, and until Wednesday afternoon I was to be left completely in peace. Feonia, happy to finally have her way (or so she thought), obliged.

Wednesday afternoon, at 4 o'clock, Feonia stopped by to ask where we were going out. I explained that the chapel offered dinner regularly on Wednesdays before their evening service, and that anybody was welcome to come eat for free.

"Oh," she answered, clearly disappointed, but still eager to go out to dinner with me. "We don't have to stay for the service or anything, do we?"

"Oh no," I replied, truthfully. "You aren't required to stay for the service afterwards if you don't want to. We can just eat and leave. That's fine."

We went together to the chapel and got some plates of food. It was spaghetti with a runny marinara sauce, a green salad, and some pretty good garlic bread.

Now, normally, the dinner proceeded at a leisurly pace, and afterwards the worshippers went downstairs for a quiet liturgical service. A few prayers were spoken, a few scriptures read, communion, a few hymns sung to the accompaniment of a single guitar, and that was that. It was usually quite simple and sedate. But I had made special arrangements for tonight. And at the dinner, which had actually begun a half-hour earlier, Reverend Berry had already explained to the regular fellowshippers what they were about to do.

We were about halfway through our meal when some young women began passing out blue sheets of paper to the crowd. I didn't say a word until I had the song sheet in my hand. "Oh my, it seems they're starting the service early!" I said. "If you don't want to stay for it, you can go now."

Feonia looked stunned, and then a little offended, and then simply puzzled. The songsheets were no sooner passed out among all the congregants than they began singing hymns loudly, slopping spaghetti as they swayed back and forth.

Feonia looked like dread itself, but I knew there was more coming. I bit my tongue waiting for the hammer to come down. Then, Reverend Berry appeared at the top of the stairs, outstretching his arms. A women swung incense before him as he descended, another carried huge candles in both hands behind him. A roar came up from the worshippers, who were having a grand old time, and the hymn-singing suddenly picked up in pace.

Within the space of twenty seconds -- and I'm not exaggerating one bit -- the place was transformed into a regular revival meeting. A choir with tambourines emerged from both ends of the building. From downstairs came dancers and drummers, and upstairs, yet another choir lined the hall and the stairway. It was beautiful. It was like the Pentecostals and the charismatics got together and really let their hair down. It was even more over the top than I could have hoped -- Reverend Berry had outdone himself. He must have invited the congregations of three other churches to dinner that night. I was done so damned well I was a little concerned it was all a fire hazard, but that couldn't be helped now. Feonia didn't even have time to get up from her chair and walk out. She was trapped. I just sat there singing my paeans of praise to the Almighty who liberated me, keeping one eye on poor, stunned Feonia, who was quickly turning a sickly shade of purple.

As I finished the first hymn, I said to her, "Looks like they're beginning early," gleefully pointing out the obvious again. "Kind of unusual. But you can just go at any time." It was hard to hear Feonia's reply over the singing and the music, but what I could make out was absolutely hilarious. She promised hexes and spells and candlelight and restitution and karma and everything else. I gently replied that my vulva was off limits, and that I loved Jesus with all of my heart. Then I stood up, walked jauntily to the chapel organ, and began rocking out.

Somewhere along the way, Feonia must have gotten up and weaved her way out of the building, carefully dodging the jostling and dancing congregants, and getting past the choir near the door. I didn't notice it when it happened, and I don't really care, just that it did happen. But that was the best church service ever, and it had absolutely the intended effect. Feonia avoided me like the plague after that. I figured she'd be allergic to Christian. Now I was free -- Feonia never talked to me again. Jesus saves, kids. Keep it in mind.