polylogs | 🤡🤡🤡

Entry tags:

🤡🤡🤡

✖ THE CARNIVAL

Ⅰ. ARRIVAL & THE TEMPLE
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
You can see the lights of the Ferris wheel from the water, and by the time you pull into port you can smell popcorn, cotton candy, grease, sawdust. Music drifts on the air, interspersed with screams from the rides.

The carnival is in town.

Not just any carnival, either - the carnival. The one to end all others. Every circus you ever read about or saw in a movie, with striped tents filled with acrobats and sideshows, midway games complete with carnival barkers in straw boater hats. But it's also every shitty fair that ever rolled through your hometown, with unreliable looking men with greasy mullets smoking as they jockey the Wild Mouse, the Gravitron, the Zipper, the Corkscrew. There's a constant stream of 80s hair metal playing underneath the roar of the rollercoaster tracks, blending somehow with the traditional piping organ of the carousel.

Experienced Travelers will know by now that every island has its own temple, and this one is no exception. It’s not in the carnival proper, though; if you step away from the lights of the midway and tents, you’ll notice dozens of old wooden circus trailers, arranged in a circle, growing tighter together the closer to the center you walk. The trailers are functional living places, with built in beds - sometimes one, sometimes two - and a small table and an old wood burning stove with a cooking top just big enough to boil a kettle on. There’s a toilet, but if you want a shower you’ll have to go outside and find a tent set up at the outskirts of the makeshift trailer park where there are tent showers set up, locker room style.

The clearing in the middle of the parked caravan is completely empty except for a solitary midway game: a towering high striker. It must be at least twenty feet tall, surmounted by a round, red bell. A wooden mallet is leaned against a sign next to the game that reads, predictably, TEST YOUR STRENGTH.

Step right up.

Notes:
1. Please remember to mark threads appropriately with Content Warnings when necessary.

2. These prompts are a jumping off point - how they affect your character and their development is up to you.

3. The island temple is accessible to all. The High Temple is only accessible to new characters this month - it will re-open to all others next month.

4. The Test your Strength game can be played by anyone. How well your character does is entirely up to you, but the game does not necessarily measure physical strength.

5. These residents of the island are normal humans. Killing them is possible and will affect the colour grading of your Scrywatch depending on the situation.

6. Any food found on the midway is safe to eat, and is consumable by non-human entities.

7. Have fun!

Ⅱ. HALL OF MIRRORS
When it comes to amusements, the Hall of Mirrors has always been second-fiddle to the Haunted House. But the line for the former was shorter, so here you are. The guy working the door has weasel eyes and is smoking. He gestures for you and whoever is behind you to enter together; "No singles. For safety."

The lights are a dull neon, cycling from deep blue to cyan to purple and back again. You find that your outstretched fingers will bump against smooth, clear glass as often as not. The mirrors reflect the maze back into itself over and over, disorienting and strange.

Some of the mirrors are convex, some concave, and as you pass them your reflection warps and bends alongside that of whoever you're stuck inside the maze with.

At some point you will realise that the reflection looking back at you isn't quite right. It's still you, sure, but it's not how you really look, not on the outside.

Looking back at you from the cold glass is how you perceive yourself. Perhaps that's stronger, perhaps uglier, perhaps as a sniveling child or an ancient hag. And this reflection is going to follow you from mirror to mirror as you desperately try to find your way out.

One of you spots an exit sign, bleeding red light. Only catch is that it's behind a pane of glass. And another. And another. You could break your way through all of them, certainly, but it's not as if there's anything laying around for you to use to do so. Just yourself, which might work in action movies but tends to cause a lot of physical damage in the real world.

Above the glass someone has placed a sticker that reads, “who are you really?” in black sharpie. Answer it, and the glass will swing open. Don't, and well...

Guess you'll have several years worth of bad luck.

Notes:
1. Yes, characters can bash their way out of the maze, but it is real glass and will cut anyone who isn’t invulnerable. There is a first aid station run by extremely unreliable carneys on the premises, so hopefully they can patch themselves up enough there.

Ⅲ. THE CAROUSEL
CW: childhood trauma
Old fashioned organ music and a million flashing lights draws you to the carousel. It's a vintage delight: huge, with ornate animals carved out of wood and lovingly hand painted. There are horses, of course, but also lions and leopards and birds and rabbits and wolves... any animal you could want! In fact, you'll see an animal that looks perfectly YOU. You just have to climb up on it for a ride.

Settled on your mount, the ride begins to move. To your surprise, it begins to move backwards. You can't seem to ungrip the pole you're hanging on to, so you're helpless to escape as the ride spins again and again.

When it stops and you step off, you will be younger. You will in fact be the same age you were when a formative event happened to you.

You're a kid at a carnival! How fun! Well, maybe you're not that young, and it's probably not very fun at all considering that now your trauma is fresh.

The only way to become your proper age again is to get on the carousel and get it to run forward. Depending on your age, you might not be able to figure any of that out, but surely one of the other Travelers can help you. You'll definitely need someone to man the carousel controls. Oh, and be careful not to knock it into overdrive...

Notes:
1. If your character does not get back on the carousel and ride it in reverse, they will revert to their actual ages at the end of the month.

2. Please be especially mindful of content warnings with underage characters. A reminder that the game does not allow explicit sexual content with minors.

3. You do not have to regress your character to childhood - if a very formative event happened at age 20 for example, you can choose that route instead.

4. Speeding up the carousel while it is moving forward will result in, you guessed it, aging your character UP. Obviously you can ride it backwards again to fix this, or again the aging will be reversed at the end of the month.

Ⅳ. COULROPHOBIA
CW: clowns, suffocation
Who can possibly resist the big top? Not you! You're ushered into the tent and you take a seat in the stands, where you have an excellent view of the huge ring before you. The excitement in the air is palpable, and even if you're the grouchy type you'll find yourself a little bit thrilled.

It's a little surprising when the lights go up to the sound of screaming guitars. Mist belches from hidden foggers, and flames shoot from near the center of the ring. The lights stutter red, blue, green. The whole thing is a lot more rock show than it is Ringling Brother's.

At any rate, even if the ringmaster looks like a reject from a trailer park metal band and the music is liable to burst some eardrums, it's still a circus. There are trained horses and riders, contortionists, and a score of talented trapeze artists. It's all sparkling and impressive and terrific fun.

The trapeze artists take their bows, clearly ready for a break. And if a break is needed at the circus? You know what happens next, don't you?

SEND IN THE CLOWNS!

The clowns spill into the ring, all sorts of them! There's Harlequin and Pierrot, Auguste and Tramp. There's Bozos and Ronalds and Clarabelles and Krustys. Hopefully no Gacys, but there's so many of them that it's hard to know for sure.

One of these clowns - the one you hate the most, of course - approaches you in the stands. With comically exaggerated movements, it leans close to you and whispers...

Well. It whispers horrible things to you, really. It recounts to you some instance in your life where you delighted in the suffering of another, a moment where you really and truly were happy that somebody else was hurt. It's not a moment to be proud of, for sure, but as the clown tells your own secret shameful joy to you, you start to laugh. Really laugh - soon you're bent over double, tears running down your face, absolutely howling with laughter.

Your stomach hurts, and you're running out of breath. Very soon you won't be able to breathe at all.

Eventually, one of your fellow travelers won't be able to resist asking you, "What's so funny?"

The only way to stop laughing is to tell them. Otherwise you're going to pass out right where you sit, a creepy clown leering over you the whole time. Maybe your fellow traveler will be nice enough to drag you out of there if that happens, because if you're left alone? Everybody knows clowns get so much scarier alone in the dark.

Notes:
1. What happens if you really do get ditched with the clowns? Great question. Maybe they make you one of them. Maybe they eat you. Maybe you just wake up in the Big Top dressing room and see all the clowns smoking cigars and taking their floppy shoes off to film Clown Foot Erotica.

It wouldn't be a party without some jams.

Network · Logs · OOC · Memes · Plurk

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Calm down, calm down." Carter says in a mocking tone and he looks unwaveringly into Quentin's burning eyes.

"You sound just like him."

A second later Quentin is hit with a psionic blast that causes all the lightbulbs around them to shatter and the rides near by to groan in protest.

"Tell me where he is!" Carter yells, throwing another blast.

Quentin's face twists into the kind of disgust look that he's perfected and weaponized as a teenager.

"Protip: If you don't know what you're talking about it, try not to show your hand so soon," he mutters before that blast hits him unexpectedly. He didn't actually think the little guy had the guts. He winces as the glass shatters around them feeling a million little cuts not from the jagged material itself but the psychic force it carries.

"Fuck!" he complains. "God, I fucking hate zoomers..." Picking himself up off his knees and dusting himself off. "What the fuck is your problem?? I told you the old man isn't here, and even if he was I wouldn't give a shit where he spends his time."

As he speaks Quentin his arms cross his chest and he produces a pair of hot pink Wilson Combat pistols from some unseen harness tucked beneath his arms. "if you're mad about our immobilized mentor? Join the fucking club, but I swear to God I'll make you regret taking it out on me."

And at that both of his psionic constructs release a couple of rounds directly into Carter. It comes with the sting of a regular bullet. Tripping all the sensory receptors that would start singing if actual hot lead sliced through the skin. But Quentin's bullets lodge themselves even deeper. Implanting themselves inside some incapacitating memory or feeling and letting that misery bleed into the rest of Carter's brain.

One of the shitty things about fighting with a thirteen year old is that they're never going to listen to reason, therefor Carter barely hears anything Quentin says. All he knows is that Quentin is from Xavier's and Xavier is at the top of his list of making people hurt, therefor hurting Quentin will have to do.

In a way Carter is better suited to fight at this age then his regular age, because he has less inhibitions and much more imagination. Which proves to be an asset when Quentin fires off his psionic construct bullets, some of them he is able to alter the course of so they miss him and when the others lodge themselves into his mind, filling him with misery and pain he grabs at that energy and unleashes it back at Quentin. There's a moment where the reality around Carter shimmers and bends and then he is swearing and screaming inside Quentin's mind.

With or without an audience, Quentin never shuts up.

He winces at the shrill noise of Carter's pain and frustration piercing his own mind. Squinting through the worst of it he can see the fabric of reality bending a little when Carter's pushed there, but when that fraying falls away his smug smile looks like he's not terribly burdened by any guilt when it comes to flexing on a child.

"Almost impressive, really. Almost. But let me show you one of the million ways in which I'm nothing like Xavier. For example, I've never preached peace."

His scrywatch flickers from orange to red a moment and Quentin takes no notice. He's too busy upping his psionic artillery. He strides into Carter's personal space as he produces a pink grenade from somewhere behind him and pulls the pin with his teeth.

From the outside watching it go off is like a lightshow. From the inside it's like merely like someone changed the channel and now they're here together on the grounds of the same estate they both have a complicated relationship with. Quentin lounges across from him in a wingback chair, watching a fabrication of his own design play out for them. A tele-novella of sorts featuring none other than Carter's mom and a certain Summer's brother plotting to run away together and what's to be done with the boy they intend to leave behind in Xavier's care.

"Oooo I love this episode," he snarks.

The sudden shift into the strange tele-novella is disorienting at first and while Quentin is probably hoping for a big reaction to seeing his mother and Alex Summers discussing running away together he sadly doesn't get it in the way he wants.
Carter knows that this is false and that it never happened, he knows his mother would have never left him for Alex. After all, that's why they left the institute. Because she cared more about her son and his safety than her own heart.
But that doesn't mean that he isn't effected by seeing Alex....

The tele-novella seems to glitch, skipping back a beat to show Alex embracing Annie. Her eyes bright and full of adoration but as he wraps his arms around her she suddenly makes a horrible gagging noise and goes still in his arms.

Seated in a similar wingback chair across from Quentin, Carter is silent. His eyes unfocussed and his head tilting to one side like the dog in the old 'his masters voice' ad. The fabrication Quentin has made grows dim and somewhere all around them a horrible squalling noise starts to rise.
On his wrist, Carter's scrywatch, which has been yellow since arriving, dips into orange.

"Alex-?" Annie gasps and suddenly she jerks, as if he has punched her in the stomach. Alex meanwhile smiles and makes a soft shushing noise.

"I'm here my love. I'll always be here for you."

A lie.
It was a horrible awful lie and when he moves away from her Annie looks down at her midsection which has been cut open, blood pours down her lower half and she looks up directly into Quentin's eyes.

"...help him." She manages to whisper before Alex plunges his hand into her open wound and drags her intestines out, dropping them onto the floor as if they were dirty rags. They land with a sickening plop noise.

"I'll always protect you." Alex says and brings up his other hand, which is holding a large sharp knife and plunges it into Annie's chest.

Over and over.

"Always."

Outside in the real world things start to go very very wrong.

Big or small— as long as he gets a reaction, Quentin will find a way to fascinate himself with whatever he can inspire in others.

"Steamy!" he goads when the players in his little drama start in on their promises. It's when things get visceral that Quentin takes a more earnest interest. He had of course assumed this scenario would present the perfect opportunity to give Carter someone he actually had beef with, but when it's his mother this cinematic-reimagining tears into his eyes light up wickedly.

"Ohhh, interesting. It's mom you're going to rend here, huh? Funny, I always go for a Summers' myself when presented with the opportunity. Unless of course Wolverine's around," he shrugs and sits back, happier to observe the boy's anger than be subjected to it.

"So why the mommy issues? Don't get me wrong, I get it. I took care of mine too. And hey, isn't it nice to have the people you're actually pissed off about right here to take your pre-teen angst out on? Doesn't it just feel right when your anger find the right target. Someone else need a cameo? Who else do you feel like disemboweling?"

Sadly Quentin is reading the horrific scene that is playing out in front of him in the wrong way, taking the act of violence as proof of who Carter would like to see punished. Even at his most angry and upset Carter would have never harmed his mother, she was the only person who had loved and protected him.
So when she died he lost control.

Which is exactly what begins to happen again.

Outside Quentin's projection the ground around them is beginning to split, more lights are shattering and the beams on the ferris wheel begin to bend.

Inside the lights seem to dim further, the image of Alex now glitching so that sometimes it's Alex, sometimes Xavier and other times it is a seemingly random man with dark hair and cold eyes. But eventually even that fades and soon Carter and Quentin are sitting in blackness, and it is out of this blackness that the voices of Stepford Cuckoo's start to speak.

"Tsk. He's doing it again...."
"We thought you would be better at listening by now Quentin."
"Haven't you learned anything yet?"
"Poor Quentin...it's kind of sad."
"Quentin you aren't paying attention."
"Pathetic."
"You have to help."
"Why are you like this?"
"You're just not getting it."

Their voices begin to speak over top of one another, sometimes disappointed sometimes mocking until they seem to fill the blackness with an awful kind of cacophony.

There are things Quentin knows to be true and many more things which he doesn't care how true they are as long as they can be used to antagonize someone. The fact that this little cinematic interpretation of events makes a mess of Carter's mother says something about the boy's frustration, and Quentin only means to poke at that until he comes apart at the seams.

Which is exactly what appears to be happening.

The familiar voices of the Cuckoos make him think for a moment they've actually joined him on this island and the current unravelling of this fabrication is their doing.

"Paying attention to what—" he asks just in time to see what those voices mean to draw his attention to. "Oh, shit..." he mutters when the roof tears away overhead. It's a bit like being at the center of a earthquake except rather than being shaken apart from underneath the structure of this place is being consumed from the outside in by... what is that anyway? He squints at the bright hot light that scorches this illusion. It feels like anger. Just all consuming rage. A thing he's fairly familiar with.

"Hey, hey, hey," he says shaking Carter at the shoulders. "Calm the hell down, you're pulling your head apart. Do you hear me? Are you still lucid?" Unbeknownst to Quentin his Scrywatch flickers a few times and settles on orange again.

He groans in frustration as the floor starts peeling up under their feet. "Okaaay I'm not going to stay here while you have a melt down, kid! See you in the meatspace I guess!"

When even his threats of departure don't deter Carter he wonders briefly how anyone ever has the patience to be a babysitter and throws up his hands in resignation. "Ugh. FINE. But I can't promise it won't hurt! And don't blame me for the world's worst hangover!" he barks over the rushing white noise that threatens to overwhelm as this place is torn apart.

True to his word he disappears from that dissolving place and back in the real world— if they can call it that— he big pink baseball bat materializes in his grip. "Man, if any one sees this..." he mutters glancing around. Beating up on pre-teens isn't a good look. Even for him. But nevertheless he sets that psionic bat up over his shoulder and and drives it home against Carter's head until it puts him out.

Edited 2021-10-03 23:52 (UTC)

The second Quentin hits Carter across the head with the psionic bat the chaos around them stops, it's like pulling the plug on some large machine. The ground settles and the ferris wheel makes an awful 'ka-chunk' noise before settling, although it is now obviously broken and horribly bent.

Carter meanwhile is laying on his side, unconscious but looking almost weirdly serene. Eventually, about twenty minutes later he begins to wake up. Groaning weakly and clutching his head.

"....ow." He says softly to himself.

It's not the first time Quentin's been responsible for bludgeoning someone in an alley way, but is is the first time he's stuck around to see if they wake up.

Teetering impatiently in his seat on a rickety old milk crate, he looms over Carter waiting to see him come around.

"Good morning Starshine," he says. "I was starting to think I'd have to Weekend At Bernie's you or something." Sure he sounds glib, but if he really didn't give a damn why would he still be here watching intently?

Carter turns his young face up to see who is speaking and isn't all together surprised to find that it's Quentin. He's either stuck around to mock him or he was actually concerned, and having touched Quentin's mind he's pretty sure which it is.
It's both.

"Boy you weren't kidding when you said it would hurt..." He says and sits up, squeezing his eyes shut briefly as the world swims about. Once it passes he looks at Quentin openly, his eyes no longer vacant but back to being sharp and intelligent.

"Thank you."

"Uh probably better than the alternative," he says in his defence. How quickly he manages to feel like he's being blamed for something. "Remind me next time to just let you rip your own consciousness apart."

He walks it back a couple of steps when Carter doesn't seem to be taking him to task for that ache in his head. Just the opposite in fact. But his lack of an immediate clapback makes it at least a little apparent that if he can't be defensive Quentin doesn't much know what to with a sincere thank you.

"Well. You're welcome or whatever. Don't go nuclear next how about?"

He stands and stretches his hand down to Carter to pull him to his feet too. If he's got the equilibrium for it. "If anyone saw me Jeter your head, maybe do me a favour and assure them it was necessary and medical or whatever."

He takes the offered hand and lets Quentin pull him to his feet, he wobbles a little bit but then is steady. He feels sore, which is fine, but most of all he feels a horrible deep ache of guilt and sadness at what he's done.

"If anyone asks I'll tell them the truth, that you were helping me." He says and sighs, it sounds like the sigh of a much older man, a man who is deeply tired.

"I'm sorry I tried to hurt you." He says after a moment, "And I'm sorry I looked into your brain a bunch."

"Well... you don't have to tell them that either," he mutters like he's sort of wishy-washy on which is the preferred take on things. Sometimes trying to keep up appearances is incredibly conflicting. If nothing else he just hopes Carter recognizes that taking a psionic bat to someone's head is not exactly the Xavier-approved approach to psychic harm-reduction.

"Don't worry about it. They don't call my brain see-through for nothing," he shrugs easily. Carter's not exactly the first person to come for him. "Sorry, if I shouldn't have gone right for the your mom jokes or whatever. But like. Don't lump me in with them how about? I'm literally their biggest regret thank you very much."

Carter tilts his head to one side, "You are? But you're so good at your powers. I thought you would have been Xavier's best student."

"I was for a minute there," he admits. "But if it were up to them I probably would be Xavier two-point-o right now. Turns out, it's incredibly different to brainwash an omega level telepath."

A riot, a resurrection, a UN hostage situation and a Phoenix later and sudddddenly I'm not such a promising young mind brimming with potential."

Carter's mouth twitches up into a faint smile, "I'm glad you're not Xavier 2.0, you're way cooler than he is."

"I wish you had taught me when we went to school together." He says after a moment, "Maybe then I wouldn't have gone all ka-blewy later on."

"Course I am," he says like he knows it's not even a contest to be compared to some boomer, but that confidence falters to be considered any kind of teacher.

"Yeaaaaah, or more likely we'd just be some kind of unstoppable villainous duo by now. Teaching was never really my thing," he admits. His brief run as a TA was volatile at best. Turns out you need patience for teaching.

"Anyway, don't worry about it. Everyone goes nuclear once in a while. I'm sort of in the camp that you have to if you ever wanna know what you're really capable of. Just... don't tell Wolverine I said that."

Carter giggles at the thought of them as an unstoppable duo, instantly imagining himself with pink hair like Quentin.

"What would our villainous duo name be?"

He looks thoughtful when Quentin mentions that everyone needs to lash out every once in a while and then sighs again. "Yeah I guess, I just wish that I didn't go all catatonic every time. It's scary."

"Name? Singular? I've already done the organized crime thing— we would probably be an individualized pair. You know like SpongeBob and Patrick, Bart and Milhouse, Han and Chewie, Ash and Pikachu. Brain and Damage. Or maybe we could just make Quentin and Carter household names like the rest." Clearly Quentin takes branding very seriously.

He quirks an eyebrow at that. "Like totally? How much of it do you remember after the fact? Is it like an out-of-body sort of feeling or are you just totally disconnected?" The little flurry of questions makes him sound like he's trying to diagnose something.

Edited 2021-10-07 01:09 (UTC)

Carter grins, "I like Brain and Damage! That's cool! You're brain right? Because you're the smart one."

When Quentin asks him the flurry of questions he just shrugs and rubs his head absently, his brain already feels foggy from getting hit but also there's a weird sense of doubling anytime he tries to think about the past. Or future.

"I only had it happen once, after my mom died. And then I went...away. For quite a while."

"It could go either way I suppose— both of us being telepaths. Maybe we just sort of adopt that as a brand-name and let people guess which one is which."

Quentin really can't help himself. His mind has a tendency to race even when he's calm, and he knows those who already think he talks too much wood absolutely give up with him if he actually gave voice to half of the things in his head at any given moment. "Where did you go? You mean like they sent you someplace?"

Edited 2021-10-07 06:17 (UTC)

"Yeah, yeah I like that."

"I went somewhere safe." Carter says with that sort of simplicity that only kids can say and expect you to understand and then yawns hugely, he's had a big day what with having his powers go nuclear and all. Speaking of he looks around them and only now notices the damage he's done to the carnival.

"Uh oh. Do you think people will be mad at me for breaking all these things?"

"Lit right? Adds mystery," he says as he starts to look around his carousel, just now noticing it's one of the only completely unmanned rides he's seen in this place. Maybe a better babysitter would keep a closer eye on the kid but Quentin is not one of those.

"Somewhere where?" he presses, but it's not exactly location details he's looking for so much as contextual ones. "Saaaafe like a relatives house? Safe liiiiike a hospital? Safe like a hiding place? What are we talking about here?"

"Huh? Oh, no. Who cares. This place is a garbage heap. And if anyone one asks you can tell them I did. Hey, was someone here when you got on this thing?"

"I can't tell them you did it," Carter says, ignoring Quentin's location questions. "That's not fair to you and it's a lie."

He looks around at the carousel and suppresses a shudder, "No....I don't remember getting on it but when I got off there was no one running it. And...I dunno, something feels wrong about it. I don't like it."

leeeeeeeeeeeeet's get ready to ruuuuuumble!

🤼‍♂️

no subject

no subject

cw: murder, stabbing, guts, grief

cw: gore

cw: gore, murder, grief

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject