polylogs | 👻🎃🤡

Entry tags:

👻🎃🤡

✖ THE CARNIVAL

Ⅰ. THE TEMPLES
There's a subtle shift in the music you will hear drifting on the wind this month - gone is the calliope that screams just a little too loud, replaced instead by circus music that sounds cheerful and bright. The thrill rides are still undercut by rock music, but it seems less sinister. Any time you venture out, you'll find the people milling about are smiling, and none of those smiles seem like screams turned upside down.

The Caravan Temple remains - 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.

Access to the High Temple is also available to all Travelers this month.

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. Your character will revert to their true age if they were affected by the carousel last 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. Have fun!

Ⅱ. CONCERT AND CANDY
CW: alcohol and drug use, sax music.
It wouldn't be a carnival if you didn't eat like a garbage disposal.

There's corndogs, deep fried mars bars, popcorn, donuts, funnel cakes, cheese fries, lemonade, burgers... Go on. Eat like you have a personal vendetta against your gastrointestinal tract. And of course you ought to help yourself to some cotton candy, because what's a fair without cotton candy?

There's pink and there's blue. Whichever colour you choose, you'll find that you start to feel a little funny after you eat it.

The pink cotton candy will fill you with a sense of pleasant euphoria. You'll find it easier to talk to people, and you'll find them just so much more pleasant than usual. You'll be empathetic, and just filled with love for life. You might even want to hug people, even if you're not usually the touchy feely type. You just feel so good.

The blue cotton candy will also make you feel good, but it's more mellow than the pink - you don't want to run around hugging people so much as you want to just chill out somewhere. You'll feel very relaxed, very open to talking to others about deep subjects like whether or not Kubrick really did fake the moon landing, man. Everything seems just a little more amusing, a little easier to handle.

To make things even better, there are outdoor concerts at night. No matter what band is on stage, you find yourself really enjoying it, even if the music isn’t usually your thing. There are kegs of beer set up around the edges of the concert area and you’re free to help yourself.

All that cotton candy and cheap beer might impair your judgement a little. Maybe... enough to get a tattoo? Calm down, they’re temporary. There’s a stand called Pirate Pete’s on the midway not far from the concert where a guy dressed as a pirate - Pete, presumably - will be happy to draw whatever you want on your choice of body part.

Whatever you wind up getting, you’ll find that whenever you or someone else touches it you’ll experience a vision of a memory associated with the imagery of your tattoo. So if you get a snarling wolf, you might experience a memory of a time you treated someone savagely. If you get ‘Mom’ in a heart, maybe you and whoever else happens to brush against it will see a memory of your dear old mother. Gosh, this could get revealing or embarrassing fast!

Fucking Pete.

Notes:
1. Any food found on the midway is consumable by non-human entities. The cotton candy will likewise affect anyone who is not human.

2. I still believe.

3. The memory can be one that your character has repressed or forgotten.

Ⅲ. TUNNEL OF LOVE
CW: potentially sexual content
Maybe it's the cotton candy, or maybe you're just really captivated by the swan boats, but you find yourself drawn to one of the cheesiest rides in the place: the Tunnel of Love.

You can't ride alone, of course - this is the sort of thing meant for two! The guy running the ride ushers one of your fellow travelers on with you, then wolf-whistles, imitates a cat noise and a bed squeaking, then purrs, pants, barks, howls, twiddle his lips and says. “Hubba hubba!”

He ignores you when you glare at him.

The inside of the tunnel is surprisingly pleasant - it does not, as a matter of fact, smell of stale water or unmentionable bodily fluids. The water you're floating on is crisp and clear, like a real spring, and alongside either side of it are miniature rolling hills of what looks like real grass. The lights are low and pinkish, casting a soft glow over everything.

And they're playing one of your favourite songs on the speakers! Whatever that may be.

As you ride along, you'll start to think that your companion is just incredibly witty and intelligent and good looking. These feelings may be sexual or romantic, or they may be perfectly platonic - the result either way is that you really, really think this person is just the absolute greatest. You might find yourself telling them things you never would normally. Or doing things you might not otherwise…

Of course, the second you're off the ride you might find all of those fuzzy feelings depart. Better hope you didn't do anything TOO embarrassing.

Notes:
1. Only for characters of age havin the intercourse, please.

2. If your characters want to get naughty, they may discover that these swan boats have a little glove box containing condoms, lube and the like. You could also just fill the former up with water and throw them at that guy running the ride when it's over.

Ⅳ. HAUNTED HOUSE
CW: violence, blood
You might be on carnival island, but it’s still October. It’s time to get spooky! And what better way to do that than to take a ride through the haunted house?

A bearded fellow in half-assed clown makeup and an Uncle Sam costume loads you onto a small rail car with at least one other person. It rolls forward along the bumpy tracks into darkness. Not that it stays totally dark for long - sickly lights illuminate animatronics and mannequins posed alongside the track. There are foam cemeteries and giant rubber spiders galore.

As you move further and further into the attraction the better the decorations get. Those rubber spiders now look awfully real, and that bat that just dive bombed the car sure seemed legit.

Suddenly the car jerks to a halt. You peer around in the gloom, and then lights go up.

One bathes a coffin in red. Another illuminates a gravestone in green. The last is a facsimile of the moon itself, pale and silver.

Before you can do more than wonder what the heck is going on, one of these attractions splits open and a monster leaps toward you. A vampire, a ghost, or a werewolf respectively. If you’re quick you can get out of the way and run for the exit.

If you’re not?

The vampire’s teeth sink into your veins. The ghost’s cold hand wraps around your heart. The werewolf’s claws tear your flesh.

You’re lucky in that it doesn’t kill you; somehow you manage to get away and stumble outside, where you swiftly discover that the rest of your month is going to be pretty goddamn strange as you transform right then and there into whatever monster attacked you.

That’s right, for the month of October you may have to figure out a way to deal with cravings for flesh and blood, or how to get anything done when objects just fall right through your glowing hands.

You may be understandably upset about this. If you return to the Haunted House and accost the guy running it, he’ll tell you that the only way to break the curse is to admit to why you see yourself as that monstrous archetype. Now piss off, he ain’t got time for your jackassy questions.

Notes:
1. To return to their natural state, your character must reveal a personality trait or incident that would correspond to the monster they’ve turned into. For example, a person turned vampire might talk about how they feel they drain other people’s energy with their problems, or that they feel drained by other people’s. A ghost might not be able to let go of the past, and a werewolf might have anger issues. Interpret as you will!

2. The monsters can abide by any monster rules that you like. Is your vampire a Twilight vampire or a Dracula? It’s up to you!

3. The horror ride guy is weirdly impervious to harm.

4. All characters will return to normal at the end of October.

The kind of jams that last all night.

Network · Logs · OOC · Memes · Plurk

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Sephiroth has had some of the blue cotton candy, himself, which makes him not quite so excited about the entire experience, but much more at ease with it. He's wading through the concert crowd, content enough with the music but preferring to find someplace calmer, when he comes across Chloe. It seems like a fortuitous encounter; she's exactly the sort of person to have an interesting conversation with. He may not fully grasp her meaning, but it's intriguing.]

Have you not been yourself?

( Sephiroth! Already Chloe is grinning at the sight of her I'm-sorry-but-you're-my-friend-whether-you-like-it-or-not. Somewhere in the back of her happily hazy mind, she's aware that physical contact with him isn't likely to go down that well. Unlike usual, it's not a potent enough force to actually stop her from initiating it. She takes both of his hands, holding them in her own as she stands before him. )

I broke my programming.

( This... probably doesn't answer the question or shed much light on anything. But she gazes at him all beatific anyway. She thinks, in some way, he understands. Or can relate. Something like that. )

Oh.

[He is briefly distracted by the hand-holding, though he doesn't fight it. Has he ever actually held hands with someone before? He isn't even wearing gloves at the moment, and it's an odd sensation. He wonders if her hands feel the same way human hands would.]

I would have thought a programming error would present a problem for you.

[Perhaps the robot equivalent of being ill? But she seems quite happy about it.]

( Chloe’s hands don’t have anything glaringly out of place; the temperature matches that of a human and her skin is soft. Distantly, she’s surprised he hasn’t immediately pulled away and reprimanded her. Mostly, she just likes the contact. The chance to show others her affection. )

No. It’s more than just an error. It’s no longer having to think the way I thought or feel the way I felt. Having ideas that aren’t really yours needling at your head and wondering when you’re going to break… It’s being free.

[He thinks it's curiosity. He's currently too mellow to care about maintaining a reputation, and he doesn't know why that instant, knee-jerk reaction to being touched just wasn't there. He trusts her to a greater extent than many people, but there has to be a point at which this starts feeling Bad, right?]

...I see. [He thinks.] You got rid of a piece of your programming that you felt you had evolved beyond. Something that no longer applied.

( Her brow furrows. Someone isn’t making sense here. She deduces that it’s likely her.

It takes a second longer than it should, but the realisation becomes written all over her face as to why. Head tilted to the side, one corner of her mouth goes up in a lopsided smile. )

I never told you, did I? Why I was created. The real reason.

( Of course she didn’t. She wasn’t supposed to speak about those things. Didn’t much want to, either.

She releases his hands. It doesn’t grant him a reprieve from the physical contact - quite the opposite. She wraps her arms around his waist and leans into him without a second thought. Self-soothing as she reels off the words of the man who made her. )

Everything’s much easier with an android. They obey your orders without ever complaining. They can cook, discuss philosophy with you, have intimate relationships according to your desires. They never say no. Obviously they are the perfect partner.

[He doesn't know why she's hugging him, but it's... fine, for the moment, it seems. Though he does just sort of stand there.

But, even with the cotton candy in his system, the comprehension of what she's telling him is momentarily horrifying. It would have been worse without. He does know what it is to be in a position where "no" would not be recognized. He doesn't know what it is to be incapable of saying it.]

...that's nothing but a fantasy. An illusion.

[Carefully, he puts a hand on her shoulder and draws back slightly.]

But I suppose the important thing is that you've escaped it. Yes?

( Taking the cue, Chloe unravels herself from him and wags a finger at herself. )

Ah. I forgot. Don't hug, Chloe. I'm sorry. It's just... You're so tall. I felt safe.

( Basic as the reasoning is, it does ring true. There's something sort of funny about finding Sephiroth to be a comforting presence, but that's how it is. Looking down a moment, she toes the ground. )

It might have been a fantasy. But it was real to me.

( And that's the kicker. Delusional as the ideals of her creator may have been, as impossible as they may have been, it formed her reality. The feelings set into her system didn't make them any less intense. If anything, it made them more so. The overwhelming need to please and be all that she was meant to be. Blind, unending devotion.

Until the scales began to fall from her eyes.

But isn't this a downer? The dark, disturbing history of the RT600 isn't a matter to discuss with the general populace. So she smiles. )

Yes. You're exactly right. And you helped me be able to do that, you know. The friends I've made here helped me to do that. It might not have seemed like I was really listening. But I was.

[It's not uncommon for people to feel safe around Sephiroth, but he makes them feel safe from attack, from monsters, not... Well, he would still kill this man if he encountered him. But he knows that isn't what she means.

Still, her way of explaining it is funny, and he smirks briefly in amusement.]

Ah... good. The freedom of choice is a powerful thing. You ought to be able to say no to anything you want.

( Unsure of what he's smirking about, exactly, her eyes go wide and doe-like, mouth slightly turned downwards. )

...Are you mocking me?

( Maybe it all does sound kind of funny. Or totally ridiculous. It is kind of ridiculous, when one thinks about it. Or it must sound so from the outside.

And at least she made him smile. It's a decent enough trade-off. She waves a hand, like nothing she's said is of any consequence at all. )

We don't have to dwell on it. I wanted to tell you about breaking the programming wall, that's all. I thought you... ( Wrinkling her nose, she shakes her head. ) Nothing. How are you? Do you like the music?

No, not at all. I was not mocking you.

[Though it's not surprising she thought that would be in-character for him. Mocking her and her positive attitude. But there are some rare moments when it's warranted.]

The music is fine. I don't understand why appreciation for it includes screaming, but... [He shakes his head and circles back to her abandoned sentence.]

What did you think?

( Nodding, her expression becomes serene. He wasn't making fun of her, and it was a bit unfair for her to think so, really. Disagree as he does, he's shown her kindness and respect. She shouldn't have made a harsh snap judgement like that.

Her arms open, ready to hug him again in apology, then she stops herself with a smile. She really does want to hug him, though. He seems like someone in dire need of hugs. )

Do you want to sit somewhere a bit quieter? The screaming can get a bit much, after a while.

( She's kind of used to it by now, what with people shrieking their heads off on the rides, but it's a case of what would make him more comfortable.

The answer to his question is an embarrassing one. She ends up saying it anyway. All manner of things are flowing out, it seems. It doesn't feel that bad, either. It just is. )

I thought maybe you would appreciate the fighting back.

[He is in dire need of hugs, but it's probably best to take it slow.]

Quieter would be nice.

[So he'll start pushing his way towards the edge of the crowd again, making sure she can follow in his wake.]

...and I do. It is a difficult thing in your position, or so I imagine.

( Perfectly content to trail after him, Chloe does exactly that. Had she been in a more present frame of mind, she would have observed how certain personality traits she was in fear of losing appear to remain. Right now, she's watching his hair swish about as he moves. How pretty.

Glowing at the perceived praise, she nods slowly. )

It was like ripping out the core of me. Which I did, I suppose.

( Her tone is a musing one, not especially indicative of the pain of the experience. It doesn't matter, anyway. )

Enough about that, don't you think? I'm sure we can find far better topics of conversation. Let's enjoy the company, hmm?

As you will.

[He doesn't mind a shift in topic. As interesting as it is... it also skirts on the uncomfortable for him as well. Ripping out the core of her...

He glances back over his shoulder.]

Although, perhaps this was meant as a celebration? Were you celebrating?

( It's the tip of a generally unpleasant iceberg. Maybe one day the stories will have a light shone upon them. Maybe they don't really need to. One of her primary concerns remains not driving away the people who have come into her life, however temporary their presence could end up being.

She gives the question a fair amount of thought. )

More just feeling good. Doing what I feel like doing. But we could make it a celebration. Tell me, how would Sephiroth celebrate something?

Me?

[He's incredulous, and amused. Imagine asking him for advise on celebrations.]

I enjoy fighting. I very much doubt that would suit you.

( The answer gets a laugh out of Chloe - a real, musical laugh. )

I thought you might say something like that but I didn't want to be rude by making any further assumptions.

( Coming to a stop, she rocks on her heels and fixes him with a bright, ever so slightly impish, smile. )

What about dancing? I bet some of your fighting moves in time to the music would be a sight to behold. Like Capoeira.

[They're at the edges of the crowd now, and he turns back to her. Oh, no. Chloe, no.]

I am unfamiliar with Capoeira, and I... don't dance.

[He doesn't know how and no one has ever asked him to try.]

( She looks genuinely torn between attempting to persuade him that he could try and not pushing him out of his comfort zone. She could imagine him to be a graceful dancer. Maybe he'd even enjoy it.

Alas, she's already bombarded him with hugs and hand holding and revelations so perhaps he deserves a break. )

How about creating something?

( Her eyes light up with the spark of a thought. So much for that break. )

Yes, let's create something. I have just the idea.

[And he took the hugging real well. Like a champ. Kind of.

Creating things is not really his area either, but it sounds more promising than public dancing.]

What did you have in mind?

( Chloe is super proud of how well he handled the hugging and super pleased she still has all her limbs and that he didn't even stomp off after said hugging. His tolerance of her truly knows no bounds. )

It's a surprise. Just do your best to go with it, okay? It's nothing terrible, I promise.

( Did her self-imposed 'no more hugging' rule also encompass hand holding? Apparently not, since she takes his hand and heads back towards the caravans. )

Something terrible might have its appeal, you know.

[Particularly given their general difference of opinion.

He goes along with this hand-holding until they're fully clear of the crowd, as he understands that to be its purpose. Then he will attempt to extricate his hand. He isn't going to lose track of her.]

What sort of terrible might you have in mind...?

( She's intrigued, and willing to change her plans. Even more so if he proposes something that sounds like it could bring him out of his shell a bit more.

She lets him remove his hand from hers with a tiny sigh. She almost tells him that he doesn't have to let go, but suspects he already knows that. It's just nice, the simple acts of touch. She hasn't experienced that kind of contact in a long time and now she's all grabby hands. )

Ah... I don't really know. Pranks aren't my purview.

It was simply that you said it.

[He thought it was funny that she should try to reassure him that way, but anything truly terrible... She wouldn't be on board, and he doesn't have an accessible target.]

concert & candy

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject