Exploration Event: Neverwere

[lifeaftr_mods]

EXPLORATION EVENT: NEVERWERE

Who: Everyone!
What: Your wildest dreams come true!
When: May 15th to May 18th
Where: Ziziphus, those still on Ensō...and Mu
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Then Know That My Life Was Just a Killer Dream
You can find most of the information you need in the OOC info post! In the meantime, feel free to use this log as a catch-all for your dream worlds, as well as detailing your efforts to free one another. Whether they're on Ziziphus or Ensō at the time of the dreams' capture, your character is free to access as many dreams as you like, as the interlocking mental landscape allows for that sort of crossing over apropos of nothing. And time, of course, is very fluid in dreams - many days, months, and years can transpire in a matter of mere minutes.

Will you fight your way free from Ziziphus's vines or Mu's thrall, or are you content to die in your sleep?

Remember to let us know if your character dies during this event!

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] May 15th: The vines make their move, ensnaring characters in ideal fantasy worlds
[ ♆ ] May 17th: The Storyteller will make contact with those they can, as well as issue information and a potential solution
[ ♆ ] May 18th: Those that have not freed themselves from the vines or from Mu will suffer a death

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[yourattention]

[Looks at clock. Looks at Tim.]

Technically, yes. Realistically, Zoe has a music thing and I'm supposed to drive her home.

[Normally, that sort of shit would be Zoe's responsibility because Zoe is Actually Responsible but his mom decided that if Connor is going to be there anyway then Connor can wait a million hours for Zoe to be done doing whatever and they can shove the cello in the trunk of his Prius.]

So if it can be done in like two and a half hours, I'm good.

[postictal]

Y’know there are way better places to nap than in your car, right?

[Though he’s guessing that Connor didn’t exactly set out to try to catch up on sleep in a baking hot parking lot. Most likely it just kinda happened.]

[yourattention]

I was taking a call with Evan about some orchard thing. Alana found somebody who wanted to donate saplings, I guess, but you know how Evan is. [Connor rolls his eyes like this is one of Those Things Evan Does.] He wanted to verify they weren't invasive and they would be fine in the Philly weather whatever whatever boring tree shit.

[postictal]

Uh, who?

[There’s the sense that he should know Evan a bit more...directly? But he is only has a vague impression that was, for some reason, associated with a strange, panicked remorse that he’s pretty sure isn’t his own.]

[He hasn’t met the guy. Has he? He’d remember.]

[He recovers quickly.]

I can’t keep track of your high school buddies without it being considered creepy, probably.

[yourattention]

I know you're super busy with -

[Connor drums his fingers on the steering wheel of his car. What was - he knows Tim has a friend, but he can't remember the name. He - god, he must be more tired than he thought.]

- your job and all, but I only have like four friends. Evan's the one I had to take to the hospital because his dumb ass fell out of a tree.

[postictal]

Doesn't ring a bell, sorry.

[He inflects it with just enough wryness for it to be just as easily construed as sarcasm, a familiar drape over the fact that "Evan" is only vaguely familiar, and logic would dictate that he should know more about him. Should at least recognize the name from something more than a passing mention.]

[Now that he thinks about it, he doesn't know who Zoe is, either.]

Four friends, though. That's more than I ever had in high school, so I'd say you're moving up.

[yourattention]

It's not that many more. I mean, you had me and Zoe and -

[He seriously can't remember. For some reason he's absolutely sure Tim has a friend, but he can't remember anything about this friend. Connor tries to pick at the polish on his nails and finds them bare. It almost makes him panic, but then he remembers: it's not allowed in the studios.]

Sorry, my brain is taking a minute to wake up. Med adjustment.

[. . . Right? He feels like the answer is that he adjusted his meds, but he doesn't know what his meds are or what got changed.]

[postictal]

[Zoe. There she is again. He should probably know who that is, but to admit that he doesn't feels like a red flag he doesn't wanna put a name to. Something about I can't remember sends a visceral jag of something cold and horrified down through his center, running from spine to skull.]

[It'd be stupid to say he feels a chill in this kind of early summer heat.]

Don't, uh, worry about it. [Let's change the subject, ha ha. Please, actually! He really wants to change the subject!] Seriously, dude, there's this great thing called shade that you can nap under these days.

[yourattention]

I'll keep that in mind.

[There's actually a suspicious lack of trees nearby. He doesn't remember avoiding them recently, but maybe he has been.]

Hey, mom wanted to know if you were free on my birthday because she's determined to invite anybody I've ever spoken to over for a party.

[postictal]

Has she met you?

[Connor Murphy, infamously social and endlessly extroverted - didn't everyone know?]

...but you can go ahead and tell her yeah, sure. If I've got a shift that day, I can trade with someone else. [Can't...remember what his job actually is, but that's probably not important, right?]

cw: mentioned suicide attempt

[yourattention]

This is the same mom who bought me a fucking suit in middle school because she was convinced I was gonna be going to bar mitzvahs every weekend. [He isn't even Jewish. The Murphys are definitely not Jewish.] I told her I was just going to hang out with, like. Evan and Shion or whatever and she was like "we have to celebrate, because you're alive and you didn't die and that's important."

[Connor does unenthusiastic jazz hands. He'd really like to go back to, like. Before people knew his name. He doesn't exactly like all this newfound attention dying has gotten him, but he feels ungrateful saying that.]

[postictal]

Yeah, well, we like you better alive. [Party at his open casket funeral, and everyone's invited?]

[He's gonna keep his smarter remarks to himself at the moment. It's probably better that way. Because as much as it sits heavy on the back of his tongue, some trite phrase like they'll never know how hard it is, going day by day or, you've made it way farther than I know you expected to, and that's not nothing, he knows that's not necessarily the way you approach things with Connor. Not really.]

You could probably sneak out mid-party, and she wouldn't even notice.

[yourattention]

Oh, absolutely. If I can convince Shion, we're sneaking out and probably going to see movie or something because I'd rather watch whatever dumb Marvel movie is out right now than celebrate being alive.

[You know. A movie such as Captain America: Civil War, that summer movie that's definitely out right now, this summer.]

[postictal]

[He should probably know more about whatever dumb Marvel movie is out right now. But his knowledge of modern day pop culture only goes up to around 2014, and he didn't exactly have the time to keep track of the newest releases on the road.]

[So forget the fact that he's blanking, mentally, on movies. That's not important. He is extremely certain that it is not important.]

Hey, no judgment here. [Tim himself is famously not very social, he...thinks?] Just let me know if you need someone to cover for you, I guess.

[yourattention]

Just ask her about whatever diet we're on that week and she'll go for hours. [Connor rolls his eyes. He is Real Tired of having to invent excuses not to be at dinner.] Right now we're doing paleo, which is what people who want to be morally superior but don't want to give up bacon and be vegan do.

[He's actually not 100% sure what "paleo" actually is. It's better than when they were doing juice cleanses and that's all he cares about, honestly.]

[postictal]

I don't even wanna know what that is. I think it's better if I just picture her hunting and killing dinosaurs for a diet.

["Paleo," right? Yeah, he wasn't real good in school either. The kids these days seem to think that fun and #relatable, at least as far as he can tell, for reasons that are easily guessed at.]

[yourattention]

Ok, if this was full Jurassic Park? I would be so down. I would eat a fucking velociraptor, no problem.

[Let him eat a dinosaur.]

[postictal]

That's the spirit. Eat what eats you. Assert your dominance, or...something.

[His expression crinkles in such a way that suggests he wasn't sure how or when that thought would be ending the way it did, and is not entirely certain he approves.]

[yourattention]

[Connor laughs, a sudden and surprised thing, at Tim's expression.]

Yeah. That's one way to put it.

[postictal]

[Connor laughs. That's enough to draw a startled, undeniably pleased quirk of a partial smirk to one side of his face. Can't help but regard it as something as a personal victory, that he managed to crack through the patina of apathetic weariness at all.]

Oh, shit. A laugh. Guess I gotta tell your mom that you're one hundred percent cured now.

[yourattention]

[Something had switched off the light and it seemed like -]

Do you want to suffer through whatever paleo cooking actually is? Because that's how you get invited to dinner where you're going to have to eat some shit like butternut squash "mac and cheese."

[Airquotes included, obviously. The authority with which he says the phrase "butternut squash mac and cheese" is probably because that is definitely a thing and Cynthia Murphy has definitely made him eat it.]

[postictal]

Please. I tried to boil cheese in college, once. If I'm not the one doing the cooking, free food is never an issue.

[He's got no refined palette to speak of, because growing up on hospital food for most of your life will - ]


[Wait. No, he...]

[He's never been to a hospital in his life. Has he? He'd know.]

[yourattention]

I used to think that, and then mom made orange creamsicle kale chips during her vegan phase and now I have a healthy skepticism for any food that's pretending to be other food.

[Also anything with kale in it. Especially if it shouldn't have kale in it - looking at you, kaleamole.]

[postictal]

Good thing you live in a state where there's a constant influx of perfect materials for all the filthy hipsters out there, huh?

[Here he was, about to say that Alabama isn't exactly conducive to that sort of thing, before remembering he's never been to Alabama. Weird.]

[yourattention]

Yeah. Kind of wish my life was a little bit less like Portlandia sometimes, though? I could go for some Always Sunny or something every once in a while.

[Actually, he'd prefer Brooklyn 99, but people actually play from that so I don't want to reference it.]