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lifeaftr2019-01-20 09:46 pm
lifeaftr_mods) wrote in lifeaftr2019-01-20 09:46 pm
Entry tags:
- coco: héctor rivera,
- critical role: beauregard,
- critical role: yasha nydoorin,
- final fantasy xv: ardyn izunia,
- final fantasy xv: ignis scientia,
- fragile dreams: ren,
- hollow knight: the knight,
- hyper light drifter: the drifter,
- marble hornets: tim wright,
- mass effect: legion,
- mushi-shi: ginko,
- original: erika fisher,
- original: mira delacroix,
- osomatsu-san: ichimatsu matsuno,
- red vs. blue: agent washington,
- the adventure zone: kravitz,
- the league: jules dagger samari,
- undertale: asgore dreemurr,
- undertale: chara dreemurr,
- voltron: keith kogane,
- voltron: takashi shirogane,
- ✖ ffxv: gladiolus amicitia,
- ✖ ffxv: prompto argentum,
- ✖ guilty gear: faust,
- ✖ hollow knight: the hollow knight,
- ✖ hollow knight: troupe master grimm,
- ✖ homestuck: karako pierot,
- ✖ hyper light drifter: the guardian,
- ✖ no.6: nezumi,
- ✖ no.6: shion,
- ✖ original: foster van denend,
- ✖ persona 5: ann takamaki,
- ✖ rwby: pyrrha nikos,
- ✖ the adventure zone: lup,
- ✖ the adventure zone: taako,
- ✖ undertale: frisk,
- ✖ undertale: muffet,
- ✖ voltron: alfor,
- ✖ voltron: princess allura
January Event: Fade to Black
JANUARY EVENT: FADE TO BLACK
Who: Anyone and everyone!
What: Your true self comes to roost
When: January 21st - 23rd; January 25th - 28th
Where: All over!
Warnings: Dark subjects such as violence and self-destruction are likely to come to the forefront - please mark your content accordingly!
What: Your true self comes to roost
When: January 21st - 23rd; January 25th - 28th
Where: All over!
Warnings: Dark subjects such as violence and self-destruction are likely to come to the forefront - please mark your content accordingly!
Down in that Darkness
This log is primarily for the Shadow and Light portions of the event, for ease and convenience. Your Shadow can be either the Persona-inspired sort - a "brutal, bitterly honest recreation of a character's worst flaws, darkest fears, and deepest secrets" - or the edgier, more laughable variant. The Lights, on the other hand, will do their utmost to convince their real selves of their best qualities, no matter how little they want to hear them.
Remember that the Shadows will be present from January 21st to January 23rd, and the Lights will be present from January 25th to January 28th.
On January 25th, we will post a separate log for Rejection Rooms!
Some useful links, for reference:
This log is primarily for the Shadow and Light portions of the event, for ease and convenience. Your Shadow can be either the Persona-inspired sort - a "brutal, bitterly honest recreation of a character's worst flaws, darkest fears, and deepest secrets" - or the edgier, more laughable variant. The Lights, on the other hand, will do their utmost to convince their real selves of their best qualities, no matter how little they want to hear them.
Remember that the Shadows will be present from January 21st to January 23rd, and the Lights will be present from January 25th to January 28th.
On January 25th, we will post a separate log for Rejection Rooms!
Some useful links, for reference:
[ ♆ ] OOC Event Post
[ ♆ ] Rejection Room Sign-Ups; remember to note your interest in these as soon as possible!
[ ♆ ] Deaths Page; death penalties have been reduced for the duration of this event, but still do let us know if your character dies regardless!
Event Timeline
[ ♆ ] January 20th: The monthly Storytelling occurs.
[ ♆ ] January 21st: Shadows of both initial variants appear.
[ ♆ ] January 23rd: Shadows of both initial variants disappear.
[ ♆ ] January 25th Lights and Rejection Rooms appear.
[ ♆ ] January 28th: Lights and Rejection Rooms dissipate. Those still trapped in their Rejection Rooms by the event's end will suffer a character death.
( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )
no subject
The question is inherent in their stare - what does that mean? - but they step forward to meet their enemy with weapon at the ready.
Their enemy is focused on them, and not the Drifter. They'll strive to keep it that way for as long as they can. ]
no subject
[This thing should not be speaking. It's so, painfully evident that it should not be speaking, because it hurts for it to talk just as it hurts to hear it talk, grating words that sound like gravel.]
"They did not accept. They could not accept. They called it a waste."
[It swings, vicious and abrupt.]
"A w͏̊͘a͈̫̎s͙̺ͥt̷͖̃e̘ͪ͑."
no subject
They bear it. They swing back, react, parry the blow and are pushed back, but they stand defiant.
And they clench their stone in hand because just this once, they can bear to speak with the voice granted by something else, because hands aren't loud enough, because--
they want the Drifter to hear it too. ]
DOES-NOT-MATTER
GIFTS-ARE-FOR-OTHERS
NOT-YOURSELF
[ A gift is for someone else's happiness and not their own. They could do with it what they wished. It doesn't hurt them. ]
THEY-GAVE-ME-A-VOICE
NO-GIFT-WOULD-EVER-BE-ENOUGH
TO-MATCH-IT
[ No voice to cry suffering. Made without. They were never meant to have it.
And still they had seen a voiceless child and seen fit to teach it something wonderful. ]
no subject
[An uncurling snarl, hissing and redolent of a menace that the Drifter should never be capable of putting on artless display.]
"They have become attached, and it will end in pain. They will die. They will die, and leave devastation. This is their final and parting GIFT. A cruelty that comes of ALLOWING such a thing."
[Oh, and they had the audacity to call this kindness.]
[It is the Drifter's speed blended with a kind of unrelenting strength, devoid of pain, stripped of the kindness that could blunt their blows and soften their edges. It is brutal and unstoppable. It is a hail of strike after strike, rained down without consideration.]
"Will you miss them?"
no subject
BUT-BEING-REMEMBERED-MEANS
YOU-WILL-NEVER-DIE
[ The memories still live on. That is the only death that matters. Now, and forever.
Their guard isn't perfect. They are cut and cut again, the blows raining down without stopping. They parry, they strike.
They'll keep doing it. A reflection of the determination that drives the Drifter is in them too, the little shadow always following behind. ]
PAIN-MEANS-IT-MATTERS
I-WILL-NEVER-REGRET-IT
[ Never, for as long as they live, for as long as they remember, for as long as they are themselves. The flame of memory will burn bright inside.
Regret implies something they wish they could take back. They have never once wanted to take this connection back. ]
no subject
[Its onslaught is unflagging. It has none of the moral quandaries and hesitations of its original. It does not care that it strikes a child who remains resolute in their insistence that it matters, and that they will not stop. It, too, does not stop. It, too, is ground of determination.]
"You have been tainted by so much loss. You think you can weather more, for their sake? You think this will make any of it BETTER?"
[Nothing will make it better.]
no subject
CAN-ONLY-TEND-WOUNDS
NOT-HEAL-THEM
[ They have known for a long time now that the Drifter's sickness is merely paused, in a kind of stasis. That this is a dream in which normally impossible outcomes can be achieved. Fates that cannot be adjusted.
(It is only in forgiving themselves, so recently, that they can even say this at all.)
They are knocked back by the unending onslaught of blows, pushed and thrown to the ground. They are not meant to struggle in this way.
But still, they get up again. Still, they fight, without hesitation or fear.
(They can't take much more of this before they need to break off and heal. But stubbornness won't let them back down before they must.) ]
YOU-ARE-THEIR-REGRETS
BUT-UNTIL-THEY-CAN-ACCEPT-YOU
I-WILL-FIGHT-IN-THEIR-STEAD
[ Personify what torments you. Give it a shape, a purpose, the ability to touch.
Give it a form that can be dispelled, something that can be fought.
Retake its power and become whole. ]
no subject
[A controlled rasp, something venomous and bitten in two with scorn.]
"They will never accept this. It is not their nature to accept. They fight until they cannot. They fight until everything is lost. They fight until they pick and choose what they might fight for, pretending all the while that they lack the choices they have always, always made."
[It's seething, swarming rage like a wasp's nest teeming beneath the folds of its fabric.]
"You think you might save them? You?"
[The words pitch louder, louder, until they're practically screaming.]
"YOU, who made it all the WORSE.
YOU, who was NAIVE enough to
T̳̥̿Ḧ́ͪ̔E̠̦̙M̥̬̌
B̨̒̇᷁͆͆̒A̽̔̾͊͊͏᷀C̤̜͚͌᷉̑ͅK̰͇̀ͮ̋ͭ̐."
no subject
[ It's a simple, quiet declaration, the voice they have used only once before in a conversation tinged with sadness.
They might not have unlimited tries the way they did in Hallownest. They might not have all the time in the world. But they don't tire like the Drifter does. Their exhaustion comes from injury, not from a constant battle against sickness.
Until the Drifter can get up, until they feel it's necessary to get up, they will continue.
(Some of the more vicious cuts remain and do not heal, because shadow though they are, the words they say are a reflection of the truth.
Denying the words hurt is something they can no longer do. But neither will they let it stop them.
They have always fought for other people. They have always thought of other people.
They will never stop thinking of them.) ]
1/3
[It will continue to hammer at them, cut and slash and slice away until there is nothing, nothing, no shred of resistance, no strength left to even so much as stand, until there is nothing because all that a drifter ever gets, in the end, is nothing, is death and all that follows. It will rend this little thing to pieces because it is in denial of a truth that no one can escape and that no one wishes to accept.]
"Some part of them will always resent you for that. For never letting go. You childish little thing, thinking that what you say has any bearing on that which they can never ESCA - "
2/3
[It stops abruptly, it stops in its diatribe, in its fluid dismissal of all that the Knight has stood for, it stops and looks - down.]
[at the thing]
[sticking]
[through its chest]
3/3
shut
up
no subject
From the Drifter's shadow, they expect no mercy and receive none. They push back as hard as they can with the injuries they already have slowing them down. The blade continues to cut them away, whittle them down, and they bleed void into the air, even as they continue to retaliate.
They stagger, visibly - expecting more blows for their visible misstep, an advantage given to the enemy - and it doesn't come.
So they look up.
...
They seem vaguely surprised that this has happened. ]
no subject
[An abrupt thrust of strength seems to have been all they had to them. They sink, nearly falling onto their face, but they manage to catch themself with an outthrust palm pressed to the sand. Their blade snaps off with a soft, buzzing snap.]
[Their breath rasps in their throat, paired with the bubbling of a cough swarming up in their throat.]
[Their Shadow lies, its breath just as labored.]
i know
[They look at it, and it stares at them with the same molten hatred as ever teeming in its gaze.]
attached
weak
failure
i know
[They're sinking lower to the earth. But they reach out, at the blur of the Knight's silhouette as it spills trails of shadow out into the open air. Their vision bleeds sideways, and still - they reach for the one thing they recognize.]
if this is the price i pay
i am willing to pay it
no subject
They can heal - later. They're still standing, and it's enough to offer comfort.
They limp across the sand to their friend, keeping themselves moving more through willpower than actual energy. They collapse into a sort of half-crouch as they reach them, one leg trailing at an awkward angle due to a cut they couldn't quite divert all the way.
They bury their face in the Drifter's cloaked shoulder, small hands gripping tight around their neck as best they can. Still careful, not to impede their breathing, not to hurt them, but still.
Maybe the Drifter's shadow is right, and they've done something wrong, in the end. Maybe they've dealt a blow through seeming kindness that can't be healed.
But maybe...
Maybe something can be wrong and right at the same time. A flaw instilled - and yet, it's not a flaw to be loved.
If it's anyone's fault, it's theirs, in the end. So the Drifter doesn't have to take responsibility for it. ]
no subject
[It is the nature of life to be painful. It is the nature of living.]
"You will die, you...you will die," [the gurgling, dying thing hisses on the floor.] "You will die, and leave them broken."
[Their free hand catches the back of the Knight's head. The closest to a hug they can get.]
feel less broken
together
no subject
A greeting, a farewell. Fates they cannot adjust.
But they're still both alive, right now, and that is the only thing that really matters.
They can't cry, not exactly. No sound or word escapes them to express their feelings. But they're shaking not just from injury and exertion but from emotion, too, and it's as close as they can get.
Nothing lasts forever. If there's anything they've learned in their long life, their long journey, it's that.
But just because it won't last doesn't mean it isn't precious, isn't treasured, isn't valued.
Since it hurts to live and it hurts to die, it hurts to love and it hurts to let go, then they might as well take the path that gives them the most happiness. ]
no subject
[They glance over to their double, steeling themself for the presence of some other, final confrontation.]
[It's gone.]
[It's gone.]
[Their eyes list partway shut. Their sprite bobs lower, stuttering a line of text for the Knight's benefit - ]
you're safe
no subject
[ That was what they were worried about, after all. The stone goes away into the folds of their cloak; no more need for a voice.
They don't ask anything like was it real or did you mean it because those are meaningless, tired questions with no good answer. It doesn't matter.
(The wounds heal, slowly, as they focus. Soon, it will be like they were never there at all.)
Lacking the energy to do much else, they press their forehead to the Drifter's helmet with a soft clack, maybe a little too hard. Closer to a headbutt than a forehead touch. But the meaning of their affection is the same, so it's all right, even if it's clumsy, even if it's flawed, even if it's not perfect.
Though sometimes there is pain and struggle and misunderstanding, it's worth it. ]
no subject
[It's hard to say. There's no room for them to feel anything but exhaustion as the aches and agonies of their confrontation start to settle in. They'd not stood a chance against their darker self; it was stronger and faster and better, perhaps because it had not been ravaged alive by an illness pouring toxin into its veins.]
[Perhaps because it had not had years to waste away, bit by bit.]
[They'll get up soon. In a moment.]
[Right now, they're learning another lesson in patience, and a small head pushed up against theirs.]
[That's enough.]