lifeaftr | January Event: Fade to Black

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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!

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:

[ ♆ ] 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.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Because I'm not him. Not all the parts of him. I just told you that.

"You look for the worst in people out of habit, don't you?" [It doesn't look surprised, if that ends up being the case.] "It's safer and easier that way, right? Expect the worst, and you don't ever get hurt."

I know how it works, but you claim he needs you.

Don't make me sound like some teenage girl who's been cheated on. I see the worst in people. It's there, even if you don't look for it. I've seen what happens to men and women who think like you. Do you want to hear some bedtime stories?

[ He...really probably doesn't. ]

"He's seen it too. He fought in a war. He's seen and lived through things that no one should, and I'd guess that you have too. I don't rule your life, and it isn't my job to convince you otherwise. I'll leave that to the other you.

"But it does raise the question."

[It stops, cocks its head at him, its expression utterly neutral.]

"If that's really what you believe, why are you helping me?"

It's not risking or costing me anything. I'm going in that direction, and it's easy enough to point when I see him.

[ If this light is dangerous, it's better to know where he is. If he's only dangerous to someoen else, that isn't Nezumi's problem. ]

"That's leaving an awful lot up to trust that the situation won't escalate, don't you think?"

[It doesn't expect things with the real Washington to go over well, once they meet face to face. That's the point it's trying to make here.]

No. I just don't care what you do once you find him. If you try and attack me, I trust in my ability to defend myself. I'll kill you if you find yourself stupid enough to try.

[ Nezumi could be reciting lines to a play. His voice is as smooth as ever and doesn't seem to hitch at the threat of murder. ]

I trust in my ability, and that's all the trust I need to have.

"Oh my god. I just said that it's not me I'm worried about here."

[Its exasperation is vague, more along the lines of simple annoyance.]

"If you're amenable to advice? Don't advertise that. Plenty of people can take someone out at long range before they even know what's happening." [Guns are a hell of a thing. Beau, for one, certainly wasn't expecting them.]

[ Nezumi knows what he said, but that doesn't mean he trusts it. Still, he isn't eager to make this a back and forth. Sometimes, he's willing to push his point, but that's usually when he cares enough for the person to push. ]

Is that so? That sounds really dangerous. What can they do?

[ This time, he allows the sarcasm to show. Nezumi knows what a gun is, and how they work. He can fire them. Over time, his instincts have developed to the point that he can tell when danger is nearby, be it knives or guns. ]

People will always have a reason to want to kill, but it helps if you mind your own business. If people know you won't be in the way, they have less reason to see you as an obstacle.

"You sound like someone who's never been in a war before."

[Sounds like. Maybe he's out to dig at someone else's wounds and outright provoke them. The Light doesn't know him well enough to say.]

"I don't mean a metaphorical war, either."

[ Maybe not. It doesn't count as war if your city was peaceful before another city burnt it down to the ground to claim it's one spoil. They lost, but there was never a fight. Maybe not. It doesn't really count when the literal death that lay in the streets until someone pays for the dead's removal is a way of life, not a war. Maybe not. Even if he'd been groomed to attempt an assassination, that had been him and an old woman, and they'd failed. Maybe not because the prison after wasn't really war, either.

If Nezumi possessed a different kind of cruelty, he'd try to compare their scars. Maybe if he was dumb enough to undervalue the trauma of war, he'd mock the experience of combat.

Instead, his expression doesn't falter. ]

I sound that way because I haven't. Some people have everything they want, and the other people can't afford food, nevermind enough guns to attack the people who have it.

[ Other people. Nezumi describes the world around him, but never himself. ]

That means I've lived a privileged life, then. Thanks for changing my perspective.

"That's not what I meant at all. You know that people can be hurt differently, right? That one person's hurt doesn't invalidate another's?"

[It's doing a rotten job at communicating this, isn't it? Or maybe...it's missing a hell of a lot of context. Agent Washington abandoned social graces and more idealistic niceties when Epsilon self-destructed in his head, but prior to then, he was entrusted with duties of relative diplomatic import.]

[Probably because he wasn't a live wire like so many other agents in the field.]

[So the Light folds its hands in front of it, and looks at Nezumi directly.]

"Why don't you tell me about it, then?"

War is a horrific, sometimes stupid, sometimes justified tool used by man for a long time. Do you want acknowledgment? Only an idiot would argue that war is pleasant. But, just like there's a different kind of pain, there are different reasons to hold a gun or different reasons to find yourself on the other side of the barrel.

[ Even now, his voice is far too light for what may be a heavier topic. ]

I'll write my narrative some other time. If I let my biography out too early, the book might not sell as well. [ Nezumi tells the story of the Western District but rarely his own personal story. ] Besides, if I tell you my story, do you really think you'd change your mind?

"Well, it wasn't just humanity that time. It was a conflict between aliens and humanity, though there was definitely human-on-human violence on the side.

"Look, if you don't want to tell me, that's fine. But I won't understand any of where you're coming from unless you do. You just kind of sound like a jerk with a chip on his shoulder."

[So that's...his choice, essentially.]

Aliens, huh? Did they want to invade us, or are we invading them?

[ Man is bad enough that he isn't going to just assume they're the victims in any conflict. ]

It's fine if you don't understand. I agreed to help you find your normal self, not to a therapy session. I will offer one thing: you're imagining the chip. I'm fine with how I am. You're the one bothered.

"The former."

[It wasn't as simple as that, of course. The Covenant wanted the absolute and total extinction of the entire human species, and naturally there were factions of humanity who saw the conflict as a way to fuel their own rebellion.]

[Humanity, poisoning itself on the sidelines, furthering its own extinction mid-war, would probably be less surprising.]

"I'm not going to last very long; if you wanted to talk, it wouldn't be for my benefit."

What do you want to hear about? How many kids starve to death? All the other stuff that are happening to them besides starvation? The dead bodies that lay around, waiting for somebody to get tired of the smell so they'll pay to have it hauled away to a dump? The screams coming from the alleys all the time? The purge that comes every few years to drag people away to the prison for existing? The sound of bones breaking when the living people are dumped from heights, or what it feels like to crawl up a pile of dead bodies?

[ He doesn't reference himself directly. Never himself directly. It's always about how horrible the world around him is, never what's happened to him, even though all of that has. ]

I can tell you stories, but I'm not carrying around some confession, ready to break. None of it bothers me. That's just life.

"That sounds like hell."

[Maybe that's the most infuriating thing about it: that it's earnest. The Light really does mean that. It fumbles over its words because Washington, for all his attempts at professionalism, isn't the best at discussion, really. He's not great at words.]

[Even the best parts of him aren't much better.]

"I'm sorry, if you had to live that way for your entire life."

[ Nezumi claims to be fine, to be strong, and in many ways, he's developed an impressive skillset. He can fight, he can flirt, he can act; all things he's done to survive this situation or that.

Someone smart enough to see past it may see that he's sacrificed a lot of things to reach that point. Among them is the ability to accept sincere condolences.

But, this is also a unique situation. Normally, the people in the Western District, all living in the same hell, didn't offer kindness. Normally, those who did lived a life of privilege that Nezumi could mock. Washington, if his words are true, has survived a war. ]

How many times do I have to say that I'm not bothered by any of it? You're judging me by your own ideas. It's normal. You're not hurt by what's normal.

[ Sometimes, Nezumi is a big, fat liar. ]

"The fact that it's normal doesn't make it better."

[Its expression is closed - morose in the only way Wash knows how to be, which isn't openly. It's sustained and it's melancholy and it's restrained.]

[The kids on Chorus grew up wearing their parents' armor. They grew up locked in a civil war they couldn't prevent, a conflict propelled by megalomaniacal assholes who wanted nothing more than to reap the planet's resources from the dead. They lived with the smell of their own dead, just a bunch of scared kids too young to remember when the planet wasn't embroiled in war.]

"I guess you did grow up in a warzone, in a way. If that was every day of it, I can't imagine what that would be like."

Are you offering a broad shoulder to cry on? You're being dense. Do I look like I'm starving to you? Does my skin even look weathered?

[ Nezumi doesn't want pity. The Western District is horrible, there's no one denying the fact. He was a child, alone after only 12, living in a world where being a child offered you no protection of any kind.

But he survived. He had already begun to close off after his time there with his guardian, but the walls grew higher, thicker. A child alone, especially one with a very acknowledged 'pretty face' had to adapt or die -- or worse. So, he did. He learned to use his looks in his favor and found a job on the stage. He knew how to fight, and he was able to protect himself, no matter what they tried.

So, he didn't have it worse. Somehow, Nezumi managed to strive. It meant living for himself, only for himself. Until Shion. ]

It made sure I wasn't weak.

[The Light shrugs, tiredly.]

"I'm offering an ear to listen, if you want it. In all likelihood, you're never going to see me again, and whatever I hear now, the real me won't ever learn.

"It won't ruin your hardass street cred if you take a moment to look back at your life and say it was kind of fucked. You're allowed to feel bad about that."

[Agent Washington knows what it's like to take the shit that's happened to you and file it into a weapon, turn it outward until it burns like a stake into the hearts of everyone else. Sometimes it feels like it's the only thing you can control.]

It's called the Western District, and it's right outside No. 6. Inside, they create complacent, weak people who believe in everything they say. They're ignorant, not realizing that their perfect city is selfish and will kill them the moment they stop being perfect, too. Life in the Western District kills the weak, but I'm not.

[ Aside from the obvious disdain for the city, there's not a lot of infliction in Nezumi's smooth voice. He doesn't sound sad or regretful. Weakness, especially in front of a stranger, is the same as revealing your throat and offering them a free blow. ]

I can fight, and I can feed myself. If you're looking for a sad story about an orphan who was defeated by life, you're reading the wrong story.

"Did you expect me to consider you that? Because all this? It reads like a front. It's obvious as all hell, if you were wondering."

[Granted, if he's grown up like this - there are sayings aplenty about the mask and becoming what lies beneath it, and such.]

This is becoming annoying. You think I have to be some sad kid who's just waiting on the right person to heal my soul?

[ Even more annoyed than he shows, Nezumi decides he'll turn the guy off another way. He seems to be decent in the way that he's not quite the same as perverts who didn't care about age of their target. Suddenly, he smiles, his face changing to something more charming. ]

Do you know what kids do to earn money when they don't steal and haven't gone to school in a world where age doesn't make a difference?

[ Nezumi's lying... in a way. Some kids have resorted to it, and it's an offer he gets from clients and pimps alike, but he's managed to survive without falling down that hole. ]

"Yes. I do."

[It's blunt, but honest.]

"I'm completely fucking aware of the kind of shit that's done to people when they're in a position to be taken advantage of. When you're at the very bottom of the chain."

January Event: Fade to Black

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settle in, i wrote you a book

claps hands together

takes a bow

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cw for child death, violence, and just bad stuff

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sorry for the delay. i went on hiatus

all good!

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warning: getting into things kids shouldn't experience

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