![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
MARCH EVENT LOG
At midnight on March 1st, a rolling lightning storm hits Yogen. Thunder crackles, and strikes of Anvil Crawler lighting can be seen lighting up the sky; anyone paying attention to the courtyard may see the explosive strike of lightning hitting the wisteria tree. Petals scatter throughout the air and are carried off in every direction by the wind...
As the month goes on the school will start to look even more barren. As the month goes on, several students start to disappear, with rumors spreading here and there about students disappearing after entering the forest. Those rumors twist and warp, and within just a few days there are rumors of a witch in the forest. But it's not a witch, nor a ghost, or anything else, but a dream, and those who enter will find themselves reminded of such by a soothing voice, the voice of a person they're familiar with, speaking gently in their ears:
"You are dreaming... They have always led and will always lead you here... Remind yourself, this is a dream..."
The world shifts subtly. There are gravestones marking the pathway now, and before long the forest is replaced by a completely new scene. A voice reminds you once more that this is a dream, and that you have always been here. You have always been led to this place. But where is this place? It's the world of a player character. It's nothing more than a snapshot in time. It might be one that they wish to escape, or perhaps a warm memory of a time that they wish to return to, but it is always an important memory to the character.
Whichever it is, the only way is to move forward. As characters move through the memory, characters will soon notice a snake and holly tattoo that spreads over their body will be. It starts small, a clump on one's back, but will spread across all parts of a character's body. It will reach the neck and face last, killing them upon reaching the eyes. As the curse spreads, they will notice changes in the dream including hallucinations, hearing lullabies, and shades that pursue them. They will also notice increased exhaustion and lethargy.
Upon reaching the end of the memory, they will find a glowing ball of light representative of a lost student's soul. Finding the soul will lead to both characters awakening at the edge of the forest, and the character who had been dreaming will be covered with the tattoo for a brief moment before it disappears.
Those who entered the dream may hear that same voice from before that tugs at their mind as the dream fades away:
"Remind yourself, this is a dream, and soon you will awaken. But you are here, as you always have been, and as you always will be... Soon, you will wonder where you were, and each moment after, will bring you here..."
The world shifts subtly. There are gravestones marking the pathway now, and before long the forest is replaced by a completely new scene. A voice reminds you once more that this is a dream, and that you have always been here. You have always been led to this place. But where is this place? It's the world of a player character. It's nothing more than a snapshot in time. It might be one that they wish to escape, or perhaps a warm memory of a time that they wish to return to, but it is always an important memory to the character.
Whichever it is, the only way is to move forward. As characters move through the memory, characters will soon notice a snake and holly tattoo that spreads over their body will be. It starts small, a clump on one's back, but will spread across all parts of a character's body. It will reach the neck and face last, killing them upon reaching the eyes. As the curse spreads, they will notice changes in the dream including hallucinations, hearing lullabies, and shades that pursue them. They will also notice increased exhaustion and lethargy.
Upon reaching the end of the memory, they will find a glowing ball of light representative of a lost student's soul. Finding the soul will lead to both characters awakening at the edge of the forest, and the character who had been dreaming will be covered with the tattoo for a brief moment before it disappears.
Those who entered the dream may hear that same voice from before that tugs at their mind as the dream fades away:
✽ Dreams may be whoelsale memories, or they may be more akin to dreamscapes based on a person's memories or mental state.
✽ The holly pattern represents the pain of love and aches of the heart, while the snake represents the yearning for the dead that consume a person.
✽ The tattoos will be blue or red.
✽ Characters may be drawn into the forest more than once, or require multiple memories to be gone through before reappearing. In those cases, the character who had gone through the initial memory will simply wake up in the forest alone.
✽ Characters who hear the voice upon leaving the dream will be more susceptible to entering and being lost in the forest.
✽ Anyone who is not rescued by the end of the month will be found at the edge of the forest. The tattoo will cover their body and stop just short of their eyes. It will disappear within an hour, but they will be exhausted for the rest of the day.
✽ The holly pattern represents the pain of love and aches of the heart, while the snake represents the yearning for the dead that consume a person.
✽ The tattoos will be blue or red.
✽ Characters may be drawn into the forest more than once, or require multiple memories to be gone through before reappearing. In those cases, the character who had gone through the initial memory will simply wake up in the forest alone.
✽ Characters who hear the voice upon leaving the dream will be more susceptible to entering and being lost in the forest.
✽ Anyone who is not rescued by the end of the month will be found at the edge of the forest. The tattoo will cover their body and stop just short of their eyes. It will disappear within an hour, but they will be exhausted for the rest of the day.
no subject
[Since lugging it around all the time would be a pain in the ass, given most of the food that you'd want to save are canned goods and noodles.]
Well. People do kill for any variety of reason. Whether or not those reasons are good are bad are all decided arbitrarily by people's morals. What can be seen as selfless to some--even to the killer might be selfish in other people's eyes. It all depends on perspective.
Although personally, I think killing of any kind isn't selfless at all... even if it's to save someone.
inaba you are going to get so much scurvy
[Shin not everyone's as good at pinpointing something's position by sound as you.]
Selfish... it really is, huh? If you're that convinced it's for good reasons, it doesn't matter what the other person thinks, either... I'd say that's the height of selfishness. Haha, to a certain kind of person, 'I want to' is a good reason...
[He's got a dog in the fight of this concept for multiple reasons, but the most direct one is when Crona chased him down to kill him. He can't help but unconsciously rub his neck through the fabric of his scarves. Why is it always the neck...?]
Even 'well they asked me to' is kinda an excuse, isn't it?
[He's got some... thoughts about killing someone who's suicidal... who thinks their death will solve problems, is for the 'greater good'...]
It fine it's emergency food, not what she eats every day,
[Although she is going to keep that tucked in the back of her mind for other reasons.]
Mmm, yeah, I'd agree with that. Doing something like that because "I know best" or "it's my last resort" doesn't make you a hero. Maybe you have saved someone, in that way. But... personally speaking, I think that's just giving up.
what if an emergency lasts a long time???
[He hasn't forgotten his covered-in-dirt arrival even so much time later. As far as Shin knows, it's really only him and Komaeda that go into the crawlspaces habitually, even as he'd spent some time the previous year etching navigation arrows into the wood of it, less now there's a monster in there... but Inaba does live in the school 24/7 so maybe she'd have a better idea? She's probably got a hiding place she's happy with, really...]
...sometimes there's just not enough to not give up... [Enough time, enough room to think, enough strength... Shin knows intimately the hard walls of circumstance, that it's easy to judge from the lofty height of not having to be concerned by them. He wants to agree but he has to admit. He hates it.] You're right, though... it doesn't make you a hero. Getting to that sort of point shouldn't have happened at all... you could say whoever let things get that far has a share in the murder, right?
[...]
Ahaha, it's easy to say you don't have a choice when you still do as well, isn't it? It takes it exactly as much out of your hands... How convenient. Even if you're saving someone, or your own skin... it's all about your desires in the end.
[It's your desires winning out over someone else's.]
then you get fucked
[Not that she would like to resort to that sort of thing, but it is something that she's going to be remembering.
Maybe she should start doing stuff with that...
Hm.]
Well, it's easy to trap yourself in a narrow way of thinking if you're not communicating with anybody. And honestly, I suppose in a way... the system, negligence, uncooperative, things like that are things that are also at fault here...
But even if an outside factor is at play, you can't entirely blame it, either. All parts of the whole are important. Ignoring one part is just simply feigning ignorance, in the end, really.
rip inaba y2k
Right... it's hard to separate it all out... and bad people will hide in that. "Oh it was all these factors" as if their own wills weren't involved...
[The conversation is without his really thinking about it starting to shade towards Shin's own judgements. In a way he's getting a little drunk on Inaba's agreement, their shared wavelength.]
Communication, huh... There's that too.
[He's been wondering about that for a long time, since even before he came here if barely. If he'd talked to the others more, if he'd believed them more... would things have ended up differently. Here in Yogen, too. If he'd pressed Rantaro more, somehow, like Sara ended up doing... the past is painful and can't be changed, only future actions can. But the lessons it teaches leave marks that get carried forward.]
Of course, if you're not able to communicate that puts you in a sticky situation, doesn't it?
[For reasons of trust, or any number of those additional things they're discussing... it just compounds the whole thing. Not just for reasons of not knowing what's going on, but if you can't speak or hear for yourself anyone can put words in your mouth or mind.]
no subject
[She points that out with a bit of a smirk playing across her lips.]
It does. And there's always the matter of miscommunication, too... there's a lot of factors in play, in any case. Some people don't like to communicate. Or are afraid to. Or believe that saying anything will be a waste of time, or they try to see that saying something will only make things worse rather than better. There's a lot of things that could happen, many factors in play.
And people can overthink this sort of thing to the point where they make the choice to say nothing at all. Well, saying nothing can either be on purpose or otherwise. Having your hand forced to not saying something is something completely different.
In any case, it's a lot to think about...
[She sighs, her shoulders sagging slightly.]
no subject
[He seems to come back to himself a little, to reality and the surroundings. He falls quiet a little, taking a sip of the tea which has become lukewarm, but not too much. He's tempted to top it up from the thermos, but that means less hot tea later.]
It just keeps happening... Haha, you'd think after you died already it wouldn't, huh?
[...he's very tired. Of it, and in general.]
What... do you think of Graduation?
[This is the point in time at which he was still turning it back and forth over in his head. Inaba's been so likeminded on so many points already... he kind of wants her opinion on it because of that. They think in similar ways, so if anyone would get the question...]
no subject
[But unfortunately, the reality just isn't like that in the slightest bit. She leans back a bit, her gaze lifting towards the ceiling.
She's been thinking about it quite a bit -
And well.]
But 'graduation', huh... if I had to guess, it's something akin to 'moving on'. But we don't know the terms and conditions at all. And honestly: I don't trust it in the first place.
So even if I had the option, why the hell would I even want to take it? So I can be reincarnated by some asshole who makes the decision as to where I "belong" for me? Who I'll be in the next life? Hell, would we even be human upon reincarnation or whatever the fuck? Even if, in the off chance, I've accepted that I'm dead, that something happened to me so that I'm here --
There's too many questions that are up in the air that are dissatisfactory.
The biggest oddity is still there, after all. The whole divide between "normal students" and "transfer students". Don't you think it's weird? Sure, most "transfers" can be differentiated due to the big... differences in appearance in comparison. But everyone seems to know instinctually, regardless of that.
[And of course Inaba would know to say this, she's someone who has the closest in terms of physical appearance to any of the normal students. Dark hair, dark eyes.]
...But that's not really my point, here. I just think it's strange that there's a divide in the first place when this is supposed to be the afterlife. Well, unless there's a meaning to creating a rift...?