[log] Event: Lavender's Green, Part Two [open]

[snowblindmods]

Characters: everyone
Location: mysterious, white hallways
Date: Day 193-194
Summary: Find friends. Get lost. Don't look.
Warnings: Potential for gore and psychological horror. Please note any specific warnings in your subject lines!

While confusingly similar, the area is split into a few different sections:

The Core
The hallways here are narrow and twist at a rapid rate. With how dazzlingly white everything is, it's easy to not realize you're coming on a turn and slam right into the walls. There are no rooms here--no one starts here, though they may find it while they wander. At the center is a large, round area, like the center of a spiral. There's a lot of air pressure here.

The Inner Hallways
The largest area, filled with dead ends, gentle slopes and twists, and, occasionally, difficult-to-see drops where a higher hallway intersects with a lower one without a wall to separate them. The whole place tastes vaguely like blood. Most rooms are here--most people start here.

The Outer Hallways
The outer ring of the ball of yarn. It's not as thick with halls and twists as the other two areas, leading to a lot more boring walking in one direction. It's totally possible to circle around the same path multiple times without realizing it, as everything is so similar here. Occasionally, footsteps can be heard just outside the farthest walls. Sometimes, something breathes. There are a few rooms here--some people will start here.


Remember to note what kind of eyes your character has in their top level!

Comments

[mrcreamsicles]

Look at me, Strange. Of course I'm not Snoop. He's a saint up in rap heaven right now and I'm not the one who's going to blaspheme his name by pretending to that level of divine rhyme. All I can do is repeat the old songs like hymns, praying that he might bless me with some of his talent.

[He rambles along as Strange gets comfortable.]

You might guess classic rock wasn't my forte. I can try, but you don't get to whine if I get it wrong.

[thewarningafter]

Ever stop and think that maybe I don't know any of the words to Drop It Like It's Hot other than "drop it like it's hot"?

[He could probably sing a solid verse or so of it...but still, knowing the charts doesn't mean he can sing every single song that hit number one.]

You can do the air guitar.

[mrcreamsicles]

You're breaking my heart here.

[He gives an exaggerated sigh. He could have admitted that any step of the line before now and saved them the trouble, but...]

Okay, air guitar and maybe some backup vocals. I'm warning you now that you reap what you sew, but you've got no better options than me.

Ready when you are.

[thewarningafter]

[What, and risk Davesprite sending him a text file of the lyrics? It was hardly a good excuse before the network went down.

This is dumb. They're in the midst of some sort of crisis even if there isn't obvious action to be taken, and he doesn't need to ingratiate himself with this loudmouth. But still....]

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality

[This wasn't a good song to choose for an a cappella performance, but he's going to soldier right through all six minutes of it if they're not interrupted.]

[mrcreamsicles]

[Oh hell yes, he's actually doing it. Davesprite is totally here for stupid time wasting nonsense, especially if that nonsense is music, which he never ever has enough of in this place. And honestly, there's nothing much better to do. They're stuck, trapped, and he has neither the navigational skills nor any good guesses to try to find a way out when he doubts this is a real location at all. And House's theory of a rogue AI eased some of his worry about what that may mean.]

[So, Bohemian Rhapsody. Davesprite was never a classic rock fan and what he does know of this song comes from pop cultural osmosis, mondegreens, and the skill that is called bullshitting. His backup vocals consist namely of jumping in where he thinks he can add. Scary moose, scary moose, will you do a fun tango? Bismillah becomes basilisk, Hephaestus, and Caledfwlch in turn, which he actually knows how to pronounce. And, apparently, the furthest ring has a 'terror put aside for him. Guitar solos become freestyle beatboxing segments. But if Strange keeps up the whole way through the song despite his unusual idea of helping, Davesprite will follow him to the end.]

[thewarningafter]

[What Davesprite is doing is sacrilege, and also it makes it hard for Stephen not to laugh while he's trying to sing. Stephen's own musicality always lay more with the piano than in vocals, and between the two of them they make a real mess of it...but Strange will bravely muddle through to the end. Unlike Davesprite, he knows every last one of the words.]

[mrcreamsicles]

[The humor is part of the point, and it's gratifying to hear his struggle against laughter. He doesn't know the lyrics or backing music properly, so why not make it stupid?]

[As soon as Strange has cleared the end of the song, though, Davesprite's own mirth escapes in a burst of delighted laughter.]

Oh man, you actually did it! Hell yeah!

[thewarningafter]

[Stephen's chuckle is more restrained, but he'd be hard pressed to make a claim that he didn't enjoy the endeavor. It was, at least, a way to forget for a few minutes where they are and his worry over why his cloak isn't with him.]

It's scaramouche, Davesprite.

[mrcreamsicles]

[Davesprite's laughing fades off into milder snickers, and he leans himself back against a nearby wall.]

Scarab mousse?

[You really want to teach him the proper lyrics now, Strange? He's difficult by nature.]

[thewarningafter]

[Nah, not really.]

Yeah, you've got it. It's like a greeting, you should start saying it to people.

[mrcreamsicles]

Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Strange. You're out of your league.

[thewarningafter]

You're no fun.

[He leans back against the wall, taking a moment to stretch out his arms and protesting hands before settling in and making himself more comfortable.]

[mrcreamsicles]

What is a scaramouche? For real this time, no lying if you don't know.

[Is... is it even a real word? He has to wonder.]

[thewarningafter]

It's like a kind of clown.

[Not actually a lie.]

[mrcreamsicles]

[A... clown. Davesprite blinks behind his shades.]

That's the thing I don't get about the song. So this dude was all carefree until he shot somebody for mystery reasons, and he has to go on the run and leave his mom and everything. Then he gets caught, and there's punishment waiting for him when he dies, but—

What the fuck does inviting a clown to dance have to do with it? Or Galileo and that opera dude?

[He means Figaro.]

And what was I replacing with basilisk and the other stuff? I feel like it started with a b, but I have no clue what word it is.

[thewarningafter]

I wouldn't say carefree. 'No escape from reality,' remember?

[He's not going to have a lot of solid answers, but he's game.]

Bismillah - in the name of God. The thing with Scaramouche is a kind of interlude, I guess. Maybe it's about having to put on a show for the people around you. Mostly you're supposed to figure out a meaning for yourself, because whatever it meant to good old Freddie Mercury, he never shared it with the class.

[mrcreamsicles]

Yet 'easy come, easy go,' and 'any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me.'

[He could argue further, the intricacies of escaping the reality of a dead body and how that easygoing nature may have disappeared in the wake of his terrible action, but he doesn't care that much. Besides, as Strange points out, it's up to interpretation.]

So either he forgot, it was dumb and he didn't want to admit it, or he didn't have any real meaning in mind when he slammed those words together; and now we have to deal with the narrative roller coaster ride.

[thewarningafter]

[Strange would probably actually enjoy debating that point further, but he's a goddamn nerd.]

Or it was very personal, or it's entirely self explanatory and we're overthinking it. A wise person once told me that not everything needs to make sense.

[mrcreamsicles]

You're telling me. I'd say my life stopped making sense a long time ago, but it pretty much never did in the first place. Slime babies, Strange. They ruin everything.

[thewarningafter]

Didn't you say you were the slime baby?

[mrcreamsicles]

Yep. One of them.

[thewarningafter]

And Jade was another one of them?

[mrcreamsicles]

Mhm. There were eight of us total. Four for our team, four for our guardians, more or less. My bro, Rose's mom, Jade's grandpa, John's nanna, except they were all our biological parents—Bro and Mom for Rose and me, Grandpa and Nanna for Jade and John. We didn't know about that until after we started the game, though. When a baby drops out of the sky on a meteor, you don't interrogate the crater on what relation to call yourself if you adopt the kid.

[thewarningafter]

Wait, wait. Your parents were slime babies, they got together and made more slime babies, but the second generation of slime babies still arrived via meteor?

[mrcreamsicles]

No, you're giving them too much agency in this. They had no decision in it at all.

[He wishes he had his drawing pad or that his tablet was working for him to illustrate this with.]

So in the game there's this thing called ectobiology. My friend John got saddled with that job. Basically, this machine tries to transportalize someone from the past, but because that person is destined to go do other stuff, instead all you get is this goopy paradox slime. John hit the buttons, got the slime for our guardians, and the machines popped out the babies. Then it mixed the slime from our guardians in the pairs I listed, and that made us. All of us, our group and them, got sent back on the meteors to Earth at the time we first arrived there. Stable time loop.