pandatreasure (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pandatreasure) wrote2017-12-24 12:44 am
pandatreasure) wrote2017-12-24 12:44 am
GRAVEYARD
[You know you must have died—nothing is ever easy around here, certainly not quick, so you must remember burning, bleeding, falling, dying?
And yet. You're waking up.
Do you recognize it here, once you pick yourself up off of the hard floor, maybe half-strewn across a couch or beanbag chair? This room died, too: you're in the library, good as new and maybe better than that, only barely smelling of burnt paper and you only sometimes kick up ash, just like those old wounds that finished you off only ache every now and again, dully.
The book selection isn't quite the same as you remember it—all the bad erotica that didn't die is missing here, sorry to say, but so are the books on everyone's home worlds. Snoop around enough and behind the librarian's desk, you'll find tablets: one for each participant of the game, and with enough experimentation, you'll find the one that reacts when you press the button. You're already logged into your Recyclr account and can read the feed, but the same rules apply: 140 characters, one tweet a day. The voting app is gone, replaced by a sort of security monitoring kind of app. Characters can view different rooms of the school, or even place a few side by side so they can view a few at a time, and they'll be able to see the living go about their day to day lives. There's even an archive of recordings, but only the important ones: murders, executions, investigations, trial highlight reels, and major events like libraries being burned down. Was watching yourself die once not enough? Boy have I got good news for you!!!
It's kind of exciting that you can go around touching stuff, probably, despite being super dead and vaguely transparent in a way you notice like your own breathing; you don't and then you do and it's all you can think about, but your tangibility only extends to the inanimate: try to touch any of your fellow deceased and you'll find that you just pass right on through like touching cold air.
The windows aren't bolted up with those big metal plates on this side of things, but look out of them anytime and it's just pitch-black and still outside, so that's demoralizing. There is, of course, the door out of the library—but for now it's locked up tight. Whatever is a ghost to do?]
((Recyclr
Offerings/Letters
Day 11
Day 14
Day 16))
And yet. You're waking up.
Do you recognize it here, once you pick yourself up off of the hard floor, maybe half-strewn across a couch or beanbag chair? This room died, too: you're in the library, good as new and maybe better than that, only barely smelling of burnt paper and you only sometimes kick up ash, just like those old wounds that finished you off only ache every now and again, dully.
The book selection isn't quite the same as you remember it—all the bad erotica that didn't die is missing here, sorry to say, but so are the books on everyone's home worlds. Snoop around enough and behind the librarian's desk, you'll find tablets: one for each participant of the game, and with enough experimentation, you'll find the one that reacts when you press the button. You're already logged into your Recyclr account and can read the feed, but the same rules apply: 140 characters, one tweet a day. The voting app is gone, replaced by a sort of security monitoring kind of app. Characters can view different rooms of the school, or even place a few side by side so they can view a few at a time, and they'll be able to see the living go about their day to day lives. There's even an archive of recordings, but only the important ones: murders, executions, investigations, trial highlight reels, and major events like libraries being burned down. Was watching yourself die once not enough? Boy have I got good news for you!!!
It's kind of exciting that you can go around touching stuff, probably, despite being super dead and vaguely transparent in a way you notice like your own breathing; you don't and then you do and it's all you can think about, but your tangibility only extends to the inanimate: try to touch any of your fellow deceased and you'll find that you just pass right on through like touching cold air.
The windows aren't bolted up with those big metal plates on this side of things, but look out of them anytime and it's just pitch-black and still outside, so that's demoralizing. There is, of course, the door out of the library—but for now it's locked up tight. Whatever is a ghost to do?]
((Recyclr
Offerings/Letters
Day 11
Day 14
Day 16))
no subject
[Folds his arms and looks away.]
......I haven't decided... if life is something I even want to return to.
no subject
Why not?
no subject
For someone as dirtied inside and out as I am... I can't picture much of a future being built off of a broken past.
And I'd much rather stay dead than be abandoned again.
no subject
I don't think a person's past defines who they are in the present.
no subject
[Gives a smile that's not at all happy.]
no subject
Why not?
no subject
I've gained a cushy life for the past couple years, yet it didn't take long at all in this game for me to regress and feel desperate again... that awful desperation to survive no matter what I have to do or what I need to give...
no subject
[he doesn't sound judgmental, just. tired]
People do horrible things when placed under pressure. That doesn't mean that you don't deserve to live.
It doesn't mean you can't make a new future for yourself, unchained by your past.
no subject
Is that the only reason you did it?
no subject
Nothing. . . about what I did was "noble."
[not in his opinion]
. . . I just did what I thought was best for the group as a whole. I thought-- [ugh. what did he think?] I thought, that if that's what it took to save everyone, then I would. . . be willing to be the one to break myself and my bonds to do that. So no one else would have to.
[some part of him doesn't regret it. but some part of him feels like it was an empty wish]
I don't really think I should be forgiven. But as for you? There's something more admirable for doing what you did for the selfish sake of survival.
[instead of some lofty ideal, some self-righteous set of morals, for which someone else suffered. right?]
no subject
I actually think more of you now than I had before, back when we were alive. I thought you were the kind of idealist who looked away from suffering, so I pushed you. But I was wrong.
[Drifts his fingers through Akira's hand. Holding hands is the most sincere gesture of comfort he knows, but this is the closest he can come to that.]
no subject
No. I don't-- I can't-- just look away.
[and maybe that's what drove him to do what he did. but on the other hand, who has the right to determine who dies for the sake of bringing everyone back to life?]
[Akira isn't a god. he's a teenager, and those kinds of decisions. . . they're tough. and he knows, deep down, that he had no right to make them, despite doing so with his chin tilted up anyway]
no subject
no subject
Neither can I.