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humiliatious2024-08-07 02:59 pm
pantheraliam) wrote in humiliatious2024-08-07 02:59 pm
Entry tags:
Cursed Night Market
Welcome
You’re not sure how you got here, but you don’t seem to mind. You feel a pervasive sense of calm with regard to your environment. You have entered what appears to be a night market. Perhaps the concept is familiar to you, or perhaps it isn’t. Colorful stalls, glowing with lantern light, line the path before you. You know what you need to do to return to where you came from. Investigate the various stalls - buy and sell what you have, until you’re able to purchase a path back. The merchants will take any currency that you have on hand. If you don’t have any, you will find some coins of an ambiguous nature in your pocket.
Rare Items
The first stall that you encounter boasts that you can buy and sell rare items. After trading a coin, the merchant hands you something - insists you take it. You don’t recognize the item, but the person behind you does. It is something extremely dear to them. If they check their person, they will find the item missing. If you attempt to return the item to them, you will find that you are unable to. Helpfully, the merchant offers that the person the item belongs to must tell the buyer a story about the item before it can be returned.
Fortunes
The second stall you encounter claims to buy and sell fortunes. Trading a coin, the merchant will relay to you a fortune, but, as you listen, you realize that it isn’t your fortune at all. With a cackle, the merchant explains that you must deliver the fortune with the person behind you. Neither of you can leave the booth until you have revealed to them their future.
Memories
The third stall you encounter claims to buy and sell memories. You can choose to sell the merchant a memory you would like to forget, or you can ask to buy someone else’s memory. Selling your memory will transfer it to the person behind you. In return, you will gain one of their memories. Buying a random memory will instead cause you to forget one of the people most important to you. In some instances, you might feel a great urgency to find someone, although you don't know who it is.
Dreams
The fourth stall you encounter claims to buy and sell dreams. Trading a coin at this stall will cause you and the person behind you to be transported into a shared dream. The dream may be about the highest point in your life or the lowest. It may also be about a close friend, there or gone. It may reveal your greatest desire or your greatest insecurity. Or any number of other things!
OOC notes
Suggestions on prompts: if you’re going to write one where someone will be seeing/receiving something from your character, it’s helpful to describe it in detail in the brackets in your TL. I know some of these prompts are probably a little confusing, but, I mean…it’s roleplay. Just fuck around. No one’s gonna police how you do things here.
Please feel free to top-level, tag in, and share this meme wherever you’d like - it is open to anyone. The four stalls mentioned are prompt suggestions, but you can go crazy and have any stall do basically anything you want. Please see/use subject line CWs. This musebox doesn’t have a dedicated rule list because it’s just for my personal shit, but please be kind, follow standard RP rules - just be nice! Do the right thing! If you have any questions, hit me up here.
code by Flyleaf ❖ inspired by event code by 10billionghosts ❖ background via unsplash
no subject
Most of the people where I'm from are familiar with that concept by now. There was quite an event.
That being said - and to that end - I'm interested what you mean by "perception".
[He glances at one of the chairs.] May I sit?
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[ Then again, there usually isn't BLOOD ON THE FLOOR!!!
Maruki spends a moment longer taking stock of the dreamtime office – everything else seems close enough to pass as reality, which is honestly more unnerving than if the room were filled with a shifting mass of tentacles. It also inspires in him the same exhaustion that dreaming of Shujin did. To spend all day at a place and then dream of it too–
Well, at least this guy doesn't seem to need counseling. He just wants to talk about perception. Maruki won't pass up the opportunity to discuss his special interest, especially not in a dream with someone who can't run out and tell the populace how suspicious he is.
He steps gingerly through the shallow blood to seat himself in his usual armchair, hands folding comfortably in his lap. His pantlegs are still rolled up; he looks pretty stupid, but just in case this place floods, he's not about to undo them. ]
I'll answer any questions you have about perception if you tell me about that event of yours.
no subject
[Armin mirrors Maruki, hands folded similarly in his lap. His posture is upright but easy. He considers crossing one leg over the other, then remembers the blood - keeps his feet on the ground.
[Answers are often given for answers. There's no use in hiding anything that's common knowledge. If there is a use in hiding it, Armin's too tired to figure it out. Can't he at least rest when he's sleeping?]
Someone who sought to destroy the world, I'm afraid. [Cleave.] They [Protect him.] had a reality-manipulating ability; although, I'm not sure exactly how perception plays into things.
To be clear, the conflict has ended. There's nothing more to do, and that [Threat-- No.] person no longer exists [Intestines slither like nooses, knotting around stomach and other guts-- breathe.], the ability gone with them.
All that is to say, I really am only curious.
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The smile that flits across Maruki's features is subdued, a little saddened. ]
I hear stories like that all the time in this room. History does seem to repeat, even between different realities...
[ A pause, a thoughtful rub to the stubble on his chin, more overworked than usual. ]
Did that ocean of blood have anything to do with it?
[ Sometimes imagery in dreams is nothing more than a subconscious sorting through days, weeks of nonsense. Mental junk, emotional refuse.
More often than not, though, it's real. ]
no subject
[Although:] I did answer your question. Will this one lead to my answer? Of course, I don't mean to be rude, but I did ask first. [He smiles. Only fair, right?
[Then, something clicks, quick.]
Assuming that was your train of thought, perhaps it would help to tell you that what we saw was certainly influenced by my own perception. There isn't any doubt in my mind about that at all.
Then again, I'm sure that's true with most dreams. When it comes to realities, I'm only a passenger.
no subject
And he does meld the two topics together seamlessly, so all credit to him.
And, perhaps most importantly– ]
Only a passenger, huh? I guess that's true of all of us, but I've never heard somebody phrase it quite like that before.
[ n o t e d ]
Ah, but to answer your question about perception... I study a field that focuses on how we perceive the world around us, and how our perceptions influence reality. Everyone's view of the world is unique to them, right? In that way, everyone has their own "version" of reality, so to speak. [ Air quote and everything! He's enjoying himself. ] It's true on just about every level, from the micro to the macro. How can we ever pin down objective definitions of truth and lies, or good and evil, when we all see things through our own lenses?
[ A beat, and then he shrugs affably and laughs at himself. ]
I'm not sure if I answered your question or just rambled on!
no subject
Then, you manipulate people's own perceptions of the objective reality around them. Is that right?
It's not true of all of us, if so. [He allows some self-aware knowing to seep into his smile.] The people whose perceptions you influence would be the passengers, in this case.
I'd say we're talking more the macro than the micro, too, right? It might be easy enough to change someone's mind about something they see - even I can do that [Like he's not a gold medalist.] - but it's another thing to take them to another environment entirely.
[It's just a dream, but Maruki only ever denied terminology.]
no subject
[ You brilliantly astute stranger. ]
Although, I will correct you on two things.
[ You little shit. ]
One: Under normal circumstances, I can't take anyone to another environment. This appears to be relegated to shared dreams. If you and I were standing in an ocean of blood in reality, I would have no power to take us anywhere else.
[ Maruki couldn't even necessarily make him think that he wasn't in said ocean of blood. Actualization doesn't quite work like that. ]
Two...
[ He leans forward then, elbows propped up on his knees and hands clasped in front of him to rest beneath his chin as he surveys the boy. ]
I'm a passenger as much as anyone else. I have no ability to influence my own perception of reality. I'm beholden to the "true reality," whatever that might be, even if no one else is. Funny loophole, huh?
cw: grief, death, gore, body horror - I'm having a good time over here idk
[Funny loophole, yeah.
[The grief is too great and too new. Armin's smile fades, although it isn't the right time.
[Countless lifetimes; no escape. Some clawed hand, unseen, rips its way through Armin's shoulder blades and wrenches out his heart-- Ah, but, only a dream within a dream. He's still seated on the armchair, alive and well and truly dead. His posture is just fine, too.]
It makes sense.
["Armin. It's just as you said.
["I'm a slave to freedom."]
It makes perfect sense, actually. Our perception being all that we have is, by its nature, something that must be changed externally...
[They could have done more. They should have. Sooner. Better. Something...
[Armin looks up quite abruptly; hadn't noticed his head had dropped until it lifts again.]
I feel terrible for people like you. [Honest.] It must be some unique Hell, being unable to change your own reality, while bearing the weight of so many others'. [Too honest.] I'm sure it's lonely. [Stop talking.] I'm sure you wouldn't be telling me any of this if you didn't think I'd forget it the second you let me go--
[Enough.
[Too great. Too new. Enough. Quiet down. Enough.]
I'm sorry. [Smile.] I got ahead of myself.
[Adapt. Invent.
[He lowers his head again, massaging at his temples with one hand as he shakes his head - a lie.] Everything I've told you...it's still fresh in my mind. [Half a lie.] I'm only trying to understand. [Honest. Honest.]
no subject
This place...is just Hell.
being unable to change your own reality, while bearing the weight of so many others'.
It rots you. I know. I know.
I'm sure it's lonely.
I know loneliness. We eat here because there's food to go around.
Maruki is quiet for a long moment, allowing for the gravity of this stranger's words to settle over them both.
Then, very quietly: ]
Did you know him? The person who had a similar ability, in your reality.
[ He's very aware that Armin said they, not he. ]
gag I'm keeping it here forever
no subject
[He lifts his head.]
I never said they were a "he". [But this man has made some connection.] Why do you ask?
no subject
[ Simple. Quiet. Earnest in its intent.
Even if he's wrong about the specific connection, he's still confident he's right about the emotional undercurrent. ]
no subject
[He's gone. What more reason is there for anything? What reason ever was there in the first place? He can't remember now.
[This man keeps saying "he," and Armin thinks he must know, although it's impossible that he would. Whatever. Eren is - was - impossible too. Armin is tired. He looks at Maruki.]
If you know something about Eren...[Impossible.]...please, just tell me.
[No. All at once, he sounds exhausted. He sighs.] That isn't it, right? Don't listen to me...
[There's his answer, then. Armin concedes.]
no subject
I wanted to show Armin the world we dreamt about.
An ocean turned to blood. Eighty percent of humanity, one of the first things Maruki ever learned about him, just proving a point that he'd try to impart much later. Don't file away that number in your head like it's nothing. Nothing Eren has ever told him has been filed away like it's nothing.
Including this.
Maruki ducks his head to try to catch his eye. Smiling, gentle, kind. ]
He told me that I'd like you because of how smart you are. He was right. Hi, Armin.
no subject
[It hurts. Armin's inner ears pick up some minute whistling deep inside his body; losing air. He should ask what this man knows, why he knows, how he knows - how he talked to him, where he is - what the Hell's going on, but it doesn't matter. None of it makes sense. Why should it start now?
[All he can think about is the sound of his own name, and how a stranger knows it because Eren loved him enough to mention him-- It. Hurts. It's not fair. Nothing is, but it's not fair.]
I'm sorry. [He manages, somehow, to say so normally, though he won't lift his head.] I'll just need one...minute...
no subject
[ To say the very least.
Maruki knows that Eren is fated to die when he returns to his reality. Clearly, Armin has lived beyond that point. Up until just today, this strange dreamtime, he only knew their friendship from Eren's side, but what little has been revealed so far from Armin is enough. A palpable, eternal grief. He understands.
And it isn't fair, that in one reality Eren is very much alive, no matter how much he hates that fact, and that it isn't the one that Armin inhabits. It's not fair at all.
After a decent stretch of silence, he speaks. ]
If you have any questions for me, I'll answer honestly... and if you don't, I can tell you some things that I think might help to hear. [ Well, help and hurt – that's the nature of grief. ] But if it's too much for the moment, you don't have to listen to me or say anything at all.
no subject
[He tries to compose himself. He manages to lift his head without his neck breaking. Maybe that's all he can ask.
[His voice his terrible in that way that someone trying to dam a flood sounds - tight, watery, pained. He wants to scream until his lungs burst; his speaks quietly.] You know him.
How? Where...?
no subject
As it stands, he can only answer the question gently. ]
We've been stuck in another reality together for some time now. A strange place, where many people are pulled from disparate worlds because of a wish they supposedly made. When I told you that sharing dreams wasn't uncommon in the reality that I'm currently in – he was one of the first people I met in dreams. The first person to house and feed me while I was getting my bearings in a strange new world. And the first person to attend counseling regularly.
[ His chest is warm, fond. So much has changed since then. ]
He's become a close friend. I'm lucky to know him.
[ And then, not as a placation (hehe) but as an entirely genuine sentiment: ]
When he tells me about you, I know no one else in any reality will ever come close. He misses you terribly. It's grief too, in its own way.
no subject
[What shocks Armin more than anything is that Eren, as Armin last knew him, would open a would-be home and food to someone he barely knew. Armin knew an Eren once that might have done something like that, but even then, kindness was always reserved for the people Eren loved most. He believed that The Rumbling was a kindness too, but Armin knows, now, that that isn't all.
[His best friend is a walking contradiction. Of course it doesn't make sense. Nothing with Eren does.
[What Maruki relays to Armin next - that makes sense. It makes sense because Armin knows exactly how their bond feels. He'd wondered, only briefly - and he hates himself for it now - if Eren's love for him had faded. Eren proved a thousand times over that it was always as strong as it had ever been.
[At long last, Armin's eyes well with tears. His nose makes a funny shape - he tries so hard to hold it all in. He can't speak. It's too dangerous. But he has to, doesn't he? How couldn't he, to something like that.]
We're not meant for this. [His jaw trembles, mouth open, the words having left, but an emptiness as to what to say next.
[Armin shrugs, miserable. He sucks in a gasp that's meant to be a sob; shrugs again.]
We're not meant to be apart. We're not.
no subject
Wordlessly, Maruki gets up from the chair and settles himself down onto the sofa next to Armin, not too close, just enough to be able to rest a hand on one shoulder. An anchoring strength that's hopefully more comforting than it is strange. Maruki does feel like he knows him, in a way, even though it's their first meeting. It's an untenable grief that he's dealing with, but if he can, he'd like to be able to give him some measure of support through it. ]
He knows that just as well as you do. It's a horribly unfair thing, I won't pretend that it isn't. I'm sorry. You don't...
[ A beat where his mouth presses into a thin, thoughtful line, and then he shrugs, softens his tone even further. ]
You don't have to talk, if you don't want to. You can simply– sit with this. I get the feeling you haven't really been able to yet, and it's what I'm here for. So... Please.
the way I literally have an icon for this - ugly crier armin arlert real
[The point is...it's a comfort. Perhaps too much of a comfort. Maruki says, "You don't have to talk," - he says, "...you haven't really been able to yet," - he says, "...it's what I'm here for," and there is so much devastating, overwhelming, consuming compassion and kindness to all of this.
[Armin's always believed in kindness. He'd like to be a kind person. He'd like to be. He really would...
[He tastes blood and pulls his teeth out from the flesh of his lower lip - licks it and curls his lips inward, shaking his head.
[Then, at long last, a sob. His body lurches with it, bent over, mouth hanging open, spit pooling and sliding out of his mouth. He looks like he'll throw up. He cries without sound, like a prolonged gag that brings up nothing. His body jerks. He puts his hand in his hair. He shakes his head, closes his eyes, but it's all real, and Eren is gone...
[Gone. Eren. Gone. It's impossible. It's just not possible.]
gently puts a mcrib in his mouth
He stays settled next to Armin, a pillar for his grief to rail against, unmoving but far from unmoved. He's been there... or somewhere similar enough. The hand at Armin's shoulder moves to rub up and down his back, slow and steady, as those sobs tear through his body with a violence.
It doesn't matter how long it takes. Maruki won't move, won't say a word to try to put a stop to it. He ought to be allowed to feel this, wretched as it is.
One thought does float through the back of his mind: It wasn't long ago that such a display would have him mentally scrambling to root out the cause of the suffering. Things really have changed. For the better? He's still not sure. ]
jLKDFJSLDFJSLDFJLSDKFJ
I'm sorry. [He'll get it together. He has to.] I'm sorry. You don't even know me--
Thank you...
no subject
[ Soft, but earnest. Maruki knows it will likely fall on deaf ears. Because, well– ]
No, I don't know you... But in a way, I feel like I do.
[ He leans forward to pluck tissues from the little table in front of the couch and hands them off to Armin with a smile. ]
He compares us pretty often. Sometimes in unflattering ways.
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