reddosmod: (Default)
Deer Country Mod ([personal profile] reddosmod) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2021-10-08 06:14 pm

Because one day, I'll leave you a phantom

OCTOBER 2021 EVENT
IMAGE DESCRIPTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

Prompt One
[Image One: Band playing on moving float with people in masks walking behind.]
[Image Two: Woman in gas mask and elaborate ballgown.]

Prompt Two
[Image One: Man looking away while creepy corpse-like woman puts hand on window.]
[Image Two: Two contorted girls crawling across floor with blood flowing out.]

Prompt Three
[Image One: Headless horseman with jack-o-lantern rearing on horse.]
[Image Two: Annabelle doll rocking on its own in chair.]

WELCOME TO THE BLACK PARADE
WHEN: During the daytime every day of October
WHERE: Throughout the streets of Cellar Door and Willful Machine.
CONTENT WARNINGS: N/A


The Black Parade has begun in Trench. You will begin to see residents painting skulls and monsters onto their faces, even the ones who abide by practical lifestyles. By the first week of October, you won't see a single resident of Trench without facepaint or a mask of some kind obscuring their face.

"It's for the Black Parade," they say, "It's to keep us safe. You should start painting your face too. You should disguise yourself so they can't find you."

Who, you might ask? Anyone dangerous. It's vague and unsettling, but you think maybe they are onto something. Call it intuition or basic common sense. Stalls pop up all around Trench selling cheap masks and costumes. They aren't exactly Halloween costumes. There's less of a focus on becoming something and more of a focus on looking different than you currently do.

Then the Black Parade really takes off. Black and white confetti seem to fall from the sky and you can hear the distant sound of trumpets and drums. You can feel the earth give small tremors and Trenchies begin to flock to Cellar Door and the Willful Machine. They line the streets and you can see why: a literal parade is coming through. Stages are set with talented musicians rocking out, singing into wireless, floating moonlit mics. Incredible, giant puppets walk through the streets guided by a dozen talented Architects. Other people move about in stilted costumes, elaborate gowns. Some performers set up small, stationary areas to perform for smaller crowds. The sky is filled with massive and unusual kites. Find one among the many stalls or make your own!

Stalls hand out candied applies, foil-wrapped candies, and roasted pumpkin seeds by the bundles. Hot ciders are kept in barrels ready to be served up in tin mugs, with or without alcohol. It's a festive atmosphere that seems to go nonstop 24/7 throughout October but exclusively in these areas. It's a good place to go to avoid some of the haunts of October and to have a good time. Why not get involved? Make your own puppet, float, or costumes, and join in the fun. Chunks of the road are reserved for parades, but others have been sectioned off for people to dance and mingle about. You quickly learn that face-paint and masked/concealed faces seem to be a good way of avoiding the attention of beasts, angry Pthumerians, and other unusual creatures in Trench.

It's not a foolproof method, but October largely celebrates the safety of ambiguity and is one of the few times the practical and pleasure factions get along. Get your face painted up or pick out a costume - it's both aesthetic and life-saving! The Black Parade is held annually every October all October long and is considered a significant Trench holiday. Many people refer to the costumes specifically as "Black Parade" costumes and sentiments commonly exchanged at this time include: Have a blessed and safe Blood Moon; May your Seasons pass unseen; Bless the many faces of cleverness; May you go unseen by the blood; Blessed Black Parade.

QUICK FACTS

1. Halloween costumes you can buy at the store won't be available unless a character intentionally makes one. Most of the costumes in Trench are more or less eccentric make-up looks and unusual masks. They look a lot more like Cirque du Soleil costumes than Halloween costumes.

2. Characters can have multiple costume/face-paint/mask changes throughout the month. No one will be forced into these - but it is strongly, culturally encouraged for everyone's safety to dress up!
LONELINESS KILLS: THE CURSE OF CLOVERFIELD
WHEN: October
WHERE: Everywhere
CONTENT WARNINGS: Psychological-based curse, feelings of intense loneliness, mental health.


It is said that the Blood Moon reminds Cloverfield of those he has lost over the decades. They say that the howling wind is actually the sound of Cloverfield's cries and there seems to be some truth to that. He can be seen wandering the Farther Shores and watching the moon. If you seek out Cloverfield and offer him comfort and companionship, he will bless you with a worn picture of a loved one or someone you miss desperately or even just a place you miss...Even if it's impossible for such a picture to exist.

Of course, not everyone will visit Cloverfield. Cloverfield's loneliness begins to curse the city of Trench. Sleepers will be impacted the most heavily as their blood will directly react to this curse. Sleepers who have a good sense of relationship may be able to avoid the curse, but those who often feel lonely or homesick will start to feel worse and worse as the days go by.

Eventually, their loneliness begins to manifest as a corpse-like version of themselves or the person they care about most. This corpse follows them around everywhere like a shadow. You won't notice your own Loneliness, but other people might, especially palebloods, Night Walkers, and Disciples. These corpses don't seem to care about anything or anyone and at first don't seem violent...But eventually, this Loneliness becomes consuming.

Once it does, you too will contort, and you and your Loneliness will soon be crawling about on all fours, blood floating out of you in thin streams. You'll be lost to your feelings of loneliness, stalking the streets with your Loneliness, looking for companionship. Of course, you're completely corrupt at this point, so your version of finding companionship most likely involves accidentally suffocating someone or other violent actions. Some people may never become violent once they are in the Final Stage, but the blood constantly flowing from them will create heavy blood pollution and may draw in far more dangerous creatures. You really don't want Lonely People walking around!

Better start some conversations - even if these Lonely People are creepy as hell. But, then again, they are just lonely. Hopefully, you will find peace of mind and find your people. Hopefully, you will banish loneliness...For the time being.

QUICK FACTS

1. This curse will impact people who are more isolated than others. Interaction with other people or animals will alleviate the curse and may completely stop it for some.

2. You can stop the curse at the corpse stage by confronting a Sleeper and opening up an emotional conversation about their loneliness. This may not always work, but the more the conversation works for the Sleeper, the more effective. The corpse will fleck away once the curse has been reversed.

3. Curses can continue to come back throughout October, but once you've experienced it once, it's less likely to occur again.

4. The Final Stage of the curse is the hardest to stop and most of the time, it's easiest to just kill the Cursed. It's easier to kill them than talk them out of their loneliness, but it is not impossible to talk them out of it. It requires dedication, patience, and some serious cleverness on how to survive a monster trying to kill you at the same time.

5. Loneliness can be widely interpreted once in the Final Stage. People should generally still look like themselves. How people act in this stage can vary from character to character and should be centric to how characters deal with their loneliness in general. If they're prone to shutting people out, then maybe their Loneliness is aloof and distant. If they're prone to clinging to toxic people, then maybe their Loneliness is accidentally violent. It's open to interpretation.
LEGENDS OF TRENCH
WHEN: All October
WHERE: Everywhere
CONTENT WARNINGS: Ghosts, Themes of death.


Unfortunately, not everyone can gain control of their loneliness. As blood is spilled throughout Trench over loneliness, this blood pollution festers and begins to claim poor souls. Corruption leads way to beasthood and people lost to this find themselves transforming into familiar, legendary ghost stories of old-world lore. These Legendary Ghosts come out primarily at night. As the Black Parade established, anyone who keeps their faces disguised with make-up or masks will be completely safe from the Legendary Ghosts. Though if you go after a Legendary Ghost in a costume, you'll only be safe until you attack them. It's not a bad move for a sneak attack though!

...But those who forgot to dress up or felt like such superstitions wouldn't work...

Congratulations, you might come across the path of a Dullahan: a headless horseman carrying a whip made from a spinal cord, ready to throw basins of blood on you and draw in other beasts. Or maybe you encounter a far more subtle Legendary Ghost. Maybe you see a hitchhiker on the side of the road and decide to give them a ride, but when you look in your rearview mirror, they are no longer in your backseat. While most of these Legendary Ghosts are intending to harm you and spread more blood pollution, some just seem to be genuinely lost souls, lost to corruption, lost to their own failures and loneliness. In some cases, freeing them is protecting yourself and others, but in other cases, freeing them is just simple kindness.

You may meet a ghost bride who is waiting eternally for her wedding by one of the shrines in Cassandra. Maybe you meet a ghostly scholar at the Archives in Gaze. The spirits range widely and seem to haunt every corner of Trench - including your own homes. The only real way to deter a Legendary Ghost from your home is by heavily decorating your home with things like jack-o-lanterns, fake blood splatters, fake gravestones, and various other death-centric decor. This seems to repel Legendary Ghosts as they see it as a reminder of their own fate. Some are angered by the decorations while others are terrified by them and seem incapable of telling the difference between real blood and fake blood.

QUICK FACTS

1. These corrupt souls can be saved through blood rituals/magic/ghost banishings relying on blood artifacts. This will usually put the soul to rest - it will not bring people "back to life."

2. While it is mostly Trenchies turning into these beings, Sleepers can also be transformed into Legendary Ghosts. We provide a general outline, but the idea is that people are turning into legendary ghost stories so you can play with your own ideas/canons.

While Trenchies cannot be saved, we leave it up to you if a Sleeper could be brought back to themselves or if they will have to "die" to be cured of their Legendary Ghost status.

3. You can use famous Legendary Ghosts from around the world. We gave a few examples, but have fun with this! The Legendary Ghost-like creature you go with should generally be "ghost-like" / have to do with death specifically. They do not need to be exclusively evil/violent spirits, but many are.
CODING
royalfling: (soft | sad | talk | didn't mean it)

[personal profile] royalfling 2021-11-08 02:26 am (UTC)(link)
[ Wu sucks in a breath because... yeah. That's exactly what he's trying to do. That's exactly what he does every time he starts to feel sad because he's the happy guy, the fun guy, the one who brings the party, who always has a smile. He's hard enough to be around when he's happy, why would anyone want to be around him when he's not?

The corpse gains a little opacity as he falls back, deeper into that pit of feeling bad about himself, for himself. He isn't worth all this effort. He's just a small man, barely more than a child, who only has a name and a title, who's desperately trying to put together the pieces of someone, of Wu, whoever that is.
]

Yes.

[ His voice is small, barely there, pressed against Mako. He's afraid to let go because what if Mako takes it all back, what if he's the only thing holding Mako here.

Every fear he pushes down, he talks himself out of, it's all rearing up and he doesn't know what to do with it except to hold on to the one person who seems to think he's worth something of anything, someone who sees something in him, someone who loves him, not for his title. Despite his title.
]
arclightning: (sad | concern | wistful)

[personal profile] arclightning 2021-11-09 02:17 am (UTC)(link)
[ The other version of him is coming back. Mako shouldn't have pushed, should have just left it, curses himself quietly except—

Except.

Yes.

Wu's trying not to be sad.

The thought rings for a moment like a shout in silence, hanging in Mako's head as Wu's breathing quickens.
]

Why?
royalfling: (soft | sad | sweet | look)

[personal profile] royalfling 2021-11-09 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
[ He should have anticipated that question. His breath hitches. How honest should he be?

Mako deserves honestly. He's good, and strong, and loving, and sincere. He deserves all of those things back. He deserves someone who can take care of him as much as he takes care of them, he deserves someone who can love him the way be should be loved, all in, no holds barred, someone who will give him everything.

Wu wants to. He wants to give Mako everything he is, as terrifying as that is.

He swallows, trying to gather his words
]

No one ever, ever cared. If I was sad. So I stopped. [ Being sad, showing that he was sad. Whatever he could manage that day.

Even Mako, at the beginning of everything, didn't care. Wu understands why, he didn't want the job, didn't want to be stuck with some spoiled prince, and being stuck with a sad, spoiled prince? At least when Wu tried to be happy, they could have fun. They could ignore everything that had happened to Wu, everything that was happening outside the walls of their suite.

A memory passes between them again, one that might be familiar to Mako. It was one night, early, very early, maybe a few weeks after Mako started working for him, barely three months since his aunt was killed, and Mako heard something from his room, where Wu was crying with a pillow pulled up against his chest. Mako had asked if everything was okay, and Wu gathered his voice and called back that yes, he was fine. That they could go out later, have a night on the town. At least that would give Wu a reason to pull himself together, to distract himself from everything, from the future that's now looming in front of him, from the classes he dropped, from the empty void where everyone he's tied to by blood used to be.

It was a lonely time, realizing he was alone. Realizing that the only person who cared about him was paid to.
]
arclightning: (sad | concern | wistful)

[personal profile] arclightning 2021-11-11 03:20 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Mako remembers that. The memory could be his own, except it's his voice filtering in through Wu's door, half-concerned, kind of awkward, unsure what the boundaries here are and what his job extends to and what Wu could possibly be crying about. His family, Mako had figured, except then Wu had said he was okay so could it really be that bad?

Of course Wu wasn't okay. Of course he did the same thing as Mako, shoved down his messier feelings into the small spaces of himself, because they don't matter. Funny that Wu's been insisting to Mako this entire time that Mako's feelings matter, even the hard-edged squashed useless ones nobody wants to deal with, while so often dismissing his own.

Maybe he was trying to tell himself that, too.

Maybe Mako's not the only one with different standards for the world and for himself.
]

I get it.

[ Mako's voice is more vibration than sound, a little tight at the edges from the lump forming unbidden in his throat. ]

When you... spend your whole life like that. Being... I don't know, looked at. By other people, who need you to act a certain way or else [ The else is different, sure: with Wu it was rejection and loneliness, with Mako it was being exploited and shoved around, but it's still there, a looming, threatening word used like a boulder ] it's hard to believe anyone's going to.

[ Spirits, this is so hard to say. Mako's voice keeps getting tighter, a little shaky in a way he hates, because he is supposed to be helping Wu and here he is digging into his own ribs with his fingers, cracking open the hard shell he's built. It hurts. It's terrifying, the idea that Wu might see into him past everything he thinks Mako is (brave, strong, smart, capable) into what he really is (awkward, afraid, terrified of losing everything he's built, a let-down).

But he's trying to make that space for Wu, and so he has to make it for himself. Mako sucks in a wet breath and pulls a little more, ducking his head like he's warding off eyes that aren't there. He's felt watched all month. They might as well be sitting on the couch in the middle of Republic City for all that Mako feels exposed right now. His eyes are tight. Mako sucks in a breath and pushes forward.
]

It's hard to trust that people will stick with you when you show them that you're not what... they think you are.
royalfling: (Default)

[personal profile] royalfling 2021-11-14 09:19 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Continued here ]