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deercountry2021-12-26 07:54 pm
sparklehorror) wrote in deercountry2021-12-26 07:54 pm
001: I must confess, I was drawn, I was drawn to the ocean.
Who: Mabel Pines and you -- one closed prompt, two open
What: Dipper died! Everything sucks
When: Mid-to-late December
Where: Open prompts center around the ocean and convenient places around town
Content Warnings: Mentions of child death, loss of a sibling, messing around with a corpse
Closed to the Pines [cw: messing around with a corpse]
In the immediate aftermath of her brother's death, Mabel copes in a horribly businesslike fashion. There is much to do. The first matter to attend to, of course, is making sure Dipper comes back intact, given how he ultimately met his end. Her first thought is to sew all the detached bits back on. But by the time they get him home, the rigor mortis has set in, and so Mabel turns to her trusty glue gun.
She digs into her special reserve of glitter glue for this project. Mabel's natural penchant for witchcraft was handed down directly from the dubious Great-Great-Grandma Pines, and though she's never been trained in this sort of thing like others here in Trench, just as Mabel understands instinctively that plastic dinosaurs in the Mabel Juice will amplify its effects, she knows that a project like this simply isn't going to work unless you're willing to sacrifice the good stuff. She does not answer her Omni at all during this time, and if either of the grunkles attempt to gently draw her away from her brother, they will be outright hissed at with all of her pointy teeth. She'll keep at it until she has Dipper as spruced up as he is going to get, and she is satisfied that everything will hold as the next phases of death set in.
This accomplished, the next thing is to get to the bottom of this corruption crap.
Mabel takes after her Grunkle Stan in many ways, and here is one of them: For the most part, she leaves research to her brother. In his absence and with little choice in the matter, given the increasing tension between the remaining blood types in the house, Mabel takes up the cause with single-minded intensity. Rifling through her brother's notes -- his journal, of course, was rescued -- Mabel pieces together what he has so far and follows up various leads on her own, adding her own research to his in easily distinguishable glitter pen that fits in neatly with his nerdy color coordination system. The mushroom that brought her out of her funk last month didn't hold her for very long before her fangs grew back in, and if what lays at the end of that road is Mabel turning into a monster too, this is clearly something the whole family will need to work together on.
The stuff about blood magic and rituals, she decides to set aside until Dipper has returned, as that's more his specialty than hers. The corruption treatments that pop out as the most Mabel things to be doing are "familiar items associated with loved ones/positive memories", and developing a tea habit. The first applies to the scrapbook that has saved them so many times, obviously, and the latter is just Anti-Corruption Mabel Juice. By the time Dipper has returned to his squid form and been transferred to a nice tank in the living room, Mabel has settled down enough to keep him company there, with supplies at hand to start updating the woefully neglected scrapbook along with a large assortment of tea tins.
Regular tea you can pick up readymade in a local shop is not going to cut it. Mabel knows this. The Pines are made of chaos and just any old blend, even if it's meant to be anti-corruption and put together by professionals, simply isn't going to do. To that end, surrounded by a horrifying minefield of winter mournings she's putting together while she's thinking, she has tins of no less than eight different berry teas open in front of her and is working on the perfect ratio in which to combine all of them. Probably once that's done it will need to be refined further with spices and things, but it's obvious to her that the most important aspect of this is going to be achieving the perfect flavor of red.
She has moved beyond hissing, by then. Still, it must be said that she regards the grunkles with deep and obvious suspicion when they come around. Mabel loves them both deeply enough that dumb blood type crap isn't going to change that. Still, sometimes the elder set of twins has very different ideas than the younger ones do about just what they ought to be doing, and Mabel knows if they try to get bossy now in a way she doesn't like she's going to have to bother sneaking around behind their backs, and that will be a pain in the patootie for everyone involved.
Open: By the Sea, mid to late December
Mabel has never had the ability to sit still when her emotions are overwhelming. Intense happiness will have her literally climbing walls; too far in the other direction and she up and runs, stopping only when some of the immediate energy is out and she can settle down somewhere quiet and solitary and decompress.
Trench being what it is, she has a few established hidey-holes to run to already, whenever things feel like too much. Instead of visiting any of them now, she finds herself drawn to the ocean. Mabel doesn't know yet that her patron is Mariana, and that connection is certainly a part of the unexpected comfort the sea is giving her. But it goes deeper than that. The inherent chaos of the waves, the bottomlessness of the water, the way it ferociously destroys entire ships and looks breathtakingly beautiful under moonlight all at once -- the ocean itself gives a face to the emotions she's experiencing now. All her grief and her aimless anger and the weird beauty in the depth of even those horrible feelings just make more sense if Mabel can look at the sea.
It's like it understands. It's like the ocean is saying: It's okay to be this way.
She can be found there often over the course of the month even after her brother has resurrected, always alone. Sometimes she wanders the shores for shells and bits of glass and other such things, and what she doesn't take for herself she arranges in beautiful patterns on the sand or the ice. Other times she settles down on the cliffs, settled on a blanket in the snow so she can watch the water quietly, taking in the distance to the horizon line.
Open: Traps, mid to late December
Having green blood was super cool when Mabel first arrived, before she found out it's called vile and sometimes people hate it and thus her for no good reason. A talk with Mako helped a lot, giving her the perspective that you can't really blame people for not trusting dangerous things that have hurt them in the past, even if you yourself haven't done anything and it's really not fair. That notion -- that it's not about hate so much as it's about not wanting to be hurt -- gave her a little peace, even if she's still having trouble admitting to being something with such a cruel name.
This in no way means she's going to accept people going so far as hunting vilebloods, especially when she hears the story at last and finds out the whole thing goes back to someone's stupid petty Moby Dick grudge. Here, then, is a productive place for her anger to go. She has always carried art supplies around with her as she goes about her business. Now, some of her milder tools are switched out for things like bolt cutters, pliers and wrenches, and even fixings to start small fires if she has to. No matter what else she was doing, if Mabel comes across one of the traps, she does her best to dismantle it, regardless of whether there's a fellow vileblood in it at the time or not.
Any darkbloods or coldbloods who so much as look at her funny during these times are met with a flat, "You better not try anything. I'm poisonous." She won't start anything on her own, though. Even now, what she'd really love the most is for everybody to just get over it.
What: Dipper died! Everything sucks
When: Mid-to-late December
Where: Open prompts center around the ocean and convenient places around town
Content Warnings: Mentions of child death, loss of a sibling, messing around with a corpse
Closed to the Pines [cw: messing around with a corpse]
In the immediate aftermath of her brother's death, Mabel copes in a horribly businesslike fashion. There is much to do. The first matter to attend to, of course, is making sure Dipper comes back intact, given how he ultimately met his end. Her first thought is to sew all the detached bits back on. But by the time they get him home, the rigor mortis has set in, and so Mabel turns to her trusty glue gun.
She digs into her special reserve of glitter glue for this project. Mabel's natural penchant for witchcraft was handed down directly from the dubious Great-Great-Grandma Pines, and though she's never been trained in this sort of thing like others here in Trench, just as Mabel understands instinctively that plastic dinosaurs in the Mabel Juice will amplify its effects, she knows that a project like this simply isn't going to work unless you're willing to sacrifice the good stuff. She does not answer her Omni at all during this time, and if either of the grunkles attempt to gently draw her away from her brother, they will be outright hissed at with all of her pointy teeth. She'll keep at it until she has Dipper as spruced up as he is going to get, and she is satisfied that everything will hold as the next phases of death set in.
This accomplished, the next thing is to get to the bottom of this corruption crap.
Mabel takes after her Grunkle Stan in many ways, and here is one of them: For the most part, she leaves research to her brother. In his absence and with little choice in the matter, given the increasing tension between the remaining blood types in the house, Mabel takes up the cause with single-minded intensity. Rifling through her brother's notes -- his journal, of course, was rescued -- Mabel pieces together what he has so far and follows up various leads on her own, adding her own research to his in easily distinguishable glitter pen that fits in neatly with his nerdy color coordination system. The mushroom that brought her out of her funk last month didn't hold her for very long before her fangs grew back in, and if what lays at the end of that road is Mabel turning into a monster too, this is clearly something the whole family will need to work together on.
The stuff about blood magic and rituals, she decides to set aside until Dipper has returned, as that's more his specialty than hers. The corruption treatments that pop out as the most Mabel things to be doing are "familiar items associated with loved ones/positive memories", and developing a tea habit. The first applies to the scrapbook that has saved them so many times, obviously, and the latter is just Anti-Corruption Mabel Juice. By the time Dipper has returned to his squid form and been transferred to a nice tank in the living room, Mabel has settled down enough to keep him company there, with supplies at hand to start updating the woefully neglected scrapbook along with a large assortment of tea tins.
Regular tea you can pick up readymade in a local shop is not going to cut it. Mabel knows this. The Pines are made of chaos and just any old blend, even if it's meant to be anti-corruption and put together by professionals, simply isn't going to do. To that end, surrounded by a horrifying minefield of winter mournings she's putting together while she's thinking, she has tins of no less than eight different berry teas open in front of her and is working on the perfect ratio in which to combine all of them. Probably once that's done it will need to be refined further with spices and things, but it's obvious to her that the most important aspect of this is going to be achieving the perfect flavor of red.
She has moved beyond hissing, by then. Still, it must be said that she regards the grunkles with deep and obvious suspicion when they come around. Mabel loves them both deeply enough that dumb blood type crap isn't going to change that. Still, sometimes the elder set of twins has very different ideas than the younger ones do about just what they ought to be doing, and Mabel knows if they try to get bossy now in a way she doesn't like she's going to have to bother sneaking around behind their backs, and that will be a pain in the patootie for everyone involved.
Open: By the Sea, mid to late December
Mabel has never had the ability to sit still when her emotions are overwhelming. Intense happiness will have her literally climbing walls; too far in the other direction and she up and runs, stopping only when some of the immediate energy is out and she can settle down somewhere quiet and solitary and decompress.
Trench being what it is, she has a few established hidey-holes to run to already, whenever things feel like too much. Instead of visiting any of them now, she finds herself drawn to the ocean. Mabel doesn't know yet that her patron is Mariana, and that connection is certainly a part of the unexpected comfort the sea is giving her. But it goes deeper than that. The inherent chaos of the waves, the bottomlessness of the water, the way it ferociously destroys entire ships and looks breathtakingly beautiful under moonlight all at once -- the ocean itself gives a face to the emotions she's experiencing now. All her grief and her aimless anger and the weird beauty in the depth of even those horrible feelings just make more sense if Mabel can look at the sea.
It's like it understands. It's like the ocean is saying: It's okay to be this way.
She can be found there often over the course of the month even after her brother has resurrected, always alone. Sometimes she wanders the shores for shells and bits of glass and other such things, and what she doesn't take for herself she arranges in beautiful patterns on the sand or the ice. Other times she settles down on the cliffs, settled on a blanket in the snow so she can watch the water quietly, taking in the distance to the horizon line.
Open: Traps, mid to late December
Having green blood was super cool when Mabel first arrived, before she found out it's called vile and sometimes people hate it and thus her for no good reason. A talk with Mako helped a lot, giving her the perspective that you can't really blame people for not trusting dangerous things that have hurt them in the past, even if you yourself haven't done anything and it's really not fair. That notion -- that it's not about hate so much as it's about not wanting to be hurt -- gave her a little peace, even if she's still having trouble admitting to being something with such a cruel name.
This in no way means she's going to accept people going so far as hunting vilebloods, especially when she hears the story at last and finds out the whole thing goes back to someone's stupid petty Moby Dick grudge. Here, then, is a productive place for her anger to go. She has always carried art supplies around with her as she goes about her business. Now, some of her milder tools are switched out for things like bolt cutters, pliers and wrenches, and even fixings to start small fires if she has to. No matter what else she was doing, if Mabel comes across one of the traps, she does her best to dismantle it, regardless of whether there's a fellow vileblood in it at the time or not.
Any darkbloods or coldbloods who so much as look at her funny during these times are met with a flat, "You better not try anything. I'm poisonous." She won't start anything on her own, though. Even now, what she'd really love the most is for everybody to just get over it.
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She sees Mabel and feels a pit form in her stomach. Flashes of the other night played in her mind, seeing both Oscar and her in danger. What Dipper had become- What she had done to Dipper-
She brings a hand up to her forehead and winces. She debates turning and going back home for the evening but she can't bring herself to do that either. It takes her a moment but she presses forward and stops a few feet away from Mabel.
"Hey... You holding up okay?"
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But she doesn't look angry, as she gazes up at Ruby. Just really sad.
"H-hey, Ruby. Um, I'm okay, I guess." This is not untrue. Dipper has returned and seems to have all his Dipperness intact, and that's the basis for everything. The rest will come in time. After a pause, she asks hesitantly, "...are you?"
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She sees the sadness in her eyes and that does make the fain smile falter a touch and she moves to plop down on the ground beside her younger friend. Her hands find the ground behind her as she sits back.
"That's good. Just- Take it a day at a time." She pauses briefly as the question is tossed back her way. Normally she might put on a brave face and try to smile it off. That was the leaders job after all, to carry the burden for those around her. But she didn't want to do that to Mabel- Not when she saw so much of herself in Mabel. That responsibility wasn't hers to bear and Ruby wouldn't want her to take on the trait just because it seemed good.
"Kind of. Not really. It's complicated." She said simply and honestly. "I feel awful about what happened. How you and Oscar were hurt. What happened to Dipper." Her silver eye moves to meet Mabel's after a hesitating pause.
"But... I did what I had to do. I did my job. I protected the people I care about and I'd do it all over again if I had to."
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In this case, though, Ruby is already forgiven. Mabel's shoulders slump, and she sighs.
"You did exactly what you should have done," she says, her voice gentle, if terribly sad. "Brobro was super upset as soon as he came back. We had a long talk and he told me about all the dumb stuff he did, but -- but even if he hadn't, and even if it was only kind of his fault because of dumb corruption stuff, it's...he hates that he hurt me. And Oscar. And if..if that was really all you could do to keep him from doing worse stuff, then...that's how it is. Dipper would hate himself so much if he had to know he'd, like. Killed me, or something."
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By the Sea
Her hair was starting to feel, well, wooly, so she had her hood pulled up from her new winter cloak and even had a scarf up to hide the oncoming fangs when she comes upon Mabel, someone she'd been hoping to run into.
"Mabel! H-hi. I didn't expect to see you here. Looking to gather some new shells for some crafting?"
The obvious thing to ask would be "are you ok" or "how are you feeling," but she had a feeling Mabel would balk at a question like that. Obviously she'd be feeling bad, who wouldn't? That didn't mean Luz had to fill the air with that question right off.
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Her voice does not carry the slightest bit of her usual enthusiasm. She still likes things, certainly, still sees beauty in the people and things around her. But since everything really hit, she's having a hard time getting excited about anything.
She doesn't answer the question about whether she's looking for shells or not, even as she scuffs around in the sand with her foot. What Mabel really came here for is the sea itself. If she picks up any shells today, it will be as an afterthought.
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She was honestly really pleased with how well it kept out the cold, but she'd talk about that later. Clearly this was not one of those cute moments, and even Luz had found that keeping chipper was some kind of a fight with all of the things that were happening lately.
"But that's not really important, or why you're here. Guessing you're still processing what happened to Dipper. I didn't think it would happen to him so fast, but I guess he got caught up in something that went over his head. We're all still trying to figure all of this corruption stuff out."
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By The Sea
For a moment, she has no intention of disturbing her, but she knows what happened to Dipper and wants to see how the other twin is. So she alights down from the sky and lands beside Mabel, shifting to sit next to her, though not so close as to invade her personal space or even be on the blanket. For a long moment, she's silent before turning to look at her and then back to the ocean.
"I've always loved the ocean," she offered, watching the waves crash against the rocks.
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But her presence here feels much more solemn than that, like her arrival is in and of itself a message. After what happened to her brother, it matters that this world can still have Sailor Moon in it. It matters that Mabel know this.
"...did -- did you live close to it at home, too?" she asks, once she finds her voice. It's all she can think of to say in reply, but it's nice.
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"What about you, Mabel? Do you like the ocean?"
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By The Sea
While she notices Mabel as soon as she arrives, it takes a few moments before she makes to decision to approach the other girl. She's unused to being out in the open like this, with almost no one else around, especially since she's still not entirely trusting of "townies". But it seems like Mabel might be here for similar reasons.
"...you waitin' for somebody too?"
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They've both got stuff that feels too heavy to carry, huh...?
"Not -- not really," she answers. "I mean, I was I guess, but -- um, he died, but he's back now. It's just, you know, it still feels pretty weird at home, so. Being here feels a lot less weird."
Mm. Awkward.
"...who are you waiting for?"
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That's probably not the most sensitive question to ask Mabel right now, but as Mebh hasn't been here long, it's news to her that people can come back from the dead here.
"I'm waitin' for Robyn. She's my friend from home, but...she left. So when she comes back, I want to be here to see her."
Even if "when" is a bit dubious, Mebh still believes that if she holds on to the idea that it's only a matter of time before Robyn comes back, it will happen.
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Traps
When he sees the young girl approaching him, Maul looks at her warily. "If you have come to finish the job, I assure you that you're very much mistaken," he warns, not knowing if he's right to be suspicious of Mabel or not.
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"I was coming to help you get out, 'cause this whole trap thing is crap," she tells him flatly. "If you're gonna be a butt about it that'll make this pretty hard, though."
If nothing else, she's not afraid of him. Mabel is the sort of person who would still be trying to help even if Maul was a literal angry bear. These traps are just too mean.
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"Alright. Let us see what you will do then," he says, shuffling his other leg back so that she has some room to work with in getting him out of the trap.
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by the sea
thus, the sea. he’s found plenty of belongings washed up on shore, three wooden frames with precious pictures in them, so precious he had to remove them and keep them in his pockets. he spoke to them plenty, especially his brother. it felt strange speaking to the others when they were still alive. colt, at least, he could imagine listening to him. it’s during one of these runs that falco is looking for a place to sit and have a conversation alone, when— he sees a girl. a girl in the family portrait of dipper’s home, and one he clicks as the sibling that may have been mentioned when he did visit dipper.
his gut goes cold and drops, while his heart lodged into his mouth. he knew he had wanted to say something, felt like he owed it, but hell if he wasn’t expecting it to be now. turning the other way didn’t sit right with him, at all, even if he was caught frozen simply staring with big, frightened eyes.
okay, so— here he goes, throat tight with nervousness and his pygmy falcon omen, perle, feeling up on his nerves too much to take to the skies. she’s on his shoulder, with her tail feathers constantly bobbing. he manages to croak out her name, but makes sure the distance is a safe one. not for him, but for her comfort. dipper couldn’t speak for her, when it came to what she thought about everything. ]
Mabel—?
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The one and only.
[It's a crying shame that she is in no mood to give him the full brunt of her everything on this, their first meeting. From Mabel, a comment like this would usually be accompanied by a pose and a grin, at the very least. Now, though, her voice is almost flat, as though Falco has stated the obvious and Mabel is just confirming it.
Yes. She is a ruffle pile with an inexplicable chunk of seaweed as yet undiscovered in her hair for some reason, and she is Mabel Pines. This is the way of things.]
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I’m Falco. [ he can feel his lips dry already, sucks them in with a flit, and continues: ] I asked your brother to help me with . . . The thing.
[ not because no one should know about the exorcism, but because the thing in question was better off left unnamed, to lessen the chances of giving it strength. was that all too direct, though? oh, well now, he’d find out soon enough. even though, for the most part, the short wait is making him nervous, like she’s just thrown glass to a hardfloor surface and expecting the shattering crack to come any second now. ]
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Closed to the Pines
The other thing he's been doing in the aftermath is insisting on checking in with his family. It's different than the last time someone died (not counting when Stan himself did the dying) in that Ford and Mabel are both still alive and when he's not brooding about it all he's casually mother hen-ing them both. It's easier than dealing with his own complicated twist of feelings.
He's been giving Mabel in particular a lot of space to grieve, especially because the he's not about to argue with her pointy teeth and hissing. Once Dipper reforms as a squid and makes it into the tank, he makes a point of checking on her more often. This time he's also here to feed Dipper - there was definitely some bickering about what exactly a squid should be eating, but Stan's been sprinkling some fish food flakes in the tank for him. That's probably good, right?
"What'cha working on, Pumpkin?" he asks, peeking at her scrapbooking.
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"Just catching up on things," she says, and while she's decidedly less energetic than usual she does at least sound like herself. "We haven't been taking too many pictures, so I gotta draw stuff."
For Stan's benefit, she flips her sketchpad and holds it up so he can see. Using her older sketches of the moment as a reference, she's doing a proper full-scale colored drawing of their arrival here in Trench -- which is to say, it's a made up family portrait style image that could look like any posed vacation photo were it not for her portrayal of Stan as a horrifying squid thing with glasses and a man face wrapped around Mabel's head like an awful winter hat.
Turns out she's still in there somewhere.
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"Heh. That's not too shabby," he says, giving the picture a lookover. "You sure my ears are that big though?"
He's teasing her; he's well aware of his giant ears and the fact that they look even more giant when grown out of a tiny squid.
"We really oughta start taking more pictures again." They all got sort of distracted by the whole discovering a new world thing, but they're settled in now. They can figure out pictures, even if they don't find more film and have to resort to digital ones on the Omnis.
Stan glances over at Dipper swimming around in the tank, and then gestures to him when he turns back to Mabel. "Imagine if this guy turns back face first too."
It seems like a safe joke to make, since Stan obviously turned out okay when it happened to him.
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traps;
She doesn't hold it to her hip to keep the chain that loops across her hips from its scabbard from jingling as she approaches the moment she realizes that Mabel is dismantling one of the traps, allowing it to announce her presence before she speaks. Her hands stay above her hips and away from the handle of the weapon, just as a secondary aim to ensure Mabel doesn't consider her a threat. "Would you like some help with that?"
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This new girl isn't inspiring any of the same revulsion she's been feeling from some others, though. She stays where she is, paused in the act of sawing through a rope with a vicious-looking knife she swiped from somewhere in the house. She left a note, it's fine.
"The more people are busting these dumb things up, the better," she agrees. "They're all just awful."
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