logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: COTTON CANDY HEARTS

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: COTTON CANDY HEARTS

characters: everyone.
location: amusement park.
date/time: august 17 - 31.
content: time to enjoy a little time at the carnival!
warnings: n/a. please use cw tags as needed.

oh come, take my hand, and run through playland...

It's clear in the past two days of fevered work, the spirits are up to something. Collecting rainbow wigs and pinstriped jackets, gathering food and preparing decorations. There's no getting them to reveal the secret, though — any attempt to ask only results in an ominous gesture of silence. However, characters won't have to worry about what the spirits are up to for too long, as on the start of the 17th each and every resident of Beacon will be delivered a note, inviting them to come out and enjoy themselves at the Amusement Park.

ALL FUN AND GAMES.

Over the last few days, some of the food tucked away in the General Store, The Invincible's stock room, and the kitchens of The Landmark may have gone missing - but not to worry, because here it is, all stocked at little booths within the amusement park, ready for sampling! The enticing aromas of fried batter and sugar wafts through the air, no matter where you are in the park. Find old favorites, from funnel cakes to fried pickles, popcorn to whole turkey legs - or try something new! Ever had a corn dog wrapped in curly fries? How about a deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a stick? One spirit, currently chewing on a crispy battered pine cone, even offers a unique suggestion - bring it anything you like and it will deep fry it for you. You do have to eat it, though, that's the catch, or the spirit will be very irate and might take something of yours later to deep-fry and leave on your pillow. Don't waste good food!

At the end of the row, tables have been covered in classy checkered red-and-white tablecloths, and piled with ingredients, and it looks like ovens formerly belonging to some ruined village housing have been dragged all the way out here and plugged in, and are now waiting and ready. There's flour (all purpose, pastry, chickpea, and others, and - no, that's just a pile of sand on that plate), plenty of butter and sugar and spices, all sorts of summer fruits, and more. It's a pie making contest! The judge is the Lunch Lady spirit, who hmms and ahhs and ohhhhs wisely as they pace back and forth along the tables, observing the pies being made and occasionally taking tiny little samples with tiny little forks when the pies are baked. How will they decide the winner? That's their secret, for now!

But their delicate little tasting session has left the pies mostly unscathed, which means it's time for the pie eating contest! A rowdy quartet of squirrel-like spirits cheers everyone on who wishes to participate, and they squeak and chatter at participants, bringing pie after pie after pie directly to whoever walks over. How many can you get down?

If food isn't your style, though, carnie spirits host a number of games scattered throughout the park. They whistle and wave you over, jump on your shoulder if small or yell at you with animated limbs from above if quite tall, urging in their musical tones for anyone and everyone to come on down and give the games a try! Toss balls at a set of colorful stacked bottles, and see how many you can knock down in a single throw, with candy and costume jewelry for rewards. Fling a ring into a booth and land it around the head of the stuffed animal you want to win, if your aim is good enough. There's even a duo dunk tank set up - over a large tub, two chairs are suspended, each with an attached bucket of softballs and a target over the head of the chair. You and a friend get to climb in and see who can dunk who first!

MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE.

A carnival isn't a carnival without some rides to test your bravery with, is it? Past where the food booths and skill games are set up, there are a selection of them set up, all providing various levels of thrills. There's a roller coaster, of course, that's been constructed of wood and makes a loud rattling noise as it drives you through the loops and hills. There's also a tilt-a-whirl, a gravitron, and a log flume, if you're still feeling the effects of the heat wave.

For those less interested in thrill seeking, there are also slightly tamer rides, like the bumper cars, a ferris wheel, and the tunnel of love. All of these rides have the innate feeling of danger that you'd find at any theme park or carnival, but they operate quite safely, albeit with some creaking.

COTTON CANDY HEARTS.

Away from the fun and excitement, the Fun House has also come back to life. There's something a great deal more ominous about it than the rest of the celebration, however — in fact, spirits will actively attempt to steer residents away. However, those determined to explore can still find their way inside.

To start, it doesn't seem that abnormal. A mirrored maze, flashing lights and creepy music. However, as they travel through the mirrored halls, they'll notice something. Their reflection doesn't necessarily follow their movements. Actually, it seems like it is trying to get closer. Maybe that isn't their reflection at all?

Trapped and lost in the maze, eventually the reflections will become full-fledged matching doppelgängers of any character that entered. It's hard to tell the difference between the fake and the actual thing, though the doppelgängers will not speak, only chase — and chase aggressively. They will grow more and more aggressive in trying to reach their double, willing to go through potential distractions if they have to. Cutting them down seems ineffective at best; as long as there are reflections, the doubles will keep coming, growing more and more bloodied as they "die". Ultimately, they will not stop until characters exit the maze or they reach their exact match.

As they reach their match, they will reach out and grab their heart. Literally, hand through the chest and everything. It's as excruciatingly painful as it sounds. The doppelgänger will smile a demented, satisfied grin, and disappear immediately after without a trace. Any character that got nabbed by their double will suffer from lantern malfunctions for the rest of the event. You're more than welcome to pick what malfunction and to what extent!

FIND YOUR FORTUNE

Characters that have braved wandering outside the relative warmth and activity of the the celebration will find the rest of the amusement park still a little grim. Dark, worn down, abandoned. Plenty of the rides seem ominous at best and dangerous at worst. In their searching, characters are likely to happen upon a fortune teller lingering in the shadows.

If they are brave enough to approach, they'll find there is no need for a coin. Upon spotting them, the fortune teller will creak into motion, offering a spiel in a slightly monotone robotic voice. It's a little unnerving, though what is the worst a robotic fortune teller can really do?

Well, it turns out, every fortune the fortune teller provides always comes true. Some of them are harmless, like a prediction that they will win their next game of darts or find a cherry in their blueberry pie. Some will get far more grim fortunes, that they will find glass in their next drink or that they will step on a nail. Worst of all are fortunes that essentially force a character to do what they would normally wouldn't, like confessing a dark secret to the next person they see.

While you are welcome to make up your fortune, you are also able to put your character's name here to get a mod-generated fortune. There will be potential clues for future explores in these fortunes, though there is also a chance of receiving something else, such as an injury or a strange happenstance. No one will receive death in their fortune!

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"Sure! I'd love more music," he replies cheerfully, though looking over at Soldat to say so results in him thunking straight into a wall. Oh well, the slow speed means it's not even that jarring. Just snaps his attention back to the car for a second as he steers it away. Is there a way to back this thing up? Not that he's discovered yet, but a round arena makes it so he doesn't really have to.

"And yeah, I have lots I like. Not sure how I could pick a single favorite either. Earth has a lot of great musicians. Nancy Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald..." He trails off as he double-checks his lantern after the not-quite crash, just out of habit.

"There's some cool guitar stuff on Songbird too," he continues. "Some of the acoustic music reminds me of home a bit more. Not that we didn't have electricity and all that, but some islands are more developed than others."

It's an intentional tangent and it takes some focus to get his mind on that track, rather than talking out loud about some of the songs stuck in his head lately. Look, when you've got the first dumb crush you've had in a good ten years, sometimes it's the cute love songs that catch your attention, but he's trying so hard not to bring that up.

Soldat smiles-- like really smiles-- at those names. They know all those names. "I know those. Those are from before HYDRA." (Those are from the best time in fuckin' history for music. You're biased, Sarge.) "I should share the rest of my swing collection with you." If he likes those, surely he'll like Glenn Miller and Cab Calloway, and maybe he'll get a kick out of the Andrews Sisters, even.

"I've been experimenting," they add, turning the car around to try and come at Rosinante from behind. "As much variety as I can. Some of it's simple guitar like that, some of it's. Really, really not." Look, the Asset really likes Nine Inch Nails... occasionally they do indulge it.

"Sounds like you better," he agrees. More fun music? Can't say no to that.

It takes a little for the car to get up to speed again. He tries for a sudden turn to throw Soldat off his tail, but nothing about this bumper car is actually capable of things like "sudden" or "abrupt" or really even arguably "maneuvering" so Soldat clips his car against the rear and sends him into a gentle spin. This time he holds on fine, though, and urges the car to keep with that arc of movement until it comes back around to smack into Soldat's. Maybe. Driving is hard.

"So when you say really not simple, like what? I've been listening to a bunch, I might have heard it."

The arc works, good job, Rosi. Soldat sees it coming and figures they can't actually get out of the way in time, so they take the hit, bracing themselves with knees and the metal hand. "Really not like guitar music. It's." They have no real way to describe it. They don't know the genre, really, and they can't really identify the instruments used. "Did you listen to anything called Nine Inch Nails?"

He expects the jolt of the collision - he's causing it, of course he expects it - but that doesn't mean he's immune to it. Maybe bumper cars just isn't the best game for him objectively as this time it throws him backward over the rear of the car on his butt, and it's only a quick scrabbling for the back of the seat with his fingers that keeps him from dumping onto the concrete floor.

But he's laughing, so maybe it's fine. "Shit, you have an unfair advantage," he mutters, another one of those thoughts that wasn't meant to be voiced at all.

Once he's recovered his seat and has his hands at the wheel again, he has to think back on the question. "Nine Inch Nails? I don't think so. If I did, I don't remember. Some of them I listen to thirty seconds of and then skip to the next one if it doesn't grab me right away so maybe, maybe not."

"How's it unfair?" Soldat asks with a smile. "Just cuz you don't fit right. That's not my fault."

They drive out of range, for now, aiming for a spot of keep-away, letting Rosinante chase them again. "If you like quiet guitar and jazz, you probably wouldn't like that," Soldat offers with half a smile. "It's very loud and kind of. Metal-sounding. Well, most of it. Some of it's quieter, but not in the same way as Elle Fitzgerald. It's not acoustic."

"Metal-sounding? Like... a sword hitting armor? What does metal sound like?" he wonders out loud. "No, I'm sure you don't mean that but I don't really think I know what you do mean. Still, if you like a lot of the same music I like, I don't know why you'd think I wouldn't like that one."

Only way to know is to try it, which he figures he'll do after he gets at least one more good hit in here with the bumper car. Maybe. He'll give it his best go.

They don't have the right kind of vocabulary to describe industrial genre music, but Rosinante is one of the few people who know about the Asset, so they... suppose they can explain. There doesn't seem to be anyone else close enough to overhear. "Because it's not me who likes it. It's the Asset. Its taste is not... the same as mine."

"Ah." He nods. "Darker? Angrier? I don't - I know enough about the Asset to guess at what that means. Big assumptions, but am I far off?"

One last attempt to crash this dumb car into Soldat's, he decides as he floors the gas pedal, not that it does a whole lot for the speed. "I need a cigarette," he announces bluntly, then snorts. "Goddamn fortune teller."

Soldat is distracted, reaching into their jacket for their tablet to maybe play some of it to show Rosinante, so while they see the ram coming, they don't have time to get out of the way. What they can do is make an undignified little yip and grab the side of the car and hope they don't drop the tablet.

They don't, but it's a near thing, and Rosinante bumps their car right up against the side of the ring. "You win," they say with a sheepish grin.

"You let me," he replies. "Well. Or maybe you didn't, but I don't think I did anything special. Anyway, I'm just glad I got to try one of these dumb things out," he says, and gives the car a joking pat of affection once it has come to a full stop.

His toe catches on the lip of the bumper as he tries to stand, and he tumbles straight to the ground, but the bumper car is also a convenient handhold to stand up with. Once successfully on two feet again, he heads out of the arena so he can get his cigarette lit without anyone else who might want to play trying to knock him over.

"Let myself be distracted. Failure on my part." Sure does show how far they've come, though. Actually playing around, letting themselves get distracted in the middle of a "fight", even if that "fight" was with stupid kiddie cars. They can't imagine ever doing that even six months ago. Soldat shakes their head and climbs out of the car to follow.

Politely saying nothing about the fall, instead just scrolling to their saved music files. (That one. You sure? Yes.) "Here. This is what I was talking about."

Music and a cigarette, cool. Rosinante leans back against the arena wall and listens while savoring the smoke - flavorless, now, but the feel of the smoke and the hit of nicotine still provide some satisfaction.

The song is different from what he's been listening to, sure, absolutely, but it's not bad. "Has a good beat to it," he says, noticing his toe has begun to tap slightly along with it. "The lyrics are... kinda sad, though."

"A lot of them are. Asset's kind of a sad sack a lot of the time, when it's not angry." Though it's been a lot less with the blank terror lately, that's something. Kind of like Soldat. (No. You're in my head, Asset, I know what you're feeling most of the time. No.) "I was surprised how many of the modern songs have really kinda depressing lyrics when I actually listened, even when the music sounds happy. Had to do some rearranging of my files."

Edited (wow that was super awkward phrasing /fixes) 2020-09-27 20:47 (UTC)

"Plenty of the ones I've heard are sad too. From my world, I mean. Songs about wars, about losing people to the sea. It's the kind of emotion that inspires some really moving music."

But, point noted about the lyrics contrasting with the music itself. Most of the ballads and other sorrowful tunes he knows have a melody that matches the words. Hm. "But in those cases, like the ones you're talking about, maybe they like the contrast. Maybe that's a thing people from Earth are into now. It's cool to see how other worlds and time periods do things."

"Proper music should have the lyrics and key match at least," Soldat grumbles a little. Mostly because it does make sorting their collection difficult, sometimes, but a little bit because the stuff from the 30s and 40s just is more familiar, and it's perfectly straight-forward.

They tuck the tablet away again and, rather than just making hopeful, wistful looks at the smoke this time, actually flash him a smile and ask, "Bum a cigarette?"

"Yeah, of course," he says without hesitation as he pulls out the pack and holds it out. "I always try to order more than I need. As long as we don't lose the lab or any of its equipment, I should have enough for a couple more months. And even then, I bet we can go directly to the Helix Station if we need to since that's where it always used to come from before anyway."

"Thanks." They pluck one of the cigarettes out and swing their lantern around to light it. This time, they don't show off the pane with the little green crack in it. "Wish we could get Weaver properly on the network while she's down there. I visit the radio tower on my patrols now, but. Still seems like it could be a delay in helping if she needed it."

"Might be like the lighthouse where we'd need to run one of those cables. It's a long way, and dangerous. I'm guessing there's a reason they weren't on the network the whole time when Pluto was running the place."

She did manage to put something on the network once or twice, though. How did that happen? Maybe from one of the submarines?

"They didn't trust us. Didn't believe we'd win. Why communicate regularly when we could be wiped out?" Soldat shrugs, has a drag from the cigarette. They can see the tactical reasoning there. "But now we can't be reset. And we're all Weaver has. Should have regular, easy communication."

"Yeah, good points, all of that. It's easy to forget how wary they were at first. I got to know some of them pretty well. And I feel like I've let some of my caution slip here. Easy to do that here when most people are trustworthy."

Though he frowns at himself for having said that. Not the sort of thing he'd normally choose to admit out loud. A year here really has been an easier life in so many ways than his life at home had been, though.

"We'll figure out something, if we can. There must be a way to get the signal to go farther. It reaches out into the forest pretty far. I don't know anything about all that, but Will might. Or maybe, if it's been done before, it's in their computer system somewhere."

"The radio tower picks up her Morse easy. So some signal reaches, just not that one." Soldat shakes their head a little, not watching Rosinante except out of the corner of their eye. They heard that admission, saw that frown.

So after a beat they say, "When I came here. I was terrified of everyone. Everything. But no one's actually hurt me except green-eyes, and now I'm. Less afraid. I've let my caution slip, too. But I think that's. Better. Everyone tells me to get better. I think that's what getting better means. Not being afraid all the time." So maybe it's better that Rosinante isn't afraid all the time, too? Is what they're trying to get at, here.

He understands plainly enough. "Sounds nice," he comments. "Glad you're less afraid. You're- right, I guess, that if we have the green-eyed spirits to be afraid of, it makes it easier for us all to get along and work together instead of fearing each other. Even when we've had people here who are hard to get along with, I've never felt like they really wanted to hurt any of us."

He works quietly at his cigarette a moment, then adds, "I know the stuff I'm afraid of isn't rational." And then forces himself to stop there. Even now, with this strange compulsion, he knows to stop there. It's ingrained deeply and has been since childhood. If what the fortune teller did to him makes him start to say any of it through his act of resistance, he'll just silence himself.

Aw, that's an important admission, Rosi. Acknowledging that it's not rational is the first step to dealing with it, right? (I thought that was getting annoyed with it and stubborning through it. Well, that's part of it.)

"Neither is mine," Soldat agrees. "Most of it. Misty says it makes sense, but it's still not. Proportional. And it's not all gone." They shake their head a little. "I still can't hear that name. D-doctors still freak me out. I can't hug people when they need it. But it's getting better. I'm glad yours is, too."

"Didn't say it had changed any for me. But you're getting better, I've noticed that myself. Glad for you," he says with a nod.

Then, "Rather talk about you than me," he adds abruptly before shaking his head. "Sorry, that's not - I should just go. Maybe I can sleep this off. There's nothing good that's gonna come from me saying everything I'm thinking all the time."

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worthallthis - 2020-10-09 17:44 (UTC) - Expand

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EVENT LOG: COTTON CANDY HEARTS

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oh geez how did I not reply to this

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