♥ October (Lasohm) Fourth Wall Log

[hugtopiamods]

October (Lasohm) Fourth Wall Log

❥ Speaking of Wall Breaking...

The ghosts in town sure are weird, huh? But they're settling down, as the month draws to a close. They're becoming less anxious and random, their behaviour growing sort of… focused. As time passes some of them begin to develop features. They can interact with the world more consistently. You can… hear their voice.

And then suddenly they are people, real and physical and just as confused to be here as you are. They could be anyone, from your world, someone else's world, a place you've never heard of… some of them could even be you, from a different universe, a different timeline, an unknown reality. What does all this mean?

IT'S FOURTH WALL, Y'ALL. Tell your friends, people interested in apping or just playing around in the setting, anybody! Time to break the wall down and have some fun.

This post serves as a replacement for the usual Test Drive Meme, in order to consolidate the chaos a bit. Though it is being posted now, timeline-wise, this shift will occur ONLY during the weekend prior to applications opening: October 30th to November 2nd, after which point characters will either disappear or become permanent residents via the application process. This also means that the rest of the event effects will have worn off, and characters will be their normal selves through the duration of this prompt.

Some ground rules for the 4th Wall event:

For characters/accounts not in-game:

• a character does not have to meet application qualifications to post to the 4th Wall Event, except in cases where there is an intent to apply when applications open. Duplicates, CRAU, AU, etc. are permitted for the event.
  
• we do ask that crack shenanigans are reasonably limited, game rules are followed, and that the event involve characters only, not players or real people.
  
• anyone can toplevel! It'll be a free for all. Go wild, have fun.
  
• characters will be given a temporary, low-tech communicator for the duration of the event with limited network access, due to limited availability of the real deal.
  
• you will not arrive with any items/companions beyond the clothes that you wear
  
• check out the Setting or FAQ pages for location details! Also, have a look at the October event log, to see what else is going on these days.

For characters/accounts currently in-game:

• players can decide for themselves at the event's conclusion whether or not memories of certain visitors remain, and to what extent; memories could become fuzzy, faces or communication obscured, they could disappear entirely, or they can remain fully intact whether the person apps into the game or not.
  
• network communications with 4th Wall visitors that don't (or can't) app in will be wiped, with the locals citing a data error related to the older communicators being used. Technology can be unpredictable, huh!
  
• any communication exchanges that you WANT to keep can remain with some discretion; for example, if a spouse visits and you happen to take a selfie with them, and they do not (or cannot) app but having that photo of them would give you comfort, feel free to keep it.
  
• Similar to the TDM, 4th wall threads cannot be used for AC or AC Reward purposes unless it is between characters already in-game.
  

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Click the above prompt to expand for details. Timeline-wise, this occurs October 30th to November 2nd. For players currently in-game, if you have any questions, please direct them to the FAQ or to the Mod Question thread on the original plotting post.

On this post, we've created both another Questions Thread and a Toplevel thread (see below) for visiting players, the latter so that anyone can track and see who's posted! When you've made a toplevel, feel free to comment HERE to let everyone know.

Comments

[unnecessaryflourishes]

They are both different to what the other remembers, it's true. And there's something almost odd about it, to see the woman he remembers and yet have her act utterly unlike the warrior he recalls. To see her seem small, and attempting to shrink in on herself besides - things he knows are almost certainly because of who he is.

(Of who he is not, if only because he cannot remember what has come before.)

"Did I not say from the first that if you had aught you desired of me, you need only ask?"

He is not unaware of the fact that the situation has changed rather dramatically from that first meeting. Nor that there is rather more meaning to his choice of words, given that she'd been in love with the version of him who had existed in this world prior. But even so, it is still the truth and he is still willing to listen, should she ask - and offer such as he is able to do so, if nothing else.

[astralera]

While Era hadn't forgotten Hades' offer from so long ago, she hadn't thought of it in well over a year now. To hear it echoed again catches her off guard, and her gaze flits back to his face before darting back down to the vicinity of her feet. The soft flush of her cheeks is made readily apparent by how it contrasts the ivory of her scales—something Era is unfortunately all too aware of.

"An offer made before you made me kill you," she tells him matter-of-factly. "And what I desire of you is something you cannot give and I cannot ask for."

Her tail moves to curl around one of her legs, tensing and relaxing over and over in a rhythmic, grounding pattern. Some of the tension eases from Era's shoulders after a moment of this.

"...But I had meant to ask was if you would permit me to touch your face."

[unnecessaryflourishes]

"Yes?"

Judging by the tone of his voice, he either doesn't find this particularly out of the ordinary or - more likely - doesn't consider it to be something that would necessarily negate his offer.

"There were only ever the two outcomes, in that conflict."

He will not apologize for his actions there, though he does regret, a little, that it had come to that. Enough that he does let some of that show through in his expression. Had there been another option, he might well have taken it. As it is... what is done is done. Thus, he leaves the comment to stand as it will and instead turns to what he can answer.

What he can safely answer. He can guess at what she might desire of him, but ... she's right to assume that it's not something he is prepared to give. Not yet, at any rate.

"Gladly."

It's a strange request, certainly. But not one that he's unwilling to grant - it costs him little enough, save perhaps for a moment of bending down so that she might be more easily able to reach.

[astralera]

While she wouldn't necessarily assume the offer was rescinded upon his death, Era can't say the result of their confrontation didn't change everything. The last request he made of her. That tired smile before he faded away... Even before she knew the extent of what their souls felt for one another she knew that something had changed.

She frowns, having nothing to else to add. Things are as they are and there is no changing them now.

It's only after he voices his answer to her request that she looks up again, surprised. Her expression shifts. She rolls her bottom lip in her teeth, hesitant and conflicted, but eventually resolves to cross the distance between them once he bends over to a height she can reach without straining.

Era reaches out without a word, fingertips pausing a hair's breadth from the sharp jut of his cheekbones before carefully brushing against his skin. His eyes are bright and beautiful as ever and she quickly shuts her own, not yet ready to confront the lack of affection in their depths. She focuses instead on tracing the familiar topography of his face with practiced ease; the slope of his cheeks, the sharp angle of his nose, the curve of his jaw, the lines of his brow, and the delicate skin around his third eye. By the time she reaches his hairline there is a small, contented smile tugging at her lips.

She tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear, then trails her fingers back down along his jaw to the jut of his chin, allowing the pad of her thumb to brush against his lips. She lingers like that for a moment, lost in thought.

Eventually Era leans in to press her lips against his in a quick, chaste kiss, then pulls away from him entirely.

"I don't like you."

[unnecessaryflourishes]

She's not wrong, to assume there'd been a change, at the end of that conflict. There had been. But even that hadn't been anything that would have negated his previous offer. True, there are things she may not feel she can ask, now, and things he may not be able to give. But she is ever and always free to ask, should she wish to.

(He notes, too, that she seems to be surprised by his acquiescence. For what reason and why she might have been expecting otherwise are questions he doesn't have the answer to and doesn't mean to ask, but he is at aware of it.)

Still, he lets her take her time, as she explores his face, fingers tracing over his skin with what is unmistakably a comfortable sort of ease. Something she has no doubt done before, unless his misses his guess (and something that few people would dare to do, at that). There's a smile, too, brief and mostly genuine, as she tucks that errant strand of hair behind his ear. One that might well go all but unnoticed, should her eyes remain shut, but it's there nonetheless.

The kiss, when it comes, is more of a surprise - he blinks at it, even chaste though it is, and there's a moment of silence after, as he takes in not just her words but how her actions affect them. That she should love him is no surprise - not after what he'd been told about his previous stay - but that she should phrase it so is not quite as he might have expected.

"Certainly not the typical way of announcing such things. Though, yes, I can see how that might be the case, unusually worded though it might be."

He cannot say that the feelings are returned, regrettably. But neither will he dissuade her from doing so - assuming he even could.

[astralera]

Era looks away, bringing her arms back up to wrap around herself in yet another absentminded gesture of comfort. It isn't as though she could pretend she felt otherwise, and it would hardly be fair not to inform him as quickly as possible. Still, she is...

She wishes things were different.

"I've tried to make it stop," she says, voice edged with enough emotion to give a clear idea of just how hard she tried to cull these feelings before they blossomed. "You are Hades, but you are not Asphodelus. I hold no expectations of you."

[unnecessaryflourishes]

“Even we Ascians cannot stop emotions.  Ours or anyone else's.”

And no matter how much they might wish it were the case.  True, it is easier for any emotion to become lesser over the decades.  But that's hardly any different from how it might be for any mortal being.  They merely have more time; both to live with their emotions and for those same emotions to fade away into the background.  Or in rare cases, out of memory entirely.  But cutting an emotion off at the roots?  That is something they've never mastered.  Not unless one of the others of their number has and has simply failed to mention it.

"And you need not worry that your emotions are holding undue influence.  I cannot stop them," and wouldn't even if he could, "but they are yours, tied to the memories that once were.  Remember them.  For he who was, even if I cannot be him."

[astralera]

"...If I tell myself I am happy, eventually I will feel happy. If I tell myself I am not in pain, then I am not in pain. So too for fear, or sadness, or anger. All manner of things..." She has spoken these words once before, to the Hades she once knew. "And yet for all my efforts I could not make these feelings stop. I can't, no matter how hard I try! It is like a sickness that plagues me without respite. It is not fair—"

Era cuts herself off with a shaky breath, lifting a hand to surreptitiously wipe away the wetness in her eyes. She takes another, steading breath before speaking again with significantly more control of both voice and emotion:

"...But it shall do my utmost not to burden you with such trifling matters."

[unnecessaryflourishes]

"Not fair to whom?"

The fact that she has, in essence, been trying to deny herself her own feelings - or to believe her way into altering them - is something that he may well wish to revisit later. Not least of all for the fact that he can't imagine it helps any, for all that he knows the urge. Knows the desire to set aside emotions that would prove inconvenient. That would jeopardize a plan, or leave him too-vulnerable. But this, too, is nothing that he intends to touch on in the immediate moment.

"Or did you think I had never dealt with unrequited emotions before? Be they love or otherwise?"

[astralera]

"To you." She gestures to him with an arm, then toward the direction her soulmate is in. "To Ardbert."

Not to herself, because she is more prone to thinking such pain is something she is deserving of.

"From someone bearing her soul?"

[unnecessaryflourishes]

"I cannot - will not - deny your emotions exist. But even from someone bearing her soul, they ask nothing of me. How can they, when you have taken such painstaking care to make it clear that I am not him?"

Care, it should be noted, that he does appreciate, and there's a softness in his voice that might well suggest at it, should she think to look for it.

"As for Ardbert--" he shrugs, gracefully as ever "--that you will have to take up with him."

[astralera]

"You are not him, but he was you. Similar to how I was once her, but now am just... me."

She puts a subtle emphasis on 'similar', because that's all they are—similar in concept, but nowhere near identical. She can never compare to someone Unsundered, whole of soul and memories.

"If you've no qualms with amaro or chocobo, there is room to spare in my house. I've an amaro chick I hatched before Asphodelus left... Hythlo would be delighted to see you, even if he cannot understand the circumstances."