entrancelogs | It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you!

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It may very well be the worst thing that's ever happened to you! | OPEN MINGLE

Who: EVERYONE!
Where: EVERYWHERE!
When: Friday October 27th - Tuesday October 31st
Rating: PG-13, warn if you're gonna go higher!
Summary: A catch all for the Horrible Memory Truth Event!
The Story:

For the duration of this event, everyone's entire room will be replaced with a memory playing on loop. They will likely recognize the moment as soon as they see it – it is a moment they remember as the worst moment of their entire lives. It could be a memory from home or something that happened in Wonderland. Lengths of the memories will vary, but they will find that these are not memories they can merely watch – they can step into these memories and attempt to make changes to them, and the memories will be long enough that they have time to make changes (though no more than 24 hours). However, anyone who tries will find that it is futile. No matter what you do or how hard you try, the outcome is always exactly the same somehow. No changes you make will prevent that horrible outcome. It just happens over and over and over again no matter what you do.

On top of that, perhaps complicating any attempts to make changes, everyone will be forced to be honest for the duration of the event. No lies or half-truths are allowed, and filters will be gone for the entire five days. If something bothers someone then they will blurt it out, regardless of whether or not it hurts someone's feelings, and no one will be able to simply keep quiet when they have something to say. They must be truthful and honest with every word they say.

This is a catch-all log for all of your Worst Memory needs! Please mark your threads clearly in the subject line with your character's name and Room Number + Floor for character rooms, or just location if you're making a top level for a public place in the mansion (like the tea rooms or the kitchen) so people can see if there's already a thread available. And here's the plot post if you need it!

Have fun!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, casting off's a pain. Casting on's more fun, especially if you looooove counting.

[And they're both kind of all about numbers, aren't they?]

There's more than one way to do it, you know. If you don't like one method, you can just do another. Can you do knitted? The one where you almost do a knit stitch, but you don't take it off the needle.

[First one they ever learned. A good one for beginners, because even if you forget the complicated fancy work another method might involve, you definitely remember how to do a knit stitch. That one becomes muscle memory before anything else.]

You know, I think you'd make a better knitter than me. It needs patience. A good head for patterns and counting and memorizing. ...People to knit for.

heh, always did like numbers.

[Not as much as the mathematicians, the engineers. But there was always an elegant simplicity to numbers. They made sense. Numbers never lie.]

that...sounds familiar. that might be the one i learned. how do i not take it off the needle?

[He makes a sort of haphazard attempt, but he can't figure out where the loose end is supposed to hang.]

i dunno. patience is only part of it. you got commitment. you start something and you finish it. me, heh, i give up too easy.

[A few dropped stitches, a few dead friends or family members, and what's the point in continuing?]

Okay, so... start with a slipknot on one needle, right? You do it on the stage where you've got your working needle poked into a stitch. You kind of pull it away a bit, so the loop gets really big. Then you add a stitch by wrapping the working yarn, like... oh, I'm bad at explaining it out loud. Watch.

[They pick up their own project, dig the needle through one of the loops. Go through it slowly, step by step, with lots of pauses to show him what they're doing. Don't grab his hands and tug them through the motions, because that's touch, feels like a level of control-taking they don't particularly want to reach for. Just let him learn by doing. They can pull the extra stitches off their own work easily enough.]

This will be good practice finishing what you start, then. You can make socks, you know. Or toys for 4. Or the most humiliating cat sweaters that your imagination can dream up. The power you hold in your hands as we speak is entirely without limit.

Edited 2017-11-02 03:58 (UTC)

okay, so like...

[He tries to follow along, but it's easier once they actually demonstrate. It's a little hard since he has to actually mirror their actions, and the stitch falls off once, but he gets it back. It's sloppy, but after a few moments, he has his first stitch.]

theeerrree we go. first step done.

[The knit stitch is simple enough from there. He takes it slowly, thinking maybe he'll just do a scarf for now. Scarves are easy.]

man, little cat sweaters. he'd hate that so much. probably rip them to shreds. socks, though...maybe i could figure out designs. patterns. make gifts or something.

[The possibilities are endless. It's weird to feel this sense of...creativity. It's different.]

Yeah, just like that. Now you just have to repeat step one about fifty to ninety times.

[Ha. That's knitting, right? Just do the same step for about two weeks, and you're there! Maybe it feels a little easier than most things because it is just a single step. One little thing, one little thing, one more little thing, until you end up with something massive built entirely out of those tiny gestures.]

That, too, is within your power. You're used to making things, aren't you? You build machines.

[He had blueprints and a broken mass of metal in his secret lab. He knew how to make the DT Extractor. So... he knows how, right? He makes sense of blueprints full of complex little diagrams and illegible handwriting and pieces them together.]

It's exciting, is it not? Having the potential to... to want something to exist, and just make it happen, like that.

repetition is something we're good at.

[He actually winks at them, despite himself. The good humor is genuine. Maybe it's not really...the best idea, to make light of all that, but. Well, Sans has never really been accused of taking things too seriously. And Chara has an irreverent streak a mile wide. So maybe it's okay.]

[He keeps knitting, starting on the first row.]

kinda. sorta. i was never an engineer.

[This isn't something he particularly wants to talk about, but on the other hand...at this point, it's pretty harmless stuff, right?]

there's, heh, there's actually a lot of jokes in the sciences, about engineers vs. the rest of us. engineers do. the rest of us just kinda...think, and write things down. you know, you'd--probably make a pretty good engineer. you've got the head for it.

[Sans has endless respect for engineers, like Alphys. They get things done. They do the heavy lifting, and they've got the minds to design things and make them real.]

it...is, yeah. it's nice. and i like that the process is so...meditative.

[Ordinarily, they would smile and nod knowingly. Just stick to agreement that knitting is a great way to switch off for a bit, teasing quips about how Sans doesn't even have an on switch, wry remarks about how the only career they're cut out for is worm food. Ordinarily, they'd pretend to be following along, because they know everything an adult knows. They're clearly totally definitely just as smart as a guy with a literal fuckign PhD, you guys.

Alas, then, that this is still a forced honesty event.]

I don't even know what an engineer does, [they confess, looking kind of mortified at themself. Their cheeks going even redder than usual, they add:] I just thought they drove trains.

[You see "engineer" in the picture books and cartoons, at least, and that's what it involves. Doesn't seem all that sciencey at all.]

I mean... I guess I could drive a train if I really put my mind to it. I got to drive the Mako for a little bit, once.

hee hee, yeah, that's pretty confusing, huh? they shoulda thought of a better word. at least underground, we don't have trains to confuse them with. i think most monsters don't even know what a train is. i actually...well, the truth is, i'm not entirely sure myself?

[Which is kind of embarrassing to admit. He knows they run on tracks, and he knows they're like...long metal vehicles. Beyond that, he has no idea.]

shepard's tank, right? sounds like fun. but nah, an engineer is like alphys. i think al is multi-disciplinary--uh, that means she's in multiple scientific fields. engineers design and build things. there's lots of different kinds. but the main point is the designing and the building. tools, machines, bridges. all kinds of stuff. it's basically the practical application of math and science.

Trains are just really big cars. They're both big metal things fueled by burning.

[Aren't they? You shovel coal into trains. Or maybe they're electric now, if they're still around at all? They must still be around. You could hear a distant train whistle on quiet nights on the surface, they remember, in that silent little backwater village. It's weird that he wouldn't know that. It's so - it seems like the kind of thing he'd know. He'd... they really do believe he knows everything, don't they?]

Alphys could definitely build one if she felt like it. Then she could be every kind of engineer.

[Would make a better use of her time than... well, no, that's bitter. Asriel's not a flower right now. Don't be like that.]

I've built something, too. I built that potato gun that one time!

[It's the sort of thing that should end with a period, not an exclamation mark. It's just a stupid juvenile weapon. They shouldn't be proud of it. They should be set against proving him right about anything, even something neutral like making a good engineer. Again, their face goes redder. They start knitting again, just so their hands are doing something, just so they don't look pleased or bashful or uncertain or... whatever they are?]

that makes sense...if it's a big enough combustion engine, then it could probably generate enough force to pull a heavy load. huh, maybe that's why they're called engineers?

[Hey, that does make a lot of sense.]

she'd be an engineer engineer. a double engineer.

[He grins, because that's utterly perfect.]

maybe we could get her to install a whole train line through wonderland. so we don't have to walk as much.

[The joke of course being that he barely walks anywhere, anyway.]

ah, yeah, i remember that. you end up launching any potatoes? how far'd they go?

[That was one of the things he sort of wanted to try doing as a kid, but it was of course way too dangerous. Even the chemistry set he got for Gyftmas one year was deemed too dangerous. Especially after he discovered what sodium does when it's thrown in water.]

[He's still knitting, and after a handful of decent stitches, he pauses, remembering how to start the next row.
Yeah, this thing is going to end up probably a scarf or something, if he can actually commit to it.]

Yeah, it actually worked! I had a hard time getting the seal right, but I totally smashed a potato against the eighth floor of the mansion!

[Gosh, it'd been so long, they'd almost forgotten! A raw tuber didn't have the same satisfying splatter-power as a bottle of ketchup, alas. Or, really, the same effect in terms of sheer...]

I think I really only built it at all to see how people would react.

[If they wanted a weapon, they already had a rocket launcher. Frisk pointed out as much. It had been incredibly unpragmatic for the pragmatic one to go to all this trouble. Nor had it really been... they'd never expected for a second for anyone to think "wow you must be dedicated" or "wow you must be smart" or anything like that. They may expect attention to come from a lot of their actions, but that expectation is never for positive attention.]

Like, I don't know. Testing if I'd get caught red-handed doing a "because you can, you have to" thing or if it'd be proof I'm still the violent one.

But... you know what? It was a really cool toy. And nobody was mad, were they?

heh, nice. that's pretty impressive.

[That's something like eighty feet, though that's a pretty haphazard guess for the height of a mansion floor. Either way, it's not bad for a flying potato.]

[He glances up at them, because he's not sure they meant to say that. They're both being...remarkably honest with each other, considering it's Sans and Chara. And sure, there's an event on, but not all of it has felt forced. It's been comfortable. He doesn't want to comment on it if it's something they didn't actually mean to say.]

[Not that he'll really have a choice.]

i kind of had a feeling. thing is, building a potato gun is kinda...hm. it's more of a sorta...scientific endeavor, or a construction endeavor. i'm not sure how to phrase it. it has gun in the name, but you can't really kill someone with a potato. or, uh, at least no one who's normal.

[Anything launched at a speed that high will cause damage, sure, but even the average monster wouldn't die from something like that.]

you're right, a potato gun is a cool toy, heh. building one isn't about violence. destruction, maybe, but...i think i said this like a year ago or something, but destruction can be...harmless? there's a difference between destructiveness and violence, like...how there's a difference between mischief and violence.

[And he's not sure Chara was ever actually taught that. They equate any level of mischief to badness, to violence. Any little transgression is evidence that they're some irredeemable villain or demon.]

[He's not gonna say any of that, though, because it's not some necessary truth that Wonderland's gonna force out of him. Saying it will just mess up this tentative calm they have going.]

[Plus he knows he was one of the ones who reinforced the idea that any toe out of line deserves judgment and punishment.]

oh, you know--that sorta reminds me. awhile ago, you mentioned putting CDs in a microwave. i actually went and did it, heh. you were right, the effect is really cool.

[They know he can't possibly be lying, so it has to be true that there's a difference between destructiveness and violence. It still... it still completely evades them, though. Synonyms, aren't they? Accidentally spill a bowl of fruit or throw a plate against the wall, and the punishment that follows is still the exact same. Play too loudly, take too much apple juice, spend too much time in your room... anything, no matter how small, could be taken as an intentional, spiteful act, and thus reacted to with the vitriol they came to expect from humanity. Right?

Better not to ask any uncomfortable questions about it. They need to think about it harder. Even in a forced-honesty situation, they can still play it like they're totally following along with adult concepts if it's something they need to mull over before they know what they actually feel about it, right?

He moves on, anyway, and they're spared finding out the hard way whether they have to bring it up or not. Sans mentions the CD thing - man, they'd totally forgotten they'd ever told him anything like that! So much for being nothing but a memory, ha. They sit up straighter, eyes lighting up despite themselves.]

Isn't it wild? I've thought really hard about why it does those spider-cracks like that, but... golly, I don't know! It must be whatever makes ice and glass crack the same way, but without any actual... nothing's hitting it, just... light or heat or something! Where else can you see something break without even being touched at all?

[Well, not break - it's still in one piece, right? Maybe fixating on the fact that it breaks is the wrong thing to focus on, anyway, but... there's prettiness in it, isn't there? There's mystery in the way something can change without anything laying a hand on it.]

They're fascinating, aren't they? Microwaves, I mean. A CD cracks, but glass doesn't. Tinfoil is fine getting heated in an oven, but it's the complete opposite of fine getting heated in a microwave. Let's both pretend I know exactly why that is, because that's gotta be the kind of thing a thirteen-year-old would definitely know.

[They don't pursue it, and that's probably for the best. They can be more frank with each other than usual, sure, but there's still a lot they both just...shouldn't talk about. Not yet. Still some lines in the sand. And he's gotta be more careful about seeing where those lines are and not pushing it.]

[It's harder with this type of event going on, but that was why he changed the subject, anyway.]

right? it's really neat. you can get that sort of breaking effect with pressure, heat, light...there's lots of ways to, uh, break things.

[Same with people, but thankfully he catches himself before he says it out loud. It's not some necessary truth, plus it's metaphorical, so it doesn't make it through the filter.]

i'm not sure myself, either. something to do with crystalline structures, i think.

[He'd have to look it up.]

heh, alright, i don't mind pretending. i think that's...a bit of a loophole for this event. microwaves are pretty neat, though. energy in general, and how it moves and interacts with things and changes things. it's neat stuff.

Yes! It really is. Energy stuff... is that chemistry?

[They don't really go over the finer points of physics vs. chemistry in fourth grade. But they do have the chemistry set Mettaton got them, so they know a few things about chemistry!]

I - I kind of like that stuff, I guess. How things change. How a tiny bit of something totally invisible or inert can make such big, dramatic differences, or make something completely new. I just... enjoy knowing why things happen, I suppose.

[Put a white carnation in a vase full of blue-tinted water. Plant your hydrangeas in acidic soil. Write "bepis" in nondairy creamer, then strike a match. Put a mason jar full of root beer in the freezer or a can of ravioli into a campfire. Things are never static.]

The things you write off as mundane or small or boring? You don't know them at all until you see them brought to an extreme.

hm. kinda? energy is part of science, so a lot of different fields study it. chemistry is kinda like applied physics. chemistry in particular is concerned with why things happen. and how things change.

[He could honestly see Chara ending up in one of the more practical fields. Probably not physics--something more like engineering or chemistry. Actually doing things, as opposed to just sitting around and talking about stuff or writing lots and lots and lots of equations.]

yeah, heh, i can see how you'd like that sorta stuff. the world needs more people who look at something and ask why or how something is the way it is, or why or how something happens. most people just accept things the way they are. the best sciences who make the biggest difference are...well, determined.

[Not necessarily capital-D, but still.]

[Applied physics, huh? They think about blueprints in a secret lab, and a broken machine. They think about how Sans knew how to build a DT Extractor. They think about how Sans knew about the Amalgamates and DT even when Alphys thought she had to hide this from everyone.

...Determination. Is that chemistry? Biology? Physics? Engineering? They'd kind of thought that it was magic, not science. They think it would be kind of foolish to admit to being that clueless.]

You're a scientist, aren't you?

[You can't go admitting you don't know a thing to a genius. Scientists are, like... doctors. Dr. Alphys, Dr. ...Aster? Dr. Sans?? Oh my god, he's Dr. Sans and they've never thought about that at all.]

How come you weren't the royal scientist? You're more qualified than Alphys, right? You just... stopped building stuff.

Is science... not fun anymore?

[Maybe that's an unfair question to ask. They're - they're good at digging into the bones of the world. They know hidden monologues about someone else, and how they're supposed to be able to connect the dots between a drawing and illegible handwriting and filenames. If they focused a little harder, they could probably remember all the foggy parts, right?

Yes. Yes they can.

Frisk wanted to find Wonderland's core. Its CORE. Why? Because Chara taught them how to crack open the bones of the world. Because Chara's SPELL filled their head with those filenames and flags and Fun values, and lurking deep within those lines of text was...

The answer comes, and they can sort of see how it might be possible for science to suddenly not look so fun anymore.]

[Determination is like a basic element--it shows up in all fields, in different capacities. It affects every aspect of things. At least it can.]

heh, sorta. i was. i don't think you ever really stop...at least, you never stop thinking like one. which, heh, is a problem sometimes.

[It means he approaches things too analytically, too logically, finds himself working through problems and puzzles without even meaning to. His mind is the only thing fast about him. Too fast for his own good, half the time.]

[He slows in his knitting as Chara talks and finally stops outright for several long seconds. He stares at the two rows he's managed to finish. Not very impressive. Only one dropped stitch, though.]

[This is...pushing the bounds of this unspoken truce they've had, but it's...it's fine. This is okay. Maybe it's alright to talk about it. He'd really rather not, and it has much less to do with secrets this time, but well. He doesn't have a choice. But that's fine, it's not like they're digging for anything really bad, and he's trying to be more honest with them anyway, regardless of events.]

i-i, uh...

[It's fine. He starts on his current row again, dropping another stitch.]

well, for...for one thing, al is actually more qualified. way...way more qualified. she's an actual doctor. i'm pretty sure she's got more than one phd, probably. heh, i never even finished mine. she's a natural genius and a hard worker. she's multi-disciplinary. ridiculously skilled. she was a shoe-in for the position, way better for it than me, even if...

[And this is the part he doesn't want to talk about, because every single time he's talked about it, everything has gone wrong. Every single time. Give them nothing, he'd said, a year ago. Shouldn't talk about it. Should just keep it to himself. It's all gone and buried and never existed anyway, so he shouldn't...]

[Doesn't have a choice, though.]

when g--when, uh, the last royal scientist disappeared, a lot of stuff went with him. uh, it's sorta...complicated. if you remove one integer--sorry, one, uh, factor, of an equation, it affects the entire equation. everything. see, i--he was one of my inspirations for getting into science at all. the idea of working with him was a sorta motivator. he hired me personally. so...with him not existing, the rest of that never existed. my--career never existed. so, as far as the world is concerned, i was never a scientist at all. i never, heh, i never held down a job at all until i became a sentry. someone as lazy as sans would never be able to hold down a real job, right? heh.

[He tries to focus on his knitting, but he misses another stitch and almost drops his entire work off the needle. He manages to catch it before it slides off.]

al was at the top of a very short list of candidates for the position of royal scientist. i wasn't even on it. and that was fine by me. too much responsibility, yanno? and after everything that happened--all the...we did horrible stuff. we abused science. i, heh, damn, i'd really rather not get this uh, this in-depth about it, but it felt like i couldn't touch science without, uh, ruining something. and everything afterward, for the last ten years, every time i went anywhere near science, it was just...bad. or pointless. or someone got hurt. so...

[He takes a breath, forcing a grin, forcing himself to finish the row and start a new one.]

so i guess, no. science isn't fun anymore.

[They're not sure if they can believe that Alphys is the most qualified person. She lied to get the job. The thing that she was supposed to have discovered - determination? Sans already knew about it. Sans knew how to build a DT Extractor, so he knew what DT was, what it was used for, what it did. Sans knew more than her, in fact, because he knew about timelines and SAVEs and... whatever that machine he had was for. All she could actually claim her career consisted of was lying, ruining lives with her incompetence, and stealing the work of other scientists.

...And making Mettaton's body. So... okay. She had one good thing.]

Not being able to touch science without ruining something sure didn't stop Alphys.

[That's mean. They don't need to be mean about it. Push it away, move on.]

I won't ask more about... specific people. The past. You know.

[They can't even recall the name. Weren't they just thinking it a minute ago? Dr. Alphys, Dr. something-or-other, Dr. Sans? Maybe they're getting worse at recalling this stuff, now that they can't keep digging back into the bones of that left-behind world.]

But... isn't it supposed to be a good thing? Living your life for someone else's sake.

[Their own needles are moving on automatic now. Infinite rows of stockinette are easy like that. The dropped stitches and slip-ups in Sans' work go unnoticed. Learning to spot and fix your own mistakes is a big part of actually being able to knit something to completion, after all, and they've got their eyes staunchly fixed on their own work.]

Every narrative I can think of says it's good. Knights and saints and lovers all do it. Heroes do it.

[Anime magical girls do it.]

So how come devoting your future to that guy just meant you lost something you used to like doing?

[How come when Asriel did it, he lost his entire future? How come when Chara did it, they were evil, manipulative, just looking to start wars?]

Is it that caring about someone just means you'll set them back in the end, or... is it just that it turns out bad because you picked somebody who wasn't... really a good person?

[They don't even know what Dr. Something-or-other was really like. They sort of vaguely remember what he built, they can recite a sprite filename, but none of that really gives them a sense for who a person actually is. They said they wouldn't ask about the past or specific people, so they don't let themself ask how the two of them abused science or what about it had made science seem so joyless and dangerous. That's too personal. Better to keep it to vague, general, hypothetical terms.]

[Technically, Sans lied to get his own job as well. Of course, that was erased too.]

she's more committed than me. she'd rather try to move forward, fix things, make amends. which is more than i can say half the time.

[Alphys is a better person than him. Better, smarter.]

thank you. i appreciate that.

[It's not easy to find an out in a situation like this. The fact that he won't have to talk about one of the more damaging subjects any further is such a relief that he finishes his row without dropping any more stitches.]

[He's quiet as they parse their thoughts, letting them come around to it. He's not sure he necessarily lived for Gaster, but he understands what they mean.]

i think it's...not that simple. i think there's too many variables for it to be black and white. living your life for someone else can be a good thing, but...not if you're sacrificing some major part of yourself, i think. compromising who you are. and it depends on the person. it depends on the circumstances. sometimes things start with the best intentions, and something just...goes wrong somewhere along the way.

[He pauses, debating whether he wants to say this. Maybe it's alright if it's freely offered.]

he was a good person at first. but it...all went wrong. he went too far. we all did. and it corrupted him. and the thing is, it wasn't all his fault. things just...happened.

[He pauses again, grin turning somewhat wry.]

there's, uh, this star trek quote i like..."it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. that is not a weakness. that is life." it's a real polite way of saying--shit happens. i guess that's...why it is important to know when to quit. so that you also know when to keep going. or something like that.

[Another pause and he chuckles a bit.]

man, now i'm quoting star trek. see? once a nerd, always a nerd.

Star Trek also had a guy who rigged the Kobayashi Maru scenario so it was winnable for him. "I don't believe in the no-win scenario," right?

[They had Netflix on the surface. Pick your own things to watch, and you'll mess the recommendations up, get caught. Stick to the things on your parents' watch lists, put subtitles on, mute it. They can't even remember which episode it was (it was a movie, not an episode) or whether it was Spock or Picard or Safeway (none of the above), but they do remember the concept of the unwinnable scenario very clearly.

Probably not surprising that it would resonate with a Determined soul. Ha.]

Frisk found a way to do what I died failing to do. Frisk found a way to do it perfectly. Doesn't that prove that the right kind of person can find a way to do it right?

[Frisk's way was the better way. Asriel said so. The ones killed this way took didn't count, wouldn't start a war. Everyone's perfectly happy. Peace and prosperity will reign throughout the land. He had no regrets.

Weren't they living completely for other people when they set the Underground free? They solved the problems of everyone who beat them up. Even when they ran away, they did it with a smile on their face (and a spear embedded in their back). They were whatever people needed them to be. And... it didn't go wrong. It didn't go too far. It didn't corrupt them. They were prepared to be the future of humans and monsters, walking out of Ebbott with Mom holding their hand and the whisper in their head finally quiet.

So why did that work better? Why did everything end up perfect for them? What's - what makes them nothing alike, if they're so... why did it fail for one but not for the other?]

If you're Determined, an anomaly, a special case, whatever. If you have the resolve to change fate... do you still just have to accept that you might just have been fated to fail? How does anyone live with knowing they're born doomed?

[They're knitting faster, hands an automatic nervous flurry of stitch after stitch.]

God, I think all the time about maybe being born doomed. Like... no matter what you do, it's just going to turn out that you'll always end up hurting people. Things just... happen, right?

I'm - wowie, I'm getting way too dark for this, huh? What happened to keeping this fun?

[He brightens.]

pssh, yeah, well that was kirk. full of determination, that guy. picard was more...integrity, probably some perseverance too.

[He starts thinking about what kind of soul colors some of the other Star Trek captains might've had and then stops. Boy, if he starts in on that, he'll be thinking about it all day.]

i...dunno about perfect. and it's not that i'm doubting frisk. it's just that...perfection is impossible. the most perfect scenario would mean frisk never got killed, never got hurt. that a kid didn't have to, uh...solve the problems of a whole species and a bunch of...depressed individuals all by themself. things would end with you surviving, and asriel getting his body back, and maybe finding a way to save the--the other six.

[The most perfect ending is the one where literally everyone ends up happy, the one where there's no conflict or pain or suffering, no sacrifice at all. The one where everyone understands each other right away, where everyone survives, everyone is saved.]

i also don't...think you died failing to do anything. you got sick. that's not a failure, that just...happens.

[The got sick and died, and Asriel happened to absorb their soul. Maybe on the Surface they could have found six other human souls or something, but that would still involve sacrifice. Though he thinks he can see how Chara would see it as a failure. Living with the Dreemurrs, being told they hold the key to monsters' salvation...and then getting sick and dying.]

[It's unfair. Being sick is unfair.]

honestly? i don't believe in fate. i think the hard thing is, uh...learning how to tell the difference between the things you can change, if you work hard enough, and...the things you can't change, no matter what. the world just has some rules that can't be broken. even a world like ours, where some rules can be...uh...bent.

[He's quiet for a bit as they talk, and when they're finished he gives a soft chuckle and shakes his head.]

nah, it's...okay. i know what you mean. i think about...similar stuff. believing you "came out wrong" is similar to believing you were "born doomed."

[His grin fades just slightly.]

maybe it's all just bullshit. being...born a certain way. i mean, that's a lot like fate, and... i think...these past two years, and the stuff that's happened the last few months with, uh, with frisk, it gets...for me, at least, it gets easy to blame the shitty things i do on...how i am. you spend enough years doing that and it's just--real easy to say, oh, that bad thing i did was inevitable, cause i'm a bad person. you keep making mistakes, or things keep going wrong, and...it feels like some kind of default. like, uh. looking at the forest and not the trees, or something.

but the last time this truth thing happened, you showed me that it's...not that way. that it's never too late. that things and people can change. it's just...not a simple fix. you don't--flip that switch in your head, and instantly you get it. it takes constant work, and work...heh. work sucks.

[But it's not inevitable. It's not doomed. There are fundamental truths in the world, but this isn't one of them.]

[For a moment, hot-cold numbness spills down the back of their neck, robs them of feeling in their fingertips and toes. There's danger in not being able to lie. There's horrible, horrible danger in it. The peril of falling right back into that despised cycle, where they're not allowed to have any secrets from Sans, where privacy and autonomy are things children don't deserve, because they say the word "fail" and he points out that they just got sick. That it's not a failure, not something they did, just something that happened to them.]

It was a failure. I did fail.

[They can't keep it back. Wonderland won't let them. The blood is draining from their face, robbing their cheeks of rosiness, and their hands are frozen mid-stitch, pulling the working yarn wrapped around their finger tighter and tighter. They can't say it. They can't say it. It'll ruin everything. They'll ruin everything.

Have to keep dodging. Have to. If Wonderland's going to demand they tell a truth, they just have to reach for one that's safe to tell.]

...You're right. It's not too late.

[Focus on that. Focus on all the rest of the things he said. The conversation has already moved on. Make sure it stays moved on.]

Hard to keep those blinders off, is it not? Dig a rut deep enough, the only surroundings you can perceive anymore are just... dirt.

You know, back when I first came here... I used to ask Frisk something. I used to demand whether any of their friends truly knew and cherished them. People from the perfectly happy timeline... the child they met was born of rehearsing, weren't they? How much of it was Frisk making the choice they wanted to make, and how much of it was Frisk choosing the option that everyone had already told them they were supposed to pick?

[Actual perfection is impossible. There was no way to break the barrier like that on the first timeline. It had to be a performance. It had to be enough to get every last monster in the Underground willing to follow them to New Home.]

Nobody can really be that. Yet, even so... I think that's still the standard I'm holding myself to. That's still what "good" means. When I inevitably cannot be that... doesn't it feel like failure? Doesn't it feel easy to conclude that the reason you can't do it is because something's wrong with you?

[They go quiet, and Sans says nothing, glancing up at them. They've gone all pale, shaky. They say they did fail, and he still doesn't answer. He gets it. They've never exactly shied away from the concept of death, but that first time must've been...]

[He decides to stop thinking about it. It's none of his business. He probably shouldn't have brought it up at all.]

[They slowly come back down, and he's patient, not saying a word until they do.]

that's a good way of putting it. dirt.

[His eyesockets lid partway as they talk about Frisk. What decisions were their own, and what were simply what everyone expected of them. No, what everyone wanted of them. Because most monsters expected something very different, and the point was that Frisk proved them wrong. But how much of it was trial and error? At what point must Frisk have started feeling like none of their decisions were really their own?]

[Another reason it's so easy for them to feel like they're not a good person.]

i think people...want something to blame, maybe. or someone. heh, that's probably why people come up with prophecies about angels and such. create someone to blame. if you can't blame someone else, you can blame yourself. i think because the idea that none of us really, uh...have that much control, that sometimes shit just happens, even to, uh...to really determined kids...i think that idea is just scary. to a lot of people. i dunno. i kinda see it as a comfort.

[He blames himself for plenty, and he blames other people for plenty other things, but it's exhausting. It wears you down. Sinks you into that rut like Chara mentioned. Realizing that the world is neutral and that things don't always happen for a reason is still kind of shitty, but at least then, it's no one's fault.]

maybe when you start blaming yourself for something, you find ways to...rationalize it. that there's something fundamentally wrong with you, and that's why the bad stuff is happening. and...heh. all it takes is one other person to agree with you, justify your reasons. and then it's like...locked in. stuck inside you. you blame yourself, and because one other person blames you too, it must be the truth.

[And it must have been a thousand times worse for the kids. An entire species blaming them--blaming two kids, without knowing the second was even there.]

There is nothing I hate more than not having control.

[That's a truth that comes out easily, because it's one of the most vehement truths they have. Why do they hate humanity so much? What did they feel on that bed of golden flowers? What drove them to help their partner eradicate all of the monsters they had once been willing to die for, to claim ownership of that vile, loathsome timeline? What makes their gut clench with mistrust and fear when faced with adults and all the abhorrent power in their too-big, too-warm hands?]

I think... I would rather be a demon than be a victim.

[Is there anything worse than worthless pity? Is there anything more painful than being a cautionary tale, an unavoidable tragedy, the sad little footnote that has to be left behind in the poor prince's story?]

I would rather be dead than be a victim.

[Anything is better than helplessness.]

I can't think of anything I loathe more than that... blasé passivity. There were a thousand points where it could have been stopped. Ten thousand points where someone could have spoken up or acted differently and diverted it all. Tragedies only snowball when people decide from the get-go that it's something that cannot be helped.

[A single human who was willing to hear that monster in the flowerbed out. A single teacher or neighbour who was willing to ask the question that needed to be asked. A single person pointing out that the lesson that had been taught was perhaps not the best one to have learned. How many Resets were born of Papyrus believing in them? How many were born of choosing to spare the one and only monster who had been willing to stand up to another monster for you, and seeing the tension leave their face as they announced they KNEW it, they had to tell Undyne she was wrong about you?]

I would rather live in a world where cruelty isn't senseless or unavoidable. I would rather have a world with villains, because they can be stopped. An uncaring, hostile universe cannot.

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punful - 2017-12-15 06:50 (UTC) - Expand

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