entrancelogs | merry christmas; i could care less [ open ]

"I like being able to keep track of things." Like someone with Cloudy Glasses and a Torn Notebook. It feels a little bit like treasuring that legacy of the nameless human who never made it farther than Waterfall; whose equipment was found and pilfered and sold off to the first inquiring child without a second thought.

They don't even know their name. Like every other child that fell, they went unmourned.

"I never really got to back home. So it's something new, still."

They can write in a notebook without any fear that someone might look at it without their permission.

"It's good, right? When you write things down like that things become like, more real. Like they're there and real because you can go back and look at what you wrote, so even if your memory gets weird, it's still there."

It's been enormously helpful the last few years for Mae, being able to lock things into place. There's something intensely important about making your thoughts and feelings real and tangible.

"Yeah? That's a real shame. But at least you can do it here. I feel like it's extra important in Wonderland. This place is messing with our heads all the time."

"I guess it's not all bad." How could they say that it is, when it's given them more time with the most important person in their life than they ever would have been allowed? How could they call Wonderland a horrible, empty place where people's memories go to die when without its interference, they never would have met the most wonderful person they've ever known.

For all its faults, it does good things, too.

It's done amazing things.

"That's why Mabel has her photo albums." Even if they don't always work. "Do you know Mabel?"

"Wonderland? Yeah. It's okay here sometimes."

This even is honestly nice, much better than she was hoping. She heard all those horror stories about last year and was expecting the worst. Especially after an event almost ruined pumpkin chunkin'.

"Yeah, I know Mabel! The Pines twins are great, love those guys. Mabel has the best ideas and Dipper is super smart. I'd probably do a photo album if I was any good at taking pictures."

She knows the Pineses - she would, though, wouldn't she? She and Mabel both have a sort of energy in their lack-of-a-filter lust for life, and she matches Dipper's cynicism to balance it out. That's good. They're good friends.

"You don't have to be good at pictures. Just taking them is important." They're memories, preserved between pages. Even if you do forget, there's still...there's proof there. Proof that it all happened.

~~Proof that he's never really gone.~~

They were some of the first people she met in Wonderland, and Mabel has been indispensable when it comes to event planning. Mae has no idea how she ended up being the person who sets up weird non-event events in Wonderland, but it's been fun, and Mabel has been really supportive.

"That's true...not gonna lie, I wish we had Instagram here. Then you can just slap a filter on something and it instantly looks better. I wish I knew anyone who's good at computers."

Angus could probably create Instagram. God, she misses those guys.

"You're right about that being important, though. Sometimes you need more than just words. That's why I doodle in my own notebook sometimes."

"What's an...?" The question dies in their throat. Stupid question, right? They can tell from context alone what it must be. You take pictures. You probably...post them, like the network in Wonderland. And people can tell you that looks great, and stuff like that. The thought of Alphys's enjoyment of such a thing is...

It quirks a smile up one side of their mouth.

"You have one too." No, she - of course she does. "They're good for remembering things, aren't they?"

"Instagram?"

Frisk sort of trailed off there, and Mae isn't sure why. Maybe they just don't have Instagram in their world? Or they're a bit young--Mae knows there's still some adult hold-outs who don't think kids should have phones for whatever reason. Technophobia, probably.

"So it's like a phone app, right? You can take pictures with it, and then you can put cool filters over the pictures--so like, you can make it look like the photo is old-timey, or you can change the lighting or the contrast. They can end up looking super cheesy or super cool. And it's online basically, so other people can look at your pics and like them and all that. It's a lot of fun, even if no one's actually looking at your pics, cause you can look at them and feel all artsy and stuff."

There's gotta be someone around here who could make Instagram for Wonderland. Wondergram or something.

She bobs her head in a sort of nod.

"Oh yeah, I've kept notebooks for--uh, awhile now I guess. Like, years. I had this kinda..."

She pauses a moment.

"Well, I don't want to get too heavy or anything, but there was this thing that happened when I was in high school, and since then keeping a notebook or journal has helped me like...get things out of my head onto paper, and that makes them real, and that helps me figure stuff out. I guess it's kinda weird to explain, but the point is, it's super helpful to me. And they're also like, genuinely fun, so."

She tries to shrug and it looks more like a snow leopard raising its hackles, but oh well.

A little like the Undernet, then. Alphys liked to put glittery filters over things like trash cans and call them self-portraits. She gravitated toward those sorts of things, unsurprisingly. The network here doesn’t seem nearly as advanced, though they’ve learned how to make little emojis and faces.

Heavy stuff. Stuff that doesn’t need thinking about it talking about this holiday season. They’ll do better than they used to; they won’t pry, and they won’t try to fix it. They can’t fix everything.

“It helps, sometimes. To see it all written out.”

Mae misses the hell out of the real internet and all the apps. There's no phone games here. No Instagram, no Catchat, no FoxTube, no Angry Birds. Nothing. At least she's got her computer and has managed to install some off-brand games and such.

"Yeah, exactly. And you can go back and reread stuff. I mean, to be fair, I don't really do all that much writing in my notebooks? I kinda doodle and write down stream of consciousness stuff or random thoughts. So rereading is more like, oh yeah, that's a thought I had in that moment. Which is still important, I think."

“Do you talk to Miss Georgia? Sometimes she likes people who write poems and stuff.”

Like Wirt. They’d liked his poetry when they’d heard it, but he doesn’t seem eager to share. Maybe Mae is just as self conscious about her creative endeavors, but there’s always a chance that she isn’t.

Some people aren’t bothered by what other people think of them. Alien as the thought is in theory, there wouldn’t be people like Miss Georgia if that wasn’t true.

"George Mason? Uhhh, I've talked to her a couple times, yeah."

She'd rather not count that whole embarrassing thing during George's event. She acted like such a dumb fangirl.

"I kind of always thought she was more about news and facts, though. I haven't written real poetry in awhile...I mean, I do it sometimes, but it's not really like...a thing."

Plus the idea of actually sharing that sort of thing is pretty nerve-wracking. She swishes her tail thoughtfully. On the other paw--hand--it could also be kind of fun.

"I guess there's always writing things anonymously, too..."

"There's the Second Gallery, too. You don't have to put your name on anything, if you don't want to. But it's kind of like a way to remember things. Just...in case."

But how do you know if you've really forgotten something, if you don't know that you've forgotten it? Stay determined - words snatched from Chara's memory, scratched away as easily as a word or a name. Easy to change, isn't it? No amount of perusing memories or surveying paintings will bring that back. They sold it away.

Sold it away, to fix a mistake they were convinced they'd made.

"I heard about that one too."

She always thought the galleries were more for art, though. And she's really not an artist, not in any sense. She's...she doesn't know what she is. That's one of those things that never magically revealed itself in college, or back in town when she went home. Even with all the weird shit that happened, she still doesn't know what her place in anything is.

"...There's a lot of that in Wonderland, huh? Like. 'Just in case.'"

"When you end up forgetting who you are half the time, it pays to have a back-up plan." Even if it's not much of a back-up plan at all, because it doesn't really play out like one; because you don't remember it is a back-up plan until the end is already in sight, and there's no getting out of it.

There's no getting some things back. Memories of staying determined, and words about the lowest levels of certain laboratories. And...and...words about ways the world can turn around on itself?

It makes their head hurt, thinking about it.

She makes a face.

"Yeah, I hate that. That's my least favorite kind of event here, the ones that mess with your head."

She can't stand it. She ends up having to spend a day or two just staying in her room afterward, trying to remember who she is and what's real. The fact that Wonderland can play so fast and loose with reality like that will never stop bothering her. And she doesn't think she'll ever be able to get used to it. Not with how her mind works.

"Sometimes it's not so bad." Sometimes you get a good life - a better life than you thought you had a right to have. Sometimes you can be something important, like an ambassador between mutants and humans But sometimes...

Sometimes that means you have to walk home to a house you don't want to return to, at the end of the day, because despite the influence and diplomatic power of someone of that stature, you're still only twelve, in a world like that.

They're getting distracted.

"But when Wonderland takes stuff from your world, it makes you forget a word."

"I guess."

She doesn't want to argue. She can completely understand how an event like that could give you a better life than whatever you have. And it can be nice in the moment, like with George's event--because you're not aware that anything has changed. But then the event's over, and it's like waking up from an awful dream, and for awhile you can't even remember what thing is real.

If any of it is even real.

"Wait, really? So it's a word? I knew Wonderland made you forget stuff when it's your own event, but I don't think I knew it was a word."

"Um...I guess, a phrase." Their expression screws up, puckering as they strain to remember. They've been trying to keep track. There were only two events from home, they know, so that means...two words.

The first one. They remember the first one - or they don't remember it, but they remember that they can't remember it.

"There's, um...it's a laboratory, at home. The bottom level. It had a special name, but now it...none of us remember it."

She wrinkles her nose at that. A whole phrase. That doesn't seem fair. What if one person only loses a word, and someone else loses an entire sentence?

"Jeez, you've had two events? Or like, two from your world? You've got a bunch of people from your world here too, right?"

That's gotta make it more likely for events to happen. Just one of those math things.

"Man, I'm sorry. That's gotta be rough."

"Yeah. One was a...a place, that we all went to." And both were mixed with events from other people's worlds, too. Mixing and matching, just to make things more difficult to guess at - or maybe because Wonderland felt like making things more interesting for its own benefit. It's hard to say.

"And the other one...the mansion flooded, I guess. And we were stuck in...in..." There's a word for it. They were...it wasn't a line, it was a circle, but the word for it is - gone. "Time kept repeating. Over and over."

"A place?" That's not particularly descriptive, but she thinks about it for a moment. "Oh, wait, so the phrase you forgot was the name of the place?"

Good Lord, that means she could forget the name of her town or something.

She outright stares at Frisk at the next part, though.

"Time kept repeating? Holy shit. Like a Groundhog Day thing, like, the same day over and over? Dude, that's messed up. So like a...what's the word for that. There's a word for that."

And that must be the other word that Frisk forgot. Damn.

"Like, time travel or--time loops? Wait yeah, that sounds right. Does that sound right?"

Time travel. Or...or...

The other word slips away. They hear it said, they just - they can't remember it. It's like an oil slick across water, slipping from their head as swiftly as it comes. It exists, they just...they can't name it. It happened, but it won't stick in their memory.

That would be it, then.

"...the second thing. The thing you said." Their brow has furrowed their look into even more of a squint than usual. "I think...that's the word I forgot. The word we all forgot."

She can see the expression on Frisk's face, that sense of trying to grab hold of reality. She knows what that's like.

"Time loops." She goes quiet for a bit. It's unsettling, to think that there's a word or phrase or something that you just can't know. That it's right in front of you, but you just...can't hold onto it.

It reminds her too much of...

"Man. That sucks. I really don't want to know what that's like. So time loops and a flood. That's a shitty combination. Wait, so does that mean you have time travel in your world?"

It doesn't stick in their head the second time any more than it did the first. That's not surprising. It's...discomfiting, that drape of static over a spot in their mind that should be untouched. Should be, but isn't. It isn't right. It isn't right to have lost something like that.

It - feels like trying to remember someone who never existed.

"Yeah." Their shoulders list up in a tiny shrug, one side of their mouth twisting. "...me. I'm the time travel."

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