entrancelogs | + Somewhere a Grandiose Carnival Was Going on in the Sky +

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+ Somewhere a Grandiose Carnival Was Going on in the Sky +

Who: Everyone!
Where: The grounds of the Mansion
When: March 9-16
Rating: PG-13 (warn if you go higher)
Summary: The Red Queen has thrown a carnival for everyone!
The Story:

From Friday, March 9, through Friday, March 16, the gardens and grounds of the Mansion will be a sprawling a carnival. The masked, unspeaking vendors will be selling trinkets and running free game booths. Carnival rides, exhibits, and foods represent all of the various cultures of those currently residing in the Mansion.

Of particular note, and perhaps incongruously, everything is decorated with red hearts.

Use this log for any and all of your carnival needs!

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"That's fine. I'd rather have it on reserve anyway for when we really need it than use it just to hurry along something that can wait for her next appearance anyway." She's happy to be strategic about it. In Wonderland, the one thing they have an excess of is time, but that may not always be the case.

"You kinda gotta wonder what her relationship to all the Mirrors is. She seems to like including them in everything." As opposed to the Queen of Hearts, who seems to favor pitting them against one another and watching the sparks fly. More entertaining?

That seems too simple an explanation, and a bit more sadistic than he'd give the Red Queen credit for.

"She does." If Georgia's being optimistic, the Queen is doing it for the same reason Georgia wants to help them. Because it's fair and right.

Georgia's rarely optimistic. It's far more likely the Queen's trying to get the Mirrors on her side.

"Think they appreciate it? A lot of them seem to have crossed over, at least."

"I dunno. They've kinda been indoctrinated to be...the way they are since day one." Meaning he wouldn't be surprised if a few of them were bent on taking advantage of the opportunity to wreak a little chaos, even if he can technically understand why they would, and even forgive it.

Doesn't mean he has to like it.

"And some of them are as bad as people like to say." She won't deny that much. It's just that plenty of reals are as bad as well.

"Maybe 'cause they've never had a reason to try being anything else." It's easier said than it is backing up with any kind of significant action, but he's not yet had the chance or reason to implement something like that anyway.

But then again, it's not as if he's been trying very hard.

"We have to break them free from the Queen's control first."

The problem is, she only has one idea for how to do that, and she's pretty sure it's a terrible one.

"Well, the question there is, how the hell do we do that." Because full disclosure, Tim has no idea. He tried to sway two people from under the control of something larger than themselves, and it ended poorly.

He wasn't much good at it.

She frowns, shifting to look out at the rest of the carnival.

"The Red Queen suggested there's a way. She also suggested we're incapable of it. Or at least that I am."

Not that Georgia intends to quit. She just has to be damn careful about it.

“What about the other residents? Like Alice?” She’s pretty comfortable relating to the rest of them, which is a positive in his mind. Most people he’s spoken to who are familiar with her are protective - or at the very least, would care if something else were to happen to her.

“Maybe it’s a question of what we are, or the fact that we still remember where we came from. We’re not Wonderland’s so we can’t do much to it, maybe. If that’s the case, why not back someone who can?”

"Yes, a 12 year old with barely any memories and 150 plus years of being trapped in this hellhole. That couldn't possibly go wrong."

She's just saying, Alice is nice enough, but she's flaky. She might be nice to the Mirrors and the Reals, but being nice isn't the most important thing for a queen.

"I'd be all for that, but it would have to be the right person. We don't want to make things worse than they already are."

"I'm just saying our options are limited here. You wanna go with the Dormouse instead?" Honestly, Alice is probably the one of them he trusts the most, which isn't much but is, admittedly, something. He doesn't distrust her as much as he does the rest.

That may as well be a vote of confidence in his book.

"I guess it comes down to whether you'd rather do nothing, or do something that has the risk to make things worse." He suspects he knows which one she'd pick.

"The Dormouse is one of the more competent residents if you wake him up." It's just that waking him up is the trick. She straightens, frowning at him. "And the answer is neither. I'd rather come up with a plan that might make things better."

"The problem with biding your time here is that you're always doing it. Hell, I've been doing it." Holding off on using that chess piece until the opportune moment, because...fuck, what if he ends up really needing it? What if there's something worse down the line? What if this chance is better off not being taken?

Is there a choice there, a question of gauging the best time to actually act? Or is there just never a good time, period?

Personally, he leans toward the latter.

"What else do we have here but time?"

An unknown amount, perhaps, but it's just about the only thing they have in excess.

"There's middle ground between never acting and being impulsive. It's called being strategic."

"So what's the strategy right now? Bide your time, try and convince the Mirrors that they're being misled...however likely that'll be?" 'Cause he's been having some limited success in some regards, and...more success in others.

But then again, he's not sure if his successes really count. He didn't sway the Mirrors in question so much as provide them an alternate route to the same destination they were always planning on heading.

"And do research."

Research isn't just biding time. Research is how you learn. Research is how you come up with your strategies.

"Which kinda depends on how chatty the residents're feeling." Or how much she feels like trawling through a spotty network history. He's tried a few times, and quickly given up. It's not like searching "Marble Hornets" on google, because so much of it is patchworked and missing at this point.

Guess even magical networks have expiration dates.

"Or how deep you're willing to dig." She adjusts her sunglasses. "More has been written down than any one person can remember. But written down doesn't mean digitalized and stored securely in a cross-referenced, organized, and most importantly searchable database. I'm working on fixing that."

It won't be easy, but what in her life ever has been? It's still worth doing.

"Not gonna lie, I'm pretty sure everyone would be relieved if you could manage a thing like that." Jay, for one, would probably cut down on the time he spends peering at monitors, the blue glare highlighting the bruise-purple rings underneath his eyes, at least until he replaced it with something else to spend his time in the early hours of the morning, when he should be sleeping but can't really manage it.

"You ask Shepard about help with that? I think she's gone trawling through old archives a couple times more than once."

"Yeah. Her work's much more thorough than mine." Georgia's all about news. History might inform the news, but it'll never be where she likes focusing. She's much better at chronicling the present than digging into the past unless she has a specific project in mind.

Also, Shepard's better at computers than she is.

"So join forces. I know Jay, at least, would thank you for it." And Tim would thank you both too, because it would mean Jay would be spending less time hunting down old things that earlier iterations of them said, or earlier iterations of their Mirrors said and did.

Though Tim, for his part, could happily do without knowing either.

"Way ahead of you here. We've been comparing notes for a while." She gives a very slim smile. "I don't let reliable sources go to waste."

"And you're not employing her? I'm shocked." But he kinda wishes he had a camera, just to snap this as it happens: Georgia Mason, smiling in a very ready and willing sense.

"But on the plus side, you've hit your quota of smiles per month, so you can jot that down."

She will never hit her quote of middle fingers per month, so Tim can have one of those now.

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postictal - 2018-05-17 19:25 (UTC) - Expand

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