entrancelogs | Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore

Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore | OPEN

Who: E V E R Y O N E (Including our 4th wall guests!)
Where: Everywhere, one both Mirror and Real Side!
When: December 12th - December 18th (WEEK ONE)
Rating: PG-13, warn if going higher
Summary: This year's Ewaymas celebration rolls out the way it usually does, with intense decorating, a sudden snowfall and...far more arrivals than usual! New faces and old fill the mansion - but why would Wonderland bring so many people at once? And why do some of them remember Wonderland?
The Story:

On the evening before December 12th, the captives of Wonderland might be awoken by a loud commotion. Some of it is typical Ewaymas noise, likely familiar to anyone who has been in Wonderland for more than a year – construction sounds and jingle bells as Wonderland decks its own halls quite literally. Garland and lights race down the walls and down the stairs, and stockings appear on the walls for each and every person in Wonderland, embroidered with their names. There are decorative candles everywhere, and all sorts of decorations for every conceivable winter holiday, even if it does not align perfectly to the dates of Ewaymas. Time isn't real, so there will be menorahs and dreidels and Star of Davids even though Hanukkah ended two days prior. And of course, in the front hall, growing straight out of the floor, is a large decorated tree full of ornaments for everyone. And as always, it will have snowed heavily overnight, bringing all of the snow Wonderland will have between now and spring.

There is a second source of commotion in the night though – the sound of a crowd.

Over the course of the night, dozens of new arrivals will appear in Wonderland. Some for the first time. Some wondering how they managed to return with their memories. Others stumbling in with no recollection of ever having been here. Some might be friends from other timelines, other possibilities, and some might even be doubles of people who are already in Wonderland. It's strange for Wonderland to drag so many people into the mansion at once, but everything seems to indicate that they are supposed to be there. They have their own network devices and even have their own stockings on the wall and their own ornaments on the tree – by all accounts, it seems Wonderland expects that they'll be staying, and is treating them like any other new arrivals. Please, make them feel at home and help them settle in nicely.

The first few days will be for catching up with old friends and enjoying the decorations and settling into Wonderland. However, within a couple of days the decorations will start to glitch, much the way corrupted computer graphics might. Lights might change abruptly from multi-color to blue or white, entire décor styles will abruptly change, candle flames will flicker on and off like broken fluorescent lights, and any singing decorations might loop on a beat or two over and over putting you into an eternal hell. Wonderland doesn't seem to be able to stick to one motif, and it can't stop changing. These glitches are occurring on both the Real Side of Wonderland and the Mirror Side.

By the 15th, these glitches will include entire rooms changing into different holiday scenes. These scenes will all be of characters at various winter holidays in the past, the present (in their world), or a possible future. At this point in the event, characters will still be able to navigate the basic mansion and be able to exit these moments easily. These scenes cannot be interacted with – Wonderland seems to consider them another form of decorating. Unlike previous events of this type, these scenes will not loop at first. They will play once, and then Wonderland will glitch and correct itself to be the room it is supposed to be. The scene might play again, but it will be in a different location if it does.

By this point, Wonderland is having an increasingly difficult time holding itself together in a way that makes geographical sense. You might exit one room, even a room that was not previously playing a scene, and find yourself in the kitchen or on the roof instead of in the hallway. You might open a door that you were sure led to your room only to see a ten foot drop to the grounds outside.

This is the mingle log for WEEK ONE! For more information on this part of the event or any questions, please head over to the plot post, or check out our Fourth Wall Master Post for your other Fourth Wall event needs! Prose or [action brackets] are welcome. Please clearly indicate whether your character is on the Real Side or Mirror Side in your top levels. And of course, have fun! ♥

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Because I don't know you, and you definitely know me, and this isn't the first time that I've seen something like this happen.

[He rattles if off...alarmingly easily. It becomes easier, once you've lived it. It's just the first time he's been on this side of it.]

[This is so much better than talking about her own problems, she steps in closer, frowning under her sunglasses.]

But you haven't been in Wonderland before. That you remember, at least. Does this have to do with your... memory problems from back home?

[She knows about those, huh?]

[The pause that gives him is small and faint and so brief it's easily missed, unless someone happens to know him well enough to call attention to it. So they were...friends. Or, at least, they knew each other. Circumstances demanded that they knew each other.]

How much do you know about that?

[She shifts her bag around in front of her and pulls a small bottle of pills out in response, holding them out to him.]

[Cool.]

[Cool fucking beans]

[He accepts the bottle, turning it over in his hands. And then, deliberately, extricates his own from his pockets - older, more worn, battered by wind and tear, the same bottle used over and over again to contradict the crisp freshness of this newer one - holding them up as if to compare them.]

[He hands them back.]

...no. Wouldn't say it's related. It'd make more sense if I'm just another version of the guy you knew.

[She holds up a hand.] Keep 'em. They're not for me.

[She's managed to stay just clear enough of that to not need them. Really, she mostly just had them in her bag because of Jay, and because...

Well. Tim had been there a long time before Jay got there, but they still went together enough in her mind that she couldn't help but hope Jay being there meant Tim show up too. She wasn't sure if this counted or not.]

So what's been going on with you that you're so cavalier about other versions of yourself?

The fact that I've met other versions of other people, probably.

[He finds himself reluctant to pocket them. It doesn't feel right to have them, this cleaner, kinder, crisper version of that which he already has.]

[He doesn't take them. He keeps holding them out, his forehead creasing.]

Should probably save these for the guy you know.

Why? He's not here.

[She was probably foolish to even hope. When has Wonderland ever been kind?]

Where did you meet all these doppelgangers?

He might be, someday.

[Sometimes people come back. Sometimes they don't. Doesn't he know it.]

Which place you wanna hear about first? The castle or the island?

Not with his memories.

[It's not impossible. Jay's here right now and he remembers. But she's not fool enough to believe she'll get lucky twice. She hardly believes she got lucky once. Not without a catch.]

Which came first? That seems like a good place to start.

The Castle. [He closes his eyes. The words are quiet, nearly inaudible. It's not that those memories are any more or less painful than anything else he's lived through, necessarily. It's not that.]

[It just reminds him that there are people he needs to return to.] The Castle came first.

All right, then. What was the castle?

Sol Raveh. Castle in the Mist.

[It's nice to be placed in a situation that's vaguely, bitterly familiar. He can be a source of answers. He can be something impersonal, funneled for questions and give and take, until there's nothing left he has to give.]

It was a war zone. Constant battle between shadows and light.

And I thought Wonderland was bad. Here when they say "war" they actually mean chess.

[And wasn't that fun? Watching so many people she cared about, including Tim himself, though not this one, die.

Okay, so Wonderland really is pretty bad. It's just dressed up in nicer colors.]

That would've been nice.

[He's certain there would've been bullshit like that too, afforded enough time. Maybe there was. He wouldn't know; his time there was limited, compared to so many others.]

But, no. Just...shadows that wanted to kill you, and could kill you. And if you died, there was a pretty solid chance your body would be made into a shadow, so that was pretty great.

Sounds like my world back home. If you replace "shadows" with "zombies."

Was a literal evil Queen behind it?

[A Queen of shadows, of all things.] 'Cause there was with us.

...no, just run of the mill scientistic hubris and good intentions.

[Is that better or worse? At least hers makes sense, she supposes, though having a clear cut villain to hate would be nice in its way.]

Well, there you go. Easier to talk to, harder to blame.

[Or maybe not. It's tough to look at a literal evil Queen and figure that there's much worth in diplomacy, though he's betting that at least someone out there did. It was an easy, clear-cut conflict. His place in it was the fuzzier bit.]

We had someone rallying our side of things - guy named Ozuma. He was the one roping people in, I think. To fight his war for him, since he was low on troops, or something.

And the queen was the evil one?

[Look, she might not know the full situation but she's pretty sure the guy rallying people to fight someone else's war doesn't get to call anyone else evil.]

Ozuma wasn't what I'd call evil, to be fair. He was just kinda...useless, mostly.

[He spent the entire time "recuperating" or some shit, apparently, because there was a food shortage and everyone was low on resources due to his inability to continue helping in any significant capacity.]

Drafts are pretty evil even when they don't cross dimensions. Even if he wasn't intending to be malicious, he still is responsible for his actions.

Yeah, well. Not like many of us could do anything about it once we were there. After a while, it stopped being about fighting any wars, and just about surviving.

[He did some fucking farming while he was there, if that tells you anything. Because of the food shortage.]

Like I said. Anyone who would put you in that situation qualifies as evil in my book.

[Not that it helps him, she supposes. She shakes her head.]

But then there was an island?

Yeah. After...few months in the Castle, I'm a casualty of war. It happens.

[He conspicuously doesn't mention that the reasons of this were that he shared a soul with a suicidally self-destructive child who eventually thought it would be best to try and cut their influence out of his own, only to kill him in the attempt. Nor does he mention that he did not blame them for this, and, in fact, was more than a little grateful.]

[He's shooting for the abridged version here.]

Something like...six to eight months passes, I think, before I wake up on this island. Some people from where I was wake up there with me. Most of them are from somewhere else.

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