entrancelogs | Faithful friends who are dear to us gather near to us no more

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Faithful friends who are dear to us gather near to us no more | 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 19th - December 26th (ICly December 25th) (WEEK TWO)
Rating: PG-13, warn if going higher
Summary: After a particularly intense week of holiday cheer and holiday scenes, Wonderland simply cannot take any more. The form it takes will no longer hold. Wonderland sheds its holiday skin and remains in the barest form of itself.
The Story:

As of the 19th, no one will be able to use the network to make posts. A new error message will appear on all screens, but again, it's probably fine.

This will quickly prove to be a problem though, as Wonderland has completely abandoned any sign of the signature mansion or its grounds. All of a sudden, it cannot hold itself together any more. At this point, Wonderland has become a series of holiday past, present, and future scenes instead of a collection of rooms, and none of them connect together in any sensical, linear way. If you find a friend wandering, you may want to stay with them. It will prove difficult to seek out people on purpose (though very easy to stumble across people by accident).

In between the various scenes, instead of the halls of the mansion, are one of three voids. Gravity does not seem to exist in them, and characters will float, swim, or spin around until they find a new scene to be in. There is no up or down, and no ground to stand on. Scenes are entered suddenly and without warning, going from floating along to suddenly standing in a memory or a vision (unless you have come from the second void). Characters can also find themselves traveling from void to void, but there is no precise place where they overlap, and if they turn around they will not be able to return to the void they were previously in. It is almost as though perhaps, the voids and the scenes are moving around, and that Wonderland no longer has a static form.

Wonderland will remain this way until the end of the event. What happens then? You'll have to wait and see. ♥ For now though, please enjoy the horrible voids that make up all of Wonderland at the moment. If you have any questions, please report to the plot post or check out our Fourth Wall Masterpost for all your other fourth wall needs!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Once we find it, of course I do! [She does not. But she's dealt with shutting down and rebooting systems in Kindergarten hubs for centuries. It can't possibly be that hard. And if she were fully aware that this was Mirror Lapis, maybe she'd be more sensitive since M'Lapis is a product of the system. It's hard for her to think that for Lapis in particular, because she just views her as another Lapis Lazuli who just so happens to have the same configuration as her Lapis.] The trick is not performing a hard reboot. That would likely utterly destroy all human minds and quite possibly corrupt the gem minds connected to the system. And that would be bad.

Well, I'll be glad to be your lovely assistant as long as you don't expect me to actually be any help.

[Of course, neither Lapis has any tech skills. She can like hold a screwdriver, and also look cute and make smartass remarks, it's not a bad gig. Of course, this Lapis has no real interest in helping anyone escape anyway, even without the implications of the simulation theory. Let's not think about how much faith she must have in Peridot here.]

[Wait. Waitwaitwait.

Oh, pebbles. This is Mirror Lapis. Mostly because "lovely assistant" is not something Lapis would probably say without a derisive snort. It's amazing how the only real differences between the two on Peridot's end is that one has crippling anxiety and the other does not. She really should get better at differentiating. Bad friend. Very bad friend.

Anyway. The important thing is to not let on that she was plotting escape and freedom to a Mirror that she thought was a Real. Be cool, Peridot.]

You... Have a slightly more, erm... localized perspective. You could still be some help, I'm sure.

[No not really, but hey! Nice save, Peridot.]

[If M'Lapis notices a shift in Peridot's behavior, she doesn't show it. Of course, she wasn't technically trying to pass herself off as the Real Thing, so there is no act to give up. She might have hoped for a funnier reaction, but heaven knows there are always more opportunities for those. Why be the first to acknowledge things when she can just keep doing whatever she feels like?

Her arm is still around Peridot's waist, so things can only be going well, and everyone is very smooth. Lapis affects a touch of theatrical mock-offense, but is still smiling.]

Hey now, we can't all be brilliant superhackers, that doesn't mean you can't use a hand or two. Besides, it's fun to watch you do your thing. What are you even looking for?

Edited (actually, come to think of it) 2018-12-28 07:30 (UTC)

[She is like so much putty in this Mirror's hands. The compliments! The physical contact which she actually likes instead of pulling away from! This is glorious madness.

She starts walking- or attempting to- in a direction, wrapping an arm around M'Lapis's waist in kind. Just going on a stroll through the void. Being a gem at least gives them a slightly better adjustment towards the lack of gravity- not fully, but enough that she can walk straight and not just pathetically circle in one place.]

Something... exposed. Wonderland is currently stripped to its default state. If there were going to be flaws that showed its true nature, this is where they would appear.

[Peridot is thinking about this all wrong, M'Lapis thinks, if she expects walking around to do any good. If anything, moving just raises the chances of being sent somewhere much less potentially helpful. Is she going to point this out? Yeah of course not, unless it becomes entertaining.]

So this is a simulation, huh? [Likewise, completely unconcerned. Obviously M'Lapis doesn't believe that, and probably won't, but Peridot certainly is serious about it.] What does that make me?

Uh.

[Well, there went that veneer of smooth intellectualism she was cultivating here in the white void of madness where only her dreams seem to be thriving. She's thought about it at length, but saying "you're a series of code accumulated from the real Lapis's brain data and altered to suit whatever ideal the Queen of Hearts was seeking" is... very rude. And Peridot, these days anyway, is aware of what is rude and what isn't... Most of the time.

She sweats.] Well... I-I haven't figured that out yet. Obviously you're real. You're not glitching like Wonderland is. I mean, have you seen the mouse? He's just... popping in and out all over the place just bzzt bzzt bzzt. [She snaps the fingers of her free hand in different places with each approximated glitching sound.]

[M'Lapis accepts this at face value -- or rather, she assumes Peridot hasn't put too much thought into it. Dismissing the Mirrors as mere NPCs is in fact the obvious take, and one she would like to avoid. But it's also a difficult idea to fully confront, and Peridot surely wouldn't like to go around questioning her friends' basic reality too hard, not when she's so very sweet and silly and so easy to not take at all seriously. That being the case, M'Lapis is happy enough to play along. This theorycrafting project will definitely benefit greatly from her input.]

That's true, I do seem to work differently from those guys. Hmmm. [Surely a distinct type of NPC at the very least.] But I guess it's hard to be sure about anything at all, since you already know Wonderland can mess with your mind.

Well, we're plugged in. Our reality is what Wonderland makes it. We could all have identical, yet functionally abnormal doubles with us, and have just forgotten they've always been there. Hmmm.

[Wow that is very deep. If you travel down that rabbit hole, anything could be a lie and the truth at the same time until the simulation ends. Peridot is basically trying to theorize Wonderland is a David Lynch/David Cronenberg horror show and doesn't even know it.] I'll keep thinking on it. We just gotta find that mainframe. I've explored this void fairly intensely. [Not that you can tell, considering it is ENDLESS SAMENESS, but..] We should try to find another.

Heck, if there's a real you on the outside, she could be completely different from how you think you are now. Anyone could be anything, really!

[SO CASUAL. M'Lapis plunges down the rabbit hole without a care, but to be fair, the life of a Mirror is already one big existential crisis from the start. It's Reals like Peridot who could use more doubts in their heads. Besides, she finds that topic much more interesting than the wild goose chase, although she is continuing to gamely "walk" along because hey, she's participating.

So it is at this point that the scene does change. Not to one of the other voids, though.

Now, look. Narrative convenience aside, there isn't actually any guarantee that people will stumble into holiday scenes which relate to them. It's not even clear whether those scenes must relate to anyone currently in Wonderland, but with the huge and unpredictable influx of visitors, it's also hard to prove that nobody involved is around somewhere right now, or has been. So basically, one could hypothetically make a case for using just about anything, right? Right??

These two arrive wayyyyy in the back of a crowd scene. This crowd scene. Yeah that's right. From back here it's hard to make out what the heck is even going on, but it's very noisy and very, very stupid. Even M'Lapis is a bit flummoxed as she sort of wince-laughs at the new surroundings.]

Haha, well this isn't gonna do it.

[She's going to be amending her notes for days after this, assuming they don't solve the problem in its entirety, and somehow manage to not die. She's fairly convinced that one of those things is going to happen. She is somehow an eternal optimist born of a realist, especially where her own ideas are concerned.

The sudden shift of scenery is a little disorienting and Peridot rubs her eyes, thinking maybe she's having to adjust to how humans look after being in the void for so long, but no... It's not her vision spheres. These are just some super ugly humans. And is that singing? She can catch a few lines over the din, though mostly it appears to be some kind of propaganda anthem.]

.... No one told me Christmas was about serving a menacing overlord.

[It feels like that should have come up in the three years she's been here.]

I wouldn't know! Jeez, I wonder if we can at least get somewhere quieter.

[She doesn't seem very interested in the scene itself. It's irrelevant and the aesthetics are terrible, and even if the illusory people in the crowd were possible to interact with, they have eyes and hearts only for San-ta. M'Lapis still has her arm around Peridot, because why would she remove it, so she just tries to keep walking, same as before... though who knows if that's going to be much more productive here than in a void.]

[Peridot doesn't like this one bit. All of these humans look unwashed and wall-eyed like they're in a trance, and every time one brushes up against her, she can feel her hard light skin crawl, which she didn't think could even happen, but that's the best she can describe the sensation. Overhead, a tiny floating moose does circles around the crowd. Nothing about this is okay.

Peridot elbows someone who gets to close to her and hisses at them like a cat, pressing in closer to M'Lapis.]

I already miss the featureless void. These humans have clearly never seen a bathroom before. [somewhere in the din, someone notices them and yells 'heEEEEY WHY aren't you BOWING DOWN?' The person doesn't seem to be anything more than moderately offended and certainly lacks any capacity to do anything about it given his dull expression and lanky body, but for Peridot, it feels like she's gotten stupider just by making eye contact.]

We're free agents! Go back to your senseless, mindless worshiping like the drones you are, clod. [Peridot keeps one arm around M'Lapis and balls the other into a shaking fist.]

Oookay, come on. Even if we are stuck in an illusion that obeys no laws of space or time, let's hope we can at least get some distance.

[The friendly arm becomes more of a herding arm as M'Lapis steers Peridot away from the ugly humans. Then, because that's not effective enough and walking isn't fast enough, she spreads her wings and adds the other arm too, flying them both away and heading out of the stadium entirely. They'll leave this nonsense behind in some form or another. A "scene" is ill-defined in real-life terms, but its borders can't be too far from where all that action is taking place, can they?]

This one kinda sucks, huh? At least in the void you could've gotten some equipment or something.

[Also, things she could have pointed out earlier.]

[YES, IT WOULD HAVE, though to be fair, Peridot has no idea what she would have done to the ugly humans. They weren't really doing anything after all. They were just... Being weird, which isn't necessarily worth razing their ritual for.

She dangles with a resigned sigh and searches the dull gray sky for something that looks like an exit- at last pointing to a patch of duller gray that breaks through the clouds, too unnatural to be a formation.] There! That's it!

[Once through it, flying becomes superfluous. Peridot releases M'Lapis and floats unhindered through the dull void herself, noting that all around them are little portholes, pockmarking the otherwise pristine space at various intervals. It's the only way to gauge any sense of distance, which makes it better than the void she'd started out in.] Are these... discarded events?

[Jeez, girl, why is attacking people your first thought. ANYWAY. Peridot may think she's going to let go now, but she was being held first and it takes two to tango, bucko. M'Lapis catches her wrist as she pulls away. She's not going to SERIOUSLY push it if Peridot really wants to get away, but she can and will make her point first.]

Careful, we could still get separated here.

[And nobody wants that, do they?

As for the gray void, she dutifully glances around too, although she personally still isn't trying to accomplish much even as a lovely assistant.]

If they were, would that help you?

Oh right. [THANK YOU FOR SAVING HER FROM THE ABYSS, M'LAPIS. Impulsive tiny gem though she is, she is liable to float off into the gray void and be attacked by the Core if she's not careful. Plus she has learned many things in her time on Earth and one of those things is this:

Handholding? Surprisingly nice. Doubly so when it saves her hard light bacon.] I'm not sure, but this is data taken from our minds, so it could be important. [She floats a bit closer, dragging M'Lapis with her so she can peer through one of them. This one shows a snowball fight with people she's never seen before- dull and uninspired- the second is a group of bedraggled people with weapons gathered around a half-dead tree in the middle of some miserable shack- depressing.] I don't think I recognize any of these humans. Maybe these are denizens of Wonderland who aren't here anymore and their data is still stored in the system.

[Well, on the bright side that would lower the chances that anyone from the stupid ugly world is around.

M'Lapis hmms but doesn't answer immediately, looking all thoughtful and stuff. In the next glimpsed scene, a woman and a young girl have a touching moment with a ghost by the Christmas tree, while three men in suits dance supportively. This means nothing to her, so she doesn't care about it. Of course, there's really only one thing she does care about.]

I guess I could be... a part of her, or something like that.

[She wrinkles her nose up saying this, although she does manage to avoid sounding overly disgusted. Of course, Real Lapis is a chump and Mirror Lapis has no desire to be any part of that. (Maybe better not to pont out that she does apparently share the knack for unannounced cryptic changes of subject.) But it's important to see all possibilities acknowledged.]

Hhuh? [It takes a second- Peridot is so observed in mentally doing math about the different portals and scenes being played out that it's more that than the abrupt subject change that gets her. She is used to that from all versions of Lapis.

She's quiet for a moment, backtracking to her own Mirror. She's made some snide comments about them being nothing alike before, but she knows it's a lie. Her Mirror is precisely the same as she used to be, but reskinned to have different loyalties and beliefs. She hasn't seen her since the Queen of Hearts was overthrown, either, and she knows exactly why- her entire worldview has just been shattered and she's not taking it well. Peridot knows this because she's been there.]

My Mirror's just... A worse version of me. Fundamentally, there's no discernible difference. She's what I would have stayed if I'd never found Earth. All of that potential can easily be extrapolated from my mind for Wonderland to use.

[So, essentially... she thinks M'Lapis is onto something and doesn't want to admit it. Though it does make her relationship with both Lapises make more sense- she's attached to this Lapis and a Mirror or a shade is just a part of her, rather than two separate beings.]

Edited 2019-01-10 23:11 (UTC)

[M'Lapis shrugs. It IS unfortunate that reinforcing her own reality also reinforces that of Mirrordot, but c'est la vie. Ultimately, it really just puts everybody on even footing, and some individuals can make much better use of that than others.]

Well... anyone could be anything. For all you know you could be fake, but I'd still rather have you around than her.

[That's probably meant to be reassuring, based on the smile. Great!]

Heh... That's very true. [She makes a keening sound because that is one hefty matzo ball, and now she knows for certain she doesn't want to deconstruct that. She'd rather focus on the compliment.] But thank you. I am the superior version of myself. I've broken free of the system and thrown away the shackles of conformity. A truly liberated gem.

[She preens... for a second. And then she gets a good look at the gray surroundings with its tiny tears in reality and sighs. None of that matters if she can't figure all of this out, does it?] We should keep looking for the mainframe...

If you say so!

[They clearly don't have any notion of how to actually find this supposed mainframe, but what else is new? M'Lapis is still just happy to be hanging out. Also, while she's not terribly interested in any of those scenes drifting in the mist so far, watching them go by is still sort of absorbing. There have to be SOME, somewhere, that are worth seeing, but it's kinda fun to just sit back and judge them en masse too.

Two anthropomorhpic animals are visiting a maximum-security prison. That's not very appropriate for a holiday special. Who approved any of it?

M'Lapis is about to continue the sentiment, to maybe egg on Peridot for more ideas slash needle her about the assumed lack of ideas, either way to try to get her to say more things. But just as she starts to speak she is interrupted. It's kinda like a desynced stereo effect, since the voice cutting in is her own, and likewise only starts to call out before faltering off in shock.

"Peri--"

It would seem that the Real Thing has finally caught up. She has appeared from behind, emerging from the fog suddenly, and if one should glance back she now has her eyes wide, a hand drifting towards her mouth as she struggles to quite decide on a reaction.

And ahead, facing away, the Mirror goes rigid. Still holding onto Peridot's hand tightly, too tightly; still smiling, now as if her face has frozen that way.

So this oughta be good.]

[A sound escapes Peridot's mouth that sounds like a gasp of shock and a a garbled cat cry stuck in a blender and whirls, which means she lets go of M'Lapis's hand if only because if she hadn't, she would have spun her around with her just with the momentum. Peridot looks between the two Lapises, awkwardly trying to figure out what to say. She may have just decided that the two Lapis variants are just parts of a whole, but her Lapis hasn't come to that conclusion, and she feels very much like Percy must have felt when he caught Paulette kissing that boy from the camp on the other side of the river.

Stars, she is not the Paulette in this scenario! She won't allow it!]

Lapis! There you are.

[Anxiety at Lapis's reaction at side, she was deeply missing her and wanted to know where she'd gone. It's a simple truth. She can't lie and she's afraid to be forthcoming- well, so much for all those communication lessons.]

[Once more, letting go of M'Lapis isn't necessarily that simple. She's stronger; if she wanted to she probably could keep Peridot's hand trapped in hers, or at least require a serious struggle, but her clinging now is only shock and distress. So she doesn't fight it, per se, but the hold lingers reluctantly, and when Peridot finally gets her hand free M'Lapis smiles blankly down at her own as if she doesn't understand how it got empty. Then she too turns around.

R'Lapis has her eyes on her double and the nearest hardlight equivalent of every muscle tensed; that hand fists as it lowers again, but to be fair fists are pretty standard for her body language. Still, while she's clearly more than a bit freaked out right now, she's not freaking out just yet, so that's a plus. If not calm, she can at least be called controlled. It visibly takes her a moment to work out words to say -- addressed to Peridot, still warily studying the Mirror all the while.]

"You didn't think she was me?"

[Which is where M'Lapis pulls it together enough to reinsert herself, more chipper than ever, practically sing-songing.]

Ohhh, don't worry. This isn't that kind of relationship.

No! You're completely different. I would never... Well, not for an extended length of time under heavy scrutiny. [Right. So bad at lying. Still a factor. Peridot is looking between the two of them frantically, because she's honestly never seen (or at least acknowledged) M'Lapis being creepy. Maybe it's the juxtaposition of a shiny sing-songy Lapis against the backdrop of a regular laconic Lapis.

Peridot may actually dissipate her form in embarrassment and shame right this second.] But I couldn't leave her alone in here. Wonderland is falling apart! And you're both... Hnngh. You're both Lapis.

[And thus warranting her loyalty and devotion, apparently. Peridot rubs at her hand where M'Lapis had held on a bit too tightly, not wanting her to pull away. Hoo boy. This is a lot.]

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