entrancelogs | + FOURTH WALL EVENT: FOREST PARTY +

Who: E V E R Y O N E
Where: The Forest!
When: Sept 7th to Sept 10th
Rating: G to PG-13 (please label higher ratings, thank you!)
Summary: Could it be that you (GASP!) don't want to be here? Do you maybe want to make like a tree and... leaf? Then how about you do the next best thing, and come to the woods to party! And don't forget to have a look at the Fourth Wall Master Post for event rules, puzzle clues, and more places to mingle!
The Story:

Beginning on September 7th, colourful ribbons will hang from several trees by the forest. Whoever follows their path will be guided deeper, right to the scene of a forest party.

Wooden benches, swings in all shapes and sizes, tree trunks, and other arrangements give plenty of opportunities to sit together. Tree houses and tents provide shelter, and come nightfall the festivities will light up for you.

Campfires provide additional light and warmth and a great place for ghost stories. Camping coolers store more than smores, and all around you nature twists and turns to give you room to dance to the music, to wander in the quiet, and to simply have a good time!

(...Are you the curiously perceptive, or the perceptively curious sort? If so, then you might also notice the small bird sitting on a branch nearby.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

NO.

[He can offer no significant recourse. No argument with any true weight. But he can offer the cold word, thrown with all of his distaste for an action that should not have been taken but cannot be...

He had forgotten.

He had forgotten what it felt like, to have his actions hold a sort of permanence. For them to not be easily ERASED, wiped from existence. Even his slate was not cleaned very well, was it? Cleaning a slate always leaves a shadow of what was written before, a patina of shaded chalk dust clinging to the backdrop of matte black-green.]

THERE WAS NOTHING TO LEFT SAY. WHAT I HAVE SAID THUS FAR IS SUFFICIENT.

[It is not. Clearly it is not, for she is still here, still talking to him, and he could have pressed onward but he did not and no matter how he interrogates his processes and runs queries and executes algorithm after empty algorithm, his own motivations remain...unclear to him.

Why.

Why.

Sentiment?

No. He does not endure sentiment. He loathes sentiment.

What, then? What, then?]

[Everything gets remembered, in little ways. In muscle memory of something in the lab, in the way a coat feels brushing against your ankles, in dreams and nightmares and waking up in a cold sweat to something you don't even have time to write down before it's gone. She wants to snark back at him, mutter something about how those weren't words, g, she stops instead, because her body still feels like she's barely holding together.]

... T-Thank you, for, uhm. Knowing when to call it quits, t-then.

[This time. Or something.

Reminds her of the last time she and Sans talked about this sort of deal. Never knew when to quit. Except for now, maybe, for some reason. It's good enough for her.]

"THANK YOU."

[The quotes may as well be audible, his tone landing heavily in the category of outright scorn.]

YOU ARE TOO WELL GUIDED BY SENTIMENT, DOCTOR. IT WILL BE YOUR DOWNFALL.

[In many ways, it is. He has seen the exact arc of the parabola her body falls in when it drops from the top of the waterfall overlooking the edge of the world (a nonsensical phrase, as the world has no true edge no matter how one looked at it or defined it), and he has seen the paths in which she did so earlier on, the paths in which she did so only after suffering incontrovertible loss, the paths in which she only did so in theory, never in practice.

* Will Alphys end up the same way?

A useless question.

In many ways, she already has.]

[She knows this. This is one thing he never had to tell her, because all her life she'd held on to sentiment. Isn't that what monsters do? Become lead by intent and purpose to interpret gestures of kindness and compassion? She has always been a creature of feeling, since she was a child. There's no getting around this. There's no saving her from herself on this one. If she wanted to escape those feelings, she'd have to be...

Erased, she thinks. Is this what happened to him? If he stopped by sentiment- if he heard her calling out and stopped- was he trying to escape this, as well?

"It will be your downfall". Was it, in a way, already his?

She pulls herself, shakily, from the floor. Realizes she's trying to smile. Maybe she and Sans have more in common than she even realizes now.]

I'll... k-keep it in mind.

[It means nothing. They both know this. But what else is she supposed to say, after that? What else can she do but try to hold it together?]

GOOD.

[She will keep it in mind, will she? Yes, of this he is quite certain. He has not exercised restraint, and he has not - been as callously objective as was his goal.

He has already remained too long and he has said none of what was intentional. What can he possibly blame this on, other than some kind of rudimentary mimicry of sentiment, that which he does not possess because there is no room for such things in what is, in essence, a neglected scrap of forgotten code. The proverbial "ghost in the machine," as it were, pitifully inaccurate as such a statement is. Ghosts exist in machines all the time. There is nothing particularly special about it. He has met one already, or will meet one, or is meeting one in simultaneity to this encounter - for an antilinear being such as himself, such semantics and positions in time do not particularly matter.

He could say more.

He does not.

He has, evidently, inflicted enough damage on the fragile state of her mind. The lines of her shoulders and the shape of her mouth and the instability of her frame reek of her poorly-repressed anxiety and uncertainty. Still always questioning her place in this world, even now. Even once she has without question earned it.

He turns away, starts to slip back, though several of his hands linger to spell out words, slow and deliberate.]

YOU GIVE YOURSELF TOO LITTLE CREDIT.

MY BRILLIANCE WAS NOT IRREPLACEABLE, AS WE CAN ALL SEE VERY WELL.

YOURS IS.

[She barely looks at him, catching the words out of desperate curiosity, even if it only leaves her more wanting. Why does he do this? Swear he has no sentiment, no affection, no worry for her, and the simultaneously try to build her up, tear her down, mess with her emotions in a continuous motion? How is she supposed to interpret this? Does this make sense to him, or is he just continuing to lie to himself about how much 'sentiment' he really has?

She wants to contradict him. Start another argument, doesn't even know what she's reaching for. Maybe she's still trying to save him. Without realizing, she reaches out, towards his form, towards his coat, feels that fabric through her fingers even though she never touched it. Draws her hand back. Enough.]

Good l-luck. Out there.

[If she's going to be sentimental, she's going to be damn so.]

[He almost delivers a scathing indictment to her about the nature of luck and the plain absence of such things in the computational void to which he has abandoned himself and continues to leave himself without hope for retrieval, because hope is a silly prospect for a forgotten scientist that never truly existed in the first place.

Luck is not a constant, nor is it a predictable variable. There are few truly unpredictable events in the universe, and he has not even the luxury of pseudorandomness in his empty blackness but it is -

Irrelevant.

Irrelevant.

Irrelevant.

He does not address her further. He has nothing left to say.
He has nothing he knows how to say.
He bleeds into the nothing from where he came and all at once, he was never there.]

+ FOURTH WALL EVENT: FOREST PARTY +

IT'S NOT A PHASE IT'S WHO HE IS

THEN MAYBE HE SHOULD BE LESS HIMSELF

I MEAN MISSION FUCKING ACCOMPLISHED

THEN MAYBE LESS OF WHATEVER THE FUCK THIS IS, TOO

YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO GODDAMN DO

FUCK U YES I CAN

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