entrancelogs | + Ahh~! Like a good old fashion nightmare!

Entry tags:

+ Ahh~! Like a good old fashion nightmare! | [OPEN] +

Who: EVERYONE
Where: Your dreams!
When: Friday February 17th - Monday February 20th (The length of the event!)
Rating: PG-13, warn if higher!
Summary: A catch-all log for everyone's dreams in this event, and all of the subconscious shenanigans within them!
The Story:

Over the course of the event, characters will find themselves falling asleep at random moments of the day, spacing out only to find themselves in a dream moments later. Whenever this happens, characters will find themselves in visions or nightmares. The content is entirely up to you, but must be something that would have some significance to the character, whether literally or metaphorically. They will likely be about a character's true feelings about a matter, or their hidden fears.

Either way, these dreams are trying to tell you something - something that you've buried, willfully ignored, or flat out just haven't realized about yourself. Within their dreams, they will meet people (from Wonderland) who represent their subconscious. These people will have uncanny knowledge of the dreamer's most inner thoughts: fears, desires, guilt, regrets, even their private thoughts of what they imagine their future to be like - and they will absolutely want to shove it in the dreamer's face, as though these repressed thoughts and feelings are rising to the surface.

OOCly, people will be able to play either awake in Wonderland or as versions of their characters within someone else's dream, taunting them with their subconscious thoughts and feelings. They will mostly be themselves, aside from the knowledge of what's going on in the dreamer's head. It's possible the dreamer might not even realize it's a dream at first, but it's equally possible that a character within someone's dream can be twisted or altered in some way if it helps them better deliver their message. They can even do standard nightmare things, like completely breaking the laws of physics or appearing and disappearing as needed.

Characters will feel sufficiently rested from these dreams, even if they don't like the content - which is good, because caffeine and all other stimulants one would use to keep themselves awake will be rendered completely ineffective.

Feel free to make use of this post for dream shenanigans! All top-levels are assumed to be for the person dreaming and the replies will all be within their dream, threads with characters who represent their subconscious. Prose and [brackets] are both welcome and if you have any questions you can over to the plot post! ♥

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"If it was just your neck on the line, sure." People take risks all the time. It's what they're good for. But that's not the emphasis here.

"Only it's not just your own life, is it? Nah, it's everybody else's too. Everyone who gets in your way."

She looks up at him, clenching her hands into fists. She can't cry, even in a dream, but her face is still giving away far, far too much.

"I gave everyone a choice. I informed them of the risks as soon as I knew how big a story we were pursuing. I kept them as safe as I could!"

"But they would've been safer if you hadn't bothered. Doesn't that keep you up at night?"

And wow, would you look at that. Looks like Georgia "stiff upper lip" Mason can express an emotion other than stoic irritation. Not that he would've thought it. Not that anyone would have, just by looking at her.

"What else could I have done?" Of course it keeps her up at night. So many choices she made, so many people who trusted her, who followed her, and who ended up hurt because of it. But she's gone over it a thousand times in her head and she doesn't know how in good conscience she could have ever made another choice. "Even more people could have gotten hurt if I didn't bother. There were no good choices."

"Wow." He draws the word out with a languorous unconcern as his eyebrows creep upwards in dull surprise. "And here I thought you were all about the truth, Mason."

But people are always the best at lying to themselves. What a shocker.

"That is the truth. I couldn't just not do my job because I was scared." She looks around at the other bloggers that surround her, that form a tight wall of bodies that she can't slip through. "It was the story of the lifetime. It was important. People needed to know they were being lied to."

"And they're so much happier because of it, right?" He'd laugh, but that'd be breaking character, stretching the limits of disbelief just a little too far. He doesn't need to, to prove his point. He doesn't need to laugh at all, even if her statement is, in and of itself, laughable.

"Everything's so much better off because of what you did."

Everyone always is, right?

"They have the chance to be." She can't hide how fucking helpless her voice sounds. They have the chance, except Buffy, who would have gone home if George had let her, and Mahir, who would have been a sports reporter if she hadn't dragged him into the news and ruined any chance of a happy, peaceful life, and herself, of course, who was never supposed to die first.

And Shaun. Her poor Shaun. And everyone still on the team who has to deal with him now.

She's breaking. Splintering at the edges. Harder, isn't it, when you can't hide behind a locked-down, stoic demeanor and a pair of sunglasses.

"So you made the world better. Not just because it was the right thing to do, but because...I dunno." He shrugs, disarmingly blasé. "Because you told yourself it was the right thing to do. Gives your life a little bit of meaning, right? Just a little something to leave behind. A legacy."

"It wasn't about that." She did want to do the right thing. She did. Sure, the ratings and the reputation and everything that came with it was nice, the feeling that she was building something, but she wanted to tell the truth. Shame the devil a little before she went.

"What do you want me to say? That it wasn't fucking worth it? That the price was too goddamn high? You think I don't know all that?"

"I think you knew it plenty." Her composure breaks so easily, once you apply a bit of pressure to the right places. Kind of like how it only takes a pound of pressure to cut human skin.

Interesting, isn't it?

"Kinda makes it worse, doesn't it? You knew this would be the fallout. You knew, and you did it anyway."

She did know. Maybe not just how bad things would get because no one could have possibly planned for that, but she knew these were the big leagues. She knew people could get hurt. Get killed. And she went for it anyway because this was her dream.

"I wouldn't do a single thing differently if I could." Her voice is quiet, only just above a whisper and it surprises even her. She clenches her fists, nails digging into her palms, and forces herself to look up and meet Tim's eyes. There's pain in there, and simmering anger, and she doesn't try to hide either.

"I know." He looks at her with something resembling pity - at how plainly she can't conceal how sickening this whole ordeal must be, at how poor her composure is, at how much she knows she's failed.

"And that's the bottom line, isn't it? You and your search for truth - that's always the priority." He shakes his head, snorting, low and scornful. "And just - to hell with everyone else."

"So? It has to be someone's priority!" And maybe that makes her a bad person. It certainly makes her a bad friend. And probably a bad sister, though Shaun would never say it to her face. It makes her a hell of a journalist.

"Do you know how deep this thing goes? How many people they were killing before I even got there? It needed to be unearthed! People needed to know! They needed to be stopped."

"So the lives you ruined were just - what, exactly? Collateral?"

It makes her a hell of a journalist, at the expense of everything else. Because she "has to," she tells herself. As if that justifies any of it, the lives that she left devastated in her wake. That she continues tear asunder, as if that makes it all right.

"You think maybe your collateral was a bit more devastating than that conspiracy ever was?"

"No." Her voice regains some of its confidence. This, at least, she has an argument for. "They were already killing. Eakly, Rebecca Ryman.... I may have gotten my team into the line of fire, but we wouldn't have started looking into them at all if people hadn't been dying."

Then again, she only knows what happened up until she died. Shaun is still digging. Does his collateral damage fall on her head too? What was the fallout of her final article? She doesn't know, and it's not like Shaun has been eager to talk about it. There's a good chance she committed treason as she died and encouraged the world to do the same. What were the consequences of that?

"And that just completely justifies any and all placing of others into the line of fire now, is that it?" A one-time occurrence doesn't justify the deaths and misery left in the wake of someone so determined to rake live coals across the truth that she'll sacrifice all else.

"And it's not just that, no. You think you're allowed. You're entitled to it."

"I'm licensed. It's literally my fucking job!" She holds up her wrist, revealing the red and blue tattoo with her license number. "Alpha-Foxtrot-Bravo-one-seven-five-eight-nine-three. Class A-15. I'm not just allowed, I'm paid."

Clinging to technicalities doesn't really help, but it's what she has, and it lets her gather her thoughts a little.

"I didn't want anyone to get hurt. But I couldn't just back down because I was afraid, either. I would never have made it as a journalist with those kinds of instincts."

"You didn't want anyone to get hurt." He won't bother trifling with the same technicalities she does. It's an obvious stalling tactic, at best. He forms a blade with two of his fingers, jamming them down onto the top of the podium.

"Eventually, it'll come down to making a choice." And she knows it, assuming it hasn't already. "You'll find your hallowed truth, or you'll watch everything you love die."

For the briefest moment, his lip curls with something like scorn.

"And you'll pick the story. Every time."

"There's not really any times left." It's another quibble, but a pretty relevant one. Even if she keeps all her memories, this is the story that kills her, and she already chose it.

"And I can tell you for a fact, I'm not watching everything I love die. They get to watch me die instead. The choice is made."

"Not in Wonderland, it isn't." And therein lies the crux of it. The fulcrum upon which this issue, and every other, remains nested.

"So you have to make your choice, Georgia Mason. Whether you're going to continue down the road you picked..." And watch everyone else suffer for her choices, again and again and again and again - "...or watch everything you've built your life on slip away instead."

Somehow, he thinks he already knows her answer. But he would, wouldn't he?

He's not even really here.

She shakes her head. Without sunglasses, she can't hide her expressions, so she doesn't try. She smiles, a thin, sad expression, and looks up to meet his eyes.

"I made my decision long ago, and I have to stand by it. If I don't, I wouldn't be me anymore. For better or worse, this is who I am and what I do, and I've come too far to back down. No matter how high the cost."

"Then I hope you're ready for everything to burn behind you." Because he wants her to remember that, and this moment, and everything that comes after. He wants her to remember that she made this choice. Maybe she isn't one for regrets, but if she cares so much about facts?

Perhaps she can draw a few conclusions from the inevitable damage her facts will leave in her wake.

"Again."

And they say you can learn from your mistakes.

She straightens, steeling herself. She doesn't know what the consequences of her choices are. She never can. But she knows who she is. Georgia Carolyn Mason. The girl who tells the truth no matter the cost.

"That's the thing no one ever seems to understand," she says, holding her voice steady. "You assume I don't want things to burn."

"Look. We already know you're self-absorbed and self-destructive to a fault." He even adopts a patronizing tone, the wry lift of an eyebrow.

"It's not justice you're pursuing. It's leaving a mark. On everything."

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