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meadowlarklogs2019-10-07 01:20 pm
strove) wrote in meadowlarklogs2019-10-07 01:20 pm
[open log] i don't care about the mess you made
WHO: Clarke Griffin, Riku, and Goro Akechi + anyone who wants to do some dreams or other stuff
WHERE: Dreams, New Amsterdam.
WHEN: Month of January IC!
WHAT: Dreams, memory shares, etc. General open log things.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation for Akechi and Clarke (respectively).
Of course, thematically they're different:]
riku: mistakes of the past, worries of the present
[These days, Riku is more or less at peace with himself. Once, his dreams were mercurial and lacked control. They showed his worry about strength. Power. And at times, Darkness—the Darkness that reigned over his life, that acted as a threat. These days, that Darkness is as much a part of him as anything: trapped in his heart, a constant in motion. A part of who he is.
But there are themes and motifs that reoccur. Friends fading away. The danger of thinking too much, even if the thoughts don't string together. A friend slipping, falling into a wave of Darkness. More recently: images of his home falling apart, of New Amsterdam falling to the same ruin, crashed into by a wave of dangerous Darkness.
And of friends dying. Of not being able to do enough. Of the struggle of having to accept that they will do as they do, even if he can't do nothing. His hands always tied, forced to be idle, passive. Accepting that, too.
There is always a push for logic against even the most irrational of thoughts. Always.]
clarke: guilt, the lives she's taken, a peaceful interlude
[Many of Clarke's dreams take place separate from what would be her mindscape. Her dreams are of green: sprawling trees with a beautiful, forested canopy. A bright sun overhead, though sometimes there are two. But in the horizon, there may or may not be ruin: ruins of a city that managed to come together in the aftermath of an apocalypse, or ruins of a world, covered in dirt and sand, and strange creatures that burrow into the ground and can dig into someone's skin. She doesn't dream of those creatures, not often.
When she can, Clarke dreams of what could be: a life in this area of rich, fertile environment. A time with her daughter, her mother, her friends. Bellamy is there when he can be, but during times of strife, it seems she has a hard time facing him. (This Bellamy is older, with facial hair and a calmer expression. Like he knows to keep what he can inside.)
When there are people present, there is always a pressure. Of being boxed in, of being the one to find the solutions. Clarke always feels as if her answers are the wrong answers, and they show here. But there is no resentment toward the many, many people in her life: angry, making demands. Just an acceptance. Clarke doesn't feel as if they're wrong to ask so much of her. Besides, she put herself in that position to ask to make those decisions.
After all, she is a mother. A leader. But also: a tumor. A cancer. These days, Clarke doesn't let those thoughts creep up, but in dreams, who can say?]
akechi: wasted potential, what could have been
[Akechi doesn't dream of exact moments or of exact places: he dreams of the settings he likes, with drawn out, complicated scenarios where he's called upon to solve a problem. Solve any problem. Because he is someone who came into his power at an age when he was already embittered by the world, embroiled in hatred for everything around him. His mother committed suicide when he was young, and he was forced to be passed from home to home, a blemish upon his family and upon the world. An illegitimate child and a problem. Rather than choosing to overcome these notions, Akechi internalized them, took them to heart.
His dreams reflect this: colored often in blacks and reds, with Akechi moving alone, carrying every purpose that he believes that only he can accomplish. His dreams are a sign of how he deluded himself: believing that his long term plans would become something at some point.
He is extremely intelligent, and his dreams show it: with him trying to make logic out of nothing, out of the world around him. He seems to be at odds with it, caught between a sense of justice (inherently emotional) and a world out of order, one that's inevitably going to be that way no matter what.
If Akechi's gambit had paid off—if he had been aware that he was a part of a game with a gambit in motion—his view of the world would've taken hold. It would've fallen into disarray, granting control to a single deity because people are inherently messed up. At the heart of his dreams, this is a singular, notable truth. It's just one that's at odds with what Akechi really wants: to be praised, loved, and seen as less than a blemish and more that someone who can accomplish things. He just hasn't admitted as much to himself.]
ooc notes
[The general overview here is to give people an idea of what my characters' dreams would contain. This is an open log, and you can request a starter hitting on one of the notes above! I'll also be posting closed requested starters below. I'm also open to memory sharing or characters just catching up, though the former may need to come along organically (as none of my three know it's on the table).
If you'd like to discuss further, hit me up on plurk @ medieval or on discord at alison#8996.]
WHERE: Dreams, New Amsterdam.
WHEN: Month of January IC!
WHAT: Dreams, memory shares, etc. General open log things.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation for Akechi and Clarke (respectively).
Of course, thematically they're different:]
riku: mistakes of the past, worries of the present
[These days, Riku is more or less at peace with himself. Once, his dreams were mercurial and lacked control. They showed his worry about strength. Power. And at times, Darkness—the Darkness that reigned over his life, that acted as a threat. These days, that Darkness is as much a part of him as anything: trapped in his heart, a constant in motion. A part of who he is.
But there are themes and motifs that reoccur. Friends fading away. The danger of thinking too much, even if the thoughts don't string together. A friend slipping, falling into a wave of Darkness. More recently: images of his home falling apart, of New Amsterdam falling to the same ruin, crashed into by a wave of dangerous Darkness.
And of friends dying. Of not being able to do enough. Of the struggle of having to accept that they will do as they do, even if he can't do nothing. His hands always tied, forced to be idle, passive. Accepting that, too.
There is always a push for logic against even the most irrational of thoughts. Always.]
clarke: guilt, the lives she's taken, a peaceful interlude
[Many of Clarke's dreams take place separate from what would be her mindscape. Her dreams are of green: sprawling trees with a beautiful, forested canopy. A bright sun overhead, though sometimes there are two. But in the horizon, there may or may not be ruin: ruins of a city that managed to come together in the aftermath of an apocalypse, or ruins of a world, covered in dirt and sand, and strange creatures that burrow into the ground and can dig into someone's skin. She doesn't dream of those creatures, not often.
When she can, Clarke dreams of what could be: a life in this area of rich, fertile environment. A time with her daughter, her mother, her friends. Bellamy is there when he can be, but during times of strife, it seems she has a hard time facing him. (This Bellamy is older, with facial hair and a calmer expression. Like he knows to keep what he can inside.)
When there are people present, there is always a pressure. Of being boxed in, of being the one to find the solutions. Clarke always feels as if her answers are the wrong answers, and they show here. But there is no resentment toward the many, many people in her life: angry, making demands. Just an acceptance. Clarke doesn't feel as if they're wrong to ask so much of her. Besides, she put herself in that position to ask to make those decisions.
After all, she is a mother. A leader. But also: a tumor. A cancer. These days, Clarke doesn't let those thoughts creep up, but in dreams, who can say?]
akechi: wasted potential, what could have been
[Akechi doesn't dream of exact moments or of exact places: he dreams of the settings he likes, with drawn out, complicated scenarios where he's called upon to solve a problem. Solve any problem. Because he is someone who came into his power at an age when he was already embittered by the world, embroiled in hatred for everything around him. His mother committed suicide when he was young, and he was forced to be passed from home to home, a blemish upon his family and upon the world. An illegitimate child and a problem. Rather than choosing to overcome these notions, Akechi internalized them, took them to heart.
His dreams reflect this: colored often in blacks and reds, with Akechi moving alone, carrying every purpose that he believes that only he can accomplish. His dreams are a sign of how he deluded himself: believing that his long term plans would become something at some point.
He is extremely intelligent, and his dreams show it: with him trying to make logic out of nothing, out of the world around him. He seems to be at odds with it, caught between a sense of justice (inherently emotional) and a world out of order, one that's inevitably going to be that way no matter what.
If Akechi's gambit had paid off—if he had been aware that he was a part of a game with a gambit in motion—his view of the world would've taken hold. It would've fallen into disarray, granting control to a single deity because people are inherently messed up. At the heart of his dreams, this is a singular, notable truth. It's just one that's at odds with what Akechi really wants: to be praised, loved, and seen as less than a blemish and more that someone who can accomplish things. He just hasn't admitted as much to himself.]
ooc notes
[The general overview here is to give people an idea of what my characters' dreams would contain. This is an open log, and you can request a starter hitting on one of the notes above! I'll also be posting closed requested starters below. I'm also open to memory sharing or characters just catching up, though the former may need to come along organically (as none of my three know it's on the table).
If you'd like to discuss further, hit me up on plurk @ medieval or on discord at alison#8996.]
no subject
It's never pleasant, but you don't need to be afraid.
[Perhaps saying as much is unnecessary for Clarke's sake, but she feels a need to do so anyway, to restate it as much for herself as anyone else. There's a brief deliberation -- which to show? Not the last, that lonely, empty space. Not the first, foggy with the distance of a childhood long left behind. The forest, then. The time it all changed.
She tugs the threads of memory, slipping underneath as into water, allowing it to flow.
Prairie lurches through the forest, arms extended in front of her, crashing through the carpet of dead leaves. This truly is a desperate escape: a blind woman, lost and alone, without her cane. Without anything. No road. Just the smell of earth, the bark of the trees into which she collides, the fallen branches over which she stumbles. Just her heart hammering in her chest, the air burning in lungs unaccustomed to its briskness.
The air changes. An updraft, the smell is different. She doesn't need to see the precipice to know it's there, that it's close. Prairie toes forward a step, another step, ready for the ground to fall away, ready--
The blow falls from nowhere, a sharp blossoming of pain across the base of her skull, and then nothing. Less than nothing. Less still than that. It happens mercifully fast, far too quickly to truly register.
When she comes to on a blanket of moss, all is light and colour, all is brighter than the memory of sky, greener than the memory of green. The landscape stretches on and on without trees, interrupted only by a little red hut. A bird flies by overhead, only it isn't a bird -- it's something whirring, robotic. Prairie watches it go. Watches. It's when she registers this without surprise, without any sensation but overwhelming calm, overwhelming peace, that she realises that for the second time in her life, she's dead.
The rest comes in bits and pieces, fragments of memory. OA is omitting sections, the most sensitive, the most strange.
Prairie pushes through the door of that little hut into space, into an endless expanse of swirling stars, tiny nebulae whirling past. She stands, walks, but there is no clear up and down, none of which frightens her. She has been here before. She knows: here, nothing is frightening.
She lays her head in Khatun's lap. The woman who had stolen Prairie's eyes welcomes her home like a daughter.
There is a door in space, and in that door a round window, like a porthole. Through it she sees her father, knows now and with finality that he truly is long dead. Khatun says that she can go to him, but if she does, she cannot return to the others. Khatun says that if she lives, she will never see him again. Not here, not anywhere. It isn't a fair choice. "To exist," Khatun intones, "is to survive unfair choices."
She says goodbye, the Russian heavy on her tongue, only half-familiar now. Papa doesn't hear her.
Prairie wakes. She wakes and opens her eyes and where once was blackness now there swims into painful focus the watchful eye of a camera; light filters in through the window, late afternoon, and she can see. She's alive. She carries Khatun's gift like a seed inside of her, a fluttering thing, promising freedom.
It fades; something of that peace lingers. OA remembers it well enough to feel it now, in spite of the tears she realises have come to her eyes.]
It was different for all of us. Different... spaces, dimensions. Stories. People.
[A beat, and then:]
I think you'll see her again. I don't think your deal is like mine.
no subject
What would it be?
Perhaps it would be little more than an abandoned gas station where she's hung her art. Perhaps it would simply be Eden, leaves crunching under her feet when the season turns from summer to fall. Perhaps it would be reclaiming North America here, knowing what that continent needs to survive because Clarke has seen it countless times before. Perhaps her afterlife is now, and she fights more for her people.
In that way, Clarke can't deny that she and Lexa may still be together. They saw eye to eye on what they would do for their people, and how they wouldn't steal private moments to themselves unless it proved necessary.
But she does reject what OA says. No, Clarke doesn't think she'll see her again. Hear from her. Miss her. Feel the tightening of her throat every time she thinks of her for far too long (now, that's happening right now).]
She's with Madi now. I'll see Madi again. [Better than saying "no, you're wrong," because it's hard to explain the intricacies of that situation. A memory doesn't show everything.]
My people left a version of this world seeking out a better one. Not the City of Light, but the world you saw outside. We ruined what little of it that remained, and went up into space. I think you're right that my version would be different as a result. I don't find comfort in ... the symbols of space. I don't want to return to the stars when I die.
[No. She wants to help her people find a place to call home.]
Coming here means I have a chance to find a better life. This world isn't perfect, but I will bring Madi here. And my mom, and my friends. And everyone I'm meant to protect. Some of them were Lexa's people once, and now they're mine. I would give a lot of things to see Lexa again, but what I want more is to find a proper place for my people to live. For our people to live. So that we can finally get our humanity back.
[A brief prayer of sorts finds its way into the connection between them:Clarke doesn't acknowledge this, but it seems as if she has given it to OA purposefully. The words themselves are an echo of many voices. Clarke's heard it her entire life, spoken by countless people. The last bit is spoken by Lexa alone with the track of a fading voice. Their people have never truly sought to meet again, only to continue on and be strong. That's what it's always meant.]
Strangely, I feel more sure of it after seeing ... after seeing what you just showed me. I can find comfort in knowing what I must do.
no subject
Either way, that certainty makes it easier to keep going, to move through this darkened dreamspace, into familiar, increasing sightlessness, interrupted by the scuffing of their shoes against the facsimile of pavement. The sound resonates in this strange space like that simple prayer resonates through OA's inner world.]
Homer's was a hospital, he said. Somewhere by the ocean, with foghorns. Scott's was a film set.
[She chuckles softly, ducking her head. It sounds absurd, the afterlife as a hospital, as a film set. It makes more sense given a bit of further context:]
The NDEs were just a way of... traveling, of moving temporarily between spaces. Dimensions. There are other spaces outside of those, we thought. Entire lives we might have lived.
[A beat.]
And other ways to travel. Permanent ones. Death isn't final, and it's only one method.
[There's a low mournfulness, an unspoken understanding: even knowing this, she cannot make manifest what Clarke wants. There is a way to open the path, yes, but want and will are inherent in the process. Even if the movements work here, which is far from guaranteed, to the best of her knowledge, she could only help people leave this world, not draw anyone to it.
There's another sadness there too, older and darker and far more personal.]
We were gonna have a garden. Homer and I, when we got out, when we found our perfect dimension. We thought there must be one, somewhere we could... live. Just live, with our hands in the dirt. I hope...
[A pause; she draws in a breath What she wants to say next must be felt, must be known in fullness, must be made true.]
I hope you get yours.
no subject
You've gone between worlds before. Dimensions, maybe. Different Earths. This isn't your first time.
[Had that been revealed through all of that? Clarke has a hard time discerning if that's true. What can be seen—or rather, understood, as that's more applicable here—of someone else's mind and experiences? From what she knows of Madi's training with the Flame, it's hard to deal with it when it's multiple people. What if it's one? She recalls Lexa meditating, but never asked at the time what it meant.
So much understanding that left her. That was never in her hands.
Clarke doesn't berate herself for it. She's curious, thoughtful.]
I've learned that there isn't a perfect world. But if there's one where my people can be left alone, that would be it now. I don't even know if this is the one, but ... [She thinks of the Red Sun sickness, of wanting to kill herself, knife mere inches from her arm to "cut away" at a cancer—]
Well, it has to be. Sometimes that's the place where you start your garden. [Monty had taught her as much.]
no subject
Yeah. It was never going to be perfect for everybody, but we'd be free. At the time it sounded like the same thing, but we did spend more time talking about planting than harvesting.
[She looks down and away, for a moment unable to bear the sight of another person even in her periphery.]
We only traveled temporarily, only in death. That woman, Khatun -- the others met people like her, people who gave us... pieces, pieces of the puzzle, like words in a language. Five movements, at least five people. Executed perfectly and with perfect feeling, they could do things we could hardly imagine. The movements would be our wings. We'd get them all, and we'd learn them, and we'd escape.
[She huffs out a wry laugh; a pang of deep longing and regret passes between them.]
Sometimes we thought we were going mad. But the NDEs were real; we had proof. Hap had recordings. We had better. We'd lived it. We knew. We just... ran out of time. I didn't escape. There was no heroic rescue. I didn't save them. But I will.
[She presses her lips together, grim. It has the sound and feeling of a promise, a story she tells herself over and over so that in the telling it becomes real. There are worlds upon worlds, and time. They'll try again. She'll find them and they'll try again.]
I have them. All five. If you hold on to this memory and it still feels true in the sunlight, I can teach you. If you want to learn, find me.
no subject
What OA is offering her is the skill to do that. It aligns with her other goals. Find a way to change and save the world. Make it a home for her and her people. Buy them a life away from politics, from worship and any consideration of all of that. Peace.
She wants so badly to be done fighting that Clarke knows that she'll jump at every opportunity that presents that outcome to her.]
You're OA, but that's not enough. How do I contact you? How do I find you? [Both pleading, but certain. Calm.
She'd remember.]