A Day Late and a Dollar Short

[applesaucemod]

As far as dreams go, this seems surprisingly...normal. True, the dreamers of Manhattan and beyond will find themselves stranded in the middle of the ocean on a fairly deserted rocky island, but it's nothing so unusual as the labyrinth from last time, and no one appears to have become an animal or reverted to an insane past (or future) version of themself. Besides, well, rocks and grass, there's nothing here but an abandoned lighthouse, the doors and windows broken, and the spare furniture worn by the weather. You can go up the spiral staircase to look at the view, but there's nothing to see but the endless ocean. One might almost think tonight was a night for simple socializing via the telepathic current.

As if anything to do with the rift is ever that simple, you silly bumpkin. How quickly each person realizes what is unusual about tonight's dream will depend in large part on their personality. Some might go the entire night without noticing (except from the distress of others, naturally), but some will find out the instant they open their mouths to converse with another dreamer. You see, each and every dreamer will be completely unable to tell a lie for as long as the dream lasts. The truth might be evaded by omission, but any attempt to say that which is untrue will result in the corresponding truth emerging instead.

Good thing it's just a dream and everyone's going to forget in the morning, right? Right??


[Mod note: As usual, players can choose to have their characters remember or forget anything that happens in the Dreaming. As per usual party rules, both members and non-members are welcome to play any character in this post, regardless of whether that character is currently in the game. Unlike usual, tonight's theme is not optional; all characters will be subject to the enforced truth-telling. Have fun!]

Comments

[rae_of_sun]

She thinks he's joking, all right - it's just the second sentence that strikes her as ludicrous. Enough so that she peers at him for a moment, trying to figure out if he was serious about any of what just came out of his mouth. She doesn't get a sense of deception from his shadows, though, and she lets out a huff of surprise.

"You've got vampires asking for that? Are you sure they're not just poseurs or something?" Because in her universe, and outside her own admittedly unique experience, if you've got a vampire talking to you and you're not interviewing them for the ten o'clock news, you're about to be eaten. They're not going to ask you to spot them a few thousand blinks or if they can crash on your couch for a few days, they're going to ask you if you wouldn't mind being devoured... and there's a pretty good chance your under-the-dark answer is going to be, 'no, not at all, please help yourself.'

[stronglikebear]

Yuri snorts. "Some of them, I guess, but that's why Blythe talks to the new people. When she came through the rift she started being able to tell when someone's lying, so it's pretty straightforward. I'm guessing you don't have Twilight in your world?"

Because it's not like he can point to a fictional account of vampires and say, 'yeah, that's one of the kinds we've seen' when her world probably doesn't have that kind of book. Twilight in his world was significantly different, after all.

[rae_of_sun]

Hey, speaking of being able to tell if someone is lying. She feels some sympathy for Blythe, though it's possible that this other woman's 'gift' wasn't so jarring as Sunshine's. Like, maybe she didn't have to spend two weeks knocking things over because her depth perception had gone all screwy and having to hold her reading material perfectly still to keep the text from making a sickening leap into three dimensions instead of the usual two.

"Assuming you're not referring to the time, I'm guessing not." If she knew he was referring to a book series about vampires, she'd be even more certain, given that she spent her younger years reading as much Other fiction as she could get her hands on.

[stronglikebear]

"No, they're books. And they got made into movies. They're kind of terrible, but a lot of people like them." Very helpful. Very clear why he brought that up, too, obviously.

[rae_of_sun]

"Ah." Well, plenty of the books she's read are kind of terrible, too, but that's why she enjoys them. "We have the Blood Lore series. And the classics, like Bram Stoker. Most of it is just hysterical nonsense, though rumor has it that vampires borrow some of those... aesthetics... just to freak people out." Before they eat them.

She mostly sticks to the older stuff, in part because the post-Wars offerings have taken something of a turn. When all is said and done, she prefers her vampire fiction to be overwrought in an 'oh no, mysterious Others' sort of way and not an 'oh no, here's a plausible portrayal of how they might actually take over' sort of way. There's not much guilty pleasure to be had in speculative fiction.

[stronglikebear]

Hey, Yuri doesn't actually read Twilight. He just...saw the movies because a friend liked them. Let's go with that. "Yeah, it's...not like Bram Stoker. At all. These vampires are sparkly and want to be your boyfriend."

And Yuri knows full well how that will sound to her, thus the pause for laughter or sputtering or righteous indignation.

[rae_of_sun]

"Sparkly?" Let's just address that bit, because it's the most ridiculous. And also because while Con is not exactly, uh... boyfriend material, there was still that... ten seconds that went nowhere. Not that she is thinking about that. Sunshine, focus on the sparkles. "I mean, the best they can manage is passing as human, otherwise they just look... dead. To some degree." Or slimy, but she's not thinking about that, either. "They definitely do not sparkle."

[stronglikebear]

"And they angst," supplies Yuri cheerfully. "Like, constantly. And so do the werewolves in the story," so you know it's dumb "which is kind of realistic."

Wait did he just say that. Embarrassed, Yuri colors and tries to change the subject. "And for some reason it's almost always werewolves in this new universe. It's like they think there's only one kind, or maybe one kind per continent."

[rae_of_sun]

Had that slip occurred earlier in the conversation - and if she wasn't disappointingly angst-prone herself, and self-aware enough to both notice and be disappointed - she might have laughed aloud. As it is, she manages to turn it into a cough. A brief cough, even. Hey, she's probably only human.

She could point out that weres, at least, have an excuse. If you're a vampire, you're king of the mountain; everyone else's hatred and suspicion of you can't be all that galling when you hold a substantial fraction of the world's wealth and technically, secretly won the Wars. And no one makes a habit of caring about their food's opinion of them. Weres, on the other hand, lack that nice, cushy fallback.

Yuri's pretty obviously appalled, though, and Sunshine doesn't feel like riling him... because okay, he's probably not a werewolf, but she still doesn't know what kind of were he is. Wereskunk is still officially on the table.

"There are some weres that tend to be a bit, uh... regional," she allows. "Like, there are weregilas, but they tend to hang out in the southern states. You don't get them that far north. But thinking there are only a few kinds is pretty," unimaginative, "stupid."

Yep. Whatever this dream weirdness is, it's catching.

[stronglikebear]

"Well, yeah -- I mean, I don't know how it is where you're from, but back home weres and wildlife usually tend to match up. But still, it's not like wolves are everywhere."

Yuri frowns to himself. Back home, werewolves had been just one among many 'predatory' weres getting the short end of the stick when it came to accommodations. He snorts at her candor, assuming it to be voluntary. "I can't decide if they never had weres in this universe and just made it up, or if all the weres died off and it's only the wolves they remember," he says. He kind of likes the former possibility better, though it seems unlikely that they'd get so many things right about it by chance. "Some of the different cultures have stories about different kinds of weres," he adds thoughtfully. Really, it's something that was on his mind a lot when he first discovered his new universe's obsession with people who didn't even exist there. He hasn't thought about it a lot in recent months, but there's been other stuff to distract him and he's sort of forgotten what it was like not to be considered a mythical creature or movie monster.

[rae_of_sun]

"Pretty much," Sunshine agrees. "You get weres like rats and coyotes just about everywhere, but that fits the pattern, too." She decides that she isn't getting a rat or coyote vibe from Yuri, not that she really knows what she's talking about, vibe-wise. She'd also like to say that she's not getting a skunk vibe, but that could be wishful thinking.

Anyway, it's not like she can really tell anything by looking. The shadows might be some help, but again, no illustrated user guide. And since any given were is going to be flouting the laws of physics when they change, it isn't that surprising that there's no real physical similarities between a were's human shape and their animal one. Like, a werechicken isn't necessarily going to be plump and twitchy with feathery hair, and a wereweasel isn't necessarily going to be skinny and have a long torso. Point being, general broadness aside, Yuri could be a wererabbit for all she knows.

Talk about wishful thinking.

"I can understand taking a concept - like magic, or weres, or vampires - and running with it. That happens all the time. But it's weird to just hit upon the idea of a werewolf and stop there, even if the werewolves were all you remembered."

[stronglikebear]

Yuri nods vigorously. "We had stories about vampires back home, like I said," he agrees. "But no vampires that I know of. It was always, like, a metaphor for other stuff going on."

He could mention how the universe he's dropped into does have stories about werebears from their version of Russia, which is a bit painfully ironic. He doesn't really want to bring up werebears at all, though, so he doesn't. Instead, he goes back to her earlier comment about the more common weres. "You'd think wererats would be a bigger thing," he says. "It was always rats I was worried about as a kid. You can't even keep regular rats out of your house, so how are you supposed to keep from getting bitten if someone doesn't lock themself up right?" That's how I got bitten. "That's not how I got bitten, though."

...Wait. Did he...did he just say that? Seriously, Yuri, get your head in the game.

[rae_of_sun]

Her nod is more understanding than might be expected. She gets it. The vampires in her universe are fairly well known, all things considered - at least, there's no question of their existence - but they're also just so weird and creepy and almost-human-but-then-really-incredibly-not that it's hard to really believe in them when you're not actually facing one down. Hell, she knows Con, and she still doesn't entirely believe in him. They're too wrong to exist, except for the pesky fact that they do. Vampires as metaphors are easier to swallow than vampires as real carthaginian monsters that want to swallow you.

Also, wow. Talking about weres with an actual were might be strange, but she's pretty damn certain that how he was bitten shouldn't be up for discussion. And if his expression is anything to go by, he didn't mean to head down that particular road, either. She doesn't even need to read his shadows to guess that much.

"So, uh... I take it I'm not the only one accidentally saying stuff I didn't plan on actually saying, huh?"

[stronglikebear]

No. No, it is seriously not up for discussion; even lying and saying he was a rat was kind of an awkward gesture to make, though he meant it as a sort of reassurance. Look, see, I'm just a rat -- I might bite you, but I won't maul you.

"Oh, God," he says, partly relieved and partly disturbed. "I thought it was just me."

[rae_of_sun]

If he's going for reassurance, telling her she isn't going to get skunked is what she really needs to hear. Not that having a werebear on her case would necessarily be that big of a step up. They're not too common, probably - it's kind of hard to judge when you factor in the likelihood that a werebear is going to get their hands on the suppressors no matter what. When they don't, you tend to hear about them. She doesn't often hear about them.

"Yeah, I'm not in the habit of telling strangers that I'm a magic handler," she admits. "Or of telling them I know they're weres, either. Hell, I haven't even mentioned it to Mrs. Bialosky." Which could just be taken to mean that she'd show more deference to her regulars than a random guy in a dream, but that's not what she's going for. "Sorry about that," she says again, because it can't hurt.

[stronglikebear]

"Yeah, I kind of don't usually tell people I'm a werebe -- a were," he confirms, covering up the near-slip with a cough. "I mean, even back home it doesn't exactly make you popular, you know? Where I am now, people would either think I'm crazy or know I'm a rifty." And neither would be great. Seriously, the thought of going into a full moon transformation in an unsecured mental ward full of defenseless patients is enough to make him ill.