Monthly Plotting Post | January

[pumpkinhollow]

Monthly Plotting Post | January

Happy New Year, everybody!! First off, I'd like to apologize for never getting up a plotting post in December. I'm still getting used to my new job and the holidays + financial stuff were absolutely kicking my butt. As a result, I wanted to get the plotting post up and running as early as possible! We've done some shuffling around of the order of events, but I think you'll like what we have in store!

TDM

All Month

Give it up for our first reprint of TDM #9!

In an effort to make the TDM for the next two months slightly less festive, I'm considering giving the event a Valentine's twist, such as morphing the gingerbread curse to chocolate and adjusting the Winter Market somewhat. If anyone has any thoughts on some tweaks that can be made to make a romance-y vibe, I'd love to hear them! The new TDM will launch next week.

LOST IN DREAMLAND

Main Event - January 17th

Content Warnings:
unreality, varied nightmare content

In lieu of the originally-planned Efrain-takedown, we've decided to delay the death of the Prince of Sorrow's Song in order to give him a bit more screen-time, and instead we'll be offsetting all the Dahlia-centric events by giving our good friend Neil a turn to shine! While the specifics of the event are still taking shape and likely won't be set in stone until closer to, we have the basic skeleton and will be using people's plotting ideas to help add to the structure.

The idea is this: one night during sleep, the entire island will be trapped in a nightmare dimension--- one that has a physical structure. A constantly shifting structure comprised of the fears and traumas that plague its inhabitants, but a structure nonetheless. The vast majority will be a landscape of horrors that amalgamate from the nightmare of player characters, allowing for the potential for a bit of memshare and a bit a lot of creative freedom to get weird with it. The center will be an oasis of beautiful dreams designed to trap dreamers in a lotus-eater type haven. And the exits will be around the edges. It will only be by travelling through the nightmares.

Traverse your fears together! Learn more about each other's nightmares! Get an escort from the island's local dreamwalker, or wander into Mortanne's domain --- the beyond. Fall into a euphoric time sink at the nucleus of the dream or try to rescue your friends from their sinister bliss. There's plenty to do!

CURRENT METAPLOT

Some handwaving of progress is currently being planned for CitrusQuest to expedite the resolution, so stay tuned for how the gang reaches the crack in the world!

Starting next month, Efrain will be starting to stir things up in the lead-up to his downfall! We'll be seeing him and his minions show up to kill the vibe at Merrymeet. In order for me to not die of perpetual 15 threads in the demon inbox disease, I will need to seriously manage my thread load for Efrain and maybe try to sneak in some unrelated Efrain threads during January, as I got a little obliterated during casino time. And lastly, the herbs granted by Mortanne to Leon Kennedy have now been cultivated enough to harvest in Paradesium! Enjoy some dubious unnamed herbs! When you eat them... something happens! (It's a good something.)

(CODE)

Comments

Connor | Ellen Ripley

[2onostromo]

Ellen Ripley: (CW for gore, body horror, pregnancy, implied sexual abuse, misogyny, more to be expected...)

The bi-focus of Ripley's nightmares will be centered around Xenomorph and her crew's science officer Ash. Both individuals represent the core of her trauma, which covers greater themes of misogyny, abuse, being overpowered, etc. The Xenomorph induces themes of body horror and forced ‘pregnancy’ by way of its biology. She may find herself in a similar situation as Kane, attacked by a face-hugger and forced to carry the small alien inside of her stomach. She may also find herself simply hunted, cocooned, and subjected to Xenomorphs abject means of reproduction. Nightmares of this variety will fall into the traditional ‘alien-scare’ category. Very physical, very action-heavy, very fast-paced.

Dreams involving Ash may be more abstract. From colleague to attacker, from presumed-human to droid, Ash creates heavy feelings of distrust. He attacks her in a way that feels implicitly sexually violent, but without explicitly playing out that way, presumably because he’s a droid. Still, this doesn’t make his actions any less traumatizing, and she internalizes his violence as such. She may look into the face of people she’s begun to trust and see him. She may relive the incident, but without her other colleagues there to help her. Maybe she’ll be forced to kill Ash herself, over and over and over. Or maybe he’ll kill her, since that is his end goal after all.

Other aspects will include the deaths of her colleagues, and her inability to save them.

I like the idea of her as a rescuer who becomes side tracked by her own nightmares. She’ll claw her way out of these experiences if it means helping others. Will she be successful in this? We’ll see…

[not_a_traitor]

I can offer Gaeta as a rescuer, if you're interested! The idea of something out there hunting you down -- especially a human-seeming android -- hits a lot of his basest fears regarding the Cylons, so it'd be very easy for her nightmares to blend with his and yank him off track. (Also a hell of a way to kick off some CR, lol.)

[2onostromo]

Yes, I'd love this! Combo-android nightmares galore. The Cylons could work their way into Ripley's dream visions and vice versa with Ash. Maybe fear and mistrust on Ripley's end manifests as someone close to Gaeta revealing themselves as an android. A delusion of sorts. He finds himself suddenly having to choose between killing this thing or escaping it. He and Ripley can help each other along the way! I imagine if she sees him going Through It, she'll try her hardest to buck up and help him.

(LOL right!? Utter chaos)

[not_a_traitor]

Ohhhhh shit yeah all of that fits so well with what I've imagined as some of his worst nightmares. Idk how familiar you are with BSG canon, but there are twelve humanoid Cylon models, and at the time of Gaeta's canonical death only eleven of them were public knowledge -- so he definitely has dreams on the semi-regular where friends/family/Gaeta himself turn out to be Cylon sleeper agents the whole time. All it'd take is a little nudge from Ripley's nightmare to amp up his own! And his paranoia could easily feed into hers in return.

[2onostromo]

I'm not familiar with most of it, so I'll do some wiki reading before we get into the meat of things! I really dig the idea of him believing himself or his loved ones might be that last Cylon model. Maybe at some point in the dream, a Cylon with Gaeta's appearance moves from his nightmare into Ripley's. Maybe this is AFTER Gaeta's already started to help Ripley navigate to somewhere safe. So now we have this situation where Rip is being attacked by someone she thought was helping her, and Gaeta has to face/attack or even kill this culmination of his fears, who ALSO looks exactly like him. So nightmarish AGHH, I'm pumped for this.