ph_ooc | Monthly Plotting Post

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.)

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can characters also get bodily shapeshifted by their nightmare (as long as they turn back when they get out) or is it just the landscape :3?

While Siebren doesn't have the same experience with dreams as Neil or the same control of the Beyond as Mortanne, his presence in the dreamscape will be something akin to a gravity well. This is when he comes to truly mantle the power of the Baron of Blank, and he will wield this same power to aid those around him, especially those whose patron demon he is.

For in this dreamscape, he truly will be the demon he's becoming. Love him or fear him, this event is going to shed a new light on Siebren.

Who's game to play off this?

They can absolutely be bodily shapeshifted by their nightmare, yes! :3c It's dream logic, go as wild with it as you like!

YAAAAAAAY

I don't want to spoil the entire scope of my dreamshare nightmare plans, but:

Mulcahy: (CWs for: body horror, gore, violence, war, probably more along the way)
... is going full-send into his very true statement of "I dream of vengeance more than mercy." He is going to be the abomination he sees himself as, expressing the hatred he can't speak anywhere else. His nightmare is his dream is that he allows himself to express being hateful and angry and violent, and that he needs it, which is true. His nightmare is his dream that he becomes a whole person. Mulcahy will eventually escape via the Necropolis.

Phil: (CWs for: explicit writing of suicide and body horror)
... is getting what is either a continuation or the natural endpoint of his seemingly endless train of suicide nightmares. We're gonna be on some Skinamarink (2022) slash Anatomy (2016) slash House of Leaves (2000) type shit. Loosely (because I likely won't be able to do any of these works justice) but also definitely inspired, at least in vibes. Once he falls into his corner, he likely won't be able to leave; others may or may not be able to escape as well. The House has no doors or windows, and the House will Continue. Phil will die. Not sure how or in what fashion and in all likelihood, this ending will only be able to be threaded with one or two people, but Phil will die.

I promise I like subtle dreams and writing too, they just both ended up with insane baroque shit because it worked, lmao. I mean, there will ideally be more/different nightmare scenes with them too. Both of these require buildup and I want to touch on more things than just these big capstones, and I'd like the variety. I just find it harder to/take more time with coming up with the funky fresh stuff.

Edited 2025-01-03 08:23 (UTC)

What's the deal with mortality in the dreamscape- is it a die in dream = die in real life situation or can we repeatedly put our kids through the pear wiggler with killing them?

Darcy (cw for child-abuse-themed horror and gore):

I am looking for Darts' dreams to be at least partially responsive to whoever's coming to see her. The good dreams will be varied, various little picaresques of safety and comfort, mostly in either domestic settings or fantastical dreams of freedom.
Her nightmares will be similar, but I have a couple of ideas that I would like to offer up to people.

The first is the big dramatic flashy "kid Darcy is suffocating under a pile of corpses and you need to dig her out", and the second is "Darcy is laying in the lap of someone featureless who is stroking her hair and has a knife to her throat. If she flinches or tries to move, her throat will be slit". The first is obviously more simple and will definitely involve comforting kid Darcy, the latter will be more tense and subdued and will require a careful approach to not have Darce fuckin' beef it. I do plan on Darcy making it into the Beyond as her way out because. Y'know. Gestures at her. But! I am open for anything! Hit me up! Hit me down! Hit me sideways!

Hawkeye (cw for discussion of war, ecological destruction, general MASH warnings):

Hawk's pleasant dreams are mostly going to be of his childhood and of Crabapple Cove more generally! Which sets up his main stage for his nightmares; that he returns home and finds they've made Crabapple Cove into a MASH unit, devastated the local ecology, and have made his father work the same shifts as he did back in the war. I am open to variations on this or any ideas around it, please throw them at me.

As always you can hit me up here or on discord for plotting.

The last time Spiral Jeff was in a dream plot like this, his nature allowed him to experience it as a sort of lucid dreaming state, where he could still be affected or harmed by things, but was able to also exert some influence over others' dream manifestations - would that be allowed or nah?

Edited 2025-01-03 11:20 (UTC)

Radar
Oh, yeah, he's definitely going to need rescuing from the oasis. Ever wanted to see Ottumwa and meet the extended O'Reilly family? Come say hi, and then try to drag him away from Sunday dinner! Part of the escape outward will involve swimming through the Sea of Japan. I'm sure it'll be fine. (Okay, more seriously, there will be a lot of war-related stuff in his nightmares and even more specifically related to Colonel Blake, if that's not your thing.)

Gaeta
Gaeta won't be caught in the oasis, so he can be recruited to rescue people early on, but his chunk of the nightmare realm will be gnarly. It may include elements of nuclear annihilation, a fair number of dead bodies, multiple distinct moments where figures from his past will try to trick him and anybody he's trying to rescue into straying off the path, and end with a ride in Raptor 718 (which involved being stranded in space on a ship with failing life support, murder, some intense gaslighting, and a failed suicide attempt). I can absolutely adjust things, tone it down, pick and choose what happens, etc etc, so it's not just a relentless march of awfulness -- though as a note for established CR, this might be the only time he offers a glimpse of what happened on the Raptor, if that's something you want your character to witness.

Nimona
Nimona can also be recruited as a rescuer! If so, your trip to freedom will include getting chased by an angry mob and crossing paths with Gloreth, the first monster-hunting knight of the Kingdom and former childhood friend of Nimona's. This one'll probably have some body horror CWs on it too as we get weird with the shapeshifting.

With all three of them, I would love to play with their nightmares reacting to, and/or blending with, the nightmares of whoever they run across. Think there could be some interesting places your crew's nightmares intersect with mine? Let's Make It Worse, Together.

Artemy canonically has some pretty fun dreams to play around with. A lot of what Artemy's dreamscape is going to be is a mess of the town he's from in a configuration that makes no sense. Sprawls of the Steppe that seem to go on forever where your stomach aches of hunger and your nose burns with scenes that you can't seem to place but then suddenly, in dream logic, you're trapped inside a house with doors upon doors that seem to lead nowhere in particular. Inside these houses there are beds everywhere, with the dying and the dead. The plague is never far behind. You'll likely be able to run into these motherfuckers. It'll be a great time.

Jimmy does not have the canon dreams that Artemy has but he does have the nightmare fuel of his canon itself to provide shit. His nightmares are just a starry black void of nothingness. Walking around, you will absolutely see some shit that you don't want to. Perhaps too many bottles of mouthwash. Perhaps a small television set which encourages you to commit unspeakable acts. Visages of body horror and gore can be found as well, if you're into that kinda thing. A talking Polle will absolutely be there. He's just a motion censored mascot though. Don't worry! (Or is he...?)

I'm waiting before I make any plans for the event, but would like to plot some things for outside of the event, if anyone is interested.

Spiral Jeff has been on hiatus and I'm looking to bring him back, but genuinely have no idea where to start and could use some help. He mostly haunts VAS and Empty Pockets. Sometimes he performs some spooky busking.

OG Jeff (

bardish) has started working at the boarding house, so any youths who live there have probably had a chance to meet him by now. He's been hanging around town going stir crazy because he gave himself runner's knee and fell down a small ravine, so if anyone wants to have some light slice of life fun with a neurotic middle aged dad, he could use some friends. Or enemies! He's a social butterfly, and he's also mostly sober (but on the lookout for a weed hookup), so any sober buddies would be cool. And other middle aged folks. And parents. And musicians. And magical types. And so on. He also likes to support the arts and hangs out at Empty Pockets a lot, though he'll never perform, and he'll leave if his younger eviler CRAU self is around.

Anyway hmu here or on discord (weeyotch) if you're interested in things outside of the event, as I'm not in the chat.

Edited 2025-01-03 15:27 (UTC)

Mulcahy:

good dream ideas:

- genuinely, hanging out at the M*A*S*H. Quiet nights in the Officer’s Club, reading in his tent while jeeps go by. he misses his friends and he was violently ripped from them, even if the war drove him and everyone half mad and scarred him for good. they’re his last memories of Earth.
- in his garden in ph :-)
- talking theology shop with one or two vague figures (that perhaps look suspiciously like darcy and zivia) for endless dream hours
- playing poker with hawk :-) and more of the 4077th, but also with some ph vets at the table
- chilling in a quiet snow field (mortanne didn’t do that, he just likes it that much now)
- overall, well fed and hale and can eat without worry :(

nightmare ideas:

- memories to pick from include: everything about M*A*S*H and the war; shelling, Christ as a dead soldier, being in OR with guns pointed at him, etc etc
- For sure something to do with loneliness and isolation from the world, from even the people who like him very much, from God
- Hiding in his sister’s room or under the bed from his brothers
- Literally just trying to go about his day while the floor and everything and all is covered in bodies and gore, many of people he know, which is a scene he used to wake up to a lot in his Sail CRAU
- everything about being tortured in the Village, especially the medical abuse (including solitary confinement, drugged food, restraints, sedation, forced hallucinations, self-inflicted starvation, & being forcefully lobotomized and abusive shock treatment, even if the last 2 were mostly undone from the death reset)
- Fear of 2 showing up in PH
- getting kidnapped, home invasion
- Violent domestic abuse situation but both of them are him; expression of both his fear of being his parents as well as how he talks to himself

Phil

good dream ideas:

- domestic like you wouldnt BELIEEVEEEE. With Darcy as his kid specifically. in a setting that is mashed up between PH/Punxsutawney/Pittsburgh/Cleveland with all of his friends, many of whom are people he does not have contact with anymore, and probably his missing family, and his late-ish wife Rita
- a lot, lot of dreams that are spins on him being in a situation where Darcy is his kid (aus, basically)
- being back in the Channel 5 station but his CRAU friends are also around, either in neighboring departments or somewhere in the city or in his phone contacts

nightmare ideas:

- Time loop shit (the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is)
- Trying to win an unwinnable gambling game to keep Darcy safe and his loved ones alive/close to him against Luck, Death, and Fate (and possibly the bosses from his CRAU; Cordis, the Captain, and Celestine)
- The December trial, with Darcy beheaded and Skulduggery
- The Village also and being trapped in a bed with his wings amputated
- to that end & his accidental themes of bodily violation, Something Under His Skin Something Under His Skin
- returning to Earth but he can’t fit into his old life anymore, due to bird bits or has changed too much and no one likes him anymore or understands him even a little or all of the above

Edited 2025-01-04 00:04 (UTC)

Rose let me bring in a living mask that kills people through the Shapes in the Snow TDM prompt, and I'm excited to make that everyone's problem. With a host, it's about as intelligent (and as communicative) as a Pokémon. It brought its own host for its first appearance, but after that host withers away or gets pulverised, it can take another one if someone puts it on, killing them in the process. If the mask itself dies, either from being smashed to pieces/exploded/etc or from going too long without a host and starving, it'll reappear somewhere on the island. It is identical to the mask Purple was wearing at Dahlia's birthday bash.

In its canon getting killed by one of these that already has a host would turn you into another one, but the process has been thrown into disarray by the island's magic and metaphysics and no longer functions. However it still grabs you and sprays acidic blood into your face at point-blank range if it catches you, which is not conducive to good health even before the part where it's trying and failing to disassemble your bones and build another mask out of them.
With a human host it has no other natural weapons except for, like, punching people; if it latched onto a nonhuman it could use their claws and horns and stuff but not any magic that isn't a bodily function, and it would struggle with figuring out how to operate larger and more complex nonhuman parts like wings. The host body is preserved well enough to run and jump in pursuit of prey, but it's not good at climbing anything less regularly-shaped than a ladder. The mask's senses are mostly equivalent to human but it has better night vision.

How it attacks people once it's attached to a host (cw body horror, emetophobia, possession details)

Hit me up here or on discord or plurk if you'd like to do something with this!

Edited 2025-01-10 08:40 (UTC)

Y'know, we hadn't considered it--- so yeah, immediate respawns for everyone yay!! Wiggle away!

If other players are down for that then absolutely! Get absolutely silly w it, dream logic!!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Snakes (CW for murder)

will probably have nightmares about his former boss, Lucrece Posey, as she was the one who murdered him (after he tried to murder her for mysterious reasons). A lot of the nightmares may involve the mortuary at Justice, Nevada, where the gang had their meetings and Snakes was poisoned. Good dreams (if he ends up in the oasis) probably involve him in control of various towns, maybe even Pumpkin Hollow, making everyone's lives better, and everyone loving him for it. And winning a lot at gambling.

Sephiroth (CW for arson, mass murder, child abuse, child soldiers)

will likely have nightmares about going insane again, burning things, trying to send Meteor on Gaia (or on Pumpkin Hollow), and/or his horrific childhood being made into a child soldier at the hands of mad scientists. It's also possible he may dream about his friends turning against him, which actually happened in Genesis's case and is his fear with Zack and Angeal. He would likely need to be convinced he's sane now, he's safe now, and these things are not happening.

Edited 2025-01-03 21:03 (UTC)

🍐🍐🍐🍐🍐🍐!!!

(Margaret technically isn't here yet, but I want to get her in before the dreams so we're putting her here anyway.)

For non-event stuff, I've got a post up with open prompts for Melanie, CT, Alice and Daisy as well as links to where Ruby and Gwen are accessible, and if anyone wants me anywhere else I'm open! But onto event stuff...

General: I am very open to dreams being influenced to varying degrees by the people joining the characters in them, and to vice versa!

👻Melanie: In some of Melanie's own dreams, she'll be able to see, but not consistently. Melanie has a lot of baggage around her autonomy, bodily and in general, so that's going to be a big theme. The clearest image I have involves:

CW: medical adjacent horror, mutilation, immobilisation

Her being immobilised, tied to a bed that looks something between a medical stretcher and a camping cot as something/one tries to cut through/mutilate her leg.

Or something generally along those lines. Being trapped in the Archives with no way out is also a viable backdrop, during which she would definitely be without her eyes as the fear would be being trapped again despite the drastic measures.

🌼Daisy: For Daisy, some options are going to require more individual tailoring because the Hunt gets messy like that. BUT Daisy's main, canonical nightmares focus on the Buried. So: welcome to the dirt dimension. You're buried alive, being crushed repeatedly etc, though for the sake of being able to escape at all you'll have more range of movement than people in the Buried usually get but basically no sense of which direction to go. Daisy will not be handling this well!

🌹Ruby: Ruby has actually been trapped in something similar to the Oasis before, so I'd love to do more with that since last time was pretty one-and-done. Ruby would be very easily trapped by a dream about a world where Beacon didn't fall and her loved ones are all still alive, including Penny transferring to the school, so you can meet some of her old friends! ...and then have to rescue her from it and have to get through the nightmares.

I want to focus mostly on the Oasis in terms of her own dreams, because a lot of the obvious nightmares for her are more than I'd like to play out, but she can go through and/or influence other nightmares.

🩰Gwen: The most important thing about any dream/nightmare area born of Gwen's memories is it will all be in mood-ring changing style watercolours like in the movie. What colours each person inside sees things as are tied to their own emotions/perceptions, not anyone else's, so you can go crazy with it.

For this, I'm most likely to play with her Village trauma from her CRAU where she was brainwashed, had her own fears about her capacity for violence turned against her, and ultimately killed someone. The shape of this isn't fully formed yet. A much clearer image I have is based on the Canon Events dilemma, where people will find themselves walking along a sprawling web where falling into the nodes along the way throws you into certain tragic 'canon events' (either of Gwen's or the equivalent of the other character's), and breaking any strings causes horrifying knock-on effects.

💾Alice: Alice is a tough one, because we still have relatively little backstory and her canon point is still only at 10 out of 30 episodes. But I have some thoughts. My main idea is going full Lonely domain vibes (an endless maze of cubicles with old computers in, laced with fog), with maybe a side of echoes of Sam, her friend Colin and her brother Luke that keep slipping through her fingers in horrifying ways. These could be together or separate. But playing with her feelings of being nothing but a drone and the extra trauma brought up in that by the Aster situation is also an option I'm thinking about.

I could also draw on future knowledge as foreshadowing for her eventual canon update, but I don't want to put massive spoilers in this comment lmao.

🔪CT: I have one very vivid mental image based on her death, bleeding out alone in a tiny escape pod. (The lights are all red. There's blood all over the floor that it's easy to slip on. Every steps you take towards the door to the cockpit only takes you less than half the distance it should. The space visually never changes but it seems infinitely long. You've got to make it to the door to cross the area.) Besides this, there's also the possibility of a very dangerous game of hide and seek where if you get caught, you're probably gonna die.

I'm also a little tempted by her initially needing to be yanked out of the oasis because it's of her long-gone colony, where someone might get to see Connie rather than CT for a moment.

💉Margaret: There's a literal dream episode of MASH. I have not yet watched it. But the general expectation of themes will be war, the endless flow of wounded soldiers, and the weird ways all of that ties into what the world expects Margaret to do after the war (aka: get married, be a housewife, etc). A not-fully-formed thought is a scenario where someone thinks they've stumbled into her oasis dream, because it seems to be a happy civilian home life, but it's actually a nightmare and there's some horrifying shit going on.

All of this subject to further elaboration/change as I think more and discussion happens.

👻Melanie:

- ~~Anya in the non-consensual surgery nightmare~~

🌼Daisy:

- Basira and Daisy in an s5 hellscape.

🌹Ruby:

- Darcy is also at Beacon

🩰Gwen:

💾Alice:

🔪CT:

- Crichton rescues her from Oasis
- Gaeta and CT and their trapped on tiny ship handshakes
- Cassandra in the hide and seek scenario
- Ripley and a mix

💉Margaret:

- Zivia in the civilian nightmare
- Hawkeye

Edited 2025-01-20 00:57 (UTC)

Please reply to this post for planning. The one under it will be for writing my plans and details.

Drelasa: Drelasa’s experience with dreams as a false paradise will drive her to flee the dream’s center immediately. However, the nature of the nightmare around her will rapidly amplify her mutations, causing her to become something all the more distinctly Sixth House. That being said, once she overcomes the terror and disorientation of being transformed into what is effectively a flute-tentacle naga creature, she’s going to be well adapted to navigating the nightmare scape, and even possibly empowered to help others traverse and navigate the nightmare. I plan to have a closed thread where Siebren encounters her mid-transformation, and after that, I’m open to dream interactions generally. I’m also cool with her having interactions before that, though they will mostly comprise of her trying to convince others to leave the nucleus.

Sheogorath: I haven’t settled on how well Sheogorath will keep a singular form in the dream world, though considering his canon exists inside a dream, there’s a chance he’ll manifest absolutely normally. Not entirely sure. I do know that he’ll be able react quite flexibly to absurd dream logic, and he’s absolutely up for accompanying others on that task.

Edited 2025-01-04 00:25 (UTC)

So I'd made a pact with myself that I wouldn't do what SH as a series has done and run Pyramid Head into the ground but in this case, I think in James' bad dream you'll have a chance to glimpse the man the myth the legend Mr Pyramid himself.

Here's a very rough idea -

So I'm thinking the nightmare will be very maze-like and difficult to tell if it's in a hospital or a hotel. The longer you try to make your way through the building, the more corroded and industrial things begin to look, mirroring the Silent Hill "otherworld." I'm also thinking like.... ok you know how glow in the dark stuff is easier to see in your peripheral vision than when you look directly at it? (Hoping I'm not like having an "actually that means you have such and such eye condition" moment here lol) Sometimes you'll pass by an open door and catch something in the corner of your eye. You get the sense that there's something horrific there, but when you look directly at it? There's nothing. Very strange! Maybe the dreamer is fighting with a bad memory here.

Some of your typical SH2 monsters will probably make appearances, and there will be some ominous scraping sounds echoing through the halls. I think maybe one or two folks can have a run in with Pyramid Head alongside James.

The whole sense of the nightmare will be centered on the desperation of trying to find someone, and the growing dread that something horrible has happened to them. There will probably be medical themed horror and such.

I dont reeeally plan to do the good dream oasis but if I do it'll just be something sweet and not at all creepy :) focused on married bliss.

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Page 1 of 6

Monthly Plotting Post | January

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/CONCERNS

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Siebren, the Baron of Blank

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guildenstern - mulcahy, phil

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Phoenix | Nimona, Gaeta, Radar

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general non-event plotting

potential dream scenes (do not reply):

Not dreamscape related

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Blue | Daisy, Ruby, Alice, Gwen, CT, Melanie, Margaret

other dream ideas placeholder [do not reply]

plans (pls do not reply)

Nimbus- Sheo, Drelasa

Planning goes here

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