Nemaisare

Preferred Narrative Fallthrough

Honestly, without knowing the exact situation(and I don't need to :P), that all seems very reasonable to me. At least, insofar as it doesn't seem to have escalated into a flame war or trolling effort. I can see the merit of both stances as well as what the rest of the players concluded. But if I were to look at each part individually, I'd have to agree most adamantly with the peanut gallery.

Poster A's inability to bend their plot towards an accommodation isn't exactly the cooperative working with the group that one generally expects and implicitly agrees to when joining a group roleplay. If you aren't prepared to let your plot be influenced by outside forces, then you shouldn't really be bringing it into a public forum like that. On the other hand, if you are willing to let influences occur, but can't find a way around them to a satisfactory conclusion to the plot(which is certainly still, at the heart of the issue, yours), then I can understand trying to avoid the influences you can't work around. However, if you already have the plot idea in your head upon joining and the complete avoidance of characters (more than one of which are not yours to control) is necessary to finish said plot, you should probably either not join, change your plot, or try to talk with the other rpers before things come to a head and they can't find a good reason to have their characters ignore yours.

Poster B's inability to control their own character is... not an exceptionally valid argument. I've encountered it before, where a writer says that they are merely reporting or letting their character write through them. I can understand the sentiment because I do know that when you write a character, you are writing a person who should remain consistent with how you want to portray them. If they do not like mushrooms, you would not write them happily gorging out on mushrooms with a huge smile on their face. But it is entirely possible that they've only actually eaten mushrooms once, and they were poorly cooked, and these are, in fact, very good mushrooms and they are surprised at how good they taste. If they would not ordinarily ignore suspicious or overt, or even just curious, behaviour that catches their attention, then why would they suddenly turn a blind eye? Bribery? Distraction? Sometimes, especially if you are suddenly in a corner and did not have the chance to prepare for the necessary actions, it can seem inevitable that your character should react one way and one way alone in order to maintain consistency and continuity. If that's the case, and backtracking was not an option(given as it's a group rp, it would be hard to manage), I can understand them being stubborn and possibly, probably, frustrated by a request to change their character's actions.

But for Poster B to say that they cannot make their character do anything different is rather silly in my eyes. They are a text based creation, and in your head, you are fully capable of making them do a 180 without any consequences. They aren't going to attack you while you sleep because you made the manliest macho man dress in drag and do the hula. It might make you and everyone else cringe to see it happen, but it is not impossible to manage. And if it allows things to continue peaceably, then maybe it is in the group's better interests that you sacrifice that character's momentary integrity and work together to find a retroactive reason for why the ignoring was a plausible action. I can understand being frustrated about it though, and the stance concerning contextual reality; consistency and continuity are important to any story, breaking them should not be done without thought and preparation and maybe a back-up plan.

I think that Poster A might be a little more in the wrong, but only if this issue came up after a lengthy period of time during which they could have been working, and weren't, to avoid it by discussing their plans and how to work around them with the other group members. But, along the same vein, demanding that someone's character interact with your own smacks of the sort of thing most people want to avoid. It should be a collaborative effort to entice characters into interacting together to further their and the rpers' aims ICly, not OOCly saying that this has to happen now, because it's going against one character's supposedly written in stone traits that can't be finagled by the writer to get them out of the situation without sacrificing either consistency or plotline.

As I don't know the rp, I'm not sure about the examples being brought up by the rest of the group, and can't say whether or not they're valid to the situation. I really don't know NRPs, at all, either. >.> But I should think that in any collaborative setting, working together is kind of, y'know, the key element.

VIGILANCE: Memento Mori

Sorry for the wait on that one, @DJAtomika I wasn't sure if I should be waiting on other people to post or not. Could have asked... >.> But I didn't, because I forgot, whoops. But six days is probably long enough...

VIGILANCE: Memento Mori

Oh, he’d been sleeping.

Lucas might have apologised for waking him if he hadn’t been distracted by the beagle coming over to sniff at his leg. Little claws scratching at his skull and the floor while he watched her assess his interest value. The store owner/manager/clerk - whatever he was he was in here a lot - followed after her, a right friendly greeting for someone shaking them out of a doze. So, he smiled distractedly, keeping his hands to themselves and now and again resettling the doll who was never in danger of falling.

“Ha. And hullo Casey. Is she Casey?” Lucas crouched to say hello properly, unable to help believing that the dog was the more important acquaintance to make, since he was more used to them than people these days. He’d meant to add her as an exception to the everything’s for sale rule, but tripped up and rolled with it anyway. He wasn’t absolutely certain that was her name, but there was definitely someone named Casey who came here regularly.

Holding out his hand for her to sniff if she wanted, he shook his head, processing the greeting and answer he’d received with a speed roughly equivalent to a cow chewing cud. He’d get through it eventually. He gave up halfway though, since he didn’t actually want any guns, and wasn’t interested in learning much more about them. Rentable or not. Finally, after a long moment, he shook his head and shrugged, raising his gaze from the cute dog to the less adorable man and offered him another crooked, half-hearted smile. “Sorry, no. I don’t like guns.” He made sure that came out clearly, speaking slowly and loudly so he could hear himself, not wanting to disappoint him after the rest of their conversation by only then bringing up that he wasn’t planning on buying anything. “They’re loud.”

He held the doll out instead, her smiling face flopping back on an unsupportive neck. “She was my mum’s and don’t dropped her, but I’m trying to find the girl.”

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

On the first pass, as he followed one of three trails leading away from the city gates, Curdle marvelled less at the speed of his travel – which seemed sometimes to be on wings of wind and sometimes more upon the whims of the wind – than he did at the array that swept across his vision.

The sand and sky were as they always had been. Nothing had displaced them. Yet, for all that it would have been an impossible task, the jinni might have believed it had someone told him then that a spirit or god had reached down while he was sleeping and turned every dune to glass. Not the clear, smooth panes that he had seen only three times in his whole life, no. There was form and shape and colour beneath him. Breath. And it spun together a thousand colours he could not name. He had caught glimpses of the same in the desert glass occasionally found by travellers, sparks trapped in time.

Fire annealed.

The desert had somehow turned to light.

Ahead of him, specks in that brightness, whorls of blues and greens and star-silver resolved themselves into mules and camels and oxen, humans and jinn, making their way across the sand. He could see the red-orange glow of hard light, magic, lingering beneath the sand stretched out behind them. It was the trail he’d followed from the gate, though the nearer he came, the brighter it grew. It formed a strange shell between the travellers and the glittering sand beneath their feet. And as he rushed past, wondering how he might even recognise that woman if he could not make out faces, that light shell flickered, foundering for a moment, and he saw one dark, jadestone silhouette that paused in the middle of a mincing bird step to turn towards him huge, round eyes the same bright light as the sand, looking right through him the way he could through them, and he fled upwards again on another rush of wind. There’d been no donkey in that group.

As he rose, vista spreading once more beneath him, looking for the other three groups to cut across to them rather than go back to the city, he realised he did not know for sure that she had even left. That she would eventually, he’d had no doubt, but that it would be today… How could he know? He’d not bothered to ask. She likely would not even have told him.

Well, two more caravans to search, and then he must go back if she was not in either. He did not know if getting too close to his body would pull him back to it or not, but if he had no other means of becoming himself, once more, it might be his best option. Or he could remain like this forever. It was not, in truth, an unenticing opportunity.

The next caravan, led by a male with a snake’s tongue, had some promise, but there were three in and around the cart pulled by one donkey, and a child in the other. The woman had not been a mother, so far as he’d been able to tell in their brief meeting. Motherly, she might have managed with anyone other than him, younger too, but not a mother.

He flew high to find the last caravan, dazzling himself with the faint spray of clouds turned crystal, and spun in a dizzying spiral back down to the heated brightness of shattered stone when he finally spotted them. He left billowing cloth in his wake, and a briefly motionless jinni, staring like the deer she resembled before a slight rattle of the chain reminded her that the day was not yet done. One donkey, stolidly silver, and a woman of shifting, faceted sapphire in the cart. He passed again, slower, and recognised the broken magic around the urn before he did her, shrouded as she was. He’d not seen enough of her to recognise her shadow. But the urn was there, and he was nearly certain it had not changed hands either, though she must have found it.

He thanked the North Wind that she’d done nothing with it yet, and lifted again to track them as the sun, a strangely dim orb to his eyeless sight, dipped towards the horizon. When they camped for the night, he would try to join them, if he could.

---

He’d watched the night’s shadow steal across the sand, stretching over the light as though devouring it, and, briefly, he’d mourned the loss. But soon enough, the caravan had begun tiny fires that snapped and sparked like golden stars, though they covered only the tiniest fraction of visible desert, it was enough. And gradually, as he looked further, waiting for the travellers to tumble into sleep, he saw other tiny stars, other spots of life, wandering over the shadowed sand. There was life still.

Now, slowly, he drifted lower, and lower still. Until he was floating above Miria’s sleeping form. He reached out to her, but succeeded only in ruffling her covers. He tried to shout, to startle her awake that way, as though her waking up was somehow the key to his existence. But she did not hear him. Nor did anyone else, save, perhaps, the other jinn. Then, he sank too low and her breath caught him, drew him in. Not into her lungs, he was no use there, but into her Self. And he fell sideways through her, brushing past emotion and thought and dreams as they dragged at him in turn. Despite his earlier ease of movement, he learned too late that a lack of form gave him nothing with which to resist that pull.

He was sent headlong into her sleeping mind.

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

So sorry it took me so long to get this reply to you. I seriously did not mean to. I was havign too much fun describing things. >.>

But I figured I'd leave it there, and you could decide how invasive or not his intrusion is and what, exactly, he might wind up seeing before she realises he's there.

VIGILANCE: Memento Mori

I was assuming more that the guns had been tested at some point before they made it to the shop... The loud noises would be all in Lucas' head. Unless a car happens to backfire while he and Sam are talking. :P

I'm not at all on the up and up concerning gun manufacture or sale. I just did a very quick google search that mentioned four different options for gun availability in Toronto, one of them was renting.... Admittedly, this was talking about gang members getting guns, so I dunno where they'd go to rent one, but I just figured if it's on the first page of google, there's going to be at least one either in-the-know or idiot person wandering around wanting to rent a gun. It would make a lot more sense for a shop to allow gun rentals if they can keep them close and see them being used at a range. I forgot about ranges. lol

VIGILANCE: Memento Mori

@DJAtomika there's a post for ya. :) I was much too eager to start spouting questions at you before posting. >.> So if there's anything you'd like me to fix up, or if it might need clarification, let me know. ;) Also, I have no idea if Sam rents his guns or not, but I figured if it's an option at other gun stores, someone would be bound to wander in and ask. But this one I probably should have asked before I posted, but I was almost done before I thought whoops, should probably know that, but I don't, so I'll ask it now. Does Sam have used guns in there? As in, things that might be making gunshot noises at Lucas? I don't even know if they'd have to be used... Do people test guns before putting them out as merchandise? Anyway! Point being, you can say yea or nay to loud things in the shop, or if there's anything outside of your posts or vague customer questions that Lucas might pick up on. :D

VIGILANCE: Memento Mori

Too many worries and ruins, plans ruined by worries, caught in a city with no way out or in or over walls that nobody could see. If he’d wanted to, Lucas might have been able to trace those lines with his feet, following new memories made by routine patrols. But he didn’t want to, he didn’t want to be here either. October was about the last month of good weather for travelling. If he left it any later he’d risk getting snowed in at the cottage, and stuck wasn’t what he liked being. At least here, at least here there was the illusion of not being stuck. He had a whole city to wander around in, enough parks to get away for a little while. But there were still sounds in parks, falling off the high buildings, it seemed. Drifting in on echoes. And he always knew he’d reach the end sometime sooner than later and the rush would all settle in again without his invitation. Caught between the bones of his skull, just like he was, only he wasn’t big enough. His head was small. Too small to fit it all in and sometimes it escaped when he had nothing else to say. Or crowded out his thoughts so they might as well have moved into someone else’s head for all the good they did him.

But not today. Not with the sun shining through the back of his coat, settling like a friendly cat, just about, all bright and brash until a cloud skittered across its face. No wind today. Well, not much down here, nothing like what it could be. Warm enough that everything was remembering it, and he’d be too hot by the end of his walk, but he’d been meeting Mark, and he preferred walking where he could. Less crowded than the buses or the subway, even if it took longer.

He knew the way well enough besides. He turned the corner with the car wheels coming up on the sidewalk and kept going two blocks past the fallen streetlight. Before he made it to the next landmark, however, a strangely simple contentment fell over him. Love, rough but true, as he dangled from a small hand and felt his feet bouncing off the ground again and again. Lucas stopped so suddenly in confusion he was lucky there was no one immediately behind him. He looked up first, feeling small, before he remembered he wasn’t and looked down. To one side the walkway was grey and spotted. On the other it tripped over the curb and turned into street. But reaching over the curb was a strand of red wool. He followed it to a stitched smile and button eyes. The doll had on a neat little dress, striped socks and black shoes, and there was an admittedly unnerving vacancy to its smiling stare, but Lucas found himself focusing on the dirty ground into the discoloured hands and the way fingers curled around his – its – wrists.

Lost toys were worse than most lost items. Especially the stuffed ones, full of synthesised comfort and hugs. It had been a while since he’d found anything like this one though. A nice little rag-doll. Handmade by a sure-fingered woman humming along to a radio. Someone would be missing it. Maybe they’d come back. If they knew where to look…

In the absence of anything better to do, Lucas stood back up, folding the doll into a one-armed hug and smiling as its memories hugged back. Over his head, he could hear the adults talking, looking for something, can I help you? Well… The whole street had buildings full of similar questions, maybe one of them would have the same voice too. Or recognise the doll. He tried a café first, the staff weren’t sure, but they offered to keep the doll and ask the next shift, too. He said he’d come back. Mac’s next. They said no one with a stroller yet that day. He was just walking by a gun store, under the assumption that it was unlikely, eyeing the doll again, when it became double. They’d walked past the shop window.

So, he turned right there and held up the doll again, then bent down and let it swing, squinting, trying to get as close to where it had been, but the light was bad and the window kept shining light in his eyes instead. Blinded his mind’s eye and that was funny because it was making his real eyes tear up too from the light. He tried touching it too late, when he couldn’t figure out what he was seeing at all and there were guns behind the glass and he didn’t want any but that’s all he was seeing now. Until he raised his head and saw a man looking back at him. Unaware that he’d momentarily appeared to have a bad back injury suddenly flare up, or any other possible explanation for his awkward poses, Lucas gave the guy a grin and went towards the door. If the window couldn’t show him, maybe someone inside had seen what it had. A description was better than asking about a stroller and a kid with the doll. Lots of kids had dolls, and strollers…

Through the door and swinging on laden hinges, Lucas swept in with a slight swaying before he caught his balance. “Hello, hi. You should change stations.”

This radio station played the same songs too many times. He could name them, and he didn’t want to. But it was better than he’d expected. Except the arm holding up the tv… He frowned up at it and went wide around the space beneath it, things that remembered falling might fall again. “You rent guns?” The question emerged surprised, and just as loudly as his initial greeting, unperturbed by having veered off subject. There was enough in here to weigh in on his words, and he needed to get through that before he could get back to the doll. Now though, he just wanted to know if renting really was an option. He hadn’t known that before. Mind you, he’d never walked into a gunstore before, either.

blackbird claw, raven wing [ closed for El Taco Taco && Nemaisare ]

Aaaaaahnggrrrrrrrrrrrrf… The rumble started low when she finished with her demands, reverberating through his chest with a rattling growl and emerging from his throat in a more plaintive groan. It ended in a quick huff. Promptly followed by a yawn that curled his tongue and bared sharp, yellowed teeth that clicked together beneath a glare he sent her way.

Then Matiir forced himself up and went back towards the tree she’d wrapped the chain around. He moved stiffly, leaning back a little to let more weight fall on his knees instead of his arms, slow, but still able to coordinate his efforts. The shackles clinked and rustled as he went, before falling silent when he stopped moving, turning around to press his back to the tree, hips twisted to the side, legs out, arms flat on the ground and chin settled so he could keep his eyes on her.

They glowed green whenever his gaze angled just so to catch the fire light, but he was not only watching her and her knife. The fire had warmed him too, though beyond its light the night was still cold and wet, and the rags he wore quickly reminded him of that fact. More than that, however, Matiir could still feel the absence of what should have been, like a prickle on the inside of his skin, buzzing in his ears like flies. The combination of cold and unrest had him lifting his head often to shake away the feeling, and more than once rising to shift position, though nowhere was comfortable now. Each time, the chain rattled and he’d settle down as though ready to sleep, only to rise again a few minutes later.

He’d watched her set up camp, recognising familiar movements he’d never taken part in before either, without moving from the fire’s heat as it reminded his muscles how to feel. He’d watched her grow comfortable, though he knew the knife meant otherwise, as he grew restless. And now that she was still, he could not be.

His stomach was empty. That was nothing new. Still, he would have preferred it full. He was cold. Also, nothing new, the weather had not been kind this last week. These things he could deal with, given the chance the chains kept him from. But the dying air stirring in fitful breaths that had nothing to do with the wind… He didn’t know what to do about that, at all.

Finally, more than halfway to morning, when the rain stopped and the chill grew more pronounced, Matiir grunted and pushed himself up from his latest position draped over an uncomfortable root. Then, still sitting, he twisted a foot up, knee going past his head, to scratch at the belly of the shirt he wore. The fabric bunched and tore and he wriggled back, hunching his shoulders up to duck through the hole for the head, still pushing with his foot until the motion, not easily managed in a human body, made him topple backwards over the root. Once he righted himself, Matiir found his hands impeded by the shirt with no way to push it past the shackles. Grumbling to himself, he tore the fabric with his teeth, grimacing at the feeling of gritty fibers in his mouth, though they weren’t quite as bad as feathers and left the rag where it fell as he turned his attention to the pants they’d put on him.

If it hadn’t been for the cord tied tight about his waist, they’d likely have come off while Samaire dragged him. He tried rubbing them off against the tree, but that was no different. Eventually, after a long, cautious stare past the embers to Samaire’s still shape, he rose into a crouch, hands lifted loose to either side of his face as he ducked his chin to eye the knot. He couldn’t reach it to bite, too stiff from the cold, and his spine no longer bent as far as he was used to. Humans used their hands, he’d watch them tie and untie rope many times before now. He didn’t have the same dexterity, but he did have claws. In the end, he needed neither, and used the heels of each hand to push the rope down until he could simply slip free of the cloth.

Finally…

Matiir shook himself when he was free of the clinging clothes, glad to have escaped their damp wrappings. He stretched and twisted, easing muscles that had grown tight, and rolling on the ground to scratch at all the healing itches crisscrossing his skin. New abrasions, peeling scabs, old scars and what felt like a trail of ants’ feet across his shoulders and down his arms. What hair he had left rose everywhere on his skin, even across his scalp it tingled and he moved more slowly to his hands and feet, enjoyment vanished, wary.

Despite his aches, when he finally shifted forward, his stiffness was gone. It had been replaced by the slow, tentative jerks produced by fear. He slipped forward, head and body as low as he could crouch, chain still slithering after him in its relentless, snaking snare. There were no birds calling. No bugs, or wind either. Only the occasional drip of water off a leaf. The creak of a waterlogged branch. He was stretched to the end of the chain, shaking from the chill or the strain, but ignoring it in favour of keeping his eyes and ears on the trees and shadows before him, occasionally lifting his nose to the air, though there was nothing new. Minutes passed, the hiss of an ember made him flinch and glance over a shoulder, ducking down even as it reminded him that he wasn’t alone in the forest. But the human keeping him nearby was not his biggest worry anymore. And he turned back to watching the trees.

Still nothing. But the presence was building. He could feel it, and he didn’t like it.

Then came a rustle, wind rushed, a deer coughed, his head came up, startled. Something crashed through the trees at the edge of his sight, a fleeting shadow that dropped to the ground with a strangled bleating, it thrashed for a few seconds before the faint pop of its spine forced it still. But by then, Matiir was already back across the small space, having leapt fully five feet in the air from a standstill, spinning as he went to rush the length of the chain and shinny up the tree it was wrapped around. And there he stayed, perched on the first thick branch, claws digging into the bark, out of reach of any other predators, keening faintly.

VIGILANCE: Memento Mori

I could see it being a sort of the characters keep bumping into each other kind of deal. Not necessarily becoming a team, but eventually going beyond casual acquaintances and whatnot, mutual friends or suchlike.

Speaking of, I did have a random idea of just having Lucas knock on Sam's door to ask if he knows the owner of a something or other that he found on the sidewalk. If you're looking for something to have happen in your post? @DJAtomika