hadriel_logs | Event Log: Memories Past

Event Log: Memories Past

Who: Everyone
What: Memory Share Event!
Where: All around the city
When: November 14th-20th
Warnings: Please remember to tag all warnings for memory shares!

Have you ever looked through someone else's eyes? Heard through their ears, spoken with their tongue? The gods have tried to teach some of you empathy, but it's time you learned the hard way, exactly what the others here have been through. For a week, every time you brush skin to skin with someone, you'll experience a memory of theirs: happy, sad, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that it feels real to you.

The first touch may come as a surprise- it lasts only for a split second but may feel like an eternity, where you're trapped in someone else's memory. After that, it could be more expected, and some may even figure out how to control it and share specific scenes from their past with others. Or, you might wear gloves and long sleeve shirts for awhile, nobody's judging.

Maybe curtail the handholding for awhile- or go right ahead, if that's your thing. After all, you never really know somebody unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, right?

► This log covers November 14th-20th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you die in a memory, you don't die in real life, but if you do die in real life please let us know here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Jo glances down at his hand before she takes his help getting off the ground.

They might not have magic, but they make it work. Ghosts are pretty easy.]

Yeah, you didn't break anything.

Good.

[Someone should really invent a way to check for a clear landing zone before teleporting. This is far from the first time he's teleported into something—or in this case, someone—in the spot he was trying to teleport to.

Or, you know, he could just fucking walk to places like a normal person.]

I, uh, I saw a memory of you in a sewer? There was a ghost.

[He's still processing.]

[Walking is a good idea, Harlan. Very good.]

...Oh. [Jo brushes off her hands and shrugs.]

Saw you get taken out by a Null. That had to hurt.

[But that would take effort, is the thing.]

Ah. Uh, yeah. It hurt.

[Harlan's got a high tolerance for and a weird relationship to pain, but that was far too much for him.]

Turns out, dying sucks. I don't recommend it.

[Jo shrugs, looking rather thoughtful about that.]

It gets easier the more you do it. [That's not fair, Jo.]

[...Ah.]

I'm sorry. How many times have you died?

[She had tried to make that flippant, but it didn't work out well. Harlan seems like an okay guy. George trusts him. Jo trusts him, mostly.]

The Null got me too. [Jo glances away after that, sighing quietly.]

I died back home before I got here. We were trying to stop something.

[He offers her a nod of solidarity at the mention of the Null. He won't pry, but he hopes that her death was quicker than his.

Dying back home, though. That's potentially troubling given when he knows of her world.]

Does that mean you're dead back home?

[It's maybe not the best way to phrase the question, but there's no point in sugarcoating it. Dressing it up in polite language doesn't change the fact that he's asking if she doesn't have anywhere to go back to.]

[It wasn't quick. She probably doesn't know how to die quick. It's just not in her to give up.

She looks away at the question. Talking about this kind of sucks. She doesn't know how it works everywhere else. She has Heaven, but maybe no one else does.]

Yeah. A plan went wrong.

Fuck. I'm sorry.

[He's not sure what to say to that. In his world, afterlives are a toss-up. It's definitely possible that they exist given that multiple planes do and people can be brought back from the dead, sort of. Harlan's never believed in that, though. He's his body, and when his body dies, he dies too. Nothing else makes sense to him, and anyway, he doesn't want to hang around as a ghost for all eternity. Fuck that. Life should have an ending.

But that ending shouldn't have come for Jo, not yet. She's young, and more than that, she doesn't look like she's ever been happy. That's not fair.]

It wasn't the plan with the sewer ghost, was it?

What, that one? [Jo laughs and shakes her head. God, that would have been kind of pathetic.]

No, HH Holmes didn't get me. It was a few years after that hunt.

[It... maybe would've been kind of cool to get taken out by HH Holmes' ghost? That seems like a rude thing to say, though.]

I know we're not that close, but if you want to talk about it, we can. Now or whenever.

[He shrugs. It's solidly up to her, so he won't pry, but he's willing to listen.]

Or you can tell me more about what kind of shit HH Holmes' ghost was getting up to. That sounds wild.

[Sooner or later, she might tell him more.]

He was killing blonde women in the building. No one put it together for a long time. The pattern was too long for a person to be doing it and it was kind of random. [The police hadn't tried. Every death had its own invented explanation.]

[Yeah, he figured she'd go for more on HH Holmes. It's a fair move, and honestly, he's happy to hear about this too.]

Ghosts and shit aren't common knowledge where you're from, right?

[He's got a decent memory, but it's tough keeping all these worlds straight, especially when a lot of them are kind of similar.]

It sounds hard as fuck to deal with shit like that if you have to worry about keeping the secret, too.

Right. [She's impressed. Harlan seems like he knows more people than she might.]

Yeah. It gets tricky. Cops don't know. And it's not like we get paid. [Ever. They made due, but it wasn't easy.]

Shit.

[Those are some massive complications. How is that even a sustainable lifestyle? Not that he's knocking it; it seems like Jo is out there fighting the good fight. Still. Sounds hard as hell. It'd be like him trying to do guildwork illegally. For free. Fuck that.]

How do you even manage under those conditions?

[It involves a lot of credit card fraud and hustling. And sleeping in the car. And lying.]

I'm not gonna lie and say it's easy, but- [She pauses, laughing after a few seconds.]

It wasn't easy. I was still helping people.

[That gets a laugh, but only because he can relate.]

I get that. Guildwork is mostly above board, so I can only relate so much there, but I get why it's worth it.

[And guildwork comes with its own set of terrible dangers and he's almost died about a thousand times, but, well. Seems rude to bring that up now. He's never been the bragging type, anyhow.]

Why is all that shit still a secret if it's putting people in danger, though?

[She's almost died lots of times, but she didn't until the end. (That's often how it works, isn't it?)

Jo shrugs at the question. That's one thing that she would've changed, if possible. It would have been easier to protect people if they weren't running around trying to avoid the cops. She knows why it's not common knowledge.

People are stupid.]

Do you have Men in Black in your world? The movie? "People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals."

[He hums as he considers this. He gets the logic, but...]

I don't know. I think it's better that people know what they're up against, not to mention it'd be a fuck of a lot easier on you guys.

[He shrugs.]

Magic and monsters and shit are all common knowledge where I'm from, and we've managed to avoid mass panic.

[His world seems like a mess to her, but she's pretty sure the same is true of when people hear about her world.]

Yeah, but it happens more in your world. There's a chance someone is randomly born with magic. Lots of people back home go through life thinking ghosts and werewolves are just stories. It doesn't affect everyone.

[She is correct.

He mulls this over, though. She's got a point. This is an interesting conversation.]

I'm still a believer in not keeping people in the dark, but I see what you're saying. If someone from my world can miss magic and monsters being a thing, they're seriously out of touch. I don't think that'd be possible, even. But how rare are we talking in your world?

I'm not collecting stats on hauntings and shit. [Jo laughs at the question, shaking her head slightly.]

Even towns where something is common, like, campgrounds where a Wendigo woke up, people will explain it away. It's a bear, that person just got lost and that's that. [Thankfully, most of the time it doesn't seem to be something like that. Or, not thankfully? Jo's still not sure.]

I don't think people believe it even if they hear first hand. You have to be open-minded from the start.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Event Log: Memories Past

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