changing and replacing this mask, show time;

[recrypt]

Comments

[survivaltricks]

They probably were.

[why would they need tire pressure pens!1]

Anyway-- more importantly, did we make a comprehensive list of the "games" from which everyone came?

[recrypt]

Minako and I were joking around last night about ranking them on a scale of best to worst, but... [ a hum, ] The ones I'm aware of are:

[ I'm listing them out in bullet points rather than a block of text just for the sake of readability rather than her actually saying things in a particular way but just imagine she's counting them off on her hand until she runs out of fingers to do it with. ]

- ours, obviously, the carnivorous house with monster possession
- a castle where two ladies were feuding and picked people to represent them. Apparently they got their wishes granted as incentive for killing.
- something about the wild west. They didn't even have movies there.
- the sex demon boat.

[ beat. anyway, moving on, ]

- something about an abandoned island I think?
- Minako mentioned the center of the universe, but I haven't really heard anything about that one.
- a city? Where everywhere was McDonald's and everyone was dead but trying to prove they deserved to come back to life or something.
- and the temple, where murder apparently wasn't actually necessary at all but they ended up dealing with it anyway.

[ ... there's a reason 'losing people with infodump holopoint presentations' is on her profile, even if she can't actually project anything from her palms here. ]

Did I miss anything?

[survivaltricks]

For the record, I think "sex demon boat" goes to the top of the shitty list. Followed quickly by "soul-eating mansion."

[but. he has nothing to add to the list because those are all places he has heard about]

For the temple you can talk to Yu and Guy. For the center of the universe, you can talk to Lili.

And for the city with McDonald's, you can talk to Magnus.

[someone here has been doing his research]

[recrypt]

[ she just waves her good hand casually and offers up ]

Heard most of my details about the temple from Majima. I'm apparently rooming with Guy, so... if anything else comes up I suppose I could ask him too.

And I'm probably ranking the temple and castle as least bad, at least as far as situations in which people are stuck in one place and compelled to murder go. Now all we have to do is sort out the middle part of the scale, right?

[survivaltricks]

The temple itself wasn't a bad setup, it just. . . uh.

[the people there]

[really liked to backstab and kill each other]

The afterlife is probably loser to the shitty side of the scale just for being the afterlife. The wild west seemed a little bad? Natalie wouldn't talk about it much.

[recrypt]

On the other hand, with the afterlife, at least they weren't being kidnapped while they still had things to lose? If they failed then, well, it isn't as if much changed, since they were already dead in the first place. But they had everything to gain if they succeeded.

... I think. I don't think Magnus ever said whether the ones in charge of his group were the ones that killed him in the first place.

[ callout post for Joshua, but anyway hmmm ]

Jason didn't go into much detail about it either, just called it 'someone's cowboy fetish wet dream', and way worse than the movies make it look like. Guess we should just assume it was pretty bad?

[survivaltricks]

Yeah, but it's still the afterlife.

[AND THE AFTERLIFE IS, LIKE]

[BAD?]

[BEING DEAD IS BAD???]

[he snorts a bit at Jason's description, though]

These middle ones might be a little tough to rank.

[recrypt]

[ shrugs! being dead is bad, but she doesn't see what the big deal is; the fact that it was the afterlife just means they got a second chance to cheat fate so they can not be dead? so. ]

Hmmm, the concept of the afterlife might be a little beyond a Doll such as me.

[ anyway. ]

So the middle ones are the island, the west, the afterlife, and the center of the universe. Hmmm. Does either of us have any more details on these, really?

[ it's not like they have to rank them at all, but like. they've already started. might as well see it through. ]

[survivaltricks]

[:/]

You're not a Doll, you're a person.

[SO THERE]

I don't know too much about the island, but Flayn and Minako mentioned being from that place. The afterlife. . . uh. Apparently I was there and I was a Reaper? Magnus recognized me from it, even though I don't remember dying at all.

I know the wild west was run by a robot named Hal who laughed when people died, because of course he did.

And the game at the center of the universe required one survivor. Lili told me her group had to sit down and work out who that final survivor would be.

[recrypt]

I'm not here to argue the semantics of my existence with you, Akira. Like I've told others, there's no point in convincing me of anything- my opinion counts for little when it's society that determine's a Doll's place in things.

[ :) ]

That's interesting, though. Maybe dying for humans works the way it does for Dolls, and if you're brought back it's more that you got redownloaded from your last backup with no memories of anything after that.

[ it's facetious, re: the apparently being a Reaper thing. but lots of existential questions there, is the newly revived you the same you if you don't remember dying, etc etc, but. ]

Or it could just be like with Chuuya?

[ the whole future self thing. she'll get right back to ranking them in a second. ]

[survivaltricks]

[JIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII]

[he has more he could say about that, but. they need to focus. maybe he can press it. . . at a later date]

I think it's more like with Chuuya. Magnus remembers dying and being brought back, so if I had really been there I think I'd remember it, too.

[a pause]

Besides. . . Chuuya and I are not the only ones who have apparently been in more than one of these games.

[oh?]

[recrypt]

[ yeah, somehow she figured it wouldn't be that easy. ]

Huh. Aren't you all popular. Who is it that you're talking about?

[survivaltricks]

Akechi.

[lol]

Apparently, he was at the castle.

[recrypt]

... Akechi.

[ lol ]

Now that I think about it, Majima was also a previous guest in Blue's mansion as well, but I'm fairly sure it's another situation like with Chuuya. The fake dossiers we retrieved from the morgue listed an age different from the one we have here.

[ zombie oldjima... ]

[survivaltricks]

[ZOMBIE OLDJIMA. . .]

It's a really small universe, isn't it?

[recrypt]

Speak for yourself. It isn't as if I've run into anyone I know yet.

Maybe the powers that be who keep dragging us to these games just like you all?

[ here lies the remains of the fourth wall, we hardly ever knew it ]

[survivaltricks]

[RIP FOURTH WALL]

. . . why?

This is the kind of popularity I don't want and didn't ask for.

[recrypt]

Did any one of us ask for this, or, better yet: would any one of us ask for this.

[ haha well fun fact about the plasma gang they don't know yet, participation and not just murder itself was also voluntary. ]

[survivaltricks]

[FUN FACT: HE ACTUALLY KNOWS THIS!!!]

I wouldn't ask for it, but I guess if some people thought the reward was worth it. . .

[recrypt]

[ she and minako have only grilled about the accommodations thus far and not the entire setup itself ripip

in the driest, cheeriest tone of voice: ]

Sure must have been nice to be in a place where murder was rewarded. ♪

[survivaltricks]

[UGH]

The temple was apparently like that. Yu called it "deeply political" and said that people were far too willing to betray others to get what they wanted.

[recrypt]

Hahaha.

Politics. Seems there's no end of trouble caused by that word...

[survivaltricks]

This is why nobody likes politics.

[recrypt]

Nobody except the ones in charge who can twist them to their advantage, you mean?

[survivaltricks]

[there's]

[a bitter note to his words that wasn't there before. like something personal has been dug up]

Exactly.