the mindscape meme

[fiver]

☄ The Mindscape Meme ☄

If you've played Psychonauts, you have some idea of what's going on with this meme. (It doesn't have to play out much like Psychonauts if you don't want it to, though.) Your character has something going on in their inner mental world that needs to be confronted by psychic voyagers, and that's what's going to happen here. It's nothing but metaphor and symbolism from here on out, and you can be as dark or as silly as you want about it.

»» how to play
1. Post a comment (with your character's name and canon as the subject line) with a quick summary of what your character's mental world is like. It doesn't have to be long. "A colorful amusement park with inexplicably Arctic-themed rides" could work for a childish hedonist hiding the emotional scars of a terrible polar-bear-related incident, for example. Give it a snappy name if you feel like it. If you have some imagery or music that fits the atmosphere, you can even link that.
2. If you have any preferences you want to stick with, be sure to make a note of them in your initial comment.
3. Respond to other people's threads with a character to explore their mindscapes. Pick or roll the RNG for an option for what part your character winds up in--or suggest another one if you've got a wildcard idea.
4. First player, your character is the host. Second player, your character is the visitor.
5. The first player writes tags about the mental world that's being explored, explaining how it reacts and adapts to the visitor's presence there. You can do more than set the mood and describe how the environment changes, though: people can crop up inside the mindscape representing various aspects of your character's personality, and the visitor can interact with them. Or if you'd rather, you can have your character accompanying the visiting character through the mindscape, trying to help or misdirect them as they please.
6. The second player tags with their character's attempts to navigate the strange mindscape and solve the inner conflict plaguing the host character--or simply escape back to the material world. Or maybe their motive is less pure, and they're trying to uncover a secret that the first character is hiding deep within. You get to decide why they're there, really.
7. There isn't any right or wrong way to do this meme, so take as much or as little as you want from the options given.
8. Do your best to communicate OOCly with other players if you run into any trouble or confusion, provide warnings if it becomes necessary, and don't be afraid to tag around!

»» prompts for the mental voyagers
1. AT THE GATES. You're about to jump off from the outermost layers of your host's personality and start getting into the stuff that really makes them tick. Can you find the key to the lock, or the hidden door, or whatever wacky trick will lead you there? Of course, the more this character tends to hide their true self, the more their inner world will try to convince you there's nothing lurking behind this facade.
2. YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO FIND THIS. You've stumbled into a hidden place where the host keeps a secret that they never wanted anyone else to know. What is it and how does it manifest in the mindscape? Are they going to attack you somehow for revealing it?
3. NIGHTMARE TIME. Oops, you've gone the wrong way, and now you're squaring off against the host's worst fears embodied within their head. What do they look like and what do they represent? Can they be defeated in combat or do you have to take a more delicate approach? Maybe they don't appear as obvious enemies at all, and they pose a more subtle danger.
4. FREE ADMISSION FOR CHILDREN. Hey, look, it's where your host keeps their most important childhood memories...good and bad. Be careful: they might not be all that accurate or trustworthy. Kids don't have the most objective perceptions of their lives.
5. THE BEST PART OF ME. You've finally found the host's greatest ideals and noblest inspirations--the things that drive them to do good and be a better person. Or maybe what you're dealing with here is the actual personification of their own greatest virtues. Perhaps they're under siege for some reason and need some help getting their strength back, or maybe they have something to teach you. On the other hand, in some characters, this part of the mindscape could be in pretty bad shape.
6. COME TO THE DARK SIDE. This isn't good. You've reached a part of the mindscape that represents or is controlled by the shadow--all the bad things about your host that they don't want to admit. Unless they have admitted it, in which case this place is under better control by them...but that doesn't necessarily make it any less dangerous for you. How will you escape, or will you try to help the host come to terms with this part of themselves first? Of course, you could also try to get them to give in to all these dark temptations and embrace them, if that's your preference...
7. FINAL BOSS. You're facing the embodiment of the core issue that haunts this character. Whatever it is, you have to think of a way to defeat it, whether through violence or other means. Are they too emotionally stable to have such a thing? Then it's the embodiment of their deepest motivation and you have to defeat it to get out of here.
8. ROAM FREE IN THE WILD SUBCONSCIOUS. Enough of those prescribed options; this one is your old wild card. Come up with your own twist on what can be done as a psychic voyager in someone else's mind.

Comments

Bruce Banner | Marvel Cinematic Universe

[aggravated]

(...good luck with Bruce and the Hulk. XD)

Anya Lehnsherr | Marvel (world 97400)

[fridgetothefire]

[It's like you're Gulliver in Brobdingnag, or Jack in the giant's castle: everything is much too big to navigate. And it is a castle, an old-school European beast of stone and turrets. Watch out for the rats.]

[mordantwit]

[Fortunately, he can scale the castle's great granite steps far more easily here than in the physical plane.

His approach is slow, quiet, as he takes in Anya's mental landscape. There's a distinctly familiar feel to it all, which he supposes he ought to have expected.

It makes him both wary and...comfortable. He huffs a wry laugh, and hears it twist in the echoes.

She's not the first refuge of an alternate reality he's met, but in some ways, he imagines she'll be the most challenging.]

Marquise Spinneret Mindfang | Homestuck | OTA

[nauticalnarr8or]

[A world of pirates and surging oceans, of course! Only your ship seems to be made of giant dice, and vast spiderwebs sprawl between the spires of glittering golden islands.]

Kelsier | Mistborn series | OTA

[alwaysanothersecret]

[You know that scene in Alice in Wonderland where she's tiny and all the flowers can talk? Well, it's like that, only the plants are brown, the sky is dull red, and the sun is a baleful, bright red, if you can see it beyond all the brown leaves. But the flowers themselves are still vibrant and multihued, laughing and chatting, planted in byzantine whorls to adorn the walls of an intricate steel labyrinth.]

2 if that's cool

[fearlessherosheart]

[Because if Kelsier doesn't want anything, it's a not-quite-human noble lady (in black trousers and blouse) with a giant metal sword (proving that she's either an idiot or Definitely Not Local) poking around in his mindscape, seemingly completely unconcerned about the sky and the color of the plants. Probably because where Tazendra comes from, the entire country is covered in an orange-tinted permanent cloud.]

Well, this is certainly a curious place.

[She turns to the flowers]

I don't suppose you can show me something more exciting than this maze?

Bruce Banner || MCU || OTA

[andtheotherguy]

[It's definitely recognizable as a lab, all gleaming sterile counters of white and chrome, with ominous green liquids bubbling in beakers and vials, papers full of data and charts and puzzles tucked here and there, just waiting to be picked up. To be honest, the abundance of interconnected glassware, with chemicals dripping or curling through thin capillary tubes from one container to the next make it look more like an alchemist's lair than anything a modern scientist would use. It's impossible to see too far in any one direction; at least the drifting steam seems harmless and breathable. But worse things loom and rumble beyond the obscuring haze.]

1

[jungiangarden]

Vladik has been occasionally called in to do therapy work from a distance, since a psychic's mind can travel far further and faster than his body. But this is the first time he's had to do it for the sake of his own safety. One foot placed wrong and it won't just be Vladik who'll suffer the consequences.

His goal is to find what makes the Hulk appear and temper it down. Not destroy it, though there are some who'd find that the most reasonable option, but from what Vladik understands of Bruce cutting his ties to the Hulk might destroy Bruce himself. He is a healer, not a lobotomizer. The goal here is self-control.

Vladik enters Bruce's mind as delicately as possible. He'll start slow and subtle, explore this vulnerable mind from the inside, and only then begin to make gentle changes.

"Bruce?" His senses are perked, ready to shield himself or flee if the other half approaches him.

Israel | Hetalia OC

[eternaliyah]

[It's a whole city, rickety streets, houses, and markets, sand cats napping on islands of soft sand under the shadow of spreading fruit trees, pigeons clouded around a dropped newspaper, cooing intently. Only every building is constructed of interlocking bones.]

CASTIEL | supernatural

[trenchcoatedly]

[It's all grey twilight, and there's a low rumble of thunder and a persistent mist. But it might be nice without all that weather, because the grass is green and soft, and there are powerful-looking oaks and bright flowers, like a gentle meadow. Just avoid the lake back there, which is the color of blood and has eyes and teeth if you look at it too long.]

[employeeofthemonthforever]

[Don't mind him. He'll just be over here, skipping stones into the lake.]

clark kent / smallville

[ex_ableness822]

[It's a bit Norman Rockwell, to be honest, as far as the surface goes. On one side is a sunny yellow farmhouse, with what looks to be the assemblage of a working farm behind it. On the other side? A country graveyard, row on row of graves with a church spire in the distance, and fresh green grass running between headstones. But beyond that? Ice and crystal as far as the eye can see, in formations that threaten to dwarf cities like New York and London, lunging up toward the sky. Above it all is a small blue planet circling a big, red sun. The two celestial bodies are locked in a never-ending cycle of slow spin and eventual explosion.]

Vladik Norokov | Psychonauts OC

[jungiangarden]

[Vladik was intimately familiar with his own mental landscape. Once it had been an untamed, dark forest. Now it resembles one of the gardens of Versailles, with meticulous flowerbeds and elegantly trimmed topiary animals that occasionally shifted and chirp on their stems.

At one end of the landscape is a large mansion, and before it a wide koi pond spanned by bridges and floating lily pads. In and around the pond are a number of man-sized koi fish with radiant scales and long, grasping fins that function as crude arms. They're also all dressed like the servants one might find at a British manor house. In ruffled aprons and flat caps they busy themselves with tending the affairs of their master's mental world.

At the other, the furthest and least-tended end of the garden, is a dark hedge maze filled with thorns. The maze is where Vladik keeps certain aspects of himself locked down--the nightmares, the bad thoughts, the darker emotions that need to be controlled for the greater good of those around him.]

[vitokinesis]

[ Yves is pretty sure he had a goal to meet here. You don't go wandering around in another man's mind like it's a tourist attraction, after all... Or do you? For the life of him, he can't remember what brought him in, but maybe that had a little something to do with the giant fish in housekeeper finery. Sadly, neither of them seemed to be able to get a sturdy means of communication going, so it's back to trying to decide what the occasion was.

In the meantime, he plays tourist. Bayou-born, the pond and its inhabitants present little danger to him. He strips off his shoes and rolls up his pants until they're at the knee. He's delighted to find that the lily pads support his weight, though it'd be of little concern if he fell in. Unlike some others, he's not got a family curse of dying in water.

So he wanders out to the farthest edge that the lilies can take him, shielding his eyes to the light of the world as he peers up at the manor. Maybe he should head in there?

Nah. Not until he knows what he's doing. For now, he takes the chance to laze about, dipping his hands into the cool water and tugging until the anchor of a stem comes loose on the pad he's boarded. Then, feet dipping to the knee in the water, he begins to paddle through the garden, kicking at any koi that dares come too close. ]

Don' even be thinkin' none for it, cher. I ain't here to hurt nothin', less you keep on makin' a fuss. Then I might see how a koi be compared to a catfish, see?

Frodo Baggins | LoTR | Open to all!

[wheeloffire]

[ You'll first end up in a forest. And if you wander, you'll stay in this forest for quite some time. But in this forest, it's always night, with just a small sliver of moonshine dotting the ground. It's hellishly hot; the temperature will adjust to what you consider to be just a little more than suffocating. A few trees can be seen burning, but they burn forever. The air is heavy, with smoke and fumes that certainly can't be good for you.

If you travel one way, there will be a patch of forest, unharmed from the deadly environment. If you stood in the center, the heat and the bad air will go away. If you look up, you'll see that the branches and leaves are cleared, and you can get a perfect view of the sun. But when you look up, you can't look away. If you stand in the patch, you'll never make your way out.

But if you travel another way, you'll stumble into a nice little town. But the closer and closer you get, the grayer and grayer it gets. The town will loose its color, turning grayscale. You won't be able to hear anything, or even smell the freshness in the air. And if you open a house, there's nobody home.

The town is dead. ]

Black Dainn | Boktai | OTA

[notrueself]

[You may think someone was mean enough to switch the lights off when you enter but luckily enough a few lights turn on, offering a rather dim look at the inside of a shadow's mind.

It looks like the remains of an old house with sand covering the ground. Upturned tables and glass are scattered about so you better watch your step. One can also hear the sound of footsteps and a piano playing with the source coming from upstairs. However, going upstairs yields nothing but a broken piano playing itself and the sound of a few girls laughing. The door leading outside, however, is open for anyone who wishes to leave.

Outside is a place perpetually in twilight. It's actually rather pretty, strange given how terrible Dainn was, but there's something moving in the grass. It's hissing away like a snake and you probably don't want to be caught by it....

Farther along one will stumble across a large stone slab with curious carvings on it. Dark shadows are seeping out and the closer you get to it, the louder you can hear a man screaming for help. though who exactly it is is up to debate.]

2

[queensbane]

[This is not even registering on Alice's weirdness radar. Call her back when there's samurai wasps or singing bottle fish.

The Vorpal Blade is clenched tight in her fingertips as she goes down the stairs of the house. Nothing of use here, nothing that can be opened or needs to be killed. It's actually making her rather suspicious. A mind should not be so peaceful, hers certainly isn't.

The tall grass brushes the stockings around her ankles as she wades out into it. She can hear a hissing, like steam or a snake, and her walk quickens. In her hand the knife slips away into oblivion and is replaced by a large pepper grinder stylized like the head of a raging boar. A small smirk crosses her face--she'd rather see the monster than fret over when it will arrive.]

Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler | X-Men: Evolution | OTA

[thefuzzyguy]

[The woods are old and dark and seem to go on forever. What could be frightening and awful, however, is rendered in loving detail, and the very air thrums with energy and joy, not foreboding. The dark hides wonderful secrets, not horrors, and the towering, gnarled trees are for climbing. The air smells of good cooking, underlaid by the loamy green of the earth, and a small house stands in a clearing with a view of a sky full of stars and a small brook running past, singing water songs.

Though it's little on the outside, the house goes on forever once you step inside. There's room for everyone who might want to visit. The rooms don't look like they have anything to do with each other, one a modern, neatly decorated living room, one a rustic, old-fashioned kitchen, one a child's bedroom so scattered with toys and books stepping is a hazard, and so on forever. The way out to the roof is easy to find, doors always open to a balcony that provides easy access if one isn't up to climbing the walls like a monkey. Even the roof is ever-shifting and endless, here crumbly old shingle, here the stark concrete and glass of a Spartan shoebox of an office building, here hemmed in by gargoyles and here a church's steeple, just above a window that leads to a gleefully gaudy chapel with stained glass and gold leaf and the smell of incense in the air.

The whole world, inside the house and out, is friendly and unpredictable and a little bit wild. Just don't go poking into the dilapidated woodshed behind the house. The darkness in there is neither warm nor welcoming, and the sounds of a crying baby and an indistinct call for help can just barely be heard from within.]

1ish! Also KURT. <3

[thecardmaster]

[Okay, this is... really not what Fate expected to find in a place like this. Granted, to be fair, he hadn't really expected to somehow be inside minds either -- when he occasionally thought being able to get into a person's head would be useful, this is not at all what he meant.

Even so, as much as this forest reminds him of Twisted Treeline, it's the feel of it that makes him a little on edge. Joy doesn't come from nothing, and a creature who enjoys this sort of place is likely one that's quite dangerous. While he may poke at Malcolm occasionally, despite really needing not to, Fate was no fool.

And that was exactly why every step of his through the forest was careful, every inch of him was alerted, and cards were being slowly shuffled between his two hands. If something wanted to catch him off guard here, it would have to work fairly hard to do so.

The house is what finally causes Fate to pause, however. He really doesn't want to put himself in a "corner," so to speak, but if someone's here...]

You certainly ain't all that kind to your guests, forcin' 'em to wander around like this.

Smile | .flow | OTA

[dontforgettosmile]

[It may seem strange that a dream figment actually has one of these, but Smile was unusual for a dream.

His seems peaceful at first glance. A normal, everyday high school with the sounds of students going about their business and getting ready for the day. However, there are no actual students around. Looking around shows that the building is actually empty. Most entrances to the classrooms have been blocked off by an invisible force and the exit to the building itself is also blocked. It seems like something is trying to lead you somewhere, though you're quite welcome to try and find another way out.

Although the longer you stay in this school, the louder a strange laughter can be heard....]

4

[apoisonedrose]

[What a nice little trip this is. Though he'd rather leave now but he'll have fun. Zion continued walking down the school hall, violet eyes watching the walls go by.

He found the laughter unsettling, though he'd never admit that. No, he'd call it annoying or laugh it off.]

Dextera | Baroque | OTA

[rightsiderequiem]

[Dextera's seems very simple when you first take a look at it.

It's a white room, void of anything within it that could make it personal. No bookshelves, no toys, no video games, nothing. There wasn't even a window to look out of. The only thing in that room was a bed that looked like it was made for two people to share. The covers are bunched up and it looks like someone is hiding under them. They're not moving and whoever it is will not bother whoever chooses to wander around this room.

However, there is one other thing. Close to the bed is an old, rusty door that has been chained shut. The chains themselves are actually rather flimsy and can be broken if enough force is applied to them. However, there is a stench of something decaying behind it. Are you completely sure you want to take a look?]

Kirino Ranmaru | Inazuma Eleven GO

[doingthemistything]

[It's a corridor. It's a long, decently-lit corridor, with unmarked doors on each side.

There's a mist that lingers throughout this hall, lightly in the middle of the hallways, but it thickens near the doors--especially around certain doors where the mist seems to form an ineffective barrier, something like a wall or a warning. You could go in anyway, if you really wanted. Certain doors, especially ones with the walls of mist in front of them, seem to give off a certain foreboding feeling the closer you get...]

6

[presto_turn]

[Shindou supposes he shouldn't have hoped it would feel natural, being inside his best friend's head.

As things stand, his head is spinning from all the mist and fog and the unmarked doors. There wasn't any directions for him to follow, besides the prickling up his spine --

So, in the end, he takes a deep breath and picks out a portal out at random, shouldering his way through it.]

Kariya Masaki | Inazuma Eleven GO! | ota

[netting_nettles]

[It's outdoors.

Behind where one will find oneself, a long, man-made stairwell runs out along an incline. It's close, if you only study the stairs, to the path trailing up towards the Sun Garden orphanage's entrance. Only that path runs straight, and this one snakes around a seemingly mountainous hill and far out of sight. Woods line it on either side, blotting out light despite the sun overhead, and the farther one looks out, the more patchwork the weather appears. Mild rainclouds near, clear in between, and, off in the distance, the start of a maelstrom.

Thankfully, you get to start out at the peak of the ascent. There, an apartment building sits as if dropped by a tornado. It's silent for now and run-down, just a few stories high...

But it might be more hospitable than the trek down.]

5

[darkbutlight]

[Hikaru's not exactly certain where to go. On one hand, there's that path, on the second, the apartment building...]

lysandra | original | ota

[obscures]

[info in her journal.]

[A red sun is fixed to an unnatural sky, anchored in place as if welded there among clouds made of dust and ash. The surrounding area is that of a garden from which all life and color has ebbed. Every few feet bears the remains of a bleached skeleton among the wilted greenery: a skull, a rib cage, a grasping hand poking up out of the dead grass. Hundreds upon hundreds of weatherbeaten bones, scattered in undignified piles as far as the eye can see.

Within sight are, as well, the ruins of what was once a simple village house. Words are carved into the splintered, faded wood: distinctly Greek, but otherwise unintelligible. And on the very edge of one's hearing, there's the faint rattling of chains.]

Jane Alderberry | The Iron Dragon's Daughter

[crueldragonsthesis]

The place you find yourself is hellishly Dickensian, an enormous factory. Great furnaces bellow, fed by towering, hairy, lumpy ogres shoveling dark fuel into them. Molten iron is poured into great moulds and those, once cooled, are swabbed down by filthy, fantastic looking children.

Explore to the heart of the factory and you might find the central power source that runs it: in vacuum globes are suspended a needle and a mummified dog's tail, spinning slowly, housed in a mechanism that's a riot of wires, gears and arcane thaumaturgical circuits.

#1

[bunny_ears]

Fucked up times fifty.

[Have a woman in a superhero costume that looks a bit more Playboy Bunny than Superman A stuffed rabbit and a teddy bear are walking by her side, because Velveteen doesn't believe in being unarmed, even in weird dreamscapes. Especially in weird dreamscapes.]

I'm going to have to do something about this, aren't I?

[It's been a long day, and Vel just wanted to go home to sweats and mindless TV and a hot shower. But a hero's work is never done. So, instead she takes to whatever catwalks she can find, seeking to go deeper into things.]

Alice Liddell | Alice: Madness Returns

[queensbane]

Hooo boy.

What you see of Alice depends on where you happened to land. There's the verdant Vale of Tears, the last fragments of what beauty and innocence remain in this broken young woman. There's the nightmarish, pointless machinery run by the cyborgian March Hare and Dormouse through forced Dodo labor. There's the dark waters of the underwater realms, where lurks Walrus and Carpenter's theater and bawdy-house with its fishy audience. There's the Oriental Mountain inhabited by paper ants, formed from a British child's idea of the Far East. And then there's the fleshy castle of the deposed, rage-maddened Queen of Hearts.

Or if you're foolish enough to delve too far in, there's the Dollhouse. The Dollhouse of homicidal toys, mutilated children, shifting rooms, and dark secrets that are comforting to forget but noble to remember.

[OOC: Via the dollhouse there will be at least references to rape and child abuse. Fair warning if you want to go in that far.]

Lets ease into this with the Vale of Tears...

[cherished_avatar]

Chrome is no stranger to broken minds, even if she hasn't been quite this deep or in something quite so broken before. Bits of it remind her of Mukuro-sama, but she wouldn't want to look too closely at those.

The young illusionist, herself, is in green and black, but has left her spear somewhere else. For now.

Music Meister | Batman

[hypnotic_patter]

[There's two sides to every supervillain, the man and the mask. The Music Meister, the Maestro of Villainy and Billy Harris, the Boy from Virginia.

The front part of Meister's mind is an lavishly decorated theater on par with the Paris Opera House. The vast audience socializes in their seats, eager for the performance to start and talking on an endless loop of praises for the oncoming performer. In the pit the orchestra tunes their instruments and the conductor adjusts his tie. Purple velvet curtains hide scenery and props, lights and smoke machines.

Behind the scenery is the other half of him. Stagehands in green and purple frantically race to prop up the scenery, to prepare what needs preparing, always in a frantic rush to give the best performance they possibly can. Things break and are quickly fixed, though often with duct tape and string. On the front side the paint is meticulous, on the back side there's bare wood and patch jobs. Even the curtains look threadbare from this angle.]

Andrew Carter | Hogan's Heroes

[stlg13bomber]

At first blush Carter's mind seems fairly simplistic. It's a house in the North Dakota mountains, surrounded by trees and wide-eyed animals right out of a Disney film. Sure, the trees are occasionally on fire, but the fire never burns the ones who touch it. It's a friendly sort of fire. Carter himself runs through the hills on deer's hooves, laughing as sparks trail from his fingertips.

Off to the side, hidden below a tall cliff, is a cave. Within the cave is a cold dark river, and across the river is an opening blocked by barbed wire.

Carter is a happy man. A gentle, kind man. A friend to even his enemies and targets. But Carter has seen some things he'd rather forget.

*sneaks in* #5 okay?

[comptroller]

Myra isn't entirely sure how she got here, but there's something...oddly comforting about the scenery. By all accounts, she should be terrified of trees on fire, but they don't seem to merit much alarm. The flames are almost pretty, really, and she pauses for a moment to admire one — when the sound of laughter draws her attention.

She whips around to try and find the source, but can't see anything.

She isn't frightened. "Hello? Anybody there?"

Alice | Revenge of the Fallen

[fleshydisguise]

[The mind of a living machine is nowhere near as organized as one might believe. The machinery lining the walls are hung with radiant cloth or glittering jewelry from cultures both living and dead. The sharp blades that guard her more vulnerable places are gilded. On the walls there are steel castings of countless human faces, the identities she's taken on over the milennia. They are of every shape and race, but seem to trend towards the beautiful and female.

A close look at the metal, however, will reveal that the gun-metal silver is merely paint. Below it is metal-hard flesh and tendons formed in the imitation of autonomic perfection. Behind the blue glass of their eye sockets blink organic eyes.]

Dom Cobb | Inception

[cityscaper]

[ It could be limbo. This city is a strange mishmash of architecture, all styles he knew, loved, had some connection to, but the arrangement is impossible. The sky is blocked out by buildings of different periods and materials that are held together at impossible angles. A church spire erupts out of the sloping attic of his parents' house, narrowly missing a sheer wall of half-formed houses that are stacked impossibly. He can't tell how any of it is holding itself together.

When he tries to rearrange it into something comprehensible instead of this M. C. Escher wet dream, and nothing happens - that's when he realises it isn't a dream. ]

Claire Stanfield | Baccano!

[vinovidivici]

[ A black and white world, a maze of landscapes given form by the large cinema screens that hem you in. The scenery that flickers across them blurs with three dimensional space, the footage spilling silently off the screen while an invisible band plays accompanying music. In one spot traffic pours out of a shot of FDR Drive and crosses into a view of the Brooklyn Bridge; other routes in the maze are criss-crossed by elephants and jugglers wandering between footage of circus tents and leaving sawdust in their footsteps, or filled up with steam and the smell of coal from a bustling train platform. The surroundings drawn from older memories and thoughts are easy to spot: they flicker as though the film they were recorded on has warped with time, scratches darting across the makeup of buildings and skylines.

The characters - you can't have a good movie without characters - move in and out of pictures too, pursuing their own agendas. Like everything else in this world, they are silent. Anything they say flashes across the screens, white letters on a black background that momentarily blot out the scenes.

Cut through a few pictures and you might find yourself somewhere where the dim glow from the screen is barely enough to see by. The ground you're walking on blends with the footage, all of it a sea of ink that reeks of iron. In monochrome films, dark reds come across as black. ]

[heritable]

[ as a telepath, charles' mind is very organized. what you see depends on who you are, but his default when people are in his head is the mansion's formal gardens. ]

[she_was_a_gift]

[ It's remarkably quiet on the surface, a stark difference from the tangled, fraying edges of her own subconscious. Her toes curl into the soft grass and savor the subtle crunch, eyes drifting to the sky overhead. If you stare hard enough, do you see past the layers to the tissue underneath? Maybe you need to peel at them, and she doesn't know how. It's a question she can't exactly pose to anyone, at the moment...and it's probably not why she's here, anyway.

Curiosity just has a way of derailing her focus at times. ]