dear_mun | canon is Oxenfree

...I'm pretty sure they could top the endless time loop shenanigans. They get really... uhh, creative.

[She sighs at that.]

Wow, and here I thought I'd already hit rock bottom.

Have you been anywhere that sounds worse then endlessly reliving a section of your life over and over again for eternity without remembering most of it when it restarts? ....actually maybe I shouldn't ask that, she might get ideas.

Wowser, I'm not sure I have, actually. But it's close. Think Lewis Carroll fairy tale with a huge helping of even more crazy. [She's talking about

entranceway!]

Though that restart thing sounds a lot like the resets some of my friends hate. What do you think is worse: a time loop where nothing matters, or a timeline where everything you do has gigantic consequences, à la butterfly effect?

Impressive. But I suppose dream based logic means anything can happen.

I'd say they both suck in different ways. I guess I've kinda had both happen? I brought my brother back to life with the time loops but I lost the friendship I'd developed on the island with my step brother, who turned into just a friend after I made the change, since my parents never divorced.

Not that it mattered in the end, time passed and then I ended up back on the island for the 'first time' again.

So I'd have to say the first is the worst because at least you can still move on with the second. I was able to make friends with Jonas, even if he wasn't my step brother anymore. But then I just ended up "going back" because I'd never ....really left.

It sounds like you've been stuck there for a while. Do you remember the prior loops at all?

Maybe it's really a question of what's worse, too little or too much power. To be completely stuck or to be like... a walking disaster waiting to happen.

[She sighs at that.]
Yeah it's been one night and some other parts after but I think I've been through it....well the mun says possibly fifty times already, but it could be a lot more. I remember it better out here, but there...I'm starting to notice things. Sometimes I'll remember things that seem like they've happened before or I just know something someone is about to say....and ...I think the ghosts there are trying to get me to realize I'm trapped or something. Even if they're still stuck in their loop of trying to use my friends to escape. Which is just as impossible I suppose.

That's a good point. Being totally helpless and trapped or having no idea what your next move might cause down the road. I mean, even if it doesn't stick, I guess I really have no idea what bringing my brother back really changes. I mean I don't think it stuck....maybe he's alive while I'm trapped in the loop. ....ugh, this is confusing.

Hey, just a word of advice, never go to a place called Edwards Island. And if you do go, never use radios to tune into strange triangles that appear in the air.

...Well, it does sound really confusing. [The concern in Max's tone is evident.] Not knowing if you're actually changing anything, slowly coming to the realization that maybe things aren't being... normal. I can't even imagine.

[Time loops sound terrible. So terrible, in fact, that she's starting to think the 'helpless and trapped' situation really is the worse one.]

Okay, I'll steer very clear of any Edwards Islands I come across. I'll jump ship if I have to. And I'll toss everyone's radios into the water.

It's super confusing. And....one of those things you don't really want to think about even though you know you probably should.

[Have a smile at that.]

Good. I'm hoping there's only one but you never know. If there's one thing I've learned from all this is that time is weird.

[Max smiles back, agreeing.] The fact that we've both come to that conclusion separately proves that time... is totally the weirdest thing ever. I'm talking like... multiple levels of Murakami weird. Surreal.

We should start a club. Or a support group. "The Space-Time Whine."

[She laughs at that.]

I like it. Hello, my name is Alex and I have a problem with time.

It doesn't like me.

[Max giggles before taking on a serious expression.]

Hi Alex, I'm Max. How many days has it been since your last time-shenanigan?

[Attempts to keep a straight face.]

Well Max. It has been 0 days since my last time-shenanigan. My current record is 'oh wait, that year was actually part of the same loop and you never actually left, so it doesn't count and now you don't remember it', so a consistent zero all around.

Stick with the time loops. Trust me. At least you have a chance of coming out of those intact.

Well I don't plan to give up with the time loop I'm in. So hopefully there is still a chance.

[She's not afraid of turning into one of the sunken, not even knowing their own names...shhh.]

Did you get sent somewhere?

I've been way too many places, and it's always the shit end of the stick.

Thankfully, the mun gave it a rest. Now I'm only out for private stuff. Not that she's any easier on me there. I think they're all sadists.

Well it has to be bad if a time loop is better.

I'm new so I've just heard stories, but what I've heard has been....pretty bad. I think half of her muses refuse to drink milk for some reason that I'm slightly afraid to ask about.

The sadist thing sounds about right.

Think that's bad? I wind up dead at the end of every timeloop so far. Still way better than winding up in a game.

Yeah, okay, trust them about the milk thing. I've heard it enough, myself.

And, uh, stay away from triangles. Like, forever.

Wow...that's terrible.

I'm not sure if I've died, my memory tends to reset a lot. I've seen my friends die when the ghosts possessed them, but then time got rewound in the loop and it didn't stick. And since it's all happening in a never ending loop that I closed off from...the real world, I'm not sure if I'm alive or dead actually.

[God her head hurts. She just wanted a fun trip with her friends and now she's Schrodinger's teenager.]

Noted about the milk though.

Wait, wait. Do you know about my loop, or are there weird triangles where you're from too?

I think the terrible stuff happens because someone doesn't want it to stick over here. Who knows with spirits and all the magic stuff. It's mostly fuzzy for me.

It's not from me, I just have a couple of kids screaming about avoiding them sharing space. One's covered in glitter half the time and says there's people to back it up with you. If we were talking about warnings, I figured--[She gets a little flustered.] Never mind.

Yeah, trying to go through time loops and figure them out is hard when it affects your memory too.

Oh! I think I have one of those kids in here too.....as well as the triangle. Thanks for the warning though. Or for passing along the warning.

[She appreciates the help, honestly.]

You just startled me because the portals and..... whatever I use to kick ghosts out of my friends or something. In my world, are all triangle shaped and form by smaller triangles appearing in midair until you use a radio to join them together. So I thought maybe it was some sort of thing that time loops had in common or something.

....Now I'm just pretty sure triangles are evil.

We just deal with snakes in ours.

Think she's really gonna stick you somewhere? If she does, there's at least one good thing. You get to meet a lot of really good people.

Do the snakes cause the time loop or is that still a mystery?

I'm not sure. She's sending someone somewhere right now. Or trying to at least. It's apparently not a bad place compared to the places some of the others went to in the past. Which is good because the kids only seven and been through hell already.

[Seriously mun, stop it with the children muses. What do you mean at least it's not Mayfield?]

I'll probably have to wait and see how that goes. The mun's still getting back into figuring out which games are which, since she's been keeping everyone cooped up for over a year, or so I've been told.

It would be nice to meet some new people. I mean it's probably the only chance I'd get for a while, the rate I'm going back on the island.

You know, it's been years and my story's not over. It's kind of the snakes, kind of a Medusa. Kind of this other douchebag snake who's been possessing my foster dad and murdering my family. It's complicated.

[It's not like teens are any better than kids. Honestly, from what Kido's experienced, the teens are already broken. The kids wind up breaking.]

Yeah, mine stepped out a year ago. She's been throwing me at small stuff since then. That's kind of neat, though. I've been a detective, a mage and a thief. One time I got adopted by a dullahan.

I have no doubt she'd be willing to invite you over.

Trust me, don't take the offer. One of us will wind up stabbed.

....you lost family. I'm sorry.

[Because that hits home.]

The ghosts like to possess my friends and kill them in front of me, it doesn't last, not even for a full loop, but....it still sucks.

I hope your story gets an ending. I'd say a happy ending but honestly I doubt time loop stories get those, so I'll just say I hope it wraps up in a way that isn't .....time repeating you from the start again.

[A small sigh, because no game makers, new game + isn't making leave possible when you're implying that there's always going to be a version of her trapped or that every single version of her in the universe has to go through that until they get it right.]

That's kinda cool. What's a dullahan?

[Everyone breaks..../shut up Johan. Oh wait that's just something he'd say too.]

And if I had that sort of control over my mun I'd be forcing her to make a game to make people happy. So who knows, maybe I'll get to see what being stabbed is like. So far I know that being possessed sucks.

[Hooo, that gets a laugh. It's a little bitter and jaded.]

... I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen my brothers die. It's the worst. You can't get used to that. At least... outside of this stuff, I don't remember old loops. The original me.

We thought things were gonna end around the end of December, but then I--I died, I guess. Again. But a few days later, I finally got a song. It's cool to get a glimpse of what I'll be like if I ever get to grow up, but--

We'll both get out of it eventually, right? Time can't literally loop forever....

[There's rumors that there's a good ending of Oxenfree. This mun ain't seen it yet, but she also fucked up and accidentally erased her first playthrough data.]

It's a Celtic monster. A fae, I guess. A headless horse rider. If you see her head or she says your name, you'll die on the spot. Celty's good, though. She's not vengeful or anything.

I mean, it's not always too bad. Possession. It just depends on what's possessing you.

Edited 2018-01-22 02:18 (UTC)

I'm ...I remember parts of the old loops. Not much changes, just some choices I make. Like ....my brother died....a year before I even went to the island. And since time messes up there....sometimes it would send me back and...I'd get to talk to him. And I...could even convince him not to.... well I could change the future so that he lived.

It changed a lot of stuff when I woke up on the ferry but he was alive and I just didn't care. ...

[She misses Micheal so much.]

My loop lets me get out, or at least think I have... at least for a bit. Pick what I'll do after leaving school but then....then I'll suddenly be getting ready for my trip to the island and Micheal will be back to being dead and I'll be meeting my step-brother for the first time.... I don't know why that happens. But I usually don't start to remember until I get to the island again.

[She's starting to remember on the ferry now though.]

I don't know....the ghosts there. They've....been trapped there for a while but they talk about ...living through the lifespan of the universe, a few times. I had to dig up information about them because they'd lost all sense of self and didn't even know their names anymore. They were a bunch of submariners that were hit by friendly fire, only instead of dying they ended up in some sort of...other dimension. Now they try to take over peoples bodies to escape, if they're dumb enough like I was to mess around with the radios. Which is what they were trying to do with my friends the first time I sealed us in again.

They still keep trying, every loop but the last time we talked, they ....kinda broke script and said they were just doing it because that's what they have to do. Even if they know they're going to fail.

[And now they're trying to tell her she's trapped there too.]

Apparently there's a possible way off, or at least out here I know that. But it's something I have to do the right way, and apparently is still ambiguous about whether there's still a version of me trapped forever.

[Hoo that's a lot to process. How do you even answer that?]

... That sucks.

[Okay there's that.]

Sorry about your brother. My sister died when I was a kid. I'm trying to get her back, kind of. So I get it.

It's just... for us, the time loops are happening because we died, too. But we died on a special day in a certain way and someone who was with us died, but we came back possessed by snakes that gave us powers and--it really does sound like a bad story.

Who makes this shit up? Why is there a demand for this? Do they really like seeing people get tortured that much?

[A dry chuckle.]

Yeah it really does.

I don't know. People have been writing stuff like this for years. Like all the books and games and stories we've read, all the crap that happens to them. Maybe there's a universe where they're really going through that.

....I think I just ruined all forms of entertainment for myself.

[She knows she's right too, considering how many other muses she's met. At least on the island she's oblivious and just trapped in a nightmare ...wait how is that better.]

But whatever you tell me, I'll believe you. I get it. I mean try explaining to your friends that you're going through the same thing over and over even though they don't remember, or that you and your step-brother, started it by using a radio to open a portal in the sky by tuning into certain stations on the dial. It sounds insane, but it happened. So yeah....bad stories or not, apparently things like that just happen.

See, this? Is the reason I use an iPod.

[She shakes her head. She won't mention that she's got at least one person floating around with her who can't play video games because of similar PTSD but that's just from canon. The mun did not do that. CLAMP did that.]

I've never been haunted by an iPod. I've been an iPod, briefly, but never been haunted by one.

My foster brother and I did once have to team up with some friends to stop a terrorist attack, though. It was a pretty good day before we all died. We beat the terrorists.

Wait, you were an ipod?.....what was that like? How did that even happen?

I died. I don't like to talk about it. It wasn't my proudest moment, honestly.

But that's the kind of thing that happens to you in games. I was a a bassist in a couple bands, too. Which is ridiculous. I don't play the bass. And I'd never be in a band. Way too much attention.

Oh, okay.

Really? My best friend Ren plays bass in a band. I leave that stuff to him though. I get enough attention just being his friend.

[And for her brothers death but yeah. Also Ren is kinda silly and his band's name is just like, really Ren?]

I know just the type. [She is of course thinking about a CERTAIN HANDFUL of her canon friends.] The kind of person who's always doing something stupid and loving every second of it while he drags you in?

[She laughs.]

It's like you know him already.

He's been my best friend since we were tiny, so I'm used to the craziness. Mostly.

[Even if it had been his idea to go to the island and to first use the radios and he ate another pot brownie. She can't help it. He's her best friend and super important to her.]

You never get used to that kind of person completely, believe me. Kano's the exact same way. I live with him and somehow he still finds ways to outdo himself.

[On the bright side, she is mostly sure Kano does not do edibles and is not the reason they're being harassed by a snake that's got them stuck in the time loop from hell.

She is only half wrong.]

That's just part of the fun.

[Most of the time. But she'll defend him forever. He was one of the few people who didn't blame her for her brothers death. So yeah, important.]

Edited 2018-01-27 13:51 (UTC)

You have more patience than I do, obviously. [Kido is of the opinion: boys are dumb. to be fair. all the boys around her are dumb.]

Are you in the loop with him at least?

[Because it's kinda nicer when someone you like is with you. Until they, uh. Die and all.

Ever want to feel in good company, Alex? Find a kagepro kid. They deal with shit like that on a regular basis and at least 3/4 of them would also take Ren's stance on things.]

Sort of?

The entire things a loop and there's a group of us. Me, my stepbrother Jonas, Nona, Ren and Clarissa.

But time loops in the bigger loop and I've mostly been with Jonas when those happened.

....he's been there a few times. When he got possessed and then that other time when he was with Nona and .....the ghosts kept showing me...him dying, over and over again.

... [Man what do you even say to that.]

You know, there's games where you forget that stuff.

I don't know if it's better or worse you'll probably never find your friends in one of them.

canon is Oxenfree

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same kido

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