TDM #6 - Planned Outage

[perchancetodreammods]

TDM #6 - Planned Outage

Pardon Our Dust

Things are a little odd in the Dreamscape at the moment! Typically, newcomers are met with beautiful scenery, a note inviting them to come speak to the Dreamscape's host, an explanation about where they are, and a handy Constellation pendant connecting them to the rest of their new neighbors. But this time, there is something odd afoot, and nothing here to help you make sense of your new surroundings if you've just gotten here. Don't worry, though, it will all make sense soon! Hopefully! Just hang tight. More details to follow... probably? Oh dear.

​

This is our second Crisis Event, and as such, things are a little different from our usual fare! Details for entry will be in the prompts below, as the rules are a little different from our standard TDMs. There's also usually pictures.

DATE

2/12/2023 (ICly intended to begin 2/15/23, posted early because I love you)

THEME

Crisis Event!

QUICK NAV

Locations

Feather Info

The Outsider

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

Valentine’s Day comes and goes, and the romantic atmosphere that the Dreamscape had taken on has dwindled after a good long month as the seasonal excitement begins to dwindle. Those who have been here for a while and are familiar with the Outsider’s antics will no doubt be wondering when and what the next big thing will be. They tend to begin a new and exciting project shortly after the previous one ends. However, regardless of how long you’ve been here, the announcement arriving today will more than likely come as a surprise.

A jingle plays from your Constellation pendant, and a stream of light pours from the little star. A suspended screen of light hangs in midair, displaying the Outsider. A video message.

To Bring You This Message From Our Sponsor

“Hello again, my friends!” The Outsider smiled, albeit a bit anxiously. “I hope that those of you who attended had a lovely holiday, however you chose to celebrate it. I do have a rather important bit of news to share, and it’s regarding a somewhat… unique… situation, so please listen carefully, as I will be starting the process shortly after this announcement.”

“Those of you who were here in early January might recall a certain mishap.” There were many words for the dream-shattering event that took place at the beginning of January. “Mishap” was certainly an interesting choice. Anyway, “Ever since that incident occurred, I have been working diligently to find the source of the problem and rebuild a stronger, safer, happier Dreamscape for all of us. While normally I have never fully lost control of my domain in that way, I’ve also never created anything as large scale or structured as this Dreamscape before, so all of this is new territory for me. As such, at this time, I think the best course of action would be for me to rebuild most of the Dreamscape from scratch, as much as I can without putting all of you into unmanageable conditions or giving you the boot.”

“What I intend to do is to shut down all non-essential functions. The outer structure that keeps the Dreamscape intact and separate from the Greater Illogic, the Nimbus Clouds, and parts of the Torn Oak will remain active. The rest of the Dreamscape will be--- well, a blank slate. You may find this alarming at first, but I assure you it is part of the process. While I am gone, many of the normal functionalities of the Dreamscape, including restrictions, will be non-operational. This means that in all communal areas of the Dreamscape, you all will collectively have as much control over the environment as you do your own Nimbus Cloud. So, feel free to experiment and paint the town, or lack thereof, red! Just be cautious with what you imagine, as I will not be available to correct any issues, and be respectful of one another.”

“Unfortunately I will need to be outside of the Dreamscape for this process, and thus will be unreachable, but I’m certain you all will be just fine. Have fun, be safe, and I will see you all soon!”

And then, without any further ado, the display cuts out, and the Dreamscape goes with it.

Have You Tried Turning it Off and Back On Again?

Before you can even process what’s going on, the world around you begins to break apart into tiny fragments and fall away like a dissolve effect on a bad Powerpoint. As promised, you are in very short order left standing in an empty white void. It’s a bit disorienting, hard to even tell what constitutes as the “floor” in this situation, though after a moment your brain adjusts. If you aren’t thinking too hard about it, you can almost see a flat plane of a slightly different shade of white that serves as your walking surface. The Torn Oak, with its blanched trunk and periwinkle leaves, and the cluster of fluffy pink Nimbus Clouds are all that remain. The Twisted City, the Barren Freeway, the Glass Lake, the forest, the sea, the mountain--- everything else is gone. Everything beyond the few remaining amenities appears to be just a blank, white void that goes on forever.

You have a few options here. You could retreat to your Nimbus Cloud, or take this opportunity to visit that of a friend. After all, there’s usually too much going on in the Dreamscape to spend much time dawdling around at home, so this could be a good time to visit one another. You could also explore the Torn Oak. There’s not much to it right now, but the Outsider is away and this might be an opportunity to wander their unusual home unsupervised.

Or, if you’re feeling creative, you can take this once-in-a-lifetime chance to manipulate the Dreamscape--- with no restrictions. No wish required. Rebuild places from your waking world, create impossible feats of architecture or luxurious amenities, have an adventure of your own making, or just dream up nonsense. Truly the only limitation is what you can imagine. However, when shaping the Dreamscape, take care not to let your mind stray, as you may inadvertently create something out of a nightmare.

​

Aside from continuing to observe the blacklist and common-sense trigger warning guidelines, there is no restriction on what can happen in the Dreamscape. Create your own fun, or a disaster. The choice is yours. However, the Outsider will not be available to be contacted in relation to this event and will not return until March 1st.

Just Passing Through

Another interesting effect of this little procedure is that the barrier between the Dreamscape and the rest of the dreams of every sentient being in the multiverse is now far thinner. Normally, the Outsider hand-selects everyone whose consciousness is brought into the Dreamscape, but at the moment, it seems just anyone can end up here. Perhaps you are one such member of the unfiltered rabble. (No offense, of course.)

Instead of landing where most newcomers do, you’ll find yourself wandering through a version of a certain H.C Escher art piece that is done up in pink marble tile and wrought iron. Take a staircase or find a door, any door, to be released into the strange white void from a disembodied door perched on the stump of a blanched oak tree, while the severed trunk and canopy of blue leaves loom impossibly overhead. Without the normal orientation for new arrivals, you are on your own. No personal cloud, no instructions, no explanations. Just a beautiful, terrifying tree and a bright, blank world. Maybe someone here can tell you what’s going on.

​

New arrivals entering the Dreamscape during the Planned Outage crisis event do not need to abide by normal universe rules. They do not have their own Nimbus Cloud or Constellation pendant, do not require a plot reason to be here, and are not subject to normal restrictions. They can be doubles of existing characters, can ignore cast caps, and can wake up and disappear at any time. They don’t even have to ever figure out that they are in a collective dream. They may ask to remain in the Dreamscape after the event, get stuck by accident, or disappear entirely! Additionally, this is a great time to canon-update your characters by having them wake up and come back later in their canon.

Mod Note: Feather Leaderboard

Hello friends! Earlier I made an announcement regarding a Feather Leaderboard that we'll be launching next week, and the March 1st event, which will definitely benefit from folks knowing how many feathers their characters have. If you haven't read that yet, it's pretty brief, but the gist is that the feather tracker spreadsheet is available now and we'll be checking it on Feb. 22nd to establish the leaderboard and announcing the winners with the plotting post for the March event!

The prize for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place is a special RP prompt for just those characters and a friend of their choosing, plus bragging rights, of course!

UNRELATED NOTE: I am posting this TDM a few days in advance, meaning it slightly overlaps with last month's Valentine's TDM. I would like to note that while ICly the prompts here state that the event is over, the feather bonus that was in place for Valentine's day is still in effect until Feb 15th OOCly, so you can still collect on Valentine's day threads started between now and then!

Comments

[capthardness]

Jack's hardly surprised by John's reaction, considering it's pretty much what he'd be doing if their positions were swapped. Heck, it's what he has done when good people have tried to put themselves between him and a bullet, usually not as metaphorically as he'd like. Luckily, that's given him lots of practice with putting himself back in the line of fire. He doesn't even bother shaking his head, just leans in and looks John straight in the eye.

"See, if we'd met awhile before the first time I wore this getup, that'd probably work. Actually, I probably would've turned right around the second I saw what was going on, unless I thought I could make a profit from it somehow." It's not easy, admitting to the man he used to be. But he's been worse, and he's still trying to prove to the universe and himself that he can be better. "Unfortunately, folks I was traveling with when I got these duds taught me to be a better guy, and I know at least one of 'em would start hitting me if I tried to walk away and wouldn't stop until I turned around. Or she'd just start raising hell on her own."

It's easy to be the better version of himself when he thinks about Rose, even if it does make it a little more difficult to keep his mind from putting robotic voices that only knew one, terrifying word on loop.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he pulls a little more of The Captain into his performance. "So, one of two things is gonna happen. Either I just stand here looking ridiculously hot and watch until that thing remembers it's a memory and goes back where it belongs, or," he shrugs, a chilling calm dropping into his voice, "we all get to see why I'm not concerned about the fact I didn't think about a sidearm."

Okay, technically that's only about ninety-five percent true, but it would be a bit more awkward to whip out that blaster under these circumstances.

[theydrewfirstblood]

John can't help it: when he makes the crack about standing there, looking hot, he smiles a little. Just for an instant, the corners of his mouth tug up...

And for one split second, there's silence. No engine on the cruiser, no sounds of life from the phantom town, no words from Teasle.

That's the thing about shit like this, however--it's like the war. As long as John's alive, it's alive. And so is Teasle...because John let him live. He almost didn't, though--and maybe John didn't draw first blood, but Trautman was right about one thing.

He'd done a lot of pushing of his own.

Reaching out, John lays a hand on Jack's shoulder.

"Guys like us don't need 'em." he replied quietly. "He didn't know that. None of 'em did."

The ice in Jack's voice doesn't scare John. Truthfully, it leaves him with a bloom of warmth in his chest, a softness pressing against his lungs and his ribs that he doesn't think he deserves. It calms, it comforts...it's nothing he's earned.

"...and I was alone."

No one to steer him. No one to remind him to try and be better.

So, maybe...at the end of the day...maybe he deserves the memory.

Maybe it's all he has to remind him to be more than the combat soldier his country made of him.

[capthardness]

Jack's rarely startled by touch, even at his own worst moments when his mind is places he never wants to see again his body wants to be touched, but he is a little surprised--not enough to visibly startle, but his breath does jump a little--to feel John's hand on him when he's putting on this version of himself. Not the backup personality that lit the way to the emergency exit, but the one of the man he'd had to be to survive all the things he'd done-- the things the Agency had forced him to do, all the worst-best choices he'd been forced to make when he was unceremoniously 'promoted' into leading Torchwood Three--without actually giving in to putting himself in the vaults for a century or three.

But maybe that's not so surprising. Of all the people he's known, it makes sense that John would be among the few who could understand how the flirty flyboy could get shoved away in favor of a dispassionate soldier in an instant, and moreover why he'd need to do it.

'Course not," his voice is still cold, but the edges are less cutting. "Guys like him, guns make them feel big. Important. Like they're actually more than the weakest, most disgustingly small minded examples of humanity." Not like he hasn't seen individuals among otherwise stellar races pull the same shite, but now's hardly the time. "Can't expect 'em to get some of us don't like hurting people who don't fit in nice little boxes, that we might actually just want to protect ourselves and others." He gives the quickest, most disdainful glance at the memory of a monster in the cruiser. "Like they swear they're gonna do, like any promises guys like that make to anyone or anything is worth shit. Heck, I know creatures whose shit is literally worth more than anything a guy like that could do in his whole life"

He doesn't talk like that often, not when he's not being deliberately filthy to make the girls giggle or Ianto blush or when he's yelling at some bureaucrat to cut some red tape he needed out of the way two days ago, but this is another situation that definitely calls for it.

But just as quickly, the cold, angry man who had seen too many people who used a little power to make a lot of people suffer just because they could stepping back to let the one who had held Owen right after he punched him and then fell down weeping on his chest take the reins. He reaches out and just barely curves the tips of his fingers against John's jawline.

"I know. I've been alone a lot too. Even in a full bunker. Makes it real easy for…these things to come hang out, not having anyone else around to get you need them to crowd out something they can't see. Like I said, I'm sticking around until that thing buggers off where it belongs. Believe me, I've got the time."

[theydrewfirstblood]

He meant it, too. Even with that moment of subdued shock when John touched him, he meant it. It was too recent for him, that familiarity with the surprise of contact when it shouldn’t be wanted, when there were reasons to be shunned.

Jack knew, he knew everything, including what John had done to this man and all the others and he still meant it. He was standing with him, touching him back…

…telling him that he was right. Something not even Colonel Trautman had done. Standing with him, the last of his unit…no longer alone.

“Why?” He breathed, even as he reached up to catch Jack’s hand. “I…why?”

He hadn’t earned that kind of loyalty. Here in this place torn out of his head…he didn’t feel human enough for it.

[capthardness]

Jack swallows, brushing his thumb carefully against John's as he weighs his words. He could tell him so many stories but even if it wouldn't be dangerous to do it under the current circumstances lest he conjure child-stealing 'fairies' or worse, there would be too many things he'd have to explain for them to make any sense, and that wouldn't help John get himself out of this nightmare.

"Because I know what it's like to be in a situation where all you had were bad choices," he says softly. "He took away any good option you had that day. And I wasn't there to see it all, so I can't say you took what was definitely the least bad one each time, but I believe you took the best ones you could see. And I know how that kind of thing weighs on you, even if you know you couldn't have done anything else, and how other people keep adding to that weight."

(for just a moment, he can see the rest of the team in his mind, refusing to look at him as they walk away from Jasmine's house, refusing to answer or even acknowledge his pleading what else could I do)

He draws a shaky breath. "I know I can't take it away. But I can tell you that, that I believe you tried to do the best you could with what you had in a situation that fucking disgrace who has no right to claim he's got even a shred of humanity put you in, and hope that lightens it a little."

[theydrewfirstblood]

All you had were bad choices. Bad choices.

...and that was it. Choices, he always had a choice (you did some pushing of your own, John), he had a lot of choices (the hand that grabbed his dog tags, the one that stopped when he grabbed it...letting go and letting them be taken from him, but what was right and wrong when every choice was bad?

He chose to let them have his tags. He chose to comply with Teasle. He chose to spare those deputies, to try and surrender. Just like they chose...

...don't worry about the soap. Just shave him, dry.

John's eyes slam shut at the memory, and a knot forms in his throat.

Yet around them, the world goes silent again--the cruiser, the specter of the sheriff, even the other people in town are gone.

John's alone again--alone at last--until that thumb still brushing his where he still clings to Jack's hand reminds him that no, he's not.

He's not alone. Not even against the memories.

[capthardness]

Jack watches the cruiser fade away and lets out a long breath. He hadn't been looking forward to finding out what might happen if he actually had to fight John's nightmare. He'd have done it--probably would have enjoyed showing just how weak and pathetic men like that were, not to mention showing off just how great he looked at all angles in these pants--but he knows that still could have made things worse. Given the way John had tried to stop him right away, he'd have put even odds on that nasty piece of the past actually trying to put him in cuffs, and there was no way that would have done anything good for John's mind regardless of the fact Jack would have…well, been himself about it; he isn't sure the guy's ready for his jokes about safewords.

Looking around at their surroundings or lack thereof, Jack leans in a little, forehead not quite touching John's, and drops his voice to just above a whisper.

"Do you need me to leave?" Because there's no way in hell he's just heading off after that without being given an explicit command, but he knows too well that sometimes it's too much to have other people there while you have to deal with the fallout of explosions in your own mind.

[theydrewfirstblood]

The reaction is immediate: John’s eyes snap open, wide and unseeing in a split second of blind, unthinking panic at the very idea. The hand of Jack’s he still has hold of is pulled against John’s chest, his grip one of white knuckled desperation.

A chill breeze stirs the air, leaving goosebumps in its wake and distant sounds from deeper in John’s memory.

The clang of metal on stone in a prison labor camp with the unintelligible voices of guards barking orders.

“I’m…expendable.” John’s voice, quiet and frank.

“What mean ‘expendable?’” A curious female voice with a Vietnamese accent.

The clang of metal on stone.

“At least in here, I know where I stand.”

The last handful of words in John’s voice, soft and gently resigned, echo as the breeze dies again, and John’s eyes focus, his mind returning to the present and lets him see Jack in front of him, feel the heat of the fingers wrapped in his, tucked securely against John’s chest.

“…no.”

His gaze flicks over Jack’s face—briefly lower, over the tight t-shirt and vest before meeting those dazzling blue eyes again. Yeah, it’s a great view, he can let himself admit that…but it feels a little like a costume to John. One he put on for John…he doesn’t know what it means or where it came from, but he pulled it out for a reason. To try and help.

Hesitantly, John closes that tiny distance until their foreheads are pressed together. He stares into Jack’s eyes for a long moment as that new point of contact keeps the memories at bay—the relentless reminders that he deserves, that he’s destined, to be alone—then shuts his eyes with a sigh as the panic and tension drains away from his face at last.

“Please.”

[capthardness]

Even if he didn't have too much experience of fighting with his own ghosts, Jack's also spent enough time trying to help other people through the dark (Ianto and John Ellis and the man who first carried his name each flash through his memory, men he hadn't done enough for, but all that he could) to be familiar with what it looks like when those ghosts step away--not forever, maybe not even for the night, but for now--to allow some of the guards to drop.

It startles him a bit, the way it did when the original Captain Jack Harkness took his hand, when John looks into his eyes like that--like he's something truly grounding, reliable; the very last things most people who knew him back in Cardiff would think of when looking at him. Hell, he hadn't been trying to be that. He'd been trying to be a distraction (hence the pants), a kick in the teeth to that nasty piece of the past, to remind John he wasn't there anymore.

But somehow, this--the way John is looking at him, relaxes against him-- feels…nicer. Not something his younger, mortal self would have understood, but that idiot hadn't understood a lot of things yet, no matter how much he'd lived through.

"Okay," Jack breathes against John's hair. "I've got all the time you need from me."

And for now at least the thought of all that time, something he'd really been hoping Abbadon would take from him, doesn't sound so bad.