Event Post: The Hope of a Child

[hadrielmods]

THE RUNDOWN

Hope's in need of energy to get the city up and running again, and now Confusion's decided to help out Hope by getting a little creative. And hey, maybe it'll be a little bit like a vacation for the inhabitants of Hadriel, right? A blast from your past, as you turn into a younger version of yourself.

That's right. Starting on January 23rd, everyone is going to have a chance to relive their childhood years. Characters will find themselves falling into a deep, unwakeable sleep - and while they're asleep, their consciousnesses will be projected outside of themselves in the form of children. They'll have all memories and experiences of that character as a child, but be totally lacking anything beyond that, with absolutely no memory of ever being an adult.

The city will be full of sleeping adults and unsupervised children - except for the few adults who don't sleep. What are you going to do? Try to play babysitter and wrangle the little ones? Or just let them run wild? Let's hope these kids don't get into too much trouble.

THE DETAILS

How much you want your character to participate is entirely up to you. Not everyone will be asleep the whole time - some people might not fall asleep at all, some might only sleep for a few hours here and there, while others might fall asleep at the beginning of the event and stay that way until the very end. Normal sleep won't be affected: people will still get as tired as normal and when they choose to sleep there will be no child version of them. However, while in that unnatural sleep, they won't need to eat or drink and will have no awareness of passing time.

What counts as a child? Anything between the ages of about 5-14, with a little leeway - we don't want too many actual babies running around, but in the end it's up to you! And if your character didn't have a childhood - if they were created as an adult, for example - it can be whatever they personally consider to be themselves as a child, whether that's an actual child they never were or simply a mentally younger version of themselves.

It's also your decision how much your character remembers from their time as a child. While they won't remember anything with perfect recall, they could have very realistic dreamlike snatches of memory or no memories at all or something in between. Maybe this is finally their chance to have that happy childhood they always wanted, and fill themselves with hope for the future. That's what Confusion is hoping, at least!

THE OVERVIEW

► January 23rd: People start falling asleep and dreaming their child selves
► February 1st: That's all, folks

Comments

Lance

[lifetothefullest]

Okay SO as a general warning, Lance's backstory involves child abuse (which is noted in his permissions post also, in case anyone would like to be sure to avoid this topic in the future as well) and so this will be a factor while he's affected by the event.

Therefore, for the portion of the event where Lance is aged down, I'm only going to be doing closed prompts; while this will probably be limited to close CR, please feel free to let me know if you want to thread something! We can probably work something out. I just want to keep my tag load under control, avoid this ICly being too upsetting for Lance if/when people figure out more about his history, and OOCly limit my chances of totally messing up writing this sort of issue.

So, while affected, which will probably only be a day or two, Lance will be about ten. At this point he's had some time to adjust to having a more 'normal' life in a safe household, but not nearly enough to be able to work through everything to the extent that his adult self has, although people who know him well as an adult can probably spot a lot of similar patterns of behavior. He's much like his older self, just less sedate and controlled; it's more difficult to handle the extremes of emotions, good and bad, and depending who he deals with and the particular situation he'll either be standoffish and just generally hard to deal with, or way too well behaved to be natural. How each situation will go is hard to say in advance though, so threads will just be kind of a whole see how it unfolds type of thing.

Meanwhile, while unaffected, Lance is on babysitting duty. He's great with kids and doubtlessly a fun adult to hang out with mostly because he's a complete pushover and--especially since this is all an event and will be temporary--is absolutely not going to even try to enforce rules or anything. If it's not dangerous, he's probably not going to say anything, so if kids want to get away with practically whatever while still be supervised he's perfect for that. I'll probably have an open prompt for this, but might just tag into other threads, idek. But in addition to CR stuff with others who are affected, he could also use some other help babysitting and bond with people that way!

So yeeeeees tl;dr I am open to plotting stuff!

Re: Lance (mentions of domestic abuse, murder)

[am_i_a_monster]

Abigail's father was abusive as well. Mostly emotional abuse, forcing her to help with her crimes, telling her he'd kill her if he ever said no. He also killed her mother and cut her throat.

An unaffected Abigail could see something in an aged down Lance, that feeling of not feeling safe, especially in the two well behaved version. She could try to help him feel safe, or open up, or to just feel free to be a kid.

Or we could do the reverse and have an unaffected Lance see something familiar in Abigail.

Or we could have them both young at the same time and recognize something in each other.

[lifetothefullest]

Yes good I'm definitely interested in these two figuring things out regarding each other; it'd probably be really good for them both down the line. :c Lance has actually already been wondering a little about Abigail from stalking network conversations.

Maybe we could have them run into each other twice, once when Lance is aged down and Abigail's unaffected, and once the other way? That'll put them kind of on even footing of having figured out something about each other, as well as avoid the issue of not clearly remembering things that happened while aged down.

[am_i_a_monster]

I like the idea of them running into each other twice! Let's do that.

[lifetothefullest]

Just wanted to leave a quick comment here to say that I know I still owe you a tag in for our second event thread! I'm just running slow on that but will try to get to it in the next day or so. <3

[nowherewolf]

wrong journal but I really want to hurl mini-Michael in Lance's direction- I just can't decide which age to throw him at.

[lifetothefullest]

I'm totally good for plotting something. 8D Whatever age(s) we end up with there's so much interesting potential for developing neat CR stuff. c:

[aroundthecoroner]

Excellente. I feel like they could maybe understand each other as kids from shitty/formerly shitty situations, or Lance could enjoy being bombarded with questions.

[lifetothefullest]

It might be neat if they ran into each other as kids and kind of either bonded or clashed, depending; even though they won't remember things clearly from time while affected, they could probably remember enough to lead to interesting stuff after the event. c:

Re: Lance

[dedikated]

you know i want lance and serah bonding over babysitting duty. and i'll probably toss tinykat at adult lance too t b h what is self-control when you can call a friend a nerd.

[lifetothefullest]

Yes good I want all of this~ Lance can't even argue with accusations of nerdery okay it's just a fact.

Re: Lance

[sonofacesius]

Will is going to semi affected and as a child probably hiding from monsters. If Lance wants to coax him out from under the table or something, probably while clutching a scalpel. Who let the kid get their hands on surgical supplies? XD.

[lifetothefullest]

Yes definitely. 8D Please give him the blade, small child.

[sonofacesius]

Yes, good idea.

[so_dark_a_road]

I'd be open to having either child Curufin or adult Curufin meet your aged down Lance, if you're up for it!

And I was thinking, if young Lance wants a sympathetic adult around, Curufin would be a good choice, since he is was a very good father to Celebrimbor when Cel was little. He knows how to help an uncertain child. And he would consider it fair turnabout, since Lance helped Curufin and his ghost cousin Finrod, and Curufin hasn't forgotten that and is still grateful.

[lifetothefullest]

That could be really interesting! I can't guarantee Lance won't still be nervous with him or anything, since it'd really depend how the specific thread goes, but it'd definitely be neat to do a thread especially as far as future CR stuff goes. 8D

Lance

[unknowable]

If you're not too busy, I'd love to do something with Adam and Lance! With one or both of them aged down, whatever might be fun!

Re: Lance

[lifetothefullest]

Yeeeeees definitely; they're both going to be the same age, so maybe aging them both down and then them going on 'adventure' exploring or something would be nice for them. 8D Or whatever else! I'm open to stuff for sure. c:

[unknowable]

That sounds adorable! Yessss let's do that.

[nonscriptum]

DO YOU WANT TO MEET THIS NIGHTMARE CHILDE

[lifetothefullest]

Yeeeeeeeeees disaster child. 8D

[nonscriptum]

great he'll show you a magic trick and then steal your wallet

[storyseeker]

SO I'M VERY LATE but I'd love to do a thread with kid Elena and either kid or adult Lance—but because I'm late, for reals feel free to pass in the name of a manageable tag load, I will not be offended in the slightest. I'm not top leveling so I could hit up one of your prompts if you do have room still.

[lifetothefullest]

I'm not too overloaded so go for it! <3 Whichever you think would be more fun is good with me.

[storyseeker]

Yay <3