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Entry tags:

rumi

navigate through it like wandering

Rumi has a list of things that are weirdest about being in Darrow. It's not ordered, because the only things she can decide for certain is that just being here at all is the weirdest part, but it is written down in the journal she keeps hidden in the back of her nightstand drawer even though there's no one who's going to rifle through her things and read her secrets. Writing is just part of the process of, well, exorcising her demons, so to speak. She's got a lot going on in her head. For a long time, she was scared even to write it down and acknowledge what she is, terrified Mira or Zoey might find it and learn the truth. Getting it out of her head and on the page was the only source of relief she had for years, that and performing.

So she's written it down, scattered in margins, along with snippets of future lyrics. It's impossible to choose what is second weirdest, though. Is it a) no longer hiding her patterns from Mira, which means they're also visible to the select few who can see such things? There don't seem to be many of those here, but there are certainly some, and it's unsettling. Rumi's been telling herself she's getting used to this, that she's okay with letting them show, but somehow letting them be seen throws her whenever it happens with anyone but Mira (which is still taking getting used to anyway). Or is it b) being on a hunter hiatus? The Honmoon feels... present, but distant, not at all the same, not as strong, and she doesn't know if that's because they're in a different world or if it's something she needs to fix. There is always something Rumi needs to fix.

Maybe it's c) not being an idol. Before Darrow interrupted her vacation, Rumi hadn't had an actual break since... well, probably since pre-debut. It's not even that she didn't have the option, she just never really took it. Nothing could have been more important than sealing the Honmoon, and being a hunter was inextricable from being an idol. And being an idol meant constant work — dance practices and songwriting and recording sessions, fansigns and calls, tours, music shows, and on and on, and she'd loved every moment and she'd exhausted herself until she couldn't think about the thousand things she didn't want to think about, that she couldn't stop thinking about. Being an idol meant variety shows, but not reality, because Celine never wanted them to have one of those — how could they fight or train with a camera crew behind them while they ride ATVs or go swimming or whatever the other idols are doing these days? Being an idol meant early days and late nights, not waking up at noon and feeling like she must be late for schedules she doesn't have.

It makes her feel sort of guilty, like she's slacking off. She's really not good at not working. On days like that, she grabs her guitar and spends an hour on the boardwalk or at Petros Park, just to be doing something. There's a dance studio she's been frequenting, too, to stay in shape and to have somewhere to practice that won't end in her upsetting her neighbors.

"Maybe I need a job," she muses aloud. Getting one would feel like defeat, though, admitting she's stuck. Plus she's never actually had a job that wasn't performing. The closest she's ever gotten was an episode of Workdol where she had to run the cash register at a bakery. Real life feels... weird.

It also doesn't feel very real. She stops outside a Halloween supply store, guitar case strapped against her back, and looks at the costumes on display in the window. "'Undead Pop Star,'" she reads aloud, voice dry. "Oh, 'Vampire Politician,' yes, wow, a costume every child would want. Wow. Is this place real?" Maybe she's having a very early midlife crisis. Maybe she's gone insane. It's really hard to be sure sometimes.

[ Relaxation stresses Rumi out. Come say hi again or meet her! It's as good a time as ever, and she could use friends. Open until this says otherwise. ]

Entry tags:

(no subject)

The winds change suddenly. The peaceful Irish air is different, now. There's the faint scent of car exhaust, unfamiliar animals and an ocean she's never met — an ocean that lacks her son. But there's more than that. In a way that she’s battled against in Ireland, the air here is stiff with emotion, with sadness and pain, embarrassment and frustration, and anger, oh… so much anger.

She can do so much good here, she's certain. They needn’t suffer a moment longer.

With a heavy clunk, she directs her owls to help her look out the window. Across the stepping stones that lead to her doorway — yet more faeries she's helped free from the shackles of emotion — an unfamiliar coast greets her, with an equally unfamiliar skyline beyond it. She doesn't know what city this is, who peoples it, but she knows that whoever they are, they need her help.

“Oh, these poor dears,” she says, her heart going out to them. “So many complicated, icky little emotions.” She lifts a clawed hand and strokes the feathers of one of her beautiful owls. It coos at her, and she smiles fondly.

“Go, my lovelies,” she says. “Bring my jars, and strip them of these awful, nasty feelings.”

The owls coo and hoot as they fly out of the hut and over the water, towards the city. In a group, in pairs, and singly, they fly across the land, jars clutched in their talons, and they seek out the feelings their mistress so wishes to release these people from.

It isn’t enough. Macha gasps when she realizes that their first trip out yields only… a softening. That isn’t right. She cannot let them languish in this misery, but something is dampening her magic.

“Again, my sweets,” she says to them, feeling the weight of her responsibility, heavy as the stone she carries.

They make several trips to and from the stone hut vaulted over the sea by its surprisingly sturdy wooden stilts. The stepping stones lay sad and unmoving, lapped as they are by the surf. Trip by trip, jar by jar, the hut begins to fill. Across the city, people are sapped of their horrible, nasty feelings, giving them a well-deserved peace. It may take more than one pass of her magic, but Macha is determined: these people need her help.

Their work has begun, and it is far from over.

[ Macha, the owl witch, has arrived to Darrow! This gathering is set anywhere in the city, any time that works for your pup. As a reminder, this plot is entirely opt-in! More information can be found here and here, and if you have any questions that may not be answered there, please don't hesitate to contact Kara. Tag in, tag each other, and remember to bottle those feelings! ]

Entry tags:

(no subject)

September 23, 2025:

Jack interviews for a job at Darrow General Hospital (and gets it). He and Robby discuss it over decent hospital teriyaki and terrible hospital coffee.

[ HERE | complete | profanity ]

Entry tags:

(no subject)

She hit the floor, discarded among open cans of soup and splatters of blood, and thought, "Typical."

( Very vague spoilers for the end of Weapons )

A busy cafe.

"What?" She breathed, heart hammering, eyes wild as she took in the scene. She was standing in the middle of a busy cafe, just outside of the ordering line. It looked like the morning rush, people with messenger bags and briefcases, looking harried on their way to work. It smelled like coffee and pastries. Her stomach lurched, both starved and sickened. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten.

"What the fuck?" She murmured to herself, stumbling out of the way of some guy on his cell phone barreling up to the counter to bark out his order. "Hey, watch it!" She seethed, but he'd already moved on.

Blinking dazedly, she shook her head, trying and failing to make sense of... any of this.

"Excuse me? Hello?" She finally snapped, her thin voice cutting through the din. "Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?"

[[At the coffee shop of your choice! Be the person to take pity on her, or find her later sitting at a table with a muffin, or even wandering the streets looking dazed. Open to all, gimme gimme. Oh, and if you have questions or need some info, go here.]]

Entry tags:

meme: reverse questions

MEME: Reverse Questions

Muns: Post here listing all of the characters you play (you might want to list journals, too, just for reference) or are thinking of playing.

Everyone: Ask the MUNS anything about the GAME or THEIR PUPS, because we all know the muns will answer when the characters won't. As a twist on the original, you're encouraged to ask whatever ridiculous question you like. What song gets stuck in your pup's head? or What would their role be in a heist? or Rank their favorite ice cream flavors. Of course, you can ask more serious questions, if you like. Hell, you can even have pups ask the questions, but ANSWERS are coming from the PLAYERS.

Entry tags:

Follow me my friend

For the last week, a fragment of a song has tugged at Wanda's mind. Both familiar and foreign, she's looped it in her thoughts like tires spinning in mud, as if she might somehow jog something free if only revs hard enough. Sometimes, just as she's drifting to sleep, she imagines herself at the beginning of a road, the one the song tells her to find, but every time she tries to reach out further, she wakes.

In her waking hours, the song pokes at her, just out of reach like popcorn between her teeth. There's never enough melody to hum into her phone or enough words to plug into a search engine. In all the books of magic she's read, nothing quite catches fits. All the roads are metaphorical and voiceless. Even walking Darrow's ley line tells her nothing.

So, Wanda resigns herself to the annoyance. It's annoying but not troubling and she has other things to keep herself occupied. Over the last few months, she's been slowly building up both her courage and her online presence and, today, a stack of flyers. Beneath her name and the QR code for a simple website she's built, Wanda advertises herself as a "magic and witchcraft consultant." The title is silly and a little grandiose, but she thinks it captures the spirit of the help she wants to provide. There are certain adversaries and tribulations in Darrow that she can help with, not as an Avenger, but as a witch.

Since her return to Darrow, it's been so much easier to retreat to Pelagos Lighthouse, spending untold hours reading through the vast collection of magical texts left behind by Dr. Strange and its previous occupants. Ever since the meteor shower and talking to Sabrina, it's crystalized just how much she's been hiding, rather than learning. Wanda's abilities can help people and people can bring her out into the world again.

( Cut for length + erring on caution for MCU spoilers )

[[Wanda's item isn't a physical object. Instead, the Ballad of the Witches' Road has arrived to Darrow's airwaves to entice and confuse her. Other pups can hear the song too and can react to Wanda's confusion/shock/BSOD OR you can catch her earlier in the day, advertising her services as a witch for hire.

Entry tags:

j,
mira,
s

유난히 긴 밤을 걷는 널 위해 부를게

Jae-eun has thought about this for a long time now, about getting a tattoo. Back home, it would have been another mark against him, would have made him look like a criminal, though not in the ways he is and not in the ways they already regarded him as being. That part doesn't bother him; he didn't belong in too many ways for one more to matter. It's more that they're expensive. They're expensive and he doesn't have a job and he worries about that. Sihyun never makes him feel like a burden — Jae-eun can do that perfectly well on his own — but the fact remains that he balks at spending that much on himself under his current circumstances.

( CW for mentions of self-harm. )

The process is a long one, and it does hurt at times. It feels good, too, though, and the physical part doesn't matter as much as the thrum of excited nerves as Ginny works, the buzz of the needle unexpectedly soothing. When it's done, he could swear his heart stops for a moment, relief seeping through him to the bone. He knows where the letters are, could still trace them if he wanted to. He doesn't want to. They're hidden now, tucked between flowers, vines, and leaves — some leaves that look like music notes, some vines that are also piano keys. He's not sure he'll ever be able to feel the same way about music, that he'll ever recover how easy it was a long, long time ago, but it's still a part of him, too. And this, this is beautiful, hope growing over despair. Ginny pretends she doesn't notice him getting teary-eyed as she goes over care instructions.

"It looks good," Sooyoung says, grinning. He's seated outside Bakery Bitna a few days later, and she's got her daughter on her hip. "You have to give me her number. I've been thinking of getting something done." When noona heads off with her baby to continue with her day, Jae-eun stays where he is, fingertips brushing over the fresh ink, his injeolmi and coffee half-forgotten. The feelings are, as always, complicated and sometimes contradictory, but the last few days, he's felt lighter, too.

[ Find Jae in the little Asian district in the Northwest of town. A good time to meet him or reconnect!! He's unlikely to go into any detail at all about what he covered up or how it got there or why. Open until this says otherwise. ]

AWS outage

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Entry tags:

Two Soldiers Walk Into A Grand Opening

The hydrotherapy pool at the physical therapist’s was one of Daniel’s favorite places in the city, which was maybe a little strange, but it was also true. It was near the hospital in what Daniel thought of as the Medical District, which meant it was also close to their apartment, and it was usually open whenever the physical therapy practice was, which included Saturday mornings. The tub at his apartment was good, but this was larger and hotter, plus it had jets.

He was relaxing with his arms stretched out on the edge of the pool, breathing deeply and feeling the muscles in his lower back and hips slowly unwind from the spring they’d coiled themselves into over the course of the week. He glanced up when the door from the changing room opened, though. The man who came in was shorter, older, and had lighter brown curly hair that was threaded through with grey. He had a right below knee amputation that looked well-healed and he moved fluidly on his crutches. He dropped them on a bench nearby, then hopped over to the edge of the pool and carefully sat down. A wedding ring gleamed on his hand when he braced himself on the edge.

“Do you mind if I join you?” he said, and Daniel waved an arm in welcome. The man was covered in freckles and was obviously someone who went to the gym and liked it. Daniel was physically fit, but he wasn’t “built” as they called it now. This man was. He slipped into the pool and sighed a little, then closed his eyes. There wasn’t much conversation in the pool, usually, and Daniel was fine with that. He would talk if someone else did, but didn’t usually start it. After a few minutes, the other man did speak, though.

“The name’s Jack Abbot.”

“Daniel Sousa. Nice to meet another member of the club,” he said with a friendly nod, since his right leg or lack thereof was visible under the water and his own crutches were on another bench nearby.

“Not a club I ever wanted to have a membership to,” Abbot said wryly, and Daniel chuckled.

“Same, but no one asked me. Bastogne, 1944. US Army.”

Jack simply nodded. Daniel hadn’t seen him before, but he’d clearly been here long enough to know that people arrived from different places, times, and entire worlds.

“Me either. Afghanistan, 2003, also Army.”

Daniel had read about that. It had been a hell of a situation, with improvised mines everywhere and an opponent that wasn’t helpful enough to wear uniforms like the Wehrmacht had. They continued talking casually, and Daniel learned that Jack was a doctor in the emergency department at the hospital, worked nights, and he’d been a combat medic before he got hit. Since Daniel’s life had been saved by the quick actions of a medic when he’d been hit, he appreciated that and said so. Daniel, in turn, shared that he was a police detective and had been infantry.

By the time they both had to leave because the pool was closing, Daniel was pretty sure Abbot was going to be a friend. They’d watched the other to make sure there was no issue getting out of the pool, then chatted easily about their respective prostheses as they got themselves put back together again. Abbot had chuckled and shaken his head when Daniel mentioned that his first prosthetic was made of wood.

“Here’s my number if you ever want to get a drink and talk about the stupidest thing you ever saw a soldier do or the most idiotic order you ever got,” Daniel offered as they walked towards the exit. It was a business card for the precinct, but his personal number was written on the back. He kept a few of those in his card case. A doctor, especially one in the ER, might need a police detective’s business card at some point anyway, although he could hope not.

“You’re assuming they aren’t the same thing. Thanks, Sousa,” Abbot replied, since they’d fallen easily into the familiarity of using surnames.

Just outside the door, they walked into the grand opening of a “craft soda shop” named Fizzical Therapy. Daniel didn’t think it was run by the same people who ran the physical therapy practice, but maybe it was, since it was next door? It’d be quite the combination of businesses, if it was.

“Huh,” he said as he looked around at the balloons and people and … was that person wearing a giant inflatable soda glass costume?

“Never a dull moment around here," Abbot agreed.

[[As promised (threatened?), Fizzical Therapy has opened next to Darrow Physical Therapy. It's roughly at Parliament and O'Connell. There is a stereo system playing Let's get Fizzical (Thank you Angel), deals on drinks, and please feel free to invent the most ridiculous soda you can think of as a Opening Weekend Special. Gathering post because why not, so tag Jack, Daniel, both, or neither. Just let me know if you want both in the same thread.]]

Entry tags:

meme: test drive

MEME: Test Drive

October Test Drive is here!

Tag into this post with characters you're thinking of apping to the game (characters who are not currently in-game or currently reserved by someone else). It can be just a tag, a brief EP, whatever you want. You can be new to the game, or simply want to test out a fresh pup. Tag each other with these characters or those already in game, and have fun.

Entry tags:

jack

Macha Plot - For Jack

He doesn't really notice it, at first -- sure, he feels more level than he has on a long time, and he's sleeping better, but he doesn't really interrogate it. Maybe Darrow suits him? Maybe, for the first time in a long time, he's just happy. Yeah, a few of the joints on his right hand have frozen, but he did break them years ago, coming off a skateboard, so maybe it's that. He's also done something to his back that seems to really be affecting his mobility, but he's got a couple of days in a row off, so he can rest. And it just doesn't feel important, anyway. Everything will be okay.

On the evening before his first day off, he sprawls on the couch to read but it isn't long before he drifts away, into content nothingness, sleeping like a stone.