deernet | [Video -> Text] un: alcaid [Locked from Stanley Pines]

[Video -> Text] un: alcaid [Locked from Stanley Pines]

[The video starts off dark. There's some shuffling sounds, like someone dragging clothing on hangers across a metal rack. Then, a pair of eyes, one bright gold and the other white look into the feed, wide and startled. The camera blurs out, but the tiniest, panicked voice can be made out.]

Alcaid! I said textIsaidtext!

[It cuts and then a moment later a text post is attached.]

Ignore that, thanks.

I just want to give a quick heads up, especially to anyone who saw my uncle's post about my other uncle leaving: He's back.

Sort of.

He's thirty years younger and doesn't have any memories of this place so, try not to be too alarmed if you see him. If you could also avoid bringing up Bill (If you know who I mean) to him, that would be great.

It makes me wonder... how many of us from the Dream are still here? It seems like a lot of us have gone back to the ocean. I went through the doors because I didn't have a place in my own story anymore, hoping this would be the place where I fit. Maybe that was just wishful thinking and we don't fit anywhere anymore.

Anyway, that's all.

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So many from the dream are gone now...

[She had seen Varian and Fern off, but it doesn't change how much she misses them.

Still, not the point. She takes a deep breath.]

I'm still here? For what's that worth, and you still fit in, Dipper. You should give yourself more credit.

[And there may yet be a plenty still here, it's just in the wake of so many recent losses like Stan, Varian, and Fern it feels awfully big.]

Hey Usagi. Thanks for checking in. I'm glad you're still here.

And I appreciate that. I think I fit in, too? But ...I also thought Grunkle Stan did, and he still left so, now I'm not sure what to think anymore.

People don't always leave here willingly. I can't imagine your Gruncle Stan leaving the three of you willingly in any situation. It's just the urge can be more than anything else.

[Ryan was never in the dream, but he's definitely been a teenager in a place he didn't feel like he belonged in before.]

i was never in the dream but I definitely went through other magical sci-fi bs before all of this? and, yknow. normal school.

but just because other people are going away, that doesn't mean you don't fit here. like...yeah, maybe it didn't work out for them. but how do YOU feel?

[...Oh! Ryan might not be from the Dream but he is glad to hear from him.]

Same. Would you believe me if I told you that when I went "home" right before we came to Trench, going back to middle school had been what made me snap and decide I'd take my chances with whatever here might have been?

I don't really regret that.

[There's a moment as he thinks about the last part, and the next message comes a moment later.]

It's going to make me sound crazy, because there's a lot of reason to NOT like this place, but, it's let me see, do, and BE in ways I never would have been able to back home. That means a lot to me.

You're right, and I know that's what happened with Grunkle Stan, it's just ...

It's hard not to wonder if maybe you could have done something to stop it, you know?

I absolutely do. When Rei left, and then again with Varian and Fern. But I also know how much they loved me, and that this place loves to take decisions out of our hands. I know it's not the same, and it doesn't make the ache any less, but I know they love me. And now Stan is back. He may not remember but he's still Stan.

Yeah.

Thanks, Usagi. That actually really helped. Realistically I knew these things? But it's different to hear it from someone else.

[And of late, he'd done an awful lot of bottling up in an effort to keep trucking, and it was obviously starting to wear on him.]

Oh... That's definitely a weird situation to be in Dipper. I'm glad he's back but- Wow. I don't quite know what to say about that.

I've had friends show up again with no memories of their last time here and have had to break some awful news to them. But not quite like this.

If there's anything I can do to help. Just let me know

Most of my house is still here. But it does feel like we're losing numbers. But- I think regardless of whether we fit in or not we have to keep pressing forward. For the ones we've lost and the ones to still to come.

No chance of my bringing up Bill to anyone, unless they've brought up the subject themself. I still bear a scar from that incident, even after leaving this world and returning to my world of origin. No matter what form I've taken, outside of my squid form, it remains.

I'd arrived in the Dream nine months before it ended, but I'm still here. I don't think I'm returning to my world of origin any time soon. My place there seems to have ended. I live here now.

I'm still around. So's Vyng and Tuck.

[Not that he.....knows you that well, lol, but as long as we're sounding off Michael sure is here!]

Thirty years is a lot, right? That's very strange.

I was in the Dream, too. For a few years. It does seem like there's less and less of us, these days.

I know what you mean. I don't feel like.... I fit, here. Deerington was strange, but I think I was better there.
This place feels like... if I'm going to fit, I'll have to change? In ways I'm not sure I'm capable of. I'm not even sure it's possible.

( Peter's never, ever said that out loud before. But he's thought it for a long time. )

I remember Bill, too. I didn't know him for long, but I uh. He seemed pretty intimidating.

( An understatement.... It's a name that Peter hasn't thought about until this exact moment, and it stuns him with an odd chill. His interaction with that entity had been... unnerving, to say the very least. It had reached through to the thing inside himself. Opened its eyes in a very particular way. )

I was somewhere weird where people showed up from all over before this, but not the Dream. Temba, on a planet called Agri-10.

There are several people here, I met versions of, there. Or knew from back home. Or both. The temporal disconnects make stuff confusing, and sometimes upsetting, definitely.

And there's one person I knew from there, who remembers me here, too. So, all sorts of possibilities.

This might not be the same because I know he was family, and I wasn't in the Dream, but I feel like you fit in with us.

[ dipper's efforts haven't gone unnoticed by his small little kouhai. ]

I miss the people I knew in the other worlds I've been to. I'm not sure I'll see them again, so [ it was hard to remain that hopeful in seeing them again, no matter how much his heart ached from time to time in wanting to see mando, or peter (parker). ] I know how some of it feels. I'm sure they're okay, wherever they are, but there's a spot that feels empty all the time even if it's small.

Edited 2022-05-09 19:19 (UTC)

Yeah, I really hadn't considered this to be something that could happen, but. It does make some sense when you think about it? Sometimes people go and come back at different points in their life. Grunkle Stan was just OLDER than most of us that he would have a longer span of time to work with? I guess, I don't know. I'm just speculating.

He's definitely still the same Grunkle Stan deep down, I'm pretty sure. I just ...wish he remembered who I was.

Thanks, Ruby. I definitely will. I know you're right about moving forward, it just. Kind of sucks right now.

You and me both. [He's riddled in scars that remind him of that bastard.] Sorry about all that, by the way. I know there wasn't a whole lot we could do to stop him but it definitely turned into a bigger mess than it should have.

Noted. (maybe I'll start keeping a list)

Yeah, I left home feeling the same way. Like when you have a puzzle piece and your sister spills orange juice on it so it swells up and won't fit in the picture anymore.

[It's okay He knows you mostly through his Uncle? Who thinks you are very neat, sir.]

Michael, right?

Yeah, it's definitely a lot. Grunkle Stan would never like ...actually tell me his age, but thirty years is at LEAST half way back. I'm not sure if there's precedence for that big of a gap.

Are we calling it "the Dream?" I was there. I didn't make a choice. Or maybe I made the choice to stay behind? Ended up here anyway.

I've had a few people from home come and go, and we were never in sync with each other. Somehow Deerington pulled my husband there younger, too. Before he'd died. It wasn't 30 years, but it was a hell of a shock. I still don't really understand any of it.

I think also we lost a lot of people in the end? Some of us just didn't come out of the ocean. Or they went off to somewhere different.

It's weird, right? I think ...in the end I do feel like I fit here, or, I guess I really WANT to fit here. Deerington was nuts but looking back on it, it gave me a lot of things I probably wouldn't have otherwise.

A chance to be with family I might otherwise only see once a year, it gave me FRIENDS and people the same age as me I could actually relate to. I have a boyfriend??? There's a lot about the Dream that I'm grateful for, even if the rest of it was rough.

Trench has been good in a lot of other ways, but it's SO different from the Dream. And different from what I know? I wonder if that adjustment has affected the people who've left.

Is that how it is for you? You don't have to answer if you don't want to! But if you do, I'll listen.

[Good job Peter, you got Dipper to chatterbox you to death. This is probably a good sign.]

He's a megalomanic, mostly-omniscient, eldritch nightmare demon and also a huge asshole. I'm sorry if he caused you any problems. He was super dead in my world but of course that didn't stop him from showing up in the Dream. UGH.

[You do not have to sugarcoat it, Peter. Dipper hates the bastard triangle more than anything.]

At a rough estimate, I'd say there are about thirty of us who came from Deerington who are still here. No more than forty to be certain.

[It's a dwindling number and likely only to get smaller, which would depress Maul if he didn't already have the attitude that everyone in his life will leave eventually anyway, so he tries not to hold out hope for anyone staying here.]

I believe the ones that were there for the longest period of time were Shiro, Vira-Lorr, and Reaper.

[ ... Hm.

This is something highly relevant to Ford for a number of reasons, and something that's been on his mind since his conversation with Mako some months ago. It's probably a conversation he should have with Dipper as well, though he's not sure how to bring it up without sounding whiny. Stan not having memories of the past thirty years is hard on all of them, but he has no doubt it's leagues more difficult for Dipper and Mabel. At least Stan knows who Ford even is.

There's also the fact that the reality of the new form Trench has saddled him with has finally sunk in. Ford is perfectly familiar with how Mothman looks, but he'd have to be blind to not seem the similarities between this and Dipper's descent into Beasthood.

He debates with himself for a while, and then finally: ]

Dipper, would you be alright speaking in person?

You're not the first person I've talked to that's been somewhere else first. Like another multiverse nexus point, which is the best word I have for where we are? Or were. It's a pretty weird and specific phenomenon! I'd honestly be interested in researching it if I could.

Yeah, I bet. I'm sorry that's happened to you though. Especially if you had friends that don't recognize you. But having just one person that knows, that's- I mean. Does it help?

Multiverse nexus point. I like that.

Someone who remembers Temba helps me feel less crazy, definitely.

There's a few of the people here I knew back home, but they're somewhere between 15 and 20 years younger than when I first met them. So, before I was born, or certainly long before they met me.

When it's family, it's hard.

[Honestly, its a very nice thing to hear. Falco is such a good.]

Thanks, man. That really means a lot to me.

I feel like its such a specific feeling? They're not ...dead or anything, but they're still gone and all we can do is keep going. It sucks, honestly, but I know those people wouldn't actually want me to mope about it.

Which, turns out, is pretty hard not to do sometimes.

[uh.]

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