UTTER GARBAGE.

[ihateyouetc]

WHAT: This is stupid.
WHO: This guy and any jerks if they decide to bust in.
WHEN: WHO CARES. HE'S ASLEEP ISN'T HE.
NOTE: Given the fact I'll likely add more dreams later, I'll be commenting to my own entry instead of pasting them in this main post every time. Reply with brackets; reply with prose; reply with a novel; reply with one line; make up something entirely ridiculous and unrelated -- do whatever. I can work with it.

1. ( EVEN IF BY SOME CHANCE I WAS, YOU CAN'T PROVE SHIT. )

2. ( WHAT POINT DO ALL THESE SERVE ANYWAY. SEEMS MEANINGFUL. CAN'T THINK OF WHY. )

Comments

GOD I'M TIRED AREN'T YOU LUCKY YOU GET THIS MESS BEFORE I GO NAP.

[ihateyouetc]

The room did nothing. There it was, existing while looking like it shouldn't, casting no shadows; no expectations; nothing. It said: open these or don't. No ultimatums. Not one was ajar as if to call your attention. Sometimes some of them were locked. Despite colour preference, none appeared more attractive than the other. Sure, there was that weird thirteenth door that appeared some time ago that had no handle and was kind of hard to look at with all the red around here, but you can't get in that one anyway so what's the big deal? Who really needs to know what's in there? Now, granted, the way the number keeps moving around is a little creepy, but once you fail to die from it you learn to ignore it.

He notes Dave's movement without looking directly at him; details observed through the corner of an eye and by the sound of his voice.

Too bad the attentive silence isn't made to last.

Karkat puffs a pffff, rolling his eyes. "Well?" How much condescension can you fit in a voice before you become the Condesce? "What do you think."

He was asking about humans, after all.

And Iiiii ammmmm the luckiest

[callbacks]

Look, Dave's from the Egbertian school of If It's There, I'm Gonna Touch It. Vaguely ominous dream doors, shiny paradox slime generating buttons, potato, potahto. It's all the same when you get down to the tropological level. Even now, knowing that Karkat's buddies may or may not be 92% dead on the other side of those doors, Dave's still sure he's going to open one. He just doesn't have any desire to. Rose called it something hoity-toity, he remembers. His sense of something something to inevitable misfortune.

Dave just calls it being an enormous tool, but whatever. He's not going for a door yet, in any case. He huffs a breath through his nose.

"Some of them are better than others." He tilts his head a little in a shrug that's too lazy to be a shrug. "And I only really know about the ones that touch the alpha timeline in some way. If too much is different, or they don't come back to change something, I can only sort of get a feel for how they might've gone. But some of them..."

He trails off. One thumb taps the air at exactly sixty BPM.

"I'm glad I don't see more of them," he finally mumbles.

HERE'S A REPLY SINCE YOURS IS THE EASIEST TO REPLY TO AT WORK BC A FUCKTON OF DIALOGUE.

[ihateyouetc]

Yeah.

Sounds about right.

Karkat compacts: knees-to-chest; arms-over-knees; chin-to-arms. It's like soft things hiding in shells, ready to defend themselves.

But not quite. "I think I've told you before but you didn't know the Aradia before Aradia. I don't know if they were the same. They were kind of different. Not that it's surprising. Aradia's had the most fucked up personality changes out of all of us but the Aradia before Aradia? I think she knew everything. I didn't know that at the time, but... after she was gone things started to happen and stuff she said made sense. I fucked up. I mean obviously, but..."

It doesn't end there. "Like, I really fucked everything up. I'm not going into detail since I don't feel like it but I don't think she ever stopped fixing my mistakes. Even my not-mistakes? So the whole outcome of this thing is I had to completely fuck everything up in the worst ways possible? I'm still not buying it, but even this much time later I still can't think of anything that could have gone differently and even if I could I probably tried it already. And okay, don't say anything. I know I've definitely said all this before in various different contexts and it's completely stupid to just start thinking about for no reason but it just kinda happens."

His eyelashes lower; staring through red slits at an equally red ground. Red not-ground. Red whatever-this-is. "I mean, do you ever feel like no matter where you are, what timeline, what kind of cool new alternate iteration of life or reality or whatever-the-fuck-else we experience here that we don't know about, that your current spectacular fucking failure of an existence is the most positive outcome that exists anywhere? Like no matter what, your karmic make-up is specially tailored to get you totally, utterly fucked and the only reason it's not jacked here is because you happened to fall out of a previously-existing timeline. Everything here was never supposed to happen. It's just some kinda weird dead space. Even if we're alive? Not that I'm complaining. Don't think I am. Just..."

Well, that's awkward.

"Okay, forget I said all of that. I have no idea what that has to do with anything."

Karkat why can't you ignore these problems like everyone else

[callbacks]

Dave listens without moving his gaze from Terezi's and Vriska's doors, and only when Karkat finishes does he snort quietly to prove he hasn't suddenly been replaced with a Dream Davebot.

"Bro, you make no sense when you're asleep. Just FYI."

And he does move, now, rearranging his feet to sit cross-legged and running one hand back through his hair. His eyebrows are drawn together behind his shades.

"Look, you can't overthink the timelines or you'll fuck yourself over. I can't think about the timelines without getting totally messed up, all right? The whole thing's dumb as hell." Dave rocks forward a bit, like he's about to get up but changes his mind at the last minute, and stills. He stares at his shoes like there's a complex math problem to work out there.

"I hate it," he says, but then he groans and tilts his face up towards the ceiling. Or where the ceiling would be if Karkat's dreamscape made any sense. "Christ. Forget I said that. This is a dream, you can do that, right? But seriously, that self-obligating back-from-the-future fate shit just--doesn't sit right with me. Which I guess is ironic, for a Time player. In an unironically lame way." He leans back onto his hands and looks off to the side, away from Karkat. "I only do it here because it doesn't matter. The time loops, I mean. They don't mean anything."

After a moment, he tucks his chin in lower with a 'ch' noise. "What I'm trying to get at is." God, what the fuck is he trying to get at. "Don't think about it and it won't eat at you as much. Okay, awesome, that sounded a lot less toolish in my head. Cool."

It's his turn to flop onto his back, hands pressed over his face. "Maybe you're overestimating how much of a fuck-up you are, though," he mutters into his palms. "Just a thought."

THIS IS TERRIBLE BUT IT'S HERE. MIGHT AS WELL ABANDON ALL DIGNITY WITH THIS ICON TOO.

[ihateyouetc]

Dave isn't the only one who can listen. Karkat is silent, glowering over his arms until Dave's body flops soundlessly out of peripheral sight. He tilts his head to watch him, brows furrowing. Did he just... put his hands over his face while wearing his stupid, pointless, absolutely-in-no-way-necessary sunglasses? Won't that leave a bunch of smudges?

What a tool.

But not for the words. Nothing wrong with those. Perfectly acceptable, normal, would-be-comforting things to say to a friend in some fucked up nightmare room. He exhales a sigh through his nose, closing his eyes; face softening into an expression that could have been relaxed if it was one that let its worries go rather than simply gave up a frown. "Thanks."

Well, that was a shitty way to put it. He tries again: "Not in the 'thanks for nothing' kind of way." Christ. Why would anyone think that? "I mean in the 'yeah, thanks, I appreciate that thing you just said about me not being a colossal fuck-up even if it's not true' kinda way, but I don't wanna go into it any further than that."

Okay, that's probably better.

"And fuck, I'll submit what you said before for deletion. In fact, this whole conversation is submitted for deletion! God, at least we're not talking about this where anyone else can hear it, like outside my head."

A pause. His eyelashes twitch but don't lift.

"Uh, well, I guess that makes it weirder? But who cares, dammit. Consider this first in the selective amnesia queue."