Item 2 - Video - Mirror Dash
Sep. 26th, 2014 11:45 pm[Video clicks on, and Dash is on screen placidly sitting on a log. He's got his backpack tugged lazily over one shoulder, but he's not even going to pretend that he can outrun werewolves and monsters and whatnot.]
Yo, question for the infiltrators. I'm kind of new on board, but I been told that this has happened a few times before, annnnnnnnd I was just wondering, do you guys have any control over coming here?
[Because if they can deliberately come over here, maybe he can deliberately get back over there once this is all over.]
I'm Dash. In case I've like, not shown up on your side yet. Definitely up for defecting to the team with Arthas and the Hulk on it, by the way, just in case anyone felt like showing up to prevent me getting horribly killed by my warden in the meantime...
[He smiles a little smile, and waves at the camera, before hopping down from the log and clicking off the video.]
Yo, question for the infiltrators. I'm kind of new on board, but I been told that this has happened a few times before, annnnnnnnd I was just wondering, do you guys have any control over coming here?
[Because if they can deliberately come over here, maybe he can deliberately get back over there once this is all over.]
I'm Dash. In case I've like, not shown up on your side yet. Definitely up for defecting to the team with Arthas and the Hulk on it, by the way, just in case anyone felt like showing up to prevent me getting horribly killed by my warden in the meantime...
[He smiles a little smile, and waves at the camera, before hopping down from the log and clicking off the video.]
Item 1 - Video!
Sep. 15th, 2014 12:35 am[Public]
[Video clicks on, and lo! It's a teenage boy with a shock of grey hair. He's walking as he talks, wandering the halls of the Barge apparently aimlessly.]
Uh, hey, I don't wanna cause a stink, but there's been some kind of terrible mistake here. My- uh, my parents, are going to be losing their minds back home in New Jersey...
[There might be something ever so slightly shifty about how he says this, but then again, he is a recently deceased teenage boy. He could easily just be nervous.]
All of this-- this inmate stuff? Yeah, you definitely got the wrong guy for that. I got a perfectly normal, crime free life, back home with my family. Yes, we cheat on our taxes and have the occasional three am family-document-shredding-party, but who doesn't? By nine am we're back to pancakes and oatmeal, and that, [decisive finger jab at the screen.] Is how you live the American dream, right?
[Private to Inmates]
So, does anyone ever actually escape from this place?
[Video clicks on, and lo! It's a teenage boy with a shock of grey hair. He's walking as he talks, wandering the halls of the Barge apparently aimlessly.]
Uh, hey, I don't wanna cause a stink, but there's been some kind of terrible mistake here. My- uh, my parents, are going to be losing their minds back home in New Jersey...
[There might be something ever so slightly shifty about how he says this, but then again, he is a recently deceased teenage boy. He could easily just be nervous.]
All of this-- this inmate stuff? Yeah, you definitely got the wrong guy for that. I got a perfectly normal, crime free life, back home with my family. Yes, we cheat on our taxes and have the occasional three am family-document-shredding-party, but who doesn't? By nine am we're back to pancakes and oatmeal, and that, [decisive finger jab at the screen.] Is how you live the American dream, right?
[Private to Inmates]
So, does anyone ever actually escape from this place?
Dash X tlv application
Aug. 27th, 2014 12:25 amUser Name/Nick: Conwaaaaaay!
User DW:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
knownoguilt
AIM/IM: stoptheworld26
E-mail: michael heroin at gmail dot com
Other Characters: Horatio Hornblower
Character Name: Dash X
Series: Eerie Indiana
Age: 16-17 ish?
From When?: From after the last episode, when the show gets cancelled :)
Inmate/Warden: Inmate! When times get tough, Dash's first and strongest instinct is to look out for number one. He extorts, blackmails, and sells people out. The first question he asks himself when he comes across someone in need, is "what's in it for me?"
THAT SAID, with a bit of emotional blackmail (or sometimes a small bribe) Dash generally changes his mind about his evil deeds and switches temporarily to the side of goodness. Lacking a home, a family, or any memories of his past, there are basically no consequences for Dash when he's a terrible person. He's got no external rudder for his morality, and has never had anyone else to worry about, just as he has no one to worry about him.
Basically, he could use a warden. OR A MOTHER.
Abilities/Powers: Lol none.
Personality:
Perhaps, when Dash woke up in the small town of Eerie Indiana alone, with no money, no family, and no memory of who he was or how he got there? He woke up predisposed to being a sneaky little shit. What is certain is that in the months that followed, as he survived by sleeping rough, dumpster diving, and shoplifting for food, Dash embraced his untrustworthiness as his most defining feature.
Dash is very deliberate in his selfishness. He's clear from his first appearance on the show about the fact that he sees the town of Eerie as being out to get him, and that he's willing to do whatever it takes to evade whatever weirdness it throws at him. He doesn't see it as his obligation to protect anyone else, and he routinely betrays literally every single person he allies himself with.
Part of this is out of genuine necessity. Dash is homeless, and he can't trust the local authorities to help him, so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where some of his more mercantile instincts come from. Many of his selfish and untrustworthy actions, however, are motivated by less obvious drives.
Being alone seems to have created in him a desire to be self reliant, which sometimes leads to Dash rejecting help, or working against the show's protagonists even when they are on the same side. He repeatedly sells the show's heroes out only temporarily, either to buy himself time to investigate a perilous situation more thoroughly, or until he discovers that the person he's sold them out to is more evil than he's comfortable with.
He criticizes the main characters (two other teenagers, named Marshall and Simon) for being too trusting, he calls them do-gooders and insists that he doesn't need help from anyone, including them. In other words, he knows that he doesn't need to throw them under the bus in order to save himself, that they would help him, if he asked for it. The reason why he doesn't is pretty simply, because he doesn't want to need their help. He wants to be older and tougher and smarter than they are, and to solve all of his problems just by going his own way.
This, at least, is one way in which Dash is a pretty typical teenage boy. He's kind of a show off, and he does want to have friends and impress his peers. Despite his protestations, he repeatedly allies himself with Marshall and Simon. On one occasion, he gets a job working for a secret society, which looks like it might be linked to his unknown past. In exchange for a $10 bribe, he sneaks Marshall and Simon in, hides them from his boss, and shows them all of the secrets. On another occasion, when the whole town inadvertently sell their souls to the devil, Simon, Marshall, and Dash retire to a secret clubhouse full of mystery stuff because they are clearly friends.
Terrible friends, who are in total denial about it and might not actually like each other, but friends none the less.
This leads to another quality that Dash wouldn't like to admit to: He is highly impressionable, and seeks guidance from awful, sneaky adults. Out of the six episodes in which Dash appears, he spends no fewer than four of them being won over into the service of one spooky adult or another. The initial motive is often money, but Dash goes native remarkably quickly.
You don't have to dig deep for the reason behind this. In one of these episodes he demands to know if the adult he has allied himself with is his father, and threatens to follow the man on his intergalactic travels, despite not being invited. The truth is that while Dash makes a big deal about how self sufficient and cool he is, he clearly resents not knowing about his past, and feels a deep disappointment about being unable to find his parents.
Or, he did feel disappointed, at least. Much of his outlook upon arriving on the Barge will have been influenced by the fact that in the last episode of Eerie Indiana, the fourth wall is broken and both Marshall and Dash discover that they are fictional characters on a TV show that's about to be cancelled.
Generally cited as being the only episode where Dash doesn't turn good at the end, the final episode of Eerie Indiana consists of Marshall Teller finding a script in his mailbox, before discovering that he is actually on a TV set. His friends and family are all revealed to be actors, and he is about to be killed off the show by Dash, in order to prevent the network from cancelling it.
Dash is one of only two other characters in this episode who retain their memories of Eerie, and while Marshall remains confident that their world is the one that matters, and that he has to get back to it and survive the day with his family? Dash... does not. At all. He just accepts that he's a fictional character and gets on with his usual business of ingratiating himself with the head writer.
Rather than being the episode where Dash doesn't turn good at the end, I'd say this is the episode where Dash surrenders to the concept of determinism.
For the whole series up to this point, Dash has struggled to balance his selfishness against his better instincts. He's gone back and forth over matters of right and wrong, and has struggled vainly to recall who he is and where he comes from. Awful though it may be, discovering that he isn't real solves these problems for him in one easy sweep.
Why does he have no family or memories? Because the scriptwriters didn't bother to write him a back story. Why is he such an awful person? It's in the script! Does he have to apologize for anything ever? Only if the script literally forces him to do so!
It's why, when the writer decides that Dash should kill Marshall to replace him as the show's lead, Dash is far less bothered by it than he has been in previous episodes. Because Marshall isn't real, and even if he was, Dash is no longer responsible for his own actions. The closest thing we get to remorse in this episode is when he tries to explain this to Marshall, who accuses Dash of telling the writer what to do.
In the end of the episode, Marshall changes the script, returns to his world, avoids getting shot, the show gets cancelled, and the world ends.
Sort of.
And Dash comes to the Barge.
Barge Reactions: Initially, Dash will be really angry about being on board the Barge at all. He'll be pissed off both by the idea of being in prison, and by the suggestion that he's here for his own good because HE TAKES CARE OF HIMSELF DAMN IT.
He'll also be annoyed at having his two crappy friends who he was always betraying taken away from him, because without them he's basically back to square one in the 'people who give a damn that he exists' stakes.
Expect him to try and slip away in ports a lot.
Path to Redemption:
Okay, first and foremost, Dash needs to not calmly accept that he's a fictional character following a script and therefore not responsible for his own actions in any way.
Despite the events of the last episode, Eerie Indiana is as real as any other world represented on the Barge, and Dash has as much control over his actions as anyone else. It just happens to be a world more inclined to hosting slips in the fabric of the universe than most, and the last one of these that he experienced threw him for a loop. Being on the Barge, where floods and ports are regular and multiple universes are generally accepted as being real, might help him get over the idea that one weird day invalidated the entire rest of his life.
On the other hand, the Barge is weird as hell and it makes perfect sense that it's not real, so. That might still be a bit tricky.
Secondly, he needs to learn to take an interest in the problems of those around him, and to be honest, just having a warden will be helpful in this. As stated earlier in this app, Dash has no recollection of anyone ever being responsible for his well being, and has never been able to rely on the adults around him for help. Having someone who's actually looking out for him (even if he doesn't want them there) will actually help him to absorb some of this mentality. Leading by example is the way to go, basically.
Finally, he needs to learn to be a bit more discriminating about who he latches on to, because there is a world of trouble in his future if he carries on the way he's begun. Part of this is just on account of his age, and his belief that he's a lot smarter than he actually is.
He is going to screw up, make terrible decisions, and alienate himself from potential friends, essentially. What he needs, above anything else, is for someone who will consistently stick by him through these screw ups, and be his conscience when he needs one.
History: Three months before his arrival on screen? Dash woke up in Weirdsville, Indiana with no mom, no dad, and no memories. And this, more or less, is all we know.
He spent the next three months living on the streets, and digging through dumpsters for food, until finally he situates himself in an old dilapidated mill which was allegedly haunted. Thus begins episode thirteen of Eerie Indiana.
So, since Eerie Indiana got cancelled and the mysteries of what the hell was going on with Dash X was never revealed? What follows is a combination of word of god, subtext, and headcanon.
Had the show continued beyond one season (according to the actor who played him) it would have been revealed that Dash was actually constructed, Frankenstein style! This explains the plus and minus symbols on his hands, the massive battery pack that he is introduced with, and his predisposition to maniacal cackling. Whether he was deliberately or accidentally abandoned, we will likely never know.
In light of this, it seems likely that prior to those three months? Dash simply didn't exist.
Sample Journal Entry:
[Public]
[Video clicks on, and lo! It's a teenage boy with a shock of grey hair. He's walking as he talks, wandering the halls of the Barge apparently aimlessly.]
Uh, hey, I don't wanna cause a stink, but there's been some kind of terrible mistake here. My- uh my parents, are going to be losing their minds back home in New Jersey...
[There might be something ever so slightly shifty about how he says this, but then again, he is a recently deceased teenage boy. He could easily just be nervous.]
All of this-- this inmate stuff? Yeah, you definitely got the wrong guy for that. I got a perfectly normal, crime free life, back home with my family. Yes, we cheat on our taxes and have the occasional three am family-document-shredding-party, but who doesn't? By nine am we're back to pancakes and oatmeal, and that, [decisive finger jab at the screen.] Is how you live the American dream, right?
[Private to Inmates]
So, does anyone ever actually escape from this place?
Sample RP:
Dash wanted to have strong feelings about the Barge. When he first saw the sky above the deck, he wanted his reaction to be something more than just wondering what the special effects budget must be.
This was, in a weird way, kind of exactly what he had wanted, wasn't it? Roaming the galaxy, meeting alien races, out of Eerie, Indiana... Surely, even if he was here against his will, there was nowhere he was more likely to find other people like him?
Perhaps if he'd arrived a few days earlier, he could have convinced himself that he was actually unravelling the mysteries of who he was, instead of plodding through the motions of a badly plotted character arc.
Creeping out of the stairwell, Dash glanced around quickly to see if there was anyone lurking on the ship's deck to apprehend him. When he was confident that the coast was clear, he approached the railing.
He tapped his fingers on it, feeling out the cold and reverberation.
He looked up at the stars.
He made himself think the thought: Wow! Just like reality!
He tried to feel something other than mild irritation about all this. To feel happy that he'd gotten out. Angry that he'd gotten busted. Even sad, that he didn't have any friends after all.
Only he'd never had any friends, really. And he hadn't really gotten away from anything.
The worst part, he decided, as he looked at the stars and tried to feel angry, was that Marshall (who didn't exist either and therefore didn't matter and couldn't have really felt anything) would probably have loved this stinkin' place.
Special Notes:
User DW:
knownoguiltAIM/IM: stoptheworld26
E-mail: michael heroin at gmail dot com
Other Characters: Horatio Hornblower
Character Name: Dash X
Series: Eerie Indiana
Age: 16-17 ish?
From When?: From after the last episode, when the show gets cancelled :)
Inmate/Warden: Inmate! When times get tough, Dash's first and strongest instinct is to look out for number one. He extorts, blackmails, and sells people out. The first question he asks himself when he comes across someone in need, is "what's in it for me?"
THAT SAID, with a bit of emotional blackmail (or sometimes a small bribe) Dash generally changes his mind about his evil deeds and switches temporarily to the side of goodness. Lacking a home, a family, or any memories of his past, there are basically no consequences for Dash when he's a terrible person. He's got no external rudder for his morality, and has never had anyone else to worry about, just as he has no one to worry about him.
Basically, he could use a warden. OR A MOTHER.
Abilities/Powers: Lol none.
Personality:
Perhaps, when Dash woke up in the small town of Eerie Indiana alone, with no money, no family, and no memory of who he was or how he got there? He woke up predisposed to being a sneaky little shit. What is certain is that in the months that followed, as he survived by sleeping rough, dumpster diving, and shoplifting for food, Dash embraced his untrustworthiness as his most defining feature.
Dash is very deliberate in his selfishness. He's clear from his first appearance on the show about the fact that he sees the town of Eerie as being out to get him, and that he's willing to do whatever it takes to evade whatever weirdness it throws at him. He doesn't see it as his obligation to protect anyone else, and he routinely betrays literally every single person he allies himself with.
Part of this is out of genuine necessity. Dash is homeless, and he can't trust the local authorities to help him, so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where some of his more mercantile instincts come from. Many of his selfish and untrustworthy actions, however, are motivated by less obvious drives.
Being alone seems to have created in him a desire to be self reliant, which sometimes leads to Dash rejecting help, or working against the show's protagonists even when they are on the same side. He repeatedly sells the show's heroes out only temporarily, either to buy himself time to investigate a perilous situation more thoroughly, or until he discovers that the person he's sold them out to is more evil than he's comfortable with.
He criticizes the main characters (two other teenagers, named Marshall and Simon) for being too trusting, he calls them do-gooders and insists that he doesn't need help from anyone, including them. In other words, he knows that he doesn't need to throw them under the bus in order to save himself, that they would help him, if he asked for it. The reason why he doesn't is pretty simply, because he doesn't want to need their help. He wants to be older and tougher and smarter than they are, and to solve all of his problems just by going his own way.
This, at least, is one way in which Dash is a pretty typical teenage boy. He's kind of a show off, and he does want to have friends and impress his peers. Despite his protestations, he repeatedly allies himself with Marshall and Simon. On one occasion, he gets a job working for a secret society, which looks like it might be linked to his unknown past. In exchange for a $10 bribe, he sneaks Marshall and Simon in, hides them from his boss, and shows them all of the secrets. On another occasion, when the whole town inadvertently sell their souls to the devil, Simon, Marshall, and Dash retire to a secret clubhouse full of mystery stuff because they are clearly friends.
Terrible friends, who are in total denial about it and might not actually like each other, but friends none the less.
This leads to another quality that Dash wouldn't like to admit to: He is highly impressionable, and seeks guidance from awful, sneaky adults. Out of the six episodes in which Dash appears, he spends no fewer than four of them being won over into the service of one spooky adult or another. The initial motive is often money, but Dash goes native remarkably quickly.
You don't have to dig deep for the reason behind this. In one of these episodes he demands to know if the adult he has allied himself with is his father, and threatens to follow the man on his intergalactic travels, despite not being invited. The truth is that while Dash makes a big deal about how self sufficient and cool he is, he clearly resents not knowing about his past, and feels a deep disappointment about being unable to find his parents.
Or, he did feel disappointed, at least. Much of his outlook upon arriving on the Barge will have been influenced by the fact that in the last episode of Eerie Indiana, the fourth wall is broken and both Marshall and Dash discover that they are fictional characters on a TV show that's about to be cancelled.
Generally cited as being the only episode where Dash doesn't turn good at the end, the final episode of Eerie Indiana consists of Marshall Teller finding a script in his mailbox, before discovering that he is actually on a TV set. His friends and family are all revealed to be actors, and he is about to be killed off the show by Dash, in order to prevent the network from cancelling it.
Dash is one of only two other characters in this episode who retain their memories of Eerie, and while Marshall remains confident that their world is the one that matters, and that he has to get back to it and survive the day with his family? Dash... does not. At all. He just accepts that he's a fictional character and gets on with his usual business of ingratiating himself with the head writer.
Rather than being the episode where Dash doesn't turn good at the end, I'd say this is the episode where Dash surrenders to the concept of determinism.
For the whole series up to this point, Dash has struggled to balance his selfishness against his better instincts. He's gone back and forth over matters of right and wrong, and has struggled vainly to recall who he is and where he comes from. Awful though it may be, discovering that he isn't real solves these problems for him in one easy sweep.
Why does he have no family or memories? Because the scriptwriters didn't bother to write him a back story. Why is he such an awful person? It's in the script! Does he have to apologize for anything ever? Only if the script literally forces him to do so!
It's why, when the writer decides that Dash should kill Marshall to replace him as the show's lead, Dash is far less bothered by it than he has been in previous episodes. Because Marshall isn't real, and even if he was, Dash is no longer responsible for his own actions. The closest thing we get to remorse in this episode is when he tries to explain this to Marshall, who accuses Dash of telling the writer what to do.
In the end of the episode, Marshall changes the script, returns to his world, avoids getting shot, the show gets cancelled, and the world ends.
Sort of.
And Dash comes to the Barge.
Barge Reactions: Initially, Dash will be really angry about being on board the Barge at all. He'll be pissed off both by the idea of being in prison, and by the suggestion that he's here for his own good because HE TAKES CARE OF HIMSELF DAMN IT.
He'll also be annoyed at having his two crappy friends who he was always betraying taken away from him, because without them he's basically back to square one in the 'people who give a damn that he exists' stakes.
Expect him to try and slip away in ports a lot.
Path to Redemption:
Okay, first and foremost, Dash needs to not calmly accept that he's a fictional character following a script and therefore not responsible for his own actions in any way.
Despite the events of the last episode, Eerie Indiana is as real as any other world represented on the Barge, and Dash has as much control over his actions as anyone else. It just happens to be a world more inclined to hosting slips in the fabric of the universe than most, and the last one of these that he experienced threw him for a loop. Being on the Barge, where floods and ports are regular and multiple universes are generally accepted as being real, might help him get over the idea that one weird day invalidated the entire rest of his life.
On the other hand, the Barge is weird as hell and it makes perfect sense that it's not real, so. That might still be a bit tricky.
Secondly, he needs to learn to take an interest in the problems of those around him, and to be honest, just having a warden will be helpful in this. As stated earlier in this app, Dash has no recollection of anyone ever being responsible for his well being, and has never been able to rely on the adults around him for help. Having someone who's actually looking out for him (even if he doesn't want them there) will actually help him to absorb some of this mentality. Leading by example is the way to go, basically.
Finally, he needs to learn to be a bit more discriminating about who he latches on to, because there is a world of trouble in his future if he carries on the way he's begun. Part of this is just on account of his age, and his belief that he's a lot smarter than he actually is.
He is going to screw up, make terrible decisions, and alienate himself from potential friends, essentially. What he needs, above anything else, is for someone who will consistently stick by him through these screw ups, and be his conscience when he needs one.
History: Three months before his arrival on screen? Dash woke up in Weirdsville, Indiana with no mom, no dad, and no memories. And this, more or less, is all we know.
He spent the next three months living on the streets, and digging through dumpsters for food, until finally he situates himself in an old dilapidated mill which was allegedly haunted. Thus begins episode thirteen of Eerie Indiana.
So, since Eerie Indiana got cancelled and the mysteries of what the hell was going on with Dash X was never revealed? What follows is a combination of word of god, subtext, and headcanon.
Had the show continued beyond one season (according to the actor who played him) it would have been revealed that Dash was actually constructed, Frankenstein style! This explains the plus and minus symbols on his hands, the massive battery pack that he is introduced with, and his predisposition to maniacal cackling. Whether he was deliberately or accidentally abandoned, we will likely never know.
In light of this, it seems likely that prior to those three months? Dash simply didn't exist.
Sample Journal Entry:
[Public]
[Video clicks on, and lo! It's a teenage boy with a shock of grey hair. He's walking as he talks, wandering the halls of the Barge apparently aimlessly.]
Uh, hey, I don't wanna cause a stink, but there's been some kind of terrible mistake here. My- uh my parents, are going to be losing their minds back home in New Jersey...
[There might be something ever so slightly shifty about how he says this, but then again, he is a recently deceased teenage boy. He could easily just be nervous.]
All of this-- this inmate stuff? Yeah, you definitely got the wrong guy for that. I got a perfectly normal, crime free life, back home with my family. Yes, we cheat on our taxes and have the occasional three am family-document-shredding-party, but who doesn't? By nine am we're back to pancakes and oatmeal, and that, [decisive finger jab at the screen.] Is how you live the American dream, right?
[Private to Inmates]
So, does anyone ever actually escape from this place?
Sample RP:
Dash wanted to have strong feelings about the Barge. When he first saw the sky above the deck, he wanted his reaction to be something more than just wondering what the special effects budget must be.
This was, in a weird way, kind of exactly what he had wanted, wasn't it? Roaming the galaxy, meeting alien races, out of Eerie, Indiana... Surely, even if he was here against his will, there was nowhere he was more likely to find other people like him?
Perhaps if he'd arrived a few days earlier, he could have convinced himself that he was actually unravelling the mysteries of who he was, instead of plodding through the motions of a badly plotted character arc.
Creeping out of the stairwell, Dash glanced around quickly to see if there was anyone lurking on the ship's deck to apprehend him. When he was confident that the coast was clear, he approached the railing.
He tapped his fingers on it, feeling out the cold and reverberation.
He looked up at the stars.
He made himself think the thought: Wow! Just like reality!
He tried to feel something other than mild irritation about all this. To feel happy that he'd gotten out. Angry that he'd gotten busted. Even sad, that he didn't have any friends after all.
Only he'd never had any friends, really. And he hadn't really gotten away from anything.
The worst part, he decided, as he looked at the stars and tried to feel angry, was that Marshall (who didn't exist either and therefore didn't matter and couldn't have really felt anything) would probably have loved this stinkin' place.
Special Notes:
