retrospec | he hasn't posted in like 3 months, he's got a lot to say

Entry tags:

he hasn't posted in like 3 months, he's got a lot to say

hey so
this is james barnes
i'm not dead anymore
so if anyone was still freaking out about that, well
don't, i guess

[ this is not a thing he thought he had to state but, well, apparently word does not travel through the grapevine as well as he thought, so. he might as well state it to the whole app at large. ]

anyway, first off,
if anyone needs help shoveling sidewalks or cleaning driveways or whatever after that snowstorm, let me know
or if you need anything else done even if it isn't snow-related
i'll do whatever you need for some cash and/or some clothes

second off,
does anyone know where i can get a fake id
i just need to replace the id stuff i lost when i died
message me privately if you don't want to talk openly on here

third off,
i got some new stuff about the founders i think
[ insert a link to a video here. ]
this is from that cavendish house last month
there was an empty book in there and i wrote down everything i knew about them and then this reenactment thing started happening
not sure how much of this is new vs old but apparently this is how it went down forever ago at the start of all this
i'm not sure how this fits into everything else we have so far

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ a good half hour later, after he's scoured the post archives to verify something... ]

never mind, i'm wrong
i thought someone already went there and put up info about it but i was thinking of some hidden room in the library instead
if anyone HAS made it to the bunker yet i don't know about it

well you trusted me enough to help you fight, at least

Cool. I'll start digging around. The woods are my place anyway.

Course I did. Even if you were an illusion, you didn't have yellow eyes, and you're not the right kind of asshole to pick fights with someone who cosplayed the angel of death one time.

what you mean like
right now? alone?

you don't know that
i fought the literal concept of death and lived
and also a mall santa
what makes you think i wouldn't pick a fight with a cosplayer

Nah. Just putting it on my list. Probably in the next few days, though. Not too worried about hypothermia when I don't have blood anymore.

I figured I built up enough goodwill by crashing your show that one time. You ever actually wanna kick my ass, I'm sure I've done something to deserve it.

well bring your coat anyway because i'm coming with and i DO have hypothermia to worry about
like i'm gonna let you just walk into some creepy bunker without backup

and i'm not kicking your ass either
not unless you actually give me a reason to

Ha. Appreciate it (on both counts), but that's assuming I can even get in. Unless you can punch holes in doors with that arm of yours.

i haven't tried it before but it should be doable
if i can crack brick i can probably punch open a door

Oh yeah, I like your odds on that one.

Damn, almost making me wish I'd get her robot hands back already.

not gonna lie
i had my human arm back a few weeks ago and it sucked
aside from being able to eat cheetos with my left hand again for a few days
but other than that
yeah metal arm all the way

Hold up, that thing makes it so you can't eat Cheetos? I take it back, it sounds like hell.

Feel like I should probably ask what happened instead of hearing it from some loudmouth bitch with yellow eyes. Been real caught up in my own shit lately, haven't really been keeping up with the network much. But it also sounds real enough that it probably deserves, like, a real conversation?

well technically i shouldn't, at least not without a glove on or using my right hand
because the cheeto dust gets into all the grooves of the metal plating and it's a pain to get it out
but i mean
i still do it anyway

[ god only knows how much cheeto dust has wormed its way into the interior of his arm. ]

it's not like you would've seen it on the network even if you HAD been keeping up
they didn't give me a lot of internet access behind bars
i'm not even sure what happened either
all i know is after i died i woke up in the hospital and the doctors let me walk out like a free man

Awesome. Another death. Exactly what I want to hear. Anyone else die over the past few months that I was too caught up in my own bullshit to notice?

[sigh. it's fine. she really wishes she were able to talk about grody cheeto arms instead.]

I'm just glad you're back. Place isn't the same without you, and apparently you're super not the same without this place.

i don't think so but i wouldn't really know
i was pretty isolated from literally everything for the past few months
i'm still trying to catch up on all of it myself

[ and he's pretty sure this was just a casual comment on her part, but it rubs him the wrong way, makes him uncomfortable. ]

what do you mean i'm not the same without this place

Just some dumb joke about how you're older than I remember. Didn't think that was in this place's wheelhouse, but here we are.

oh

[ that's certainly better than what he feared she was implying--that Retrospec has changed him so drastically he might as well be a different person than before. It's basically true, but that doesn't mean he likes to acknowledge it, or see anyone else come to that conclusion themselves. ]

if there's anything i've learned about retrospec
it's that EVERYTHING is in their wheelhouse
i didn't think they could amputate or send dismembered arms or let me get brainwashed for a couple of months but they did
like an unwinnable game of chicken

[the alternative is that they're all the same people they were before and they always had the capability to do the fucked up shit they've been doing. equally not great.]

I mean, you heard what Anna Duplicate #5 or whoever called me. You know what the latest bullshit is in my life.
But back up for a second. You think what happened over the summer was brainwashing?

[ wait is she implying that the comments about her being heartless are like....literally true? He thought that was just the shadow lobbing random insults at her.

...Huh. ]

no
i think it's what happened to ME over the summer
something different happened to me than everyone else i think

[who knows! she'll never tell.]

Yeah? Any reason? I sort of remember talking about showering with metal parts, but that seemed pretty normal.

I mean, not that I can remember a damn word of it specifically. Thanks, Retrospec.

that was me trying to act normal
that's the thing
other me got brainwashed before and was used to doing a lot of
stealth work
i think retrospec gave me the brainwashing back somehow
so i thought i was supposed to pretend to be this kid james barnes until i had to carry out the rest of my orders
i guess it worked because no one really noticed

Huh.

Okay, cool, that opens the door to a brand new world of possibilities that are all equally terrifying. It let you remember that the other you got brainwashed, but didn't let you remember the actual brainwashing until after you fucking died?

Super not into any of this. Not to be paranoid on main or anything.

technically i never remembered the fact that i got brainwashed
i actually thought i was getting memories from two separate people for the longest time
or that they like turned me into that other person for a few months
because i guess that was part of what the brainwashing did
i only figured it out because i remembered other-me getting put on trial and it was all part of the evidence
but it's all secondhand info to me

either way though yeah it sucks
idk what to tell you
hope that brainwashing didn't happen to other you?
not much else you can do is there

Yeah, I guess the fuck not. Hopefully they're content just messing with my body. I mean, robots are programmed to do shit anyway so they probably wouldn't have to do much.

Shit, I'm really not into this memory hole I'm falling down. Whatever, dude, I'm just glad you're still here. Ain't a lot of people I talked to in the beginning of the year still here at the end of the year. Trying not to think too hard about that one either.

yeah but most of them are still alive at least
you can still talk to them and all
just not about this stuff
but yeah
i'm pretty glad i'm still here too

My legs are robotic and they took my heart, dude. The kind of shit on my mind ain't really "the weather" anymore.

But yeah.

[ Yeah, James gets it. He has a hard time talking to people off-app now too. Even before the whole prison-death-aging drama. It's hard to go from finding commiseration with each other in the misery of fucked up regains to just...chatting about homework or other teen nonsense. And then when people ask him why his mood's off, why he's acting so weird, he has to scramble for some mundane excuse because "grappling with committing war crimes" isn't going to cut it.

It sucks.

But he doesn't want to think about it anymore right now, and he's getting the feeling that neither does Anna, so.... ]

so you wanna check out that bunker or what?

he hasn't posted in like 3 months, he's got a lot to say

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)