[OOC: Splendorocity Application!] NOT A ROUTE POST.
Player Information:
Name: AJ
Journal: makeshift_6; easier to reach me at stompyerface
Method of Contact: AIM & MSN: redbuttonofdoom@hotmail.com ; Plurk: zombiecannon; email: perfectlydistractednoodle@gmail.com
Previous characters: None here!
Character Information:
Full Name: Julius Monrey
Series: Heart no Kuni no Alice
Canon point: Beginning of the game, when Alice is going to choose a residence.
Age: Appears to be about 25.
Species: Human
Appearance/PB:
Appearance upon arrival: Same, except he's wearing a pair of reading glasses.
History:
Previous RP memories: None
Bringing someone along?: Nope
Character History:Wikipedia
Unfortunately, the Wiki article only covers the manga adaption of the original game. It therefore fails to mention some key points to the game.
First and foremost, while Heart no Kuni no Alice takes character names and personality references from Alice in Wonderland, that is about where the similarities end. Key in differences between the two is that the world, the country of Hearts, is separated into four districts: the Castle of Hearts, the Hatter Residence, the Clocktower, and the Amusement Park.
Most important for Julius is the Clocktower. It is his primary residence, his workshop, and generally his whole life. It's the only neutral area in the country, the other three districts being engaged in a power dispute. It's also the entire country's morgue. The people in HnKnA have clocks for hearts-- so when they die, the clocks break, and are taken back to the Clocktower to be fixed. The new clocks are then used to essentially reincarnate the person who died. This ease of replacing people lead to death being treated very lightly in the whole country. Julius is the master of the Clocktower, and the country's mortician: he fixes clocks. Because it's considered a very grim and depressing job, Julius is the only person doing this work; this keeps him busy just about every minute of every day. The closest things he has to friends are Ace, a volunteer worker who herds in straggler clocks, and Mary Gowland, the Marquis of the Amusement Park.
This connection to the Clocktower and time has led some credit to the widely accepted idea that Julius takes up the role of Alice in Wonderland's character Time. Julius also appears to be the only resident of the country allowed to change the time of day at will; there are otherwise very strict rules to changing the time. Time in the country of Hearts doesn't run like normal time; the time of day changes whimsically from midday, evening and night relatively freely.
The fact that Julius and the “Mad Hatter” are also having a personal dispute at present only adds to the “Julius is Time” theory, as Time and the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland were also in dispute.
The point of debate in each story, however, is significantly different from the other. In Alice in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts accused the Mad Hatter of “murdering Time”, to which Time took offense. In HnKnA, the Hatter, Blood Dupre, broke the March Hare, Elliot, out of the Clocktower's prison. Therefore, to Julius, the Hatters are all rulebreakers, and he condemns them as such.
Life is a game to the HnKnA characters, and breaking such pivotal rules as Elliot and Blood have inevitably brings much contempt down on their heads, despite being powerful forces themselves.
Personality:
Julius is what most people would call a grumpy workaholic. Most of the time, he would much rather stay in his workshop repairing clocks than go outside or perform any kind of social activity. And when his work is interrupted? He gets very angry and irritated, often yelling at people and calling them names, with the exception of Alice, if she chose to stay at the Clocktower. However, his reaction even then isn't much better: he up and ignores anything she says, up until enough time has been spent around him.
Later plot reveals that a moderate part of his anger and irritation is really just a result of his own awkwardness. He is uncomfortable with intimate situations, particularly with people he likes. His grumpy demeanor also stems from his own introverted personality, a trait that seems to prevent him from expressing his feelings well. The two parts tend to go hand in hand; it could even be said that he's awkward in social situations because of his introverted tendencies.
Playing through his route in HnKnA opens up his personality to show that he is actually quite protective of those he likes. While he tends to be rather brusque about it, Julius is unwilling to allow any harm to come to Alice (provided she's been spending time with him) if he can prevent it. Expressions of gratitude make him awkward, however, and he would rather come up with an awkward, maybe not quite believable excuse than accept anybody's thanks.
An interesting sidenote to this is that while he seems to be friends with Mary Gowland, the Marquis of the amusement park, he doesn't seem to show any particular affection for him. It shows that he's just as grumpy and brusque with his close friends as he is with anyone else, although his animosity towards Mary might be explained by his dislike for cheerful, overbearing atmospheres and rollercoasters. Julius, while he can be bullied into riding a coaster by those he's close to, absolutely cannot ride one without getting sick.
Extended Personality:
Julius' work is actually very important to defining his character. The clocks he repairs can, in a sense, be considered the “souls” of the people that die in the Country of Hearts. When he fixes a clock, he makes it so that soul can be reborn. As such, most people in the country take life very lightly. Since Julius chooses to work by himself, locked up in his tower, almost all the time, they also feel little to no connection to him, and take his work for granted.
Why is this important to Julius? Because every day, at all hours, he sees the result of their murderous lifestyle, and it just about sickens him. He is the only character (excepting Alice) in the game that treasures life-- to him, the never ending stream of broken clocks is more than just work that needs to be done, though he claims that's all it is. The world he lives in has dictated him to being the single person that keeps the bloody lifestyle of the populace going, and he has no choice but to repair and sustain the way of life he's grown to hate so much. He does, however, tend to internalize most of this reasoning, showing only a disdainful and irritable exterior to most of the people in the country, obvious exceptions being Mary and Ace, his two close friends. Thus, to most, he is a very hard character to approach, unless someone is stubborn enough to stick around for a long time.
It's very difficult most of the time for Julius to understand the rest of his world because of this definitive care for life. The world looks at him with scorn for being the undertaker, and he looks at the world with scorn for treating the clocks-- life-- with such frivolous disregard. This can be seen as the main reason Julius keeps to himself, with only two friends in the whole world: Ace, who is rebelling against his role, and Mary, an oddly wise and understanding figure for a leading character. Julius holes himself up in his workshop, doing the only thing he can think to do to feel like he can handle the ugly truth about life and death in the country of Hearts: fix clocks so that people can live again. Most of this is seen through the friendship route with Julius, which occurs if Alice spends time with him while living somewhere else; though much of the details of Julius' work itself is described through interaction with Elliot and Blood, his enemies.
Specifically, there are three major events in Julius' friendship route. The first is Alice's voiced admiration of Julius' skill with his work. Julius briefly mentions that she's odd for sticking around and watching him fix clocks for hours, and Alice retorts that watching him work is like watching a god bring life into something. Julius is slightly flustered at the compliment-- and flustered at how accurately she conveys how he sees his position to be, although he denies the idea of being any kind of god whatsoever. The other events focus more on Alice and Julius' bonding as friends, and less on Julius' personality in and of itself. However, through plot exposition through meetings with Nightmare, more is revealed on Julius' self-imposed hermit lifestyle, since though Nightmare and Julius are not friends, per se, they still know each other very well because together they maintain the stability of the world they live in.
In the event that someone grows close to him romantically, Julius has been known to be very unexpectedly, very spontaneously romantic. He also tends to prefer to give attention to his romantic partner physically, while verbally gently teasing them and making them the center of attention. One instance, at the end of his route, has Alice demanding that Julius give her a score on the coffee she'd made, since he hadn't given her one since she'd made a coffee with a score of 82. Julius told her that there was no way he could possibly give a score, since he never drank it straight anymore. When Alice expressed her confusion, he claimed that every time he drank her coffee, it was essentially already changed by the taste of her kiss, and spontaneously demonstrated through a mouth-to-mouth feeding.
Another instance is when Alice is brushing Julius' hair in a more quiet, intimate moment. Alice gets angry with him, telling him that as a crabby workaholic that doesn't take care of himself, he doesn't have the right to have such perfect, silky hair. Instead of outright arguing with her, Julius just turns around and kisses her, diverting all the attention back to her. He then states that he finds Alice's hair to be beautiful, and that she doesn't need to be jealous. (This then sparks a small fight over the fact that Alice claims to not be jealous, when it is obvious she is.)
It is very interesting to note that Julius has very little trust in other people. Too often he is betrayed and/or shot at, particularly by the Hatters and those that live with in the Castle. He tends to see the world with wary eyes, since his role is not the most popular one. Many minor characters in the game view him and his work with hatred, as many of them are tired of being used in their endless cycle of life. Some of them wish to truly “die” in their world, and the only way to do that is to break their clocks beyond repair. However, this action is the only truly unforgivable sin in this world, since it brings a certain amount of unbalance to its dichotomy. (Note that Elliot has destroyed a clock to this extent, and was placed into the Clocktower's prison for his crime. He was rescued by Blood, and for this reason, Julius holds a deep grudge against them both.)
The people that Julius does trust are few and far between. Mary is one, whom he trusts as a close friend, though he denies it out loud. There is a strong tie of understanding between them, and Mary does his best to try to get Julius to experience more of the outside world. Julius appreciates the effort inwardly, but as he would rather not deal with the outside world, often reacts to Mary's schemes with scorn and irritation. Ace is the other person Julius tends to trust. Contrary to the manga's portrayal of a complete trust between them, Julius trusts Ace the way a partner trusts his partner: they have a strong, deep understanding of each other, one that keeps them relatively friendly even after a fight. However, Julius is always wary of anybody's capacity for killing and violence-- and that includes Ace. On the other hand, should the player choose to develop a strong romantic relationship with Julius and Ace, they're actually shown to share their main love interest in an only slightly awkward threesome.
Providing that Alice chose to stay with Julius, it is shown that Julius will actively protect Alice from being forced to do anything she doesn't wish to. This is particularly shown if Alice is living at the Clocktower, but spending time with other characters, particularly Vivaldi, Peter, Blood, Elliot, and the Tweedle twins. All of those characters will actively attack Julius to try and force Alice to go and live with them, and these are the only times Julius is shown to use his gun as what it is-- a gun. He fights back, telling them that they will not force his guest to do anything of the sort.
Extra:
Character Abilities: He's...really good at fixing things. He's repaired so many clocks he can probably build one blindfolded with his hands behind his back. Not that he would, but still.
Possessions: His small repair tools, and a wrench that turns into a weapon. And his reading glasses.
Anything else: He doesn't have a heart. He has a clock instead. It literally is a ticker. [/shot for terrible pun]
Samples:
Action/Communication thread/post sample:
(Taken from route_29)
Thread with route_29's Sebastian and Ciel
New Action Sample:
[There's a loud noise as the seal is dropped on the floor, and a soft curse soon after. The sound of shifting cloth and dirt signals when Julius actually picks it up again.]
[When Julius speaks, his voice is highly irritated and full of sheer frustration.]
...This is ridiculous. I haven't been this lost since the last time I traveled with Ace. And no one will tell me where this is.
[After this, there is an extended silence as Julius quietly fumes to himself.]
...Is this even the same world? It looks the same, but... it also...doesn't.
...Maybe it's a dream.
[There's an audible sigh.]
Nightmare... I swear... if this is your doing...
[And then a brief pause.]
I'm going to hurt you.
Log/Prose sample:
Initial:
When Julius awoke, he was in the most peculiar of places. He was quite certain he'd never been in a maze quite like this. The walls were impossibly high, and the ground was carpeted in pink flowers and green paving stones.
More than that, there wasn't a single clock in sight. His work-- who had interrupted his work like this?! Julius rubbed his forehead, straining to remember what had happened before he fell asleep. He'd seen that outsider off, and gone back to the workshop. Working on the clocks... Vaguely, he remembered seeing an item that was quite unlike the clocks he usually worked on. A box that played music.
“...It must be because of the box.” Julius shook his head irritably. How frustrating-- first Peter and the outsider crashed into his tower, now he was ripped away from his work by a musical box with no regard for anyone else.
Regardless, he had to find a way back. He didn't belong here, in this...this very strange maze. He would probably have to find his way out first, he supposed, and find someone who knew how to get out.
If there was such a person.
New Log Sample:
Once upon a time, Julius would have been thrilled to know that he could go to another world and not deal with the scorn and horror of his home. He might've been happy to never bring another "clock" back to life again.
But this place was not what he was expecting. Julius inwardly cringed. If anything, this world had the potential to be much worse. There were so many people around him, and yet, he felt like a ghost. He left no imprint on them at all. It was like the couldn't even hear him. It disturbed him more than he ever dreamed possible. Though he had always been alone to some degree, even the locals back home, who only visited to give him broken clocks, had acknowledged that he existed.
It left him almost frighteningly sad, and a little lonely. He never thought he'd be saying this, even just to himself, but he found himself missing his friends. At least neither Gowland nor Ace ever ignored him-- in fact, they usually gave him too much attention.
Julius stopped and sat down at a bench, clasping his hands loosely in front of him and staring at the ground. To any onlooker, he would look like a man in mourning-- dressed from head to toe in black, with an entirely defeated and demoralized air about him.
He sat in thought for what felt like hours, but what could've been just a few minutes. What had brought him here? That strange music box? Probably. Why had he touched it in the first place? He knew it didn't belong there. He should have simply thrown it away.
He supposed it was human nature to be curious, and to let curiosity dictate actions. Even so, he felt himself begin to resent the trinket for pulling him away from everything he knew. Everything he might've loved and hated about the world was at least everything that was familiar. He wondered to himself if Ace would manage to find his way back to the tower again, and wondered if his friend would start to worry about his prolonged absence.
Probably not. It wasn't like Ace wasn't entirely familiar for disappearing for months. And his only other friend, Gowland, never visited enough to concern himself with the repairman's disappearance.
The only person he could think of that might notice was that outsider... Alice, was it? He shook his head, trying to drive her out of it. It didn't matter if she noticed, after all. Even if he eventually grew attached to her, she would eventually disappear, leaving him and any friends she'd made alone and bereft.
In spite of himself, his thoughts traveled along that trail, making him wonder if the girl was alright. He'd sent her away from the tower in a hurry, telling her to go find somewhere else to stay. He'd forgotten to explain the way the people in the land acted-- particularly the ones in the Hatter's mansion, and the Castle of Heart. He felt a little sick thinking about it-- it was like sending a lamb to the wolves.
He shook his head again. Surely that stubborn woman was strong enough to take care of herself, and cynical enough to keep herself out of trouble. She didn't need him worrying about her, he was sure.
Alice, he knew, was an outsider. She would be adored by all in that place. All she had to do was get past the introductions.
His mind wandered back to his own situation, and he resolved to try a little harder. After all, he was perfectly capable of handling himself. He didn't even have the fragility that the more delicate Alice had to handicap him. And he was a shade wiser-- he knew that he was in a foreign place. He knew that the first thing he needed to do was to get an understanding of his surroundings-- and the people in it.
Name: AJ
Journal: makeshift_6; easier to reach me at stompyerface
Method of Contact: AIM & MSN: redbuttonofdoom@hotmail.com ; Plurk: zombiecannon; email: perfectlydistractednoodle@gmail.com
Previous characters: None here!
Character Information:
Full Name: Julius Monrey
Series: Heart no Kuni no Alice
Canon point: Beginning of the game, when Alice is going to choose a residence.
Age: Appears to be about 25.
Species: Human
Appearance/PB:
Appearance upon arrival: Same, except he's wearing a pair of reading glasses.
History:
Previous RP memories: None
Bringing someone along?: Nope
Character History:Wikipedia
Unfortunately, the Wiki article only covers the manga adaption of the original game. It therefore fails to mention some key points to the game.
First and foremost, while Heart no Kuni no Alice takes character names and personality references from Alice in Wonderland, that is about where the similarities end. Key in differences between the two is that the world, the country of Hearts, is separated into four districts: the Castle of Hearts, the Hatter Residence, the Clocktower, and the Amusement Park.
Most important for Julius is the Clocktower. It is his primary residence, his workshop, and generally his whole life. It's the only neutral area in the country, the other three districts being engaged in a power dispute. It's also the entire country's morgue. The people in HnKnA have clocks for hearts-- so when they die, the clocks break, and are taken back to the Clocktower to be fixed. The new clocks are then used to essentially reincarnate the person who died. This ease of replacing people lead to death being treated very lightly in the whole country. Julius is the master of the Clocktower, and the country's mortician: he fixes clocks. Because it's considered a very grim and depressing job, Julius is the only person doing this work; this keeps him busy just about every minute of every day. The closest things he has to friends are Ace, a volunteer worker who herds in straggler clocks, and Mary Gowland, the Marquis of the Amusement Park.
This connection to the Clocktower and time has led some credit to the widely accepted idea that Julius takes up the role of Alice in Wonderland's character Time. Julius also appears to be the only resident of the country allowed to change the time of day at will; there are otherwise very strict rules to changing the time. Time in the country of Hearts doesn't run like normal time; the time of day changes whimsically from midday, evening and night relatively freely.
The fact that Julius and the “Mad Hatter” are also having a personal dispute at present only adds to the “Julius is Time” theory, as Time and the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland were also in dispute.
The point of debate in each story, however, is significantly different from the other. In Alice in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts accused the Mad Hatter of “murdering Time”, to which Time took offense. In HnKnA, the Hatter, Blood Dupre, broke the March Hare, Elliot, out of the Clocktower's prison. Therefore, to Julius, the Hatters are all rulebreakers, and he condemns them as such.
Life is a game to the HnKnA characters, and breaking such pivotal rules as Elliot and Blood have inevitably brings much contempt down on their heads, despite being powerful forces themselves.
Personality:
Julius is what most people would call a grumpy workaholic. Most of the time, he would much rather stay in his workshop repairing clocks than go outside or perform any kind of social activity. And when his work is interrupted? He gets very angry and irritated, often yelling at people and calling them names, with the exception of Alice, if she chose to stay at the Clocktower. However, his reaction even then isn't much better: he up and ignores anything she says, up until enough time has been spent around him.
Later plot reveals that a moderate part of his anger and irritation is really just a result of his own awkwardness. He is uncomfortable with intimate situations, particularly with people he likes. His grumpy demeanor also stems from his own introverted personality, a trait that seems to prevent him from expressing his feelings well. The two parts tend to go hand in hand; it could even be said that he's awkward in social situations because of his introverted tendencies.
Playing through his route in HnKnA opens up his personality to show that he is actually quite protective of those he likes. While he tends to be rather brusque about it, Julius is unwilling to allow any harm to come to Alice (provided she's been spending time with him) if he can prevent it. Expressions of gratitude make him awkward, however, and he would rather come up with an awkward, maybe not quite believable excuse than accept anybody's thanks.
An interesting sidenote to this is that while he seems to be friends with Mary Gowland, the Marquis of the amusement park, he doesn't seem to show any particular affection for him. It shows that he's just as grumpy and brusque with his close friends as he is with anyone else, although his animosity towards Mary might be explained by his dislike for cheerful, overbearing atmospheres and rollercoasters. Julius, while he can be bullied into riding a coaster by those he's close to, absolutely cannot ride one without getting sick.
Extended Personality:
Julius' work is actually very important to defining his character. The clocks he repairs can, in a sense, be considered the “souls” of the people that die in the Country of Hearts. When he fixes a clock, he makes it so that soul can be reborn. As such, most people in the country take life very lightly. Since Julius chooses to work by himself, locked up in his tower, almost all the time, they also feel little to no connection to him, and take his work for granted.
Why is this important to Julius? Because every day, at all hours, he sees the result of their murderous lifestyle, and it just about sickens him. He is the only character (excepting Alice) in the game that treasures life-- to him, the never ending stream of broken clocks is more than just work that needs to be done, though he claims that's all it is. The world he lives in has dictated him to being the single person that keeps the bloody lifestyle of the populace going, and he has no choice but to repair and sustain the way of life he's grown to hate so much. He does, however, tend to internalize most of this reasoning, showing only a disdainful and irritable exterior to most of the people in the country, obvious exceptions being Mary and Ace, his two close friends. Thus, to most, he is a very hard character to approach, unless someone is stubborn enough to stick around for a long time.
It's very difficult most of the time for Julius to understand the rest of his world because of this definitive care for life. The world looks at him with scorn for being the undertaker, and he looks at the world with scorn for treating the clocks-- life-- with such frivolous disregard. This can be seen as the main reason Julius keeps to himself, with only two friends in the whole world: Ace, who is rebelling against his role, and Mary, an oddly wise and understanding figure for a leading character. Julius holes himself up in his workshop, doing the only thing he can think to do to feel like he can handle the ugly truth about life and death in the country of Hearts: fix clocks so that people can live again. Most of this is seen through the friendship route with Julius, which occurs if Alice spends time with him while living somewhere else; though much of the details of Julius' work itself is described through interaction with Elliot and Blood, his enemies.
Specifically, there are three major events in Julius' friendship route. The first is Alice's voiced admiration of Julius' skill with his work. Julius briefly mentions that she's odd for sticking around and watching him fix clocks for hours, and Alice retorts that watching him work is like watching a god bring life into something. Julius is slightly flustered at the compliment-- and flustered at how accurately she conveys how he sees his position to be, although he denies the idea of being any kind of god whatsoever. The other events focus more on Alice and Julius' bonding as friends, and less on Julius' personality in and of itself. However, through plot exposition through meetings with Nightmare, more is revealed on Julius' self-imposed hermit lifestyle, since though Nightmare and Julius are not friends, per se, they still know each other very well because together they maintain the stability of the world they live in.
In the event that someone grows close to him romantically, Julius has been known to be very unexpectedly, very spontaneously romantic. He also tends to prefer to give attention to his romantic partner physically, while verbally gently teasing them and making them the center of attention. One instance, at the end of his route, has Alice demanding that Julius give her a score on the coffee she'd made, since he hadn't given her one since she'd made a coffee with a score of 82. Julius told her that there was no way he could possibly give a score, since he never drank it straight anymore. When Alice expressed her confusion, he claimed that every time he drank her coffee, it was essentially already changed by the taste of her kiss, and spontaneously demonstrated through a mouth-to-mouth feeding.
Another instance is when Alice is brushing Julius' hair in a more quiet, intimate moment. Alice gets angry with him, telling him that as a crabby workaholic that doesn't take care of himself, he doesn't have the right to have such perfect, silky hair. Instead of outright arguing with her, Julius just turns around and kisses her, diverting all the attention back to her. He then states that he finds Alice's hair to be beautiful, and that she doesn't need to be jealous. (This then sparks a small fight over the fact that Alice claims to not be jealous, when it is obvious she is.)
It is very interesting to note that Julius has very little trust in other people. Too often he is betrayed and/or shot at, particularly by the Hatters and those that live with in the Castle. He tends to see the world with wary eyes, since his role is not the most popular one. Many minor characters in the game view him and his work with hatred, as many of them are tired of being used in their endless cycle of life. Some of them wish to truly “die” in their world, and the only way to do that is to break their clocks beyond repair. However, this action is the only truly unforgivable sin in this world, since it brings a certain amount of unbalance to its dichotomy. (Note that Elliot has destroyed a clock to this extent, and was placed into the Clocktower's prison for his crime. He was rescued by Blood, and for this reason, Julius holds a deep grudge against them both.)
The people that Julius does trust are few and far between. Mary is one, whom he trusts as a close friend, though he denies it out loud. There is a strong tie of understanding between them, and Mary does his best to try to get Julius to experience more of the outside world. Julius appreciates the effort inwardly, but as he would rather not deal with the outside world, often reacts to Mary's schemes with scorn and irritation. Ace is the other person Julius tends to trust. Contrary to the manga's portrayal of a complete trust between them, Julius trusts Ace the way a partner trusts his partner: they have a strong, deep understanding of each other, one that keeps them relatively friendly even after a fight. However, Julius is always wary of anybody's capacity for killing and violence-- and that includes Ace. On the other hand, should the player choose to develop a strong romantic relationship with Julius and Ace, they're actually shown to share their main love interest in an only slightly awkward threesome.
Providing that Alice chose to stay with Julius, it is shown that Julius will actively protect Alice from being forced to do anything she doesn't wish to. This is particularly shown if Alice is living at the Clocktower, but spending time with other characters, particularly Vivaldi, Peter, Blood, Elliot, and the Tweedle twins. All of those characters will actively attack Julius to try and force Alice to go and live with them, and these are the only times Julius is shown to use his gun as what it is-- a gun. He fights back, telling them that they will not force his guest to do anything of the sort.
Extra:
Character Abilities: He's...really good at fixing things. He's repaired so many clocks he can probably build one blindfolded with his hands behind his back. Not that he would, but still.
Possessions: His small repair tools, and a wrench that turns into a weapon. And his reading glasses.
Anything else: He doesn't have a heart. He has a clock instead. It literally is a ticker. [/shot for terrible pun]
Samples:
Action/Communication thread/post sample:
(Taken from route_29)
Thread with route_29's Sebastian and Ciel
New Action Sample:
[There's a loud noise as the seal is dropped on the floor, and a soft curse soon after. The sound of shifting cloth and dirt signals when Julius actually picks it up again.]
[When Julius speaks, his voice is highly irritated and full of sheer frustration.]
...This is ridiculous. I haven't been this lost since the last time I traveled with Ace. And no one will tell me where this is.
[After this, there is an extended silence as Julius quietly fumes to himself.]
...Is this even the same world? It looks the same, but... it also...doesn't.
...Maybe it's a dream.
[There's an audible sigh.]
Nightmare... I swear... if this is your doing...
[And then a brief pause.]
I'm going to hurt you.
Log/Prose sample:
Initial:
When Julius awoke, he was in the most peculiar of places. He was quite certain he'd never been in a maze quite like this. The walls were impossibly high, and the ground was carpeted in pink flowers and green paving stones.
More than that, there wasn't a single clock in sight. His work-- who had interrupted his work like this?! Julius rubbed his forehead, straining to remember what had happened before he fell asleep. He'd seen that outsider off, and gone back to the workshop. Working on the clocks... Vaguely, he remembered seeing an item that was quite unlike the clocks he usually worked on. A box that played music.
“...It must be because of the box.” Julius shook his head irritably. How frustrating-- first Peter and the outsider crashed into his tower, now he was ripped away from his work by a musical box with no regard for anyone else.
Regardless, he had to find a way back. He didn't belong here, in this...this very strange maze. He would probably have to find his way out first, he supposed, and find someone who knew how to get out.
If there was such a person.
New Log Sample:
Once upon a time, Julius would have been thrilled to know that he could go to another world and not deal with the scorn and horror of his home. He might've been happy to never bring another "clock" back to life again.
But this place was not what he was expecting. Julius inwardly cringed. If anything, this world had the potential to be much worse. There were so many people around him, and yet, he felt like a ghost. He left no imprint on them at all. It was like the couldn't even hear him. It disturbed him more than he ever dreamed possible. Though he had always been alone to some degree, even the locals back home, who only visited to give him broken clocks, had acknowledged that he existed.
It left him almost frighteningly sad, and a little lonely. He never thought he'd be saying this, even just to himself, but he found himself missing his friends. At least neither Gowland nor Ace ever ignored him-- in fact, they usually gave him too much attention.
Julius stopped and sat down at a bench, clasping his hands loosely in front of him and staring at the ground. To any onlooker, he would look like a man in mourning-- dressed from head to toe in black, with an entirely defeated and demoralized air about him.
He sat in thought for what felt like hours, but what could've been just a few minutes. What had brought him here? That strange music box? Probably. Why had he touched it in the first place? He knew it didn't belong there. He should have simply thrown it away.
He supposed it was human nature to be curious, and to let curiosity dictate actions. Even so, he felt himself begin to resent the trinket for pulling him away from everything he knew. Everything he might've loved and hated about the world was at least everything that was familiar. He wondered to himself if Ace would manage to find his way back to the tower again, and wondered if his friend would start to worry about his prolonged absence.
Probably not. It wasn't like Ace wasn't entirely familiar for disappearing for months. And his only other friend, Gowland, never visited enough to concern himself with the repairman's disappearance.
The only person he could think of that might notice was that outsider... Alice, was it? He shook his head, trying to drive her out of it. It didn't matter if she noticed, after all. Even if he eventually grew attached to her, she would eventually disappear, leaving him and any friends she'd made alone and bereft.
In spite of himself, his thoughts traveled along that trail, making him wonder if the girl was alright. He'd sent her away from the tower in a hurry, telling her to go find somewhere else to stay. He'd forgotten to explain the way the people in the land acted-- particularly the ones in the Hatter's mansion, and the Castle of Heart. He felt a little sick thinking about it-- it was like sending a lamb to the wolves.
He shook his head again. Surely that stubborn woman was strong enough to take care of herself, and cynical enough to keep herself out of trouble. She didn't need him worrying about her, he was sure.
Alice, he knew, was an outsider. She would be adored by all in that place. All she had to do was get past the introductions.
His mind wandered back to his own situation, and he resolved to try a little harder. After all, he was perfectly capable of handling himself. He didn't even have the fragility that the more delicate Alice had to handicap him. And he was a shade wiser-- he knew that he was in a foreign place. He knew that the first thing he needed to do was to get an understanding of his surroundings-- and the people in it.