JULY 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

[sodder]

JULY 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to July's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: DREAM HORROR.

All Test Drive Memes contain at least one clue to the Deerington's upcoming in-game events for the month! Keep your eyes peeled! But...not literally.

Characters may die during TDMs, but you do not need to count it towards a game-canonical death unless you want to. Consider it a freebie. All TDMs can be considered game canon as TDMs introduce minor aspects about the world of Deerington that can be revisited by characters later on in the game. You may also use TDMs for your application writing sample as well as AC.

CW: Violence, Freddie Kreuger references, fire, forced sleep with some drug-like references, stabbing, nightmares, monsters, possibility for extreme alcohol consumption, and lobster festivals
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Prompt Three
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

WHEN THE BOAT COMES IN

It’s July and July in Maine means lobster! The Lobster Festival springs up seemingly overnight down near Koji Pond. In the morning, there’s a large parade that makes its way through town, starting from the top of East Main Street and all the way down through West Main St until they hit the festival. There are tents, a few rides, games, arts and crafts, and most importantly, food pretty much everywhere behind the hotel and you can help yourself to free ice cream at the ice cream shop! Lobster ice cream and Blueberry ice cream are pushed to the forefront, but you can get just about any flavor you could possibly dream of in the long run.

You can hear live music playing and a stage has been set up on the roof of the arcade. Live bands play everything from folk music to jazz to classic rock that you may or may not have heard in your lifetime. There’s a tent where local artists (including sleepers) are selling art, a craft tent where people are selling goods they’ve made such as pottery and homemade fudge, and a Do It Yourself tent where people are teaching you how to make your own buoy decoration for your front yard or how to weave your own baskets!

A seafood cooking contest is held for anyone who may want to show off their culinary skills. Any kind of seafood dishes are allowed, but they highly encourage showing your abilities to cook with lobster! Think you can beat the longstanding champions from Deerington? It’s pretty unlikely, especially since it looks like the townspeople keep trying to sabotage your meal as you’re making it. Did you mean to put in an entire half cup of salt to your stew? Oops. Guess you better figure out how to work with it anyway.

Across Koji Pond, there are floating crates set up for the great crate race! See if you can make it across the lake fastest – challenge a friend! These lobster crates wobble pretty heavily, but each runner is given a life vest for when they might inevitably fall in. Be careful if you do! Some of those strange looking fish in there definitely bite.

Each morning at the festival there will be an all you can eat blueberry pancake breakfast. Surprisingly, nothing drastic seems to happen, so have as many pancakes as your body can hold! They’re delicious, after all. Through the rest of the day, it’s easy to get your hands on lobster rolls of varying sizes, full steamed lobster meals (with corn on the cob and a buttered dinner roll), lobster salad, steamed mussels, scallops, haddock (baked or fried), fried clams, lobster stuffed risotto balls, blueberry cobbler, and strawberry shortcake are all available at any of the food stands. All the food seems perfectly safe. But you’re gonna need something to wash it down with…

The drink stand has a great deal to offer, but every drink seems to come with a particularly strange side effect to it. People who enjoy the hand crafted beers will find that it gets them drunk twice as fast and can even make people who would normally never drink completely wasted after just a glass or two. Every glass you have makes you thirstier than the last and it can be easy to want to reach for another beer to try and get yourself together. In fact, it’s particularly hard to reach for anything else. Urges to drink the beer will last for at least one full hour or can be cut short by being responsible and going to drink some water instead.

So maybe beer isn’t your thing; that’s okay! There’s also blueberry lemonade which will turn you the color of blueberries from head to toe! Fresh iced tea will make you feel particularly sarcastic, prone to mocking even your closest friends and gossiping with complete strangers about the things you may or may not have heard about the town. Got a juicy secret you were trying to keep for someone? Well, it’s out in the open now. Cream sodas will make you extremely cuddly, wanting to cozy up next to the closest person to you for a little while. The more you drink, the more touchy-feely you may get, so maybe try and stick to just one or two unless you’re looking for some afternoon delight. Hot tea will make you feel calm and relaxed to an extent you never have before. To the point where you might even want to just go lay down on one of the docks and take a quick catnap in the middle of the afternoon sun. Hopefully you wore sunscreen.

Effects from any drink will last for one to three hours or until you have some strawberry shortcake from one of the food vendors.

BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL

So maybe the lobster festival isn’t your thing or you got tired of all the crowds and wanted to go and do something else fun. Strangely enough, some of the fields out near the farmhouses apparently have a bunch of blueberry bushes that no one’s ever noticed before! They’re in full bloom and the berries look ripe for the picking. Perfectly round, juicy, warm from the sun – you could eat a whole handful of these and maybe never feel more satisfied. They’re deliciously sweet, perfect for pies and cobblers. And a whole basket seems to be reasonably priced, so why not go out and pick as many as you can!

The longer you’re out in the fields, the more you’ll start to feel a little groggy. It’s easy to shake off as just being from the sun at first and you might think about heading back, but something in you wants to keep picking. So you trudge in deeper into the fields, and that sleepy feeling becomes more and more difficult to ignore. Eventually, you might find that you’re ready to just lay down and take a nap in the shade of a particularly large blueberry bush. It seems like a good a spot as any – the ground is nice and soft. Just curl up for a little while and close your eyes. Even people who are normally not prone to sleeping will find that they are compelled and even capable of taking a quick nap in these fields.

Any dreams you may have while sleeping will feel more vivid than normal – to the point where it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. Did you actually manage to find your way out of Deerington and back home? You can pinch yourself, but you won’t wake up, and it’ll hurt like a bitch, so it’s hard to be sure. Dreams seem to mostly be pleasant ones, but the occasional nightmare might find its way in to your otherwise restful sleep. Anyone who stumbles on you asleep in the fields might even hear you talking in your sleep, rambling out conversations and feelings you might normally have kept quiet. Got feelings for someone you were trying to bury? They might just hear you mutter them out loud if they’ve found you there in the dirt. Wanted to make sure no one in Deerington found out you had no home to go back to? That sucks, it sounds like you might have just spilled the beans without even knowing.

The real question is if the person who finds you will wake you up or just keep listening to find out more of your secrets without having to pry for them.

NINE, TEN, NEVER SLEEP AGAIN

It’s not just in the blueberry fields that sleepiness seems to be catching. Throughout Deerington, people seem to be having a harder and harder time staying awake for long stretches. The desire for a quick nap or even a long snooze becomes harder to fight as each day passes and you might find yourself nodding off in places you normally wouldn’t – behind the wheel of a car, in the middle of a store, at work… Hopefully no one gets too hurt or loses a job during these strange episodes.

Only unlike in the fields, when you do give in to sleep, the dreams you have are now far from pleasant. Nightmares are running amok in your mind, but that vivid realism? That inability to tell when you’re awake or asleep? That has definitely not changed. You might not have even realized you’ve fallen asleep at all – most of the scenery around you seems to be Deerington itself, but something just seems off. You don’t have time to think about it though because it’s then that things start to get scary. Whether it’s reliving your most traumatic experiences, running in to your worst enemies, or seeing monster of your own creation popping up and chasing you, danger and fear are permeating every corner of these dreams. Horror movie fans might find they’re being chased by Freddie Kreuger, hunted down by Jason, cornered by the aliens from Alien. Or maybe there are terrifying monsters from your own world that have started to come for you and are trying to tear you limb from limb. It feels impossible to outrun, and maybe in the end, you don’t. But if you die in your dreams, you don’t really die in real life, right? So you might just snap awake with a particularly frightening jolt.

You think when you wake up that everything is fine. That sense of fear is gone and you’re able to just breathe. But as you go about your day, you start to see images from your nightmares out of the corner of your eyes. Was that Freddie’s claws scratching against the blackboard? Did you just hear the strange clicking of alien feet against the tiles? You hope it’s in your imagination, but this is Deerington. When does anything ever stay normal?

The danger from your nightmares is definitely invading your personal space and it will try to kill you. Anyone else can see these images just as plain as day as you can and they are welcome to either sit and watch or help you fight. Whatever is trying to kill you will go down in the same manner it would have back home – that means that it could be as easy as a bullet between the eyes or it could be as complex as an intense ritual. Guess you’ll have to figure it out for yourself before it really does kill you.

Character Arrival

You can read how all characters arrive in Deerington here.

There is not a collective "all these characters showed up at the exact same moment" occurrence in Deerington. Since characters fall asleep, die, or pass out at various times throughout all their worlds, it wouldn't make too much sense if they arrived in game all at the exact same time. There should be some discrepancy between character arrival, whether by a couple minutes, hours, or even days up to a week.

The players are entirely in control of how/when they want to play their characters arriving in Deerington. For TDMs, you can play it like your character has just arrived and that can be maintained as your game canon, or you can wait until game events for that moment. Or you don't need to acknowledge it at all. The flexibility for character allows a bit more of an organic feel to the character arrival situation, so please play it to whatever feels right for you.

If you are interested in having an "arrival" introduction for one of your TDM prompts, you are more than welcome to explore that option.

Comments

[bigbadrose]

Seeing.

Half-dream, not real? Yeah. I assume it's to do with the nature of this place. Not so much creating hallucinations, but being sort of borderline reality and... not.

[tagartist]

Wow. Is that the lame rumor everyone went with for me? I was totally of age for the Real Deal when they cuffed me, y'know.

[ Cause that's what matters here, clearly. Getting arrested on campus should probably have felt more embarrassing, but it is Chloe Price after all.

She crosses her arms over her torso, glancing around the fields to make sure there isn't anything weird in sight, before she goes to give her another nudge with her boot. For anyone else she might have bent down and been more gentle, but she'd hate to get Victoria's cooties. ]

Get the fuck up, Chase. We're not in Kansas anymore and I'm not taking the blame if you get mauled by some field demon.

[tagartist]

I don't know what any of that fucking means.

[ Even after a year, Chloe has no idea what real Mainers are like, because the townspeople aren't real and it's not like they carry on fun conversations with the Sleepers for shits and giggles for her to learn more about how locals act. She is watching him carefully as he stands up on his own, just in case he starts to fall again, but she definitely goes to take a gulp from that beer bottle.

Shit, this stuff is strong. What do people brew this shit with? She takes another sip for good measure. ]

No one's tellin' you because there's no way, hot shot. Crapapple and your lame city are off limits. You're stuck in good ol' Deerington until they decide they're bored with you.

[finearts]

( Victoria may or may not have had a hand in getting that rumor moving. But let's be real: she totally had a hand in getting that rumor moving.

The second nudge is enough to get her to sit up. And then, eventually, stand up. She does an inventory on herself and checks to make sure she didn't accidentally end up with blueberry goop on her clothing before addressing Chloe. Her clothes are more important than this impending conversation. )

Okay, one, what are you doing here? Two, am I still dreaming? ( The likelihood that the likes of Chloe would end up in her dream was low, but it makes more sense in the moment. ) Three, what... demon are you talking about? ( She looks around pointedly. Even the Potential Dream Version of Chloe can be spared from her know-it-all attitude. ) Well?

[revenante]

Thank you.

[ It's actually very sincere, considering. She smiles across the bar at him, almost teary-eyed.

Taking the glass, she downs it in one and then lurches - hit with a burn she's not familiar with. She nearly spits it back up. Smacking her hand to her mouth, she tenses, trying to keep it down.

It's awful, but then she quickly realises, as nothing happens - she doesn't think it's poisoned. ]

What was that?

[revenante]

I kind of have a habit of doing that, I can't say I'm surprised any more.

[ How many times has she died, after all? She's lost count by now.

She smiles, touched, when he offers to learn the movements - but it doesn't reach her eyes. ]

One isn't enough. I need five people. Five strong people to perform the movements.

[tagartist]

[ How she can be worried about her clothes when she's convinced she's dreaming is astounding to her, but also not entirely surprising. That just about lines up with the priorities of most of the Vortex Club, right? ]

Aww, you dream about me? [ She's putting a hand over her heart and everything. ] I didn't know I was your type. [ She holds up the bucket of blueberries though, as if that should answer the what part at least. ] Can't pass up a bargain.

[ She could tell her the truth and say she was making shit up about the demon and that it was just some vague example of the kind of screwed up shit that Deerington liked to throw at people, but where's the fun in that? She takes a breath that's reminiscent of someone trying to steady themselves before telling some horribly depressing story. ]

This field's littered with 'em. I know it looks peaceful, but that's how this town likes to trick you. [ Actually... not a total lie, surprisingly. ] They use some kind of odorless chemical that lulls people to sleep and then they feed on their napping victims. They pulled like six bodies out of here last week. [ A beat and a flat look. ] I figured you wouldn't want to ruin your sweater by being disemboweled.

[timeriffs]

There you go. You just hopped into that truck, popped in the key, and you're starting to rev up those dusty leader engines again.

[He starts to walk, leaving room beside him for the troll in the narrow pathway between the bushes.]

Feel that familiar rumble under your ass, Karkat? Itching to honk that horn of authority?

i'm so sorry this is late!

[revenante]

[ The OA stops when she feels the touch at her shoulder - she flinches back, as light as it is - a ghost of a touch. Even as she sleepwalks, she doesn't like to be touched, as if some part of her deep down could be aware. She's somewhat aware but not all at once. She pulls in a breath but she remains as she is - her eyes half-open and unfocused.

Safe. She hasn't felt safe for a long time. She doesn't know what safe is anymore. ]

No one is safe. I'm not safe. I'm alone again. I lost Homer and the others, I lost the boys and BBA. [ Her fingers curls around the green of the blueberry bushes, she crushes the leaves into her palms, shaking her head. ] I've lost them all - and he will find me.

[avengingarcher]

[ Now that the green kid's calmed down somewhat, Clint does redirect his gaze to the street for a minute, despite the fact that he's already thoroughly scanned through the milling crowd for anything suspicious or potentially dangerous. He's always had a sharp eye, and years of training have taught him how to spot trouble before it happens. There's no such trouble here, not that it's stopped him from expecting it. ]

Well, I'm actually friends with a big green guy, it's just not that weird to me anymore.

[ A much bigger green guy, and one who's a lot harder to deal with to boot. Maybe this is something kind of like that? He doesn't know all the details about what happened to Banner, but aside from the whole walking and talking thing, regular turtles aren't usually this green, are they?

All he can think of are the muddy little turtles that the kids have found on occasion. ]

Yeah, I'm human. You're a... turtle?

[finearts]

( She taps it, expecting the horn to fall off like a Halloween headband, and flinches back when the it stays in place... almost as if they're actually growing from his head. Her curiosity isn't sated until she flicks them two more times, just to be sure. )

Okay... you so used some industrial strength glue to make your cosplay really convincing... ( By this point, she's sounding a lot less sure of herself. Even if the horns weren't real, it wouldn't explain his dedication to talking about a 'fantasy' world where Kate Beckinsale is a troll..? For some reason? )

If you're such an alien, what do people eat on your planet? ( She's not sure how this will prove anything... but it will! Somehow! )

[rage_on]

Yeah? Huh. Imagine that.

[He supposes that does make some sense. Being exposed to strange things sure makes one more open-minded.

The guy confirms himself human. Okay. Just to make sure, no harm in that, right? Raph nods, giving a slight knock to the edge of his carapace over his shoulder.]

That's right. The shell give it away?

[avengingarcher]

[ This takes sleep talking to a whole new level. If he were aware of what's going on he would wonder how exactly she's in his dream in perfect detail while his eyes are closed and he's still deep asleep. When it comes to dream logic, it's nothing unusual for people to appear and disappear at random, and he hasn't even started to suspect that this all isn't real. It's hard to snap back to reality when he doesn't want to. ]

S.H.I.E.L.D. or Avengers?

[ She's way too young for military. Pretty young for anything really, she's just a kid. He's no stranger to the concept of alternate universes, but in his experience nothing goes between dimensions without something major going on. And if something that major's going on, that's usually when they start calling him in.

It's never good news, but he's even more reluctant to hear it now, even if he can't explain why. ]

[laminae]

The sewer?

[Fern doesn't look disgusted - he looks perturbed.]

Dude, don't try that here. The sewers have a bunch of monsters in them.

[rage_on]

It was the safest, out of the way place for us to live.

[He tilts his head, then drops his shoulders in a sigh.]

Of course. So what kind of monsters we talking about here?

[shoutymutant]

I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm not going to fuck around this time, no.

[He follows closely. After all, he has a Strider to look after.]

[shoutymutant]

Grub-based shit, mostly. I used to make a decent grubloaf. You learn how to feed yourself after a while if you don't want to eat raw grubs your lusus brings. [Then he realizes that's another thing she'll get tripped up on.] Shit. Lusii are, uh, parents. Kind of. Guardians, really. Make sure you don't get eaten by wildlife.

[avengingarcher]

[ It's a familiar face that he hasn't seen much of, more of a ships passing in the night than anything intentional, but when the chips were down and the Sokovia Accords happened, Clint showed up for Steve, and that also meant being on Barnes' side. It's not like he couldn't cut a guy some slack for being brainwashed anyway, since he's unfortunately had very personal experience with that, but even if there had been some lingering unease, it wouldn't have stopped Clint from offering an easy smile in return.

Hey, a teammate's a teammate, and familiar faces have been way too rare lately. The fact that he's not immediately trying to kill him is always a good start. ]

Friend and fellow outlaw for a while there, yeah.

[ He offers a hand. ]

I don't think we've been formally introduced, but any friend of Cap's is a friend of mine.

[avengingarcher]

[ It's so absurdly out of place that Clint can't help but stare. There's an army of robots rampaging down the street and this guy is... watering his plants? And he sounds like he's about to ask for an autograph, despite looking over the wall and toward the robots advancing toward them. He knows this place is weird, but damn, this is surreal even by the new standards. Maybe he is dreaming again after all. ]

Who are you talking to?

[ He blinks, seeming to snap out of it when the car parked just a few feet away at the sidewalk is blasted down the street. ]

Get down!

[ Rather than wait around to see if the guy actually does it or not, Clint shoves himself back to his feet, his bow back in his hands with another arrow ready to fire in the blink that it takes him to turn. The moment the arrow strikes, it goes up in a fiery explosion which scatters metal pieces in a shower across the street, as well as Wade's garden. ]

[peckishly]

Oh, that sounds scrumptious. I do love a red wine and a soft cheese.

[ But he does grow a little distantly pensive when Crowley asks if he knows what upstairs will do if they find out about the two of them and all their history together. ]

I think they'd consider ending me for good.

[ Not just discorporation, not just dishonorably discharging him to Hell, but entirely destroying his existence. Good thing they had contingency plans for that, and nothing horrible happened. But he can't let Crowley know that yet, it'll ruin the surprise that he's dreaming. ]

But we've been careful for so long, I don't see why we couldn't take some precautions.

[ He imagines they're sitting down now, with the waiter having come by with a complimentary bottle of wine, and he mimes swirling his glass and taking a whiff. ]

Oak and cherry.

[4thwaller]

You! Mostl-- Don't shout at me, it's one of my -- [ It's probably a good thing that sentence didn't get finished because he's shrieking and holding the watering can up like it will offer him any form of protection as he shrieks. Did it manage to dump like everything that was left in it on him... Yes, but that's okay, because HAWKFUCKINGEYE. ]

That was so cool! You know we're like totally bffsies in the comic-- my petunias! [ That sure is a gasp of pure unadulterated horror. ] I've been working on those for weeks! Deborah gave me some of her secret fertilizer!

[ These are the upset sounds of someone decidedly not getting down for cover. ]

You're lucky I like your feathered butt! I've slap-chopped people for less!

[ He drops the watering can behind him and pats himself down looking for a weapon... ] Oh, right, left those inside. What is chasing you and why did you bring them to my house?

head down

[webdesigned]

( Peter's stomach has been... well, sensitive, ever since Woodhurst. it is not something he wants to get into with a relative strangers but he had hoped that maybe seafood would be a protein he could stomach. after at least twenty minutes of psyching himself up to chew on some delectable looking lobster, he'd finally tried a tiny cold bite and nearly swallowed before he choked it all up. he threw it out after that. great, one more sort of food he can't manage to keep down — seriously, just what he needed. as if being stranded in spooky Maine and having no idea what happened to all his friends and the rest of his team from Hathaway wasn't enough.

Peter is still getting reoriented with ... whatever exactly is happening, right now, so he hasn't felt his most social either. still, when he glums off toward what is apparently his bed for the time being when he spots someone hunkered over against a wall, looking ... well, he's got a helmet on, so, it is hard to tell what the guy looks like. but that's generally not the posture of someone feeling 100%, so he skirts around the stranger, not really wanting to touch him and make things worse but not quite able to ignore him, either. truth be told, Peter is a terrible New Yorker. most people back home would have just kept on walking. )

Yo, you alright in there? Maybe the hat isn't helping, do you feel hot? ( "hat" is such an insulting name for a pretty cool helmet, but hey, his mind is really not on the hat. helmet. i meant helmet. )

[hiyakai]

[ o o p s

did he go too far with the wind? innocent mistake. he didn't expect it to knock the stock over too, but... it has sure riled her up, hasn't it? man, her magic is really mesmerizing to look at. so much so that he just has to give her the final hoorah because watching the red glow of her powers levitate the seafood stock is, well, kinda awesome. plus, he figures it will ease her anger towards him.

he was only having some fun!

anyhoo, he doesn't care about the cooking competition anymore, so as soon as she starts leaving the stage, he turns off his stove and follows after her. drying himself off with a towel, he hops off of the station, only slowing down once he has fully caught up with her. ] Hey! Wait a minute— [ he has a ridiculously friendly smile for a guy who'd just been drenched in seafood stock. ] Hi. Sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to make you mad. I was only having a little fun and I might have gotten carried away when I found out you can do magic like me. Except your magic is like way prettier in comparison. [ a beat. ] I'm Kai, by the way. What's your name?

[ "persistent" may as well be his middle name, wanda. he has no shame and he doesn't give up easily (: ]

[mohawkeye]

[Bucky looks different from the last time that he saw him, but Clint still knows. He knows his voice. And he knows his face, had seen pictures, his name on the lists of the dead. When they'd been processing, when they'd still thought there was something that they could do. Something to fight, to struggle against.

So when Clint looks up, peering out of his hoodie to actually get a good look at the other man, it's like he's looking at a ghost. That way it tinges his voice, too, a little hushed, a little bit disbelieving because he hasn't figured out how time and life and death work in this place just yet.]

--Bucky? Is that you? How are you..?

[The question trails off, not quite knowing how to finish it. How are you alive, how are you here? He'd meant to keep himself on the downlow for the most part, but he hadn't quite expected to see him of all people. He remembers when Steve told him, the look on his face.]

[shiro2hero]

Okay... In that case, I guess it's a good thing these are just the locals. [Because they're probably just... dream people. Not like the people who'd woken here. And for a second, he finds himself eying the young woman's hair. Is it pastel? Like the locals?]

That's very nice. I'm sure. I have no idea how that helps right now, but uh. Congratulations.

[Patience. Focus. Deep breaths. All he wanted was to find something for Allura. A slow exhale, and he's pushing his hand through his hair.]

Dare I ask what you think I'm looking for, exactly?