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soddersays2019-06-25 12:24 am
sodder) wrote in soddersays2019-06-25 12:24 am
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JULY 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME
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!
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.
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and maybe the fact that he looks so amused by the whole thing is only frustrating her a little more. because how dare he, he started this.
chewing at her lip, she stubbornly turns on her stove again, tossing the pan over it to place the frozen butter within, warming it the old fashioned way, since her magic isn’t necessarily about generating heat. still, she can toss a quick flick of a spell that punctures his sack of flour, forcing the white powder to explode up towards his face. ]
no subject
wetting a towel, he scrubs his face clean, taking the time to slyly issue another spell. a strong gust of wind is going to send some of the flour still spilling over the side of the counter flying towards her, knocking over a few of her ingredients in the process.
#nailedit ]
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she's innocently going about her business when he'd started this little game of his, and despite the retaliation, he's laughing, almost like he's thrilled she's actually fighting back. and perhaps, if that'd been it, she'd have stopped and carried on, maybe done her best to salvage whatever mess she'd ended up with, but — the boy is persistent.
because there's nothing natural about the wind that suddenly breezes through, not in the way that it so conveniently carries a batch of flour over to stain her own face and apron, or how it's heavy enough to actually knock a few items down.
when the seafood stock suddenly tips over, spilling all across the counter, she mutters a serbian swear, her eyes widening from the shock of it. though she manages to upright it to avoid full spillage, enough of it seems to have reached out to soak up beneath her vegetables, pool a mess beneath the bowls, and drip along onto the stove. with the latter, the heat mixes with the liquid enough to burn into a small fire, one that she has to quickly swipe a hand to cast off.
her heart pacing fast and her breath panting slight, she runs her tongue along her lip as she settles in her raised anger. lifting her hands, she curls her fingers for another spell, red light cascading over the spilled liquid from the counter, including whatever remains stocked in the container, before she lifts it all into the air, floating from nothing save for the magic she casts.
with a quick wave of her hands, she sends the floating seafood stock over to the man, drenching him in the liquid. satisfied with that final retaliation, she tugs her apron off, tossing it over the counter before she steps away to leave the staged kitchen with a scowl in his direction. ] Bon appétit.
no subject
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 (: ]
no subject
whatever her reason, she certainly doesn’t expect to actually be followed, jolting in her step briefly when she hears him race up behind her before readjusting her pace again. ]
Haven’t had enough? [ but she lets him talk, even if her eyes remain focused forward, a sigh in her breath when he provides his explanation, causing her to slow down to a gradual stop before she finally turns to face him.
rather than answering his question, she raises a brow. ] You’re reckless with your magic. Do you always use it for pranks?
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kai spent most of his life deprived of the ability to perform magic, so he can't ever fathom wanting to distance himself from it. he was one of nature's rejects and his coven made sure he never forgot it. so no matter what anyone might think of him or his powers, he would never repress or sideline them in favor of the status quo, even if it means he'll once again be ostracized by another society.
it won't be anything new for him anyway. ]
I come in peace. [ he holds up both his hands in a gesture of good will, coming to a stop when she does. ] I'll be honest with you, [ he slips his hands into the pockets of his black jeans, hooking his thumbs over the edge. ] yooou're actually the first person I've ever pulled a prank on with my magic. [ he looks a bit sheepish as he gives a small shrug of his shoulder. ] Might be why I got a little carried away back there. [ he looks over at the ongoing contest. ]
I don't usually use it to mess with people, [ he holds up three fingers with his left hand, where a ring can be seen on his forefinger and pinky. ] Scout's honor. [ no, he typically uses it to harm and/or kill people. ] I just didn't think I would meet another witch here.
no subject
she could continue to walk away, possibly, but it doesn’t change the fact that he can use magic, and though wanda’s already come to meet a few more in this town that can conjure it, it’s still intriguing to her to find someone who can, even if her current expression contradicts that feeling. but at the very least, it’s enough to keep her here listening to him.
with her arms crossed over, she sighs, a squint in her gaze, but soon it softens when he uses that word — witch.
she had never actually considered herself a witch before coming here, not until lilith informed her of the possibility that she could be one. and the more she hears it out of other mouths, the more she believes it could actually be true. ]
You’re a witch? [ some of the annoyance seems to disappear from her tone now, a rise in interest evident now as she keeps her eyes forward towards him in her curiosity. with a sigh, the tension in her shoulders loosen, teeth nipping at the inner part of her lip. ] Well, it wasn’t a very good first impression you put on out there. [ because, damn it, she could still be mad! ] But ... but I’m not actually upset.
[ she shrugs, eyes softening. ] I don’t actually meet a lot of people who could use magic either. But there’s a few here.
no subject
deemed a monster because he couldn't perform magic, at least not naturally. there was a period in his life where he wanted nothing more than to be normal and accepted. he had even built up hope that one day both his family and his coven wouldn't look at him like he was some kind of aberration.
it never happened.
he doesn't think he'll ever belong anywhere, but now that this strange, little town is giving him no other choice, he wants to try. maybe finally get the chance to live a somewhat normal life like everybody else, to never have to be alone again. ]
Yeah, I am. [ he's also a siphoner and a vampire, but she doesn't need to know that. ] I can't undo what I did earlier, but I can make it up to you. [ a beat. ] We should probably get cleaned up first though. [ he opens up his arms, spinning around once to show wanda her handiwork. ] I mean, personally speaking, I don't mind looking like the wetter cousin of the Pillsbury Doughboy, but I think we can both agree seafood stock is not the best deodorant on a hot summer day.
[ he looks around the area for a moment as he rubs his neck with one hand. ] Uhm... [ he holds up a finger. ] Give me a sec. [ running back towards the stage, kai grabs two towels, wetting them in the sink. they can't do much about their clothes right now, but at least they don't have to walk around all wet and sticky. he'll return in a couple of minutes, handing her one of the cloths. ] Here. We can use these for now. [ giving his face a quick scrub, he starts to wipe his neck as he jerks his thumb down the road. ]
There is a stand selling t-shirts over there. Why don't I get you a change of clothes and then I'll wash the outfit I'd ruined for you? It's the least I can do.
[ olive branch? ]
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but as he disappears briefly, only to return with a set of towels, even with her crossed stern arms, she can't find it in herself to be angry with him, her lips pursing as she tries to contain a partial smile that wants to rise from them.
taking one of the offered towels, she presses it to her cheeks, wiping off the coating of white flour there before lightly grazing it against her exposed neck. even when she gives a roll of her eyes, there's a bit of amusement in the gesture, playful even. ] I guess I can let you do that much. It's the least you can do.
[ maybe she repeats that last line to tease, a shrug in her shoulders as she tries to pretend to still be uptight about it. ]
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[ then kai will be happy to lead the way as he walks beside her. he'll keep his distance from her though, just to avoid accidentally grazing against her. it won't take long for them to reach the stall where a lot of lobster-related merch is on display for purchase. ]
Oh, this one would look cute on you. [ he picks up a grey t-shirt for her to see, a grin on his face. ]
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Just what I wanted. A souvenir to remind me of this very pleasant day.
[ maybe she's trying to criticize, but it doesn't stop her from tilting her head to study the shirt either. because okay, it's still fairly cute. ]
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he made her laugh. good job, kai. ]
It's also a great motto for life. Who wouldn't want to be a lobster?
[ he hands the shirt over to her, so she can take a better look at it. his attention then turns to the other t-shirts on display. ]
These are all very inspirational, don't you think? [ he holds up another tee. ] I'm gonna get this one.
no subject
but she does accept the shirt offering, holding it up once more to peek over the design before turning it over to hold to her chest, peeking at how it might look on her.
at his new presentation of another shirt, she peers up, squinting with amusement. ] Oh, yes, I’m very inspired. Not that the phrasing even makes much sense, but —
no subject
It's at least better than that one. [ he points at a t-shirt that reads: "well, it ain't gonna suck itself" with a small lobster mixed into the design. ] Funny, but pass.
[ anyway, since they have the shirts covered, what about...
oh god, lobster print pants. no way. they also seem to have lobster print skirts and dresses too. ]
How many lobsters are too many lobsters?