Sodder (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sodder) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
soddersays2020-08-26 04:27 pm
sodder) wrote in soddersays2020-08-26 04:27 pm
Entry tags:
SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME
SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to September's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: CHILDREN/YOUNG ADULT 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: Evil dollhouses, potential body horror (turning into a doll), heights, pranks with the potential to cause harm, some stalking vibes
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!
THE EVIL DOLLHOUSE
When you wake up, you find you're not in your own bed, your own room, or even your own house. The room is well decorated, almost Victorian in fashion. The bed is pretty uncomfortable and you're not even sure the mattress is a real mattress. The chairs look like they might be made of plastic and the doors are flimsy. But it might not be what catches your eye, especially if you look out the window.Through the clear panes (which also seem to be plastic), you will notice you do not see the town of Deerington, or even the outdoors at all. You see a living room that feels larger than life. There aren't any people in it, but as you look around at the fake looking furnishings and the strange view, you might be hit with a realization: you're inside a dollhouse.
The dollhouse has three floors for those who explore; the second floor you woke up on has two bedrooms and a fake little bathroom, all decorated in the same Victorian dollhouse style as the room you originally found yourself in. The bottom floor has a cute little kitchen with small porcelain dolls sitting around the table, a living room with all the basic furniture one would expect to find (in fact, it looks a great deal like the living room outside the windows), and an office filled with books that can't actually be pulled out of the shelves. On the very top floor is an attic. It's dusty and filled with broken toy beds and chairs, a few shattered doll pieces, and on the far wall you'll see another bookshelf. All seems... fairly standard, really, if you're used to seeing dollhouses.
But what there doesn't appear to be is an exit.
While searching, you may run into another Sleeper. A friend or a stranger, it's clear you're both stuck here together. And the longer the time ticks by, the more concerning things get. You might not notice at first, but anyone inside the dollhouse starts slowly... changing. It seems to go at a different pace for everyone, but the results are always the same. Your skin will start to become porcelain, your cheeks more rosy, your clothes made of cheaper cloth material, your joints become stiffer, and your eyes will start to become more and more glass like. If you don't get out of the dollhouse soon, it's clear that you may become the next doll at the kitchen table.
Searching the house again may feel fruitless, but keen observers may find light scratches on the floor in front of the bookshelf in the attic. Maybe they were like that because of someone moving things around or maybe there's a reason. If you decide to eventually pull the bookshelf aside, there will be a large door in the wall. It may seem strange, given that the wall only leads to the outside, but it's the only door to the outside that actually opens. You expect it to open up into the living room, but instead you'll see the grass of the park below. Far below. It's likely you could get hurt jumping, especially if you've started to turn to porcelain, but what other choice do you have?
Once characters take the plunge, they will find that they land rather softly in the grass, despite how high the jump may have seemed. As soon as you are out of the dollhouse, your body will have returned to complete normal.
And the house with the dollhouse in the living room will be nowhere in sight.
THOSE PESKY KIDS
You start off thinking maybe you're just forgetful and moved minor pieces around in your house without paying attention. You might think you're just seeing strange things out of the corner of your eye, because why wouldn't you? It's Deerington. Things are always strange. But each day, there's something weirder going on. Small objects might turn into entire rooms being rearranged, strange sightings out of the corner of your eye might turn into you swearing you saw a lake monster running through the street, and you swear you can hear the rattling of chains or the sounds of someone telling you to leave echoing in your house at night or following you down the street.A haunting seems plausible. It wouldn't be the first time in Deerington. But no amount of herbs burned, or exorcisms performed, or chants and spell cast will make these things go away. In fact, they seem to just becoming more and more frequent, and more and more intense. Eventually, the strange creatures you see running around may start to try and attack you. They may start to try and kill you. But they always run off before you can attack back or show yourself to be stronger than them. It's probably the first time the monsters have ever been so easily scared.
Anyone who looks into it further may start to find weird clues lying around after a monster has been chased off. Footprints that don't look quite monster-like, tapes or records that when played will make strange rattling sounds like the chains you've been hearing, a piece of rubber that looks a lot like the monsters skin... Huh. The more you follow the clues, the more they'll lead you towards the answer to your dilemmas; these aren't hauntings.
They're pranks.
People can work together to catch a monster or ghost (or killing it, if you decide to); catching them will lead to them getting quite flustered and angry, struggling to get away. Pull off the mask or the sheet and underneath you'll find... a very disgruntled townsperson. Maybe your business was taking too much money away from theirs and they were hoping you'd close down with enough scares, maybe you talked back to them one time and they were looking for revenge, maybe you ruined their house or garden when you were fighting the things in Deerington that actually try to kill you, or maybe they were just having some "harmless" fun; they all have a different excuse, but they're clearly angry about getting caught.
They woulda gotten away with it if it weren't for you pesky Sleepers, after all.
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.
Blue Sargent | The Raven Cycle
[ Blue didn’t think there was much sense in standing around where ever this was that she now found herself and just waiting around for something to happen, so the moment that she gets her bearings back, and her head stops feeling so clouded and unbalanced, she makes her way further into the town.
One embroidered combat boot after the other -- this petite girl has a unique sense of fashion pairing the shoes with a high-collared flowing babydoll dress clearly handmade of mismatched fabrics underneath a well-worn leather bomber jacket.
It doesn’t look very different than your typical American town, but there’s something about the atmosphere that makes her skin crawl ever so slightly. Like something was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Something hanging heavy in the air around her, making the energy feel strange -- and her presence probably wasn't helping, she had a way of amplifying these things.
All she knew for sure was that she wasn’t in Henrietta anymore, so her first order of business is to figure out exactly where here was.
(She probably should have paid more attention in Geography and she might have been able to recognize some of her surroundings as the Northern part of the East Coast. But, alas, she’s clueless.)
The search for answers leads the teenager to a small bulletin board in the library, littered with various colored pieces of paper that advertise different businesses and services provided by the townsfolk. She doesn't pay much attention to anyone else passing by, carefully reading each flyer as though she was seriously debating the options in front of her. When she eventually feels a presence coming up next to her, she lets out a huff of air and finally speaks up — but without turning her attention away from the bulletin board, as though she's asking speaking to it and not the stranger nearby. ]
There's a lot of handyman competition here, huh?
ii. playing with dolls. ( dollhouse )
[ The house Blue finds herself wandering through is both familiar and... not all at the same time. The decorations, the furniture, the color palette, the entire layout of the house, they are all things that Blue can remember, but she isn’t sure why. It feels as though she’s trying to retrieve a memory that she’s long since forgotten. Digging through the murky waters of her mind and coming up empty-handed each time.
She’s sure that she never once lived in a house like this. Could she really imagine any of the Fox Way women existing in a house that looked like… ]
A dollhouse?
[ It doesn’t make sense and Blue tries to find a sensible explanation for the entire thing, but the more that she wanders the long hallways and seemingly empty rooms, the more correct she feels.
(But that doesn’t stop her from trying to rationalize that someone just had horrific interior design tastes. How could she be inside of a dollhouse? She wasn’t that damn small! )
Also, the longer that she wanders, the stranger she feels physically, her joints starting to tighten slightly, like they need to be popped a few good times to release some of the tension that had suddenly built up. But, try as she might — bending her fingers and wrist one way, then another, and then back again — there’s never that satisfying sound or feeling. ]
What the hell is going on? [ She whispers, before then raising her voice loud enough for it to echo down the halls a little. ] Hello? This isn't funny! Is there anyone else in here?
[ Her cheeks are a little more flushed than normal, but that’s just from the yelling and the sudden anxiety, right? ]
iii. wildcard
[ choose your own adventure! I defaulted to brackets here, but don't feel tied to it, I can match styles if need be! message
i!
ronan's slight smirk looks more genuine--if confused--than usual, reluctant relief in pale eyes. ]
Hey, Sargent. [ he jostles her elbow with his own, and in spite of himself, he's a little surprised she doesn't melt away or change into something else. he's pretty sure this isn't his dream-space, but it does.. feel like a dream, kind of. but if it's a dream, what the fuck is blue sargent doing here anyway? ] Last I heard, you were chained to a fucking tree. How'd you get here?
no subject
Her lips turn upward into a playfully smug smirk as she shifts her attention to the boy who is towering over her. ]
I don't know, it's still a pretty nice place even though they let you in here.
[ She's glad to see his face, everything had been so strange here that it was nice to have something -- or rather, someone -- familiar around. It makes her feel less like she's just making all this up in her head, and more like this is something she's really experiencing. If Ronan's here along with her, then there had to be some explanation as to why.
(And once she figured out the Why, maybe she could figure out the Where. One question at a time.)
She wouldn't have just imagined up Ronan, of all people if she were going crazy, right? It just didn't make any sense. And Blue prides herself on being sensible, she can surely figure this out if she just takes a moment to really try. ]
Environmentalism is an important issue.
[ She's unsure if he's speaking literally or not -- it sounds like one of Ronan's typical jabs at her. Blue certainly doesn't remember being chained to a tree before she arrived here, but her memories are fuzzy and she writes off this forgetfulness as just another Weird Thing on the seemingly endless list of them. ]
I walked here. [ It's matter-of-fact and paired with a shit-eating grin. ] But before here, I’m still trying to figure out. I’ve gotten as far as… [ She reaches forward and tugs a strip of paper from off of the bottom of one of the flyers and then holds it up between herself and Ronan. ] Finding affordable lawn care service.
no subject
he hesitates, then, glance sliding away from her, fixing on the raven on his shoulder instead. for a moment more, he's quiet, warring with himself over whether to ask. it's going to sound fucking crazy, isn't it? but will it be crazier than waking up in a strange town after a dream involving deer?
he shifts on his feet, brows lowering and mouth tilting into a frown. ] Listen. Is.. [ he trails off, glancing reluctantly back to her. ] Is this place real? Sometimes it feels like it is, but sometimes it kinda' feels.. [ he trails off again, making a frustrated, confused gesture with a hand. ] I don't think it's a dream. I mean, it can't be if you're here, right?
[ christ. he pushes a thumb against the corner of his eye. ] Just.. how the hell did we get here otherwise?
no subject
And he’s corporeal! Which isn’t something she’d usually be that excited over — or check, for that matter — but it’s another thing that she uses to reassure herself that this is real and she isn’t crazy.
Ronan’s next line of questioning helps reassure her that much more, and she lets out an audible sigh of relief. Ronan feels the same exact thing she does — that unexplainable something odd in the air, the strangeness of it all. — this couldn’t be a coincidence. (Were he here, Gansey would tell them there’s no such thing as coincidence.)
It isn't her that was messed up, it's this place. ]
It feels weird, right? I thought I was dreaming too, but then I got here and there’s all this. [ It’s her turn to gesture vaguely around with her hands, indicating then entire town where they were. ] But I wasn’t here before I fell asleep..
[ That must’ve been what happened, right? She must've fallen asleep in the Pig after the party — she could remember the stupid togas, getting in the car with Gansey, trying to call her mother… but had she really fallen asleep? It was an exhausting day, but… It didn’t make sense. ] ...Or, I think I fell asleep. I don’t know. [ She exhales, pursing her lips into a straight line. Get yourself together, Blue Sargent! There’s a sensible explanation to this somewhere. ]
I'm real. You're real. So this is real. [ She's starting with the facts! ] But something still isn’t right about this place. And this.. [ Blue points unceremoniously to the bulletin board. ] ..isn’t helpful, so I’m open to suggestions.
arrival
So here he is. Looking up... local history. How far he's fallen.
When Blue speaks, he gets sidetracked enough to squint at her like she's weird, even though he's standing in the library in a t-shirt and jeans with a sword strapped to his belt.] ... Is that bad?
no subject
And, to be fair, it isn't the weirdest thing she's come across today. It's probably closer to the normal end of the scale. ]
Maybe for an aspiring handyman -- or woman. [ Blue gives her attention fully to Nico. ] Are you one?
no subject
Sounds like similar things happening here, if there's so much competition on the board.] You're really looking for a job? Most stuff here is free. [Which is weird but as a person who spent a good chunk of his life roughing it out of sheer stubbornness, he can sorta appreciate that.]
no subject
I'm trying to figure this place out, [ She looks at the bulletin board again. She’d been hoping that there’d be something of help there — maybe a neon flyer explaining exactly what the hell was going on — but she’d come up with nothing more than a good list of people to call if she ever needed violin lessons. ] and this seemed like as good a place as any to start.
no subject
Libraries suck. Yes this is absolutely an issue with libraries and not with his methods, thank you.]
It's not working, I take it? [His eyebrows raise slightly, considering.] Unless you also need to get a whole lot of stuff fixed.
no subject
[ Blue reaches to pull a hanging paper tab from off of one of the flyers and tucks it into her pocket — pottery lessons, she might as well learn a new skill or two while she’s here. ]
I’m Blue, by the way. My professional title would probably be… Waitress/Dog-Walker/Environmentalist. [ She laughs quietly. It’s the library, after all. ]
no subject
Which he is pretty sure is against library rules, so he will politely refrain and just let his name hang out there, unaccompanied and unimpressive.]
Environmentalist? You haven't learned anything about this place yet, have you? [He gestures, sorta all around them. Clearly she's new too but it doesn't hurt to ask.] Like why the graveyard's under water?
no subject
[ The grin quickly fades once he mentions the flooded graveyards — she hadn’t gotten that far in her discovery of this place yet. ]
I didn’t see that, no. [ She shakes her head. A flooded graveyard in this already creepy town? Blue had been told not to believe in coincidences. ] I haven't gotten much further than this. Is that the only place?
no subject
But the forest seems messed up too.
no subject
[ Blue adds the new information the seemingly endless list of strange things going on — she feels as though the more that she thinks she’s figured something out, the more she uncovers that confuses her. She wants it to make sense and she tries to make it make sense in her brain, but fails miserably every time. It’s like she’s trying to piece together a puzzle without knowing what picture it’s making. ]
More or less messed up than an underwater graveyard? [ She pauses for a moment, thinking out loud: ] It could all be connected. [ Blue has come to learn that weird occurrences usually are. ]
no subject