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soddersays2018-07-01 06:30 am
sodder) wrote in soddersays2018-07-01 06:30 am
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July 2018 Test Drive Meme
JULY 2018 TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to July's Test Drive Meme! This is our first Test Drive ever so let's make it a good one. This month's Test Drive's theme is: JAPANESE BASED 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: Psychological horror, supernatural horror, body horror with stitches, potential gore, potential burning.
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!
THE SISTERS OF KOJI POND
The streets of Deerington are hazy this fine summer evening in July. Buzzing drunkenly through the tall wild grass on the sides of streets are the speckled dots of fireflies as they fly about. It's a bit muggy, the kind that makes your clothes hang from your body and cling against the slopes of your shoulders and arms. It's easy to feel lost in the tranquility of that perfect summer night. The stars are bright overhead, and there's a full moon in the sky that looks as big as a quarter from where you're standing. Distantly, it smells like somewhere someone is having a late night bonfire. If you listen hard enough, you could almost hear the crackling of the wood as it splinters and burns.That's when you can hear the soft laughter of a woman. It's the appealing kind of laughter that maybe reminds you of a distant lover, a sister, a friend, or maybe even your own mother. Turning towards the laughter, you might see the shining glow of the moon tucking itself behind a nearby building. But no, the moon was still up in the sky where it belonged. Wasn't it? The moon has halved itself. That's all right. That's how it had been when you last looked. Wasn't it?
The laughter distracts you from the halved moon, sounding closer now. The exhale of a sigh and you feel that prickling sensation that you are not alone. That's when you see a white cat. The creature is sitting neatly in front of a street lamp, and it's positively otherworldly with its luminescent glow. So that's where the moon had gone. The cat appears perfectly normal except it has twin tails winding slowly back and forth behind it.
When the cat finally looks your way, it opens its mouth and a woman's laugh comes out of it, bright and cheerful.
The cat stands up and pads down the sidewalk, its tails twirling about in an almost mesmerizing motion. Behind you, the moon has gone from a half down to a thin crescent, the stars blacking out one after the other.
If you follow the cat, it takes you down winding streets. The cat takes you to Koji Pond. Above the sky has gone completely black, and there are no fireflies to see. The street lamps have gone completely out. It's just you and the woman-.
The woman? What had happened to the cat? No, it had always been a woman you were following, right? You can't mistaken a cat for a woman.
But there's not just one woman. There's two, you realize. Two at opposite ends of the pond. Each are wearing an identical moon-white kimono. One is laughing softly, but the other is staring blankly across the water. The grave woman wears her long black hair up in a tight bun, whereas the laughing woman's hair is flowing free and filled with soft flowers. The grim woman turns her flat, black eyes and gestures to you.
"Come here. Now."
The laughing woman tucks some hair behind her ear, looking your way. She radiates warmth and that summer sweetness you remembered feeling before the world went dark. "My sister is so cruel. Ignore her. Sit beside me."
Which woman will you go to? Neither of the women will pressure you, but you'll find that if you try to leave, your sight will grow darker and darker, though you won't be blind exactly. It's more like the light from all the worlds in existence have been stolen away and put into these two women. Everything beyond them is cast in darkness.
If you go to the stern woman, her tight expression will smooth out and she will bow her head, cupping her hands against her chest. From her sleeves, she will remove a silk bag of roasted soybeans. She hands them to you, not smiling, but not looking quite as severe as she had moments ago. "Scatter them."
Once you do, you'll notice the more you scatter, the more stars you bring back into the night sky. By the time you're done with the bag, the women will have both disappeared, and the white cat from before will be sitting where the stern woman once sat. Only this time, the cat has one tail.
However, if you decide to go to the laughing woman....
As you come closer, you'll notice that her hair is parted to hang evenly over her shoulders, and at the back of her neck is ...a mouth. A snarling mouth with sharp teeth. The closer you walk to her, the hotter and more stifling the air around you becomes. All you can hear is the woman laughing. Her face is reflected a million times in the water's surface in Koji Pond, all laughing, an entire auditorium's worth of laughter hurled at you.
You must overcome the laughter. The woman's hair will grow, wrapping itself around you wherever it can to drag you towards her. The moment you assault the woman, her laughter will turn to screams and the world all around you will feel as if you've been placed into an oven. Small fires will spark live in nearby bushes and across the grass.
It doesn't seem like regular objects can truly kill her though.
The other sister can't reach you, but she is throwing raw soybeans to you. They scatter all over the place. If you're quick on your feet, you'd think to pick them up. If you're even quicker, you'd think to throw the soybeans into the nearby fires to roast them. This seems to be the only way to really hurt the woman- and the only way to eventually banish her. But it'll take some time.
The worst part? The longer you stay near the woman, the sicker you'll feel. Maybe you'll come down with the cold, or maybe you'll grow blisters on your tongue. It doesn't matter: you'll grow terribly sick with some illness in the world and nothing will cure it until the woman has been abolished. And when she finally is? You will be left terribly weakened, but the stars will slowly come back as will the full moon.
I LOVE YOU: PLEASE LOVE ME BACK
It begins as a regular day in Deerington. The only problem is that there's really no such thing as a regular day in Deerington. When you come to, you'll find yourself feeling particularly emotional. Whether that's overly sad or happy, it doesn't seem to matter, because you're feeling everything so intensely. Maybe you just didn't sleep right, or maybe it's this weird dream you're having. Hopefully if you ignore it, it'll go away.Except it doesn't go away. It's beginning to feel isolating being alone with your thoughts, even if they're happy, because it feels like you're near bursting to express yourself to someone.
When you finally cave, it's to the nearest person. The urge grows even louder inside of you until finally you're exclaiming loudly to the other person how you're feeling. Then you think to ask something that seems perfectly natural to you: you ask for a hug. Or maybe you ask for a handshake. Any contact.
Maybe the other person is sympathetic, or maybe they're feeling this emotional onslaught as much as you are. Either way, the moment your skin makes contact with another person's body, you'll feel a sudden swoop of sensation slide through your skin. It doesn't hurt, necessarily, but you've never felt anything quite like it before. And you don't want to stop touching this person wherever you may be touching them. As a matter of fact, you want to get closer. This urge does not need to be felt on both ends.
But the closer you get, the more yourself you begin to feel. Until at last you decide to look to where you have touched the other person.
Securing the two of you together are thick, coarse black stitches. Try and tug yourself away will result in atrocious pain on both ends. Anywhere your skin has touched the other person's will have been stitched to it. Careful getting hysterical though- the more emotional you become, the more likely you'll be to crowd closer to the person you're sewn into, and the more you'll fuse together. Better try and calm each other down first.
The solution is simple: you need to cut your way out of the bond. The tricky part is finding something to cut it with...and, well, the fact that the moment someone tries to cut the stitches, you'll both feel a hysterical urge to stay together forever.
It's possible to overcome that urge- but boy, do you need to have an iron will. Cutting the stitches is a miserable ordeal that hurts every snip of the way- but each time you cut a stitching, it fades away entirely as if it had never been there to begin with.
There is another option, of course. You could always jump into some water and get the stitches wet. Once you do, they'll melt right off you, not even leaving holes or dots behind. Surely you hadn't just imagined that, right?
THIS IS MY HOLE, IT WAS MADE FOR ME!
It is certainly a nice day for a refreshing hike into the woods! Or perhaps you have decided that a little exploration is in order for this new, strange town you have woken up to. At some point along the way, perhaps you find someone else on the trails of the National Park. No such thing as bad company, right? As you traverse towards Mount Rheum, the wind begins to pick up and you hear a low moaning. You could swear that you recognize that voice. Before you can place any names, the moaning stops and it's easy to think that maybe it was just the wind. Winds pulling through the trees always did make the strangest noises. Except when the wind picks back up, you're more certain that you know this voice. Maybe it's the voice of your companion, or a loved one, a hated one from back home...Maybe it's even your own voice that you recognize. Each time the wind blows, the voice seems to change. It can't be the wind? It all seems to be coming from one direction: Mount Rheum.
You never quite reach the base of the mountain.
Even if you head straight on towards the mountain, when you pass through the line of trees that should technically open up to the base, you'll find no such thing. Instead, you'll find an enormous looming wall of gray slate. You can't even see the mountain behind it, it's so immense. How did you not see that from the forest? The wall seems to be tipped towards the mountain, and you think, just maybe, you could climb it. It crosses your mind for just a second before you notice something odd about the wall. From far away, it looks like a bunch of black smudges. But as you grow closer, you realize they aren't smudges at all. They are holes.
Holes the shape of human beings. And every single hole looks completely different from the next. There's hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, and they climb all the way up the slate wall. And there is one hole made specifically for you.
You may even find the hole that belongs to someone you know, or your companion, and every time the wind blows, you can hear the groaning voice of that person coming from within their hole.
It is impossible to get over the wall of gray slate. No matter how hard you may try. But it seems possible to find your own hole. You'd swear that the holes are moving. Examine the inside, and they seem to go on indefinitely. Put your hand inside any of them, and they will feel oddly warm. As warm as a human body. If you put your hand into the hole that belongs to the person you're with, they will feel a terrible coldness overcome them. Keep your hand in long enough, and you'll begin to see them die right in front of you. Better keep your hands to yourself....Or that'd be easier said than done if you didn't feel yourself grow in power, in intelligence just from stealing their life force.
Climbing into your own hole? You'll feel exhilarated! Alive! Like you have truly found the proof of your own soul. You don't want to leave your hole. It was made for you!
It is almost impossible to get out of your own hole. Chances are good you'll be slowly pulled into it, your body steadily crushed and stretched out, but you'll be conscious the entire time, and at some point you'll begin to moan horribly from the pain of it all.
Of course, you can always be saved. If someone climbs into your hole after you, it'll break apart the rock structure clenching down around you and they might be able to pull you out in time. You'll be left terribly weak, pale, and incapable of proper speech for a couple of hours...But at least you're not dead.
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.
no subject
[Her bout of amusement had been too short-lived. She listens to Corr's hooves clopping on the road and mourns the fading glow.
Of course, Sean confessing he smelled his sea horse (not a seahorse, lesson learned) is deserving of a huff of laughter. You can't listen to someone be led around by their nose like a wild man and not at least be a little amused.]
Jesus, you are a bloodhound.
[An industrious bright-eyed and bushy-tailed meerkat still fits the image in her mind, but she expects the side eye would be well-deserved if she said that out loud.]
no subject
he's not surprised that she laughs at that too. maybe he's beginning to get a sense of what amuses her. ] I grew up next to the sea, and scent and memory are easy bedfellows. [ he smiles too, his expression softening somewhat as he does. always so severe, sean kendrick.
it's a little debatable whether he'd know what a meerkat is... ]
no subject
Bedfellows. [She repeats it the way he says it, with same, if slightly exaggerated inflection, as if tasting the flavor of the word. And then again, slower.] Bedfellows.
[The smile doesn't quite emerge from hiding, but it's not hard to guess what she's thinking: that if he thought the mainland was a novelty, the mainland probably thought he was a novelty right back, with his accent, and his romantic turns of phrase, and his water horse whispering party tricks.
She can find his islandisms quaint and amusing all she likes, but the one thing she can't make fun of him for is the way his demeanor shifts, aplomb giving way to what seems to her an almost homesick nostalgia.
No, she can't make fun of him for that.]
That's either reassuring, or even more creepy. Hard to choose. [Referring back to the tattoos, that is.] I woke up with one, too. Same with the other stuff.
[The painted road markers passing by underfoot get another sober, tight-lipped look--a state of mind that seems closer to the surface than any show of humor, despite how often she reaches for glibness in her arsenal.
She can feel hers even now, like a fresh brand itching on her thigh. Or maybe it's just the location that makes her think so, being the very same spot that had so recently sported purple and yellowing bruises. A fading handprint, not unlike Corr's hoofprints in the mud, marking where fingers had gripped her leg and dug in. Clay was here. Her shoulders twitch, as if she could cast the memory off like a fly that's picked the wrong time to land on her.]
Wonder what made us so lucky.
no subject
he takes a glance down at his arms, where his tattoos are. ] We don't get tattoos, on Thisby. Not generally, unless you were a sailor in the war.
[ THAT'D BE WORLD WAR I BY THE WAY. ]
I've wondered the same. Were we chosen, or just lucky enough to be in the right place at the wrong time?
no subject
Granted, the same could be said of big red horses--since when do those exist? She feels her Jon Snowness acutely--she really knows nothing.]
Not if we're not reciting from a Shakespeare play. [To take the sting out of the fact she's effectively calling him a walking ode to quaintly phrased Hallmark cards, she smiles sidelong and clarifies:] America. All over America. New York, America these days.
[No tasteful tramp stamp for Sean, got it.]
They're a popular bad decision to wake up regretting after a night of drinking where I'm from, but this is a first for me.
[Someone branding your body while unconscious! Fun! This is awesome, she's having a spectacular time. (At least the horse is cool.)
There's a bit of a silence as she considers--not that she hasn't tossed the question around herself, but she's not sure how much to say. The last she remembers, shit had been royally hitting the fan. It's hard to think this Deerington place is just a coincidence.]
I think... I don't know. I think in my case, something might've... happened. To me. [She scratches her neck.] Like, maybe I'm in the hospital-- [Again.] --and this is just my brain going off the rails.
no subject
by now, they've reached the place where the street branches into a cul-de-sac that ends in the house sean work up in. whether or not he ends up squatting there, he'll need to go back for his clothes and the saddle he left behind, so he glances down the street in that direction, but makes no move to leave just yet. ]
Are you in hospital often? [ he asks this only because--well, if you wake up in a strange place and that's your first guess, there must be a reason for it. ] Is that why you were so suspicious at first? You thought I was a fever dream.
no subject
[They're both from Earth, that's something--sarcasm audible! Buying and selling horses is a pleasantly normal concept in this sea of otherwise extremely confusing concepts, though. Likewise, she doesn't take offense that there's no overwhelming note of fondness in his tone in talking about New York like there is when talking about Thisby. It's missing from her tone, too--New York is currently home but it's not home, no more than the last five places were.
Can they go back to talking about what century Thisby is living in? Sean could excuse himself and hightail it to his house right about then and she wouldn't mind; it'd save her the effort of trying to pick a way through an explanation of her many, many issues. Relationship status: complicated.]
... Sort of? Yes and no.
[Her expression pinches. It's a non answer, but what can you say when your choices are:
1. You actually did get shot point blank in your dining room, and imagining you travelled to a foreign country and maybe/maybe not found your long lost dad was really just neurons firing randomly in your dying brain.
or
2. That speeding train really did punch your ticket when you jumped in front of it like a genius and this is straight up the afterlife.
In summary, options are slim and morale is low. Better the non-answer for everybody's sake.]
Let's just say it's been a weird day. Honestly, I'd take the fever dream. Anyway--thanks for the, uh... eye-opening conversation. I'll let you get back to it. And him.
[Corr, who's been exceptionally docile in Sean's grasp on their walk.]
no subject
Fair enough. [ no resistance to her graceless exit attempt, either. ] The pleasure is... well, mostly his, he likes attention so much. But it was nice to meet you.
[ that's not even really a lie, either. well, 'nice' might be stretching it, but it was certainly interesting and sean appreciates having had her help.
he turns corr down the street, then looks back over his shoulder to say, ] If this is a hospital fever dream, I hope you wake up soon, Henry Coles. But in the meantime, be safe.
no subject
She pauses at the entrance to the cul-de-sac while Sean and Corr continue on (where he intends to put a horse in a residential area is a mystery all on its own), allowing a brief half-smile for the thought of the monster horse having enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame. Yeah, sure, consider her a convert--Corr's claimed the privilege of being her first and only and favorite water horse to date.]
You, too. Good luck with the... [A vague wave encompassing everything and all Corr-related.] ... horse stuff.
[For Sean, she reserves a different farewell smile, something a little less wry around the edges. Calling "nice" a stretch but not really a lie is a good way to put it. It's been... not terrible. She's probably more surprised about that than anyone else.
He could leave it there and she expects he will, but then he turns to regard her, and... strangely enough, says something she didn't know she wanted to hear from someone other than the voice of desperation in her head until she hears it. Blinking a little, she nods. A thank you hovers on her tongue, made too heavy with sincerity to speak.]
Same goes for you, horse whisperer. [A lighter, more humored alternative. She puts her hand up in a mock-wave.] The ocean must be missing the pair of you by now. See you around.