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soddersays2021-02-25 12:33 am
sodder) wrote in soddersays2021-02-25 12:33 am
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MARCH 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME
MARCH 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to MARCH's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: PSYCHOLOGICAL 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 that deals with gaslighting, losing one's grip on reality, being trapped and restrained, threat of drowning, threat of being eaten, sensory deprivation, bleach, blood, violence, haunting apparition of a child, injury by rusty implements
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!
IMPORTANT INFO FOR PROSPECTIVE PLAYERS: This past month we were excited to announce that Deerington will be entering a new chapter in a few short months. This new chapter will involve a permanent setting shift that you can read about in more detail on this post. All prospective players are welcome to ask any questions they have on the linked post.
THE WALLS HAVE EARS. AND EYES.
With all of the shifting in Deerington, it's not shocking when you start to feel like something in your home or workplace has begun to shift. You can't put your finger on what it is. Your furniture is exactly where it should be. Nothing seems moved. Maybe it's just Deerington paranoia acting up. God knows Sleepers have plenty to be paranoid about. Then you start to notice little oddities. Scratch marks on the baseboards of your bedroom. If you have a bedframe with posts you might notice what looks like human bite marks have taken out chunks of the material. Only surely no one's gone around biting your bed? When you walk by windows, you start to think you see a trick of the eye and you could swear you see bars on the other side of your window. What? No. You don't have bars on your bedroom windows...
You're just seeing things. You're just seeing things. But maybe you're hearing things too. You can hear scuttling in the walls - maybe the rats from February? No, no...This is different. It sounded too big. More of a sliding shuffle than a scuttle. Maybe you look into your vents just to make sure but there's nothing to find. Nothing at all.
Then you start to look at your walls. Was that stain always there? Was it just part of the wallpaper or paint? Hmm...You don't remember there being a stain there.
You keep looking at the stain. Maybe it only takes a few days or a few hours but eventually, you start to see a face in the stain. If the stain's big enough you could swear it looks like...a person crawling. No. No! That's ...Just your imagination. Get a grip. But that stain may start to look like it has eyes, eyes looking right at you. Or the design in your wallpaper might start to look like a face is tucked among the floral patterns, eyes staring right at you.
You start to notice creeping figures out and around Deerington. While you're shopping for groceries you swear you can see a woman crawling from one aisle to the next, quick and scurrying. Were you the only one who saw that? Surely not? Maybe others have too. Then you see more women crawling across yards and you feel paralyzed with fear because they all look like that stain on your wall.
When you come back the stain has moved.
This drives many mad. You start to obsess over the stain. Maybe you even break apart your walls to see if there's really a person behind them. Maybe you start to peel the wallpaper off your walls or try to repaint everything to hide it. But the more you do, the more you sink down into paranoia. Eventually you start crawling around, trying to see if you can conjure up these creeping figures. You find yourself scratching at the baseboards and gnawing on furniture, becoming the very creeping fiend you feared.
Maybe you even eventually start to creep into people's homes, into their walls, to start the cycle of madness all over again. The only way to break free of this cycle is to catch one of the people in the walls, take their hand and pull. If you win this tug of war, you and the figure you chased in your madness into the walls will fall back into the three dimensional space of regular Deerington and you'll find the person you were chasing was just another sleeper trapped in the cycle like you. If you lose... you find yourself falling into an endless void and when you slow to a stop--
WASH AWAY THE MADNESS. PURGE THE SIN.
--You find yourself floating in midair in the middle of a sterile white room. You lost the tug of war with the other sleeper in the walls, or perhaps you were just walking down the street and got distracted by your reflection moving strangely in the storefront window and touching it pulled you through the glass and landed you here. Regardless of how you got here, now you are in what looks like a room that belongs in a hospital. Somehow you are also dressed in white pants and a t-shirt and there's a hospital bracelet on your wrist that has your name and blood type printed on it as well as a patient number. Beside you is another sleeper, either the one who you lost the tug of war to or a completely new one. You are able to speak to each other in this space and there is a slight echo as you do, enjoy it while it lasts.After a moment of weightlessness, your bare feet touch the ground, which feels cold like concrete but is as white as the white subway tiled walls. There also appears to not be any light source, it just comes from everywhere and you may notice you're not casting a shadow. And neither is the albino german shepard that's appeared in the room with you. It looks friendly enough and you get the sense that it wants to guide you somewhere as it turns to walk through an open door that has suddenly appeared in the room.
Follow the dog and you'll find yourselves in an all white hallway, only there's a mirrored ceiling and the yellow stains of age on the peeling white wallpaper move in ways that make you uneasy. Almost immediately, you'll notice that there is no sound, not even from the dog or your own steps, not even your own heartbeat can be heard. But oddly, you can hear your own breathing, so loud in the otherwise utterly silent space that you speak to your companion just to have a different sound, but your voice is muted as well. Charades might be the only choice of communication between you two for some time. And as you continue on in this odd liminal space, out of your peripheral vision you'll notice your reflections on the ceiling above acting oddly, walking backwards or twirling in a childlike fashion while you are walking a straight line.
Spend long enough in this never ending silent white and bright hall with nothing but your breath to remind you that you're physically occupying this space and you start to feel on the edge of your sanity. After pulling your gaze from the disorienting reflections and stains on the wall, you look for the dog, but the dog is gone and in its place far down the hall is a small child dressed in white from head to toe with very little skin showing. It feels like it's been so long since you heard a voice that when the child speaks your ears hurt, blood trickles out. Wait, that can't be right... is it because of the silence from before or is the voice just supernaturally immense?
"GET OUT."
Is all the child says before water starts slowly rising up from the floor, but take a whiff and you catch the strong chemical scent of bleach. You and your companion must rush to find an exit or another creative solution to the problem at hand before you are drowned, and there will be no holding one's breath and swimming with your eyes open if you are submerged in bleach so you must act quickly. At the end of the long hall where the child stood there is a red light, but if you run towards it, it seems to only get further away.
If you can't go forward or back, then through the walls is the only solution. It is difficult though, at all the spots on the walls that are white, they are indestructible. It's the aged, yellow stains that are perpetually moving and shifting that are the weak points. Together, you must try to corner the shifting stains to stay still long enough for you to kick and punch your way through very thick walls. The stains seem to move away from anyone experiencing strong emotions and towards those who are calm and collected, and the key is to get them to stop moving entirely.
Once you burst through the thick wall and escape drowning by bleach, you'll either find yourself back in Deerington, or...
BREAK MY CHAINS AND I'LL BREAK YOURS.
You stumble into a mostly empty and dimly lit surgical room with blood on the floor and old dinge and rust on tiles and sinks. If you came here from the white hallway slowly filling with bleach, the pungent liquid will spill into the space as you enter, but turn around to look at the hole you and your companion made and you'll see it magically stitch itself up, like a wound in flesh speed healing rather than tile and drywall reorienting itself. However, it's possible to arrive here from Deerington without going through the white hall and that's by passing an empty lot in town. You could have sworn that lot had a house or a store the other day, but instead there's a dingy storage shed that draws you in with an intoxicating scent that wafts from a jagged hole in the side. No matter where you came here from, when you walk through, one or more other sleepers can walk through holes in the other walls at the same time and each hole will stitch up behind you.It's too late to turn back once you're in and you barely have time to realize the danger you're clearly in when you are struck from behind and knocked unconscious. No matter what your body is made of or what abilities you have, you are knocked out cold... and when you awaken you are chained in the center of the room to a rusy old cair. The other sleeper or sleepers you found yourself with in this place are in the same situation facing you and on the floor in between you is a pile of old rusted keys of varying shapes and made of all different kinds of metals. The only thing these keys seem to have in common is the look of sharpness on every edge, like if you picked them up too hastily you could slice open your hand and get a tetanus infection from the rust.
The next thing you might notice is the heavy breathing of another person nearby, and when you look you see a large man in a soiled button down, jacket and khakis. He looks like a pro wrestler that went to a court hearing that then got blown up and he was the only survivor. But more striking than his size and attire is the fact that in place of a human head is just a black smoky blur with what looks like hundreds of eyes poking through the darkness, and when he turns, his face is nothing but a gaping circular maw with rows and rows of jagged teeth that spin like a food processor. The man doesn't speak, the only sound that seems to come from that horrifying void that is his head is haunting and hard to describe. It gazes at its prisoners with its infinite eyes for a moment, washes blood from its hands in one of the sinks along the wall and then lumbers over to the only exit while sharpening a butcher's knife.
It is rather clear what his intentions are. But why leave a pile of keys and not kill and eat you now? Who cares what game he's playing, what test you're undergoing? Time to figure out how to get free and obviously the keys are important. The chairs can be moved, tilted over and pushed, but they are heavy and you'll have to work together to get the right leverage to start picking up keys and testing them on each other's locks which are placed by your hands bound behind your backs. Your hands are so tightly bound that you have to use the keys blindly on the other person's lock, and don't forget that those keys are sharp and hard to hold too. One of you will get free first, but then the haunting sound and the thump of his feet can be heard in the next room. Do you leave your companion to the monster or risk it and try the other keys?
Whatever your choice, the door to get out is locked and unbreakable, but there's a vent high above it that you can get through alone with great difficulty, but will be much easier and faster with the help of your fellow sleeper. The moment you are inside and moving through the vents, the hulking man with the void head will let out an ear shattering screech and chase you from below, the butcher knife and other stabbing objects will slice through the bottom of the vent and you'll have to dodge and weave until you see the light at the end. Kick the exit vent open and you'll crawl out onto grass outside any building in town.
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
Sure, she and Dipper have gone to weird places before, up to and including a gladiator arena overseen by a Time Baby in another dimension. Being pulled here in the first place isn't a strange concept and neither is the idea of meeting people from other dimensions entirely. But most of their previous adventures were over in the span of an afternoon, and they were ultimately asleep in their own beds each night.
And if Dipper's been here five months, he's been away way longer than just a summer already.
"Is it Sodder who's making the monsters...? Can't we talk to Sodder?"
Ah, she has no idea.
no subject
In order to keep his hands busy while he explains to his sister what is frankly awful news, he starts to unbutton his coat. It’s probably 20 degrees out here and she’s dressed for the summer. He doesn’t want her getting sick when he’s only just now gotten over his.
“Yeah, for me, anyway. There’s people I’ve met that have been here for years,” He says, just to let that sink in a little bit. This situation is beyond anything they’ve been able to wriggle out of back home.
“...No, at least, if there’s a way to talk to her, we haven’t figured out how. We recently ...tried and let’s just say it went really badly.” The way he looks off to the side and winces seems to imply he isn’t kidding, nor is he exaggerating from how little he wants to elaborate. Instead, he just wordlessly drops his coat on her shoulders.
“...Come on. We shouldn’t stay out here, it’s freezing. Where did you wake up? You’ve probably got stuff we can take home.”
no subject
She does not like that. She doesn't really like a lot of this, at the moment. Including being asked something like that.
"Dipper, you know I never remember anything from first thing in the morning," she scolds gently. The walkie-talkie long since fallen, she pulls another item from -- her hair, or her sweater, or wherever the hell she was keeping it. Mabel's personal art student hammerspace. "Anyway, I did grab the most important thing I saw."
It's the scrapbook, as bright and festive as she is against the browns and grays of winter.
no subject
One disadvantage is that it doesn't care about things like walls and trees and other people's homes.
The lack of nuance in the directions has mixed with the urgency of realizing Mabel is here and created a scenario that involves Ford and Stan cutting a chaotic path through the town, one that involves them crashing through gardens, slipping down back alleys, and completely ignoring things like sidewalks and trespassing laws. It's not very graceful, but it gets the job done.
And speaking of not very graceful, when Stan and Ford finally get far enough past the building to lay eyes on Dipper and Mabel, Ford slides - literally slides, thanks to the ice - to a stop with an excited, "There!"
Like Dipper, Ford decides that the best and shortest route to Mabel is directly over the chain link fence. Unlike Dipper, Ford is actually pretty good at scaling them on account of how many times they've stood between him and interesting anomalies, escape routes, and valuable supplies. He scrambles over the fence way faster than a man his age has any right to, jumps down when he reaches the top, hits the ground in a roll, and then gets up and keep running. He doesn't slow down when he reaches Dipper and Mabel, instead scooping them up, in in each arm as he dashes by. Then he slides (once again literally) to a stop, whirling around on his heel with an enormous grin on his face.
"Stanley, look!" Stan definitely already saw, but Ford needs to make sure Stan knows exactly where to aim what's sure to be an excited tackle or bear hug.
no subject
Stan just barely keeps up with Ford, but he's not nearly as coordinated. A number of Ford's sudden stops end with Stan skidding directly into him. He follows Ford over the chain link fence without a second thought, and he's generally pretty good about getting up them from his years and years of crime experience. However, he fumbles exactly the way Dipper does and falls right on his face.
He's still running on adrenaline though, so he pulls himself up like it's nothing (though sheesh he's going to be sore tomorrow). Seeing the kids in Ford's arms is exactly what he needs to give him a second wind.
Ford was right to expect a tackle or a bear hug, because they get both at once. Stan collides into the three of them with enough force that he knocks them all backwards into a snowbank. He just laughs though, and squeezes them all.
"Mabel! Pumpkin! You're actually here!"
He'll deny it later, but he's so happy that he's actually crying a little.
no subject
"Grunkle Ford? Grunkle Stan!"
She leaps to her feet, dancing in place and totally unable to control her breathless laughter, and by the time Ford has launched himself at them she has her free arm up and is ready to be scooped. Nobody will notice Stan crying probably because Mabel is crying herself, whole-hearted full-body sobs, totally unabashedly.
Dipper hadn't actually mentioned they were here, and she hadn't had the time to think to ask. But from her perspective she only just left these two and oh, she hadn't wanted to go. So many of the things that happened at the end of the summer had somehow felt like fresh beginnings, things they'd be leaving undone for a while as life called them home, and the idea of letting go had been so awful Mabel had been preemptively missing things that were still right around her for a while. Even if Dipper says this place is really bad, to suddenly be turned around and get this back, Mabel just can't be sorry about it. She hadn't wanted to go and now she really can't be sorry at all.
no subject
Speaking of Grunkles, Dipper snaps his head up just in time to see Ford leap off the fence. Oh! Oh, they’re here already, he didn’t have to text them. Maybe one of them saw the compass. That’s good that saves him some trouble. Great Uncle Ford is...
...is not stopping.
While Mabel is holding her arm up and cackling with glee, Dipper is holding his up in alarm. “Grunkle Ford, wait- OOF!”
Nope, up he goes. It doesn’t take much for him to crack and start laughing though, even as Stan plows into them and sends them all crashing back to the ground again. No one is going to notice Stan crying because everyone is just going to be an emotional wreck here for a bit. Dipper’s thin reign on his own emotions breaks with Mabel’s unrestrained sobs right beside him, and he cries openly, for once, out of happiness and relief. God, he’s missed her so much.
no subject
Everyone is emotional and crying and that's enough for Ford's laughter to take on a wavering quality and... yeah, he's crying, too. Once again, he simply doesn't care.
"I should get more of those compasses," he manages after a moment, breathless with laughter and voice cracking slightly with emotion. "If either of us had been asleep we might not have noticed for hours."
no subject
"I noticed first," Stan says proudly, as though it makes much of a difference. "Here, take a look."
He hands Mabel the compass so she can see it for herself and hold it in her hands. All four of the hands are pointing directly at her with only the most minor of twitches, since everyone is in approximately the same spot.
"Instead of pointing north, it points wherever one of us is around here." It isn't as scientific an explanation as Ford would probably give, but it's good enough. "We've, uh. We've been hoping you'd turn up for a while."
no subject
What gets to her is that Dipper said it's been five months, and she has no reason to assume it hasn't been that long or even longer for the grunkles too, and Stan says they wanted her here and there's her name right on the compass. Her brother's dour demeanor about the place already forgotten, Mabel stares up at Stan with her eyes shining and her heart high.
"You put me on it too?" As best she can given her hands are full, she tosses an arm around Stan's neck again, simply because she's facing that direction and it's not like the others have let go yet anyhow. "Sorry I'm late."
no subject
Ah, right.
Dipper will carefully wiggle out of the pile so he can go and collect those. His was lost in the snow by the fence, Mabel's was not terribly far from it on the grass. This device that he'd desperately clung to all these months, talking to it out of some unhinged loneliness every night hoping one day she might answer him back. His feelings on all of this were complicated and uncertain, but he guessed for a little while, he could let himself be happy, and then later they could tackle the situation at hand. Together.
Holding both of them close, he'll walk back over to his family.
"You would be fashionably late."
no subject
"He did notice first." Ford can definitely let him have this one. He'd given Stan the compass... not reluctantly, exactly, but only because he thought Stan needed it more than he did. Now he'd glad for it; Ford had been so absorbed in his work it would have taken him much longer to notice, and thus much longer for the two of them to realize Mabel was here. With some humor, he adds: "He was so excited he almost tripped coming down and going up the stairs to the lab."
no subject
At first he's surprised. He still isn't used to his self-centered baosting being met with positive attention instead of eyerolls or irritation, and he's never entirely sure what to do with it when it actually happens. But the teasing that follows feels natural, and Stan laughs.
"You think that's something? You should've seen Ford!" he says, with a grin. "He was so shocked when he heard the good news he actually dropped his experiment on the ground!"
Does Stan have any idea what Ford was working on? No. Is it going to leave a permanent mark on the floor? Eh, probably.
no subject
More importantly, looking back and forth between the older twins during their exchange, Mabel also picks up that at least in this moment they're getting along. The two were kind to one another at the very end after they nearly lost Stan, to be sure, but a handful of days of that was never going to be enough to erase Mabel's fear that she and Dipper might someday start fighting as much as their grunkles did. Not when Ford's return was followed by weeks when you could barely get the two of them to stay in the same room. If Stan's hurling himself into the lab and getting away with it, maybe they really will be fine all alone on a boat.
"Where do we live now? Is it like the Shack? I want to see!" She gasps abruptly, delighted by a stray thought. "Dipper! Do we get to share a room again?"
no subject
He's a little distracted though, letting his thoughts slip into a spiral of 'I need to make a list of what to warn her about.' and 'I need to show her what places to avoid and what places to hide in.' and 'Who is a friend, and who should you look out for.' He's desperately trying to keep it all in his head that her question startles him.
"Huh? I-" Oh. Oh, that was a question, wasn't it. They spent all summer sharing a room, and they were going to go back to their own spaces back in California. Their house on Sheppard was big enough that they could have their own room but, "What, I thought you'd be tired of my stinky laundry by now."
But his smile, which is teasing at first, turns soft. "I can probably shove all my stuff over for you, I guess."
That's a yes, Mabel.
no subject
While Dipper and Mabel converse Ford takes the time to climb to his feet and, without waiting to see if he needs it, offers a hand out to Stan as well. It's only once Dipper has explained their sleeping arrangements to Mabel that Ford supplies some additional information.
"It's not quite as run down as the Shack--" He says this with a weird sort of exasperated affection. "--but it is in need of repairs and on the edge of town. Most people say the neighborhood is creepy, but I find it rather peaceful."
It's quiet, for one, and the houses are far enough apart that he never gets any complaints from neighbors about the odd explosion or escaped specimen.
no subject
"Ugh, mistakes were made," he whines. "Horrible, horrible mistakes."
But, nothing he regrets! Ford starts to describe their house, but he's neglecting possibly the most important piece of information he could give, so Stan chimes in as well.
"Also there's bones all over the place!" He starts counting off on his hand, starting with his thumb. "In the yard, in random closets and cupboards, stashed in the attic...you get the idea. So yeah, it's basically like the Shack!"
The worst part is there were even more bones up until recently. The only reason there are less is because the Murder Hut is finally open for business, and some of them got moved. But really, when you start filling up a place with bones, do you ever really get rid of them all? Their house is going to just have random bones in weird places forever now.
no subject
The answer to that, of course, is a little iffy, and nothing that's going to quite get across until Mabel has had some real time to settle into this place -- there's too much touchy subject matter, too many things she just won't be able to appreciate fully until she's experienced them for herself. But her family is familiar and beloved, so much so that even the occasional glimpse of someone falling from the sky isn't enough to rattle her for long. Dipper leads her around by the hand, pointing out this and that. Stan is entirely too ready to loot the craft store for Essential Mabel Things. Ford talks endlessly, a part of them now where he was once their surly basement cryptid. Everything else this place could throw at her is secondary to their presence, and so Mabel sees no reason to be worried just yet.
The punchline, of course, is that they get back to the Bone Fortress and find Mabel's sewing machine perched innocently upon the kitchen table. Turns out she woke up in the house and ambled right on out without any of them noticing until she was long gone. Go figure.