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memesville2020-10-25 11:03 pm
robbies) wrote in memesville2020-10-25 11:03 pm
Entry tags:
TDM - OCTOBER 2020
TEST DRIVE MEME - OCTOBER 2020
Everyone's entitled to one good scare.
CW: Violence, death, mouth trauma, vomiting, needles, razors
“Help me. Please, help me…”
A child’s voice, calling out for aid. There’s no rhyme or reason for when it comes to you. It’s so quiet, a whisper in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind. Were it not for the sharp, stabbing pain it pulls out of you, you could ignore it. You could even pretend it’s just your imagination.
It all happens so quickly and powerfully. Left in the dust, your brain struggles to process it all. Blacking out is the least it can do, but it’s also all it can do, and it does so before you even have a chance to fully register just how young the voice is, and how deeply, heartbreakingly lost it sounds.
When you finally awaken with your bare feet tangled in soft sheets, a layer of fuzzy fleece or slinky silk clinging to your body like another layer of skin, the sunlight pouring in from the window next to your bed momentarily blinding you, and the cries of happy children playing baseball outside of it carrying faintly, it all becomes very clear—
Something is horribly wrong.
A child’s voice, calling out for aid. There’s no rhyme or reason for when it comes to you. It’s so quiet, a whisper in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind. Were it not for the sharp, stabbing pain it pulls out of you, you could ignore it. You could even pretend it’s just your imagination.
It all happens so quickly and powerfully. Left in the dust, your brain struggles to process it all. Blacking out is the least it can do, but it’s also all it can do, and it does so before you even have a chance to fully register just how young the voice is, and how deeply, heartbreakingly lost it sounds.
When you finally awaken with your bare feet tangled in soft sheets, a layer of fuzzy fleece or slinky silk clinging to your body like another layer of skin, the sunlight pouring in from the window next to your bed momentarily blinding you, and the cries of happy children playing baseball outside of it carrying faintly, it all becomes very clear—
Something is horribly wrong.
OCTOBER 1st.
It becomes very clear very quickly that this isn’t a simple kidnapping.
By the time you make it down to the living room, you’ll notice that the television is on; someone must have forgotten to turn it off before they went to bed. On it, a cartoon pack of cigarettes and accompanying cigarette dancers prance around a black and white pumpkin patch, joined by dancing skeletons, ghosts and witches as a cheerful little earworm blares: ”Thirty days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, thirty days til Halloween—“ |
GETTING TO KNOW THE NEIGHBORS.
| As you get acclimated, you gradually begin to learn more about this strange new world you’ve found yourself in. You’re in a neighborhood on the east side of a town called Santa Rosita located… somewhere in California (wherever or whatever that might be). The year is 1961. If it wasn’t clear enough, your neighbors are more than willing to humor you if you ask. Even if you accost them with questions and demands. Sure, you and your family are a little kooky, and you have a very overactive imagination, but the key to any good joke is playing along! And how could something like “I’m from the future, from another world” be anything but a joke? A. AUNT MYRNA'S PARTY CHEESE SALAD.Over the course of the week, your neighbors will come by unannounced, each with a new homecooked meal to welcome you to their cozy little side of town. Meatloaf, potato salad, lamb chops. Gelatin molds — lots of gelatin molds.Someone even comes by to drop off a gelatinous yellow lump of pineapple, green peppers, celery and yellow cheese swimming in a soupy mixture of sour and whipped cream. “It’s my aunt Myrna’s recipe!” they gush once they drop the casserole tin into your hands, proceeding to rattle off every ingredient. Well, at least you won’t be starving anytime soon. When you bring it back in to your kitchen - and its cheery wallpaper and its floral patterned Pyrex dishware, you and your new...family(?) all stare at the cheese salad, the gelatin, the curiously frosted meatloaf spread. A smorgasbord courtesy of the insistent generosity! Who will take the first bite? |
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B. DON'T BE A SQUARE!
You can only avoid the cheer and the neighbors for so long, even as you sit inside enjoying all the amenities of your new home. The television can only turn its volume up to five, after all! One bright and sunny Saturday, the weather crisp and clear, news broadcasts and reruns of The Ed Sullivan Show are drowned out by the music in the neighborhood. Eventually it’s too much to bear — you simply must put on your shoes and go discover the source of that infernal racket.Why, it’s the block party! Haven’t you seen the invitation — with instructions — sitting in your mailbox, silly? Wear a badge so everyone on the block can know you’re new and welcome you to their extended family!
Well! Each neighbor was supposed to set up a table with snacks and drinks and entertainment on their front lawn. Carter Mayhew, one of your Robbie neighbors, has a whole ring toss obstacle course set up for boys to play with, and his wife is cheerfully and blandly instructing a group of girls on jump rope rhymes. Colorful streamers hang from every lamppost and mailbox, balloons and party favors galore. Like you, there are even a few newcomers to Santa Rosita that are caught just as unaware of this event — though others are being welcomed in by husbands and wives and children, caught in conversations about building decks and the upcoming Halloween festivities.
Before you can decide if returning home or joining the party is your choice, a plate with chips and dips and yes, more gelatin is shoved into your hands and a party hat snapped on to your head.
“The guest of honor has arrived! Come and meet your neighbors, neighbor!”
THROUGHOUT OCTOBER.
|
Life falls into a peaceful haze for the next several days. Dull, unassuming, tranquil. As the month drags on, the spirit of Halloween begins to manifest in Santa Rosita, from the pumpkins people start putting out on their doorsteps to the smiling faces of paper skeletons pressed against their windows. And then, towards the end of the month, something terrible happens. You hear it first through word of mouth, rippling through Santa Rosita like a wave, dark murmurs accompanied by sad sighs and downturned eyes. Soon, you start to read about it. Grim business, they say. A tragedy. How could something like this happen. People stop talking about it by the end of the week. Best just to forget about it. Every day, that cigarette commercial comes on. It’s impossible to escape it. And every day, the number of days in the song changes, counting down. ”Thirteen days till Halloween—” “Eight more days til Halloween—” “Three more days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween…” |
HALLOWEEN.
CW: Violence, death, mouth trauma, vomiting, needles, razors
|
October 31st. It sneaks up on you whether you like it or not. When dawn breaks on Halloween day, things are as serene as they’ve ever been as men do yard work, raking leaves as their wives bake fresh pie and cookies in the house, the spicy scent of cinnamon, apple and pumpkin wafting through the neighborhood on chilly October wind. There’s a smile on every child’s face as they skip off the school bus in the afternoon, running into their houses to get their costumes ready. As it begins to get dark, the residents of Santa Rosita start lighting their jack-o-lanterns. One by one, little balls of light flicker to life on every porch and doorstep, jagged smiles grinning in the dark. For the entire night, nobody blows the candle inside their pumpkins out. It’s a tradition, a very old one, and traditions are just another way of saying rules. And Halloween in Santa Rosita, as it turns out, lives and dies by the rules. |
A. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR CANDY.
Halloween isn’t just for the kids, although they certainly make up the bulk of who you’ll see out and about on the streets. Walking through Santa Rosita, your neighbors are as generous with handing out treats as they are with handing out gelatin molds and pot roasts, and they don’t discriminate. Adults are received just as warmly as children; the worst one can expect is a quirked eyebrow if they show up to a house without a costume.Apples, packs of gum, homemade cookies. Chocolate bars, nickels, popcorn balls. Your neighbors hand out all sorts of treats, most of them homemade. The Robbies are no exception, and it’s their treats that seem a bit more high quality than most, some of the candy they hand out being obviously expensive, brand names. The good stuff. They drop each treat into your bag with those same pleasant, mild expressions and too-tight smiles you’ve grown used to in your short time here.
Eventually, as everyone winds up doing at some point in the night, you decide to start digging into your treat bag to sample some of your well-earned goods — maybe in the comfort of your home, maybe outside on the streets. And that’s when the fun begins.
Maybe you bite into metal, the razor sharp end of a blade embedded into the apple or candy bar you’ve picked out burying itself in your gums, or splitting your tongue. Maybe it’s a needle, impaling itself straight through the roof of your mouth or a cheek. Or maybe it’s nothing that obvious. Maybe the realization that something is wrong comes moments after you’ve devoured that chocolate bar or cookie, the bitter aftertaste of rat poison hitting the back of your throat along with bile and the rest of the contents of your stomach as they rise up and out of your mouth.
Or maybe you’ll bite into plain, sweet chocolate or fresh fruit. That’s also part of the surprise. You really don’t know what you’ll get until you start eating.
B. ALWAYS RESPECT THE DEAD.
At ten o’clock, all the television sets in the neighborhood turn on, blaring to life right in the middle of that omnipresent cigarette commercial. The volume begins to rise of its own accord as your television starts to pick up interference, bursts of static squealing amidst the rising, screaming chorus of ”HAPPY HAPPY HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN!”Breaking through the static, garbled and tinny, a child’s voice cries out.
“Can’t— I can’t hold them— back— Pumpkin— don’t blow the— out—”
And just as quickly as it cut in, the voice cuts back out. Commercial jingle notwithstanding, you’re alone once more. But not for long.
The doorbell rings. You can see them outside from your window: costumed children. Their masks and clothes are grimy and ragged from the muddy, slimy water they’ve been decomposing in for over a week. When they come to your door, squelching wetly as they shamble up the porch steps, they ring the bell or knock, as all polite children do. If you don’t let them in, they’ll find their own way, always by force. And once they find you, all they can gurgle in their reedy, waterlogged voices is, ”Trick or treat.”
From there, they attack.
With superhuman strength and speed, they tear and rip at anything they can get their hands on — clothing, skin, muscle, face, eyes. Being short and small, despite their strength, they're at a distinct disadvantage. They can even be thrown off, with some effort. But they don’t stay down for long, and attempting to hurt or mortally wound them only stalls them for a few moments, if that. How can you kill something that’s already dead?
Some in the neighborhood are willing to try and find out.
The only houses they seem to ignore completely are the ones with lit jack-o-lanterns still outside. They’ll loiter outside these houses, staring straight ahead at your door or window like they can see exactly where you are. But sooner or later, they’ll pass by and move onto the next house.
As long as the candles in carved pumpkins stay lit.
OOC INFO
Hello, and welcome to We're Still Here's first TDM! Here's a few things we'd like you to keep in mind:
The TDM is canon. You can treat this as the game's first real event and pick and choose what threads you would like your character to remember when they enter the game. For characters who app into the game, the events of the TDM will be treated like a dream. Upon awakening from it, characters will find that time has jumped ahead to December 1st. You may also feel free to use similar reality and/or time distortions to explain why the family members your characters have in the TDM aren't the same as the ones they may be assigned to in the game proper.
If you would like to have Halloween content in your relaxed housing prompts, please feel free! You are not beholden to follow our prompts exactly so long as the spirit is maintained.
There is no Network prompt listed, but feel free to wildcard one for your characters anyway.
Although the TDM is canon in the sense that characters are free to remember its events when they app into the game, it does not count as an official plot heavy event, meaning that characters will not receive regains from participating in it.
With regards to the dead trick-or-treaters: you may NPC them however you'd like, but keep the details we've listed in their prompt in mind. They are supernaturally fast and strong, will ignore houses as long as they have a lit pumpkin on the porch outside, and will try to enter each house the moment the candle in the pumpkin goes out. Additionally, they can't be killed, but they can be momentarily stalled by injuring them. By November 1st, 6AM, they will disappear the moment the sun comes out.
The TDM is canon. You can treat this as the game's first real event and pick and choose what threads you would like your character to remember when they enter the game. For characters who app into the game, the events of the TDM will be treated like a dream. Upon awakening from it, characters will find that time has jumped ahead to December 1st. You may also feel free to use similar reality and/or time distortions to explain why the family members your characters have in the TDM aren't the same as the ones they may be assigned to in the game proper.
If you would like to have Halloween content in your relaxed housing prompts, please feel free! You are not beholden to follow our prompts exactly so long as the spirit is maintained.
There is no Network prompt listed, but feel free to wildcard one for your characters anyway.
Although the TDM is canon in the sense that characters are free to remember its events when they app into the game, it does not count as an official plot heavy event, meaning that characters will not receive regains from participating in it.
With regards to the dead trick-or-treaters: you may NPC them however you'd like, but keep the details we've listed in their prompt in mind. They are supernaturally fast and strong, will ignore houses as long as they have a lit pumpkin on the porch outside, and will try to enter each house the moment the candle in the pumpkin goes out. Additionally, they can't be killed, but they can be momentarily stalled by injuring them. By November 1st, 6AM, they will disappear the moment the sun comes out.
Ibis | OC | OTA
[Ibis doesn't often get up early, but there's a lot of weird things about this morning. The tech levels are bizarre - too advanced for her adulthood, but still FAR too primitive for her youth. Did she spend a few thousand years unconscious again? Bullshit.
Well, in situations like this, you need to take the initiative. Ibis quietly makes her way downstairs to the kitchen, finds a serviceable knife, then returns to the bedroom to deal with the man in the other bed.]
Good morning. [She's not brandishing the knife, but she isn't making any particular effort to hide it, either.] I have a few questions for you.
-Gelatin Molds-
[The culinary world of the 1950s might as well be a foreign planet. But hey, these people are... theoretically humans, right? So the food should be human palatable, even if Ibis personally has never seen anything like it.
Welp. Nothing for it but to be open-minded, right? While the rest of the family is still being repulsed, she carves off a corner of the nearest gelatin mold, puts how it looks out of her mind, and takes a bite.]
...You know, it's actually not bad. Unique texture, but I could see myself getting used to this.
[She's a monster.]
-Trick or Treat-
[This place seemed sort of passively nefarious, but not actively hostile until now. She's been lucky until now, but someone mentioned the only weakness these monster children have - the jack-o-lanterns. And her house doesn't have any. So, it's time for an expedition.
Fully aware of how much danger this puts her in, Ibis emerges from her home, beginning a slow, limping trek towards the nearest safe home. Deprived of her cane, she borrowed a fire poker as a cheap substitute, but it's not helping that much. As she makes her way closer to safety, a group of dead children take notice, gleefully advancing on her.
It's a matter of simple math. At her speed, and at their speed, the kids will reach Ibis before she reaches the safety of the home she's headed towards. Rapidly running out of options, she yells, as loud as she can, to try and alert someone from the house that could be her salvation. Hopefully someone hears her before it's too late.]
-October 1st-
No, mostly he's a little bit busy having skin. It's a new and overwhelming experience. By the time Ibis returns with that knife, he's sitting up with wide eyes and rolled up sleeves, squeezing different spots on his arm to test the feelings of it. That's bones inside there, but there's so much else, and it feels so real...? He startles at her voice, and his eyes flicker to the knife.]
Uhhh. Questions?
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Let's start with the easy ones. Who are you?
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That's, that's a very easy one. I'm Papyrus! The Great, uh... Papyrus.
[If he sounds a little unsure, as his eyes flicker down like he's making something up, it's just because this isn't his room or even his body. Is he's supposed to have a different name to match...?]
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Next question. ["What the fuck" would be a good one, but maybe too general.] Do you have any idea how you got here?
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No, I have no idea! I don't even know where here is. [A glance around the room confirms, nowhere familiar. A room with two beds, various old-fashioned decorations, a bunch of family photos. But maybe that wasn't the right answer.]
Am I supposed to...?
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No, I don't know what's going on, either. Just that I don't like it.
I'm Ibis. Have you seen the photos?
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Yeah, there's a lot of photos in here. With frames, and...
[He squints at it, noting the lack of horns, scales, fur, and other telltale signs of monsters. Toriel's shown him old pictures, he has a little better idea what to look for, but he's not certain, disoriented as he is.]
...Humans in them?
[You know, a perfectly normal and human thing to specify.]
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You seem even more confused than me right now.
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[Papyrus touches a hand to his face, as if accidentally poking his eye and wincing at it will help him make sense of which of the faces in the photos is supposed to be him.]
But I don't look like... [He shakes his head, carefully stands from the bed like he's unsteady on unfamiliar legs.] Are there any mirrors around?
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[That isn't his body. That has to be it, right? Whatever he is, he isn't human, and he doesn't realize that he's a human.
So what is he, then? An AI? Another one of those self-proclaimed 'gods'?]
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[In any other circumstance where he found himself kidnapped to an unfamiliar home and and dressed in unfamiliar clothing, he'd make an escape attempt the moment he could head to the bathroom. But in this case, with his very bones out of sight...
He heads out, finding that the hallway holds even more photos of human faces over and over, and starts checking the nearby rooms. Whether Ibis follows or not, it's clear when he finds the mirror: there's a bit of a shriek.]
Oh my god!!
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So, what are you supposed to look like?
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Trick or Treat: text edition
It's idyllic, it's peaceful. Akechi (or Goro, as the neighbors insist on using his given name or even worse, their 'new' family name) hates it to the core of his being. So Ibis, his 'new' mother (who is only 4 years his senior, isn't that a sick joke?) likely hasn't had much luck with him on a social front. He's gone all day investigating and only returns to eat and sleep and not always then. Sure, he plays at being polite but it's not hard to notice the occasional sneer behind her back or the back of the 'father' when he thinks he's not being watched.
But still, when things start going to shit there's a text:]
Are you somewhere safe?
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Still, at times like this, it's only natural to reach out to the people you know, even if it's not all that well.]
I managed to get into a protected house with nothing more than some skinned knees and a bruised dignity. How about yourself?
no subject
Safe enough.
[Which doesn't mean SAFE exactly]
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[Halloween died out millennia ago. Truly a dystopian future.]
I don't suppose you have the resources on hand to make one?
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[A delay]
Shooting them only puts them down for a while, so don't depend on anyone with a weapon.
[AKECHI WERE DID YOU GET A GUN- wait you're 18 and in the fake 60's, getting a gun was easy af]
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Putting them down for a while is better than nothing. Do you have enough bullets to make it to a safer house?
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Not even close.
[tone is impossible to tell over text, but he really doesn't care. He had something to finish back 'home', so surviving was the goal for now. but... he's not exactly scared of dying either]
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