TDM - OCTOBER 2020

[robbies]

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.

---

OCTOBER 1st.

It becomes very clear very quickly that this isn’t a simple kidnapping. If you’re twenty years old or older, the bedroom you wake up in is very clearly a couple’s bedroom — with separate beds like a modest, modern couple of course! A similarly lost and confused stranger is in the other. They are your counterpart, for everything in this room has a matching counterpart — the nightstand and lamp each of you have beside your beds, the framed pictures on the wall, even your pajamas. If you’re under twenty years old, your room is smaller but more personalized, filled with comic books, model kits, stray baseball cards littered around the floor. Dolls, fashion magazines of people dressed from a bygone era, stacks of vinyl records neatly arranged next to a record player. And then there are the pictures. They’re everywhere in the house — in a frame on your nightstand, hung on the walls, stuck in the photo albums and scrapbooks lying on your desk or tucked away in drawers. Here you are on your wedding day, exchanging vows with your partner. Here’s you sitting in a fishing boat with one of the younger members of your house. Here’s a picture of you at ten years old getting ready for the first day of school. All of the photographs are aged, sepia, even yellowed and dusty in frames hung for a long, long time. 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?

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.

---

▶ NAVIGATION ◀
COMMS	logs | network | ooc | memes
OOC INFO	premise | rules | faq | taken | applications | hiatus/drop/canon updates | reserves | mod contact
SETTING INFO	calendar | setting | housing | npcs | death and tranquilizing | event suggestions/engagements

Comments

Dora (The Explorer) | Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)

[canyousay]

1. October 1st (feel free to assume family connections, naturally)

[ Dora could fill a whole research journal with places this room she has woken up isn't. Her own, for one thing! Or any of her friends. Or where she had just been, and where she had heard whatever that call for help was! Or the jungle, but waking up in the jungle might have been stranger than wherever this is.

It's a very normal bedroom, structurally (and this is something she tests, making sure the walls are solid and that this is not some kind of trick or game show), but she recognizes precious little of what's in it. But that's not unusual for her, so she spends some time figuring out what the things in here are and what they do.

It's that search that, eventually, leads her to the pictures. Pictures of her with a family that is... definitely not her family. Pictures that would be incredibly hard to falsify, you know, on account of the childhood spent exploring the jungle. Pictures that are, fundamentally, impossible.

So she takes one out into the hallway, and the very first person she sees receives a very cheerful: ]

Oh! Hola. You're one of the people in these pictures. Did you make them? It's sort of weird to do that without telling me.

2. Getting to know the neighbors A

[ The gelatin nightmares are definitely enough to give even Dora pause, her usual cheer replaced by confusion and, moreover, concern. She takes a spoonful out of one of them and raises it up to investigate it further. ]

This... I'm sure this is technically safe to eat, but why did that lady make it? She could have stopped like... seven ingredients ago.

3. Always respect the dead (cw: violence, etc)

[ Dora gets the feeling that, as Halloweens go, this one is something of an outlier. For starters, the candy isn't really recognizable! But then a lot of things aren't recognizable here, so she's fine with that. She made a costume! It's a little slapdash, and right now it's not in amazing shape, but she's dressed as a... mountain? It's a little hard to recognize it right now, but that was the idea at the start of the night.

It's different now, of course on account of the, well. The zombie children? She tried peace, she really did! But then they went and made that hard, and totally wrecked her costume, so now she's running down the street back towards her house with... she got a camping knife from someone at some point in all this, it's fine. ]

I'm very sorry, I don't like having to stab people! I'm only doing this because it's an emergency!

[ She says, stabbing a (former) people. It does nothing, and she sort of. Kicks the former child away and keeps running. ]

4. Wildcard!

[ Wanna do something else? Leave it here and/or dm this account to hash out details! ]

1. October 1st

[spaghettimonster]

[It's well-spotted on Dora's part to recognize this man as one of the people in the pictures, with his current attire and expression. He's squinting at one of the hallway pictures, dressed in old-fashioned pajamas, with a sleeping cap in hand and hair far curlier and far less styled than the look in most of the family photos. But the shape of his face is very much the same, past the baffled frown.

At the question he turns the squint in Dora's direction, glancing down at the frame in her hand, and shakes his head helplessly.]

I... no, I didn't make these pictures. I don't know where they came from!

[Papyrus doesn't know where this house came from, or the unfamiliar body he's woken up in, and it's all a little stressful.]

[canyousay]

Oh!

[ Dora, at least, takes this in stride. Someone else in the same situation! And he seems a little stressed, which is... understandable, given the circumstances! And so, she decides to try to help this strange man! ]

Then you were also kidnapped here, right? [ She leans in a little, still cheery as she adds: ] Is this your first time being kidnapped?

[spaghettimonster]

[Papyrus doesn't lean away from her, despite the intensity of her interest, mainly because he's frozen up.]

Y-yeah. At least, the first time I've been kidnapped this hard!

[Kidnapped not only from his house and kingdom, but from his very body? But surprise invitations to parties, where a friend grabbed him and literally hauled him over her shoulder, count as kidnapping, probably.]

Is this your first time? [She seems to be taking it in stride, which makes him think maybe not.]

[canyousay]

[ She shakes her head. ]

No, I was kidnapped once - sort of, anyway, but there was more... they made it really obvious. And I can move my hands, so I don't think it's the same thing.

[spaghettimonster]

Oh my god, I'm so glad we're not tied up.

[Imagine if they'd woken up like this, but tied to railroad tracks or suspended over a vat of acid, or some other scenario taken right from a comic book. He wiggles his fingers with more appreciation for them than ever.]

And they're your own hands?

[He's just, you know, checking. Maybe it's the stress talking.]

[canyousay]

As far as I know!

[ Though that does prompt her to check her hands, inspecting them closely. ]

Yup! Unless someone else's hand have that same scar from tree-climbing when I was little. Is something wrong with yours?

1.

[zenryokubatankyu]

[Osomatsu is walking through the house, taking a look around. Okay. A lot of people he doesn't recognize in these pictures. Still, he's...trying to comprehend all of this when he sees a...oh. It's one of them. One of the people from the pictures. A cheerful sounding teenage girl.]

H...ola? Hola. [He barely knows what that means from Karamatsu telling him that as an 'eloquent foreign greeting' before.] I, uh...did not make these. Assuming you didn't either. But either way, yeah, it is weird...this entire situation is, even outside of the pictures...

[canyousay]

[ It's not exactly heartening to hear that someone else is in the same situation she is, but it is heartening to see someone else address her back in Spanish, so it evens out! ]

It's very strange, but don't worry, I've been kidnapped before. I wonder if someone is after my parents' research again... though this is a lot of trouble to go through for something like that, and I don't feel like a hostage...

[zenryokubatankyu]

[...She says this so casually??? What kind of lives are the youth of today leading?!]

Ah...I mean, I guess it sounds like you're really important. I don't think that's the case, though, because it doesn't feel like we're really captured and even if we were...I don't really have anything really notable to be some kind of hostage for. I'm just a normal guy...so this seems like it might be something else. I can't imagine what, though...

[canyousay]

[ Super normal ones! ]

Well, then the good news is if I've been kidnapped for the same reason, it's not going to work! But then the bad news is I have no idea why we're here... but I'm sure we can figure something out!

3

[krmvgivv]

[Dipper's costume is mostly in tact, thanks mostly to the fact that it's a jumpsuit. He's lurking on his porch next to a lit jack-o-lantern when he hears her apologizing to the zombies.

He looks around but, as usual, it seems like it's up to him to help. He grabs the shovel he's been using and charges off the porch. Once he reaches her he offers a hand.]

Come with me if you want to not get zombie guts all over you!

[canyousay]

[ In her defense, she's never seen a zombie movie before, she's just out here doing her best.

But she nods and takes it - with the hand not holding the knife, obviously. ]

I would definitely prefer that!

1

[righthandstand]

[So this is supposed to be his little sister. Okuyasu feels weird wearing an ironed shirt and slacks, like he doesn't belong in them, but it's what he's wearing in the pictures.

The scars on his face don't match those clothes, either.]

You think I know how to make fake pictures or what?

[canyousay]

[ If anything about him intimidates her, Dora absolutely doesn't show it. ]

Maybe! Diego says anyone can, with that "photo shop" thing on his computer. Buuuut that sounds like a "no."

[righthandstand]

Never heard of anyone doin' that before. [He's form the 90's. All Okuyasu knows how to do on a computer library is look up websites.]

You think it's one of those other people in the picture? It's a really messed up thing to do if they want kids so bad.

[canyousay]

Maybe... have you seen either of them? I guess they could answer best.

[righthandstand]

Nope! [He stands up straight and looks from right to left. No one else here.] They probably have no idea, either.

...Or they could be the ones behind it. [Evil adults kidnapping children, that makes total sense!] We gotta be care if they're still hidin' from us. They could still be in their bedroom and not woke up yet.

1

[bisexualdisaster]

[Alex looks sleep rumpled and a little grumpy, which isn't surprised because he just woke up in this weird-ass house with some strange woman who is definitely not his boyfriend and all these pictures claiming they're married (but also not sharing a bed?? Not that he wants to, it's just weird) and kids he doesn't know in pictures and... oh look, here's one of them.]

Hola chica. Much as I appreciate your faith in my photoshop skills... nope. I have no idea where those creepy things came from.

[canyousay]

[ Oh good, someone else who speaks spanish!! She sighs. ]

So I guess we're in the same weird kayak... do you have any idea what's going on?

[bisexualdisaster]

Well, the most logical explanation is this is all some weird hallucination and I'm going to wake up with a killer hangover.

[But he doesn't sound like he believes it even as he says it.]

[canyousay]

Hm... I guess so, but it's probably a bad sign if we're both hallucinating the same thing.

1

[eudaimonikos]

Oh...hola.

[For an old white man, his Spanish actually sounds very good. It's through no virtue of his own. Demons can speak all the human languages; it's not as though English is his first language either.

He's not sure what we're doing here, but she's gone back to English, so he'll do so as well.]

No. They're very...creepy. [Not the worst thing happening here, but it's a...a good touch.] Who are you?

[canyousay]

[ Oh! That is remarkably good Spanish for an old white man in a suit. ]

My name is Dora! I... also have no idea what I'm doing here, and think these photos are creepy, if we're being honest.

[eudaimonikos]

I'm Michael. It's nice to meet you...considering.

[At her comment, he looks at one of the pictures on the wall again - a family shot of the two of them plus a couple others - and winces. Photo-Michael has his arm around his "wife's" waist. He wouldn't hold even Janet or Eleanor, his best friends, like that. It's horribly familiar.

Reaching up, he takes it off the wall and places it face-down on the nearest end table.]

Seen either of those other people around? That woman wasn't in the creepy fifties bedroom.