TDM - JANUARY 2021

[robbies]

TEST DRIVE MEME - JANUARY 2021

Good to the last gasp.
CW: gaslighting, potential mentions and depictions of trauma and other problematic material, body horror, dolls, violence

---

“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 outside of it carrying faintly, it all becomes very clear—

Something is horribly wrong.

---

JANUARY 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, the morning news is playing. The newscaster, a man in a gray suit and horn-rimmed glasses, keeps shuffling his paperwork on his desk as black and white footage of people in the midst of celebration — throwing streamers, wearing paper hats, toasting flutes of bubbly liquid — is interspersed between his droning report: ”New Year's Eve was in full swing last night as citizens from all over Santa Rosita came together to ring in 1961. A surge in ginger ale and sparkling cider beverage sales was reported by Honeybees as early as eight o'clock in the evening, a boon for the store…“

---

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. CLOWN AROUND. If December was a time for sweet treats and good food, January is the month where everyone is trying to unload their leftovers. Who better to enjoy them than you, the newest family on the block? Your neighbors have quite a bit of food to share: Throughout the month, they'll stop by to say hello, bringing a new sugary dish with them each time. As always, jello molds are a staple. One plate turns into three turns into five, and by the end of the first week of January, you're likely to end up with a collection of jiggling pink, green, and orange lumps taking up space in your fridge. From mountains of Whip 'n Chill to Broken Window Glass cake, you'd be forgiven in thinking that there's no end to it. And yet, there's the occasional exception. Someone comes by with a Bundt cake lathered in vanilla icing and topped with rainbow sprinkles. Were it not for the giant candy clown head topping it, it would almost look good enough to eat. "There's a rumor going around that you've been a bit under the weather, so I thought this would cheer you up!" they say, right before thrusting the technicolor nightmare into your hands, the clown's dead pink frosted eyes staring up at you. Your neighbor is quick to tell you to eat it while the icing is still fresh (you never know who might lick it off when you're not looking, eh kids?), but not that the clown itself is made out of styrofoam. That's something you'll just have to find out for yourself when you take it back inside and start chowing down!

B. SNOW DAY

What awakens you one cold Friday morning isn't the blare of your alarm clock or your family getting ready to start their day or even the chilly air that tickles your toes as they poke out from the bottom of your covers, but the sound of hooting and hollering outside your window. The sight that awaits you when you go to investigate is something out of a Norman Rockwell painting: The entire neighborhood is outside, playing and carrying on in the snow. While everyone was sleeping, Santa Rosita got four inches of snow, more than enough for the schools to close but not enough to stop everyone from enjoying it.

And enjoy it they are! Children build snowmen in their front yards while their fathers work on shoveling their driveways. Most, however, are busy erecting snow forts in their yards and the middle of the street, running back and forth as they collect ammunition for an ongoing snowball fight that takes up half of the neighborhood. Nobody is spared from their assault, not even the adults, and especially not the newly arrived ones who leave the house. Good luck getting the mail, mom and dad!

"Come on! There's plenty of snow!" one young boy yells at you over a snowdrift. "You can join my team!"

"Nuh-uh!" another boy shoots back. "You can join my team!"

And on and on it goes. Well, for the pacifists among you, making snow angels is always an option!

---

THROUGHOUT JANUARY.

CW: gaslighting, potential mentions and depictions of trauma, and other problematic material

There’s no business like show business! And business is hopping at the Starlight Drive-In, which has been boasting about its all-new film premiering on January 2nd and playing all month long. The critics are raving, the townspeople are flocking, and plans to go to the drive-in seems to be all anyone can talk about. “Make sure you get there early to see the serials,” many of them suggest, eyes wide with excitement. “I couldn’t look away!” Whether you come with your family, your friends, or simply come on your own, the lot is packed, Robbies and normal townsfolk alike beaming as they hook the individual speakers onto their cars. Apropos of the cold weather, the concession stand has added seasonal items to their menu, serving up hot chocolate and kettle corn in addition to its usual soda and popcorn. Watching a movie against a backdrop of gently falling snow while you're sipping on steaming chocolate and melted marshmallows has a certain je nais se quoi to it that even you have to admit is appealing. At last, when it's finally dark enough to start, the projector clicks on from the booth in the back of the lot and the movie begins. A. COMING ATTRACTIONS. The movie, Curse of the Doll People, is a horror flick. A real chill-o-rama, starring actors you've never heard of playing a group of archeologists who unknowingly trigger a deadly curse that sets a group of murderous living dolls upon them. The poster pasted on the ticket booth promises it'll be the most fun you'll have screaming. Unfortunately, you have to sit through several minutes of previews first. The coming attractions aren't anything special — a bunch of westerns, a romance, even a beach musical. Far from being bored to tears like you might be, the people in the cars around you are glued to the screen, popping snacks into their mouths and whispering their commentary among themselves. The movie is the reason why everyone's here, sure, but you don't just get one flick out of going to the pictures! There's also the serials, little 5—10 minute long chapter plays that tell a story in pieces. Nothing can beat those, and when the first one starts, everyone sits in rapt attention as if it were the feature presentation itself. But as the scene opens up on a sight that is instantly familiar to you, and your own face stares back at you from the projection screen, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary film. You watch your memories play out in grainy black and white footage, aired for all the world to see. Or perhaps not — though you may not realize it, the movie playing out on the screen differs from person to person. No one sees the same thing. The person next to you might see one of their worst fears come to life, whether imagined or real, practical or fantastic. You might see one of the worst moments of your life — the death of a friend, your hated enemy bringing you to the brink of death, your absolute lowest point — exactly the way you remember it... save for the way your double on the screen occasionally turns to face the audience, staring directly at you with a knowing smirk and a wink. Or the way your loved ones will sometimes go off-script, gazing at you with pleading eyes as they beg you to help them. The people of Santa Rosita will see an exciting battle between two pirate ships, swashbuckling and cannon fire in place of the traumas you're witnessing. When the serial ends on a cliffhanger, much to the disappointment of everyone around you, it's almost a mercy. "Tune in next week for the thrilling second part!" Well, you will, won't you?

---

END OF THE MONTH.

CW: body horror, dolls, violence

Aside from the horror of the drive-in, January might seem to be passing calmly... until one night, something changes. In the middle of the night, once you fall asleep in your comfortable bed (or on your couch, or with your head lolling against the kitchen table), a nightmare comes to you. The shift from whatever dreams you were having to the cold, dark void you find yourself standing in happens gradually and quietly. So too does the image that plays out in your mind's eye: From out of the darkness, a featureless mannequin stands ramrod straight, facing you with its arms pressed rigidly to its sides. It has no face, no identifying marks, no features at all. It's a blank slate in every sense of the word... until it isn't. Slowly, the material of the lower half of its face begins to split as a searing pain tears through your own, as if invisible fingers are ripping your lips off inch by inch. The slit on the doll's face widens and deepens until, finally, mercifully, its new mouth opens as yours disappears, replaced by a flat, smooth barrier of skin. Like it was never there to begin with. The pain returns, this time in your arms and neck — right as the doll's own begin to jerk. Your joints are hardening, seizing up as the doll's arms go from minutely twitching to slowly flexing. While every nerve and bone from your fingertips all the way up to your shoulders grows heavy, the doll tilts its head and looks down at its hands, as if seeing them for the first time. By the time it takes its first step, you've taken your last: the pain has spread to your feet, ankles and toes hardening and locking into place. Every part of you is claimed this way; what isn't taken by force simply fades from your body and shifts into being onto the doll's, your skin replacing its cloth body, your clothing dressing it, your hair filling out its head. Your tongue goes numb as the licks its newfound lips, coarse cloth and batting surging up from your lungs and all the way to the back of your throat. By the time it's over, you can't move. You can no longer breathe. All you can do is stare at the perfect, eyeless double of yourself standing before you. As your eyes begin to burn, the last thing you see before everything goes black is the sly curve of a smile — your smile — before the face wearing it turns away and walks back into the darkness. Luckily, you wake up to a room full of sunshine and the distant sound of traffic as the neighborhood gets ready for another beautiful day. The morning air feels cold and dry on your skin. You're you. As much as you've always been. Right?

A. DOPPELGANGER.

It's the kind of morning that makes you want to sing. Where the sky was once dull and grey, it's now a deep blue. Barring the usual hustle and bustle on the streets of Shadyside, the first sound that greets you when you wake up is the steady beat of water trickling outside your window as the snow begins to gently melt under the rays of the sun. You may even hear the chirp of a bird! January, in all its dreariness, is nearly at an end.

When you leave the room to go downstairs — or upstairs, if you slept in the living room — the house is quiet and flooded with sunlight. With how perfectly silent everything is, it's easy to mistake the calm for solitude and think you're alone.

This is not the case.

Waiting to greet you is a familiar figure. If you go downstairs, you'll see it sitting in your kitchen with its head bowed and its arms hanging limply at its sides; if upstairs, lying in your bed on its back. There's no mistaking who it is. Even at a distance, their hair, face, clothes and features all instantly recognizable, and you know who it is before you even fully register their presence:

You.

Motionless, your doppelganger looks more puppet than person. Its chest is still, not a single breath leaving its mouth. Its eyes are closed. They snap open when you get closer to it, wide enough to see the whites, as its head jerks up to look straight at you. In a staccato imitation of your voice, it chirps at you:

"Hi!"

"Good morning!"

"Hello!"

"Rise and shine!"

Your clone is a good imitation, but not a perfect one. Its movements are stiff and uncoordinated, like a marionette being commanded by unseen strings. Though its cheeks are rosy, its skin is pale and almost glossy with the texture of newly polished porcelain. None of these setbacks bother it in the very least. If left alone, it goes about the house mimicking your morning routine, though given how awkward just walking is for it, it's almost certain to do a very bad job. Still, it tries its hardest, following you all day around the neighborhood, trying to imitate your movements — all with a smile!

That is, until you become aggressive with it.

It doesn't take much to set your doppelganger off — a simple shove will do it. When that happens, its eyes will do the impossible and open even wider, its mouth yawning into a wail that pitches louder and louder. That's the point when it will lunge at you. Its hands will try to go for your throat, but not always. It's resourceful enough to improvise with whatever it has around it, whether that be a kitchen knife, a paperweight, or even a letter opener. Luckily for you, they're fragile. Just hitting them is enough to crack and chip away at their skin. With enough strength, their limbs can even come off. Unluckily, they don't stay down for long; even a severed appendage can be popped back into its proper ball-jointed place.

All the while, they never stop childishly whining and shrieking at you.

"Not nice!"

"Why are you so mean?!"

"Not nice, not nice, NOT NICE!"

The only way to shut them up for good is to keep pummeling them until they're nothing but a pile of doll parts. But be thorough — even a mouth that's nothing but a shard of porcelain can still talk.

---

OOC INFO

Hello, and welcome to We're Still Here's second 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 February 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. Additionally, starting today comments made to the TDM will now count towards Activity Check. Current players are permitted to use up to five comments from it for this month's Activity Check — half of the required amount to pass. The other five must be made within the game's communities.

If you would like to have January or other winter-themed 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.

A note about the drive-in theater: Players are in full control over what memories, phobias, or fears the serials before the movie will depict. You can also specify whether or not other characters will be able to see your character's serial. Be sure to label your threads with relevant content warnings if needed!

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Comments

doppelganger

[the_caped_crusader]

I wouldn't expect an answer, if I were you.

[ the voice is familiar, cheering her on silently from a short distance away as she struggles in the remnants of her garden. whenever she's finished dealing with her body snatcher, she'll rise to find bruce dressed in his costume, arms crossed, like maybe he had been watching the whole time. ]

Took you long enough. I was wondering when you'd remember you could actually fight.

[sonicsiren]

Didn't really have a reason to fight until I found the creepy fembot in my kitchen.

[The thing, whatever it was, is in pieces now. Its mouth was the last thing to go, and that Dinah had stomped on quite a few times before it stopped asking Dinah why she was so mean. She turns back to Bruce, wiping her brow with the back of her hand, finally looking at her fellow Justice Leaguer with a short, relieved smile.]

Oh, great. You have your whole suit and I don't even have a pair of fishnets to my name. It's good to see you, though.

[Definitely a pleasant surprise.]

Did you find one of these in your kitchen, too?

[the_caped_crusader]

Bettie Page was big in the fifties and sixties, wasn't she? I think you'll be alright. Mine is a little more discretionary.

[ he takes a few steps forward, directly past her, to inspect the pile of not!dinah now littering her bushes. ]

Hm. I did. It's all taken care of. I figured I'd stop by and welcome you to the neighborhood. I see I was a little late, though.

[sonicsiren]

Mostly the fifties. By the time the sixties hit, she was converting to Christianity and wanted to become a missionary, leaving her pin-up days behind her.

[Dinah gives a casual little shrug.]

My old partner Starling was a huge fan of Bettie Page. There's always one in any group.

[She's standing next to Batman now and leans down, picking up a little shard of her doppleganger.]

I'm not exactly the person anyone turns to for tech-knowledge - you, Barbara, and Ollie have always been better at that sort of thing - but this Stepford Doppeldoll seems surprisingly well-built for this era. She lasted longer than some punching bags I've met in a dark gym.

[Dinah throws the piece back down into the rose bushes and sighs softly.]

Glad you stopped by to say hello, though. Even gladder that you didn't bring a Jell-O mould cake. It's barely been a month and I've had enough of those for a lifetime.

So, talk to me. None of this is normal. My memories are futzing out on me, and even my cry is gone. What do you know?

[the_caped_crusader]

Not much. I've only been here for a little over a month now. You have any coffee?

[ when bruce stands, he's comfortable enough to take a few steps away from dinahbot, glancing towards her "home." ]

We're stuck in the year 1961. Calendar reset on New Year last week. Other than that, all I can tell you is that we've been expected to play our individual roles in a nuclear family. Events like this haven't been unheard of either, but good luck getting anybody around here to acknowledge it.

[ he offers a quick glance her way. ]

And it's good to see you too, by the way.

[sonicsiren]

Come on inside. I can't promise that the coffee's going to be very good - mine veers a little more towards sludge than it does deliciously roasted bean juice - but something's better than nothing, right?

[Hey, at least she's honest about it. Dinah's a woman of many talents, but things involving the kitchen has never really been one of them. She does make a great glass of ice water, though.

Concern settles across her face as she leads Batman into her, er, home.]

1961 is an upside-up year, so if there was ever a time to be stuck in a time loop, I guess this is literally it.

Have you seen any other familiar faces here? Barbara? Diana? Ollie?

[The kitchen is a mess, courtesy of Dinah's fight with the doppelganger. There's a long chef's knife sticking out of the wall, a broken chair, a dented frying pan. She was clearly using everything in the room to her advantage. Dinah swiftly arranges the chairs that aren't broken around the Formica dining table and brings the pot of coffee to the table with cream, sugar, mugs, and spoons. A coffee cake - brought by one of the neighbors - soon follows.]

Make yourself comfortable. As comfortable as it gets here, I guess. I have so many questions. Who's, what's why's. I mean, is this some weird Truman Show reality project we've been kidnapped and duped into?

[the_caped_crusader]

Sometimes I think the only one of us who ever learned how to cook was Clark. Farm boy...

[ he takes a seat in the mess of her kitchen before decowling. ]

Selina was here. She's... gone now, though. I haven't met anybody else. As far as who's behind all of this, I have a feeling the answer is more sinister than we think.

[sonicsiren]

I haven't had the luck to have his cooking yet, but Diana's told me that his blueberry pancakes were out of this world. Kind of a fitting description, all things considered.

[She HAS had Ollie's chili. Many times. Many, many times. As much as she loves the man, his cooking is nowhere near as good as he thinks it is. Not that she'll ever tell him that.]

Oh...I'm sorry. Are you okay?

[She can't imagine that Selina would have been particularly happy or comfortable here, but her skills could definitely have come in handy. Still, it would be awful if Ollie had been here, and then he suddenly wasn't. She pours out coffee for both of them and nudges Bruce's cup and saucer towards him.]

Given the few people I've met and talked to, I'm getting the distinct feeling that this isn't something as simple as a fictional world we've been brainwashed into by Mad Hatter.

[the_caped_crusader]

It's never anything that simple anymore. Doctor Destiny, Scarecrow... I was hoping for a break getting thrown into new worlds now that The Batman Who Laughs is out of the picture.

[ he takes a sip of the coffee and stifles a grumble, though it's still... audible. ]

Hn. But, anyway, it's fine. I'm fine. I'd rather she be back in Gotham than here dealing with God knows what.

[sonicsiren]

I'm not sure any of us are ever going to be lucky enough to have a break, Bruce. One way or another, one reason or another, we were all pulled into this life. I've seen firsthand with Babs how someone just keeps getting pulled back into the life.

[Hell, even the year that she'd taken off to tour with a rock band named after her had been fraught with superheroics and villains and even an unexpected explanation for the origin of her Canary Cry.]

I warned you it was bad. The cream and sugar help. A little.

I'd...like to not have an extended stay here. Between Gotham City and Seattle, there's a lot I have going on that I can't afford to leave behind. You, of all people, know exactly how that is. It's clearly not going to be easy - the usual suspects aren't anywhere on this list - but maybe if we work together, we can solve this mystery? I have to admit, it's fantastic having a familiar, trustworthy face here.

[the_caped_crusader]

It may not seem like it sometimes, but I trust my family to look over things while I'm gone.

[ though he would like to go home as well. behind is normal agitation is the additional sort that comes with having too many questions and not enough answers. ]

For now, we just have to play along. I started a neighborhood watch. Feel free to join, if you want. It's certainly not the Justice League, but we do get together for coffee on weekends sometime.

[sonicsiren]

Every family has their trials and tribulations. I've seen it with yours, I've seen it with Ollie and his in Seattle. It's not something I've had much first-hand experience in myself, I'll admit, but I know that when the chips are down, you're all there for each other.

[Sure, she's come close a few times - the Birds of Prey are the closest she's ever had to family, and the Black Canary band were family of a sort, even if for much of it they didn't exactly trust her because of all the secrets. Ollie...well. She loves Ollie, just as she'd loved Kurt, but she's already done the marriage thing once. ...twice, counting this mess. Gah.]

Of course you've started a neighborhood watch.

[She'd expect nothing less, and honestly, she probably would have done the same. Whatever's going on, there's always strength in numbers.]

As long as I'm not the one who's making the coffee - though Canary coffee torture might be something I want to add to my repertoire in the future - I think that sounds like a good idea.

[the_caped_crusader]

There's a guy named Levi over on Midwich who makes a pretty good cup.

[ and with that, he takes another sip of her crude oil and imagines distantly that it's something else. ]

Mm... before I forget, speaking of your powers, you may get them back sooner rather than later.

[sonicsiren]

[Dinah, who has been poking at a piece of the cake she'd brought, hesitant to actually eat it, drops her fork at that, eyes glittering, Does she remember a time before she had the Canary Cry? Yes, of course. Her childhood, most of her time with Team 7. It was just Dinah, her wits, and her ability to survive. But even she has to admit, the sonic scream helps.]

How? I assume it's somewhat similar to how you got your, ah, look back.

[Bruce is intelligent, yes, and handy, but there's no way he created the Batman suit from materials available here, right?]

[the_caped_crusader]

Uhuh.

[ he sets his cup aside and picks up his cowl, examining it as he responds. ]

Though I can't speak to the quality. This suit is only the bare basics. Most of the tech has been removed. How they managed to know all of this and then retrograde it is another problem entirely.

[sonicsiren]

Whoever this is, they seem to know too much. Identities, secrets, our pasts. I'm still troubled by the movie at the drive-in the other night.

[Oh god. The movies. Dinah's past is bad enough, but she knows Bruce has had a tough life, too. A tough past.]

Please tell me you avoid the drive-in.

[It's not that he needs to be babied or protected, but she's fairly certain he's relived the worst parts of his past all-too-often to have it appear on the screen.]

Maybe wherever this is, it's not really 1961, but a really great facsimile of it. Or, you know, one of a hundred different possibilities.

[The thing is, wherever they are - whenever they are - there's others she's met who don't know anything about places named Gotham, Metropolis, or Coast City, so this is far, far bigger than just Dinah and Bruce.]

[the_caped_crusader]

Whoever, or more worryingly, whatever.

[ his eyes lose focus, staring past the cowl in his hands. a moment of silence passes between them before he continues his thoughts. ]

I feel like I've been... forgetting things. Like I've done something like this before. It might be a good idea to start writing things down, though there's no telling if that'll help. The townspeople all know more than they let on, but they're afraid to acknowledge it.

[sonicsiren]

Whatever hadn't even crossed my mind, I hate to admit.

[But it was also a very real, very terrifying possibility.]

Look. Given what we've experienced at the drive-in that night, I wouldn't be surprised if we're somehow being surveilled by who-or-whatever it is that has an interest in us. Writing things down isn't a bad idea, but I'm concerned that the things we write down might somehow get snatched away from us when we're not paying attention. It's clear that people who we don't consider family are able to come into our homes whenever we want - look at the doppelgangers.

We should share our notes out - make doubles and distribute them amongst the neighborhood watch group. or give it to someone else we trust - anything that keeps us from forgetting what we know.

I don't suppose we can take a townsperson to the tallest building in town and threaten to drop them unless they sing?

orz! i don't know how this got buried

[the_caped_crusader]

Not unless you want to see a mental breakdown in public. I've watched it happen-- press them too much and they just... break.

[ bruce audibly exhales through his nostrils and crosses his arms, easier to think now that he actually has someone here that he can talk to. despite the rough relationship dinah and bruce have had in the past, they are both very capable, and both very aware of it. ]

Anyway, you know how I feel about sharing information, Dinah. I know you'll do what you think is right, but I think I'll play my cards closer to my chest... present company excluded.