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

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“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…“

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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

[weifinder]

( There are more and more discrepancies he's noting, staying quiet on them as she first flips through the book of maps, then moves to grab the spinning ball with maps on its surface. Ingenious, really, if he knew what the scaling was, or what these land masses to the north or south meant, what these places he'd never considered might be in a world that supported them all.

No, there are other details, and he picks at those. )

To your time, this region you name Russia was known as Russia, where as previously, it was called by another name. Right?

( He hadn't caught which one that was, but it isn't the important point. )

Your time is not a match for what all this indicates. ( He gestures broadly to the room, then to the maps. ) Neither is mine. Is it possible that we aren't in a time familiar to either one of us?

( This would sound more absurd if he wasn't entirely certain this was wildly unlike anything he's ever lived before. )

[blackwaterchild]

[Miu purses her lips, expression sullen and clearly already displeased with the logical assumptions Wei Wuxian is putting together. She doesn't want to think about it like that, because, well, that was impossible. How could it possibly be actually true?

Miu had seen and lived many unexplainable things in her life, but this...]

That's insane. [She responds instantly, tone a bit waspish and defensive] You realize how insane that sounds, right? How could-- What could--

[She looks around, feeling a cold sense of dread settling in her stomach. It was impossible to deny how strange it all was when it was all staring her directly in the face. She moves away to go sit heavily on the edge of the bed, leaning forward as she presses her hands to her face and lets out a deep breath.]

...What the hell... [She mutters into her hands] How could something like that even happen?

[weifinder]

( He knows how insane it sounds, and it feels even more insane to him, but it makes its own sense, too. When she moves to sit down, he watches her in concern, but he doesn't move until she's breathing out.

Wei Wuxian crouches down on the ground before her, not reaching out so much as being the guy in his silky pajamas with his hair all down loose and cascading over his shoulders in an improper display (thanks, realm, he enjoys the unkempt look not at all), he tries: read, tries to be somewhat reassuring. )

Enough power and nearly any kind of realm can be breached. Or an illusion of such a thing can be made real, as seems to be the minimum we're facing here.

( Please don't start crying. That's all he's asking for here without asking for it directly at all! He's studying her with visible worry, but still not breaching personal contact. )

If there's a way to come, there's a way to go. We'll just need to figure it out!

1/3

[blackwaterchild]

[She peeks at him through her fingers, expression wary. She doesn't know how much of that is supposed to help, even if she supposes there's some truth to it.

His concern is also interesting, though she supposes she can understand it a bit more. A crying girl can be a pain to deal with and for a moment Miu considers willing tears to her eyes just to see how he'll react or if he'll get uncomfortable. But the momentary amusement it would cause would probably only lead to her being angry if he tried to comfort her, so really there's no winning here.]

Obviously. [She opts for being sarcastic and disdainful instead, sitting up straighter and frowning at him.] I'm not a kid, you know. [...She's 17, but, you know, shut up!! She very deliberately pokes his forehead] So don't treat me like--

2/2 i lied

[blackwaterchild]

[She snatches her hand back as if burned and stares, wide-eyed for a moment. There's a beat and she looks down at her hands in growing confusion and alarm before she reaches out suddenly to cup his face in her hands, staring intently at him.

Nothing happens, obviously, but that's what's wrong. She can't read his thoughts or his emotions or poke into his memories at all. There's just-- There's nothing. She can feel the warmth of his skin beneath her fingers, but that's it and it's-- It's--

She lets him go and stands up abruptly, moving around him in a desperate move to just get away for a few seconds and disengage herself, feeling suddenly even more hollow and filled with dread than before. She stares blankly at the doorway, trying to wrap her head around being normal and how she's supposed to feel about all of that.]

Hey... You said-- You implied... You could see spirits and all that too, right? [Her voice sounds faint and there's a tremble to it that she hates she can't quite subdue] Can you... Can you feel anything here? Anything at all?

[weifinder]

( Oh thank everything, she doesn't cry. She does poke his forehead, which he would usually at least act put out about, but he's still studying her in turn enough to realise something in what happened went wrong for her. It's there, the way she pulls her hand back, how she stares down at them, and then when she's cupping his face; he could keep himself from raising his brows, but he doesn't, saving even his commentary for once she gets through whatever's going on.

He had no idea what it is specifically, but the general sense of it is easy to pick up on even before she starts asking questions. )

Mah, the younger generation is so bold! Casually touching people's faces just like that...

( Hands up to pat at his own cheeks. He's not unsympathetic, but he is inclined to try and reduce tension when he can. His hands fall back down to his sides, and he offers a half-cocked smile. )

Oh, no. Since I've woken up here, my cultivation's been sealed. All the things I should be able to do, I can't. I take it your own skills rely on touch, so you didn't notice any sealing until now. It's entirely possible all skills any one of us has beyond a normal human state of mortality have been suppressed.

( The why, to him, is both obvious and not: it makes them as a whole off-centered, easier to control, but he doesn't assume that's all it is. )

[blackwaterchild]

[She whirls around to face him, the cool, indifferent facade gone now in the face of this. She looks stricken and panicked]

That's-- But that's impossible! [She grabs at his arm again, as if somehow by sheer force of will alone she can get her power to activate. But there's nothing once again and something about that is terrifying. She can't recall a time she's been alone with her only her own thoughts and mind and she recoils, hugging her torso, brow furrowed.

There's no tears, but she does have to take a few deep breaths to try and steady herself, forcing herself to stand up straight. She smooths her clothes out and schools her face into careful neutrality, not used at all to not being in complete control of herself or her reactions.]

We can't be the only ones here. [She mutters, more to herself than to him. Her fingers curl and uncurl into her palms.] There's a lot of reasons to kidnap me, but they wouldn't go through all of this for just us. And if it was for our powers, they wouldn't-- wouldn't seal them, or whatever.

So what's the point...?

[weifinder]

( He doesn't dislodge her hand, letting her try to do whatever she's clearly trying to do. When she pulls back to hug herself, his hands come up and he gestures placating, though he doesn't follow after her. His hands are still up by the time she's collected herself, and he has to wonder if all teens are this good at doing that. Putting on a mask to handle what needs handling.

Then again, everyone has a public face, and there are many kinds of surviving.

Slowly lowering his hands, he offers her a wan smile: )

I don't know that who we are matters. We won't know until there's some sign we do. ( Really, if someone wanted her... for reasons she apparently knows, he can't say anyone wants him for anything good, so let's not linger over that right now! Thank you! ) Your abilities aren't all you are, even when you think they might be. So what they want aren't those, but what any person is, I suppose...

( A poetic pause: )

Decently attractive!

( Hahaha--oh, right, he clears his throat and waves his hands, dismiss the bad joke. )

No, no, probably more like prone to getting in trouble. Or curious. You're a curious person, I'm a curious person, so why don't we look outside this building to see if we find anyone else just as curious? Or if we find people who aren't, that says something too.