In the Night Moderators (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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memesinthenight2019-09-15 12:44 pm
inthenightmods) wrote in memesinthenight2019-09-15 12:44 pm
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TEST DRIVE MEME #4
TEST DRIVE MEME #4
Hello and welcome to the In the Night test drive meme for September! Thanks for your interest in our game! Reserves open on September 20, and applications open on September 22.
While you're here...
- Take a look at our rules and faq pages to familiarize yourself with the game.
- Note that we have a reserve cap of 20, and a (current) application cap of 13 apps this month for new players, as the game has a player cap of 60. An accurate count of current players will always be available on the taken page.
- TDM threads can become game canon if both players wish. If the situation isn't something that could happen in-game, you're free to chalk it up to some strange hallucination, a shared dream, or other mysterious circumstance.
- Note that this is not limited to new characters threading with characters already in-game. If current players wish to thread out the TDM prompts as canon events, they are welcome to do so. They are welcome to make posts in the main comms for TDM events as well. Please note, however, that actual plot clues or happenings will not occur in TDM prompts.
- If you plan to apply, please keep in mind that we do require at least one sample thread on the application to be from our TDM (though it doesn't need to be the current TDM).
- You're welcome to use the provided prompts or come up with something on your own, but we do ask that all threads take place in our game's setting.
Thank you again, and we hope you'll choose to join us!
log prompts
GATHER YE ROSEBUDS WHILE YE MAY
With a cloud of mourning having weighed heavy on Beacon over the last month, the Lighthouse Keeper has decided to try and rally the community with a game: a selfie scavenger hunt! With the promise of (secret) prizes for those who play along, she's provided a list of 25 different items to track down and take a picture with. And, of course, all submissions will be public for others to view and comment upon. A town forum, Instagram-style. How fun! Feel like teaming up? Finding a companion to go searching with could make the task go by faster, as there's nothing saying that you can't both submit the same pictures so long as you take them together. And what's a proper game without company?
This prompt is a mini version of this month's Gather Up event.
IT'S RAININ' SIDEWAYS
Overall, the weather has been mild lately. Since Autumn hit, the standard has been overcast darkness blotting the stars and little wind. The rumble of thunder sounds just before the downpour begins, as if a switch has been flipped up in the clouds. If you're in the Invincible, the houses in the village, or any of the other solid establishments, it isn't anything to worry about, really. Mostly, it just means hunkering down until the storm passes. However...it seems that someone opted to build themselves a structure in the square that's proven not to be able to withstand these harsher elements. Whether you're the unfortunate sap in the tent or you're merely a bystander, one way or another, you notice its roof cave in, the beams placed to support it buckling inward and trapping the inhabitant inside. It's not enough to crush someone, but it'll surely be difficult to gather oneself as the wind and the rain bears down without mercy. Call for help and maybe someone will hear you, or be the good Samaritan that runs to their aid.
network prompts
I CAN'T *PBBT* UNDERSTAND *PBBT* YOUR ACCENT
Something's wrong. The things that you type and the things that you speak are transforming themselves upon being posted to the network. Or maybe that's not quite accurate, because everything in your posts are certainly your own words...it's just that indiscernible static has descended upon the page and crept into your audio, blocking out pieces of your statements--just enough to change the overall meaning of what you were originally saying. Efforts to clarify don't seem to be improving the situation, and it's hard to say if there's any way of fixing this. Maybe it's a comfort that the problem isn't isolated on your end; after all, that effectively takes the issue out of your hands to solve. Or maybe it's just the opposite. Maybe knowing that the network is experiencing widespread failures, however mild, fills you with a sense of dread and unease. One thing's clear, at least: you'll need a bit of luck to get your point across for the time being.
THE TITLE EQUIVALENT FOR WHEN YOUR GRANDMA COMMENTS ON YOUR UNRELATED FB STATUS AS IF SHE'S WRITING YOU A PERSONAL LETTER
Sometime in the recent past you had a problem. Maybe it was a dire emergency advertised to the community at large, maybe you became overwhelmed with stress and needed the ear of a close friend, or maybe it was just something embarrassing you were sharing in confidence. Unfortunately, regardless of what the message was, it looks like it disappeared the moment you hit send, as if it had been eaten by the network itself. It's been long enough now that you've brushed it off; you've been able to solve your problem one way or another and moved on. That's when it appears, unprompted, on the network for all to see, regardless of how private it was meant to be. Well, now you might have a bit of explaining to do.
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My heart is already breaking for him fyi
This feels... almost normal. Like Hawkins, but at night instead of under a blue summer sky. Like her friends could run around the corner any second now.
Pictures, like at the mall.
Eleven looks down at the tablet, brows drawn together as if she's giving the proposition much too serious a thought. She's breaking all of Hopper's rules, but... she has to start finding her footing here, doesn't she? And the boy with the silver hair is quiet and patient.]
Yes. Please.
[She holds the tablet out to him, frown melting into something a little more earnest and open.]
What... is your name?
no subject
Riku.
[ He says it softly, turning the tablet around to face the screen towards her. ]
You'll need a username. Something people will see whenever you put anything on the network, like leaving a note that anyone can read.
Could always just put your name down. I did. Easier that way.
[ Don't think too much on how, if she sets to work on inputting her username, his teal eyes keep darting over her face, the set of his eyebrows carving a small crease between them. Her return brings up a whole world of possibilities and he grapples with how they're both sweet and sour. Selfish as he is, he saw how it ground one friend down, how it stole another from them in the blink of an eye. Felt the agony and then the relief when the other him was ripped out of existence completely.
He might miss them, but he wouldn't wish this place on anyone, not even his worst enemy (but only because he'd be stuck here with him). ]
It'll be okay. Everyone starts out like you.
no subject
[She looks down at the tablet as if it holds all the mysteries of the world. She... could claim herself Jane, here. It's just that the name doesn't sit quite right. She's Jane Hopper, but she's been Eleven more than she's been Jane, and she's El to anyone she cares about.
And does it matter, here, who can find her and who can't?
Perhaps it matters only when other people... die. And come here. She hopes to see no familiar faces, and sadness passes over her own features for a moment before she draws herself up.
It would be nice to apologize to Hopper, who took her in and wanted to protect her from from the world. Jane Eleven Hopper.
Her fingers tap on the buttons, face set in deep concentration.
jane011
She's both. The number is hers now, as is the name, and she is El. Eleven looks up at Riku with a deep breath.]
El. Easier that way.
no subject
But Riku didn't think he was ever past considering himself something fake, an artificial facsimile of the real thing named Riku.
Maybe it would have taken years for Dawn to get past it, the way Riku was still learning to accept all the parts of himself, the light and the dark. And he was robbed of that chance, but Riku never once detected a hint of regret, in those echoes he felt of his final death. ]
Ok, El.
[ He holds up his hands to take the tablet again, so he can show her how to bring up its camera. ]
Let me show you how to take pictures first. Then you can see the list.
no subject
[Eleven hands it over more easily now. It's not quite hard to gain a rapport with her. Harder, a little, to earn her full trust, but Riku's been kind and patient.
She tucks her hair behind her ear - grown out so much in the past two years, compared to how it was kept shorn short before.
And she watches closely, concentrated, to make sure she learns it right.]
no subject
But they're not people who should be alone. ]
See these? They're applications. Tools you can use to do different things. This one will let you take pictures.
[ Turning the tablet over to show her the small lens, he adds: ]
You'll have to aim this at whatever you're taking a picture of. The screen will show you what it'll look like.
no subject
As Riku explains the lense she looks at him in slight disbelief. She's seen cameras. She's seen screens. This is nothing like any of that. Still looking doubtful, she reaches out and puts her finger on the applications tool for pictures that Riku indicated.]
How do I...get the picture?
[She doesn't understand all intricacies of cameras, but she's seen ones that spit out images, and she's knows some turn into photos to hold and look at later.]
no subject
Kairi was still so new, a miracle from beyond the horizon of their tiny, idyllic world.
She didn't understand the things all Destiny Islanders knew like fish take to water, those little daily details the rest of them all had engraved on their hearts, even as young as five years old, and Riku misses her so much.
Sora had missed her the most, so that's why he had to leave. She's always why he leaves. ]
[ His pupils shrink when he focuses back on Eleven and the moment they're in, normal spots of black in the marine. ]
Where do you see it, once it's taken?
[ He has to look over the screen for a moment to remind himself. Despite his age, Riku's honestly been the type to leave his own Gummiphone untouched for days, neglecting messages, ignoring the network. He always had more important things to do. ]
This one. Right here, see it? Think of it as a picture album. A box to put all your pictures in.
I mean, it's okay, I didn't need my heart or anything. Cries in Riku.
They're all gone.
No...
No, she is gone. She's dead, and they're left behind, and...
Did she fail, then, to protect them? If she's dead, did the Mindflayer leave them alone or did it...
She has to hope it left them alone. Has to hope that her death was just a loss for them, and hasn't made things worse.
Eleven swallows hard and pulls the tablet back to her - if it's yanked from Riku's grasp a little before Eleven's hands touch it, well. Perhaps he notices. She doesn't know that he knows about her, after all. Her grip is white-knuckled.]
No - where does it come out?.
[He has to understand, doesn't he? Eleven has gotten better with words, but not so much that she can explain all of the complex thoughts in her mind, and it can be frustrating, to communicate and always be on the back foot. She'd rather focus on that, right now, than on thinking of her friends and family and how she's dead and how hopefully they're not, and what that means.]
no subject
Except that's not what's upsetting her, he thinks. It just so happens to be something tangible she can focus on.
It happens to, if not all of them, then enough of them to count. A convenient stressor they grapple with because the weight of living in unabated darkness is too nebulous. Riku can't count the number of times he's nearly lost his cool because of some minor inconvenience. ]
It's okay.
[ Riku bids his hands to unfurl from the fists he's curled them into. Gentles her with a tone soft and low. ]
It's just different. It's okay.
[ Anyone else might have rightly been startled by a tablet that moves on its own. It's possible he didn't even notice, or chalked it up to the hallucinations and other phenomenon that plague those with more prolonged exposure to the darkness that covers over this dead world. ]
The pictures stay inside. Want to try it?
no subject
For now, she swallows, hard. Realizing the coil of anger loosens as fast as it tightened, and is almost more frustrated by that. It leaves behind a dull resignation and a faint sense of fear at this place and its darkness and its lack of anything she knows.
But Riku is only something - someone - she doesn't know. He's not darkness.
Eleven blinks at the tablet, then nods. Her eyes are swimming a little bit, but no tears are spilling. She takes a deep breath and finally looks up at him again.]
Yes. Please. Will you... help?
no subject
The people who use it without losing themselves to the temptations and entrapments of the Darkness are few indeed, but these things can make people powerful. There's sayings on many worlds to the same effect: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, for example.
Hang onto that anger, keep it locked away until you need it. Just don't let it drown you. The resignation, though, that's harder to handle. Riku knows, because he struggles with it often these days, the despair.
Nodding, Riku turns the tablet without having it leave her hands, tilting it in her hands until, with a glance back towards the bonfire, Riku can determine it's probably aimed towards it burning in the distance. ]
Can you see the fire on the screen?
Try pressing that button I showed you. Take a picture of it.