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memesinthenight2019-12-14 09:42 pm
inthenightmods) wrote in memesinthenight2019-12-14 09:42 pm
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Test Drive Meme #7
TEST DRIVE MEME #7
Hello and welcome to the In the Night test drive meme for November! Thanks for your interest in our game! Reserves open on December 20, and applications open on December 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 2 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
MAGIC CASTLE IN THE LAND OF SWEETS
You wake up one morning to find that The Night Market has come to Beacon, rising from the depths of the lake to set up booths and stalls all around the square. As a market, they offer a variety of goods and services typically unavailable to the good people of Beacon. Lantern charms that grant special and boosted abilities? Check. Magical potions to imbue the imbiber with fun but temporary effects? Got 'em. Specialty goods from home? Can do. Cigarettes? You bet your buns. The only catch? It all comes at a price.
Accepted currencies at the Night Market include: Building and scrap materials, old tablets, old lanterns, captured forest spirits, torches, information, and most importantly... Plutonium. Of course, attempting to barter is always an option... but these currencies are your best bet for dealing with the various vendors offered by the Night Market.
And finally, if bartering isn't your speed, The Night Market has also brought with it a host of activities akin to a street festival. Warm up with a hot toddy or gourmet latte from the pop-up coffee booth, sample a treat from the candy shop, or win your bae a stuffed forest spirit or mechanical goldfish from the carnival games. Above all? Have fun!
This prompt is a mini version of the game's Pleader event.
BATTLE WITH THE (RAT) KING
Throughout the month, the residents of Beacon will discover that a familiar and not particularly wanted visitor has returned. Strangely, the creature appears to be incised by the holiday decorations that have been put up by those so inclined. It goes after any decoration it can, intent to rip them down, tear them, sometimes even run off in a tangle of garland. In particular, the Rat King goes into a frenzy any time it spies a nutcracker, and won't stop until it sinks its teeth into the wooden soldiers. It could be worse, you suppose. The thing doesn't seem to be paying mind to people unless they get in its way. Still, there are some residents that went to a lot of trouble to put this all together. Maybe you should help?
Or maybe you're scrooge and just want to watch the Rat King do its business. That's also fair. Just expect to get some coal in the secret santa exchange.
network prompts
MARCH OF THE TOY SOLDIERS
At some point while you were out and about, minding your own business, you find yourself in quite the troubling situation. All of a sudden, you're surrounded by what appears to be a small army of tin soldiers. The reality, of course, is that they're all somewhat small forest spirits that have decked themselves out in pieces of scrap that act as army-like uniforms, and not real toys at all...but still, the effect is unsettling. They're not all that threatening, really, aside from being creepy, but there are so many of them, and they hold sharpened, bite-sized spears that they keep trying to jab into you any time you try to move out of the circle they've made to sequester you.
Ultimately, you're able to more or less make out what they want: a ransom, of which they do not have the ability to properly communicate. They won't rest or let you go until you post of your plight on the network and give them what they want. You know, just, who knows what they actually want. That's still up for debate.
CHILDREN'S GALLOP
RINGLE DANGLE JINGLE JANGLE!
This is the nosie that greets you on an endless loop from the Bonfire Square. A small group of spirits have gathered there and set up what appears to be a donation pan, which they keep smacking and rattling as they provide all of Beacon with a rousing and unending set of holiday caroling. Unfortunately for everyone who isn't a spirit, this basically just sounds like coordinated screaming. And the screaming does not stop. Maybe for some of you, this would be easy enough to ignore in one capacity or the other, but it seems the spirits have accounted for this, and are very insistent on being given the attention their cheery efforts deserve.
Which is to say: throughout the day, everyone receives what is effectively spam emails to their tablet in the form of...very loudly written words. The emails pour in, over and over:
WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME
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no subject
The smile drops a little at the statement Riku tacks on at the end, though. He sticks his arm through the loop of his lantern and puts his hands in his pockets. It's cold tonight. ]
It mattered enough to me - [ He stops himself. Redo. ] Sora wanted to make things right with him, even after everything that happened. For both of them. I can't make you feel like it matters, but it mattered enough to him to do something about it, and since it mattered to him that much, it matters to me too.
[ He doesn't want to start anything with Riku! He gets where he's coming from, although the why and how he got to be this burdened with despair is mysterious enough slowly, slowly starting to make him think that there's something else going on, but when it comes to Roxas and Xion? Riku can think whatever he likes about him - he may be right, for all he knows - but Sora draws the line at them. He did the right thing, and it was important. Sora isn't sure if he's real enough to be able to claim pride over what he did, but this Sora, as a collection of raw, disparate memories, at least feels strongly about it the decision. It was the right thing to do. ]
no subject
It's close enough. Maybe that's as good as they'll ever get. ]
That sounds like something Sora would've wanted.
[ To save every heart he ever encountered. Riku isn't looking at him, he keeps looking up at the lighthouse, its red beam slicing through the perpetual night. His tone is flat. ]
It's fine.
[ It doesn't matter because there's no way to do anything about this. There's no body sleeping in stasis, no delicate witch trying to piece together his best friend. There's no way to extract the parts of Sora needed to restore him, so...
It doesn't matter. It's over. ]
It's not your fault. I'm the one who couldn't let go.
[ He turns away, he starts to walk down along the beach, away from the docks and the market, away from Skyler. ]
no subject
Maybe this is as far as this goes.
(Sora doesn't like that. Not at all. This isn't how it ends. He's been deader than this and that didn't stop him.) ]
Wait. [ He jogs next to him, sand sliding under his shoes. If Riku doesn't stop, he'll take his own turn to try and grab him by the elbow. ] Wait. Riku. [ If Riku pulls away, Sora will let him go, but he has one last thing to say if this is how Riku's going to leave it. ]
no subject
There are traces of it here and there. Fragments of splintered wood, the occasional plank, half-submerged in sand, rotting slowly.
His elbow is grabbed and Riku doesn't look back.
He doesn't dare. Most of Riku's life he's learned to take the feelings he's judged embarrassing and buried them down deep. He scoffs. He laughs. He challenges.
He doesn't cry, even if once he took hold of a special door, and with red-rimmed eyes told the boy on the other side to take care of her, their precious friend from beyond the borders of their tiny little world.
Not a single time in his whole life has he let his friends see, he isn't about to extend that to a stranger carrying the memories of a long-dead friend, either. ]
What.
no subject
The venom in his voice is real, Sora thinks, which means that this is something that Riku's taking seriously. Which is the least he could expect of him, given the circumstances, and he knows he should just. Leave it. Go back to the town and try and calm his heart down, bolster it somehow. Even in death, where in theory he should have come here alone, he still has faint memories of friends half-remembered and stubborn roots of old friends Skyler managed to keep in his heart. Riku probably has better things to do than to spend his time on a container filled with memories. He's demonstrated his lack of interest in anything but the real thing, after all.
But. He keeps following him, up to where the beach turns to grass, turns to a little hill overlooking the shore. He doesn't know where Riku's going, but he needs to know. He selfishly, selfishly needs to know. ]
Promise you'll be okay. [ It bubbles out of his mouth - selfish, selfish, Riku considers him a stranger, this is too demanding - but he can't stop himself. ] You don't have to promise me. It's fine. Just. Wherever you're going, promise you'll go back to your friends safely. [ He swallows. He can't let his voice crack, but he does have to ask. Hold it together. ] Please.
no subject
Sora would have known, he thinks, resentment boiling up through the cracks like hot tar. Would have realized he wanted to be left alone. That's one of the things about their friendship, in all the years of pushing and pulling at each other, they learned how to navigate around each other's needs even if they didn't completely understand them.
Sometimes all Sora needed was the reassurance of contact, an encouraging word that didn't come spring-loaded with patronizing condescension. Kairi needed to know that her friends hadn't outgrown her, that things can change without breaking apart.
Once, Riku might have seen the venomous Darkness in his heart as a threat, as proof of some insufficiency or flaw that makes him unworthy. He's come to accept it - his anger, his loneliness, his jealousy and his selfishness - these things are part of him as much as his courage, his reliability, his loyalty and his selflessness. Feeling them isn't wrong or right.
It's the choices he makes when he's in the thick of it, the moment when he chooses to consume his Darkness, to transform it into Light. To make something productive instead of do something destructive.
But, damn him, Riku's tempted to smash a fist into his face for the promises he tries to push on him. He's sick of it, the promises he tried to keep, how long he hurt for nothing. It isn't fair and life isn't. Sometimes things don't happen for any good reason. They don't make you grow or change, even if Riku has, in ways he doesn't see because he's too close to it.
Sometimes they just hurt. ]
Listen to yourself.
You want to feel better, you don't care about anything else.
[ Riku doesn't blame him for that, it takes a certain kind of dark heart to want to feel like they ruined someone else's life. He isn't. Riku doesn't have to know him to tell that much. ]
You just want a clear conscience.
no subject
It's not as though what Riku's saying entirely true. But it's not entirely false, either. And, for reasons that Sora can't help, partially because of the thing he is, but also partially because of who Riku is, he can't help but believe him. Riku wouldn't lie to him, after all.
What was he even thinking? He's just chasing shadows. That's all this was. He didn't deserve an answer to that. He never did. ]
That's true. [ ... And he can't say much more than that. The spike in his brain from years ago isn't letting any other options have their say. ] I see.
[ And slowly - grudgingly, as though he's trying to hold himself here, because among the things Sora is bad at doing, it's giving up when his friends are right there -
He forces himself to turn away and find the pinpoint lights of Beacon again. ]
Good luck, Riku. [ That's about as neutral a farewell he's willing to give. He'll start walking back down the way, retracing their steps back to the night market. He won't let himself look back. ]
no subject
...
[ What is he supposed to think?
What is he supposed to feel?
He was never part of some world where he was the alien presence, a kernel of something other waiting, like a piece of unexploded materiel, inside the body of some unsuspecting person, long after his own death.
In Riku's own experiences, a person who holds a portion of another's memories has them forever - until they're extracted, poured by a witch with very specific abilities into its original, slumbering host. None of those other factors are here. Too little time remains to acquire anything close to what might be needed to get back his friend, and...
Not enough might be there to bring him back entirely anyway. Everything points to the obliteration of everything that Riku once held dearest, with Kairi buried, never to return, with Sora reduced to a distant echo in a stranger's altered body.
All of this culminates in the message, writ large: Riku protected nothing and no one, a fool who clung too tightly to a pretty hope with no substance. None of this means he can't continue, or he won't - what a poor way to carry on the memory of the two most important people to him, of Kairi and of Sora.
Just that it hurts. Just that he'll carry these scars until the World Eaters erase these and Riku both, or they'll find a way to stop the World Eaters. Bring back the light. And then he'll rejoin his friends at last.
He never makes it up the hill. He has nothing to bury, so he goes to the only place that still carries any warmth for him. ]