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𝕋ℍ𝔼 ℕ𝔼𝕏𝕋 ℕ𝕀𝔾ℍ𝕋. ([personal profile] nextnightmods) wrote in [community profile] memesinthenight2020-10-01 06:05 pm
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TEST DRIVE MEME #04


TEST DRIVE MEME #04


Hello and welcome to the The Next Night's test drive meme for October-November! Thanks for your interest in this GPSL! In an effort to streamline our application process and avoid future confusion between incoming and existing players, we do not have a reservation period. Applications will be judged on a first-come, first-served basis.

While you're here...

  • Take a look at our rules and faq pages to familiarize yourself with The Next Night.

  • Next Night currently operates on a rolling app system, meaning you can app whenever you are ready! There is a player cap of 60 players. The taken page reflects the current number of players.

  • 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 top-leveling is not limited to new characters! If current players wish to post a starter, 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.

  • As we no longer plan to have a bimonthly game-wide HMD meme, we require that all new applications going forward must have a HMD post somewhere on the journal and we will ask for this as part of the application process.



Thank you again, and we hope you'll choose to join us!


log prompts


TRICK OR TREAT. TW: GORE



For reasons unknown, the spirits of Beacon seem to love spooky season. And as October slowly pulls down the temperature, a few spirits get right into the swing of spooky. It's never too soon to celebrate Halloween!

Some of the celebrations are obviously a treat for residents. Spirits will leave festive surprises at doorways, under pillows, in drawers and under beds. What kind of surprise? Well, it depends. Candy is a staple, though it's not likely to be any kind anyone's ever heard of. McMillain's Candy Earlobes, anyone? Other things like pumpkins, spiced drinks, intricately cut and carved masks could be hidden around.

Less playful and more disturbing are the spirits determined to provide tricks. They're just as likely to slip something somewhere unexpected, but the item in question is a lot less fun and festive. Things like broken glass, bloody teeth, and locks of hair. Definitely not what anyone was expecting when they slipped into bed, or glanced under a table.

That's not all, either — some little tricksters seem determined to give a fright, hiding any place dark enough to hide them. And in a place that's always dark, that's practically anywhere you look. The spirit will pop out from your closet, under your bed, around the corner, inside the drawer you left something in, even falling in front of you from nowhere with an ear-piercing scream.

Last but not least, the pranksters have managed to leave trick supplies around the shops and the rest of town. Perhaps a blanket that only leaves you colder, a salve that burns instead of heals, canned food that makes the pit in your stomach a little deeper. It seems any trick item is bound to have the reverse effect of what was intended — and much like Cinderella, they will disappear without warning.





SCREAM IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT TW: BODY HORROR



Out in the dark, it's hard to note at first... vines curving down the streets, up walls, along paths. Eventually, the massive influx of pumpkins is impossible to ignore, as they dot and litter and scatter all over everything. And no amount of clipping or pruning seems to help, the determined plants will just grow back and in deeper fervor.

It seems fairly innocent at first, even nicely festive. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to last, as the plants don't seem to be particularly friendly. The pumpkins seem to have faces, when you look out of the corner of your eye. It's like they're staring, watching — but investigating doesn't show anything but a normal plant. Strange...

When the moon is high in the sky over Beacon, vines snag at feet and ankles. At first it seems a natural consequence of overgrowth, but as the vines tighten and drag into a vice, it seems more intentional. Spirits made of vines come to life, and they are determined to draw anyone they can catch into their fold. Smothering in vines and lives, the plants attempting to trickle into mouths and under skin. Slipping, sliding, slithering. Slowly taking a person over until nothing is left behind and all are one, combined. Without fire around to combat them, strength and anything sharp might be your only hope of breaking free. Or failing that, someone close enough to hear you scream before the vines curling around your throat kill the sound in your throat.





DEARLY DEPARTED.



Bonfire Square and its surroundings have once again become a temporary cemetery. The walkways, the open spaces, the riverbank, even perhaps the trees themselves now bear memorials the people who once died and now reside here. Some are shrines, others simple markers; perhaps yours is a grand mausoleum. Some have names and dates, some may not, but each is distinct. And as you walk past, you are drawn to them - drawn to place a small gift or token, or one of the last late-blooming flowers growing under the trees. In fact, the compulsion to visit these graves and leave something behind is awfully hard to resist.

When you do, you are drawn into the final moments of the person whose death the shrine marks. You experience it through their own eyes and feel it as if it is your own.

As if this wasn't difficult enough to bear, you realize this must mean somewhere in town your own death is on display. Will you let others visit freely? Will you guard your grave and its secrets? Will you try to destroy it? If you do, another will emerge elsewhere - it soon becomes obvious that trying to remove them is futile. You are, after all, really, permanently dead. No amount of wishing or fighting can change that now.

Feel free to decide how your character's grave, shrine, marker, altar, or other memorial looks, and be sure to describe what others will see when they visit!





network prompts


TEXT PROMPT



At this point, you may have accumulated a lot of treats (so to speak) from the spirits. A few days into this and after the spirits have had some time to learn what the residents of Beacon prefer as far as their offerings go, the network updates with a post:

hello! we have a game if ur interested in more treats. you give three stories: two real, one lie. if someone guesses the lie they get to keep candy. everyone gets candy but the guesser gets more. enjoy!!!

They're good on their word when it comes to this - after you share your two truths and a lie, at least one piece of candy appears at your side. There may be a few more depending on how juicy your stories get, whether or not they are real.








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policier: 𝓭𝓷𝓽 (five)

ii

[personal profile] policier 2020-10-11 02:02 am (UTC)(link)
( Javert finds him not too long after class is over. He had to stop to search the house first, hoping beyond reason that he would be there and had merely lost track of time and his patrol. He is not. Javert stalks across the square like a man possessed, making a beeline for the church, and then perhaps the Invincible.

He doesn't get that far. The sight of the grave startles him a bit, but not so much as the sight of Soldat sitting in front of it, distressed and disquieted. Javert doesn't need to ask to know what he has seen. He had felt much the same when he was made to relive his death, and everything that had led up to it. He approaches quietly, saying, )


Had I known they would appear again, perhaps I would've warned you.

( There's a silent apology in his words, and he appears solemn. )
Edited 2020-10-11 02:08 (UTC)
worthallthis: (but i did it)

[personal profile] worthallthis 2020-10-11 04:48 am (UTC)(link)
[They look up and blink blankly at him a few times. Then they focus finally, and remember that this has happened before, and shake their head faintly.]

How could anyone know. They'd come back.

[They wipe at their face, and unwind their other arm around around their knees, preparing to get up, but not quite there yet.]
policier: 𝓭𝓷𝓽 (thirty three)

[personal profile] policier 2020-10-11 04:20 pm (UTC)(link)
( He doesn't have to. Javert bends his knees, lowering himself so that he's at eye-level with him. Perhaps it isn't his fault, as Soldat says, but Javert still feels badly for it all the same. )

Would you allow me to see it?

( He asks, because the compulsion to leave an offering is difficult to resist when he's hovering so close. Javert doesn't have any coins left, which is what he gave as a gift last time, useless as they were to him, but he does have bullets and a tie pin. Even that doesn't seem like enough, however, for what he may see. )
worthallthis: (cautious)

[personal profile] worthallthis 2020-10-11 07:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah. Yes, of course, if you want to.

[They finish the process of getting up, to give Javert access.]

It's not. Pretty, though. Not the death, that's-- that's fast. But everything leading up to it.

[Though Javert did spend a while in their head. Maybe it won't be quite as much of a shock to see what they really were like, at the beginning.]
policier: 𝓭𝓷𝓽 (thirty six)

[personal profile] policier 2020-10-15 01:07 am (UTC)(link)
( He knows quite well what he may see. He's known from the beginning what Soldat was, and that he wasn't always as kind and merciful as he is now, but neither so was Javert. It won't change his feelings, and he doesn't seem afraid. )

I want to know you.

( He says, looking at him. That's been true for a long time. )

All of you. Even the parts you are most ashamed of, if you will allow me.
worthallthis: (Default)

[personal profile] worthallthis 2020-10-15 05:07 am (UTC)(link)
Oh.

[Right. Okay. Soldat gives a little sniff, swipes their eyes again with the back of the flesh hand, and steps back off the grave.]

Okay. You have to... set something on it.

[Which Javert knows, because he's seen this before. Right. Soldat may have set their favorite worry stone on it. They're a little worried about taking it back, now.]
policier: 𝓭𝓷𝓽 (forty)

[personal profile] policier 2020-10-17 08:36 pm (UTC)(link)
( Javert levels him with a look, his expression flat and unimpressed with the other man's instructions. He reaches up and pulls the pin from his cravat, a simple fastening with a pearl set on top, and places it on the ground. He endures the vision silently, watching and listening as intently as a spy. He knows that he's not a trespasser, though. Soldat has allowed him to see this willingly, and that means something. When he comes out of the memory, he's not wholly unaffected, his expression despairing and breathing heavily, as if feeling the other man's emotions as his own. )

That man is a fool.

( He agrees, though he knows there's something else that he knows. He's seen that man before, in another memory, many years before. )

You did know him, did you not?
worthallthis: (sad 2)

[personal profile] worthallthis 2020-10-19 06:26 pm (UTC)(link)
[Soldat looks embarrassed for the comment, at least, and steps back again to give Javert more room, looking at the ground, stuck for the moment in a simple parade rest. It's easiest, when they're nervous.

They do nod, though, at the question.]

Yes... that was Steve. From the memory you saw in February. I'm not really sure how, but he got bigger. I have other memories of him big. Including one of me being confused by it.
policier: 𝓭𝓷𝓽 (fifty two)

[personal profile] policier 2020-10-25 09:00 pm (UTC)(link)
As I thought.

( He's always had a talent for recognizing faces. Even after years have passed, when a man has changed and become someone else, as Steve has, there are still things about him that remain the same. Javert pulls himself to his feet and moves away from the grave, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He doesn't look at Soldat, but he does speak lowly, as if still catching his breath, )

Is that why you are upset? Because you harmed him?
worthallthis: (sad)

[personal profile] worthallthis 2020-10-25 11:12 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm. I'm afraid I killed him, sir.

[It comes out a little strangled, but mostly just sad. They swallow, then continue more steadily:]

Concussion. Multiple shots and stab wounds. Then he would have fallen into the river. I'm afraid he died when I did.
policier: 𝓭𝓷𝓽 (thirty four)

[personal profile] policier 2020-10-31 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Perhaps.

( He answers flatly, but he doesn't sound particularly convinced. It would seem logical that Steve died when Soldat did, but that means little. )

You have not seen his body. You don't know that for certain.

( Did he not think the same thing when he had learned of Valjean's death? It had been written about in the paper, and attested to by multiple witnesses. Everyone had believed he had died, and yet he did not, and he eluded Javert's capture for months because of it. Perhaps Steve had as well. If he were a normal man, he would have died before he hit the water from his wounds alone. )
worthallthis: (but i did it)

[personal profile] worthallthis 2020-11-01 01:15 am (UTC)(link)
I don't know, no. But. It's a strong probability. I've run through every scenario I could imagine, in my head. Wrote them down. Probability is at least ninety percent.

[That all sounds flat and quiet, reporting more than emoting, but they do have to sniff and wipe at their eyes once more.]

He let me. He would have let me actually kill him, if the ship hadn't killed me.
policier: 𝓭𝓷𝓽 (thirty six)

[personal profile] policier 2020-11-11 11:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Is that truly so surprising?

( He cannot help but scoff. He can tell the other man is weighted down by guilt, and that is something that he may never heal from. Perhaps Javert's words will not do much to make him feel better, but he desires to comfort him, and speaking the truth is the only way that he knows how. )

He is a good man, and he cares for you. I imagine he would have wanted it that way.
worthallthis: (lookdown-mask)

[personal profile] worthallthis 2020-11-12 04:57 am (UTC)(link)
[Sora said the same thing, once. It rankles now the same way it did then.]

It wouldn't be right. He's. He's good. People respect and follow him. He shouldn't die because of me.

[Steve Rogers is worth ten of Soldat, as far as they're concerned. Probably more, given the many people they've killed.]
policier: 𝓭𝓷𝓽 (thirty one)

[personal profile] policier 2020-11-14 03:57 pm (UTC)(link)
So would rather he live with the guilt? What do you imagine that would do to him?

( He can sympathize with Soldat's frustration. He felt much the same when Valjean spared his life, and that's one of the reasons why Javert had to lie to him when he did. He couldn't tell Valjean the truth and have the man try to change his mind. Nor could he allow him to feel guilty for what Javert was about to do. )

You're a good man, too, and the people here respect you. Don't speak as if your life has no value.
worthallthis: (thinking)

[personal profile] worthallthis 2020-11-15 04:04 am (UTC)(link)
[They can't speak to what Steve might have thought or done. Surely he'd have gone on with his life, kept saving people, stopping bad people. Whereas if the Asset had killed him, they would have just gone right back to HYDRA and done it again.]

Maybe they shouldn't.

[They finally move around Javert, tentatively bending to collect their worry stone back, needing it in their hand. Nothing happens. The memory doesn't replay, nor does it-- go away.]

But even if they do now. They wouldn't have at the start. Shouldn't have. I wasn't good. Not then. I only learned better because of you, because of Misty, of Sora, because of Aziraphale and Crowley and Eleven and Rosinante. Everyone here.