August 2022 Test Drive Meme

[folkie]

AUGUST 2022 TDM

INTRODUCTION

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Welcome to Folkmore's monthly Test Drive Meme! Please feel free to test drive any and all characters regardless of your intent to apply or whether you have an invite or not.

All TDMs are game canon. You can choose to have your TDM thread be your introduction thread upon acceptance or start fresh. Each TDM will provide a scenario for how characters arrive in-game that particular month.

Playing TDMs will allow characters to immediately obtain canon items from homes especially weapons or other things they may have had on their person when they were pulled from their worlds! There will always be a prompt that provides some sort of "reward" to characters who complete certain tasks.

Current players are allowed to have in-game characters react to TDMs via the Network or make a log with the prompts. Current players are always encouraged to tag new people on the TDM!

TDM threads can be used for spoon spending at any time by characters accepted into the game.

[ Prompt One ★ Prompt Two]

Summer Is Over

Content Warnings: snakes, cultists, optional violence.

FALLING DOWN LIKE PIECES INTO PLACE

A breeze with the crisp smell of dying leaves caresses you awake. You sit up to find yourself in the middle of an apple orchard, rows spreading out in all directions. Mouth watering apples hang from the branches, and nobody will stop you from taking one. You can wander the orchard as long as you like, but eventually you will find yourself emerging into the front yard of a little farm. There’s a red barn with perfect white trim set far back, and to one side of the yard is a kiosk modeled to match the barn. This is staffed by a woman who sure looks a lot like the fox that brought you here.

On the side of the kiosk are advertised a few different items: pumpkin spice lattes, hot apple cider, cold alcoholic apple cider, and hot chocolate. The cider, you will be informed, is made on site. (But you have to be of legal age to be given that hard cider!)

There are two other things advertised: APPLE PICKING and a SCAVENGER HUNT.

“You need a buddy for those, though,” the woman running the kiosk will tell you. “Lucky for you there’s plenty of people you can pair up with.”

If you elect to try the scavenger hunt, you and your partner will be handed a piece of paper. On it reads the following:

TAKE A PICTURE OF THE FOLLOWING ON YOUR RELIC! :)

- YOU HOLDING HANDS WHILE YOU GO DOWN A PATH
- FEET WITH AUTUMN LEAVES
- SOMETHING YOU THINK IS TRULY BEAUTIFUL
- A GENUINE SMILE

“When you’re done, bring it back here and show me,” the woman instructs you. “You’ll get a prize if you do.”

It’s an easy enough list, right? Although you have to follow the instructions - you really DO have to find something you genuinely think is beautiful, and that smile can’t be forced! Those might require opening up to your partner a little bit!

If you succeed in the scavenger hunt, you will be gifted with an item from home.


Now, what if you decided to go apple picking?

You will be given a bucket. “Be careful to only pick apples from the trees in the rows,” the kiosk woman tells you with a secret smile. “You don’t want to bother the old trees off the path.”

Yeah. That sure sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it?

If you do stick to the orchard proper, you will be able to pick your fill of apples. All of them are crisp and sweet and delicious. But at some point you will see the other trees.

They’re both huge and old, standing on two sloping hills just past the orchard rows. One of them has apples red as blood, and the other apples gold as the sun. In the shade of these trees are weapons sticking half out of the earth, as if they were carelessly buried many years ago.

If you pick one of the red apples, you will find that you are suddenly besieged with huge snakes. They are as big as anacondas and an inky black that absorbs the light, with eyes the same red as the apples. They aren’t poisonous, but they bite and they crush, so you’ll have to fight them off at least long enough to run like hell!

If you pick the golden apples, a crowd of people will silently begin appearing from the orchard. They are all wearing animal masks… and they are all holding hand scythes. Uh oh. You’ll have to fight them off in order to escape! If you don’t manage that, well, in some places it’s traditional to have a big ol’ sacrificial bonfire…

All the weapons below the trees are non-enchanted items, but you may keep them.

Plaid Shirt Days and Nights

Content Warnings: Optional themes of identity and school trauma.

IMAKEOVER MAKEOVER

Thirteen believes passionately in education. There are, after all, five academies in Folkmore all catering to different types of learning. While these academies are open year round, it becomes apparent if you walk through any of the districts housing shops that back to school is definitely a thing.

A new school year represents a chance to learn more about the world, and about yourself.

Also? It’s a great time for a makeover!

Yes, step into any of the shops selling clothing and accessories anywhere in Folkmore and you will find yourself passionately invested in helping another person discover who it is they want to look like! Do they want to look cool and aloof? Warm and approachable? Are they an e-boy or a cottagcore witch? Punk or prep? You two can figure it out together!

As you shop together you will find it easier and easier to open up to one another, sharing who it is you want to be.

You’ll also be able to score a sweet outfit. Nice.

SAVED BY THE BELL

Wander into any school in Folkmore and you will find a handmade poster instructing all new students and faculty to report to the auditorium. Normal enough, one supposes… but the moment you enter the room you will find reality swims all around you and all of a sudden you’re stuck in a school nightmare!

You know the kind. You’re late for class, no matter how fast you run. You’re in gym class, trying to climb that goddamn rope. You’re getting your books dumped. You’re naked and giving a book report.

These could be memories, but it’s just as likely that they aren’t - you and another person are just trapped in this cliche together. Whichever one of you is in the audience role could maybe help the other one out? Get them some pants or something? Yeah.

Comments

Giovanni Rammsteiner | DOGS: Bullets and Carnage | familiar

[ofobedience]

i. the fall

[for one bright blinding moment, he thinks that the world is ending. the light - his own light , it's blinding. It rings in his ears and through his skull, reverberating right down to the core of him like it'll shake loose the snatched parts of himself that make him who he is, separate him from muscle and bone and metal once and for all. almost, he wants it. it doesn't last though, and when the light stops and the metaphorical dust settles and he can once again discern the shape of himself, he laughs. it's a staccato sound that falls oddly flat in expanse of the orchard, lets him know that the space he's currently occupying is finite. clearly, things have taken a turn for the outlandish.

he picks himself out of a pile of leaves, smoke still rising from him in acrid wisps as he straightens his cracked glasses, flicks dust from his ravaged suit; he doubts anyone is here to observe his performance, but the show must go on. it helps ground him, helps him retain his poise.

he cocks his head as he listens, trigger-fingers twitching in reflex. is that the crunch of footsteps making their way through this strange and alien place?]

Come out, come out, whatever you are.

ii. apple picking

[The trees and the orchard and even the picking of apples from their true source are all so strange and alien to him that he's left feeling undone, unmoored. Disconcerted. Of course, he allows none of this to seep into his outward appearance, stalking through this strange, new place with all the loose and languid canine grace at his disposal. Hands shoved into the pockets of his torn suit, eyes partially obscured behind cracked orange lenses, he picks not a thing, touches nothing-- not until he comes to the other kind of trees.

It's the weapons, of course, that catch bright at his interest. It's only when he's done rifling through them - armed once again, settling some of the unsteady feelings in him - that he plucks one of the shining golden fruit. Almost unconscious, an afterthought. When the people and their array of strange masks begin bleeding out of the woodwork, his face splits wide on a crooked-pin smile. Now here is something that he knows. Something he can sink his teeth into.]

Play time.

ii. makeover

[He'd stepped inside ostensibly to see if there's anything that can be done to save his now-ragged appearance - one should always strive for elegance, no matter the circumstances - so its a strange sensation, to abruptly realise that others around him are in dire need of his help. That he actually wants to give it.]

Now, this may be what you're looking for. It's just your cut and colour.

[He holds up a fine-tailoured suit, no matter your gender or present state of dress.]

[ooc: It has been a few years since I brought Gio out to play so I’m feeling rusty, please bear with me!]

i.

[halsband]

[It's the worst kind of coincidence, so much so that Heine doesn't think it is one. His footsteps fall heavier the moment that grating voice rings out and confirms he wasn't imagining the laughter. Emerging from a line of trees and tossing aside a half-eaten apple, Heine's 'greeting' is a mix of a hiss and a growl.]

Giovanni.

[He's trying to stay some level of composed to assess things. That tone is one he wasn't sure he'd hear again; Giovanni was fucked and could barely form a coherent sentence the last time Heine saw him. He'd question it more if he hadn't already been quite aware of time displacement weirdness with Nill.]

Why the fuck are you here?

[It's a pointless and routinely antagonistic question, and if he wasn't so done with this shit, he'd shoot Giovanni in the head just for showing up. He still might.]

[ofobedience]

[Someone steps into view, the familiar lines of him coalescing into stark recognition and there's something bright and lit up inside Giovanni because suddenly all of this, it feels almost like home. There is no comfort to be taken in such a thing, but what there is instead is the sense of deep structures that repeat themselves endlessly and in that theres a sense of order, a sense of the known. He's always preferred what is known. Never has liked changed or vast slides into uncertainty.

This is known. This is something he can do.

His smile spreads unevenly wider, and already he wants the fast ascension into animality, into bright ugly violence, blood spilled across his hands the ground and up between his teeth. Dark music in his blood, and the inside of his mind turns blackest red. Never mind that his hands are empty, holsters devoid of weaponry.]

Well, well.

[He says, and it's not precisely an answer. His voice dry as the crackle of dead leaves under foot.]

One might ask you the same thing. What's a dog like you doing in a place like this?

[He takes one neat step closer.]

[halsband]

Asked you first.

[It's petty and childish, but he sounds more bored than anything, an attempt to temper the excited laughter shrieking in his brain and the pulse of bloodlust brought on by the simple act of Giovanni taking that first step closer. Heine's managed to - mostly - hold back here and he intends to keep doing so; his violent outbursts relegated to sharks and giant centipedes, and maybe some sentient half-insect people, but they started it. Yet, his fingers twitch and Lily's gun is in his hand and leveled at Giovanni before he consciously makes the decision to grab it.]