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

[phantomthot]

"Well...I've never heard of anyone trying that particular tactic, but it might work? Kuma Lisa or Amrita are probably our best bets, Kuma Lisa because she's probably the nicest and Amrita because she knows all about survival. And we can't survive when everything's so uncertain. She has to understand that," Tinya replies thoughtfully.

And Tinya listens, clearly fascinated by what Anne has to say about her home. "It sounds beautiful. No wonder you clearly love it so. Beauty and nature are often overlooked where I'm from in favor of efficiency and technology. I'd like to see it! If I can?

It's possible, we just had something where our memories were kind of exposed and watchable. It sounds worse than it was! No one got hurt."

[oftheisland]

"That's possible?" Anne asks, all astonishment.

To share her thoughts, her memories... what an intimate experience that would be. But even with all the words she has to marshal, she'll never be able to capture the peace and beauty of Avonlea and the Island, not really. Not like seeing it. "How does it work?"

She finds she's eager to begin, to share this with her new acquaintance, because Anne loves the island more than any other place in the world, and she firmly believes everyone else ought to love just as fiercely as she.

[phantomthot]

"Mm-hmm. Magic is a big part of living here. Which can be an adjustment!"

She finds comfort in the notion that it's all brain waves being connected together through some kind of unknown technology, even though it's seemed like a lot of it was genuine. Real. With no explanation besides magic, something long dead where she's from.

"I don't...know exactly. There were these bubbles containing a memory. And the you who were and the you who are both existed. And others could look in on the you who were and, well. Talk to you about it."

She wants to see the beauty of other worlds. Most of the ones she's heard of back home have been consumed by technology, but here is beautiful. She just hopes it doesn't go the same way as so many others, pavement where there used to be flowers.

[oftheisland]

"Magic," breathes Anne, her eyes aglow with delight. "I'd imagined it so often – there's a good deal of magic in even the regular world, you know, if you can just open your eyes and heart and if you have an imagination – but – "

She clasps her hands together before her chest, smiling as though she might never stop. "To be here, where it's everywhere – ! It's beyond wonderful."

Magic, breathed in like air. Swum in like water. She listens to the whisper of this impossible ocean and feels her heart be buoyed up like a seabird on the wing. "If I could, I'd certainly share a memory with you," she promises. "I have so many lovely ones. And I'd love to see your world, too. What's it like?"

[phantomthot]

Tinya smiles a little sadly. "...I never really had the chance. I had dance practice, school, preparing myself to get the Caste I wanted. So I had to study stars and planets, dimensions and how to slip between them. But...I'm trying to make up for it now!"

Tinya grins gently. "It is. Have you met the cat people yet? Or been to Catfe? They're both so sweet and amazing!"

But she worries. This place has layers of strange she'd never even heard of during her studies to be a Traveler. She doesn't want this young woman to have a rude awakening. "My planet...I don't think you'd like it. Everything's industrialized and colored white so that the dirt will show. My--my foremothers used to rule, but we were overthrown five hundred years ago. We had beauty, but the Caste Council chose to replace it all."

[oftheisland]

"Oh, there's always another chance," Anne tells her, earnest. "Only look at me; I was an orphan girl and I thought life would never hold any real joys for me, so I was content to imagine them all, but then I came to the Island and to Green Gables, and everything changed. Every day is a chance for a new beginning."

So she says, and so she believes, fervently. She's only been at Green Gables for a third of her short life, but the delights and loves and joys that have been so abundant there have more than outweighed all the loneliness and sorrow of her early years.

She shakes her head at the question and gives the girl a wary glance, suspicious of being teased. "Cat people? Tinya, are you fooling with me?"

[phantomthot]

"I hope so! I try to look at it the same way, only I'm way too aware of whom my foremothers were. But...that's so sad, to think that your life would never have any joy in it! Not even little joys, like a pretty day or a cookie or a dance? It is, it's so sad!"

She barely had the chance to really enjoy her new home when she left Bgztl. She wanted to seize every chance to have joy because her childhood, too, was relatively joyless. Her mother is a formidable woman and she fears what her mother will do when she finds out that Tinya hasn't come back, has no intentions of coming back.

"Absolutely not! They walk on their back paws and wear clothes just like people do! Their entire bodies are like cats and they're the best little bakers in the entire world! And so sweet! I really love them!"

[oftheisland]

"Of course, joys like those," Anne says, staunchly. "Even on the worst days of my life, all those small joys of life have been my faithful companions, though it can sometimes seem terribly selfish to enjoy a sunset or flowers or the scent of the earth after rain when one is in the depths of despair. And thankfully, I had an imagination. It would have been ever so lonely if I'd had no imagination at all, but I did, and I could imagine myself all sorts of beautiful things to keep me company."

Things perhaps not unlike the people Tinya now describes to her, but Anne doesn't think the girl is telling her a falsehood. "Then we should go and pay a visit at once," she decides. "If I'm really to be here a while, I ought to make every effort to be neighborly."

[phantomthot]

"Oooh, thank the Mistress! But, isn't that when we need the small joys the most? To make the sadness a little lesser than it had been? And one must have an imagination! Life's terribly dull and boring without one. What kinds of beautiful things would you imagine? I always imagined friends. Loads of friends." And a mother who loved her, was proud of her, but that wasn't in the cards.

She's not. The cat people are indeed the cutest little people imaginable! "Sounds good to me! They're a little shy at first, but I'm sure they'll love you! You're so nice, how can they not? On our way!" And Tinya starts leading Anne to where the cat people live.