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Entry tags:
December 2023 & January 2024 Test Drive Meme
December 2023 - January 2024 TDM
Introduction
Overflow TDM post found here
[ TDM Questions ★ Jump to Comments ★ Full Navigation ]
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 and work like "mini-events". For new players and characters, you can choose to have your TDM thread be your introduction thread upon acceptance or start fresh. Current players are also allowed to have in-game characters post to the TDM so long as they mark their top levels ‘Current Character.’
TDM threads can be used for spoon spending at any time by characters accepted into the game.
Playing and interacting with the 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.
🦊 New Star Children meet the Fox still in their worlds, and she brings them into the new realm of Folkmore. As you follow her, your body begins to change and new characteristics emerge. These may stay for a while, or perhaps they will hide away after. And during all of this, the Fox explains to you where you will be going: to Folkmore.
and then... you fall like a shooting star, falling to the land in a burst of starlight.
🦊 Experienced Star Children are already familiar with this time of the month. There are shooting stars all across the sky, and some fall to the land, which means the Fox has brought new arrivals. These newly arrived Star Children will face some tests, but Thirteen wants the more seasoned residents to participate as well.
Perhaps you follow the falling stars on your own, or perhaps the Fox simply teleports you there, but it appears you too will be part of this.
Content Warnings: School Detention, Time Not Passing, Forced Reflection/Confession, Potential Violence
Welcome to detention. Star Children, whether they're new arrivals to Folkmore or old hands, find themselves sitting at two person desks in a library. Perhaps there's only two Star Children, perhaps up to four or five. Regardless, each Star Child has a slip of paper in their hands which spells out why they are in detention, a secret detention slip no one else can read. Which, whew, because the reason any Star Child is in detention is for something they've never been punished for, something they might reasonably have thought they got away with, something they know was wrong.
The door to the library opens, and Kuma Lisa enters. She explains that Star Children will be in detention for four hours, and by the end of detention, they will need to reflect on what they did and express contrition. The headmistress gives no further guidance before leaving and closing the doors behind her.
Four hours is a notable chunk of time, but it's not so long, is it? Surely it's possible to wait it out without making good on the assignment… Or perhaps it's enough to write about it in one of the notebooks on the table in front of each student, without explaining it to another soul. Star Children are welcome to try whatever they want. However, they may notice an oddity with the clock. Namely, no matter how many times the second hand ticks around a circle to mark a whole minute, the minute and hour hands don't progress. It's the same minute over and over and over—
Detention is four hours, but how long four hours takes is entirely up to the Star Children in detention. Read every book in the library. Throw a dance party. Get high. Pull weapons out of the books. All matter of non-magical weapons. Nothing immediately happens upon pulling those weapons—no monsters to make detention less boring. Unless people make progress reflecting on their transgression, communicating about it with another Star Child, and showing penitence for it, time won't pass. Reality warps to stay in the same minute, minute after minute, hour after hour.
What's it going to be? Never ending detention or personal accountability?
However long it takes, it only takes four hours in the realm of Folkmore.
A word of warning to those who grabbed weapons, they will be attacked on their way home after detention. They will be attacked by creatures out of storybooks. Star Children will need to know the literary weaknesses of these creatures, good luck, or the help of someone else coming along who does know their weaknesses. At least there's some excitement in the day after four long long hours.
Welcome to detention. Star Children, whether they're new arrivals to Folkmore or old hands, find themselves sitting at two person desks in a library. Perhaps there's only two Star Children, perhaps up to four or five. Regardless, each Star Child has a slip of paper in their hands which spells out why they are in detention, a secret detention slip no one else can read. Which, whew, because the reason any Star Child is in detention is for something they've never been punished for, something they might reasonably have thought they got away with, something they know was wrong.
The door to the library opens, and Kuma Lisa enters. She explains that Star Children will be in detention for four hours, and by the end of detention, they will need to reflect on what they did and express contrition. The headmistress gives no further guidance before leaving and closing the doors behind her.
Four hours is a notable chunk of time, but it's not so long, is it? Surely it's possible to wait it out without making good on the assignment… Or perhaps it's enough to write about it in one of the notebooks on the table in front of each student, without explaining it to another soul. Star Children are welcome to try whatever they want. However, they may notice an oddity with the clock. Namely, no matter how many times the second hand ticks around a circle to mark a whole minute, the minute and hour hands don't progress. It's the same minute over and over and over—
Detention is four hours, but how long four hours takes is entirely up to the Star Children in detention. Read every book in the library. Throw a dance party. Get high. Pull weapons out of the books. All matter of non-magical weapons. Nothing immediately happens upon pulling those weapons—no monsters to make detention less boring. Unless people make progress reflecting on their transgression, communicating about it with another Star Child, and showing penitence for it, time won't pass. Reality warps to stay in the same minute, minute after minute, hour after hour.
What's it going to be? Never ending detention or personal accountability?
However long it takes, it only takes four hours in the realm of Folkmore.
A word of warning to those who grabbed weapons, they will be attacked on their way home after detention. They will be attacked by creatures out of storybooks. Star Children will need to know the literary weaknesses of these creatures, good luck, or the help of someone else coming along who does know their weaknesses. At least there's some excitement in the day after four long long hours.
🦊 Star Children, new and old, in groups of 2-5 are in detention for something they did wrong & haven't been punished for.
🦊 Kuma Lisa explains detention lasts four hours, and people have to express regret for what they did by the end.
🦊 Time doesn't pass unless Star Children make progress toward that assignment.
🦊 It always takes four hours in Folkmore time.
🦊 Star Children who draw weapons from books during detention will be attacked on their way home.
🦊 Kuma Lisa explains detention lasts four hours, and people have to express regret for what they did by the end.
🦊 Time doesn't pass unless Star Children make progress toward that assignment.
🦊 It always takes four hours in Folkmore time.
🦊 Star Children who draw weapons from books during detention will be attacked on their way home.
Content Warnings: Theft, Glitter Bombs, Minor Power Nerfing
There's a problem with the nonexistent mail delivery system in Folkmore. Gifts are being delivered to residents' addresses—their correct addresses, even if they live in the woods—but those recipients, written on a fat cream label, cannot pick them up, teleport them, or otherwise move them under their own power. These gifts sit in garish and contrasting colors that make certain to draw attention to themselves. Hello, here they are.
Anyone else can pick these packages up, from the person next door to a stranger walking by. There's so many gifts around it's easy to pick one up, remove the label, and go on one's way. Few people are home all the time, and even if they are, what are they going to do? Pick it up themselves? Ha! It's freereal estate. Star Children with abilities to see inside the packages can see something they want badly within as extra motivation to go for it.
When Star Children open their ill gotten gains, these packages explode in a glitter bomb that coats everyone within a ten foot radius. This glitter is impossible to wash out, magic away, or otherwise remove for twenty-four hours. Walk, swim, fly, or otherwise go about with glittery evidence of the crime committed.
Almost always. If it were guaranteed, where would the fun be in that?
The rare fortunate criminal or the original recipient, helped by another Star Child, will receive an item from home. This may even be a weapon or magical item. Those who receive an item will stop receiving gifts on their doorstep, whether they stole the gift or received it from a package addressed to them. They can keep stealing other people's gifts, but they will only receive a glitter bomb from then on.
Mischievous Star Children can even prank each other by changing the label and redelivering packages to someone else. Should that person get help to bring the gift inside, it still isn't their gift, not really, so it too will explode in glitter.
There's a problem with the nonexistent mail delivery system in Folkmore. Gifts are being delivered to residents' addresses—their correct addresses, even if they live in the woods—but those recipients, written on a fat cream label, cannot pick them up, teleport them, or otherwise move them under their own power. These gifts sit in garish and contrasting colors that make certain to draw attention to themselves. Hello, here they are.
Anyone else can pick these packages up, from the person next door to a stranger walking by. There's so many gifts around it's easy to pick one up, remove the label, and go on one's way. Few people are home all the time, and even if they are, what are they going to do? Pick it up themselves? Ha! It's free
When Star Children open their ill gotten gains, these packages explode in a glitter bomb that coats everyone within a ten foot radius. This glitter is impossible to wash out, magic away, or otherwise remove for twenty-four hours. Walk, swim, fly, or otherwise go about with glittery evidence of the crime committed.
Almost always. If it were guaranteed, where would the fun be in that?
The rare fortunate criminal or the original recipient, helped by another Star Child, will receive an item from home. This may even be a weapon or magical item. Those who receive an item will stop receiving gifts on their doorstep, whether they stole the gift or received it from a package addressed to them. They can keep stealing other people's gifts, but they will only receive a glitter bomb from then on.
Mischievous Star Children can even prank each other by changing the label and redelivering packages to someone else. Should that person get help to bring the gift inside, it still isn't their gift, not really, so it too will explode in glitter.
🦊 Gifts appear outside Star Children's residences, even those without residences.
🦊 Recipients cannot pick up the gift but any other Star Child can.
🦊 Almost all stolen gifts explode in a glitter bomb that leaves glitter for 24 hours.
🦊 Star Children can receive an item from home, even a weapon or magical item.
🦊 Star Children can prank each other by changing the labels/moving the packages.
🦊 Recipients cannot pick up the gift but any other Star Child can.
🦊 Almost all stolen gifts explode in a glitter bomb that leaves glitter for 24 hours.
🦊 Star Children can receive an item from home, even a weapon or magical item.
🦊 Star Children can prank each other by changing the labels/moving the packages.
man, nier is sure a game(s)
Whatever, it's not the most pressing thing about this encounter, and certainly won't be a moment from now, once Dolph's self-diagnostics do their thing. Dolph has no idea he's looking at another machine, what with how much skin is showing and what percentage of that skin looks alive, flesh-toned, normal. Cybernetics are no common thing in Eden. They require special connections, or as Dolph would put it now that he has firsthand experience: selling your soul.
All of this to say, there's no culture surrounding it, so what could be a sort of greeting between kin is completely lost upon this one rogue cyborg trying to make his way through some storybook dimension. The random flashing light is just that, as well as something to incriminate the person in front of him when his HUD inevitably fills with high priority alerts about something probing into his system.
Having recently been the victim of a virus, Dolph isn't going to play games with a potential hacker. Wasting no time at all, he takes a step forward and slams his metal fist on the desk in front of the stranger, hissing: ]
Just what the fuck was that?
it only gets worse :^)
Eve lets out a tiny annoyed huff when he's forced out, the slam of Dolph's fist a distant footnote, the young machine acting more as if he was scolded for digging around in a cookie jar and not somebody's mind. Indeed though, the machinery Eve can observe on this man's body, it's sleek but primitive. Meanwhile the inner chambers - while more complex - were small enough in scope that at a glance he could see the vocabulary and etchings of war strewn all about and little else. Which is meaningless alone, as humans have had innumerable wars, and they all bled together into a meaningless soup in the annals of history.
No, that peek inside doesn't answer the question at all. Something just isn't right. Not when that alien walked away alive.
Eve leisurely lifts his gloved hand and gestures vaguely at Dolph. The whole Dolph.]
I just can't figure it out.
So which is it, huh? Are you a machine...or an android?
[Many of the creatures here are purely organic. But grumpy guy can be hacked. That's neat!
What does it mean...?]
he's just a little guy (derogatory)
I was a man.
[ Android isn't a term he's heard. Machine is only partially true. The fact that those are the only options the snooping stranger can come up with isn't something Dolph chooses to pick at. It occurs to him that he doesn't have to acknowledge the question at all, but if some throw-away answers can spare him from further potentially-dangerous tampering, so be it.
Changing tac, Dolph slinks over to the wall—specifically, the one that holds the doorway out of this room—which he leans against, much more comfortable with some empty space separating them. He can at least pretend that light thing won't work at this range. ]
Now, I'm what you get when you let doctors fill you with metal.
[ Satisfied? ]
Do that again, and we'll have a problem.
KLDFSFDS
The chambers seemed incomplete.
This person, who looked like a machine, is not wholly so.
This man is flesh and metal melded together, which is something Eve has never experienced because he has never met a tangible human before, just learned about them through their archives and bibles. The fact man and machine can be one is an entirely new concept to him, and he realizes that his brother would be over the moon itself at the idea. Humans, a fascination just out of reach, and they can play at being machines! There's so much to tell Adam when he sees him again, and it's a damn shame that weird animal has seemingly cut him off from the network. For now.
Gleefully, Eve claps his hands and sits up straighter in his chair, grinning in that way only a kid who's gotten the best present ever could.]
I thought something was funny! That means humans really are crawling all over this place.
[Cool statement to make when you look like a regular guy who plays college ball.
He was mildly skeptical though, because there's no way he'd get to enjoy his brother's dream alone, right? But it turns out, there's aliens and people comingling and a man made of metal to punctuate the crowd. Speaking of metal man, Eve continues:]
And you. You're something else entirely. What do they call humans like you?
fffff no, ilu and i see why you've done this now
First of all, the thought of someone being inside of his head long enough to have an opinion about it gives Dolph the heebie-jeebies. Second, someone can't say all of that and seriously expect him to only react to the last part as if he's got the attention span of a fucking internet search bar.
Eve is correct about how retro Dolph's tech is, comparatively; he doesn't enjoy the same kind of effortless access to other electronics. It takes a bit more effort to forge a connection and sift through coding the way Eve just frolicked through his like firewalls are just a suggestion.
So, when he suspects that something's off about Eve, it's purely how weird of a fucker he is that gave it away. ]
You first.
[ America explain. ]
What makes any of this so fascinating?
[ Has bleached asshole never looked in a mirror? Humans can't be possibly be that interesting when he looks identical to one. ]
"BLEACHED ASSHOLE" IS KILLING ME I HOPE U KNOW
Although Dolph flipping the question around does get Eve to frown.]
Hey. I'm the one asking questions.
[He asked first! He's learned manners against his will, sure, but even a five month old machine can use them well enough. What's this guy's excuse?
Eve leans forward in his chair, hands on his knees. He pats at them a few times while he briefly thinks it over. The animal in his head, the starry sky, and the fact they're here...well, no, there's no way. Even androids need special units to take them to and from space. No forest animal could do that. And this place is too primitive to exist on the moon. The structure is all wood and shit that would collapse in the vacuum of space. So what...? And then there's the fact there's more alien species here! Which is conceivable, but weird to think about running into now of all times.
Auuuugh. Thinking sucks. Eve scoffs at nothing, then tilts his head at Dolph.]
This place doesn't make any sense, does it? Yet here you are. And here I am.
But if you have to know, you're the first human my kind has seen in, uh....several thousand years. Does that sound familiar? It might not. I know humans come and go so often the whole species forgets stuff from generation to generation, so they keep doing the same stuff over and over and over.
It makes your history a huge pain to read about.
[And that's after having to read at all. Blech!]
Happy now?
i've studied your weaknesses.... also cw: nihilism ??
Not even close.
[ Happy is for people who get to flee from fascist hellscapes to the tropics with their lovers. Happy is now off the table, seeing as any chance of that happening for him went to so much shit. At this point, everything he held dear is gone. Everything that could have meant something, gone, too. Now he's stuck in a bland room full of stale air and frozen in time, discussing the end of all humanity with...
It's unclear still, but you know what? ]
It doesn't matter.
[ He's right. This place is senseless; why try to grasp it? ]
I'm a cyborg. Cybernetic, and organic. I'm also dead, if you want to chew on that.
no subject
Eve would personally be happy with that, which is what's important to him, but this guy continues to spew out new concepts every time he opens his mouth. Learning through books is damn awful, but getting to hear it and ply it out of someone this sullen? That makes it so much more fun. The only way it could be more fun is if they were fist-fighting why they chatted, but he's still taking stock of this weird situation.
Cyborg. Cybernetic and organic.
That's a brand new concept Eve hasn't once considered. Fish have been replaced by machine lifeforms over time, but there's never been a marriage of the two. It seemed inconceivable, the two incompatible.
You know what's even more incompatible? Being dead, organic, and still moving. Ludicrous statement! Eve makes a funny noise, like he wants to laugh and he doesn't know how.]
Uh...? What? Obviously you're not. Anytime I find dead stuff it smells bad and it doesn't move.
[thinking emoji and an audible sniff as he considers the following and concludes:]
You reek, but you're definitely moving.
no subject
But Dolph lowers his chin, sneering, as if Eve had enough information to take what he just said anything other than very literally.
A fucking sniff test? ]
You don't get it.
[ His arm should be scattered across the Midwest, but every piece has been put back into working order. His clothing isn't in ribbons. His body no longer feels tender. Perhaps most significantly of all, he's not a headless corpse.
Except for his time-stamped memories of it all, it's been made to look like none of it ever happened. Only, the Fox forgot to erase his hard drive, can't, or won't.
Dolph has nothing to prove to Eve, not really. But he also has nothing better to do. ]
Check my black box.
[ From fearing intrusion, to all of a sudden inviting it. Overwhelming apathy is a hell of a drug. Dolph is serious. Eve is welcome to entertain himself with his last moments: his system log as he dragged his critically failing body back to Sarah Fisher's feet. The visual feed from his eye as it was ejected from his head. The black holes in his data formed from the heat frying the last of the components that had been keeping him operational. He doesn't care. ]
when i saw Laserhawk's teaser ending i was like MY NIER CHOICE WAS PROPHETIC
Taking Dolph literally is all Eve is capable of too. The metaphorical is meaningless to him. Adam can wax poetic about the philosophy of a race he's never met and what mortality means to organic creatures, but Eve? Eve only cares about what's practical and right in front of him.
And Dolph is right in front of him! Case closed...or is it?
Eve squints at Dolph, since he made a big deal about getting hacked before. Not that he cares, but it'll be annoying if this guy gets mad at him for doing as he asked! This time Dolph gets more of warning as Eve tilts his head this way and that, considering, before leaning forward and snapping his fingers, like the idea just sort of came to him. The air around Eve ripples like he's a stone that's been tossed into water, the waves as bright as sunlight on choppy waters. And he does watch Dolph's black box recording, eyes closed.
Actually, it's an incredibly familiar sight. He's watched machines fall from afar ever since he was born. But as long as they had a network to return their consciousness to...it didn't matter what happened to their body. But this guy? He's not sure.
His eyes still closed, Eve hums.]
A stronger cyborg got the better of you from the looks of it.
[He didn't really get what they were fighting about...but it looked cool.]
Damn, I wonder if that trick of yours worked. Someone must have backed up your data, though, you know? Otherwise you wouldn't remember any of that. Happens to the stupid androids all the time.