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newcombers2024-05-23 02:01 am
newcomod) wrote in newcombers2024-05-23 02:01 am
Entry tags:
May 2024 Test Drive Meme: The First of Many to Come
We will officially be opening our game June 1st at 12:01 AM EST.
Reserves will open on May 28th at 12:01 AM EST.
Applications will open on the 1st at 12:01 AM EST.
Applications will close on the 5th at 11:59 PM EST.
Please follow our Plurk
Our memes are open to current and prospective players alike.
All Test Drive memes are game canon and serve as a lead-up to the following month's event. The first prompt in each TDM will always coincide with the disastrous circumstances of Penumbra's collision.
This disaster will leave unique supplies or conditions for the following month until the reset in time occurs and a new collision invokes new circumstances.
Most characters upon initial arrival may suffer mild amnesia, fatigue, and diminished powers. Memories, energy, and powers will eventually return. Per player choice, this can be quickly or slowly.
You can use your TDM threads for writing samples on your application.
If you are applying for a new character, you can choose to keep your TDM threads canon to your character or not.
Even if our current players do not engage with the TDM, we strongly recommend they read each TDM to be aware of how Penumbra strikes Newcomb every month. We encourage characters to react to this via network or log posts in the community spaces.
Image Descriptions from left to right: First image is a red train pictured along raised tracks set against pine trees in sunlight, second image is a gif of a train explosion as people flee from the destruction, third image is of a dark sky with orange lightning.
Prompt
Once upon a time, Newcomb had its very own train station that was used by students and staff alike. Most students would arrive at campus via the train and supplies were often shipped in through the train. This very train station used to be located by Fitch End and was one of the first out-of-campus locations to be destroyed by Penumbra. This month, it seems as if the reset has brought the train back. For a moment, anyway. One may awaken from a deep slumber in one of the passenger cars, groggy and nearly jetlagged. You will be surrounded by other characters waking up, just as disoriented and confused as you are.
The train ride itself isn't so bad though. The scenery beyond the windows is filled with gorgeous sprawling woods, already tinged with the golds and reds of autumn. The smell of pine and old leather fills the train and you will find your backpack in a cubby just above your head or on the seat beside you.
There is no way to exit the train at this point, no matter how one might try. What is the point anyway? Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Something is soothing about a train ride, after all. You may even feel tempted to fall back asleep. Maybe things will make more sense when you wake up again.
You won't have peace for long. The train jolts violently as if being struck by something, and after, everything descends into chaos. Cars begin to slam together, some smashing upward, shattering glass and doors, crushing seats. Explosions burst from the front of the train, and as it pivots onto campus, it scorches the ground.
Cars break apart, sliding into their destruction here and there against buildings or trees. It feels as though it happens both slowly and rapidly, defying time itself, the sound of a ticking clock somehow overwhelming the symphony of metal scraping against metal.
Oil from the train catches fire across campus grounds. While the buildings are fireproof and resilient, the rest of the campus is not and neither are some characters who may be wandering about perchance. As the disaster comes to a screeching halt, characters will have to help each other from the wreckage and help put out the fires.
The train will remain on campus for June. It can be broken apart for metal parts and explored for small, sentimental items or important weapons that belong to a character. The train will vanish in the blink of an eye as midnight hits on the 31st. The Penumbric siren alerts the campus of the reset and the incoming meteor and its potential new disaster.
You will have to brace yourself for what happens next.
Note on Penumbric Collision Prompts: Characters do not need to arrive in this prompt. You may opt-out entirely by having your character fall through the sky or wake up incredibly disoriented randomly on campus. Arrival to Newcomb should be somewhat physically and/or mentally draining or damaging. Even characters resistant to pain or injury will be temporarily vulnerable to the arrival.
Image Descriptions from left to right: First image is a shadowy humanoid with a black and gray smudge effect concealing the face, second image is a pair of hands covered in a black goopy substance, third image has several clear vials containing a smoky, goopy black substance.
Prompt
A curious boxcar can be discovered among the wreckage of the train. This boxcar was carefully sealed off and kept at freezing temperatures. Inside were metal crates filled with test tubes and Petri dishes containing a mysterious black goo. During the fall, the boxcar's front end was ripped away. Between the raging fires from the crash and the exposure to higher temperatures, the vials and petri dishes thawed. Vials and Petri dishes began to break apart as the mysterious goo essentially "woke up" from its cryogenic state and escaped from the glass containers.
This mysterious goo seeks out living organisms and will subtly attach itself to character bodies. This can be as subtle as a dime-sized speck of mysterious goo behind a character's ear or consume half a character's body. The goo's attachment is painless. It has a tarlike odor and causes a strange prickling sensation the longer it remains attached to a character.
After some time, the goo will naturally slide off a character. Alternatively, a character can apply freezing water or ice to the goo and this will essentially "kill" the goo and slough it off in broken chunks.
While the goo is attached to characters, it will cause uncontrollable, unusual behavior. On a less severe end, symptoms may include disorientation, difficulty walking, slurred speech, confusion, and clinginess even to strangers. On a more extreme end, the goo may cause characters to act in ways contradictory to who they typically are: they may be prone to fits of violence, hysteria, flirtation, cruelty, or even for some, abundant kindness and outgoing friendliness.
The goo will automatically make characters want to interact with other characters whether positively or negatively. It uses these interactions as a way to migrate from one host to the next.
Image Descriptions from left to right: First image has a playing card and two white dice, second image has a text bubble that reads, "I'm not a Soft Gay I'm an Anger Gay. I love dogs and burning things." Third image shows a field of grass and wildflowers with a free-standing picture frame with torn canvas, the torn spot revealing a city scape image.
Prompt.
Who isn't familiar with the bizarre urge to overshare to total strangers online? It would appear that the mysterious goo has an intimate understanding of this instinct and intends to capitalize on it.In other words, the mysterious goo's influence is not limited to in-person interactions. Even characters unfamiliar with technology will have the burning desire to get out their new phone and create a public post to all Fermii users containing two truths and a lie about themselves.
These can range from embarrassing and silly to serious and incriminating. Characters will continue to feel an itch to respond transparently to those who correctly guess which is which. Even the most sophisticated and chronic liars cannot resist the force of the mysterious goo's presence.
The urge to overshare will ebb away the more truth is exposed.
Ironically, this may be a minor blessing to those unfamiliar with smartphone technology. It would seem that the mysterious goo has managed to assimilate the knowledge of how smartphones work and helpfully pass it into the mind of its host. However, the price of exposure might not be worth the shortcut to knowledge.
Peeta Mellark | The Hunger Games
Peeta wakes gently in his seat, squinting at the evergreen trees rushing past the window. He’s on a train. It’s a considerably less fancy than trains he’s been on before, like the one for the victory tour that was practically a 5-star hotel on wheels, but comfortable. He doesn’t quite remember how he got here. He also doesn’t quite know where he’s going. He starts to look around, scanning the other people in the car, looking for any clue on the train that might indicate where it’s headed.
Maybe you’re seated next to him, or walking by in the aisle. Either way, he’ll politely get your attention.
“Excuse me, sorry. I fell asleep, and I’m wondering if I missed my stop. Where are we?”
He doesn’t want to sound mad, so he pretends like he at least took this train on purpose. Suddenly he hopes the stranger doesn't ask what stop his is, because... He can't answer that in the slightest.
FIRST TRAIN: II
Peeta never gets to find out where they’re going, at least not yet. The train car lurches, and some horrible screeching can be heard, like it’s coming off the tracks. It careens suddenly to one side, tipping as it does, and throws the passengers around like ragdolls as it crashes through trees, scrapes against ground.
The car rolls, throwing Peeta against the ceiling and knocking him unconscious, then begins to implode, half-crushing him in the process.
When he comes to, he’s stuck between a broken seat and the ceiling, unsure what direction is up. The exposed metal sticks into him in various places, and each and every breath hurts. His right arm is crumpled against his own chest, broken. With his still-good arm, he tries to push against the metal to free himself, but it only causes more pain. He groans with it, then looks around for anyone else who can help, still dizzy from the probable concussion.
“Help… Anyone?”
GOO
Once Peeta is patched up a bit and has a backpack, he’s going around trying to help others out of the wreckage, especially where there’s fire. He startles when he looks down and sees a large patch of black on his good hand. He rubs it vigorously against his thigh, but it won’t come off. It’s some kind of weird goo, and it starts to make him nervous.
He looks around, and he forgets what he was just doing, where he was going. Why is he here? It doesn’t matter: there’s trouble, so he needs to find Katniss. He needs to make sure she’s okay. He starts to walk, and he’s slow and stumbling, calling out listlessly.
“Katniss? Katniss! Finnick…?”
He sees someone in a train car, and approaches as quickly as he can. He calls inside to the person.
“Katniss, are you okay?!”
2 TRUTHS AND A LIE
1. My heart stopped once.
2. I’ve lied about having a pregnant wife on national TV.
3. I’m a 3-time swimming champion.
WILDCARD
((ooc: Helloooo! I’m Drew, I can be found at
2 TRUTHS AND A LIE (un:capitolgaze)
basically bound to be discussion of: underage sex trafficking, death and murders of children, fascist dictatorships, dehumanization
wow i mean obv af much
we all no the lie b 3
i mean, d12, come on
[Finnick doesn't trust Newcomb in the least, so he opts for a typing style in accordance with his persona.]
[The parasite hits him soon after.]
1. i am out here rizzing up everyone, being the king of the rizzlers, and i Fucking love it
2. i kissed the boy "starcrossed lover from d12" on national tv
3. my presence rizzes up all the Hot Spiles In Your Area
[Pride goeth before a fall, Finnick.]
no subject
Finnick? Are you drunk?
And 2 is the lie, you weren't kissing me!
no subject
[No, "text like a drunk person" is a strat.]
technically i was
ur girlfriend sure seemed to think so
hunny that's called saving his life
[And that's three sentences so contradictory that they might as well be yet another game of Two Truths And A Lie.]
no subject
So do you get off on technicality in this game? If that one is true, then which of the rizz ones is a lie?
[Oh. He sees it now. 1 might be the lie- Finnick doesn't fucking love it. It's mostly an act as far as Peeta is concerned... But he's curious what Finnick will say, and doesn't want to call him out, outright.]
discussion of drug use
did u enjoy watching me gettin high drated aaayyyy
[If Peeta has any knowledge of drugs and the quick wit necessary to pick up on it, the pun on 'hydrated' should clearly be deliberate. Finnick thinks Peeta's probably had a chance to notice his edgelord tendencies by now, and they are a component of his humour. If he had been paying attention, anyway.]
private text, un:bakerson
When, in the arena? Sure, Finnick.
[He gets the pun, and he knows Finnick is an edgelord. He may be a bit naive but he does know Finnick.]
unreality
[Panem has televisions aplenty, but nothing even remotely like a network. So, self-chosen usernames without spaces are a real novelty to Finnick.]
And righto!
How was that not your first guess? I mean, hello, Annie.
[Finnick says that, but does Peeta know about Annie? Have they met? Wait, are Finnick and Annie even married? Now that's a hell of a question to not know the answer to.]
[Finnick's memories are an absolute mess right now, have got him in Annie and Peeta's position. For all the empathy he has for them, he's never really pictured ending up like them in his future. He knows what damage the Games have inflicted on him, and it's not like he's gonna end up in another, he's 23, except-]
Wanna play a game?
The rules are simple. I ask you about something I remember, and if it actually happened, you say Real. If it's fake news, you say Not Real. You up for it?
no subject
[How could he forget about Annie? Finnick's wife, his true love. Duh. It's like everything from the past is covered in fog. He's felt like this before, sort of, and it is not his favourite.]
I've played this game before. Go ahead.
[Finnick must be going through the same thing with his memories, to the point where he doesn't even remember that the two of them have done this in the past, in reverse.]
no subject
So, did we tie the knot? Did I tie any knots of any sort?
It feels like a lot of my memories are just tying and untying this one knot while being just down in it. And I've a few of really intently sorting bread.
But I'm also this king of rizz that makes love to spiles with his mouth?
That doesn't exactly track, you know.
no subject
[To Peeta, these aren't really even memories so much as just... Facts about Finnick.]
no subject
'Kay, I'll believe you 'bout that. 🤔
Awesome! 😀 If that was fake, it'd be the Worst. 😢
[Finnick has just discovered where the emojis live on his device, and he's having a ton of fun just experimenting with them, trying to figure out which ones to use and when. He never even knew such things existed till he arrived in Newcomb.]
no subject
Woah. How do you do that?
no subject
Or do you mean the circles that look vaguely like faces?
To get to those, you click the button that looks like one of them but grayscale, and tada… all the face circles you could ever want plus images of all kinds of objects and places and animals and everything else you could possibly imagine - some which I've never seen anything like before.
I mean, the heck are these ones supposed to be. Any guesses?
🐲🪐🛫🛬🛩️🛰️🛸🚀📼💾🖲️🚰
[Finnick has his own guesses for every single one of them, but those guesses could easily be wrong. Newcomb is confusingly new, as its name might suggest, to him in a whole lot of ways.]
no subject
Well the last one looks like water. You were just talking about spiles, come on, you know that one. The others... Some of them look like hovercraft maybe? The train here was different than home, so maybe their aircraft are different too.
🥧🍰🎂🧁🍩🍪
I'm glad they have dessert here.
[He examines the rest of the emojis, trying to glean things about this world from them. Most of them are familiar, which is good. There seems to be just... More, almost?]
What the heck are these? ☯️☪️✡️🕉️♈♉♊♋♌♍♎♐♑♒♓⛎
no subject
You think they travel about in silver saucers here? Where are they, then? Invisible like some stuff in the arena is? 🧐
Yiiiiikes. 🥶
What, you think just because this is a bizarro university with wacko muttations, the people here lack the buds on your tongue that make you like sugar?
How very District 12 of you, Bakerson. 💅🏻
[It's not that Finnick is disdainful of District 12, necessary. Well, okay, he has something of a Career superiority complex, but he also is in favour of interDistrict solidarity.]
The first has Water Vibes. The second looks like a crescent moon and one star.
Can't even venture a guess at what the rest of them are. Symbols representing things important to the populace here? Maybe each of Newcomb's industries? Or how much in your favour the odds are?
[Because those two things are exactly a Panem citizen is bound to expect any other culture they encounter to value most. Their industries, and the concept of Probability.]
no subject
What do you mean, District 12 of me? I'm just trying to find positives!
Yeah, no idea. Maybe they're just decoration.
no subject
[Real edgelord of you, Finnick, turning District 12's poverty into an excuse to flirt.]
Well then, let's put that to test!
♉️♋️♍️♑️
♈️♉️♑️
♊️♎️♓️♑️
First Train I
He's sitting across from Peeta, his arms folded in his lap, his right prosthetic arm on top, fingers twitching now and then. He's so used to being invisible to anyone and everyone that he doesn't realize the guy is talking to him until that awkward pause after where Eddie's supposed to respond.
He blinks back his tears, a stray one leaking out that he quickly wipes away. He looks across from him, blinking a few more times, shifting to sit up straighter.
"What?" Yeah, good job Eddie. He takes a second, trying to process what the guy had actually said. Right. Where are we.
"I'm...I'm sorry. I don't know," Eddie admits freely, looking back out the window, actually paying attention to the surroundings. They didn't feel that foreign to him. "We're..."
There was something at the edge of his mind, valuable information that he just couldn't seem to reach. He frowns, looking back at the other guy.
"...I really don't know. I'm sorry. I um...I don't have the best memory on a good day. Today's not a good day, I guess. I might have missed my stop too."
no subject
"It's okay. I have no idea where we are either." He tries a mirthful smile, as though making fun of his own ignorance a little.
"But we'll figure it out, don't worry. What's your name? I'm Peeta."
He holds his hand out to the boy with a warm smile, hoping he's "there" enough to shake. He's used to interacting with people who have a similarly faraway vibe to this guy, and sometimes a friendly touch can go a long way.
He notices he has a prosthetic arm, and has a sense of familiar recognition. Oh yeah, Peeta has an artificial limb too.
sorry this is a teensy slow ! your peeta is amazing btw
One: Eddie realizes they are on a train. Despite the strain of the actual situation, he has spent his entire life desperate to jump a train and escape. Had he finally done it? Did he not remember it?
But if it was a train then...He was alone. Where were his...his...Faces come to mind, but each one is blurred, and distorted. He can't even recall their names.
The second thing happens immediately after this realization: a boy is talking to him. A boy with nice hair and broad shoulders is talking to him and not threatening to kill him or beat his ass down. Eddie feels a flush of embarrassment when he realizes that Peeta knew he was crying. He rubs harder at both of his eyes, trying to permanently clear the proof away, but he was a chronic cry baby so it was probably useless.
"Eddie. I'm Eddie. It's...um. It's nice to meet you..." Spoken hesitantly, because given his history with meeting guys around his age, most of them wound up ragging on him sooner than later. Even if Peeta's eyes are warm and even if he kind of smells like a bakery. Eddie turns away somehow, putting his body between Peeta and his broken arm, as if it would even do anything.
He's about to say nothing more to the boy. He's too paranoid and has zero tact. He doesn't know how to be comforted either. Least of all by another guy.
But...The boy is holding his hand out to shake. To touch Eddie. Willingly.
"Um..." He reaches out tentatively with his real hand, and the warmth is immediately comforting. He swings their hands in a small shake.
"I've-," Eddie begins but abruptly stops when he sees Peeta's prosthetic leg. "Oh."
Eddie removes his hand from Peeta's and instead moves it to Peeta's prosthetic, not even thinking twice about personal space. "That's...You're like me. Wow. Except looks like yours is a little nicer."
no prob! AWW thank you!! Eddie is so sweet I wanna squish him
Peeta almost pulls his hand back, wondering if this is too forward for this guy. Maybe the other boy wants nothing to do with him, evidenced by him turning away. But finally, Eddie shakes it. The handshake Peeta offers is warm and firm and suggests he shakes hands quite a bit. His smile grows a little at the willing connection from Eddie.
Peeta isn't bothered at all by Eddie touching his leg, his smile not faltering for even a moment. In fact, he looks a bit excited, his eyes bright.
"Yeah, we're the same! I think yours is nice too." Peeta has the sense that he doesn't meet others with prosthetics very often. He wants to say more about it, to share more about himself so Eddie might feel more comfortable, but he actually can't remember what happened to his leg or where he got this artificial one from.
"I think some... Rich people gave this to me, or something. I actually don't really remember, which is kind of weird." It strikes him as odd that he'd forget something that seems so important, such a big event in his life.