livinglot | ⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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test drive meme

⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME #5

WELCOME TO THE SHOW!↴

Or, more specifically, Lost Carnival's test drive meme! This is an opportunity to try out your characters in the setting before you apply, or to put together samples for characters you've never played before. There are going to be options for both new arrivals and veteran characters. Before we get started, let's lay down some details:

You can read the full premise here.
Reserves and Applications are both currently OPEN.
You can apply as a newcomer or as a "veteran" character who has been in the carnival for up to three years. In the case of veteran characters, you will need to come up with an explanation of why they haven't been around the carnival recently.
TDM threads can be used as game canon after the fact if both characters are accepted and the players agree to it.
If you are interested in additional IC and OOC plot responsibilities, consider applying for a Supervisor position. Treasurer, and Wardrobe Manager are currently open. More roles that currently need filling are listed here!

NEW RECRUITS↴

You gotta start somewhere, right? These prompts are for characters who are arriving in the carnival for the first time, and who are destined to sign a contract. How they go about that is up to you, but in the meantime they can enjoy the sights and sounds of something truly out of this world. Visitors to the carnival comes from many different worlds today, as the ringmaster casts out her recruitment lures. Will you become her most recent hire?

► ADMISSION FEES: After crossing into the carnival's realm and passing through the trees, most visitors will find themselves at the front gate - though not all choose to enter that way. If they enter legitimately, however, they will have to pass by a clerk who will trade admission and tickets for various attractions and rides in exchange for "anything of value." What is of value may seem highly subjective, and so some may struggle to produce payment at first, though in actuality the carnival will take anything from mundane currency to items of purely sentimental value.

► MIRROR MAZE: The mirror maze (pictured above) is a big attraction in the carnival, and stretches much further on the inside than it looks like it will on the outside. It's hard to get through, and what's more, after you've been in there for a while your reflections will start gaining a mind of their own - mostly in order to taunt and distract you with personal information. They don't know everything you know, but they know more than they should, and their mind games can be pretty hit or miss.

► GAMER'S CIRCLE: Almost all of the game booths are organized in a large ring around the Cookhouse, called Gamer's Circle. Your can play just about any carnival game you can imagine here, for a variety of prizes sometimes traditional, exotic, or outright magical. Dart tossing? Got it. That game with the water guns? Got it. Most of these booths are currently manned by humanoid spirits who look like they are made of smoke. If they can trick you into earning debt, they will.

► NOT YOUR WHEELHOUSE: Sometimes, even magical ferris wheels get stuck. The carnival's particular wheel is enchanted to create a particular out of this world experience - as you pass along the top, you feel as if they are so close to the sky that you can interact with the stars like baubles hanging above your head. Of course, the novelty probably wears off when the wheel is broken and you've been stuck enjoying the light show with some stranger for the last half hour. How are you going to pass the time?

► TRYING TO LEAF: No matter where you came from, you seemingly emerged from a forest. Obviously, to get back home you should be able to go back in the same direction, right? It turns out you can't. Worse, trying too hard to get through the wood will result in you getting lost, or turned back to the carnival. The trees here are not normal, and are varying levels of alien, including things like trees with glowing fruit or orange flowers that constantly burn like candles.

► WILD CARD: Anything else you can imagine in this setting! There are a lot of possibilities and you're free to explore them. Check out the rest of the game info or the locations page for additional inspiration. Want to make a starter with your character experiencing their first theoretical change? Go for it!

VETERAN WORKERS↴

These prompts are tailored to the carnival's existing employees, the veterans. Odds are they've been here from somewhere between a few months and three years already, and know their way around the block. For them, this is just business as usual - and depending on their attitude towards their job, they may or may not contribute to a few people accidentally getting themselves a contract. Whatever you do, though, don't warn visitors away from the carnival - the ringmaster hates losing business like that.

► DO YOUR WORK: This one's pretty simple - just have your character doing whatever you'd like to have their job be! There is a big list of ideas over here, and you could use this to try things out with a character you intend to be a new arrival, as well.

► WILL O' WISPS: The ringmaster's will o' wisps have gotten free, and she's asked that everyone keep and eye out and help her reclaim them regardless of their official jobs. Wisps are small creatures that burn both hot and cold and comes in a few different variations of the same basic theme. Handling them physically (or psionically, or magically, for that matter) is difficult due to their near intangible nature. Touching and being around them can result in confusion and a sensation similar to being comfortably drunk.

► BREAK TIME: Whatever you were doing, it's break time! It's time for you to relax however you see fit. Do you enjoy some of the carnival attractions yourself, or is that old by now? Do you hang out in the Cookhouse to get a snack? Do you take a nap? Yolo, baby!

► RIDDLE GAME: For a bit of fun, the ringmaster has left a variety of locked chests around the worker areas of the carnival, each with instructions and a riddle written on their lids. The chest will accept three guesses from each worker before refusing to respond to them any further. If you guess the right answer, the chest will open and you will be rewarded with some manner of fun magical knick knack. If you've run out of guesses, maybe you can conspire with someone else and promise to split the prize?

► CAPTURE THE... EGG?: The Ringmaster likes to keep things exciting for her employees, and this time she's devices a game that mixes an Easter egg hunt with capture the flag. She's hidden various metallic "eggs" around the carnival that chime like bells when people get near, and divided participants into three teams (red, blue, yellow of course.) The carnival has been divided into three zones, and the objective is to gather as many eggs as possible for your team (three points for gold, two for silver, one for copper.) However, when you are in a zone that doesn't belong to your team, if they can snatch off your team flag they can take you to "jail" and confiscate any eggs you may be holding for their team. When in doubt, bullshit the rules! This is a prompt, after all.

► WILD CARD: Anything else you can imagine in this setting! There are a lot of possibilities and you're free to explore them. Check out the rest of the game info or the locations page for additional inspiration. Want to do a performance? Hang out in the Backyard? Choose whatever appeals!

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[Hiccup still stares at him wide eyed. Okay so someone turned them into. Fish. People. He tousles his own hair, trying to sober himself up from his daze.

A heavy sigh passes through his lips as his shoulders slump. The viking curls his fingers into tight fists..]

We peeked in on a show a while back, before I was sworn in. I didn't have an admission fee so. They took Toothless, my dragon.

Oh...

[Well that's odd. Maybe the dragon was too big? Steven isn't really sure how it works.]

That's weird... she let me keep my lion and stuff. Is Toothless really big?

[He considers that for a few moments longer.]

Maybe they just took them to the menagerie! It's where they keep all the big monsters and stuff. There's totally another dragon that lives there, too.

You have a lion?

[As if that was more shocking than having a dragon. He considers it for a moment.]

Well, he's certainly bigger than a lion. He wouldn't hurt a fly though! Unless you make him mad, of course.

[But, there's a possibility that his dragon pal is around here somewhere, besides the places he's looked on his own.]

But the menagerie. Can you take me to it? I can't imagine what he's going through. We're usually connected at the hip, ya know?

[Steven bets Toothless was pretty mad when they tried to tell them they were stuck here... Thankfully, Lion doesn't really care about most things. He's adapted to the carnival grounds just fine.

He perks up at that request, looking like he's ready to just tear right off and do now.]

Yeah, for sure! I even know the main zookeeper who works there, and...

[He pauses, and then shrinks down a little as he remembers his pressing responsibility.]

Uh. Oh yeah. I kind of have to do my performance first, is that okay?

[Oh right! Yes. There's some performances going on! He nods furiously as he rubs the back of his head bashfully.]

Right! Yes! Of course!

[Hiccup steps aside to give Steven some room to head out on stace.]

Sorry, I didn't mean to keep you. Go out there and break a leg! I'll be around!

[He offers a thumbs up!]

[That's right... If Rita can still use her blastia magic, it stands to reason that other forms of magic could be accessed here. The possibilities could be endless...

And when she sees that shield appear, her eyes widen.]

Incredible... [She bends over to get a closer look at the shield, poking at it gingerly with her finger.] To materialize solid matter out of thin air... is the shield itself made of magic?

Uh... I think it's mostly made of light? [The same stuff gems are made out, anyway.] But the light is probably magic light so I guess that's kind of the same thing?

[This isn't the sort of magic he's ever had to seriously study.]

Edited 2017-03-22 23:53 (UTC)

Light...? I suppose it's possible... [She taps her chin with her finger, considering the information.]

And you said this was some kind of hereditary power? In that case, are you the source of your own power? Or are you able to draw it from an external source?

[He's never really been in the position to look at gem powers very academically, so hearing her marvel over it is actually sort of cool. He nods, grinning a little, and lifts up his shirt to show his gem.]

It comes from my gem! Which is a part of me, so... I guess it's internal? The gem is the most magic part, though.

[Steven gives up a thumbs up right back, and adds a last couple makeup lines to his face. He hopes that he'll be able to help get that dragon back... losing a dragon sounds like it would suck.

He shuffles off to the curtains, and waits for his turn. It doesn't take long to arrive. Steven goes out on stage and goes through his act, which seems mostly like some acrobatics that show off his magical powers, as well as some jokes in between.

His slot isn't very large today, so after a lot of glowing pink light he'll be back and ready to go, even though he's still wearing his costume.]

Ready when you are!

Edited 2017-03-23 19:59 (UTC)

A gem...? [She stares at the jewel in place of his bellybutton, and for a moment, her fingers brush against the red jewel in her own choker. Using precious stones for magic... could that be a commonality between their worlds? But perhaps the similarities end there, if his is literally part of him...]

Then... people on your mom's side were all born with gems like that?

Yeah! They're called... well, gems. Actually.

[He puts down his shirt, and lets his shield disappear.]

All of them have a gem like mine, and form a body out of light. Mine is still made of skin and stuff though, because of my human parts.

A body of light... wait... [She'd assumed he was from some mostly-humanoid magic race... but actually part human? Human biology and what he's describing aren't normally things that mix.]

You mean you're... half-human, half... something made of pure magic?

Yeah...

[He confesses it just a little bit uneasily, blushing a little, but shrugs it off with a small laugh.]

Weird, huh? I'm the first of my kind to exist, where I come from.

'Weird' doesn't even start to cover it...

[It might not be the nicest way to talk about someone's very existence, but Rita's not one to mince words. The kid's pretty darn weird.]

Of course, from a scientific point of view, it's pretty amazing. Might even make a good topic for research... maybe if I had a stronger foundation in biology. [Or in gem...ology.]

[OPTION 1]

The carnival is… pretty huge. It’s much larger than the one that comes through Odaiba during the school holidays, and there’s a larger variety of stalls and games than he’s usually come across, including some games that Yamato has never really seen before and doesn’t entirely know how to play.

He’s about to walk past the rows of game stalls and head over somewhere else when— hold on a second. It’s a prize for one of the games, a plush toy that has an amazing likeness to Patamon that it catches Yamato off-guard for a moment, standing in front of said game booth and just staring.

… How did Patamon end up as a plush toy anyway? How did people even know of Digimon and what Digimon looked like to somehow even make a plush toy that looks that alike to his brother’s Digimon partner?

[OPTION 2]

The mirror maze is starting to creep him out – Yamato is pretty certain that he’s been wandering past the same walls for at least fifteen minutes now, although it could be a lot longer.

He’s also fairly certain that he’s imagining things when he hears his reflection hissing back at him things that he’d thought he’d buried since the Dark Cave incident, betrayer, who would want you for a friend, look at you, still so weak and takeru doesn’t need you anymore and it’s frankly grating on his nerves. It’s easy to ignore it and shove it to the back of his mind, treating it like background noise when he’s not looking at his reflection, but when he turns another corner at his attempt to find another route out of the mirror house and comes face to face with a dead end, and—

And his reflection is laughing.

Yamato’s instinctive reaction is to reach forward, throwing his weight forward as much as possible into a punch. The next thing that he feels is a sharp pain – his knuckles are bleeding, and there are small cracks in the mirror, and the mirror in front of him is innocently blank.

Shit.

[OPTION WILDCARD]

[ hit me up with anything /o/ half completed app this a way for your reference~ I prefer prose, but I can match your format too! ]

Ow!

[ Wait, since when was there someone in front of him? He's quite sure that there hadn't been anyone who had been in front of him when he'd rounded this corner in his own attempt to escape from the mirror maze, so he's also caught off guard when she stumbles right into his path and lands a punch right into his gut.

She definitely packs a punch.

When he's not doubled over in pain, though, he's about to tell her off, to watch where she's going but now that he's managed to take a look at his would-be attacker and notice how frazzled she looks, Yamato pauses - thinks twice. ]

...... You okay?

[ Not the smoothest introduction, but hey, maybe something's spooked her? ]

[Rita takes a step back from him, hand still curled into a fist, as she finally takes a look at the person she just hit. He doesn't look particularly threatening, but Rita still manages to get offended at his innocuous question. What, does she look like some kind of damsel in distress to him? Ridiculous.]

I-I'm fine! Maybe you should watch where you're going!

[She glares at him, her face slightly red, but after a moment she starts giving paranoid glances at the mirrors around her. That weird reflection she saw... was it his? It sure looked like her own reflection was somehow off, but that's impossible. She must have been seeing things.]

[ Well, someone looks offended. Yamato raises his hands in mock surrender, taking half a step back to her one step back, just in case.

Her glare is met with a slight frown though, mostly because woah. She's the one that walked into him?? The maze is weird, with its pathways that seem to loop into each other all the time. At least now he knows that the maze isn't completely empty. ]

I'm pretty sure you weren't in front of me...

[ It trails off when he spots the way that she's giving paranoid glances at the mirrors around her. ]

Something wrong with your reflection?

"Well that was a stupid thing to do," comes yet another laugh, only this one is different. A different voice, a different tone, a different direction, and lacking the distortion of the mirror reflections. No mirrors here, this time it's definitely a living person and that'll be revealed once Yamato turns around.

Shima is leaning lazily against the side of the row of mirrors on that side, having popped up through the various tricky spaces between scattered throughout the maze, arms crossed over his chest as he just chills there. He'd only been watching — with all three eyes, a third one stuck vertically in his forehead courtesy of the carnival — as yet another person managed to get lost. I mean, it's pretty hypocritical to find that funny, since he got hopelessly lost in here once, too, but...

Okay, okay, no matter, it's not like he's going to feel bad about that, anyway! He wasn't even going to speak up (or offer to help, for that matter) until the guy went ahead and broke a mirror, ah, but he did and now here they are.

"Now you've gone and broken it. Those are pretty annoying to fix, y'know? With all the whining they do about it."

The sudden appearance of someone that hasn't been there before, someone that he can't even see in the now-cracked mirror, is enough to startle him and instinctively take a step backwards before whirling around.

"Who the hell are you?" he blurts out, and he doesn't mean to come off as brusque as that probably will sound to Shima's ears. He's dreaming. He definitely has to be dreaming, even though he winces when his bleeding hand hurts and the sharp sting of pain tells him this is not a dream. People just don't have three eyes, and Yamato's also fairly certain that he looks way too human, way too real to even pass off as a Digimon. "Did you just come from--?" Vague hand gestures in the general direction of the trick space that Shima probably just stepped out from follows, and Yamato still sounds suspicious, wary.

Another wince, and another glance at the cracked mirror pulls out a few guilty feelings. "Eh. I was... startled," he finishes lamely. It sounds like an excuse. "I wasn't planning on breaking it?"

He would actually have offered to pay to replace the mirror that he's broken, but since the person at the admissions booth had taken most of his money earlier, he probably isn't going to have enough money to replace said mirror.

Vague hand gestures, but Shima gets it. He shoots a look back over his shoulder, then back to Yamato.

"Yeah, from back there. This place is a literal warren sometimes, but I figure ya already know that," he says, still sounding cheerful and unbothered regardless of how the other kid sounds. Overall, he's not worried. He does shifts away from leaning against the wall in that little hard to see passage, very soft metallic chimes sounding as he moves, soft enough they would have been easy to miss under the mocking of the mirrors. It was out of sight a second ago, but as he steps further out into the hallway, it's clear he's armed... or is he?

Depends on how 'armed' one considers a Buddhist staff, but he sure does have one slung over against his back, definitely more like a weapon than anything else.

"And who I am happens to be security. Bad luck for you, huh?" Still cheerful, of course. He's not bothering to act threatening or anything, it's just him stating a fact. "I know you weren't planning on breaking it, but that doesn't really make up for it."

Following Shima's look over his shoulder confirms that there is indeed a passageway that Yamato is fairly certain was not there five minutes ago, prior to the whole accidentally-breaking-the-mirror fiasco he's found himself in. Secret passageways too? This maze being a warren is a huge understatement, and the deadpan look that Yamato shoots him in response is enough to convey the kind of sentiment Yamato has about his analogy.

"So, is it employee-only, or...?" Could you let me out that way, is the question that Yamato kind of wants to ask and is heavily implied.

Crap. Yamato should have known, with the pretending-not-to-be-threatening thing and the staff slung over his back. Shima is more armed than Yamato is, so while Yamato is calm enough to not really freak out, he does cast a few wary glances every so often as if he's kind of anticipating whether Shima is going to actually use that staff of his. Somehow, he has a really bad feeling about how this is going to go down, and this is probably worse than that One Time back in the Digital World when he and Jyou had to work off all that "accidental" property damage in Digitamamon's diner.

Security shouldn't look so cheerful or matter-of-fact about property damage.

"Uh.... Kinda, yeah. We could work something out instead?" He's not going to run - he's at the very least savvy enough from prior experience to know that it would be a terrible idea, even more so when the person on the other side looks way more dangerous than a giant Digi-egg. Negotiating seems like a much better option - it worked the last time.

No. [She answers curtly.] Of course not.

[Because, obviously, a reflection is just a reflection, and anything "wrong" with it would have to be a matter of perspective. It's common for the human brain to misinterpret certain stimuli, and...

Looking back to a mirror beside her, Rita sees her own reflection, its arms folded and its mouth curled into an amused smirk. Clear as day.

Despite herself, Rita gasps and jerks away from the offending mirror, then points a trembling finger at it.]

Do you see this?!

Security really shouldn't, but Shima is just one of those chronic smilers. He's already sure it doesn't do much to put anyone at ease, not when you attach the word 'security' to the entire situation here. Still, even if he is armed, he's not going to bother going for his staff or anything. That's for some of their less friendly patrons, fortunately...

In this case, he's pretty sure he's just dealing with another teenager. Probably someone his age. No big deal, right?

"Yeah, kind of employee-only, but if you want out, I can take ya out that way, no problem," Shima says, at least being that kind. Of course, considering his plan is to lead Yamato out but not actually let him go, well, it's more self-serving than Yamato might think.

"But before I let you go for real, you'll have to work something out with the big boss for damages. She's pretty friendly, though! So I wouldn't worry too much, yeah?"

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⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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Ishida Yamato | Digimon Adventure Tri. (Newbie)

mirror maze

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2!

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