livinglot | ⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME #1

WELCOME TO THE SHOW!↴

Or, more specifically, Lost Carnival's first 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 open October 5th at 12:01AM EST.
Applications open October 7th at 12:01AM EST.
You can apply as a newcomer or as a "veteran" character who has been in the carnival for up to three years.
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.
Supervisor applications will start being processed a few days after apps open, and will be selected on a competitive basis. If you want a supervisor position, it is best to submit your application as close to the beginning of the application cycle as possible. If you don't get chosen for your desired supervisor position, you will be given time to rework your application to be a regular veteran, or to apply for a supervisor position that is not yet taken.
Lost Carnival could use some additional moderation assistance! If you are interested, please let us know 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.

► 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.

► NOT YOUR WHEELHOUSE (NEW): 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?

► 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?

► 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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...Oh.

This might be a problem.

Ginko frowns slightly and looks over his shoulder, as if looking for someone else who might be better equipped to explain this, but it looks like this is going to be his job for the moment. He turns back to the little deer, giving a quiet sigh and rubbing at the back of his head with one hand. Well, first off, he's not even going to try to touch the flying thing just yet.

"...Sorry, but... there may not be one." He tries to be as gentle about it as possible, but. There's only so much that can be done to soften this.

[Well that sure is a sudden change of topic. Ginko blinks and glances down at himself, as if he'd forgotten for a moment that he is literally green and has horns and a tail.]

--Uh. Thanks, but it... isn't a costume.

"Nnno. I don't think so." Ginko sighs as if this is the most exhausting conversation he has had all day. "What I should do is get him back where he needs to be so he can eat his actual food."

[ Given what he already knows about this place, he can't help but wonder if the Ringmaster has a set age limit on the people she brings here or not.

The young man next to him is successful, and Archer glances at him after a moment. ]

It's better to win at these games than lose them.

[ For more reasons than one, really. ]

If you haven't incurred a debt, I'd avoid it.

Uuuuughhhhh. What, are you scared I'll beat your high score or somethin'?

"Well, he does make a lot of unpleasant sounds and tries to bite me, if that counts." As if to prove that point, the creature snaps at his nose, forcing him to jerk his head back. "--Boring isn't the word I would use, but alright."

His attention has shifted fully back to immobilizing the squirming animal by the time Natsu speaks up again - at which point his gaze snaps toward him to give him a look of sheer disbelief. "Absolutely not. Why would you?"

Ginko doesn't even want to be touching this thing but HERE HE IS.

_{[It isn't...a costume? Sorry Ginko, give her a moment to process what you've just said. She gives him a once over, still holding the little creature between her hands until she snaps out of her daze, a sound of surprise slipping her throat.]}

Uwa really?! That's...oh wow! What are you?

_{[That probably comes across a bit more blunt than she means for it to, but at least her reaction is, er, positive? She's not scared by his appearance, at least.]}

New Recruit - Admission Fee / Gamer's Circle

It had been during a night walk on the park around the trees to read her book of charms, when the concentration of trunks became thicker, until the lights and music of something filtered from beyond the trees. Music coming from pipes, something resembling the times of her childhood.

The sounds and music surrounded Yukine Miyazawa just as she emerged from the trees, and saw the Lost Carnival for the first time.

Even at a distance, she wondered if she was dreaming, as she believed seeing strange silhouettes, things not quite human in the distance, moving with the same elegance as either quadrupeds or arachnids. Due to the desire to know, either curiosity born from dread on the back of her head, or something reminiscent of her childhood, Yukine stepped forward. At first cautiously, then walking forward.

Anything of value, please.

Yukine stared at her own book of charms, and knowing she would easily get another far too quickly from confiscated material at the library and the reference room of Hikarizawa High, and the fact she had memorized many of the charms and incantations of it to continue helping, she offered it, having it taken and accepted like old fairy tales and legends.

Her first places to explore were the games. Darts, ring tossing, water guns, bell-ringing. Many of them were familiar, but then were games she had never heard before that, Yukine felt as if in a dream when a coin from a game bounced on the floor to then fly to the roof, outright violated known laws of reality.

It's most likely a dream, Yukine smiled as she thought, and explored around the stands, as this was a night she would spend a few hours tonight, and not the many, many, many months that she would spend in here paying a debt.

All over a sodding coin charm she would invoke at the worst possible moment.

Veteran - Do Your Work / Will O' Wisps

Yukine Miyazawa smiled as one pair of hands worked on cutting curiously-colored vegetables on the table in front of her, before passing them along from hands to hands to another pair that wore gloves in front of a small stove, which in turn extended the small pseudo-bird to another pair that finished beating an orange sauce and poured it over the dish, before it was put inside of the oven, all hands moving in synchrony for another dish for workers and guests alike.

It was incredibly efficient to have all of those arms belong to her long body.

Exposure to both strong fae magic and the ingredients of hundreds of universes had radically changed Yukine's physiology until she stopped being human in her entirety. At first something embarrassing, in time it became a talent to handle an entire kitchen when nobody was available, happy to help anybody that needed her within the carnival.

It also made her much less afraid of faerie exposure, since she was well beyond the point of normalcy, which is why she had in fact been part of the people to tell about the wisps that were necessary to recapture, and in fact didn't even get to know until she saw one hovering above her.

"Hnn?"

All of Yukine's arms stopped their cooking on all stations when she felt the shift in temperature over her food, and then saw the dozens of specks of light above her. She turned all stoves off in synchrony, trying to look at the specks as they hovered and shifted, then lifting all yards of length up the higher the collection went...

Wild Card

All available! Both prompts can be at any time they happen, whenever if it's when Yukine is asked for something at the admission fee, or when she's cooking, or make your own prompt!

Edited 2016-10-02 02:34 (UTC)

I'll have you know that I'm perfectly within standard employee protocol! There's nothing rebellious about walking through a public space.

[Peridot frowns, squinting suspiciously at the papers. Her nose wrinkles.] What are you doing, anyway?

Rudolph's ears finally lift in both alarm and curiosity.

"Whadya mean?"

He doesn't straight away disbelieve this stranger but he used to live in a forest. How could there be no way out?

Fortunately, Peridot isn't interested in Pidge's personal business, so she's spared from any rude prying.

"Yes, that's what I said," the gem reaffirms, slightly irritated. She sighs. "If you've got a problem with that, you'll just have to take it up with the Ringmaster."

[A demand comes from up on high:] Can't you do something about them!?!

[Seriously. Peridot has no patience for this right now. And all the babbling and yelling from guest and scout alike is making it REALLY hard to concentrate on fixing this thing.]

Aaaaauuuuh, Im twyi- [There's a strange slurping sound, followed by a yelp-but at least with her tongue out of the drink this will be easier.] They won't stop!!

Peridot isn't even surprised in the least. But hey, she's actually kind of glad that Amethyst's here? At least that means she has some backup.

...Probably. If Amethyst is feeling helpful.

"How does it look like it's go-- YIPE!" She flattens against the arm of the Vortex. Someone has just thrown a soda, and just narrowly misses hitting her.

"Whoah, what the heck--"

Amethyst leans past Peridot, hair bristling like she's in an anime.

"Hey, what's your problem!" she yells in the direction the soda came from. "You want to just knock her off here so this thing never gets fixed?? Come on, you wanna throw another one?"

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that most of these games are designed with people with thumbs in mind. Got any suggestions?

[Nothing like being in a new dimension to work up a hearty appetite. Sunset's been eyeing the food for awhile now, although, she's magic savvy enough to know that in a place of tricksters actively trying to keep you in this strange carnival, eating the food on grounds may not be the best idea.

But, she's already here, and the brightly coloured teen figures there's...no harm in eating. Because that funnel cake looks good.

Or, it does, but then something else distracts her. A...zebra?

She pauses from reaching for the funnel cake, eyes wide as she sees a familiar mark on the zebra's flank.]

You...you have a cutie mark?

[The plate promptly shatters in response. Gilgamesh says nothing, as that all but speaks for him.]

[At first, silence reigns, and perhaps faint hope sets in that she may have been left alone. But after those moments pass, Gilgamesh steps through one of the mirrors to greet her properly. He's very tall, even more so than a draenei, with legs a bit like hers but draconic features overtaking everything else.

The malice in his eyes that had been present in the reflections is gone, replaced by vibrant amusement.]

I could.

[Emphasis on could. She has his curiosity, anyway, which means any abject violence has been stalled for now.]

What sort of "elder" are you to chide me so? Who could say they have seen further than the great Gilgamesh?

[Gilgamesh shakes his head, and again makes a transparent show of accommodation with the unusually kind words that follow.]

Please. You've nothing to be shamed of; let us see this "gift" of yours.

I've been working on it. Maybe you haven't been paying attention.

[To be fair, she hasn't been working on it when around many others from the carnival. She doesn't want to show off her trump card before it's too soon. No one should suspect Jasper of using fae magic, and that's the way she'd like to keep it.]

It's nothing much.

[That's a lie. She's about mastered this area of study.]

J-Just because I don't know something doesn't mean I'm not paying attention!! I bet you don't know what my magic is! [she counters with a huff, not thinking about the fact that Jasper likely couldn't care less about it to begin with.

As it is.] Oh, really...? It looked pretty great to me! Big and flashy, I bet there's a lot behind it!

"I dunno." To prove that he can? "But I thought it might be cool. I've never seen anything like it before." He shrugs and leans closer, partially tempted to just reach out and touch it anyway. The creature certainly doesn't look too happy to be there. That's a bit of a shame.

"You sure? I mean, you're already here. I don't wanna hold it, just, you know...poke it."

[Is that all, he asks, and Gilgamesh scoffs.

He can't know what he's thinking, but he can guess. He can't know what he's planning, but he can make his own to circumvent it, should that prove necessary. And it may very well, judging from the man's sour attitude. Archer has already established himself as a problematic individual, simply by the way he carries himself and the blunt attempts to dismiss him outright. And Gilgamesh does not appreciate being dismissed by someone so far beneath him they are no better than a speck of dirt.

Gilgamesh steps closer—too close—and lowers his voice to a threatening growl.]

You are but a fledgling here, mongrel. Do not think to undermine or otherwise oppose me; any disobedience will not work to your favor.

[He snaps that very, very sharp set of teeth, spines bristling, ears pinned back. Perhaps is something of the old Gilgamesh Archer may recognize, but there's much that's new. New, and even more terrible than before, that suggests his former foe has not improved in any regard. If anything, he's only gotten worse.]

Do what you are told to do. No more, no less. Should I discover meddling in my affairs of any sort, there will be consequences, and I can guarantee...

[The air heats up abruptly, as if it preceding an explosion. Not something beyond his power, but he restrains himself just barely.]

You will not care for them. Am I understood?

I don't have the high score.

[She's strong, but she's not the strongest one here. She can't help who's brought in from other worlds, so this feels less like an admittance of weakness and more like a mere statement of fact.

The gem knocks the hammer over so it falls to the ground with a thud.]

Go ahead and waste my time.

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⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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Yukine Miyazawa | Clannad

RESPONDS WITH MY ICON-LESS ALT ACCOUNT BC DW is drunk I guess??

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want me to avoid legend of everfree spoilers?

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