livinglot | ⇨ 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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

admission fee
[ "Anything of value" is very ambiguous and doesn't sound like what you usually get asked to pay, he's pretty sure. ]

Isn't the fee usually a set amount of money...? Uh--I do have some money though if you accept yen...?

[ Apparently they do, so he has to fish out his wallet from one of his pockets--whichever pocket it now was in--and in the process of looking for it in the pockets of his doctor's coat he makes some other items spill out as well, like a couple pieces of dagashi, a flat black card with a display, a calculator, a penlight, batteries, plastic-wrapped bandages, and a box of various childish but cute bandaids. At least he found his wallet though? It's decorated with Pac-Mans and Ghosts. It has flipped open on the ground to show a business card in the front flap, reading Doctor Igarashi Kanata, Gokurakuen, 0090-5064-5555. ]

Shi--sorry, just a moment--

[ So he has to crouch down to pick those things up. He didn't mean to hold up the line... ]

mirror maze

I know the ship blew up, how do you even know that!?

[ How very productive, to shout at his own distorted reflection. He has not even registered that it's not a digital rendering or something like that. ]

trying to leaf
[ For some reason he didn't even realize it when he first came through. Maybe because his attention was entirely caught by the sight of the carnival lights, when the door he opened should have lead to the room he was staying temporarily in until Gokurakuen could get a new base, ship or otherwise.

But now that he's at the forest again, he's not trying to go through. Not yet. Because he stares in amazement at the trees, as if he's never seen trees before. ]

Amazing! Are they real? [ He carefully touches one, as if he's expecting it to attack him the moment he touches it, or something. ] Amazing!

wildcard
[ Open for anything you might have. ]

[The Ψiioniic is sitting at a picnic table nearby, watching amusedly as the strange newcomer marvels at the plants.]

They don't have trees where you're from?

[There's cocky grin on his face and glowing purple freckles dot his cheeks.]

Edited 2016-09-30 21:42 (UTC)

[ Tearing his gaze away from the tree - albeit reluctantly - Kanata looks over at the stranger. The odd looking stranger. But there are a fair share of odd looking people in this odd place. And the oddest things is the trees, but far. He shakes his head to confirm that the question is accurate. ]

No, almost all plants are extinct. There's only one kind left since a century back.

[Out of all the responses you could get from such a statement, laughter is probably the one you'd least expect. The Ψiioniic laughs anyway.]

Are you serious? What happened to the rest of them?

Edited 2016-10-01 01:54 (UTC)

[ This is no laughing matter, sir, and the look Kanata shoots him is saying so. ]

They got devoured by the Shinigami Flower, just like people are if they aren't careful.

[He stops laughing, though it might not be because of that look he's being given because he is still smiling.]

Oh shit, that sounds terrible.

[He looks towards the carnival and it's lights.]

Guess you're kind's having a rough time of it back home.

Yeah... [ He doesn't mention how the Shinigami killed so many of their staff recently after an attack, or thee details around it. Losing the ship and that many people was not something he was keen to think about. ] If we had more Doctors t Gokurakuen it would be easier.

[Papyrus, likewise, is exploring the edge of the treeline out of sheer curiosity at the trees. The skeleton presses a gloved hand against a leaf, marveling as the leaf bends gently away.]

These are the softest, fattest needles I've ever seen!

[What do you mean trees besides pine trees exist? Not in Snowdin, they don't.]

[ ...wha? Kanata may never have seen trees in real life but he's seen illustrations and read some old fact books about plants and the statement he hears confuses him. ]

Those are called needles? Not leaves?

[ Did the books get it wrong? Nobody that lived now had ever seen a tree after all, maybe the books had lots of fact faults. ]

[Papyrus looks up at Kanata's question, and considers it with all due seriousness.]

Hmmmm. They do look like leaves.

But who's ever heard of a tree with leaves?!? That's for vines, and flowers, and things like that!

[Sorry Kanata.]

I thought trees had leaves... [ He was sure of it until he heard this weird guy talk. ] I know flowers have them but I thought trees did too...

[ Papyrus, you're changing how he looks at the world here. ]

Oh, I used to live in a forest. Trees as far as you could see! Unless you looked at the snow, or the rocks. [The rocks were a lot more of the view than the trees, honestly. But that's not the important thing here.] And they all had needles!

[He's happy to help!]

You lived in a forest? [ And for Kanata, it’s the very first time he’s ever even seen a forest. ] That’s amazing, then you have much more experience with them than I do. Are forests nice to live in? There are no Shinigami Flowers there?

[It's a magical day of firsts for them both.] Shinigami...? No, there weren't any flowers in the forest! Except one, sometimes. [It's a long story.] It was just like I said; trees, and snow, and rocks.

Wow. [ But even only trees were amazing. ] If it was only there sometimes, did it wilt and stuff and then sort of, sprouted back up? Like, laying dormant? [ Because that was a thing that the Shinigami did. ]

[And trees lit by sunlight are even more amazing.] Do flowers do that? Oh no! I thought maybe he went on vacation with the others?! But maybe he was just dormant!

...Wait a minute. That sounds like sleeping.

⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME #1

Kanata Igarashi | Shinigami x Doctor | New

Re: Kanata Igarashi | Shinigami x Doctor | New

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trying to leaf

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sorry about the delay, feel free to drop this if you want to

it can be the slowest of threads

thank you

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