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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"...Wow." Ash stared at him openly, struggling to process those questions. "You don't have any pop culture context, do you? Okay, okay." She spread her hands to stop any further questions, her tail flicking side to side. "Let's start by taking me at my word, okay? Step one in your lesson plan is learning: 'Ash is cool'. And 'cool' is good. And not temperature related. With me so far?"

He opens his mouth and looks like he has another question, only to pause and think better of it. He wondered what was 'pop culture' was, but managed to take the hint to try and let her explain first.

"Ah, alright?" Seariadn would take her at her word, at least for the moment. Naive didn't mean stupid after all, and he'd try to find more information later.

"Now, metal is a kind of music." She jerked one thumb over her shoulder, indicating the neck of the guitar slung over her back. "It's loud, it's thick, it's distorted, it's awesome, and it's powerful. So all of that is good. So something being metal is good in those ways, see? Like 'Ash' sounds like fire and burning!" She got all animated as the description whipped her up, stomping a foot as she pumped her fists.

"Ah... right..." He still didn't get it, mostly because he didn't have a frame of reference, but she seemed to like it, so it was good for her.

At the mention of 'fire and burning', his eyes went wide and he cringed away from her. Fire and burning was bad, really bad. There weren't many things that truly scared him, but fire was one of them, since he was all fabric and stuffing. Ash was kind of scaring him to be truthful, fire was not something he wanted anything to do with.

"Whoa, whoa, not in a bad way!" She threw up her hands to reassure him and put an end to THAT line of thinking. "Abstract! No one gets hurt from it. Okay, never mind that. Uh, let's -- how about we just say I like 'Ash' better than 'Ashleigh' and leave it at that, okay?"

He didn't look too convinced, but at least he didn't look so panicked and he nodded slowly. Still Seariadn seemed to be calming down a bit. "I... don't like fire..." Yeah, that much was clearly obvious by his reaction.

"Yeah, I get that. Uh, how about water? Water good for you? Or is that... I'm betting you're hand-wash only, huh?" She was really, really tempted to look for a label, and suppressed that urge with an effort of will.

At the mention of water, he just shrugged a bit. Water wasn't scary like fire was. "I guess?... I'd rather not get water logged, but I'd dry..." He paused and looked at himself curiously. "I think at least..."

"So not to get too nosy, tell me if I should back off, but what is it like for you?" Of all the strange creatures she'd run into over time, a living plush doll wasn't one of them, and -- well, curiosity tended to run in her kind. "Do you eat?"

(ooc: Sorry about any tag formatting/icon issues. I'm replying by e-mail.)

"What's it like?... um... lonely..." He's not entirely sure what she means by either question, but he's trying to figure things out a bit at a time.

The latter question could lead to confusion, so he goes with the 'safe' answer. "Fabric and cloth?" Really, Seariadn could technically ingest anything he could fit in his mouth, but the only thing he could actually make use of was fabric, thread and the like. Anything else would just sit in him, unharmed until he coughed it out, he was 'just' a plush after all. A living one, but a plush all the same.

"I guess... you don't have a job? I mean I know some places that would go for it, but it might be hard for people to look past the surface," Ash mused, tapping a lip with a claw. She knew aaaaall about that.

"A job?..." He sighed, shook his head and looked down at his hands. "I... can't even find somewhere safe to stay..." Seariadn had resorted to hiding in old, abandoned buildings and vehicles most of the time.

"Nobody wants a 'huge, creepy looking toy' hanging around..." Clearly he's had some issues with people that couldn't 'look past the surface'. "I... wondered if I'd have better luck here..."

It was a carnival after all. Even so, he didn't seem overly hopeful. Ash's reaction earlier had him slightly worried that others would get mad thinking he'd been made specifically to 'shill' for the carnival, and they'd not want to hire him because of that.

"You don't let them put you in a sideshow," Ash said immediately. "You get a real sensible job, okay?"

The catgirl had strong opinions on being judged by looks, which came with her gender and especially her species. Plenty of people thought the blonde bimbo was just a pretty kitty sex object. She could guess how people would treat a living plushie and she wasn't going to stand for a second of it.

"... Would working at a sideshow mean I'd at least get a safe place to stay?" Because he was kind of getting more than a little desperate. He hung his head a little and sighed. "What kind of 'respectable job' is going to want me?"

Right now as far as he was concerned, a crappy job was better than no job...

"I bet you could work here. Hmm, what can you do?" Despite having absolutely no hiring authority whatsoever, Ash was seriously considering this questing, one finger tapping against her cheek as her eyes stared up and off into the distance.

Quite frankly, despite the fact that she didn't work for the place, Seariadn needed all the help he could possibly get. At her question however, he looked rather unsure. What could he do? "Um... I can cuddle, move and talk?" Not really any sort of job skills there.

Being made out of fabric and stuffing took a lot of potential jobs off the table right away, anything that meant getting dirty, wet, or being near fire seemed like a bad idea, as did anything where heavier things needed to be lifted or hauled.

"Okay, okay," Ash said, holding up her hands to stop that train of thought, "What do you WANT to do?"

Please have an answer for that one.

He just sighed and looked down at the ground, totally unsure of what he was supposed to say. "I... really don't know. People always seem to be afraid of me, but I don't want to scare anyone. Maybe, maybe something where nobody has to see me...?"

While he was going to say more, he suddenly seems distracted by something, and if Ash looks over to what has his attention, she'll see a child hugging a small plush toy and being very happy to have it. As Seariadn looks away, Ash might be able to tell that he's actually jealous of the small toy. He clearly doesn't understand why everyone loves the toys, and yet nobody seems to like him.

"You don't happen to know of any jobs that would keep me out of sight? This whole being a 'person' thing is strange... I'm not sure I like it."

"Better than the alternative, man," she said, reaching out to give him a pat on the head. Normally she wouldn't get that touchy, but she was pretty sure he was up for it between his earlier comment and that look he'd shot the toy. "How 'bout we go see if they've got work for you? I bet a place this big has SOMETHING you can do for sure!"

"Maybe..." Seariadn leaned into that pat on the head just a little, since it was some of the very rare positive contact he'd ever gotten.

The way he perks up at her question is almost instant, and he sounds so hopeful, even if there is a bit of cautious disbelief to his voice. "You... you'd really do that? Go with me?" He wondered if having her come would help at all, but then again, even if it didn't, at least he would have company for a bit.

"Sure, you bet! You sounds like you could use the support."

She tugged her hand away from his head, but only so she could offer it to him. Help him up out of that corner and get him moving!

There was just a flicker of disappointment on his face when she pulled her hand away, only to perk up and eagerly take hold of her hand. "Thank you, thank you very much!"

Seariadn would go with her easily enough, even if it might take a bit of coaxing to go near anywhere with more than one or two people. He's not really shy, it's just a little overwhelming being around a lot of people... The odd looks some people give him as they pass by don't seem to help his confidence much either.

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⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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