TEST DRIVE MEME

[rysligmods]

TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to Ryslig's test drive meme! If you're considering apping here, this is where you can try your characters out in the game's setting. A few things to note: The State of the Game Discussion produced a lot of great suggestions and we now have a post for Plot Suggestions and Monster Questions. The NETWORK VOTE results are in and PRIVATE MESSAGING will be added some time in November. Lots of people have asked good questions on the FAQ, so do take a look. You can only app ONE character per round so choose wisely. Reserve and application dates have been announced. Test drive meme threads can be used for your roleplay sample! Sample scenarios: SCENARIO ONE: You've just been released from the hospital in Vandare and no one really seems to know what to do with you. The locals offer polite advice but don't seem to want to spend a lot of time with you. You and the other new arrivals stick out like sore thumbs, so perhaps one will spot you wandering about town. SCENARIO TWO: You've become hopelessly lost in Lager Woods. Paths don't seem to lead where you remember them leading, and you feel as if you're going around in circles. Childlike giggling can be heard from no direction in particular. Suddenly, you stumble upon another character, who seems to be just as lost as you! Perhaps you can find a way out together. SCENARIO THREE: The time has come and you've found yourself becoming a monster. Is the change instant, or gradual? Are you familiar enough with monsters to know what's happening, or is it a complete shock? NOTE: Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.

Comments

[radiobluffs]

What's beneath it is... well, this narration's not sure it should say, in case it spoils the mood with the words it would have to use! Maybe there's a real smile. Maybe there's desert wind, blowing scorched and dry through the mind of something less than a man, blowing hot sand into your shoes and your underwear, oh, desert sand is just the worst. Maybe there are spiders! That's the best-case scenario.

"Oh," says Kevin with a self-depreciating laugh, "is it that obvious? This forest is just going to be the death of me! I heard some trees laughing together -- at least, I think it was the trees; the laughter was faint, and seemed to come from all around me at once -- so I thought maybe they'd give me directions if I asked them politely. But they just laughed. And laughed... and laughed."

His voice is soft and friendly, and yes, he really does talk like that. Sorry, Itachi. Sorry, Itachi's patience.

[peaceloving]

"They think you a fool," Itachi murmurs, listening to the soft, rustling voices that dance overhead. Yes, the trees do whisper -- and now he can understand them, now he can hear those voices clearly as they gossip among themselves, slow languorous unhurried voices. Why should they rush? And why should he, who is just now coming to realize his own kinship with these great, long-lived bastions of the earth?

Even a few short weeks ago, this bizarre way of speaking would have sorely tested his patience, would have demanded sharp action. But he can draw on the nature of the trees for himself now, and wait as patiently as they.

"Why did you come here?" he asks, sharpening his gaze. He still can't see much, but this trespasser doesn't need to know that -- the appearance of an intense stare will do much. "What brought you to this forest?"

[radiobluffs]

"Well that's not very fair of them!" says Kevin, cheerfully, chidingly. "Maybe I think it's foolish to sit around all day photosynthesising, when they could be working hard to become valued, valuable members of society -- as chairs, wardrobes, and company-branded letterhead stationery."

He realises he's gone off on a tangent, and stops himself, and adds sweetly: "But that's none of my business."

It's difficult to describe how saccharine his voice is when he says that, but the narration will try. Here goes:

Very, very, very, very.

Itachi's questions go temporarily unanswered, because by god, there's got to be a limit on how much talking Kevin is allowed to do in a single tag.

[peaceloving]

Chairs? Wardrobes? Stationery?

Itachi doesn't actually need his questions answered. Oh no. He has all the answer he needs. This person isn't a friend to the trees at all. The monster rises inside Itachi, the snarling beast that demands he kill and devour.

The human in him, the part of him that still values human life, wants to hold back. After all, trees are used to make such things. It's a fact of the world.

But the monster still rages. And he's hungry.

"You don't belong here," he hisses, and a vine lifts from over his shoulder, stretching out toward this interloper, only good for food.

so they're best friends now, right?

[radiobluffs]

A little too late, Kevin realises that his big mouth -- ah, his sensible consumer feedback -- has gotten him into trouble again. Odd how that keeps happening. It's almost as if people don't appreciate positivity.

--Right, the vines.

The smile remains, but it's a frightened rictus of ohshitohshitohshit. Kevin is a lover, not a fighter, if he absolutely had to make the choice and was given no third option of 'other'. So he dodges.

"Wellitwasnicemeeting--"

And, with his shoeless foot, he treads on the biggest stone of his life.

"--yOW!"

Kevin just about avoids the vine, but it's not by skill so much as it is by pratfall.

oh, totally. These are vines of SUPER BEST BUDDIES 5EVA

[peaceloving]

There's a saying about a complete novice in battle being more dangerous for being impossible to predict; while Itachi has never put much stock in that before, it's a simple truth that anyone with even the tiniest amount of battle training would never have made such an asinine mistake -- and would have been struck by the first blow, as a result.

Pure luck, of course. He's unwilling to accept that anything else might have interfered. Such as his blurred vision, the uncontrolled lash at someone that the monster inside him hungers to devour, or...

It doesn't matter. He advances again, eyes narrowed. It doesn't improve his vision any.

"You have come here to do violence to the forest," he hisses, and another vine joins the first one. "You will regret your intentions. Flee back to your city and stay there!"

yaaay, they can have a mutually beneficial and productive social relationship!

[radiobluffs]

Kevin's been in fights before, don't get him wrong. Who helped to kill an entire army of good-naturedly displeased sales guys? This guy! Who ran like a baby from a teenager throwing books? Also... also this guy. But she was a scary teenager, okay? She had a way with words. Especially words that were bound in hardback and travelling rapidly through the air.

While the narration goes off on a tangent amusing to only itself, Kevin stumbles to his feet -- and straight into the second vine. He can't even use the 'complete novice in battle' excuse. He can't even use a 'complete novice at running away from battle' excuse. He is just not having a very good day.

"Ah," says Kevin, lately the beloved Voice of Desert Bluffs, and currently a man at a loss for words. "Ah--"

(While Kevin panics, this narration thinks it's a good time to mention that it gives carte blanche to Itachi for whatever he might want to do as events progress. Permission to eat Kevin, permission to rough him up a little, even permission to shake hands and part as friends. Hey, it's a meme thread, so no harm done.)