TEST DRIVE MEME: SECOND STAGE

[interdimanagers]

☆WELCOME TO INTERSTELLAR

And welcome to our second TDM! We've got two types of prompts to use this time around: the first takes place while your character is in the process of being captured, and the second is during their first brainwashed rockstar networking gig. The former is designed to be considered 100% game canon if you make it in officially, while the later is more speculative and will only work if you get lucky during label and band selection.

☆THE TALENT SEARCH

These prompts are design to be kept as game canon after acceptance, and can be used as the official story of how your character was captured. Importantly, the kidnappers entering your timeline causes massive time distortions, which means that the outcome of this scenario will stagger and replay itself multiple times before settling on an outcome. This means that after the fact, you character may remember being captured multiple ways, or going in more than one direction, before the timeline settled on a final path. Or at least, they'll remember this until their memories are wiped shortly afterwards, but that's okay! That's what memory regains are for. Read this page for more specifics on this situation. Any powers the characters have will be weakened and prone to malfunction to the point of uselessness.



►A1) THE SEARCH: It always starts out this way, doesn't it? At some point in your life, you were just doing your thing, wherever you call home. Then, all at once, it's like you've been torn from your dimension by the roots. Time and space displace, and it's like you've been shifted one layer of reality to the left - like some kind of subspace where you can see your reality through it, like a rainbow surrealist image of your home. Even if you can see this ghost image of where you were, you can't interact with it meaningfully. Any friends or family are somewhere else. As you begin to wander, without any other options, you'll find that the scenery gradually shifts to ghost images of other places, other worlds. If you wander long enough, you'll even find other people, lost just like you are. But you probably won't have much time - you've been brought here for a reason, after all.

►A2) THE HUNT: It could happen almost immediately, or it could happen hours later - but, at some point, your dimensional kidnappers start to do their sweep. Space Men in black body suits and gas masks pursue you on foot and in small spaceships, trying to sweep you and the other displaced up like fish in a net. Their guns contain a weird pink gas that will knock out most with only a single breath - and for those more enduring, they have the heavy artillery, like electrical nets and guns. The fallen will be sealed up into stasis pods for transport and loaded onto the ships, which seem like the only way to get out of this place by choice. This is where it ends, but are you going to put up a fight?

NOTE: Characters already in game can't really tag into these sections, so try to tag around to other first time character tests if you can!

☆WELCOME HOME

By default, these prompts aren't considered canon, but if after you are accepted and sorted they can be tweaked into working for you, it'll be totally okay to keep them as a part of your rockstar's personal history. This occurrence is something that will be happening around November 15th game time, but of course, what remains canon and what doesn't will be subject to who is accepted and where they are placed. This takes place after being kidnapped and brainwashed, as your character is first joining their new label. As usual, this is celebrated with a party.



►B1) PLAY IT STRAIGHT: It just another large scale soiree, something typical to the high music society of Vista City - but maybe it's not yet typical to you. For a number of the freshly signed on newbies, this is their first real taste of what their new label has to offer - either Virgo or Pride - and the sheer glamour of it may be intoxicating. Industry big wigs scatter the floor, as do performers of all the tops labels and bands. Maybe you feel intimidated. Maybe you want to make your mark. Or maybe you're not quite as new as some, and are just trying to get through the evening. Either way, they is plenty of booze available if you need some liquid courage. And is that a hookah pipe corner over there? Probably.

►B2) TOTALLY NORMAL: The signs of it are small, at first. Glasses you set down seeming out of place, stuff that almost looks like words written in the condensation on your glass. These little hauntings only get more and more persistent as the night continues, almost like some otherworldly presence is following you. You can feel them lurking nearby at times, like an unusual spot of cold or warmth in the air. None of the higher ups seem to notice but...to some of your new peers, this feels like old news. Eventually the signs become bolder, and at some point in the evening you'll hear it whispered in your ear or written on the bathroom mirror: "Remember."

►B3) REMEMBER: And you do. It strikes you suddenly, a feeling like a foreign presence straying through your mind. You remember something of your past, pertaining to the emotional affinity Love, Duty, Passion, or Hope - whichever feeling describes the person you used to be best. Except you know nothing of that life now, nothing except this single, strange thought in a room full strangers.

NOTE: Current characters definitely go to this party on November 15th, but it isn't required play. Besides the haunting and meeting new characters, it is considered business as usual.

☆HELPFUL INFO

► Follow the mod plurk for updates: interstellar5555
► Check out the game NAVIGATION
► Reserves open on November 6th at 12:01AM EDT
► Applications open on November 11th at 12:01AM EDT

Comments

[exhumerus]

Heh.

[Well, he respects her dedication to realism. Still, her cooperation gets a grin out of him - in the sense that he was technically grinning already, and is, in fact, always grinning, all the time.

Still, this is weird enough that he feels like he probably has to deal with it, at least a little bit.]

No idea, to be honest. I haven't felt anything like this for a while...

[Which...Undyne wouldn't really understand the context of, really, but that's fine. He's used to saying cryptic things he can't expect everyone to understand.]

My bet's on...something magic.

[cherishthistag]

Yeah, obviously. [Come on, Sans. That isn't helpful!] But why??

[She clenches and unclenches her fists a couple of times, looking around again as though the cause is going to reveal itself. Then, abruptly –]

I'm going to find whoever's pulling this and punch them until they tell me what's going on. You can stay here if you want.

[exhumerus]

[Aw, how sweet of her to acknowledge that he's probably just going to sit on his ass! Maybe it's a sign of the actual urgency of the matter that He doesn't take her up on it.]

A tempting offer, but I think I'll tag along this time. Your particular flair for showmanship deserves an appreciative peanut gallery.

[He'd like to know who is causing it, too...anyone capable of messing with timelines like this has always been an incredibly risky prospect. He's tentatively started to trust that Frisk is going to leave well enough alone, but if someone else is suddenly doing it...

If he had a real stomach, it would probably turn. His left eye flickers blue for a few moments, and then stops.]

...I'd hate to miss out.

[cherishthistag]

[What a shame Undyne's busy scanning the horizon when his eye socket does the thing.]

Hah. Yeah, whatever is going on here, someone's ass is going to get PUMMELLED.

[She doesn't ask him to help. It's Sans.]

C'mon, then.

[And she picks a direction and strides in it like she's aiming a weapon.

She doesn't really know where she's going. Everything is about equal levels of incomprehensible rainbow haziness. But picking a direction at random beats just standing around.]

[exhumerus]

[Sans disagrees, generally speaking. Standing around is great. Almost as good as sitting, or laying around. But this is starting to feel like one of those situations that isn't just going to let them keep doing that indefinitely so...may as well let Undyne nip it at the bud. She's good at that.

He wanders along after her. The urge to ask about any of the others is there, but at this point that kind of thing is useless small talk. He already can tell that she hasn't - if she had, she would have mentioned it right away.

Though she isn't paying attention, Sans's eyes are on the horizon, too. He really, really hopes that this isn't going to turn into a fight. He doesn't particularly want to watch Undyne die and he also doesn't want to have to deal with things being made his responsibility. This seems like a time for some cryptic advice - it's about as far as he's willing to push at the moment.]

So...just wondering...

Do you remember how all of you guys rushed in to pacify Asgore, and then something weird happened that none of us could remember afterwards? Right before we left the underground?

[cherishthistag]

... Yeah.

[She slows down a little to look round at him, looking curious and puzzled.]

Of course I do. What's that got to do with anything?

[exhumerus]

Well, from my persperspective...this is feeling a lot like that.

[No biggie or anything.]

[cherishthistag]

[Undyne stops. She frowns. She can feel her fins prickle.]

Oh, yeah? How come..?

[exhumerus]

[It's her asking for clarification that makes him kind of wish he hadn't said anything at all. It's not like he remembers everything about it like he kind of assumes Frisk does...but there's a whole backstory's worth of context for this observation, and not one he really wants to talk about. It's kind of a problem.

He'd hoped that when they returned to the surface and whatever the hell was going on with the timeline resets stopped happening, that...well. That none of this stuff would ever have to be touched on ever again. But yet, like clockwork, here they are.

All the same, his dimly amused grin doesn't falter.]

Details, details.

[He sounds like he might brush it off entirely, but...]

The point being, magic like that...is nothing to mess with. Or...to handle alone.

[Ironic that, for the first time, the thing he's most afraid of is that something terrible will happen to her here and that thing won't be magically undone.]