interstellar404 | TEST DRIVE MEME: THE SELF TITLED ALBUM

☆WELCOME TO INTERSTELLAR
And welcome to our first 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 tour. 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?

☆THE MAGIC TOUR BUS
By default, these prompt 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. They take place after being kidnapped and brainwashed, on your character's first tour under their new label. As it turns out, it seems like brainwashing aliens isn't the only thing the abductees have to worry about.

►B1) PLAY IT STRAIGHT: It's just another day on the tour bus, in between long stretches of highway. How do you fill your time? Do you practice your instrument, or do you take full advantage of the open bar? Do you sulk and try go to bed early? Do you yell at your bandmates for ruining the toilet? Do you troll people on Twitter? Tours being what they are, everyone is probably at least a little bit tired or cranky. Just don't do anything that will get the Manager on your ass, because that's always more trouble than it's worth.

►B2) THAT'S NORMAL: The Managers aren't here, as far as you can tell, leaving you in a moment of relative relaxation. Something about those guys just make you uneasy, and they're always shoving you around and making you do things you don't really want to. However, these moments of peace don't last long, because it stars to become increasingly apparent that your tour bus might be...haunted? Whether its the bus turning on without a driver and without a key, wine glasses falling off tables, or guitar static sounding like frantic whispering, things are starting to get weird. Yet, at the same time, something in your subconscious is strongly suggesting that you should ignore it, and that everything is normal and fine...

►B3) THEN WHO WAS GUITAR?: These weird experiences eventually culminate in a kind of phantom music bleeding in from the air around you. The source is impossible to discern but it's somehow...familiar? Like something that played at an important moment in your life, even if the event itself just won't come to mind. What's weirder, is that everyone seems to hear something different. It gets to you in a way that your programming doesn't like - but how do you react? Reluctantly take it in, or throw a fit until it stops?

☆HELPFUL INFO
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You meditate as well, then?" That actually took her by surprise. As did the admission. The words just tumbled out though.

"I'm not sure I...totally understand. But when I sit in the quiet, I can refocus myself. It helps, after a long show. Just something I think I've always done. That's why I like quiet, you know. It makes the focus easier."

"It is like that. That is how I began, actually. What I do is the next step from that..."

How to describe it. How to explain it. Meril bowed her head as she considered. The words she'd used in that blog post had been elaborate and fanciful, capturing nothing of how it truly felt in favor of making it sound sublime and mystical.

"When you are playing," she said, slowly choosing each word, "you do not think about what your fingers are doing. It is like that. You stop thinking about what you are doing, whatever it is, and simply do it. Without a bridge between thought and action. Live in that moment, with no difference between your mind and your body, or your body and the world around it."

Rei took in the words consideringly, her head canting to one side as she studied Meril's face. It wasn't exactly what she expected the woman to say, and she couldn't deny that was really how she felt when she was playing. She just knew, she pressed the keys and knew. It was oneness with the piano, and that was something she could understand, certainly.

Applying it to the world at large was a bit much for her to immediately comprehend, having not really thought about it that way yet. But that didn't mean she couldn't imagine what it must be like. It wasn't the easiest thing, but she could imagine it.

"I...yes, alright. I think that I understand. and I can certainly see how that would make recovering after a show easier. Being able to just feel the world like that. I admit, I'm a little jealous."

Meril had trouble explaining it simply because it came naturally to her. She fell into the state easily, without needing any training or practice. In fact, she barely understood how others could not do the same.

"Perhaps it is easier for me because I do not draw the same energy and fervor from playing and attention as you do." Her own admission that perhaps Rei could do things she envied in turn.

Rei huffed once, and nodded, leaning back in her seat. She appreciated the talk, at least. It felt like they actually connected...and that was hard enough for her, distant as she was.

"Well. I...thank you for sharing that. Maybe it's something I can apply to my own spiritual life. Goodness knows, I have plenty of time to practice while we're on these trips. And it's not like it clashes with my own beliefs."

Which is as much an admission of practicing something and having faith as anything.

If it was difficult for Rei, it was downright formidable for Meril. 'Ice Queen' wasn't just a role she played for the fanservice, after all.

"Perhaps you would repay me by telling me about those beliefs?"

In another woman the changes would be minor, but Meril straightened slightly as she focused on the girl, her fingers falling still as she gave Rei her full, and somewhat intense, attention.

Fair point.

"I...if you like. Though, they might seem a little bit silly, honestly."

Rei smiled awkwardly, observant enough to notice the shift in her demeanor. She doesn't necessarily feel uncomfortable, but she is worried about being scorned a bit.

"Can I have your word you won't laugh?"

"You have it. I have no intention of taking up laughter any time soon."

As self-aware as the statement is, Meril was also entirely serious. She had a sense of humor, but one so dry and subdued that actual mirth seemed past her. The occasional smile was rare enough to earn comment.

Going out on a limb, Rei nodded. She hadn't said this aloud to anyone, but she leaned in so other bandmates wouldn't hear.

"Do you remember how we talked about animism, during that project? The spirits and souls in everything? And how everything has a governing spirit?"

Was this a secret? Meril didn't understand why it needed to be... but she could understand the concern of being laughed at or mocked. When they'd written those posts, she'd read everyone's. Nothing had resonated with her, but she remembered them all clearly, including Rei's. She signified that with a nod.

"I believe that. IT...well, it makes too much sense to me not to. And sometimes? I think that I hear them. I think that they speak to me, in little ways. A nudge to the left, or pushing my finger to a new key...that sort of thing."

Meril didn't doubt that Rei felt she was getting guidance from something or someone, but there were many possibilities what it could be.

"Can you describe the feeling?" She wanted to understand. Wanted to know what Rei felt. And she couldn't say why it was important to her.

"Um. It's like a voice in my ear. Wind, sometimes, or just a feeling on my skin in a different way. That's...what it's like. Barely anything."

Maybe shes barely sane?

And yet somehow that thought never entered Meril's head.

"There are many possible explanations for that. I don't think yours is a bad one. A world beyond this one is... reasonable, I think."

"Do you?" Rei actually smiled. "I'm glad to hear it. I'd hate to...have you think less of me, as a co-worker."

Ah, Rei. Meril didn't put enough investment into people to think less of them -- that would require effort she simply didn't care to put forth!

...Except, well, she was privately glad to have not complicated matters between the two of them. She might profess that her bandmates' feelings towards her meant nothing at all so long as they remained professional, but even Meril knew that wasn't entirely true.

"I might think less of you if you believed in nothing and no one but yourself and what you could see," she mused. "What exists beyond that, I do not know, but I am certain it is something."

TEST DRIVE MEME: THE SELF TITLED ALBUM

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