☆MUSICIAN TEST DRIVE: ONCE MORE WITH FEELING

[interdimanagers]

☆WELCOME MUSICIANS

And welcome to our third 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 in early January 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: This is perhaps your second or third "New Years" party, and several days after the fact - just the industry's standard for starting the New Year with a bang and giving a change to mingle with all your exciting new business connections. 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. Just how alcoholic is this egg nog? Probably very.

►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 in earlier January, but it isn't required play. Besides the usual hauntings and meeting new characters, it is considered business as usual. Pride Records and Virgo Entertainment's employees are uneasily coexisting, pretty much because they have to in order to keep up appearances. Body guards are out in full force.

☆HELPFUL INFO

► Follow the mod plurk for updates: interstellar5555
► Check out the game NAVIGATION
► Check out the RESCUER TDM
► For more deets about Americana's holiday traditions check out THIS POST
► Reserves open on January 2nd at 12:01AM EDT
► Applications open on January 11th at 12:01AM EDT

Comments

[traumatizing]

He takes the earbuds and pops them in, covering his ears to block out the ambient noise from the party. It's good. Its really good, Terry can tell that much. He bops his head along and nods extra hard at all the right bits. He even raises his eyebrows at one particularly impressive phrase and has to resist the urge to ask Cloud to replay that couple of seconds for him.

Unfortunately for Cloud, Terry does a lot of writing and sequencing on the go, so he knows when he hears something too put-together to just be a rough copy. "No way are you 'just playing around with ideas'," is his response when he takes out the earbuds, and he points to one of the tracks on the screen. (He wouldn't normally be this forward, but Terry's had a fair amount to drink, and he's always excited about music.) "That line's way too polished for that."

[off_the_edge]

As soon as Terry had taken the earbuds, Cloud had got up to walk around - few things made him as nervous as closely watching someone else listen to his music, or even music he's recommended to someone, while they've got headphones in - but it's only enough to give them both some space. He's keeping an eye on him, making sure that he's getting all the reactions he wants, and when he comes to sit back down it's with obvious pride. He got them all.

He knew he would.

"Not really," Cloud says, shrugging, winding the earbuds around his hand. "I've just been working on it for a long time between doing other things. Thing is, when you've spent that much time working on something, all you can hear is what still needs work."

He looks hard for any sign of recognition - tell me it's not just me.

"I'm Cloud," he says. "Actually, I'm Clarence, but the fans don't need to know that, right?"

[traumatizing]

"I get that. My bandmates practically have to wrestle me out of the studio or I'll be recording and editing for months." He laughs a little sheepishly and looks down at his drink, thinking about that and the harddrives full of music he never thinks is good enough to release.

"Terry," he says, offering a hand with a wry smile when he looks back up at Cloud's face, "or Trauma, if we're going by stage names."

[off_the_edge]

Cloud nods. He definitely knows that feeling. He remembers sometimes it felt like he was orchestrating some kind of crucial battle while forcing his way through long grids of menus.

"'Trauma'?" Cloud considers. Then he decides. "That's awesome. What do you play?"

He's only going by his stage name because, without in any way having a lack of perspective about it, it feels so much more like his own.

[traumatizing]

"Anything I can get my hands on." Not that he's good at them all, but he's that annoying kind of guy who'll spend half an hour trying to learn the digeridoo if you leave him to his own devices long enough. "I play synth for Cosmic Indulgence mostly though."

[off_the_edge]

"I'm the same," Cloud says, with wary interest. "I do a little bit of everything."

This is strange. If someone had told him ten minutes ago that in this place of all places he'd meet someone who got what it was about, he'd have just told them that it wasn't possible and he didn't really care anyway.

"Anyway, it's your turn," he says, and even with the aloof sweep of his hand he can't hide the eagerness in his voice. "You have to play me one of yours, it's your turn. Come on!"

[traumatizing]

Terry laughs, a little awkward despite himself, but Cloud did show him something. It'd be rude not to reciprocate. And it'd be nice to get an outside opinion once in a while.

"Alright, alright," there's a hint of a grin on his face as he fishes his phone out of his pocket and pulls up his latest piece of work - no headphones, but Cloud has his - and offers it over. "It's... New so. Be gentle."

The track is rough, and there's the odd gap where it needs something to bridge two parts, but the music itself is heavy on the synth and drums. Discordant, but intentionally so, and angry as fuck. The overall feeling seems to be that something's coming, and that's something to worry about.

[off_the_edge]

Cloud nods, plugs his headphones in and listens. It's definitely less finished than his own track, but that's great on its own - you listen to other people's finished music and your own works in progress.

"This isn't bad at all," says Cloud, meaning without any condescension that it's incredible. There's ideas in it he'd never had come up with himself, but that hit him in the gut. He goes back and solos the synth and bass in a passage, toggling them on and off to work out how the sounds work together. It's like seeing in colour. "How'd you do this part?"

[traumatizing]

"Uh--" He peers at the phone to see what Cloud's looking at, scratching the back of his head, "gratuitous use of sixths and ninths mostly." Terry says it with a smile, but it's mostly to hide how difficult he finds the question. As excited as he is to talk about it, no one ever really asks him about the technical details of his stuff, between that and the booze it's kind of a struggle to articulate. "And a chorus pedal on the bass doing shit a chorus pedal is not designed to do."