redmarsshit | test drive meme: november 2019

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test drive meme: november 2019

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

▶ Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

▶ All TDM threads can be considered game canon, and current players are welcome to either top-level on the TDM so prospective players can tag them, or use the prompts for logs or network posts on the communities. All threads on the TDM can be used for Activity Check.

a. the truth hurts.

As though everything happening in the past month wasn't enough, there's been a minor explosion in one of the labs. No one hurt, if you don't count the hapless maintenance bot that caused the explosion in the first place.

But there are gases drifting through the laboratories, some of them making their way into the air vents, invisible to the purifiers in the system thanks to the explosion. And those gases are leaking into the air around Anchor, little pockets of danger waiting to be breathed in.

Those who breathe the gasses in might be the unluckiest Anchorites of all.

They're stuck telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth for the next five hours, give or take. Good luck with that!

b. retromedia.

Oblivious to what's going on inside Anchor, the shift rages outside, bringing shadows of things and places from other worlds, those things flickering into existence and out of it again.

The bad news is that the Whole Foods is gone.

The good news is the shift left something behind in its place.

A long, squat building, with cement walls painted over with stucco and punctuated by big windows. A flat roof with slanted sides, painted a deep blue. In bold yellow letters bolted to the roof, a sign:

BLOCKBUSTER
The sliding doors are broken, bouncing open and shut steadily, but the inside is clean and well-stocked with rack upon rack upon row upon row of VHS tapes, all of them neatly packaged in plastic boxes. Some of them have the movie covers on them, but most bear the Blockbuster logo and tiny labels running down the back, declaring the box's contents. There's a giant, somewhat busted up standee of Tim Allen as The Santa Clause, flickering holiday lights strung unevenly from the ceiling, and symbols of various seasonal holidays stuck up along the walls and windows.

Any movie you could possibly want lies within, or at least any movie you could possibly want that was released on Earth during or before 1994. And don’t worry if you can't find a VHS player in Anchor! There are whole shelves of VCRs tucked into one of the closets, apparently part of an aborted plan to rent out VCRs along with movies.

Poor Blockbuster. They were innovators. And now they're lost to the sands of the red shift.

c. sweet sweet self-care.

While sickness persists inside Anchor's walls, those in recovery seem to be getting better every day. And while the health bots have been working overtime, some of their processes have gotten a little borked up from all the work they've been doing.

Along with medical care, they're now administering lectures to their captive audiences about the value of diet and exercise, the importance of personal hygiene, and the healing properties of massage. Some of them are forcing massages on people just to prove their point, which, y'know, could be a lot worse. At least they're good at massages?

The spa bots are getting in on the action, nagging the healthy to come for relaxation and decontamination in one gloriously bubbly swoop. They've converted several of their spa pools into sweet-smelling antibacterial baths, so you can make extra-sure you got those visiting-a-sick-friend cooties off!

No, seriously, go with them. Before they drag you there and make you take a bath like an unruly two-year-old.

Believe them, it's worth it. If you complete a circuit of the spa, including the antibacterial baths and the fresh and zesty decontamination shower, you get a shiny sparkly holographic sticker that says "YOU ARE FREE OF DISEASE" in little cheerful bubble-letters. They designed them all by themselves, totally from scratch. Are you proud?

d. the network.

Need to get hold of someone, call for help, ask the city at large a question? Need to ask a friend which 1980s teen movie classic to watch at movie night? Maybe you need to hold your sat phone up to whatever crazy thing you're seeing and send out a recording to double-check if your eyes are deceiving you and what you're looking at is real?

Whatever the reason, the network is going strong, so feel free to include a post to it in your top-levels.

Navigation.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Ben accepts that whap, which he figures he'd probably earned. More than a little hypocritical of him, sitting here and preaching about self-worth and not taking responsibility for things that aren't your fault, and then saying negative stuff about himself. Without reproach, he reaches up to neaten his hair where Peter had mussed it. Peter Parker is proud to know him. Part of him can't believe that, even though he knows it's the truth. How could he deserve a seal of approval like that? But most of him is just happy.

He is also grateful that Peter does what he asks, and starts telling a story from when he was first getting his powers. He grins through the story, laughing until his eyes are shining. Ben can tell it must have been distressing at the time, but it's the kind of story where now Peter can look back on it with some fondness and amusement at himself. And Ben is glad to hear Peter actually talking about his uncle, and to hear how well his aunt and uncle treated him when he was going through... all that. ]

That is. Amazing.

When Jacob asks if he's done, Jack sweeps his hand in a universal (multi-universal?) gesture of after you, and then follows him out the door at the far end of the room.

He's like a tiger in a cage. Coiled restless energy. Jack has to wonder if he was ever that full of fire.

"Where do you want to start? Back at the arrival room? Probably a good idea to watch the video, even if it turns out to be a nothing but lies. Knowing what people want you to believe, and why they might want you to believe it, it sometimes ends up being more valuable than you think." It's also a place to start. Though wandering around isn't a bad way to kill time, either.

Hey Genji how bout you git good.

"Yeah, yeah, I know how that goes. Except also throw in high school. I am so far behind right now." Which is probably fine because he's dead? Not that being dead is fine but man it's complicated.

[Oh yeah, Peter can laugh at himself for that one now. Telling this story comes with the realization that it's been nearly three years now since he got his powers, a year and a half since he died and started getting stuck in these weird other universes, and that's kind of a trip. He's just gonna try not to think about that too much.]

Yeah, well, "amazing" might not be the word I'd use to describe it. Although, after my aunt fond out that I'm Spider-Man - and stopped being mad about it, I told her what really happened with the zipper incident. She cracked up all over again.

[ allison relaxes a little, relieved that ben isn't angry, confused, or upset by allison's uncharacteristically long-winded and honest text messages. ben, it seems like, is actually listening to her concerns, not immediately dismissing them or taking them personally or turning them back on her. she feels, for the first time in a long while, truly heard, even though she isn't technically speaking. allison isn't one hundred percent convinced that cole isn't a danger -- ben's testimony, while usually reliable, isn't enough to make allison certain. vanya was usually pretty clear-headed, too.

but it's enough for now, enough to let allison smile a little when ben refers to cole's hat as "stupid big," enough to feel happy for ben, really happy, when ben says that cole understands him, that cole isn't afraid of ben or ben's powers, that he makes ben feel good. she wants ben to have all that. and she wants it to last, wants ben to have it in a way that doesn't end up hurting him in the long run. she knows what it's like to feel the need to be loved, to be understood, and how good it feels once you've finally gotten that love. and how bad it feels once it's taken away. ]

If he makes you feel good, then I feel good about him. Really.

[ that's the text that allison means to send, followed by the text that the truth gas makes her send: ]

But also like I'll probably ask around and try to get to know him a little better because it's hard to believe that someone is a good person until you see it for yourself you know?

[ allison grimaces a little, trying to just shrug off the fact that she just told her brother that she's going to run a background on his boyfriend. no big deal! that's totally normal, right? ]

Also wait what he can talk to the tentacles??

[ allison isn't just going to let ben say that without some follow-up questions -- she's always believed that while ben wasn't a monster, the weird interdimensional creatures definitely were, and that communicating with them was probably impossible. ]

Yep, that's the way of things with siblings in my world too.

[ Good to know some things are a constant. ]

I can tell you all about my adventures sometime, in person... it might be a lot to type out. I'm better at typing than I used to be but I'm still pretty slow.

[ Listen the fact that this boy is literate at all is kind of amazing. ]

From what she's told him of Pandora, that doesn't seem like it's necessarily a bad thing to tell someone. Perhaps it's questionable to assume everyone and everything will be a threat to you and attack it first, but it also sounds like that's what to expect from Pandora.

It also sounds like there were still people who wanted to try and change things for the better. Including Angel.

They have had this discussion before, and he doesn't think he needs to keep telling her that the number of bodies she may see at night matters little when she tries so hard to be better, since the first time she understood the weight of what she was doing.

He takes her hand in his, and brings her knuckles up to his lips.

"If you ever lay awake next to me, thinking those thoughts, I want you to wake me."

He hopes she hasn't been suffering those thoughts alone while he's been sleeping unaware next to her, but he fears she might have.

[ arya's defensive stance drops momentarily, her eyes going wide. mick rory, trying to kill leonard snart? arya doesn't understand. however she might have felt about those two, she always acknowledged that at the very least, they were a pack. ]

That doesn't make any sense. You two protect each other. I've seen it.

[ what happened, to make them hate each other? arya isn't sure, but whatever it was, it must have been awful.

arya's eyes narrow. chronos shouldn't like that she's a killer. he should be scared of her. ]

Some. I could kill you, if you aren't careful, so do not try me.

I would not drink water like that even after boiling it.

Swimming in it would mean I did not boil it.

I want no part of Thames water.

Luckily enough you don't have to worry about that here.

A lot can happen in two hundred years, Shortstack.

[ He grunts, giving a tiny, hooked smile of approval. ]

That so? I'll watch my back. If you try and kill me, though, I'll have to try and kill you back.

"But it's not Pandora."

Because poison air is one thing. A planet full of cannibals and bandits, and possibly Jack, is another thing entirely. He'll deal with it, he'll protect her and the others as best as he can, but...God, it would be nice if they didn't have to spend their new lives here fighting constantly.

He's already so very tired of that life.

"Good. That's step one. Now we need to get you a place to live. Unless you don't want that?" Some people don't and he absolutely doesn't get it. Having a safe place to sleep at night where you're not going to wake up with a knife in your ribs is probably the most important thing after having enough food to not starve.

"So if you need to contact anyone, you can use that. Sorta like a phone. But with less video games."

He hasn't been through his place enough to figure out where people are living. Or even supposed to live.

dojust
sleep
any where ?

He assumes its more like Norfinbury where everyone just took what they got instead of the Meadous where everyone got a house. He woke up in the house in the Meadous, after all, and he wasn't sleeping in that arrival room here. Too many robots.

"There's rooms. I'll show you. There's still quite a few empty ones so you don't have to share. But I guess eventually that's gonna be a problem. There's more than one bed in mine so I guess it's supposed to house a bunch of people, but that'll .. kind of suck." Pratt is not someone that does well in close proximity with others. He hadn't enjoyed it before the cult and he definitely doesn't now. He doesn't even really like the plain metal walls - reminds him way too much of Jacob's bunker.

"There's also a bar. A spa. Kitchens and dining hall."

He shakes his head. If he has to room with people he'd rather not. Not that he has a better idea of what to do when he needs to sleep.

donot wantto
share

donot
trust

Anyone here, yet.

That she can give him the assurance of immediately. Smiling as she gives his hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Not Pandora. No bandits yet, and only strange animals but they're not inherently dangerous either, so far. I even saw some that looked like the ones from the pictures. Deer and things."

Angel giggles, softly as she ever does when he touches her, not just because it tickles when she still finds it so strange to be touched, but that this happiness that pours out of her must go somewhere, she simply cannot hold it inside of herself by her sheer will. That he finds her worthy out of all the world to be the one to touch this way.

"I couldn't do that. You look so peaceful when you sleep. Who am I to disturb beautiful things in the universe?"

[ Allison isn't really wrong, to doubt Ben. In a lot of ways, he'd been the most easily manipulated, of her siblings. He'd been sweet, growing up, but gullible, easy to twist around, easy to bend. He isn't nearly as much, now, but those tendencies are still in him.

Not that Ben is thinking about any of that. He is just blushing, so hot he wouldn't be surprised if Allison could feel it coming off him, and beaming. Very quietly, and with a great deal of joy, he admits: ]

I, um. He. We kissed.

[ It feels so silly to admit that to Allison like it is huge. Allison, his glamorous movie star sister. Allison, who is a freaking mother. And yet, for Ben... it is a milestone. A first. ]

You can ask around. And you can ask me about him, too. I know he's still a stranger to you. I'm not afraid of anything you'll find. And he would understand completely, why you felt the need to.

[ Then she's bringing up the creatures on the other side of the portal and Ben squirms uncomfortably, that bubbly grin dimming slightly as he looks down at that glossy magazine, sitting half-forgotten. ]

He can talk to freakin' trees. He's the spirit of Compassion he can do all kinds of shit.

Forever a disappointment.

"I think you will be excused. It is hard to get to classes when you're in a different dimension." But also high school? He hadn't realized just how young Peter is. A bitty scientist.

"Who is fighting in your world?"

[ two hundred years? arya climbs on top of the jeep to get some height, squatting and leaning towards chronos to get a better look. he doesn't look two hundred years old. ]

You're a liar. If you were that old, your skin would be falling off your bones.

[ she leans back and crosses her arms, satisfied with her inspection. ]

I'm not a shortstack, you giant old-man oaf. Besides, you can't kill me if you're already dead.

It takes practice. Someday you will be as good at typing as I am. 😆😎🤓😍😉👍

[ calm down arya you've only known what the internet is for like 6 months ]

I'll hear your stories in person, mage.

Doesn't matter to me if you believe it or not, runt. [ An expansive shrug. ] All that matters to me is that if you kill Snart before I get to him, I'll take it out of your hide.

[ He grins when she calls him an oaf, more teeth than amusement. ]

You're not the first to say so. [ A pause. ] Shortstack.

[ That's it that's her name now. ] Mmh. You asked what I meant by a different version. I mean different version like a different universe. Someone who looks like me but isn't me.

[Lalli's eyes widen when he sees the tear run down Reynir's face but he doesn't say anything, doesn't move when Reynir turns to leave. He wants to do--something, but he has no voice and there are stones in his stomach. He hadn't meant this, either, hadn't realized how hard had been taking Lalli's behavior--part of him had thought the irritation was mutual.

But he can't take that back, like he can't take back what he did to Onni, and Reynir is already gone.

He stands there for a while, trying to grapple with the newfound conviction that everything he's done has made him into the exact thing he didn't want to be: a fuck-up. That's what he is, and he doesn't know where to go.

Eventually, numbly, the gears in his mind begin to move again, and his legs mechanically begin to walk back to the apartment before he makes the decision to do so. He doesn't know what to do about Reynir, and he doesn't know what to do about Onni, but of the two of them there's one he still feels he can talk to--at least, for right now.

Onni, at least, always seems to know what to do when Lalli doesn't.]

[He could have had her convinced, really, if they hadn't made some effort to talk to one another after that somewhat disastrous first meeting. Maybe she should have been more sober for that, and the first impression could have been better.

All in the past, now, though.

Julie laughs at the movie, too, though she finds she's far more fascinated with how much Ben laughs. It looks like her estimation of his sense of humour had been right on the money.]

Oh my god, Ben. [She snickers.] Do ghosts just hang around a ouija board on the off-chance they can make it in Hollywood?

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test drive meme: november 2019

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