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.

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[ Guess who definitely also got hit with some truth gas? This guy! Not that it will make a huge amount of difference. He's pretty honest to the point of oversharing most of the time, anyway. ]

So you're a kind of mage, too?
Are there others who have similar powers when they dream?
My friend Onni sometimes becomes an owl when he's dreaming. Only that's his luonto. Sort of... a third part of his soul, he said.

Is Nymeria a part of your soul?

There are at least two others. My brother and my sister. I'm not a mage, I think. Mages in my world are old men with long beards who live in towers and cast spells and I'm not that and cannot do any of that. People who do what I can do are called skinchangers.

[ oh no oh no why is she spilling jon and sansa's secrets! she would never do this! the whole thing is stressing arya out! ]

I don't know. I don't know if I have a soul. How do you know if you have one? Sometimes I don't feel like I have one.

[ sometimes she feels empty inside, hollow, like she's becoming no one again, especially when she thinks about robb or her parents or how she can probably never go home. ]

Skinchangers? I've never heard of that before. It's something that runs in your family?
And mages in your world sound kinda lame, no offense.
In the country I come from, mages are mostly women, but none of us live in towers.
The longer I'm here the more I realize how different things are in different places.

Of course you have a soul.
How could you not have one? You're talking to me...

[ Clearly there's some breakdown in translation here in terms of what having a soul really means. To Reynir, there's no moral element. It's just... consciousness. Existence. ]

I don't know. I don't think my mother and father could this. But I never asked.

[ reynir's country sounds so neat! why is every other place better than westeros, pretty much always? ]

That makes sense. Men can be stupid, and I don't think you can be a mage and be stupid. ; )

You simply have to talk, to have a soul?

[ that doesn't make sense. to arya, having a soul is more than existence. it's being a real person, and there are creatures other than people that talk. ]

I think, where I come from, it is supposed to be more than that. It makes you yourself. But sometimes I am not anyone at all.

Some things run in families but don't apply to every single person. I had an aunt who was a mage, too, but my parents are not.

[ Neither are any his siblings, but that isn't surprising, considering none of them are genetically related to Reynir or their parents or that aunt. Whatever their bloodline is, Reynir's got no way of knowing if it has magic in it or not. It had immunity, and that was what mattered. ]

I don't know about that.
Not about men being stupid - that part's definitely accurate.
But I am a mage and definitely make some really REALLY stupid choices sometimes.
Maybe I'm the exception.

[ He considers a few moments how best to explain to her. Reynir has such a crystallized idea of what a soul is, but it's difficult to explain to someone who isn't a mage and can't just see it, hear it, sense the soulness of a soul. ]

My friend Onni would be better at explaining souls than me but it is... your awareness, I suppose. Your essence. Souls can change, can be trapped and twisted, but they can't be destroyed, or lost entirely.

In my world there's... a disease. It makes people into monsters. Horrible, twisted, ruthless monsters. But even after all that, the soul of the human is still there, buried inside, wanting to be let free. That's what mages do, in my world. We hear them, when no one else can. And we help to set them free. Well, amongst other things.

[ But the way she's talking about herself is raising some real red flags here. ]

What do you mean, sometimes you aren't anyone?

Maybe it's only the elder mages who are wise. You're just learning how to be wise right now.

I make stupid choices sometimes too.

[ arya would never call herself stupid -- that's her favorite insult! another score for the truth gas. still, she's glad reynir agrees with her that boys are gross. that's the thinking person's opinion, after all. ]

But if souls can be twisted, they can be changed. [ to arya's horror, she continues to type, then send: ]

I was taken in by a kindly man, who gave me food and a roof and a place to sleep and hid me from those who wanted me dead and taught me to fight. In exchange he wanted me to change my soul, I think. I had to become no one. Not a person, but a servant of Him of Many Faces. It worked, for a time, until I escaped to the Clock, and then to here, and sometimes when I am scared or alone I feel like I am becoming no one again.

[ once the message sends, a confused and upset and frightened arya throws the phone against the nearest wall. it breaks into pieces, and she makes her way up to the arrival area to get a new one. that should fix everything, right? it's just the phone, it's not something happening to her.

she finds a new one, and enters her username to read reynir's next message. ]

[ Some of it might be down to cultural misunderstanding, but Reynir isn't really sure that a guy who took someone in and then tried to change their soul somehow for some reason could be described as kindly. He has so many questions it is hard to know where to start.

First, perhaps, establish some context. ]

Is 'Him of Many Faces' the name of one of your gods?

I don't think I really understand what you're talking about, I'm sorry. I'm not sure how a person could be no one. Everybody is someone.

It sounds like becoming no one is sort of not fun, though? If it happens when you're feeling scared. Or is it - some kind of spiritual solace?

[ Other religions are weird so Reynir's trying not to be a dick here in case this is stuff she thinks is perfectly fine, but this is all sounding sketch as hell to him. ]

He is supposed to be all of them. One God, many faces. The priests believe that all worshippers all over the world only worship one, and that is Death.

I am not one of them though, not truly. Arya's gods are the old gods of the North, the ones that live in heart trees and existed before men.

[ the new phone has not fixed the problem. ]

You can give up being someone. It is terribly difficult. I could never really do it.

[ arya doesn't really know how to answer reynir's question, because the thing is, he's not wrong -- being no one was a solace from being arya for a time, when arya was nothing but a stupid little girl with a dead family and blood on her hands. arya doesn't entirely see it that way, though -- joining the faceless men to her was a survival move, and she's never really thought about it deeper than that.

arya doesn't really have to think, though, because it's almost like her fingers type for her. ]

It is helpful if you want to separate from yourself. It makes being scared easier because you are not scared when you are not you.

But that's stupid. I don't worship death. And you can't worship something without knowing it. That's just not how it works.

[ Arya's gods sound more like Onni and Lalli's and he makes a mental note to ask more about that, later. For now, though, he is trying to understand the rather complex concepts she's trying to explain.

He... doesn't entirely get it, until she says it makes being scared easier. Then it begins to click that she's not talking about some kind of literal magical transformation, some kind of cultural or spiritual practice he's unaware of. Instead, she's talking about... well, a kind of psychological response to stress, perhaps. Probably there's some fancy word for it and Tuuri would have known it, or Mikkel.

So he stops trying to understand the mystical mechanics of the thing and focuses instead on the fact that... this is something this person's been through. Trying so hard to give up being someone and being no one so they couldn't be terrorized or hurt. ]

Your world must be very frightening, for that to be necessary.

[ reynir may have not intended his first message to be funny, but arya smiles anyway. usually, when she talks about the house of black and white, people always react with sadness, fear, or both. reynir, however, is also calling it like it is -- they're stupid, all those awful priests, and it's nice, in a way, to hear them get knocked down a peg. ]

You should tell them that.

(Do not truly tell them, or they will kill you faster than you can pray.)

It is frightening, sometimes.

[ arya can't lie. but she also doesn't want a texting-stranger to pity her, so she follows up with: ]

But it can be beautiful, too. I trained in Braavos, where the streets are made of water, and the city is guarded by a statue of a giant titan, and there are cats and taverns and merchants and so much life everywhere, if you know where to look.

[ Reynir knows a topic being avoided when he sees one but he's not gonna be a dick about it. Why dwell on the bad? ]

That is so cool! Does everyone get around in boats? Is it warm there? Are there palm trees?

[ thanks reynir, you're a real one. ]

What is a palm tree?

There are not many trees at all. Mostly marshes, and surrounding the city there are islands with mountains on them. It is usually chilly, but not terribly so. Lots of rain. In the winter the canals can freeze, but I have not experienced winter there yet. I was born in the summer, and our seasons are long.

It is cool. 😎

What is your world like? Aside from the very cool women who are mages and your terrible disease.

I've never actually seen one. Only drawings in books.
It's a kind of tree that grows in places to the south where it's warm all the time
🌴 They look like this!

[ Reynir at least knows what palm trees ought to look like now! It's the small victories. ]

You haven't ever been through a winter?
How old are you? How long are your seasons?!

Well. The terrible disease brought about the end of the Old World, so there are ruins everywhere.
Even in Iceland, where I'm from, where the Illness never reached, there are huge abandoned buildings.
People had to move away from the city to inland places, to grow food, once we couldn't import any.
We don't have the same kinds of technology as exist in this place. Some of it used to exist but we just... can't power it anymore.
It's hard to talk about something as big as the whole world.
I can tell you about my home if you'd like?

That explains why I have never seen one. I am from a cold place.

I am two and ten. Our seasons can last many years. Summer can be ten or twenty, and winter can be twenty or more. The maesters say the next winter will be a long one, and cold.

[ that sounds...scary? arya thinks of the abandoned homes in the riverlands. she's not sure if she wants to hear about things like that. ]

If you would like to tell me, I will hear it. I like to learn, but I do not like to be a bother, no matter what my sister says.

[ Oh no, she is only a baby! Reynir hadn’t realized. ]

I’ve never heard of a world with seasons like that.
It’s kind of hard to wrap my mind around to be honest.
Is there no fall or spring?

You’re not being a bother at all.
That’s just what sisters say. Let me guess: she’s older than you?

I’m from an island called Iceland. Most of the people left in the world live there because the gods protected us from the Illness.
It’s a cold place, too, in the north like where you’re from.
The village I come from is called Brúardalur. It’s pretty small and boring, honestly. Nothing much happens there any anybody who is interesting leaves for the city when they grow up.
My parents have a sheep farm and grow some crops, too, so I mostly grew up looking after the sheep and farming and weaving and stuff.
I thought when I was younger it was illegal for people who weren’t immune to the Illness to travel at all, but when I found out that wasn’t true I left to have adventures and see a little more of the world.
It was pretty stupid, how I did it, but I don’t regret going.

There is fall and spring, but they are both very short.

She is older than me : ) It's all right, I call her names too. It's the way of things.

Many people where I'm from just farm, but I've never done it. I do like to explore though! Adventures can be fun I think, when they happen for the right reason.

How did you go on your adventure?

[ it's gotta be better than fleeing the scene of your father's execution, right? ]

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. ]

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.

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test drive meme: november 2019

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