test drive meme: november 2019

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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.

Comments

[itsnotaonesie]

[Peter also does not stop hugging Ben, but what he does do is give him a perhaps unnecessarily tight squeeze in reply.]

Aaaah yeah, probably would ruin it, bud. Not gonna lie, though, you've got me curious now. Fire away.

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben is going to keep holding Peter until he is ready to let go; and in the meantime he tries gently coaxing a little amusement into him. He hadn't been lying, of course, about having those questions ready. He couldn't have been. But what he hadn't said aloud is that half the point of asking them is to remind Peter of smaller, frivolous mistakes. Little errors and faults that he'd made that hadn't been connected with anyone he loved dying. To make Peter laugh at himself, but also, in a more subtle way, to remind him that the stakes weren't always so horribly high, that he is allowed to mess up and have it just be a funny story. ]

What is the absolute dumbest thing you ever said out loud, either in school or to a stranger, as a little kid?

[ That seems, to Ben, likely to be a relatively safe question to ask. All kids blurt embarrassing nonsense, but the consequences aren't, he thinks, he HOPES, usually all that traumatic. ]

[itsnotaonesie]

Oh. That's a lot tamer than I was expecting.

[Not that he's complaining, it's something else to focus on and it's not treading into deepest, darkest secrets territory. Except now he really has to stop and think, and it would be kind of awkward to do that for a while still clinging to Ben, so he's finally going to let go and lean against the table.]

...Oh, okay, got one. We had this neighbor lady a couple apartments over that was horrible at doing her makeup. Like, her face was always way lighter than the rest if her, she wore bright blue eye shadow, she even had this really bad perm right? I legit thought she was one of those birthday clowns, and I don't remember how I worded it but one say we passed her in the hall and I straight up asked her where the clowns work, something like that. She was pissed, but my aunt and uncle thought it was the funniest thing ever.

[benhargreeves]

Well, I'm not gonna ask anything that actually makes you uncomfortable, duh.

[ There's a gentle teasing in the comment, but it is still deeply true: Ben is uncommonly averse to making people uncomfortable. He avoids it at all costs. He is willing to make Peter sad, if he thinks it will genuinely provide wisdom and comfort to him over unhealthy coping mechanisms. But the thought of making him even remotely, actually embarrassed, just for his own entertainment? Yeah, no. Ben's way too much of a softie for that.

He listens to Peter's story with open glee, covering his grin with his hand as Peter reveals just what he'd said. And oh, that really is a good one. Ben's eyes are bright with mirth as he stifles giggles, trying to imagine a baby version of Peter absolutely dragging that old lady, without even meaning to. ]

Ohhhh my god. Amazing.

[itsnotaonesie]

There's not too much that makes me uncomfortable these days, but I sure do appreciate that.

[And that's why Ben is Peter's best friend, he's just so goddamn thoughtful. Even if he is willing to deliberately make him sad sometimes.]

Do you have any good embarrassing stuff you said as a kid stories?

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben casts his mind back, for a story that will be funny - outright funny, not tinged at all with anything grim or depressing or messed up. A lot of the embarrassing stuff he had said as a kid had come from being ignorant and isolated and abused and not really having a sense of what was normal. A lot of it, in retrospect - stories he can still laugh about with his siblings - is majorly fucked up.

But he hits upon a story that will work, one that is completely harmless, and similar enough to Peter's story that it connects, in a way. His face lights up, and he begins: ]

I must've been, like, five? We got a lot of stuff delivered to the house, and we didn't go out much at that age so it would be like such a big event to sneak to the back door and get a look at whatever strangers were bringing, like, groceries or soap or cigars. It got to be where we recognized a lot of the guys who would make the deliveries and it was always the same one who brought produce. This older dude. He might not have even been that old - maybe fifty or sixty, but that seemed ancient. And then one day there was somebody new. He was maybe college age? Who knows.

[ Ben can feel his face getting hotter, but he'd committed to telling an embarrassing story and so he's just going to have to live with it. The truth gas is certainly ensuring that he doesn't leave any details out, even if he would prefer to. ]

Anyway he had this really long hair and I'd never seen a guy with such long hair before, and he was honestly pretty cute. The second time he came instead of the old guy, I asked if it was a permanent thing, and he said this was his delivery route now. And I uh. I might've asked him if he'd replaced the other guy and gotten his job because he wasn't so old and ugly.

[ He gives a little shrug, explaining: ]

I didn't know how jobs worked! I didn't get why he thought it was so funny! It seemed like a valid question at the time!

[itsnotaonesie]

Oh thank God, I wasn't the only awkward disaster child. [I mean he's laughing, but no, he's still an awkward disaster child. He's just a disaster in different ways now.]

It's probably a good thing that our goofy embarrassing stories are this tame. Things didn't start getting too awkward for me until I got my powers.

[benhargreeves]

Ummmm I was an awkward disaster child before you were born, kiddo.

[ Sure maybe the timelines of their worlds don't sync up perfectly but considering their relative ages? It IS true.

Unfortunately, so is Ben's blurted, honest response to what Peter says next: ]

Well, I picked the tamest one I could think of on purpose, because sometimes I just wanna pretend my childhood wasn't completely fucked-up and horrifying even though I know you know it was.

[ Ben shuts his eyes, frowning and biting down hard on his bottom lip. He really wishes he hadn't said that. Even if Peter could probably have guessed it. He feels completely mortified, admitting it out loud. Could he really sound any more pathetic if he tried?

Best to change the flow of the conversation, fast: ]

Tell me about getting your powers. That sounds potentially amusing and embarrassing, right? Let's talk about that and not me and how pathetic I am.

[ ...Dammit. ]

[itsnotaonesie]

I know your circumstances were super weird, but when I'm thirty I hope I look half as good as you. [though at this rate like honestly, he'll be lucky if he makes it to thirty. He's already died once, after all.

First of all, I don't think you're pathetic at all. You're my friend and I'm proud to know you.

[so THERE. Peter whaps him upside the head, very gently.]

As for my powers, when I first discovered I could stick to things, I was in the bathroom getting ready for school, right? I hopped out of the shower and I was getting dressed, and when I was zipping my pants my fingers got stuck to the zipper. I couldn't let go, I was just stuck. So I was like, 'shit, I can't go to school like this', and while I was in the middle of panicking about it my uncle knocks on the door all 'hey Peter, you're gonna be late for school'. I still can't let go of the zipper, so I just blurt out the first thing that pops into my head, which was 'I'm stuck in my zipper'. Which... wasn't completely untrue, but he's thinkin' I, y'know, had skin stuck in there, so he's like 'oh my God, are you bleeding, do you need help', I hear him tell my aunt what happened, or what he thinks happened, and then they're just out in the hall cracking up and handing me an ice pack through the door. I didn't go to school that day, I was kind of afraid to ask what May said when she called to tell them I'd be out.

[Peter just presses his lips together, nodding silently to himself. Mmmyep, that happened.]

Aaaand that's how I discovered I could stick to things like a spider.

[benhargreeves]

[ 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.

[itsnotaonesie]

[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.