cursedcontent | TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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TEST DRIVE MEME #1

A Blood Offering

You wake up cozy in bed at the Saturn Motel. As you observe the room you may realize that it looks a little dated. Or, perhaps from your point of view the lamp and TV are wildly futuristic. Or, like Goldilocks, it may seem just right: close to the world you just left behind. Either way, you just had a very strange dream (see the arrival scenario) and now you're here. And you're not alone: there's a bed next to yours and someone else is waking up just like you are.

You can chat for a while if you like, but if you try to leave you'll find the door is firmly locked and no amount of kicking, punching, or hitting it with an object will do you any good. Instead, there's a letter on the nightstand which reads:

"Good morning and welcome to your new home!

You may be wondering why you're trapped in this room. Fear not, the door will open easily if you offer a bit of blood. More than a few drops but not enough to be a serious wound. A handprint's worth will do, let's say, and it only needs to come from one of you.

I'll let you sort that out yourselves. See you on the other side.

Sincerely,
The Mayor"

And indeed, a handprint's worth of blood pressed against the door will unlock it and let you out into the world. Do you volunteer your own blood? Do you take it from the other person by force? It's up to you! But there's no food in here, so you better figure it out eventually.

Roller Rink

As a celebration of your new lives here (and an apology for the whole blood offering thing - they were just testing something out, really) the Mayor has invited everyone to the Crazy Eight Roller Rink for a private, after-hours party.

Attendance isn't mandatory, but it is heavily encouraged so that you can meet your fellow Cursed and know who's in on the whole secret. It'll help you down the line at some point if your Curse gets out of control and you need someone to wrangle you.

As a reward, everyone who shows up and completes at least one lap around the roller rink (you must be wearing skates, but you can crawl the lap if you can't get the hang of them) will receive a free walkman with a mystery tape inside. The color, style, and mystery tape your character gets are up to you.

Mallrats

Everyone loves the mall! Right? Right! And this group of newcomers is lucky enough to be here for the White Pines Mall Grand Opening celebration! Feel free to walk around the mall and partake in sales galore, check out the attractions, or just get to know the layout of the place.

The Mayor has given everyone a gift card for $100 that can be used anywhere in the mall as long as they attend the Grand Opening.

They also strongly suggest that you familiarize yourself with the mall and its layout, just in case you ever get stuck there for a while and have to compete with others for food and resources. But that probably won't happen.

Extra Info

The test drive meme and the IC intro log will have the same prompts, and threads between two accepted characters can count as game canon.

The first prompt is flexible: technically you're supposed to be with one other person, but if you want to do larger groups that's fine.

Rooms at the Saturn Motel initially contain two beds for the prompt, but upon leaving and returning characters will find that they all have their own rooms with one bed. If you want a roommate, someone better be ready to sleep on the floor or snuggle up! The room doesn't have to look exactly like the reference image as long as it's not too fancy and suitably dated.

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[ It's wild that it only takes 6 words to pull her back into focus, to shift and redirect the bottled up emotions into a rocket.

Sorry Steve. Teens, right?]

She sucks in a sharp breath, vigorously wiping at her face with a half sad, half sardonic laugh. ]

Ever the optimist.

Someone's gotta be.

[ But it does make him smile, just a bit. A half-hearted quirk of his lips when he sees the Max he's come to know start to shine through a bit. Sometimes Steve wonders what must have gone in her life to make her as tough as she is. Well, he can guess a bit about what it must have been like to have Billy as a brother, but that can't be all it. After all, she seemed so much more relaxed that summer before shit kind of hit the fan again.

Then things click a bit. Steve glances behind him, at the mall, and then at Max as she stands there refusing to look at it. ]

It's not that great in there. Really shitty excuse for an ice cream parlour, and I'm sort of an expert on that sort of thing. I wouldn't waste my time if I was you.

[What is this mythical fun you speak of?

Fukawa pulls a face that belies several doubts.]

I'll take your word for it.

[Although — all right, it's hard to parse with this mysterious auto-translation sorcery going on, which is something she both does not want to think about and cannot stop thinking about, but he does have an accent of some kind. It would be easier to tell which if they were speaking Japanese. It sounds sort of European? Nordic, German? Russian? Something stoic and northerly, nowhere near percussive enough for the Mediterranean. Maybe he's got a history of long winters with little else to do but strap on a pair of skates.]

Y-you're probably right. [It's not a comforting idea, but it's a likely one. If nothing else, Fukawa has learned that relying on outside forces to fix anything was a fool's tactic. They're the ones in this mess, so they'll have to be the ones to climb out of it. Still, the addition of the supernatural puts a potent wrinkle in that. The stunt with the door keeps giving her goosebumps, the image snapping back into mind on an hourly rotation. Then there's the anachronism of the setting, the bizarre spread of captives, the oblivious locals. That stupid shared dream.

How are they expected to contend with a force so nebulously defined? She's drawing nothing but blanks. If she had been a sci-fi or fantasy enthusiast maybe she'd have better theories.]

I still d-don't know what to believe. Or what they're even talking about. Have you seen anything weird yet? [She shoots him a quizzical glance.] I don't feel cursed.

[ Yes. The way he woke up bleeding with no visible cuts, first from his cuticles and now intermittently from his palm instead, when nobody else is—but Vasiliy doesn't disclose that. This conversation is already getting into potentially dangerous territory, and it's the kind of conspiratorial discussion a man like him is smart enough to abstain from having with a stranger. For all he knows, she's not one of the new arrivals. She could easily be a mole this Mayor sent to watch them. ]

This place seems normal. Only arrival was weird. And the door lock, with blood. ...I think we are in nineteen-eighties.

[ He knows they're in the Eighties, because the first thing he did upon waking up in an unfamiliar place—after hunting for styptic powder for his hand—was locate a newspaper. It's not the first time he's woken up in a different time, but it is the first time others have been there with him, which leads him to wonder if he didn't die in his sleep despite that initially seeming a likely explanation given the events of his paused-and-resumed life thus far.

Seeing a wall of replicas of Gorbachev's face moving in sync across a dozen TV screens in a store window at the mall also helped grind in the point. ]

Edited 2022-08-28 00:34 (UTC)

[ The didactic tone is familiar; the face and the intervention in a stranger's business less so. Vasiliy lowers the windbreaker he was holding up with one hand—optic white, with loud blue and red stripes on the upper arms—and regards the stranger. He's had time to get used to dyed hair, but that doesn't mean he thinks it looks good, especially when it's faded out like hers. ]

Do you think?

Edited 2022-08-28 00:32 (UTC)

[ She nods, muttering a soft thanks before moving to the bench. Max plops on the seat with a heaviness that doesn't match her small frame before sliding to be as obscured as possible from onlookers.

After all, a crying teenager doesn't exactly blend in with the vision the Mayor apparently had of making this all seem normal.

Fidgeting with the sleeve of her jacket, she takes a few steadying breaths -- get herself back to some sort of neutral so she can get the hell away from the stupid mall and its stupid reminders. ]

[ She takes the windbreaker from him and holds it up to his shoulders, standing at arms length to take a good long look at him. ]

Yeah, why not? It's not my style, but-- [ Her eyes flick over him again with a smirk and a self-aware shrug. ] I'd be willing to bet we don't have a lot of overlap there.

[The least Wanda can do is stand in the way, making it difficult for anyone passing by to see what's going on.]

I'm Wanda. What's your name?

[Easy small talk.]

[ He's definitely being sized up here, as indicated by the length of time she stares if nothing else, and Vasiliy can't help but feel a bit like a taxidermied animal in a museum full of tourists. The judgement of the future's American women tends to be that he comes up lacking, a stark contrast to what he spent most of his adult life accustomed to back home. But he's not tall here, or particularly resemblant of the blond, bronzed, muscular men on Abercrombie and Fitch bags, or fluent enough to be funny or charming. An EMT's uniform gets him more attention than street clothes, certainly, but it's not associated with the power implicit in the deep navy trousers and belted olive jacket of a NKVD officer's daily wear.

She makes a joke, somewhat self-deprecating: she knows she stands out, and probably wants to, not a sentiment Vasiliy's ever related to in his life. He smiles back, a social necessity. ]

Probably not, no. I prefer something less loud than this. Did you already find clothes?

[ Less loud and easier to clean. That white fabric seems difficult. ]

[Not like she has a choice now. Let the jury know that she is accepting this offer under extreme duress.]

F-f-fine. [God. She works into a sit and raises a hand to the other woman. Her hair and clothes were already a mess, but sitting squat on the rink with her glasses askew makes her look like a fallen five year old.] If I h-have to accept your pity, you better not make a big deal out of it.

Max.

[ Slowly, she starts putting one mental brick at a time back into its correct place. File away the emotions and get the control back in place. ]

Sorry. I'm not usually this pathetic.

[ Her brows shoot up and she barks a laugh. ]

You think this is loud? Honey! We might not even be the same species! [ She tosses the jacket over the closest rack and loops her arm through his to guide him to the next display. ] Let's find you something beige.

[ She waves her free hand vaguely in the air to indicate her general ... All of her. ]

You're lookin' at the current extent of my wardrobe. I wouldn't normally look for anything in a place like this, but I got a gift card. Seems a shame to waste it.

[Nancy frowns at this man's terrible manners, but she doesn't say anything.] No, we don't. I've never seen one before but... it looks outstanding! So decadent!

[Now she wants to go get one, maybe. When he tells her more about it.] What all is in it? [She leans forward to try to identify it a bit better.]

No should, [she repeats, frowning just slightly. She likes Peter. He doesn't seem to judge, and took the time to explain things to her. She was so far out of time and it was good to have a friendly face she could speak with.]

I like that, quite a lot. It makes sense, when there's so many options.

[She keeps Sisters of Mercy, but starts to look for his next recommendation.] Is that a band? Or a book?

Joyce had her at bourbon. And pretzels.

"I know two of those things," she says proudly, before stopping fully when they enter the court. She looks around, at all of the signs, the people, the color. She inhales deeply, before realizing Joyce has asked her another question.

"Oh- both! And certainly sweet! One year, I remember, for the holidays, we all split three oranges Fagin'd gotten his hands on. They were so sweet, such a pretty color." She smiles at the memory. Happier times, she thought, before everything had gone further to hell and she'd started to realize exactly what her life was. "I kept the rind, so I could smell the orange whenever I wanted."

That is to say, she needs all of the food you can give her. She was always small, but recent events had had her dropping more weight than she needed.

"Maybe. We'll just have to keep looking for them." Joyce nodded and they each went about investigating the room and their only means of escape.

Except that Jonathan was already volunteering for something that she would never let him do.

"Not on your life." She rested her hand on his arm. "You may be grown up now but I'm still your mother, it's still my job to see that you're safe." And who knew what blood meant in this place, besides it wasn't as though she hadn't bled in her life before, frequently enough.

"Let me do this, do you have a pocket knife or something?"

[She lacks the ability to poke into anyone's mind right now, but she can guess what Max is doing. It's familiar.]

You're fine. You're not pathetic. [She's human, and young at that. A fact that irritates Wanda, but she pushes it down with a press of her lips together.] Take your time.

Joyce was going to learn to stop being surprised one day, but today was not that day. She blinked rapidly at Nancy's story and sort of nodded in understanding without adding a comment. What could she say to that really?

"Ok, well let's start with some chicken and then get pizza, we can take the pretzels with us if we want while we walk around." Joyce took the liberty to order them two plates from a vendor, large scoops of rice were topped with bite-sized pieces of chicken and thick sweet sauce.

She gathered them and two large cokes on a tray and guided Nancy to an open table. Joyce set out the food and plasticware, popping a straw in each drink and situating them across from each other. "There we go, after this we'll see how much room you have for pizza."

"Thanks," Bev leaned in and drew in slightly on her cig to catch the tip with a flame. Once she had a good cherry going she leaned back and took a deep drag with a salaciously satisfied sigh.

"Yeah, help yourself. It makes it easier to justify when you just really need a smoke." Or at least it made people laugh. Smoking was a dirty secret for most places in New York, and she'd never really gotten into the whole vape thing. Maybe she was too damned old for that fad.

"This place is weird right? I remember malls like this when I was a kid, don't see them much anymore." Nt with the decore like this, but this whole place felt a little bit, what was the word? Anachronistic?

[ The fight at the mall feels like a lifetime ago, considering all the other BS that's happened. So much heavy crap. Too much. She can lean into making fun of this mall.

Not like it's hard, honestly. A welcome distraction. ]

I bet their overpriced day-old pizza's dried out under the heat lamps. [ Yeah, she could do this. ] Only way to get people in there is bribery. Bribery and shitty stores.

If she's said too much, she doesn't even realize.

Nancy waits patiently for their food, and happily takes her tray and follows Joyce's lead. The chicken smells delicious, and with rice, too! It was sure to be filling.

"Would I be bothering you if I asked you what pizza is?" Pizza in it's current state was not something she was bound to recognize. Maybe one or two Italian restaurants in London had them, but she wasn't going anywhere that wasn't a pub for food. She watches Joyce with the straw and copies her. She takes a sip with slight difficulty, then brown eyes fly wide open. "This is the best thing I think I've ever had to drink." The world is so much better 150 years in the future.

Right? What, they need to give us a hundred dollars to get us to go? That's like ... Losing money for them.

[ So it's definitely the mall giving her some anxiety. He can't blame her, he knows that what happened to Billy hit her harder than she was willing to let on to them. Luckily the mall's not the only place around here to go to. ]

You seen the arcade yet? Don't tell anyone this, but I've never been to one.

[ Not cool enough for King Steve. The closest he's ever gotten is picking Dustin up sometimes. ]

Joyce was getting used to stories that seemed outside of the norm, but it still took her a little bit of time.

Joyce had almost started to eat when Nancy opened up with her question, she sat her fork back down and tried to think how to phrase it so it would make sense but her knowledge of historical foods by era was pretty weak.

"Uh, sort of like a flat bread dough, baked with a savory tomato sauce with cheese on it topped with meat and vegetables." That was the basics of a pizza, without going into the many variations or regional specialties.

"It's something my kids could basically live on for every meal if I let them."

Hopper had been a smoker since High School. So he knew how satisfying the light up and that first precious drag was when you had the itch for a cigarette. He wouldn’t dream of trying to interrupt or hurry her along. There were moments in life you just had to savor.

Hopper squinted back up at the mall in contemplation. They hadn’t had a big mall in Hawkins for very long at all, so he couldn’t really empathize with feeling that everything he was running into was anachronistic. In fact, to him, everything felt kinda modern. More modern than relatively small town Indiana tended to be anyway.

“There’s definitely something weird about it.” He agreed. “It doesn’t really feel like it’s dated to me, though.”

Hopper, so fixated on the door and trying to figure out exactly how the lock worked, nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the other voice from behind him. Had she been here the whole time?!?

He quickly composed himself. He was used to carrying himself with a certain authority that’s belied when someone startles you and he was eager to get back into his comfort zone. He looked back at the door with his eyes narrowed. The surly expression a dead giveaway of how well his investigation of the door had gone.

“Nope, we didn’t get that lucky.”

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TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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your info page says he has an accent, hope this is okay?

yes! he definitely does.

mallrats!

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