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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A Blood Offering

[ Here’s the thing. Billy died. Half crazed and out of his mind, suppressed and stuck, until a little slip of a girl got in there and rattled him enough for him to wrestle control. Enough to grab on to a giant monster made of meat and rot and to… die.

Except not so much. The dream feels crazy, maybe a last-ditch spasm of chemicals, and he wakes up feeling better than he has in months in a motel not unlike the one he was going to fuck Karen Wheeler in. He sits up real slow. Stares at his sleeping companion like they’re both ghosts. ]

What are you in for?

Roller Rink

All this and a free Walkman? Christ, what a deal.

[ He says to whoever’s nearest to him, voice drawling and sarcastic, though he’s not really paying attention to them, still thinking about how his limbs feel, how it feels to use them himself and to not be fucking dead. Roller-skating is fine. He’s good at it. It’s how he got to second base with Jenny in California back when second base with girls was the goal, not getting their skirts off.

This is all fucking crazy, and the Curse sits at the back of his brainstem. How much is it gonna be like the big fucking monster? Who knows. But he’s not feeling real keen on making friends right now. Still, he’s got the roller skates in hand, a cigarette in his mouth. Hey, it’s the ‘80s,’ you can smoke anywhere, can’t you? ]

Mall Rats

[ Jesus Christ. A mall? Billy laughs like a hyena outside the main doors, kind of like a maniac. This is a really good joke, mayor! But he’s got a hundred-fucking-bucks and that’s not too bad. Enough for some better cassettes than the mystery tape. Maybe even a change of clothes.

If you ignore the laughter and catch him inside the mall, he gives a beautiful buttery looking leather jacket in Paradiso a forlorn look, but eventually gets lost in La Pointe, picking through whatever the fuck’s come out between 1985 and 1989. Wild. There’s a lot.

Later, he stands in the food court like a ghost until he laughs again, kind of a cackle. Holy shit. Holy shit. He died here! Sort of. Not here, but, it feels like… it was yesterday. He needs a burger. He still has enough cash for that, right? He gets in line and says: ]

I’d kill for a steak.

[ He laughs again, a little fucking crazy. What was the Hawkins body count? He stopped counting, couldn’t tear his eyes away though. Watched the whole thing. ]

[ Feel free to go off script, and tag in any of the mall location he breezes by/through. Or — something else? ]

Edited 2022-08-21 22:32 (UTC)

[ Of Stede's motley assortment of passions and talents, straightforward priorities and doing a good job of reading the room have never strictly been included on the list. He's prone to a little tunnel vision like that. To his brand of pittering and pattering and touching random furniture and being weird about the towels.

He doesn't find anything during his sort of restless "if I stay in motion the gravity of this possibly-imaginary situation simply cannot find me" tour of the room that looks like a better way out. Even the windows are stuck. What if there's an emergency? There's a whole child in here!

It occurs to him, belatedly, that everyone just generally being expected to have a knife and be on board with having it used is... perhaps... not best applicable to being kidnapped into random buildings. It's maybe more of a piracy thing. Even when he's the one volunteering to do the handprint. Everyone's got their hangups. ]

Oh, I dunno. Who knows how they even got us in here in the first place? Bit of a rabbit hole, honestly. [ If he doesn't admit to not knowing what a camera is, then he can still look cool. ] But I do think it's highly important to encourage creative problem-solving, so maybe you've got a point. Can't hurt to look into all our options.

[ (no worries re: canonblindness stuff ftr! Stede is technically British; i'm super loosey-goosey about the accent thing though. like i personally can't imagine him not sounding inexplicably Full Rhys Darby™️ in-universe, but canon also never acknowledges it one way or the other, so there's basically no wrong answer LOL) ]

( is peter the only person that drinks coffee in this place? it would appear so. )

The motel coffee is just a cup of hot.

( as he'd told chapel, anyway. but it's better than sheer, absolute void of coffee. )

I wasn't old enough to be drinking gas station coffee the first time around but I'm old enough to remember gas station hot chocolate, and I think I'd rather drink instant.

[Getting their own skates on that had been the hard part for Wren, hand still bandaged from cutting it to get out of the room. Once on, the rest was easy, and it's on their second lap they slow themselves down a bit next to the struggling guy. He's fallen down how many times and keeps going?

From one stubborn person to another, that's impressive.]

...I don't know about anyone else, but where I'm from this is a pretty common thing to do when you're a kid.

[Said as though teenagers aren't kids, an opinion only a teenager would have.]

I think I went to my first skate party at 8. Easy to learn when you're falling down all the time anyway. Want some pointers?

[He may be smiling, but now she's tossing him such a glare.]

D-don't rub it in! I already know I'm garbage at this! [Honestly. Did he expect that to sound encouraging?

His offer has her looking to the railing. Sweet, sweet sanctuary. She could just give up.

Her jaw squares, her grip tightens. She turns her focus back to the track ahead.]

No. [Fukawa says firmly.] I'm n-not going to fold like some wet napkin. I have to finish.

[She pulls herself back up, slow and steady. There, feet under her hips, chin up and ready to go. The odds may be against her, but she has a mission. There's only been one whiff of a potential clue so far. It's waiting for her at the finish line.]

I'm g-going to get that stupid walkman. No matter what.

I— [Don't want to close my eyes with you around?

She already made a fool of herself. And maybe she'll still keep them open, locked onto an old stain in the hall carpet, but she wants this over with and she needs to have a little faith. It's what Komaru would tell her.

That's the thought that settles her stomach, has her nodding curtly when the woman announces her plans. If only she were here with her, this all might be bearable. Her optimism would even out Fukawa's suspicion, and they could rely on each other to get by.

In the meantime, she's stuck with Mrs. White in the hall with a bloody napkin. Let's hope this doesn't turn out like a game of Cluedo.]

I don't know how you stand it. [She says suddenly. Conversation is far from her strong suit but the silence is eating at her.] The human body is disgusting. Just a fleshy sack of goop and guts. I always th-thought people who worked in hospitals m-must have a secret fascination with death.

[Wren had read the note as well, spent some time checking various windows and other possible exits to no avail. It had seemed at first like maybe giving their roommate by fate her space to work through whatever initial fear she had was the best option, it's quickly becoming apparent that this is not the case.

That's fine, Wren is used to taking charge of a situation and calming people. Of course, this could be easier if Wren was alone and could just punch through the door ~~so they think~~.]

Ah- hey, it's okay, it's going to be okay.

[Wren stands as Chrissy's panic boils over, approaching her with hands up and out - see? Empty and nonthreatening, motions slow and gentle and easy to see coming a mile away.]

We've got this. I've done this kind of thing before, we're going to be fine.

[Wren has never done this kind of thing before unless you just want to throw it into the ballpark of 'dealing with weird supervillains who love escape room shit'. But they're very good at sounding fully confident in what they're saying.]

Wren had only woken up a bit before John. Just enough time to cope with being awake, stand, see the door is indeed locked, and return to their bed and take up the note they were left with. Much as they considered shaking their roommate awake, there were so many other what ifs to process...

They look up when John stirs though, a bit tense on principle, but it seems like he's just as much an unfortunate prisoner here as Wren is.

"Hi," they echo. "... Don't suppose you have any clear memories of ending up here beyond weird dreams? This was on the table." Wren said, holding out the letter for John to take.

— hey, whoa!

[ That would be the sound of a young man Christine is about to crash right into — at least until the swerve of Steve's skate pulls him out of the other woman's orbit and saves them both from winding up on the ground. Saves his own walkman from getting bumped into as well. (They're durable, sure, but not impervious to damage either.)

She still looks unsteady, however, especially without something (or someone) to stop the trajectory of her backwards-path, so yeah, Steve readjusts his own balance and slides in to help. Not everyone spent their peak high school years hanging out in places like these, after all. ]

First time on the roller rink?

Not unless you have Level 4 Biosafety Lab training and the proper PPE at hand. There are things in my blood you won't want to be exposed to.

[The voice, slightly husky since the speaker has just awakened, belongs to a tall, blond gent clad in a lot of black, sitting up on the second bed, his back to Rodney as he takes a pair of dark glasses from the bedside table and slips them onto his face.]

Though practically negligible, Fukawa feels a wash of relief come over her. If he'd claimed to feel ill, started showing the slightest sign of abnormality? She wouldn't have anywhere to run.

And that would be because?

"Oh, that p-part's a real laugh. Just a second."

She scuttles in to whisk the note from the nightstand, only to hurry back to the end of the bed. Normally she'd force someone else to read it, lest anyone laugh at her stutter, but there's no one to spare her the indignity now.

"G-good morning and welcome, blah blah blah, th-the door will open easily if you offer a bit of b-b-blood." She pauses to glance up, catch his reaction. "M-More than a few drops but not enough to be a 'serious' wound. Whatever that means. A handprint's w-worth will do, it only needs to c-come from one of you.

"Sincerely," she holds, her sneer begetting a shiver of derision. "The Mayor."

Edited (realizing the note's on the nightstand days later....) 2022-08-23 04:49 (UTC)

Whoa, dude!

[ There's a sluggish moment between Steve putting the letter down to watching Kurosaki move his hands down to his waist when he thinks the guy is going to pants himself. For what reason? Who the hell knows.

But no. It's freakin' worse than that. The belt is removed and then there's blood, and then said belt is being thrown aside as his roomie heads straight for the door to press his palm to its surface. Like this is totally normal.

This is totally not normal!

It takes another moment before everything catches up with his brain and Steve rushes towards man and door and watches him bandage his hand up. Like it was no big deal. Not only was that extremely crazy impressive ('metal', Eddie might say), but it was just plain and simple crazy. ]

Dude!

I — I mean, yeah, kind of, I guess, but that's not exactly what I meant.

[ Well, it partly is.

And it's also partly true even if the circumstances are really weird and off-base and he'd struck out with a hell of a lot more patrons coming to the shop for undisclosed reasons. (The uniform. It was 100% the uniform. It messed with his perfectly sculpted hair, which is his best feature, thank you very much.)

But he can ease into the whole 'monsters taking over a small town' thing later. ]

Yeah. [ He lets out an exhale, thinking of how he'd just started a new gig at the video store too. Can he include that in his new resume? But more importantly: ] You'll need new clothes. Where are you from, anyway? Or is 'when' a better question?

█ a blood offering—

[ As if being passively infected with an apocalyptic disease isn't bad enough.

There's someone else in the room, but Daryl doesn't recognize them, and he's not feeling particularly patient. He tries the door, then tries the door again, and then tries it in a different way, which is slamming his entire body into it shoulder first, resulting in a loud (pointless) BANG!

His shoulder hurts and the door hasn't moved, which feels insulting. Is he really getting that old.

Mumbled bitching under his breath, he stalks back to the nightstand to grab the note and read it. His drawn expression doesn't change, even when he tosses it aside. ]

Fine. [ He removes his knife from its holster. ] You up? I don't want to have to do this twice.

█ mallrats—

[ So, maybe he's lost his mind.

Daryl is willing to accept that. Even before ~~zombies~~ walkers happened, he'd had enough small, odd experiences to believe that, maybe, the supernatural was real. It allowed him to tumble into the end of days without having a nervous breakdown in the process. This is something else for sure, way beyond running into a vampire, or some shit, but he doesn't seem to be waking up.

Considering he looks like exactly what he is - a refugee from the actual apocalypse, caked in dirt and grime and gore in entirely too many states of age - he should be shopping for new clothes. Instead, he's dumping an entire blue raspberry Slurpee into his face while ordering more pizza.

Only dripping a little blood still. From the door shit.

Next: one of these places has to have cigarettes, surely. ]

( ooc: season 6 ish, i guess?? i live in the past. also idk about curses yet + feel free to do prose or brackets, i am ezpz. )

[ Maybe some people would take a more proactive "whoa, you're here, what have you learned, are you okay" approach to seeing a trusted colleague out in the wild in the middle of a mall-sweep.

A sweep, a familiarizing, just in case they get trapped in there and have to compete for food and resources. (Familiarizing was on the agenda already, because he's not an idiot. Screw the Mayor's suggestion. The Mayor's lucky he can't get his hands on them.)

Ronon is not one of those people. He could be if he wanted. Sometimes he is. Doesn't seem all that urgent to get into it right now, though. If McKay wasn't fine he'd be advertising it, and right now they're not under attack. Easy going.

So he does the next best thing and drifts over to grab the power adapter that Rodney just dropped back into the bargain bin, unannounced. ]

I could think of a way to use it.

[ A weird cheap appliance in the hand is at least worth as hard as he could hit someone with it. Assuming he doesn't need any power adapted by it. ]

( he lets out an exhale of breath that's part acknowledgement, part laugh. )

Yep. ( sideglance; wryly. ) I know you Avengers really flarking love being the guys with the sacrificial play, but it doesn't have to be you every time.

( and if you must do it, he thinks, capital-y you as a group need to stop with the in-fighting and the pissing off other species and stop getting into shit you can't handle and calling on the wider galaxy for help, because it's a pain in the flarking ass.

he thinks it but he doesn't say it, because wanda? you really helped him and richard rider out one time, and he's still appreciative of it.

he makes his way to the bathroom, which in true hasn't been updated since the late 70s fashion, is a stunning — key word — shade of avocado green. peter hates it, but he figures that if there's going to be anywhere in this d'ast room that has something sharp, it'll be the bathroom.

(maybe. probably. health and safety really wasn't a thing in the 80s, right?)

he opens one cupboard, then two, and that's all there is. there's a toothbrush and toothpaste, a plastic cup — for what? he doesn't know — a couple of washcloths, and— that's about it. soon enough, there's a dull thud somewhere behind him. somewhere, of course, being completely relative and a couple of metres, because the room is Small.

I don't think they're providing us with anything useful, wanda says and peter laughs. the entire situation is flarking absurd. he eyes the lamp, a crack running pitifully along its cream, because of course, base, and he runs a hand through his hair and decides— )

You know, you might be on to something. ( he's wearing boots, wanda. he could stomp on the base, likely a far more effective venture than whatever that attempt just was. )

Edited 2022-08-22 07:16 (UTC)

there's plenty of space travel where i'm from
but from the sounds of it, you weren't just stuck on one planet with no outside contact, either before all this

[ that sounds almost ominous ]

yeah? what does it mean to you?
and if this really is the 1980s then yeah, i time travelled

[ christine thinks for a first time, she's doing a pretty great job at this, actually, but —his swerve-and-slide manoeuvre is impressive. she definitely couldn't have managed anything requiring that kind of control just yet.

so she lets him steady her and grins, pushing some strands of hair out of her face while she's at it. ]

What gave it away?

[ Another day, another 'what are you, an idiot.' Ah, well. He guesses people are people no matter where you go. Apparently including the distant future of the 1980s?

Stede's trying not to let himself think about that part. He's not sure he can afford the emotional retail space it would require to completely admit it. It's easier to just think of everything as really weird. Case in point: this man trying to tell him his business. ]

Oh, come on. If they don't want it touched, they would put out a sign. Live a little, mate! [ Nailed it, definitely guessed exactly why he's getting snapped at.

He does make a magnanimous transition from sticking his hand in there to simply turning it over in his hands, though. ]

Not that this color inspires much livelihood. I like my greens less... muddy.

I have my own ship. The Ryder.

( as in winona, but it's not a reference he expects her to get, what with the being from several hundred years in the future. )

We try not to stick to one place, it'd kind of defeat the point.

Peter is not a morning person.

He's not even a waking person, because time is not really a concept he pays particular attention to in space.

Current Peter is cosy and comfortable and he doesn't particularly want to move. Sure, he's just had the weirdest dream — like, not the weirdest dream of his life, that was definitely the one with the Master of the Sun or whoever — but it was still up there. He thinks that if he just stays very still and keeps his eyes closed, he can go back to sleep, back into warm, comforting embrace of the blankets he's currently buried beneath.

There's a part of him that says this is not right. He feels well-rested for the first time in — well, a long time, he doesn't even know. He has no headache, no hangover, which frankly surprises even him. He thinks he remembers, faintly, Groot yelling something at him about the end of the galaxy, or just the galaxy in general. He'd ignored it because he'd felt like death, told Groot he was dead, and now—.

Ugh, fine.

This isn't right. His bed is not this comfortable, his blanket is not this thick. His ship is not this quiet.

He opens his eyes and stares at the not-quite darkness of his duvet-cocoon. Somewhere in the outside world, there's a bang, a slow rattle of china against wood, then a dull thud and the sound of something cracking.

Peter groans and sits up, squinting in the sudden daylight of the motel room. His stomach churns, a mixture of dread and panic pulling at his insides tightly as he takes in the room, before it settles into sharp, sudden confusion.

There's a broken lamp on the carpet between the two (two?) beds, and there's Matthew-flarking-Murdock stood next to the lamp.

The last time Peter had been on Earth — like, actually on Earth in an extended-stay kind of way, in what amounted to the galaxy's shittiest vacation, he'd ended up in court.

Now that it's all in the past, he can acknowledge that Murdock is, presumably, a really good lawyer, but it doesn't mean he's not still slightly salty about the "probably colourful outfit" jab (blue and grey is not colourful, mister-flarking-fancy-suits), or the "it shoots fire so it's a firearm", are you fucking kidding him? God, his lawyer had really sucked.

He runs a hand through his hair, and stays quiet for one second, then two, then—

"Either I'm having the weirdest flarking dream or I'm still drunk."

He's not either of those things, he knows that, but consider this: what the fuck.

Ronon opts to not say 'hi' back. He makes an elective decision to not do that, while he's having himself a pace of the room. He just absorbs that it's been said.

Awake, check, not hurt, check, personality? Seemingly intact, check. If there are gonna be issues, there's nothing he can do about it anyway. For now he'll just try to be grateful that it's Sheppard he's stuck in here with and not some stranger. That leaves him ever so slightly less on-edge. If not any less cursed or trapped, apparently.

"I'm gonna take the door off its hinges," is what he offers in return instead.

Look. He may have knives on his person at all times, but he's not bleeding all over some door without trying to just get rid of the door first.

so the ten people you mentioned, they're your crew?

i'm on a nurse on the uss enterprise. [ am, not was. she's not accepting being stuck here just yet. ]

Temporarily.

( not all of them were very excited about being part of the guardians, but evidently it beat being taken in by the nova corps. )

It's complicated.

( anyway— )

That explains the concern about my caffeine consumption.

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Page 8 of 31

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

billy hargrove | stranger things

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Roller Rink

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blood offering

blood offering

nothing like a classic bump-into at the roller rink amirite

I [CW: Fictional pathogens referenced]

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daryl dixon | the walking dead

iii

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heck yeah

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blood offering, or: zdarsky vs zdarsky

A

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