chismosos | test drive meme #1

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test drive

test drive meme #1

TDM #1

LA LLEGADA

The Museum of Art and History is the largest and oldest in Llave, and contains a grand collection spanning from the time the first humans landed on its shores to the modern day. The building encircles an open courtyard where an art installation sits amidst many of the plants important to the settlers of Llave. Behind the museum is a wide, shallow field of hard-packed dirt lined by large stones, the petroglyphs on their surface worn by time—the earliest known playing field in all of the Caribbean. And further out are the areas where excavations are ongoing, uncovering the pottery, jewelry and artifacts of the ancestors.

After awakening, things move quickly. The museum is closed, and the characters ushered into the courtyard to wait. Any needing emergency medical attention are kept in one of the air conditioned galleries until the paramedics arrive. A group of women with a military bearing take charge of the situation; identified as the Bajari Bara, they question the healthy and able. They cede authority only to the Prime Minister when she arrives. Two more of their group flank the nation's leader, though they step aside when she begins to walk among the new arrivals to speak with them.

Each side has many questions and few answers. Characters are informed they are in Llave. It's October 2020. And efforts will be made to return them to their homes. But how they came to be here and why remain mysteries…as does how they’ll find their way back.

GFR Media

A hurricane shelter nearby is activated for use by the recent arrivals. There, characters are provided with food and clothing, a cot and other basic supplies. No one is allowed out, but through the windows they can see the lush green of the their surroundings. At night, coquí sing them to sleep. Those taken to a hospital will remain there until they are discharged. Each patient is allowed one visitor to stay with them overnight.

Over the next several days, all characters undergo physical and mental evaluations; are provided with their first immunizations; have the next legal steps explained to them; and are taught about Llave. Every character, regardless of age, has a caseworker who checks in with them daily. None have been arrested, they are assured. But they must also complete the quarantine process. To enforce quarantine, at both the hospital and the shelter, the Bajari Bara guard every entrance and exit.

Welcome to Llave.

EL AREYTO

As luck would have it, around the time quarantine ends, all of Llave is in the midst of celebration. Today is the Day of Heroes, celebrated every last weekend in October, which this year happens to fall on the eve of All Saints’ Day. So when the new arrivals venture out for the first time, Nona, the capital, welcomes them with color and music.

Jorge Arce

The people of Llave have a special love for music and dance, and it shows. All day, groups gather to play, and many more to dance. The songs center around heroes of Llave with the chief of these being Nuna, a beloved figure who is said to have led her people here to freedom. Those performing wear traditional clothes: guayaberas, long circle skirts, palm hats and headwraps, all brightly colored.

From early morning, artisans have set up under tents tables laden with goods. Clothing, jewelry, musical instruments, paintings, and more made from leather and wood, seashells and fish scales, aluminum and copper. Many create right at the table. Most popular are those working on cemís: sculptural objects, said to house the spirits of ancestors. Many carry them as amulets especially on this the eve to the days of the dead.

The food is equally rich and one of the cooks takes an interest in the new arrivals. Those who eat his food find their mood changing depending on what they ate. The tostones he prepared while speaking of his childhood home in Santa Cecilia bring on feelings of joy and contentment. The alcapurrias fried while arguing with a customer about last night’s wrestling match cause those who eat them to feel irritated. And the casabe, a flatbread made of cassava, that he explains he learned to make from his wife who passed, induces a profound nostalgia for lost loves. His wife, recognizable from the photo he keeps on the wall, sits beside those most affected and comforts them until the melancholy passes.

More dead can be found. An old man in a fine guayabera recalls composing the lyrics to a particular song. He points out the man playing the congas and proudly says his great-grandson will soon outplay him. When characters look back to the old man, he’s gone. Those with a sense for it will recognize many dead walking among the living. These next few days honor and celebrate the departed, and the dead have seized the rare opportunity to join the festivities once more.

For those who prefer the sea, the impossibly blue waters of the Caribbean are just a short walk away.

Cobblestone and concrete paths line La Bahía de Nona. On one of the larger rock outcroppings jutting into the bay sits a silver-white dog. If called, he will trot over. Up close, one can see his color is due to the sand and salt that has collected on its coat. Though he allows himself to be petted, he does not step off the rocks. A passerby comments that the dog has been waiting for his master to return. How long? The man shrugs. When he was a boy, the dog was keeping watch; now he’s forty-three, and the dog is still there.

EL TRAVIESO

Or perhaps the characters were more distracted by how clean the water was, how clear. Enough so that the sight of a bottle bobbing in the waves seems offensively out of place. Anyone who chooses to snag it out of the water will find it’s a corked bottle of rum, apparently empty.

From a nearby restaurant, someone yells and waves their hands—too late. By uncorking it, they have freed the bacoo. Immediately, everyone backs away. Two cross themselves.

Only one stays long enough to warn, “You have to trick it back into the bottle. It likes milk and bananas. Don’t ask it for anything.”

Turn around, and the bacoo is there.

Short and rugged with large eyes, long arms and legs, covered in unkempt hair and its fingers and toes ending in claws, the bacoo is a strange little creature. Stranger still, it can grant any wish—so long as it is kept appeased with a steady diet of milk and bananas.

A hungry bacoo will pelt walls with stones, move objects, keep its owner up at night, and otherwise wreak havoc until it is fed. A shapeshifter, they can be difficult to locate, much less trap. And a starving bacoo will turn vicious and its pranks malicious.

Best find a way to trick it into the bottle. Fast.

OOC NOTES

This TDM covers from mid-to-end of October. The first prompt lasts approximately two weeks; the second, a day. For now, all characters are restricted to Nona. Any attempting to leave will be gently, but firmly escorted back.

The TDM will also double as the first IC post of the game. Threads between any two or more characters who were all apped and approved will be considered game canon. As such, actions characters take in this TDM will impact the game once it opens. How characters behave will shape the inhabitants’ first impressions of them. Make it count.

Questions regarding this TDM can be asked below, while questions regarding the game at large should be directed to the FAQ.

Thank you for your interest and we hope to have you join!

NAVIGATION • IC COMM • OOC COMM • MEME COMM

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

﹙ he doesn't seem to care that he was caught staring — his expression is utterly impassive. he's sitting on his cot, arms crossed, leaned back against the wall. ﹚

Your ears.

﹙ he has manners like, five percent of the time. this is apparently not one of those occasions. for all the wonders of space and the earth, he's never seen anyone (or anything) like her. ﹚

[ Catra's expression gets even more sour at the reaction (or rather, the lack of reaction) her challenge gets from the guy on the cot. She sits up a bit more, hands gripping the edge of her cot. ]

What? Never seen ears before?

[ Her tail lashes in agitation and she forces it to still. No need to let this guy know he's getting to her. Not that she's doing a good job of hiding it anyway. ]

Not like yours.

﹙ he hadn't noticed the tail at first. his eyes track its flick, and then settle back at her face. ﹚

What are you?

Some people have different ears.

[ There's an aggravated baring of teeth at Heero's next question, and angry jolt that travels down her body. Her tail bottle-brushes a little in open annoyance. ]

I'm a cat, idiot.

﹙ he absorbs the information silently.

another world, obviously. extradimensional. one where human/animal hybrids are not only expected, but ordinary enough that she's offended by his curiosity. she wouldn't be, if she were the only one. she'd be used to the stares, the questioning. heero makes a noncommittal sound. he hasn't moved, despite her obvious agitation, and his posture seems perfectly at ease. if he views her as a physical threat, he isn't letting on. ﹚

You should tell them if you have any dietary restrictions.

﹙ he's not dealing with any hairballs, thanks. ﹚

What? I don't have dietary restrictions.

[ Catra scowls. Her gaze could kill if eyes were also guns. Thankfully for Heero, this is not the case. ]

Not that it would be your business even if I did.

﹙ he stares her down a moment longer, and then closes his eyes in disinterest. as if he considers such a thing to be beneath his notice. ﹚

It's my business if you hack up a hairball on my stuff.

Oh, fuck off.

[ Catra scoffs, shoulders hunching as her anger starts to boil and bubble further. Her hands grip the edge of the cot, claws starting to dig in. ]

I wouldn't touch your crap, even to hack up a hairball.

Then we won't have a problem.

﹙ he can hear her shift, the squeak of her cot and the way the frame gives beneath the twist of her hands, but he hasn't troubled himself about opening his eyes again. ﹚

Seeing as how we're here for quarantine, we could be isolated for weeks. There's no point getting angry.

﹙ he's so good at people. ﹚

I wouldn't be getting angry if you weren't so focused on pissing me off!

[ Catra has had just about enough of this guy and his aggravating calmness. ]

Maybe you're just easy to rile up.

﹙ you know. putting that out there. but he does open his eyes again, get up from his cot and go to the stack of nonperishables meant to sustain them over the course of quarantine. he grabs not one, but two bottles of water and on his way back to his cot, he stops near her and holds the second out. ﹚

Maybe you should shut up.

[ Catra glares as he stands and moves across the room. After a moment she simply flops back onto her cot and closes her eyes, trying to shut out the background noise of a bunch of people shoved into one space. When she hears his footsteps approaching again (useful things, those ears) one eye cracks open. Silence stretches out for a long moment then, slowly, she reaches out and takes the water bottle. Okay, if this is a peace offering she guesses she can take it. ]

Thanks.

﹙ he backs off to give her space afterwards, opting for holding up a wall rather than retreating to his own cot. his patience for the 'hurry up and wait' of both soldiering and spycraft is impressive, but it's still finite. sharing wasn't exactly meant as a white flag, but her 'thanks' made it one retroactively anyway, and he's not the man (boy) he used to be. there's no reason to antagonize anyone. ﹚

Don't mention it.

﹙ he cracks the seal on his, takes an idle, shallow sip. he'll drink or eat anything he has to to survive, but there are times he misses the filtered, oddly metallic water of the colonies. it was something familiar. ﹚

What're you going to do? Once we get out.

[ Catra has never been good at patience. It demands too much of her, requires her to be a 'good' kid which she has never been very skilled at. Even when she tried. She cracks open the bottle of water and takes a gulp. ]

No idea. What am I supposed to do? They can't send me back where I was.

[ Where she should be dead. ]

This place is nothing like Etheria.

﹙ etheria. it's not a place on any earth he knows, but that doesn't rule out alternate universes. after all, she's a cat-girl. doctor j tinkered enough with his genetic code that he can see how such a thing might have developed at the hands of a determined enough scientist. between that, and the fact that she says she can't go back, something like empathy catches and tangles in all the jagged edges of his emotion.

he doesn't really want to keep up the conversation. but it isn't always about what you want. he's done leaving people to bleed in the dirt, metaphoric or otherwise.

it's easy to reach for something that quatre or relena might say, but they're both so much gentler than him. there's a faint, considering shift of his jaw off to one side, then: ﹚

I think they plan to treat us like refugees. If they had plans to send us back, they wouldn't be going through the trouble of quarantining us like this. And if their intentions were malicious, we'd either be dead or they'd be torturing us by now.

﹙ heero uses 'comfort'...

it's probably not very effective. look he's objectively terrible at this okay. ﹚

[ Catra props herself up on her elbows. She's not sure she wants this conversation to keep going, either. There's too much risk in it. The worrying idea that someone might just get close enough to dig into the cracks of her armor and find the ways to hurt her. ]

Not like they can do much worse to me. I guess we'll just have to look out for ourselves.

[ There's a scowl. She doesn't need anybody. Not anymore. ]

﹙ his attention settles briefly on her. not curious, not with a statement like that. assessing. there are two types of people that have known something like torture well enough to say a statement like that. those who've been tortured, and those who only think they have. he takes another idle drink of his water bottle and glances towards the door. ﹚

I don't think we're going to have to worry about that.

﹙ he saw what the outside world was like before being taken here. enough of it, anyway.

he wants to be hopeful, but he's too much a pragmatist for that. ﹚

But it'll come down to how the population reacts once we're let out of here. It could go either way.

﹙ there didn't appear to be any resource scarcity he could tell, no unnecessarily ostentatious monuments to religion. there were people of different races, and no one treated him any different on the basis of being japanese. it's harder to say with her, because those ears will draw human attention, but that's easy enough to hide. if she wants to, or cares to. ﹚

[ Catra rubs a hand across her face. ]

Ugh. If they're anything like the doctors they're going to want to poke, prod, and measure every bit of me.

[ Catra says the words disdainfully, her brow furrowed. ]

You'd think they'd never seen anyone who looks different in their life.

Edited 2020-11-04 03:39 (UTC)

I bet most haven't. People like you don't exist on Earth, at least not the version I'm from. Probably not this one either.

﹙ given how often humanity opts to war over some small difference or other, it doesn't surprise him. ﹚

Ugh.

[ Catra groans emphatically. ]

Of all the planets I had to end up on it had to be the one where everyone looks the same.

Tell me about Etheria.

﹙ she's remarkably calm about the idea of there being other inhabited worlds, which to him suggests the likelihood it's commonplace in her universe. but he's asking less out of immediate curiosity and more because getting people to talk can be a good way to lessen anxiety and discomfort. ﹚

I dunno. It was just this planet I lived on. Kinda pretty I guess. I was too busy fighting most of my life to think about.

[ Catra waves a hand dismissively, as if it's not that big deal. Of course, it is a big deal and she finds herself missing home. Not that she'd admit it. ]

﹙ he makes a sort of quiet affirmative noise, an understanding sort of hmn. it doesn't surprise him at all that she's a fighter. some people you can tell at a look. it's something they carry. in the set of their shoulders and the tension in the jaw. the way they refuse to put their backs to a door. every sign tells a story, and for stories like that there's only two conclusions — you survive, or you don't. even survival of the physical short has varying shades of death following at your heels.

capping his bottle of water, he tosses it back to his bunk with a sort of unerring precision. ﹚

Were all the people like you?

[ Catra definitely has that. The tension in her shoulders, The way at least one ear is always pointed in another direction, listening for the sound of someone potentially sneaking up behind her or coming from a direction she can't see. ]

Pfft. No. I think I was the only person like me I ever met. There were people like you. And a lot of people not like you. Big, small, white skin, brown skin, black skin, purple skin, everything in between. People with horns and fur, and hooves... Just really diverse.

﹙ he cants his head faintly to one side. ﹚

What were you fighting for?

﹙ she's his age, or somewhere thereabouts unless her species tends to be longer-lived than humans, which he can't rule out. no one who got into a fight at legal adulthood would lament it as having been most of their life. not the way he can say it and mean it, and not the way she just did. ﹚

test drive meme #1

1)

omg heero <3 hello fellow traumatized child soldier

exactly why i tagged tbh : ')

new goal get heero to say "I'll kill you" to catra

omg... we all know it's just how he introduces himself it's fine

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i want u to know that this thread sent me back down the gundam rabbit hole & i might pick up noin

yells!!! pls... noin is so good...

she is... so good. finding icons in this day and age is such a pain tho

yeah that is the struggle tbh, i could only find a few :c i commissioned mine mostly

i had to steal some from an LJ Noin that hadn't gotten nuked yet.

!! but you found some! what's your acct? c:

i haven't made it yet. still doing my rewatch + figuring out a username

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omg i forgot i meant to reply and then... forgot. what sort of usernames do you like?

i tend to like either simple ones or puns/jokes about the character bc i'm extra

i will brainstorm and try to help!! puns on fire/nines/etc would prob all work :|a

thanks!! I'm still only on episode 7 rn anyway

omg so early in... i hope you enjoy the ride!

Re: omg so early in... i hope you enjoy the ride!

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