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silentspringooc2024-04-06 09:04 pm
silentspringmods) wrote in silentspringooc2024-04-06 09:04 pm
APRIL TDM WHO'S WHO & PLOTTING
TDM PLOTTING #2: APR 2024
Part I; Chapter 4. AND I AM SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS
Part I; Chapter 4. AND I AM SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS
Welcome to the April TDM who's who and plotting post, neighbor! This is open to both current players and players who are TDMing. Current players should toplevel on the same post but specify that they are ingame in their subject line.
National Everyone-Smile-At-One-Anotherhood-Week (arrival)
Maybe you were on your deathbed, taking your last gasping breaths. Maybe you had just drifted off into sleep. Or maybe you were just in the middle of another ordinary day—but whatever the case may be, you now wake staring at an unfamiliar popcorn ceiling, dressed in a coordinating pajama set or nightgown straight out of the Sears catalog. A complete stranger lies asleep beside you. Perhaps a dog or a cat you don't recognize lies sleeping on a red tartan bed on the floor behind the mahogany footboard.
This is your house, but it’s not your house: on one of the twin dressers in the room, the morning light reflects off the cover glass on a framed photograph of the two of you standing side-by-side and smiling like figures in a Norman Rockwell painting, maybe with a third, also unrecognizable younger party in the foreground between you. A Civil Defense booklet titled ”Survival Under Atomic Attack” hangs halfway off the corner of the dresser, its pages and cover curling upwards with wear atop a dogeared Macy’s Christmas catalog. The other dresser hosts a watch box and a compact radio: yours, if you’re the one wearing the coordinating flannel shirt and pants, or your new husband’s, if you’re in a babydoll-style nightie.
It’s not immediately clear if you’ve found yourself in the fifties or the sixties, at least until you throw on the robe hanging on the back of the bedroom door and head out into the driveway at some point. There you find a rolled newspaper tossed onto the concrete beside a shiny new car, dated April 1, 1961.
Prompt Details:
— All characters wake in a normal human body with any disability aids (including glasses or contact lenses) converted to the most common form of them in the 60s unless a modern development like a sip/blow powerchair is needed for them to be playable. Although cutting edge technologies like myoelectric limbs were just starting to come around at the time, they were not common and readily accessible, and therefore are not allowed.
— Characters have no powers, and regains will not happen in this game. If they biologically need something to function that is fantasy in nature (ex: have to drink blood), that need is gone and replaced with only a normal human’s needs.
— Characters will find their belongings, up to 3 items from home, around the house in normal places for each item to be: a book on the shelf, a framed photo on a flat surface, etc. Items that don’t exist in the regular universe in early 1961 may not be brought (ex: gameboy, pokeball, wizard’s staff).
— Characters may bring one normal, non-livestock pet, or may meet said pet for the first time when they wake up in Sweetwater. They can also be petless.
— No items or weapons from after 1961 are allowed, and no weapons more powerful than a hunting rifle or handgun can be brought with them. One weapon per character.
It's time to leave the capsule if you dare
On the morning of the second, the usual controlled burn warning for the forest beyond the Sweetwater Atomic Energy Plant is issued; citizens are informed that it will go on for the next 3 to 5 days. The usual rules apply: keep your windows closed, limit how much you go outside. The wind gradually carries the diffuse, unnatural smoke into the air of the neighborhood, smelling a bit like burning plastic—certainly not the rich, smoky smell of burning wood.
Around 7:30 in the morning the next day, a man staggers down the middle of Haven Street, dragging his feet in their knee high wellington boots like they’re made of lead—one shuffling step, then another. His shoulders hang.
He’s dressed as though he’s descended from space, a lone astronaut taking first steps on the surface of a hostile planet. A gas mask with soulless circular eye holes covers his face and wraps around his head down to his neck; a white rubberized NBC suit engulfs the rest of his body—except for a two-inch tear ripped through the fabric on one thigh, exposing it to the chill April air outside of the suit, bits of frayed material hanging over the edge of the ravine torn through his pants leg like the spikes on a venus flytrap as it grows longer with his movements. A thicker pantomime of the kitchen gloves on the side of every Haven Street sink covers his hands up to mid forearm. Charcoal streaks his boots and the legs of his suit as he shuffles forward.
The front door of one of the houses swings open. A teenage girl runs down the steps, the ends of her black bob still in its rollers. Characters may recognize her from the memory shared on New Year’s Eve.
Or maybe they don’t. Maybe they’ve just arrived in the neighborhood, and she’s just a teenager half-ready for school, in her school uniform and bobby socks shoved into fuzzy pink house slippers.
“Mister! Excuse me, Mister—”
The man doesn’t turn his head. Slowly and mechanically, he removes the mask and hood, then unzips the long front zipper of the suit and sheds it like a rubberized chrysalis. The mask falls from his limp hand; he steps out of his boots, standing in the pool of protective equipment at his feet dressed in nothing but sweat-drenched underclothes. Trancelike, he peels off each wet cotton layer until he stands naked in the middle of the street, sweat glistening on his skin in the morning light, revealing cracked, chapped knuckles and dry pink flesh. A rash blossoms across his naked back, a darker red at its edges, like a drop of ink spreading out on a paper towel. He bends down, reaches into the top of one discarded wellington boot, and pulls out a gun.
Candace’s eyes widen in immediate recognition. “No!” she screams, breaking into a run, the flat soles of her house slippers slapping against the pavement. “No!”
He presses the cold barrel of the gun into the soft flesh under his chin.
“No, no, no! No! Stop!”
Tears run down her cheeks as she pushes herself harder, runs faster, and reaches out to grasp his naked arm— The single gunshot echoes through the neighborhood. Blood splatters across her school uniform as the body collapses atop the heap of PPE, jaw hideously mangled, skull open. The girl screams, and screams, and screams, arms rigid, fingers spread, body shaking as she collapses onto the asphalt.
“Oh my God,” she whispers as characters approach, her bottom lip quivering under half-applied Covergirl lipstick, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
Neighbors open their doors and run out into the street–including a woman with skin a few shades darker than the girl’s in a floral apron and yellow playtex kitchen gloves, shoving stunned neighbors out of the way with a single scream:
“Candace! Candace, baby, Candy,” she sobs, immediately crouching behind her daughter and wrapping her arms around her shaking body as she continues to wail, brown eyes blown wide, face flecked with someone else’s blood. Her mother’s hands shake in their rubber gloves as she fumbles across her body, checking her rigid arms and legs and face as though making sure her child is intact, and then she pulls her up; Candace’s legs buckle underneath her and almost send her back onto the pavement, but her mother catches her by the arms in a hard uncomfortable grab in the split second before she falls. “Mama’s here. Your mama’s here. You’re going to be okay, alright, baby? You’re going to be okay, it’s all going to be alright—Stop looking at her!” she screams through her own tears, even though all but a few eyes are on the body, “Stop looking at her! We’re going to get you washed off, baby, come on, you’re okay—”
She fumbles with the ties of her apron and strips it off, draping it over her daughter’s head as though to hide her face as a Cambodian woman several inches shorter and a decade or two older than her breaks from the crowd and takes the girl’s other arm, rubbing her bare skin, trying to make eye contact, issuing urgent reassurances - characters who have explored the shopping Sweetwater has to offer may recognize her as Mrs. Hăk, from the Hăk Asian Market on the other side of town. A family friend? Her husband places a hand on her back, saying something in hushed, equally urgent Khmer. She rebukes him insistently and immediately returns her attention to the task of shepherding the shellshocked girl away from the scene; her husband takes a step back, arms hanging by his sides, helpless.
Addendum.
Characters may or may not experience this vision in addition to the above prompt.
For a fleeting moment, before police arrive, characters who have come out in the first few minutes hear a voice: the same man older arrivals heard over the phone on New Year's Eve, hysterical with emotion. "No. No. Fuck! Fuck! Motherfucker! Son of a fucking bitch! Motherfucking son of a fucking bitch! Cowardly fucking son of a bitch! Worthless shiteating Commie bastard!" He lets out a single shout after that, echoing through witnesses' brains, the only sound other than hushed words in the background, inaudible but serious, delivered like order—"Fuck!"—and then the memory takes on sight as he slams a recognizable hand down on the shiny black hood of a car. The skin on the outside of some characters' hands even sears and burns, like they themselves have held the outside of their fist on metal heated by Maryland's late summer sun, leaving something a little more minor than a large oven burn.
His sight eclipses the gore in the middle of the street entirely, until it blots out everything around the characters who see the vision: a middle aged man behind the steering wheel of a car, his head tilted back against his stationwagon's bloody headrest, mouth hanging open, eyes half-lidded and glassy like a supermarket fish, not having even had time for their finite well of tears to evaporate.
"You've killed us," they feel themselves tell the corpse in the same man's voice, now laden with a new, hollow calm, and let out a disbelieving laugh. "You've fucking killed all of us."
And then they're staring at the body of the man in the suit again, their mouths never having opened.
Load up, load up, load up with rubber bullets
Police are on the scene seven minutes later, patrol cars with lights on and sirens wailing proceeding down Haven Street single-file like a funeral procession, tailed by an ambulance.
“Everyone back!” Dick Clark shouts as he throws open the door of his patrol car and runs toward the crumpled body and pile of bloody PPE. “Go back to your homes and wait for further instruction!”
But there’s something tense in the way he holds himself, in the sharpness of his breaths—not hyperventilating by any means, but a very harsh, defined in and out, the faintest tremor on the exhalation. He steps closer to the body, putting himself between it and the onlookers—but there passes a moment before that in which he just stares deeply, as though looking right through it, mouth frozen in a hard line. Then he lifts his head, continues shouting orders. There’s something in his eyes, though. There’s something tired, and haunted, and stricken.
Shakily, the townspeople disperse, walking back to their homes with glances over their shoulders at the carnage. If characters falter, policemen will usher them into the nearest homes—even if it’s not their household, and is in fact a neighbor’s, although they only ever end up with other player characters—by force if necessary, and sometimes in groups as large as five people. All that seems to matter is getting everyone off of the street.
Watching through the windows, characters will see the area being taped off, a blanket draped over the naked body. The EMTs bring out a stretcher and load the still-covered body, bringing it back to the hearselike ambulance. Police officers with nightsticks patrol up and down the street, ready to force any escapees back inside.
An hour later, the first Civil Defense broadcast is issued over the radio and in close captioning on an otherwise blank black television screen, both of which turn on automatically in every home:
This is Dick Clark, your town police chief and Civil Defense director. Mandatory curfew has been enacted until 2 P.M. tomorrow. Draw all curtains and turn off all lights visible from outside of the home. Lock all doors, and do not exit the home until advised to do so. If any suspicious activity is noted outside of the home, do not exit to investigate. Call 911 immediately. . . This is Dick Clark, your town police chief…
Might as well get to know your new family members better—or whatever neighbor you’re trapped with for the next 30-someodd hours.
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air
In spite of the horrifying turn of events, the Junior Hunter Over Fences 2’ Division show in the ring down the road from the riding stable proceeds as planned on the sixth—although a line has been drawn through Candace’s name on the posted ring order and she’s nowhere to be seen on the day of the show. It’s a good chance for characters to familiarize themselves with their new neighbors, especially new high school classmates who are competing.
It’s a sunny day, a great time to grab a hot dog and lemonade from the concessions stand and mingle around—but despite the good time their human counterparts are having, the horses are nervous, eyes darting this way and that, acting up with little hiccups of resistance in the ring, pawing deep tracks into the sandy ground and sparse grass outside of the ring as they’re groomed outside of their trailers.
Both Walter Harvey Glickman, the stablemaster, and Jack Alvarez, an occasional fixture at the barn, can be seen on the showgrounds—the prior, coaching his riders, the latter, simply watching the competition. Jack sits in a manual wheelchair outfitted with knobbier tires than characters might be used to seeing; even without standing, his small stature is readily apparent, lean and certainly no taller than 5’4. His legs, in particular, are thin with prolonged disuse; his upper body is wiry, the flex of his muscles beneath his long-sleeved shirt implying good condition and frequent exercise. One of the riders, on a particularly rangy dark bay, stops to talk to him on her way out from the gate as Jack strokes the animal’s leg with apparent familiarity.
He also pays particular attention to the performance of a tall, lean grey mare—and is watching when she refuses the first roll-top, backing up and continuing to back up, nostrils flaring, eyes wide. She dances in place, hooves landing this way and that as her rider struggles to get her back under control; they manage a disorganized canter in a circle, coming back to the obstacle, and again there is a refusal—the mare, by this point, near hysterics. The disqualification is announced; the rider dismounts on the spot, holding the reins tight together under the horse’s chin, walking her back toward the gate as she trots in place, unable to dash forward as she clearly wants, snorting loudly through flared nostrils.
“She doesn’t like the smoke,” Jack says, sourly, with no apparent concern over who hears him. “Of course they’re all upset. They can’t breathe. Plant couldn’t even stop burning for one day.”
To make matters worse, the sunshine and crisp air that began the event are no longer by mid-afternoon. Clouds gather, and before too long it begins to sprinkle, then rain, despite mention of neither in the day’s forecast; the competition goes on, although event volunteers can be seen emptying water buckets and turning them upside down, with the exception of the large galvanized trough at the entrance of the ring, which they only manage to turn onto its side, unleashing a small flood on the patchy grass. Characters have the option of taking shelter under the covered pavilion where guests sit at picnic tables to enjoy their concessions, or perhaps they’d rather just go home after such a strange day; if they do take shelter, they’ll find themselves sharing tables with people they may or may not know: while there are several picnic tables, townie spectators seem to have had the same idea (though it’s worth noting that they don’t sit with player characters), and there just isn’t enough seating for anyone to sit alone.
To start plotting, fill out the form below, and post it in a comment with the subject line structed as follows: Your Name | Your Character's Name | Your Character's Canon | In Game/Not In Game:
player info
Player name:
Player pronouns:
Contact(s):
If you're new, tell us about yourself!
character info
Character Name:
Character Age:
Character Role:
Canon:
Canonpoint:
1 paragraph summary of character/canon: Imagine that the reader is canonblind. Lay out the basics someone needs to start a thread with your character, important things to know while interacting with them, etc.
“Family” members: If in game.
Links: To permissions posts, opt-outs, info sheets, etc.
Other Info:
TDM/event plans
Arrival:
It's time to leave the capsule:
Rubber bullets:
Don't drink the water:
Adiva | Chell | Portal Games | In Game
Player name: Adiva
Player pronouns: she/her
Contact(s):
I'm not new new but I wasn't around as much in March as I meant to be! I'm Adiva, I work in games, and I co-parent a dog you can see pictures of on plurk. I'm still getting Chell involved with things and excited to plot with players old and new!
character info
Character Name: Chell
[REDACTED]"Barnes"Character Age: 28ish? She doesn't know, she was in stasis for a long time.
Character Role: Wife
Canon: Portal/Portal 2
Canonpoint: Literally seconds before leaving the facility at the end of Portal 2
1 paragraph summary of character/canon: Chell is the silent protagonist of the Portal games, described by her nemesis-slash-
girlfriend GLaDOS as a "dangerous, mute lunatic" who is very hard to kill. She spent the last [TIMELINE UNAVAILABLE] either in cryosleep or trying not to be murdered by computers in an underground facility designed to test strange sci-fi technology like (very short range) interdimensional portals, security turrets full of bullets, and advanced AI. Now, she's still adjusting to what life as something other than a test subject can be. Slightly above average in athleticism and intelligence, in the 99th percentile of "tenacity," and good at solving puzzles.“Family” members: Bucky Barnes, her husband. :|
Links: SS app, info and permissions
Other info: Chell is mute and hearing, and uses ASL and written English to communicate.
TDM/event plans
Arrival: No specific plans, though on the 1st of the month she may notice new folks.
It's time to leave the capsule: Chell will be coming out to the street when she spots the man in the suit, so she'll be among the bystanders when shit goes down. She'll want to try and investigate the discarded suit before the cops show up, though she may be distracted by the vision. She wasn't here for New Year's, so if anyone wants to clue her in that there's a connection, she'd love to hear about it!
Rubber bullets: Who wants to get stuck in her house with her and then break curfew with her after nightfall! Because fuck this noise, she wants to see what suspicious activity there is!
Don't drink the water: No specific plans on this one, but she'll be around and keeping an eye out for anyone new.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Player name: Maniette
Player pronouns: She/they idc
Contact(s):
character info
Character Name: Arthur Lester
Character Age: 34
Character Role: Husband
Canon: Malevolent (Podcast)
Canonpoint: Episode 12: The End
1 paragraph summary of character/canon: Arthur Lester is a recently-blinded detective from Arkham, Massachusetts, 1934, trying to solve the mystery of how he became entangled with an entity trapped in a magical book - who he literally just learned is a fragment of the King In Yellow, and implicitly responsible for all of the torture he's faced in the last twelve episodes.
“Family” members: Newly single!
Links: Permissions!
Other Info:
TDM/event plans
Arrival: Arthur is now single, and it might not be immediately obvious for him until someone comes over to his house and sees the lack of Helly in photos. If she's not back that evening he'll start asking the other neighbours to check in.
It's time to leave the capsule: GUESS WHO CAN'T SEE SHIT. He can definitely work it out from context and he'll try and approach even without his cane, so someone might need to grab him.
Rubber bullets: Who wants to get a furious Arthur shoved into their house and help explain to him what happened!
Don't drink the water: Debatable whether Arthur will be present to engage with this one due to the ongoing Truck Barrier puzzle.
astrea | sam carpenter | scream | in game
Player name: astrea
Player pronouns: she/her
Contact(s):
character info
Character Name: samantha carpenter
Character Age: 26
Character Role: wife
Canon: scream
Canonpoint: scream vi, right after killing bailey
1 paragraph summary of character/canon: scream is a slasher series, where different killers don a ghostface mask and go on a killing spree. sam is the illegitimate daughter of the original ghostface killer. she struggles with psychosis and dark urges and the fact that she actually does like killing people (but she's never killed someone who didn't deserve it). sam wants to be good, she wants to be a good person so bad but it's hard when a lot of people in her universe have written her off as evil/just like her father.
“Family” members: norton folgate
Links: general permissions (opt out in comments)
Other Info: sam takes anti-psychosis medication so she doesn't see hallucinations of her dead serial killer father.
TDM/event plans
It's time to leave the capsule: now that sam has kind of accepted that this isn't a hallucination as she has access to her medication she'll be bit more active. she's going to want to figure out everything about this place so she can leave and hopefully get back to new york and her sister. she will experience the vision, which is more proof to her this isn't a hallucination because if it was her dead dad would be lurking somewhere just telling her to kill everyone and he hasn't so. she honestly won't be too concerned about the guy who just killed himself, she's going to be more curious about everyone else's reactions.
Rubber bullets: sam again is looking at everyone's reactions. she'll think something is off about the police (but she thinks something is off because well /gestures to the fact she's even here). she's been ushered into a house and is overhearing vox leading a prayer (SUS). really she's just observing people right now. trying to get a feel if there is anyone she can trust in this place (survey says probably not). when the broadcast happens she'll probably make some comment about dick being an appropriate name for him or something.
Don't drink the water: sam will be there, likely somewhat begrudgingly but this is recon/scout people out month for her. i think at this point she may be getting a bit more agitated by the whole thing. she literally killed a guy by stabbing him 30+ times, then stabbing him through the eye and then she was here. and she's still here. when the weather turns she'll go under a covered area and do her best to seem interested. horse racing seems like rich white people nonsense to her (and also kind of inhumane?).
/tldr be her friend, flirt with her, whatever... sam does have a ghostface mask here with her, which really isn't a big deal bc no one here will recognize it but at some point when shit really hits the fan i'd love for her to wear it? she also has billy's knife and is currently debating hiding it on her person when she's out and about. she might also at some point this month try to figure out a way to keep training/working out so she can be ready to fight if/when need be.
here are two puppies just because...
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but also YES! i'd say sorry to him in advance but... neither sam or i are sorry, oops.