snowblindmemes | Test Drive

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test drive

Test Drive


TEST DRIVE MEME
If you'd like to apply to Snowblind and would like to test the waters first or get a sample set up for your application, this meme is for you! We've even provided some prompts for you to use if you want (but feel free to make up your own). Here's how it works. ✭ Reply to this entry with a character you're considering apping into the game. You can include the name of your character and the fandom in your subject line. ✭ Comment around to others on the meme, whether you're in the game already or not. ✭ Now you have a sample ready for your application! ✭ So go reserve and apply when reservations and applications are open. ✭ Seriously, do it. Network Prompts ONE: PLEASE CONSULT YOUR PRIMARY PHYSICIAN What a lucky day it is that you've found another application to install onto your tablet. These things are really a mixed bag, aren't they? At first, this definitely seems like you got the better end of a deal. The app is titled "DIAGNOSTICS.EXE" and when you run it, it seems to be some kind of body-scan program. However, when you run it, the only thing it tells you is that PARASITES ARE DETECTED. EXTRACTION REQUIRED BEFORE STAGE THREE TRANSITION BEGINS. Whatever that means. Maybe someone on the network can help, or maybe you can just panic about the parasites apparently eating away at your insides. TWO: SOMETHING THERE THAT WASN'T THERE BEFORE It's obvious pretty quickly that something's wrong with the Network, though it's hard to say exactly what. The Admin hasn't raised any kind of alert as to any known errors. Still, you can see fluttering behind the screen, like gnats moving and squirming. Wait--maybe it isn't the Network at all. Maybe it's your tablet. When you listen hard enough, you swear you can hear the scrabbling of little paper-thin legs. There has to be something you can do. Maybe someone on the Network will give you some kind of clue. Action Prompts THREE: OUT VILE SPOT You and your traveling companion have made it to one of the food-stocked buildings for a sorely needed refill of your rations. There's plenty of time before lockdown, too, so it can't hurt to stop and eat what you can't carry. Things are going well for the most part, though you do notice that where you were most frequently handling the food, whether somewhere on a piece of clothing or on your skin directly appears to have developed what looks like a blue-black spot. Scrubbing it does nothing. Maybe it's nothing, a trick of the light or a bruise or stain you hadn't noticed sooner, but maybe you should let your traveling companion know, just to be entirely sure. FOUR: MIND THE WALLS This house is alive. At first, you and your traveling companion were sure that you were imagining things--it's a large house, after all, and in the dark after lockdown the shadows created by the light of you tablet can play tricks. It's easy to get turned around. You're tired. But after a long while of searching, you're sure of it. The walls are changing position. Doors lead to places they didn't a moment ago. When you touch your hand to the wallpaper you feel the faint, hot pulse of a heart beating. The two of you separated to cover the place faster, but now you're not sure how to navigate your way back to the front of the house to meet back up again. Good thing you both have your tablets to communicate between. A live video chat could help pass the time, at least.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

two.

[Text is her default method of communication, even if video and audio modes are available and offer quicker and arguably smoother interactions. It's a habit, and she's a writer, anyway. The obnoxiously purple font she sets hersef up with is also habit, as is her go-to username.]

@tentacleTherapist:
My tablet appears to have a bug.
It's convenient that the word can refer to both viruses and actual insects, because I'm honestly not certain which of those options it might be.
Symptoms include a sort of flickering in or behind the screen and a very faint scratching sound.
I'd contact technical support, but this frozen hellscape seems a bit lacking in that department, so I'm left to harass the general public for help.
So.
Thoughts, anyone?

four.

[She can't See here.

Her eyes are working just fine, but Rose can't help but feel like she's running blind. Something's cutting her off from the Light or her powers or whatever the fuck, and she can't get so much as a glimpse of the future, let alone the most fortuitous one. She should be able to easily find the correct path through this shifting maze of a house, but here she is, completely lost.

And there's certainly something up with the house. She doesn't need to be a functional Seer to tell that much. She touches her fingertips to a wall and the warmth and faint pulse behind it makes her grimace. Still, she leaves her hand there, trailing her fingers along the wall as she walks, her chipped and bitten-down nails scratching occasionally at the imperfect surface of it. It at least helps her keep her bearings a bit straighter. The house wants to play tricks, but like hell is she gonna let it get the best of her.]

Hello?

[God, she feels like a horror movie protagonist just saying it and she grimaces again. If there's anything malicious to hear her, it's not likely to answer. But finding someone else to watch her back would be helpful. She falls silent after that, pausing so as to not pollute the atmosphere with even just the sound of her own footsteps, and listens carefully for any sounds at all.]

wait for lockdown
hold your tablet in the doorjamb and break it open
take copious notes on your observations of anything that comes crawling out

[He's helpful.]

Edited (spelling) 2017-11-26 07:20 (UTC)

I'm hesitant to immediately resort to the most drastic and destructive option.

[rose you fucking liar.]

Still, I'll keep it in mind as a backup should all else fail.
Now, do you have any suggestions that don't involve breaking my only form of communication?

you'll find another one tomorrow if you break it
just fyi
evie likes having her ways to track us

have you tried saying beetlejuice 3 times?
i mean
maybe it works on real beetles
when they're scuttling around tablets

I'm getting the feeling you don't really know much about technology.
Or about late '80s comedies, for that matter.

we're talking the 1880s, right?
cut a poor guy from appalachia some slack here
i hear them folk from the future talking about all this

I didn't know "fyi" was common parlance in the 19th century.
Or are you just that quick to pick up the modern lingo?
Please, astound me with all the slang you've learned so far, I'm sure it's very impressive.

[Oh god, fuck this house. Fuck this house entirely. As much as Norfinbury has liked to play around with his senses on the regular, a building where the walls move and rearrange themselves is an entirely new one. He can't even guess why in particular this would be going down, but that's not so much the big question on his mind. What's better is, how the hell does he get back to the entrance? He's been stuck here a while already and doesn't expect he'll be able to leave for better shelter tonight before lockdown sets in, but he can at least find the door to get back out in the morning.]

[The thought that someone else could be here escapes his mind entirely until he hears someone speak up from... somewhere. He can't trust his ears or the architecture to give him a real read on where it's coming from. Hell, considering who it sounds like, he can't even trust that it's real.]

[He hesitates a moment, then calls out in a volume meant to carry:]

If you're a hallucination, then I've got better ways to spend my time than getting psychoanalyzed right now.

[She's kind of surprised to actually get an answer. She's more surprised to hear a voice so deeply familiar to her. Even if she can't see him, the voice just faintly muffled by distance or walls, it's like a weight lifts off her chest and she can breathe just a little bit easier. She calls back with a hint of amusement in her voice.]

Not a hallucination. Though we might sit down and talk about the fact that even figments of your own imagination seem to think you need therapy.

[There's a faint smile on her lips despite the situation in general, and she moves in what she thinks is the general correct direction. It's hard to tell how close she is with the way sounds travels in these halls.]

Keep talking. It shouldn't be too difficult for you.

[Lord knows he never shuts up anyway.]

[Rose. Rose. Rose whom he hasn't seen in three years, not even in the form of an anomaly. He's missed her here in different ways, largely in part from the similarity of being stuck here to the months spent together in the alternate timeline before he went back to save John. But this is Norfinbury, she hasn't seen him yet, and that's all it takes for a kind of dread to seize up in his chest. She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't have to put up with this. And hearing him, he figures she must expect the real Dave.]

[Well, one way to shatter that illusion: he caws.]

[He'll keep moving anyway. He can't not meet up with her now that she's here, and if she's at all disappointed he's a different Dave, then he can rip that bandaid off all at once.]

I hear a voice that sounds like you in the middle of Santa's sweatshop, and you're surprised I expect it to go that way? You're going to be disappointed when I tell you I haven't seen a single chaise longue in this place. I've got a whole list of candidates if you want to bust out your Junior Freud routine across the network, though.

Edited (what are words) 2017-11-26 07:53 (UTC)

[Truthfully, she had been expecting the real Dave, not that "real" is really the right word. The Other Dave. The one she spent the last three years with. She probably couldn't be blamed if she had forgotten Davesprite was a thing, really. She only spoke to him the one time three years ago, after all, briefly, and in the middle of the most hectic day of her life.

And yet, there's only a moment of confusion at the cawing before she pieces it together, and she feels a bit guilty for assuming at all. It's not like she hadn't just recently been reminded of the sprites' existence in the most ridiculous and embarassing way possible. And however much her mind defaults to the Alpha Dave, there's a part of her that's just as strongly attached to this one. Her memories of that alternate future are hazy and dreamlike, but she does remember. He was her Dave too, until he stepped back into this secondary role for everyone's sake. He's the same person -- without the three years of development she'd witnessed, maybe, but still Dave at the core.

The kindest thing she can do is not comment on it at all, probably. Not right now, at least.]

Whatever will I do? I suppose I can take the troll route and curl up in a pile with potential clients for a perfectly professional feelings jam, but that seems a little culturally appropriative.

[Ack. She's hit a wall, and the hallway here turns in the opposite direction of Dave's voice. She frowns and grudgingly follows it for lack of a better option, hoping it will twist back further up or contain a door that might lead the right way. Raising her voice a bit more, she calls back to him.]

Marco.

[No immediate reaction to it doesn't tell him for sure what she thinks, and it occurs to him suddenly that she's never even seen him like this. They never did run into each other in person after his prototyping, did they? He doesn't know what the time has done to her, either. John mentioned seeing her in a dream bubble once, but knowing her god tier pajamas are orange doesn't do a thing to say how her face has changed or how tall she's gotten.]

Polo. Found a staircase.

[And it sounds like she's moving away from him, too. He heads on up, digging out his tablet as he does to send her a voice message. It'll be easier that shouting themselves hoarse, and he figures she's likely kept her old username. His call comes from @featherydouche.]

Karkat's gonna have a hell of a lot to say if he hears you're soliciting something that pale from strangers. He's in town, by the way.

Edited 2017-11-26 08:24 (UTC)

[Well, there's all the confirmation she needed. Other Dave would certainly never abandon his normal handle, and definitely not for a bird-themed one. She may have never actually seen this sprite Dave, but Other Dave had mentioned the whole bird component of the situation at one point over the last three years.

This hall has a few doors, at least. She checks them one by one while she answers his call, keeping one hand to the leftmost warm wall to keep from getting turned around.]

Don't tell him it's a human therapy thing. I'll let him think I'm just promiscuously pale and see if he flips out or respects my polyamorous ways.

[She's not sure which way it might go and she's curious. Rose can honestly say she likes Karkat a lot, but she doesn't know him well enough to really know how he might react to some things.

It occurs to her that the whole Davesprite and Karkat thing must be interesting. She knows Karkat and Other Dave had a Thing on the meteor, after all. Then again, there could be some kind of time shenanigans afoot here. Or alternate timeline shenanigans. Dreambubble ghost shenanigans. There are so many kinds of shenanigans that could potentially be at work and she is without any Seer powers to help cut through all the bullshit. It's really unfair.]

[When Davesprite had first arrived in Norfinbury, the prompt from his tablet had put an obvious question in his mind: keep his old username, or change it? It wasn't that hard to decide. He'd felt low enough about being the bargain bin Dave that he figured it better to avoid the two-sided disappointment of letting anyone who knew him think he was the Real Dave at first. "Feathery douche" on the other hand was descriptive, and a suiting warning for a teenager low on his self esteem stat.]

[It's gotten easier since, in ways, but the username has stuck.]

Doubt he'll buy it. Not unless you've embraced the xeno lifestyle that hard over the years. I hear you've got a girlfriend now...?

[Which is a gateway to a hell of a conversation, if they just go through it. Rose can't know all the questioning Davesprite's gone through over Karkat, from pale to red and how many no homos can he fit in over accidental innuendos that would make Freud raise his eyebrows. By contrast, he hasn't the faintest clue what Other Dave got up to in that timeline, and the subject is still complicated at the best of times.]

[Rose, though—Rose is his sister, and he couldn't love her any less for it, no matter his own issues.]

[For now he pauses where he is. With both of them searching, that's just more ways for the house to change on them.]

Edited (screams at phone tag typos) 2017-11-26 09:43 (UTC)

[The smirk is practically audible in her voice when she replies.]

It has indeed been thoroughly embraced. A side effect of dating a troll.

[aka she is so up in that alien junk it has bypassed funny straight into "rose please shut up about your hot alien vampire girlfriend".]

I don't know if you ever had a chance to talk to her. Kanaya. The one with the jade green text. You would like her.

[Other Dave does, at least.

One of the doors fortunately does open up into a stairwell. She wouldn't bother under other circumstances, since an exit from this funhouse is unlikely to be found on the second floor, but finding Dave suddenly takes precedence over escape. She wouldn't leave without him even if she miraculously did find the way out.]

I'm heading upstairs.

Not since before the timeline split. They all lost interest in me after that, 'cept for like a single conversation where I told Terezi to step off. And Karkat here, but that's different.

[Namely because apart from Jade, he was the only one here alive from paradox space. He'd had mixed feelings, not especially trusting them after what happened to John, then settling into the hard facts of sacrificing his relevance, and finally unable to talk to them even if he'd wanted to once on the ship for those three years.]

[Stairs, though.]

I'ma hold tight where I am. Less chance for you to get lost again if I don't go wandering off into the fucking twilight zone first.

[He settles down onto the floor here, and Rose may hear the sounds through her tablet as he unloads his various bags and coils his tail up more comfortably beneath himself. He's going to look like shit no matter if he's upright or not, and he tries to distract himself from how she'll react by tackling the other avenue of conversation.]

So like, she's a troll vampire, right? How's that work? Are you living out your own real life Carmilla fantasy, or does she keep her fangs to herself?

[He has never read Carmilla, but there's some kind of lesbian vampire thing in that, right? He thinks there is. He doesn't know.]

Edited 2017-11-26 11:10 (UTC)

Good idea.

[Her side of the call is similarly messy with background noise, her steps on the stairs and her just slightly heavier breathing from the effort of the climb. Shit, she misses being able to fly.]

A girl has to eat. [She smiles to herself, but refrains from expanding that into more overt innuendo. Someone has to be subtle to counter Dave's endless runaway metaphors.] Good reference, by the way. I'm impressed.

[The door handle under her palm at the top of the stair is as disconcertingly warm with something like body heat as the walls, but she steels herself and powers on through. If she slams the door a little, no matter. Better for Dave to maybe hear her in person.]

[He doesn't expand it either, but he hardly needs to from the embarrassed jesus he mutters under his breath. He swallows it down and pushes at the other topic.]

You think I know jack shit about Carmilla save from half-remembered cultural osmosis? I'm years out of date, Lalonde. Even more out of date than you think when we've got people from years, decades, centuries in the future. The local year is at least 2150, and—

[Rose will hear the squawk and see the ruffle of vibrant orange as he nearly jumps out of his plumage at the sudden door slam. The door she came through is right within viewing distance, and decidedly not the door he came through a little bit ago. He doesn't trust that the door he used is even still there behind him right now.]

[If there were a singular term to describe how he looks (aside from startled all to shit), it's worn down. There's an underslept weariness in his face that creeps past the edges of his sunglasses, a thinness to his cheeks, and one could almost see the weight of stress that's pressed down heavier and heavier on his shoulders. His hair is shaggy with about five months' growth; he has scissors, but hasn't asked anyone to cut it yet. He could use a shower. He could almost always use a shower, rare as they are with hot water here. Some of the seriousness may be undercut by the fact that he's dressed like a homeless clown had a baby with a balloon animal.]

[Carefully, he folds his wings back neat behind him and settles the feathers of his ruff. He's staring saucer-eyed at her, but the dark lenses hide that much, and do pretty well to obscure the scars around the sockets, too. He clears his throat.]

'Sup?

Edited (curses at typos) 2017-11-26 12:19 (UTC)

[The sudden squawking nearly makes her jump out of her skin. The only semi-human, brightly colored and bizarrely dressed figure hunched there in the hallway has her instinctively tensing for a moment before she actually recognizes him, and the tension slips out of her almost instantly.

Torange coloring is a surprise. It shouldn't be, because she's seen other sprites, her own (unfortunately) included, and she intellectually knows how the colors turn out. But it didn't really prepare her for her brother all orange. At least she'd kinda been mentally prepared for the wings and feathers. It's all strange as shit, but hey. Strange has been the definition of her life for the last few years.

The corner of her painted lips quirks upward slightly, and she tugs at the orange hood of her godtier garb peeking out from beneath the purple coat she's arrived with.]

I see paradox space saw fit to make sure we matched.

[They are sorta twins, after all.

She nods and unceremoniously drops to sit down next to him. Making a show of adjusting the long ends of her orange tunic under her, she steals a peek at him through her bangs. Just...looking, covertly. He looks like shit and he's kinda dressed like a lunatic, but she can't help but feel like it'd be rude to openly stare. Like he'd think it's because of his sprite parts. Which are unfamiliar and strange, sure, but she's trying to be kind here and it isn't necessarily something that comes easily to her.

When she's settled, she sits back and gives him a more overt once-over, just a quick glance, and arches an eyebrow.]

So. What the fuck are you wearing, exactly?

[She is pretty fucking orange, as things go, but still distinctly less so than he is. Even all his other colorful layers don't do a damned bit of good against his wings, hair, face, or the fact that whoever picks the coats decided coordinating orange with orange was a smart style choice.]

[Even with the extra months they spent together, it's still a bigger change to see the effect of the years on her.]

Yeah.

[A quiet little response. Being a sprite didn't actually tell him what a fully realized Seer of Light looks like, not when she wasn't his charge.]

[There's a tightness in his chest for seeing her that only gets worse as she sits down. There's a whole layer of reality to it different than just hearing her voice. She looks fresh and new next to him, the kind of shiny apple you put at the front of the display instead of the lumpy, bruised thing that gets tossed as not store-worthy. She hasn't been here yet in the way he has, with longevity and endurance and too many knocks along the way. He has to swallow just to get more words out.]

It's called hobo chic. You'll pick it up if you give it long enough. I know you hail from the frozen over backwoods of New York, but even you have to admit it's colder than Santa's balls outside.

Edited (screams why do typos haunt me so much today) 2017-11-26 12:57 (UTC)

[At least she's on her way to that realm of hobo-esque disarray. Nowhere near his level yet, of course, but the beginnings are there. The purple coat clashes something awful with the orange godtier pajamas and the light blue ballet flats that definitely won't handle this weather well. And her black lipstick and heavy eyeliner, carefully preserved even after a battle with Her Imperial Condescension, was already kinda at odds with her sunshiney garb to begin with.

He's a bit taller than her, even just slightly more so than Other Dave is, but even sitting right next to him he feels small somehow. Too skinny. Jesus christ, how long had he even been here? She doesn't let her gaze linger on his too-long hair or the edges of scars any more than his bird parts, but every off detail is silently noted, each one a needle stab in her heart.

Still, she adopts a faint smirk. Overt concern and fussing has rarely been their style.]

I see. Is that a Tiara of +1 Cold Resistance, then?

Gotta hold onto my roots somehow, Rose. Ain't nobody else gonna keep irony alive here.

[But it's getting too hard to look at her, so he turns his torso toward one of his assorted bags to pick through. He hadn't expected her, but he'd thought of her still in his time here, and the purple puts to mind a thing he'd grabbed for someone else who never made it far enough to retrieve it. After a little digging, he manages to pull out three things: a purple graduation gown (nothing thick, but a layer still), a pair of knitting needles (someone surely would have a use for them eventually, right?), and a book that's one part Lovecraftian horror, one part cheesy romance novel. He hands them over in a bundle.]

Strider Claus got you a present. Just don't try the monsters with those needles; you'll die.

[As much a fact as snow being cold. It slips out before he can hold back on it.]

rose lalonde | homestuck

@hotstud_xxx; text

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btw "He's her Dave too" murdered me in the best way I love these two so much

don't mind me i'm just over here weeping over them forever

oh you too huh welcome to my life

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four

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