Test Drive

[snowblindmods]

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.

Comments

[mrcreamsicles]

That's what happens when you go too long without debugging your code.

[He is part game construct, after all. It's not a real answer, either, but he's never known her for being the most direct.]

[He gives her hand a gentle tug and starts forward down the way she'd indicated.]

I should probably ask what timeline you're from.

[knitpick]

[She keeps pace with him, mildly comforted to have his hand in hers again even if her poker face will stubbornly reveal nothing of that. Her other hand returns to follow the wall on her other side. Unsurprisingly, it feels no less alive than Dave's hand.]]

The alpha timeline.

[And the obvious follow-up question to that -- for them at least, who're used to these kind of shenanigans -- is "when". So she doesn't wait for him to ask it. At least there's some good news to be shared today.]

We won.

[mrcreamsicles]

[Davesprite makes a quiet, considering noise. It's not as big a revelation as it could be, but it draws the same question it has for a long time: what does the alpha mean if she's here? If she's already won? Is she someone who could go back, when all this is said and done, to no great upset? He hopes so.]

Jade told me that when she was still kicking around. Congrats.

[He's not even excited.]

She said there's a version of me that gets combined with a cat troll? Nepeta?

[knitpick]

[Sigh. She didn't expect cheering and jumping for joy or whatever out of him, but it's still a kinda underwhelming reaction. Davesprite confirmed for depressed bird.]

I...maybe?

[SHE NEVER ACTUALLY EXPERIENCED DAVEPETA. Rose looks perplexed, but frowns and tilts her head thoughtfully as she considers it.]

I didn't see anything -- anyone? Anyone like that. But we figured Jasprosesprite was going to abscond with the spare kernel and bring Nepeta back, which would have been only one level of prototyping, and we saw that one sprite can become the second prototyping for another, so...it's possible that something like that occured while I was elsewhere.

[mrcreamsicles]

[He'd been depressed already just by the end of the ship journey, brought down by the awkward soreness of a best friend who never took him for a real version of himself. He'd known it, too. And here, after months of friends dying, trauma piling on, and the growing certainty that he's likely doomed back home? There's no way he could feign cheer and good mental health. It's enough for him that he's handling this as well as he is.]

[But as for what Rose is actually saying—]

Jasp...rosesprite?

[He glances over, eyebrow cocked over the rim of his shades, like he's unsure of pronunciation or that he didn't hallucinate the line entirely.]

I mean, I figured another kernel had to be part of it, but what the hell were you doing in the alpha timeline? It was bad enough when I heard it took John to fix it. Have you got an answer on how that worked, while you're at it?

[That in particular had been a big, sore question ever since Jade mentioned it his first day here. Since when did the fucking Breath player do time travel?]

[knitpick]

[Just hearing the name repeated makes Rose groan. She gives up tracking the wall just so she could have a free hand to bury her face in. She leaves it there while she sighs and shrugs helplessly, voice slightly muffled by her palm sounding a little exhausted just thinking about it all.]

He somehow got some kind of...retcon powers, I think? He didn't explain much, and I didn't have a chance to interrogate him about it. A great deal was going on at the time.

[She groans again, pressing her palm hard to her face like she can maybe just push the memory of the entire incident right out of her skull.]

...Including Jaspers tossing my corpse from the failed timeline into an empty kernel and then accidentally fusing himself with the resulting sprite.

[Does she look like she wants to die? Because she absolutely wants to die.]

[mrcreamsicles]

[There's a whole lot going on in the overall present moment. 1) Rose is clearly, massively embarrassed. 2) Retcons are a thing. Retcons. 3) Jasprosesprite is a thing that exists. 4) Jaspersprite somehow had his paws on Rose's doomed alternate timeline corpse. 5) Jasprosesprite is possibly responsible for whatever the hell his alternate future fused-with-Nepeta self is. 2 again) Retcons???]

[Davesprite spares a moment to pinch at the bridge of his nose. His head hurts already.]

What?

[His hand drops. He needs to do something, anything, and he seizes on the handle of the nearest door because maybe that will help give some direction past the rest of this mess. He finds a closet for his trouble, groans, and shuts the door.]

No—no, you know what, no. I'm not asking. I'ma let that whole heap of nonsense sit right where it is. I don't—no.

[He shakes his head, like he can somehow make the topic vanish. He's going to have to sit down and think through it properly sooner or later, but right now when they're trying to find the exit is entirely unsuited for how dang much that is to contemplate. His sprite programming's going to have a fit if he forces it. (Time doesn't work that way.)]

[With an irritable gesture at the door, he asks,]

Do you think this will go somewhere else if I open it again?