aftr_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME ( 017 )

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*test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 017 )

Test Drive Meme #17

Hello, and welcome to LifeAftr! We’re pleased that you’re expressing an interest in the game. Here, you can test the waters, gauge how your character may fare in the world of LifeAftr, and even gain some in-game incentives, if you so choose.

Remember that Reserves will open on November 17th, and Applications on November 24th!

Two important notes:

1. LifeAftr's test drives take place on the island of Mu, which exists apart from the real world and possesses a dream-like quality that characters are innately aware of from the moment they appear on its shores. No need to panic or fret. Dreams are odd things, after all - and anything can happen in them. Why would anyone question where their mind chooses to wander in its sleep?

2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but can be accepted as game canon as well. In fact, certain choices your character makes in Mu have the potential to bear in-game consequences, largely in the form of test drive reward items.

Is Anyone There?
What initially promises to be a relaxing island getaway is anything but. The tropical backdrop is all there - swaying palms, crystalline shores, white sand beaches, the whole hog. It's as idyllic as Ensō ever gets in the real world, the waters sparkling just that much more with a polish of dream-shine.

The real problem here is that you're not alone.

While they might be little more than a misted, formless shape at first, they'll rapidly take a more solid form as time goes on: a specter of a single person of great emotional significance. Whoever you might be seeing, they're here to rouse some aspect of your life that was not fully resolved. Someone you did not mourn, someone you did not grieve, someone you loved, someone you cut ties with unkindly, someone who represents a chapter in your life that you have thus far sought to repress.

Tailing you relentlessly, refusing to be ignored or brushed aside or forgotten, this specter is hungry for your attention to the exclusion of all else. They will bring every painful association to light and rub those wounds raw, to a terrifyingly parasitic extent. They crave your attention, your love, your devotion, your fear. They are tethered to you, and cannot tolerate the thought that you might pay attention to anyone or anything else.

However they might have been in life, however fondly or not you may remember them, this shadow of them is merely that: a shadow. Desperate for your attention, and likely to grow jealous if you dare direct it anywhere else. They can't live without you. Why should you get to live without them?

In fact...why should you get to live at all? If you don't give them the attention they crave, they might start to demand it a shade more vigorously. They're only going to grow more solid as time wears on - and while no one but you can see them, they have the power to affect you very physically if they so choose.

Choose Your Own Adventure
What you have before you, dear traveler, is a very linear path forward. Deep, tropical woodland, jungle-like in texture and evening-dark, and a well-trodden path that stretches onward in a seemingly infinite, winding road. There is no way to go but backwards or forwards. Or, for the particularly brave...well, you could try moving off the beaten path, but we wouldn't recommend it. As it happens, the surrounding vegetation in this area is mostly comprised of a very irritating sort of foe.

As it happens, most traditional mimics take the form of wooden chests to befuddle and then snack upon any intrepid explorers foolish enough to open a container without checking for teeth first. Such is not always the case, however!

Mimicries are what we will tentatively dub...distant cousins of your more conventional mimic. In the waking world, most of them prefer to assume the form of bushes, waiting for an unsuspecting traveler to tread upon the roots that will then snap around their ankles and reel them in, leaves parting to reveal a row of very nasty, very pointed jaws. Tonight, on Mu, their aptitude at blending into the vegetation to prey on the absent-minded explorer is out in full force.

While mimicries are very skilled at impersonating their surroundings, there are plenty of holes in their disguise for those keen of eye. An alert enough traveler may glimpse a pair of yellow, reptilian eyes blinking out from the vegetation before they fade just as fast. Mimicries are highly hostile, prone to attacking once they feel you've drawn close enough for them to take a good chomp, and don't tend to let go of their prey until either it is dead or they are. Armed with spiny teeth and a terrier-like refusal of relinquish their grip under any circumstances, mimicries can vary from genuine danger to outright irritant.

The good news is that, despite their number, mimicries are terribly vulnerable to fire. Happy hunting!

Caught in the Rainbow Current
On the more peaceful side of things, you're also liable to wake on a much quieter island destination - and this time, neither ghosts from your past nor RPG-styled foes will be there to spoil your stay!

Instead, you can take heart in the drifting, multicolored lights that shimmer off the seafoam and flotsam. A bale of kaleidoshells are passing through this region, and they're certainly taking their time in doing so. Resembling a cross between turtles and dugongs, kaleidoshells are so named for their distinctive radiance. Their scales and rainbow-colored shells can get as large as six feet across. The shifting colors on their backs are both bright and reflective. A vast enough number of kaleidoshells can allow for the illusion of an underwater aurora borealis, which is precisely what is occurring now.

Kaleidoshells are placid and peaceable creatures by nature in addition to being unfailingly pretty to look at. As they are largely sea-dwelling, their presence in the archipelago is usually seasonal. However, despite the autumn season, Mu has elected to make an exception. Kaleidoshells are particularly slow and unwieldy on land, and thus not much of a threat, but you're probably better off not trying to poach their eggs. They do, however, make a very fine sight around the waters of Mu, especially in this artificial evening. Luminescent, their rainbow patterns glow underwater with the dim pulse of drifting mood lights.

So relax, take in the sights...or wade in to swim alongside them, if you like. They won't mind the company, and there's something singularly enchanting about getting to swim in the tide of a rainbow.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i. welcome to the jungle

[Michael, for one, is absolutely not at all inclined to leave the path! He is getting plenty of nature right where he is, thanks very much. The only reason he's bothering to walk through the forest at all is because there hadn't been much of anything where he was, and there's got to be people somewhere around here, right?

He's wearing a full business suit, but the heat and humidity don't really seem to be bothering him. He's keeping up a good pace, scanning the area as he does. The jungle sounds are largely unfamiliar to him, and there's a lot of plants and stuff here that he's never seen in person before. Bright flowers that he didn't bother with in the neighborhood, weird shrubs that may or may not have just blinked...

...Michael stops.]

...huh.

[He glances up and down the path, and then snaps a branch off the nearest tree. And chucks it at the weird bush. It snaps at it with large, horrific jaws that seem to sprout out of nowhere.]

Oh! Look at that! [Michael seems surprised and delighted by this! This may change, depending on what the mimicry does when it's finished chewing up that stick.]

ii. yearly review

[Michael's no stranger to psychological torture. He knows Shawn can't really be here, so he's held up under whatever's happening here well enough until now. It's not like he cares about Shawn's opinion anymore anyway. Right? He wasn't even that great a choice; Michael thinks he could give whoever created this a few pointers.

Now, though, things are starting to get physical.]

How the hell - ? [To anyone else, it looks like Michael's being dragged by the arm towards the ocean. He's fighting back against the pulling. He and his foe seem to be fairly evenly matched, even though his dress shoes aren't getting much traction in the sand.] Let go! That isn't even a real retirement, you're just going to drown me. Is that what we're doing now? Waterboarding? Real creative, Shawn.

[He takes a swing.

you wanna watch an old man get into some kind of weird fight with the air]

[ .... ah. She knows what's happening here, and she feels really bad for the guy. When Lance had appeared before her, she'd absolutely thought he was really.

She clears her throat, loudly. ]

... They're not real, whoever you're seeing.

Uh, yeah. I figured that out from the part where -

[excuse him while he, uh, slaps some invisible hands away]

He wasn't exactly tangible until just now.

[ She nods. ]

Mine was like that, too. At the very least... it shouldn't be too long until he disappears.

[Michael steps a little closer, focusing very deliberately on her like he's trying hard to ignore whatever the hell else he's hearing right now.]

Do you know why this is happening?

I think so.

[ She pauses. ]

Back on the islands--not this one, this one is sort of in a realm of its own?--it was because of this dream island that we saw people we missed, people we never got closure with.

...that is so dumb. That has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

[He pauses to listen to his hallucination before continuing.]

See, that's another thing, the real Shawn would also think it was dumb. Pffft, closure... [It's like the concept of it personally offends him.] I don't miss him.

Michael | The Good Place

yearly review

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!!!!!

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welcome to the jungle

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yearly review

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