polymeme | Summer TDM

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! test drive meme

Summer TDM

✖ Test Drive Meme

Ⅰ. ARRIVAL
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
You land on an island, no surprise there. It’s not particularly large, this island, but what’s really more of note is that the entire thing is a beach. White sand stretches out in every direction, the only greenery being palm trees and impossibly fragrant bushes of flowers that resemble hibiscuses.

Allergic to the sun? Don’t worry, there’s plenty of canopies set up so that you can get some shade. There’s also changerooms with toilets and showers, and also free swimsuits that fit you perfectly! There’s plenty of food stalls - try a corndog, or the fish and chips at “America’s Scrod Basket!” Groovy! Once night falls, you can relax in one of the many hammocks strung up between the palm trees, or catch some Zs on the surprisingly comfortable beach chairs all over the place. All of your basic needs are met, Traveler!

Notes:
1. Please remember to mark threads appropriately with Content Warnings when necessary.

2. These prompts are a jumping off point - how they affect your character and their development is up to you.

3. Have fun!

Ⅱ. BEACH BLANKET BINGO!

All of the residents of this island look like they’ve stepped off the set of a 1960s beach party movie. Catalina Caper, maybe. They’re all extremely friendly, and BOY do they love to dance! Which they do. Frequently.

In fact, did you notice the live band? Because there’s a live band! A few, actually - they rotate through the day and into the evening, although you never actually see them switch. That’s pretty weird.

The island residents will drag you into one of their many, many dance parties whenever they can. Sometimes they’ll just form around you like a horrible flash mob, twisting and shaking like they’ve downed a gallon of redbull.

Maybe you want to get as far away from the water and the parties as possible. Venture further inland and you’ll find yourself still surrounded by sand and a few tropical plants. There’s bound to be a few other Travelers about, but at least it’s quiet.

Wait. What the hell is that, a lawnmower?

Surprise! As you stand there, a dune buggy comes plowing over the hill, spraying sand everywhere. Inside of the buggy is a group of young people, all smiling broadly at you and any other Travelers nearby.

“Hello, friends!” they cry. “Want to take a ride? Charlie’s got a ton of these, you can borrow one!” So if you really feel like careening all over the island, this is a great way to do it!

Notes:
1. These residents of the island are normal humans. Killing them is possible and will affect the colour grading of your Scrywatch depending on the situation.

2. The food is safe to eat, and is consumable by non-human entities.

3. The short creepy guy who has the keys to the dune buggies might be a little pissed if you trash them, but he can be mollified if you listen to his shitty music and tell him it's good.

Ⅲ. SURF'S UP!
CW: drowning, possible death.
As with all of the islands you will visit, you will either see the island as floating either in a horizonless sky, or in the middle of a wine-dark sea. Regardless of which you see, you soon discover that you can go surfing in it.

That’s right - there’s a bunch of boards set up down at one end of the beach. Wander down and you’ll find yourself suddenly embroiled in a surfing contest! That’s right, it’s you versus another Traveler - first one off of their board is the loser! Win and you’ll be the most popular person on the island for the duration of your stay! People will lavish attention and gifts upon you. Lose and you’ll be ridiculed! They’ll probably even make fun of your mom!

Whether or not you care about winning, once you’re in the middle of the contest you and your fellow Traveler will see someone swimming not far away from you. Or they were swimming - now they seem to be going down and popping up, looking terrified. The realisation comes to you suddenly: they’re drowning.

You have a choice here - you can forfeit the win to save this stranger, or you can leave them to their own devices. Your opponent will have the same choice. Be a hero, or be a winner?

Notes:
1. Obviously, the decision to save the swimmer or not will affect the colour of your Scrywatch. Both parties may decide to save the swimmer, or both may decide to continue on with the contest. Your reason for saving them can also make an impact - are you saving them only to be considered a hero by the island residents?

Ⅳ. TERROR AT ROCK-OUT BEACH!
CW: unwanted romantic attention from a monster, optional sexual themes.
You’re just sitting there minding your own business when you suddenly realise that you’re very nearly alone. In fact, it’s just you and another Traveler, maybe a few. Where did everyone go?

Suddenly a shadow falls over you. You turn and are greeted by what looks like a man in a vaguely fish-like costume; it has flat webbed feet, a body covered in what appears to be rubber seaweed, and a triangular head with huge rubber gills sticking out to either side. Its immobile mouth has pointy teeth, and its bug-eyes appear to have pupils merely painted on.

This monster waves its arms threateningly. “Gaaaaah!” it says. Its voice is muffled. “Gaahhhhhhhhh!”

Somehow it is a lot faster than it looks, and the next thing you know it has enfolded you in its embrace.

“You will be Flupper’s bride!” the monster shouts, regardless of your gender identification. It looks at whoever happens to be in your general vicinity. “Who this?”

Struggling, you realise that Flupper is stronger than any creature you’ve ever encountered before. You can’t seem to get it to let go of you, and it's rocking against you in such a way that it makes a sound like the soles of sneakers on a gym floor. On the plus side, it doesn’t have any genitals so at least it’s not as bad as it could be. Still, desperate times call for desperate measures! “That’s my partner!” you claim before you can think about how stupid an idea that is.

“You bride? LIES! Flupper can tell!”

“We can prove it!”

“Oh yeah? Tell something only bride would know!”

Oh shit. Now you’re stuck - you and your fellow Traveler have to admit to something true about love or intimacy, under the guise of it being about the other. Flupper’s lie detecting abilities are good enough to call you out on untruths, but not good enough to know who you’re talking about.

He’s not letting you out of his squeaky embrace until you’ve convinced him that you’re a couple.

Notes:
1. It’s up to you how much of this back and forth it takes to convince Flupper that you are ‘brides.’

2. You can choose to abandon someone in Flupper’s grip - this would be reflected in your Scrywatch colour. Probably negatively, unless you feel strongly about the morality of fishman marriage via kidnapping. The ‘bride’ would then be forced to attend an extremely dull ceremony lasting three days and three nights. For the duration of your stay on the island, you would now be married and expected to bring Flupper its slippers and pipe every evening.

3. You can try to kill Flupper. Unlike the other residents of the island, it is extremely resilient and strong. It is possible, however.

4. You can keep this completely G rated - maybe all you know of love is that time in first grade when you got a Valentine card from the cutest kid in class - but if you DO get saucy, please mark your thread with a Content Warning.

Greetings, prospective Travelers! Welcome to the Summer 2021 POLYMYTHOS test drive meme and thank you for your interest in our game! Our next application round will run from June 25 - July 2, 2021. For the months of June, July, and August, we invite you to use this TDM to explore but one of many, many islands within the Endless Isles; use it as an opportunity to introduce and familiarize yourself with the game, form connections with other characters, and just have some fun. (Perhaps while also getting some solid samples together for your application!)

Use the prompts provided below as-is or feel free to write your own set within the environment detailed in each. You're even welcome to access the network via your character's ScryWatch. While there will be some inevitable changes, TDMs may count as game canon and some islands may be revisited in the future. Be mindful of your surroundings -- you never know how you and your fellow Travelers might affect this place in the long run.

Hang ten, Moon doggy! Seeking those killer jams?

Network · Logs · OOC · Memes · Plurk

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“Hold my arm.” He doesn’t charge out of the water as he otherwise would; he moves slowly, feels the receding waves sucking sand from under his bare feet. “I’ll keep you on your feet.”

It was brave of her to try surfing, he realizes… and foolish. Likely very foolish.

“It’s warmer than I’m used to here.” Talking of the weather seems reasonable, particularly when it’s the reason for the general state of undress.

She chuckles a little, not exactly at him but at his tendency to head straight to the wildest theory possible.

"They could be, I guess. From what you've said, just about anything is possible. Robot or real, as long as they're not trying to hurt me, I'm okay." She tries on a few hats and various pairs of sunglasses.

"I didn't see any lifeguards. I'm tempted to go swimming but I've never been in the ocean before..." She can swim, but it's always been in a lake or a pool.

DiMA looks so excited that Malcolm hates to burst his bubble with what he's about to say.

"They don't look anything like you. As I said, they don't have bodies. They're just voices... personal assistants that help us on our devices."

Malcolm reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. "I'm not sure if it's going to work here, but... Hey Siri?"

The phone remains blank, unresponsive. "That's normally where Siri would chime in I'd get to ask a question, or maybe ask her to set a reminder... something like that."

"Then you aren't giving yourself an authentic Nav experience," she says. Gideon cannot imagine a stripped down version of her without all of her sense of humor. It sounds too bleak. Gideon's not imagined Harrow's life without her in it. That was supposed to be the advantage of the one sacrificing themselves. She's never one to catch a break.

"If I'd known that was all it'd take, I'd have gotten sacrilegious sooner," she says. She's never feeling bad for that again (not that she felt bad before).

Her hand splays against Harrow's back, providing the support of an exoskeleton. "We were one flesh, and if you look around, we're now one end. Guess it was right." Gideon watches Harrow's face. This place means a lot of shit, and Gideon only cares, right then, that it's the two of them against the world again.

"Yeah, good point. They might be totally nice even if they are robots."

He brightens. "Dude, I'd go with you. I know basic lifeguard stuff and first aid! I was a camp counselor in high school, I had to make sure no kids drowned."

DiMA patiently waits during Malcolm's demonstration, leaning in to get a better look. But as Malcolm finished, DiMA's excitement quickly faded away.

"I see. Just a computer then. Nothing that could be considered alive." How disappointing.

"We don't have devices like that in my world." What exactly was that thing? It looked like someone took the screen out of a pip-boy. "But there is a great variety of robots. Synths are a rare kind, sentient from the start and made to look exactly like humans. I'm a prototype."

Malcolm falters a bit when Liara grabs his hand. It's not personal; he's just not used to being touched. He's kind of like a feral cat, though generally a lot nicer. Twirling her while they dance works for him. It doesn't involve too much contact.

"It is," he agrees. "It looks like the cheesy 1960s beach movies around here, if you know what I'm talking about."

She might not, depending on where and when she's from.

"The islands haven't been too bad," Harrow confesses. It does sound like a confession: tired and emotionally wrung out, as if this is something she's afraid to say, doesn't want to admit. "This one is the oddest, so far? But even it has—"

You.

"—advantages."

Gideon snorts. "I've survived more assassination attempts than I've attended dinner parties," she says. Admittedly, the dinner party number is so low that's not as impressive as it sounds. Still. "We both deserve some 'not too bad' as far as I see it." Something lacking the fate of the universe. Sure, Gideon remembers the spiel about becoming her better self. She's choosing not to think too closely on that yet. She refuses to be the one to turn this reunion into a sob fest. Or a navel gazing party.

Gideon looks across at the free beach underwear and food and people dancing and people swimming. Swimming could be it? It doesn't feel like a Harrowhark setting. Too many people. Not enough prayers. "Yeah?" Gideon stares down at her and uses the moment to bite off a large chunk of her protein on a stick.

Maybe it's a cop thing, but Malcolm's first thought on arriving here was also that he must be dead. This place didn't strike him as heavenly either, but who really knew what the afterlife looked like? He supposes it's better than where he could have ended up.

He's been trying to assimilate while also investigating how he got here. He's still not entirely sure if he's dead or not. The dancers manage to get a hold of him and Malcolm just goes along with it. He's a surprisingly good dancer, and he enjoys dancing when he lets himself go. Fortunately, with nobody here from home, it's easier to let himself go.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the woman suddenly drop below the heads of the crowd. The dancers don't seem to notice or care. Malcolm pushes his way through them until he reaches her.

"Hey." He squats down. "Are you okay?" She looks terrified.

"I liked Carcosa better, because it had so many undead."

Of course she did.

"This one just has you," is added in a mumble. "And I hope you are still with me when we change islands again, but if you are not—at least there was this one. Also," now more loudly, "Watching people fall off those wave-riding board things is a bit entertaining."

"Ah, yes, right at home," Gideon nods. "But was the food any good? Because this food is good."

Of course Gideon likes that.

She looks at Harrow, not sure what's normal on these islands. Perhaps people disappear just as often as they appear. She's just gotten here. "However slightly, you beat out the food here, no matter how good this fried protein turns out to be," Gideon nudges her shoulder into Harrow's.

Oh, Nav. How could Harrow ever think this was a hallucination? She could never think of these things.

"The food was ... fine. I did not pay close attention to it. It was less of a big deal than the food here, we did not have to stand in lines to pay for it so often, though there was a restaurant where one did have to do exactly that. After eating. I had wondered what happened to the people who tried to leave without paying."

They probably got shot at, because: Carcosa. Harrow had liked the beach and the make-up counter. "Really, me more important than food? Are you all right? Have you been hit in the head recently?" It's only after she says it that she puts a hand over her mouth and silently prays for Gideon not to mention having been impaled on a fence recently.

"Hit in your head," Gideon mutters. Despite how weak Harrow's arm muscles and every other kind of muscle (brain isn't actually a muscle, she thinks), they healed impressively quick. Enough to make up for how much worse she'd been at fighting. At first. She doesn't know if Harrow's from before all that. If there's a Harrow after all that.

She steps up and orders as much fried protein as they'll give her, quickly, before she steps to the side to wait for it. That's what others have been doing. "You didn't have to promise your skeleton to perform decades more labor in return?" Gideon pokes fun at the Ninth House that doesn't have the labor any other way. The dead are more productive than most of them were shortly before they died. "Not fully like home then."

The part of her brain that isn't currently panicking... is smart enough to realize, dimly, that she is having a panic attack. She'd be embarrassed if she wasn't occupied trying to breathe, trying to calm herself down.

There's no blood. No wound. No Michael. There's - a stranger, at her elbow, a human (presumably. Hopefully).

"I -" C'mon, Decker, snap out of it!

"I think I need to - uh, get away from the crowd," she finally stammers out, taking a deeper, shuddering breath. She's got this. She straightens. "I'll be okay, just need some air..."

She hardly notices his reaction, mostly because she's busy turning and doesn't have eyes in the back of her head. If she had, though, she would have apologized profusely. She generally trusts people to tell her how they're feeling, especially if she's the cause. It comes from growing up with parents who shared everything with her. They were as close as three people can be.

She nods in agreement with his assessment. "I try to think of it like a theme party. And at least we can leave whenever we want. These poor people seem stuck here. Kyle - have you met Kyle? Hair just like mine, looks like he could be my brother? - well Kyle thinks they might be robots."

"In a way, them being robots would be kinda comforting. Robots have programming, right? They stick to what they've been told to do. So if they're dancing, they're just going to keep dancing. No need to worry about them suddenly turning on us." And suddenly, his 'crazy' idea doesn't seem so crazy.

His offer sounds too good to be true. Almost as if whatever power that brought her here also sent her exactly the person she needs to get acclimated.

"Really? You don't mind?"

"Yeah, just a computer." That's the extent of synths where he comes from.

Malcolm can't help but be interested in what DiMA is saying. For now, his issues of life and death are put on hold.

"Did someone make you?" he asks. "They made you sentient? We would call that artificial intelligence where I come from."

"Yes. Someone made me." DiMA said, although he didn't sound happy about it. "The Institute. The first synths didn't think or feel. The Institute wanted to see how a synth would handle personality. They created me and my brother for their experiments."

He fell quiet, staring down at the sand with a distance look in his eyes. He seemed lost in his thoughts for a long moment. Then he sighed and gave Malcolm a sad smile.

"It is not a pleasant story. But one I don't mind sharing if you wish to hear it. I've told it many times."

That's an extremely good point, and Kyle nods as she talks. Although part of him is always going to be awaiting a SkyNet situation when it comes to AIs.

"Really!" If there's one thing Kyle likes more than learning, it's being able to help somebody else learn. He's a bit of a dork that way. "Nah, I don't mind. I mean, we're here for a while, you know? And you're awfully nice." He grins. "Also: ginger solidarity."

Malcolm furrows his brow as he studies her. It seems like it might be a panic attack to him, but he knows that people come here from all sorts of different places, including ones where magic and super powers are real. That means that her reaction could be due to any number of things.

"Sure," he says calmly, not making a big deal of what's happening. He offers the woman his hand in order to help her up.

He's not always forthcoming when it comes to his feelings. Sharing them means possibly getting into the whys of him feeling a certain way, and that's not usually something he tells people unless he trusts them. One of the few positives about being here is that people don't know who his father is. He'd like to keep it that way.

"No, I haven't met him. Robots, huh?" Malcolm contemplates that. "They're very life-like robots, if that's the case. At least if they're stuck here it seems like they're enjoying themselves." Maybe they're programmed to think that way. Or brainwashed.

Maybe she should be more paranoid. Maybe she shouldn't trust a stranger in this strange place. But he's the first person since she's arrived to be making any kind of sense, to even seem to notice her distress instead of just smiling and pushing her to celebrate (what is there to celebrate).

So, she takes his hand, getting back to her feet properly.

"Thanks," she says faintly, assuming he's going to escort her away from the crowd. It's way too much, too soon. Breathe, Decker. "Sorry, I'm clearly not making a great first impression," she adds, trying to lighten the mood a bit. No really, she'll be fine. "I just got here, and I'm not really clear on where here is..."

"Oh, it's lovely. The weather, and even the water is lovely when it's not trying to knock you over and eat you," Dulcie allows for that the water isn't really at fault here, but only mentally. She knows it's her fault; she knows she's reckless. She just doesn't want to focus on it.

She does take the offered arm, though, as if it is only her due, but with a nod of appreciation.

He tries to follow whatever pace she sets, erring on the side of too slow. He had placed a blanket and some towels up on the sand, but they are not very close to the water line. It will take a little while to get to them.

“Is it cold where you come from, too?”

It’s nice to be this warm coming out of the water, even if it’s strange when it’s not a hot spring.

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Summer TDM

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Beach Blanket Bingo

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