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June-July 2024 Test Drive Meme
June-July 2024 TDM
Introduction
Welcome to Folkmore's monthly Test Drive Meme! Please feel free to test drive any and all characters regardless of your intent to apply or whether you have an invite or not.
All TDMs are game canon and work like "mini-events". For new players and characters, you can choose to have your TDM thread be your introduction thread upon acceptance or start fresh. Current players are also allowed to have in-game characters post to the TDM so long as they mark their top levels ‘Current Character.’
TDM threads can be used for spoon spending at any time by characters accepted into the game.
Playing and interacting with the TDMs will allow characters to immediately obtain canon items from homes especially weapons or other things they may have had on their person when they were pulled from their worlds! There will always be a prompt that provides some sort of "reward" to characters who complete certain tasks.
🦊 New Star Children meet the Fox still in their worlds, and she brings them into the new realm of Folkmore. As you follow her, your body begins to change and new characteristics emerge. These may stay for a while, or perhaps they will hide away after. And during all of this, the Fox explains to you where you will be going: to Folkmore.
and then... you fall like a shooting star, falling to the land in a burst of starlight.
🦊 Experienced Star Children are already familiar with this time of the month. There are shooting stars all across the sky, and some fall to the land, which means the Fox has brought new arrivals. These newly arrived Star Children will face some tests, but Thirteen wants the more seasoned residents to participate as well.
Perhaps you follow the falling stars on your own, or perhaps the Fox simply teleports you there, but it appears you too will be part of this.
Content Warnings: Ghosts, Potential Violence, Potential Death
Summer has hit. It's hot, and nowhere is it hotter than Cruel Summer. Naturally, new Star Children arrive in Cruel Summer with no indication of which direction to go to escape, unless they're so lucky as to arrive near the Selkie River. The water provides a break, and a selkie skin will protect Star Children from the heat. Though beware the cruelty of leaving a selkie without their skin. Along with the heat, Star Children can hear whispers and the echoes of screams throughout Cruel Summer. There's no obvious source of the noises. Not the normal creatures. Not anything anyone can see.
Whether new or old Star Child, anyone lost, overheated, in need of a rest, or anything else will find a friendly spirit will find them in the sands, rock, or shores of Cruel Summer. They'll guide the way toward the huts found in Cruel Summer. These huts have changed; the huts are bigger and grow together, making them one interconnected twisting winding empty town. No one appears to live there. The wooden town is in disrepair, varying from building to building. Even so, they are cool inside, a welcome break from the summer heat.
No matter how one entered, even through the swinging doors to the saloon, that exit disappears behind Star Children. There's no turning back. The only way out is to explore the way through the buildings. This fact continues to be true building to building as exits continue to vanish. The abandoned town isn't as empty as it first seems. As Star Children explore the branching paths through the wooden structures, they see ghosts of spirits going through the paces of their lives. They're familiar to these spaces and interact with missing objects that sometimes shimmer in spirit energy.
Spirit Children may interrupt these routines to try to talk with the ghosts. Some ghostly spirits are friendly. They may interact with Star Children as though they're someone else, someone the spirits used to know. Others, like the bartender, may treat them like a new customer. Other ghosts are determined to stick to their routines and, should Star Children continue to interrupt, will attack those who disturb them.
These spirits may kill Star Children when they attack. Normal weapons won't hurt them. There are revolvers, shotguns, iron pokers, hunting knives, and other plain weapons around to grab in self-defense. Salt bullets and iron will dispel ghosts. These weapons may be grabbed at any time. However, doing so attracts the creatures in Cruel Summer. A blood red worm spitting yellow acid may break through the floor to eat or spray Star Children. An enormous coyote may leap through the window. Whether attracted by the use of weapons or passing by, any dangerous creature found in Cruel Summer seems agitated when they come near these structures and will attack them and anyone inside. They will focus especially on anyone with a stolen selkie skin.
Should Star Children die, whether to ghosts or creatures, they will not immediately return to life.Do not pass go. Instead they will haunt the ghost town for one week in the room where they were killed. Other Star Children may recognize them and work to snap them out of their routines. Yet nothing will free the Star Children's spirits before the week is through. At the end of the week, they'll come to, alive, in their bodies in the room they died in. Best get through and out of the ghost town before dying again!
A constant through these scenes are the spirits' spoons, visible somewhere in each scene. The ghost spoons are whole. Once free of the ghost town, Star Children may choose to travel to the Shattered Spoon Shrine in Never Fade to search for the broken fragments of any of these spoons. They are in such small pieces, however, that no Star Child may feed them enough Lore alone to bring the spirit back. Two or more Star Children may spend time in the Shrine creating and feeding Lore toward the spoons to heal them. It just may be enough to bring someone back.
Summer has hit. It's hot, and nowhere is it hotter than Cruel Summer. Naturally, new Star Children arrive in Cruel Summer with no indication of which direction to go to escape, unless they're so lucky as to arrive near the Selkie River. The water provides a break, and a selkie skin will protect Star Children from the heat. Though beware the cruelty of leaving a selkie without their skin. Along with the heat, Star Children can hear whispers and the echoes of screams throughout Cruel Summer. There's no obvious source of the noises. Not the normal creatures. Not anything anyone can see.
Whether new or old Star Child, anyone lost, overheated, in need of a rest, or anything else will find a friendly spirit will find them in the sands, rock, or shores of Cruel Summer. They'll guide the way toward the huts found in Cruel Summer. These huts have changed; the huts are bigger and grow together, making them one interconnected twisting winding empty town. No one appears to live there. The wooden town is in disrepair, varying from building to building. Even so, they are cool inside, a welcome break from the summer heat.
No matter how one entered, even through the swinging doors to the saloon, that exit disappears behind Star Children. There's no turning back. The only way out is to explore the way through the buildings. This fact continues to be true building to building as exits continue to vanish. The abandoned town isn't as empty as it first seems. As Star Children explore the branching paths through the wooden structures, they see ghosts of spirits going through the paces of their lives. They're familiar to these spaces and interact with missing objects that sometimes shimmer in spirit energy.
Spirit Children may interrupt these routines to try to talk with the ghosts. Some ghostly spirits are friendly. They may interact with Star Children as though they're someone else, someone the spirits used to know. Others, like the bartender, may treat them like a new customer. Other ghosts are determined to stick to their routines and, should Star Children continue to interrupt, will attack those who disturb them.
These spirits may kill Star Children when they attack. Normal weapons won't hurt them. There are revolvers, shotguns, iron pokers, hunting knives, and other plain weapons around to grab in self-defense. Salt bullets and iron will dispel ghosts. These weapons may be grabbed at any time. However, doing so attracts the creatures in Cruel Summer. A blood red worm spitting yellow acid may break through the floor to eat or spray Star Children. An enormous coyote may leap through the window. Whether attracted by the use of weapons or passing by, any dangerous creature found in Cruel Summer seems agitated when they come near these structures and will attack them and anyone inside. They will focus especially on anyone with a stolen selkie skin.
Should Star Children die, whether to ghosts or creatures, they will not immediately return to life.
A constant through these scenes are the spirits' spoons, visible somewhere in each scene. The ghost spoons are whole. Once free of the ghost town, Star Children may choose to travel to the Shattered Spoon Shrine in Never Fade to search for the broken fragments of any of these spoons. They are in such small pieces, however, that no Star Child may feed them enough Lore alone to bring the spirit back. Two or more Star Children may spend time in the Shrine creating and feeding Lore toward the spoons to heal them. It just may be enough to bring someone back.
- Whispers, echoes of screams, etc become common throughout Cruel Summer
- Huts become bigger, interconnected, growing together. Anyone lost, overheated, in need of something in Cruel Summer gets a friendly spirit redirecting them to these buildings
- Buildings will still be in some state of disrepair, but like a whole twisting winding town
- Insides are a cool respite
supernatural ghost spirit air conditioning - Only way out is through, no turning back, as the exits disappear behind you
- Many are friendly, but some are not. One can attempt to talk to them, but how interactive they are varies
- Occasionally other creatures from Cruel Summer may burst in and attack
- If a Star Child dies, rather than return to life immediately, they stay a ghost for about a week, part of the tour
Content Warnings: Fire, Coerced Confessions
Fire! Fire across the realm! For the second half of June, wildfire burns everywhere. While it doesn’t hurt Star Children, it can reduce everything else to ash: homes, businesses, gardens, spirits. The local spirits will be in a panic and beg Star Children for help from small ice mice in Wintermute to fennec foxes in Cruel Summer. How can Star Children help? Confessions. Anything the person they are with doesn’t know. The more earnest and meaningful the better.
When wildfire erupts and spreads, Star Children may stand in or in front of an area they want to protect and confess something to another Star Child who happens to be nearby. Their neighbor? Their partner? A stranger lost in a new land? These confessions simply need to be something the other person doesn’t know to protect structures and spirits. Memories related to the confession will show in the fire. The fire will fuel these memories until they run out of energy, dying down to embers. At least in that place at that time.
Should something start to burn before someone confesses, multiple confessions are necessary to catch the wildfire’s attention and distract it from the fuel source it is feeding on. Two or more Star Children will need to make confessions whose memories are shared in the flames. Water powers can also help quell the flames, but confessions are necessary in the end.
Once July hits, the wildfires are mostly gone, only sparking up here and there on occasion. In their stead are embers. They spark in the air like fireflies and fly around Folkmore, attracted to Star Children. These embers land on Star Children and make them glow. There’s no pain. In fact, the embers provide sparks of insight into memories, situations, and other emotional dilemmas that Star Children haven’t previously understood. Talking the issue over with another Star Children provides further emotional clarity.
Spirits are welcoming to both embers and Star Children. Confessionshelp Folkmore grow as well. Gardens bloom in beautiful displays. Crops grow healthy and joyful. It’s even possible to hear humming from some of the vegetables and fruits. The land grows with the Star Children. Anyone who lacks a green thumb can work their way around that with confessions! Save that dying plant and grow those tomatoes.
One time that a Star Child confesses, either to wildfire or to embers, they will find a jeweled box shaped like a flame. The peak of the flame comes off to reveal the insides. Within, there is an item from home. It may even be a weapon or magical item. Larger more meaningful confessions are more likely to receive weapons. These items may even be larger than should fit in the box or its entrance. Whether the box should only hold a single ring or fill the palm of one’s hand, these items fit. Star Children also can keep the jeweled box, and this one item from home can be stored within the box. Other items too large to fit the box will not enter it. Only the one from the box.
Fire! Fire across the realm! For the second half of June, wildfire burns everywhere. While it doesn’t hurt Star Children, it can reduce everything else to ash: homes, businesses, gardens, spirits. The local spirits will be in a panic and beg Star Children for help from small ice mice in Wintermute to fennec foxes in Cruel Summer. How can Star Children help? Confessions. Anything the person they are with doesn’t know. The more earnest and meaningful the better.
When wildfire erupts and spreads, Star Children may stand in or in front of an area they want to protect and confess something to another Star Child who happens to be nearby. Their neighbor? Their partner? A stranger lost in a new land? These confessions simply need to be something the other person doesn’t know to protect structures and spirits. Memories related to the confession will show in the fire. The fire will fuel these memories until they run out of energy, dying down to embers. At least in that place at that time.
Should something start to burn before someone confesses, multiple confessions are necessary to catch the wildfire’s attention and distract it from the fuel source it is feeding on. Two or more Star Children will need to make confessions whose memories are shared in the flames. Water powers can also help quell the flames, but confessions are necessary in the end.
Once July hits, the wildfires are mostly gone, only sparking up here and there on occasion. In their stead are embers. They spark in the air like fireflies and fly around Folkmore, attracted to Star Children. These embers land on Star Children and make them glow. There’s no pain. In fact, the embers provide sparks of insight into memories, situations, and other emotional dilemmas that Star Children haven’t previously understood. Talking the issue over with another Star Children provides further emotional clarity.
Spirits are welcoming to both embers and Star Children. Confessions
One time that a Star Child confesses, either to wildfire or to embers, they will find a jeweled box shaped like a flame. The peak of the flame comes off to reveal the insides. Within, there is an item from home. It may even be a weapon or magical item. Larger more meaningful confessions are more likely to receive weapons. These items may even be larger than should fit in the box or its entrance. Whether the box should only hold a single ring or fill the palm of one’s hand, these items fit. Star Children also can keep the jeweled box, and this one item from home can be stored within the box. Other items too large to fit the box will not enter it. Only the one from the box.
- Last two weeks of June, wildfire burns across Folkmore. After that, they are rare.
- Confessions can protect or rescue buildings, land areas, and spirits.
- Come July, embers spark across Folkmore like fireflies. They provide insight for Star Children. Talking helps.
- Confessions help the land grow.
- Confessions reveal a jeweled box containing an item from home.
no subject
Expect an apology. Maybe a fruit basket. But one with no pineapples, she'd had her fill of pineapples for the rest of her life given how Shane had carried on!
And she just grinned. She was proud of herself for coming up with such a great solution.
"I think me and my husband should have couples' therapy! I know it's a bad sign to think you need that after you've only been married for a week, but Shane won't listen to me. Maybe he'll listen to a third party? He's very rich and very used to getting his way about everything, but if we want things to work, he's got to be willing to work with me! Do you think that's a good idea?" All said at approximately the speed of light.
no subject
Oh, sheesh!!
Talk about getting more than you bargained for, huh. Usually Minako loves getting juicy love gossip like this piece right here, but something feels utterly wrong about getting it this way. The other's sheer excitement to talk about it, coupled with the speed she's using to talk about it, Minako is pretty sure this can't be entirely voluntary. Especially when this place just loves forcing them to give up their secrets to other people out of the blue. This seems to fit the bill perfectly.
Hence her dedication to handle this delicately.
.. as delicately as Minako can, anyway.
"If it's okay for me to ask.. Why do you think you two need therapy in the first place? It is just because you feel like he always has to get his way?" B-Because surely that's something she would have noticed while dating him. Right? M-Maybe?? Minako is so unsure here.
Which is so rare when it comes to matters of love. But usually they don't just smack her in the face like this!
(CW: secondhand embarrassment)
In the meantime, Rachel feels completely fine with spilling so much personal information with a total stranger. There isn't even a voice in her mind telling her that maybe, maybe she overshared a little. A lot, really. A lot to a young woman who looked like she was even younger than that awful Mossbacher girl.
"We had conversations, but we never really talked and we should have. He doesn't want me to work at all, but if I don't work I'll feel, I don't know. Kind of weird? But I want my own money. And I hate how judgmental he can be, like what difference does it make if someone made their money by writing mystery novels? I might try to write a mystery novel! My minor was creative writing, after all. But anyway, it's the whole rich WASP thing and I'm, well. Not. My family is from Eastern European Jews and that's important, too. Right?"
Oh dear G-d, what a mass of word salad. She'll be so humiliated later and probably try hiding under a rock.
no subject
She feels like she's getting lost in all this information here that doesn't feel nearly as important about the main cause. So Minako shakes her head, like she tries to shake off the surplus information and focus on what really matters here. Even if she doesn't know the other, this at least sounds like a cause Minako can rally behind, as a defender of all women everywhere.
"He doesn't want you to work?" If Rachel didn't want to work, then that'd be fine with Minako, but it obviously sounds like she does want to. If not just a little. "Why wouldn't he want you to work? That's so weird!"
There, finally she's managed to latch onto something that feels very workable to Minako. She even seems clearly interested despite not knowing Rachel, giving the other a stare that's half-curious and half-ready to get offended on her behalf.
no subject
But yes, Rachel definitely wants to work somehow. "Shane is wealthy. Rich. Obscene levels of rich, on a first name basis with the Kushners level of rich. His mom never worked and his grandma never worked, so he doesn't understand that I went to college so I could work. Meeting and marrying a billionaire wasn't on my 2021 bingo card."
"And Shane is just...really traditional. Like WASP traditional. He golfs, he drinks Johnnie Walker blue label, and he has a Maybach. As though driving all over Long Island and Manhattan are good ideas." Rachel pouted. She'd grown up on the Metro, the most danger she'd ever been in was being kicked in the face by a spontaneous dance crew.
no subject
"Should you guys really be together though if your values are so different?"
It feels a little mean to point out. And Minako really doesn't want to be mean here - not about a topic that's as important to her as a person as love itself is. But when she's listening to this story, it just feels like the obvious thought in her mind. Rachel and Shane-- It sounds like they clash. And Minako knows what she could never give up her own values just to settle for a man, no matter how ditzy and boy crazy she might seem at times.
Surely it has to be the same for Rachel, deep down.
"Wouldn't having to fit his values just make you feel awful..?"
no subject
"I don't know! I thought it was a 'When Harry Met Sally' opposites attract thing. And my previous boyfriend? Was a dick. So I have this really rich guy swoop into my life, making me feel like I'm living my own Cinderella story and it's like. I didn't have time to really think things through, everything was going so fast."
It is mean. It's also necessary. Though, Rachel had let go of a lot of her own values and tradition when she insisted on going to college, even if it was one of the many, many branches of CUNY. She worked hard, she studied hard, she lived paycheck to paycheck. The idea of being taken care of was thrilling and intoxicating.
Her parents hadn't gone to the extreme of sitting shivah for her, but her mother was the only one willing to still talk to Rachel. She also hadn't gotten an invite to the wedding.
"It would. It does. I mean, sure, it's great to be part of the 1%, even by proxy, but I don't know how okay he's going to be with my friends and my family and my aspirations if he's willing to throw such a huge tantrum about the honeymoon suite being booked already."
no subject
Then the teenager makes a bit of a face. It's the sort of face only a teenager could make, really. It's not full out mean, since Minako means well, but it's definitely very, very unsure of an expression as she voices:
"So you'd rather be rich than be happy?"
It's not like Minako doesn't get the appeal of living rich, but.. if it was under those circumstances, she knows she wouldn't even be considering it for a moment! Absolutely nothing is worse to her than a controlling man..! Surely Rachel must realise that too, right? Don't all women everywhere?
no subject
"No. No no no no no! Not at all! I'd much rather be happy, but everything went too quickly to really question things. And seriously, Shane? Was acting like an asshole to the resort manager. I've never seen him act that way before and it's an absolute horror show. . I've worked retail and service jobs, so I know how it feels to be on the other end of treatment like that. It's awful."
And it didn't help that Shane's mom crashed their honeymoon so she could take her turn to berate the manager. And try to sell Rachel on the idea of being a trophy wife as a good thing. All she knew about trophy wives was that they were always replaced with a newer model.
Actually, they were usually replaced by a model and the way the prenup was written, Rachel would get very little in a divorce.
no subject
Maybe it's slightly too casual a way to suggest divorce - though, to Minako's credit, she does sound a touch awkward as she's saying it because she knows the weight of her implication here - but it really does sound like it's what Rachel wants, right?
Unless she's under the influence of something here that's making her want a divorce she doesn't actually want.. but even then it shouldn't be a problem, Minako figures. Not like the other can annul the marriage on the spot, this far away from home!
"Love is just like everything else in life, you know? If it's too hard on you, or it just hurts.. Then you don't have to keep holding on to it forever." Minako looks a little more serious the more she's talking here.
She knows this reality too. Maybe not Rachel's specific reality, but-- she does know what it's like when love goes sour, for sure.
"That's no way for anyone to live."
(CW: antisemitism)
It's not at all too casual. If her mother-in-law can go on and on about the merits of being a trophy wife in public, she won't fault this young lady for implying that divorce should be an option. The hardest part is, she'd seen Shane at his best. Or at least the Shane she'd wanted to see. That Shane was romantic, gentlemanly, and always knew the place to be, whether that was an art gallery in SoHo or a pop-up tapas place in Williamsburg.
Under the influence, yes, but not saying anything she hasn't thought about. Quite the opposite, she's wanted to get a second opinion about what she should do from nearly the beginning of their stay at the White Lotus.
"It's hard. And it hurts. But I feel like--like he expects me to get rid of parts of me. I already have. My parents weren't invited to the wedding," she admitted, looking ashamed. Shane may be a friend of the Kushners, but having a culturally and practicing Jewish wife? The Pattons would never.
The worst part was, Rachel knew it wasn't. But pulling the trigger on a divorce and returning to her shitty studio apartment in Queens, begging for clickbait articles to write, was another matter.
(CW: antisemitism)
There's still a part of her heart that refuses to budge all the same though. Women always deserve better than crappy men!
"Why wouldn't your parents be allowed at your own wedding?"
Even that part doesn't make sense to her. Isn't that the least you can do for your spouse on such an important day? It'd be one thing if Rachel wasn't close to her parents, but it doesn't sound like it's that, given the rest of what she's saying.
(CW: antisemitism, stereotypes)
And she'd agree. But it seemed like she had crappy men radar. Turn her loose in any nightclub and she'd automatically gravitate to the crappiest man. It was like a sixth sense.
"Well, um...my parents are Orthodox Jewish and that's really important to them and I know that they didn't like Shane. The feeling was mutual. It's like Shane doesn't know how to process working class Jewish people. And he really wanted his wedding to be at Church in the City New York, that's where his parents were married. And he knew my parents would never go for that."
So the bride's side was mostly made up of college friends she only saw at parties with an open bar. She'd called her mom from the resort, then had it thrown in her face that her parents could never afford the White Lotus themselves. It sucked.
(CW: antisemitism, stereotypes)
And with that in mind..
.. well, the teenage girl just sucks in a deep breath before releasing it as a sigh.
"Okay, you know all of this sounds super messed up, right?" And that's coming from a girl who has flirted with several men who turned out to be literal monsters before! So that's saying something.
no subject
She sighed and shook her head. "I guess it's just a matter of time."