Test Drive Meme #2

[changelinged]

TDM #2 - March/April 2025

🦋 Introduction

Welcome to the Pixie Led Test Drive Meme!

The prompts will always be game canon, provided both characters who participate in a thread are either already in the game, or get accepted in the next application round.

You do not need an invitation to join the Test Drive Meme, it's open for anyone!

Please indicate character name and canon in the subject line of your top-level. For current characters, you may also indicate your character's court.

For prospective players, Invites open on the 18th, Reserves on the 20th, and Applications on the 22nd. Thanks for checking us out and we hope you'll join us!

🦋 The Party

You wake up at a party.

You're not sure how, exactly, you got here. You may have just been walking in the woods or at a meeting for work or doing any other normal activity for you. But you know you weren't supposed to be at this party, you're fairly certain.

Anyone you ask about it will say the party is for you. You and the others also waking up and looking confused. Further questions will lead to the partygoers insisting you have something to eat. You're starving and others are eating the food without repercussion, so you figure there's no harm in a bite. You finish your portion.

It's a garden party at the crack of dawn, with the sun still in its early stages of climbing through the yonder, casting a good mix of pastel hues of blue, pink, and beige on everything. Heralding the first day of spring, the Ruler of the Spring Court has found it fitting to arrange this gathering where guests can feel the blades of grass touching their ankles, as well as the rich soil beneath their feet. Flowers of all kinds surround the party as if they were carefully curated. With spring as the "dawn of seasons," which marks a transition from winter's latency to the resurgence of life everywhere, the Ruler of the Dawn Court has also seen it fit to host aspects of this party during the one time of the year that dawn occurs the whole day. Tall candles and torches grace the outskirts of the garden party, providing warmth and an orange glow everywhere. Not one flame goes out even with the occasional wind, the Duchess always makes sure of this.

There are also freshly picked blossoms and branches with leaves on every table accenting the festive spread of food and drinks. This time, a lot of the food prepared for the Adopted guests are familiar to them with a little bit of a twist. Burgers might come in small packages and in toothpicks, while hotdogs in buns are also diminutive. Cookies look delectable but they have a flowery flavor to them, as if eating freshly picked daisies or daffodils. Fruits that may have been present in an Adopted's home, such as pineapples and watermelons, have seeds in odd places. Picking this selection of food is an attempt to be more welcoming and to appease the lovely guests the fae have invited.

As the party winds down and everyone's eaten, a tall, stately woman stands up and speaks. You feel her voice more than hear it.

I am the Lawspeaker of the Fae, elected by Seelie and Unseelie alike, and you are all, now, subjects of Faerie. You cannot leave this realm once you have eaten our food, and even if you could, there is no saying how much time has passed back where you're from. Your loved ones are likely dead, your problems have likely played out. We require assistance in various matters, and each of you has been chosen for your talent and skill. You will be adopted by one of the Seelie or Unseelie Courts based on your strengths and personality. Your Court will decide what to do with you from there.

As suddenly as she stood, she sits back down.

🦋 Chance at a Dance

A party is not complete without dancing, of course, and while during the last gathering held for the Adopted, different fae danced to music exclusively for them around a glowing tree, this time they are insisting their guests to join in.

This is a party for you, after all.

If the prodding of the different fae hosts won't convince you, perhaps the music will. They play easily recognizable tunes that their wonderful guests must have heard before. These melodies have certain unique effects to their mortal attendees, which are as follows:

• Upbeat Music: You will believe that you and your dance partner have been friends forever and have known each other a long time.
• Romantic Music: You will become amorous and flirtatious towards your dance partner.
• Slow Music: You will develop some tension with your dance partner. It may be negative or sexual; completely up to you.
• Quiet Music: You will assume your dance partner is a threat and try to fight them.

🦋 Flower Power

At the Spring King's behest, every Adopted should wear a flower corsage or boutonnière to the gathering. After all, this is to celebrate the coming of spring and what better way to do that than to honor everything in bloom.

The thing is, though, the King of Spring, while amorous and friendly, also has a penchant for playing with mortals' memories, if not also affect their desires and despairs.

So, mischievous as he is, he made sure to enchant the different flowers present in every corsage and boutonnière for the party with the effects below:

• Rose: You will recall a horrific trauma
• Carnation: You will see a vision of your future, whether it's good or bad
• Orchid: You will remember a time you lost someone
• Chrysanthemum: You will believe someone among the Adopted is your soulmate
• Dahlia: You will believe you betrayed someone important to you, whether you actually did or not

It is perhaps a good thing that no one but the Adopted are allowed to see these visions and memories, but everyone who wears a corsage or boutonnière will be able to see each other's memories and visions when in close enough physical proximity to the vision-haver, for better or for worse.

🦋 GEIS

You feel a vibration in your pocket sometime after the Lawspeaker addresses everyone. When you search for the source, you will pull out your Leaf, the device the Fae use to stay in touch with each other. Anyone who's used a smart phone will easily recognize how it works.

Greetings, Adopted. This is your Lawspeaker.

Tell us all of a time you gave someone a gift. Perhaps a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates. Was it appreciated or not? A reward might await the most meaningful gift given.

🦋 Link to Overflow Post



ｎａｖｉｇａｔｉｏｎ

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Comments

[microbrobotics]

..........

[ Tugging on this guy's ears at all would be very very rude. Probably. So of course Hiro's gonna do it.

He is very gentle, at least, and applies the minimum amount of force required to confirm that yes, those ears are attached. And presumably warm to the touch, for that matter? ]

Oh my god.

[steepwithdead]

[Warm, feeling like the sort of fleshy-pliant that synthetics would have trouble replicating... and it wiggles a bit against the tug. (It's also fuzzy. He is covered in short, soft grey fur, a look and skintone that would be awfully hard to fake.)

Caduceus chuckles. Oh, to be a child.]

Well? Am I real now?

[microbrobotics]

Holy -

[ Now he's REALLY looking at Cad, noting the other spots where there's very real fur? No obvious spot where a mask would be? facial structure?? ]

What's a firbolg? Are you an alien?

[steepwithdead]

Funny, you're not the first person to ask me that.

[He'd like to meet an alien someday, just to see if there's any resemblance.]

I'm not an alien. A firbolg is a kind of giant, where I'm from.

[Might explain why he's like seven feet tall.]

[microbrobotics]

[ Yeah uh. Hiro is like five foot nothin' and has not yet hit his growth spurts properly yet. Mostly because the TV series did not bother to update his appearance despite clearly covering more than a year of material, in this essay I will ]

A giant? Like - giant giant?

[ He gestures somewhere way above his own head. ]

[steepwithdead]

[Takes notes about the shortstack-]

Giant-giant, yes. [He doesn't know what other kind there would be?] I'm a bit short for one.

[microbrobotics]

What's normal look like then?

[steepwithdead]

Hmm... well, depending on the kind of giant, they tend to run about 15-25 feet tall.

[microbrobotics]

[ Hang on, picturing that. ]

Whoa. How does that work? Do they have breathing problems? Like, surface area has to start being a problem at that scale, plus the fluid dynamics of a cardiovascular system if you've still only got one heart -

[steepwithdead]

Hmm. Perhaps we're just built differently.

[Skill issue. Big hearts for big bodies!]

[microbrobotics]

Dude, you can't outbuild physics. Mostly. Sometimes.

[ IT'S NOT IMPORTANT. ]

Are you like - from here then? Or did you get yanked in too?

[steepwithdead]

[Wait till he sees what ~magic~ can really do-]

I was pulled in like you were, unfortunately. Though from a different world, I assume.

[microbrobotics]

One with magic and giants and stuff like that?

[steepwithdead]

Yes! Exactly.

["And stuff like that" is a good summary tbh. It's a lot.]

[microbrobotics]

So ... what do you do in a world like that? Are there jobs? Schools?

[steepwithdead]

Oh, plenty of both. People still need to live, and to learn. My "job" these days is adventurer, I suppose.

[microbrobotics]

What, like "wander around and save the world" adventuerer?

[steepwithdead]

We hadn't quite saved the world yet, though you could say we were working on that right before I arrived here.

[Against all odds, somehow they have become A Big Deal.]

[microbrobotics]

Wait seriously? For real? ... What are you fighting?

[steepwithdead]

It's sort of been a long series of terrible-somethings, but most recently it's another group of adventurers who want to summon a terrible entity from another world that would devour ours.

[microbrobotics]

...

Okay, but why?

[steepwithdead]

They were promised great knowledge, I think. They don't really care about what happens to the rest of the world.

[microbrobotics]

[ If Hiro could have found out a way to resurrect Tadashi that way, he'd probably have done it. And then Tadashi would have hated him for doing an apocalypse about it? Hm. ]

Were they at least trying to save someone important to them?

[steepwithdead]

[He chuckles faintly at that, not a happy laugh by far.]

Only to save themselves from pain, maybe. At the expense of everyone else. They thought they could reshape the world however they wanted, but the power they were seeking wasn't something they'd be able to control.

[microbrobotics]

[ Ah. At that, the kid's face hardens. The expression really doesn't suit his youth at all. ]

... Okay yeah, classic supervillain garbage then. I've dealt with a couple of those.