[meme] Test Drive

[citycouncil]

July Test Drive has arrived! (A tiny bit late, shhh.)

Tag into this post with characters you're thinking of apping to the game (characters who are not currently in-game or currently reserved by someone else). It can be just a tag, a brief EP, whatever you want. You can be new to the game, or simply want to test out a fresh pup. Tag each other with these characters or those already in game, and have fun.

Comments

[auctionofinnocence]

[ He's no worse than her ex-mother-in-law, at least, and just as British. ] Why, because I haven't died, of course.

... Am I to understand you have?

[atechnicality]

When someone gives their name and then a year, I've found that does tend to be the assumption.

[auctionofinnocence]

[ Hard to argue that, actually! She laughs a Polite Society laugh. ] Honestly, that's fair enough! But in Darrow, like dying, date of departure can mean all the difference in a first meeting. There are people from all sorts of different times. Why, a dear friend of mine is from a far flung future I would never live to see even if I hadn't found myself here.

Now, since you've brought it up, are you from 1912, or did you die in 1912? If it isn't rude to ask, that is. I'm afraid my dabbling in the supernatural begins with eerie statues and ends with vampires trying to kill me, both of which happened here, mind you, so my metric is a little askew, but it does seem vital to the conversation at hand.

[atechnicality]

[she may be American, but that Polite Society Laugh is eerily familiar to the sort of thing he used to hear from family friends and hearing it again is... odd. a disconnected piece of his past that is, according to her, actually from a future he never got the chance to experience and now here he is coming across it once more in wherever and whenever Darrow is]

I died in 1916. I was last in 2024. Does that answer your question properly?

[auctionofinnocence]

I should say it does. Now, it's my understanding that Darrow exists in what is the accepted contemporary, so you'll have little adjustment, I expect. The tricky thing is that you'll meet people from the mid-1900s, the early aughts, and then, for a fun twist, different places altogether that could be Earth but might not be.

[atechnicality]

To be frank, what you are describing sounds a good deal like the supernatural community so I do not believe I would truly have too difficult a time of it.

[and does he sound smug about that? you better believe it]

[auctionofinnocence]

Well, bully for you, Darling [ and she doesn't even sound sarcastic when she says it ] I'm glad to know you're prepared, even if it is because you're... Well I suppose you must be a ghost, mustn't you? Unless you have a more preferable term.

[atechnicality]

Ghost is perfectly acceptable. I have never even considered what alternatives might be.

[auctionofinnocence]

Spirit, specter, wraith, phantom, apparition?

Sorry, I had a lot of time to think about what word to use when my statue started moving around on its own.

[atechnicality]

Oh, those sorts of words. I was afraid you might mean 'post-living person' or something similarly modern and ghastly.

In my line of work those terms tend to mean very specific kinds of phenomena. Ghost is a simple name, but much more useful, I've found.

[auctionofinnocence]

Oh, you mean living-impaired, or the like. Goodness, no, that just sounds condescending.

'Your line of work'? Capitalism persists in the afterlife?

[atechnicality]

I am a detective. So it is more a calling than a strictly monetary venture.

[auctionofinnocence]

A detective? And so young. You can't be older than, what, eighteen? Nineteen?

[atechnicality]

Nearly seventeen. [and there's that brittle bristly-ness again. plus a sense of something distinctly immature despite all his posturing. no adult would be so hung up on nearly seventeen versus sixteen]

[auctionofinnocence]

Nearly a year younger than my last husband, then. [ And yes, she is in her 30s. Her expression goes quickly from flirty to somber, though. ] So young, and already a ghost.

[atechnicality]

I daresay there are a great many ghosts my age or near to it. There was a war on, you know. [it's something he doesn't think about often, the fact that if he didn't die as he did he might well have died in the trenches two years later. but the knowledge is still there]

[auctionofinnocence]

Yes, there was. A good many people lost their lives to it. I daresay a good many more did in the subsequent wars, too. We're awfully predictable, aren't we.

[atechnicality]

Yes. The living are.

[auctionofinnocence]

Well! This conversation has taken quite the turn for the dour, if I do say so myself. [ A notably Polite Society bracing smile as she gestures toward the street ahead of them. Her curiosity is genuine, though, when she asks, ] Has anybody shown you around the place yet? It's all well and fine to wander around aimlessly, but I find a guided tour to be preferable, myself. I'd be happy to show you around, Mr. Payne, unless you're waiting for someone?