thetube | Test Drive Meme: Feb/March 2016

"Pulp - Common People" (Watch on YouTube)

Welcome to the Underground test drive meme! This is where you can try out the AU version of your character, start some potential CR and get a feel for the world of the game. Choose your character's species, read up on the available factions and you're ready to go. Put your character's name in your subject line when you post, tag out, and have fun!

Note to current players: Activity in this meme counts as game canon! So you can use it for activity check. If you end up playing anything that you can't or don't want to use as game canon, it's fine to ignore it. (In that case you shouldn't submit it for activity check.)

Here are some prompts to inspire you:

1) COMMON PEOPLE. What do normal Londoners do every day anyway? Sometimes you just want to blend in with everyone else. Make friends with humans. Talk about the weather. Go on, try it.

2) PENTHOUSE SUITE. But wait. Maybe you want to see how the other half live. The elite of the elite. You've been lucky enough to be asked to a meeting, or a luncheon, or a date. Find out what the most powerful people in London are really like.

3) GET OUT YOU FILTH. Supernatural prejudice is a regrettable fact of life in London. It doesn't matter what you are, there's someone out there who hates you because of it. They'll shun you, heckle you, even hunt you down and kill you. Of course, you're probably not immune to a few prejudices yourself.

4) SPEED DATING. Oh god. Why did you sign up to this. You should have known it was a bad idea when someone mentioned it was supernatural speed dating. Help.

5) THE REAL UNDERGROUND. Down in the darkest corners of the Tube, there are supernatural vagrants of all kinds, especially vampires. That friendly busker may well be a fae. That girl waiting for the next train is a ghost. Once you've seen it, you can't escape from it.

6) IN THE SUPERMARKET. On the other hand, you never know what you might find just walking around your local supermarket. You haven't forgotten how to do normal things like groceries, right?

7) A CURSED EXISTENCE. Maybe you literally are cursed. Maybe you just feel like it sometimes. There are things you can't do, weaknesses that normal humans aren't subject to, but they make everyday life in London that little bit more difficult. Try not to get too mad about it.

8) CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE. Anything goes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well then.

Laura smiles carefully. "That's a good choice." It squicked her out to see vampires casually drinking blood, truthfully. Though she'd never dare say that out-loud. Really even think it.

"So do you come to these sorts of things often? You seem..." what was the opposite of nervous? "Confident, in this environment."

Natasha's eyes flick back and she smiles slightly in return, mirroring the other woman's expression less cautiously but no less carefully. It's a touchy subject for both of them.

"First time." She shrugs off the observation. "New in town, and I thought I'd try it out. I could use some friends."

Friends seems safe. More informal than allies. Less impersonal than connections. It's not exactly a lie, either. She really could use some friends. Vampires don't generally live on their own. Not entirely without a support system. That's a good way to end up dead in their world.

And it was already apparent that Laura wasn't exactly interested in being more than friends. So...

"What about you? I could be wrong, but this doesn't strike me as quite your scene."

"Well, welcome to London, Natasha." She'll take friends at face value, willing blindness to the layers the word contained.

Laura, for her part, didn't trust vampires as a species. Individuals... She'd never had the opportunity to see if she could work alongside one. And she wasn't sure she wanted to find out.

"I thought I'd put myself out there more." She was old and still single, it was sad. And she didn't want to die alone, a thought that was with her increasingly, in the wake of her cancer diagnosis. But that wasn't first date material. "Meet some new people- people I don't work with every day."

"Meeting new people. Well, it does seem good for that." Natasha sat back a little as she considered. It would be easy to let the conversation die there, wait for her eight minutes to run out. But she wasn't quite willing to do that yet.

"Are you looking for anything in particular, or just new?"

Just new? She raises an eyebrow behind her glasses.

"Ideally, a man," she admits with the smallest of shrugs. "But so far I've thoroughly embarrassed myself, and run into a fellow I work with."

That gets a laugh out of Natasha. "I got that impression. It's fair. I promise I don't have any designs." She smiles, a sort of obligatory half smile. "Honestly, I'm not looking to be what anyone is looking for. You're safe."

Laura spreads her hands, palms outward, facing Natasha. No offense was taken and none was meant to be given. "Well, that takes the pressure off," she jokes, with the same half-smile.

"Oh?" Now she's curious. "Isn't that the opposite of what these sorts of things are supposed to be about?"

"Depends how you're thinking about it. Like I said, I wouldn't mind making friends. Different kinds of friends." She laughs a little then, just before saying the most honest thing she's said all night. "My life is in no place right now for something serious."

"I see." She presses her lips together slightly. "It's always hard to launch right into dating, in a new place. Friends are a perfect step." Goodness, she sounded like she was talking to a child.

"But I completely understand."

Oh, Natasha doubted she did, but she wasn't about to try to change the other woman's mind. It was easy to accept, sounded normal even. The truth wasn't exactly material for a first date.

The reaction she has is kind of gratifying, anyway. It says a lot about Laura's personality.

"That's nice to hear at least. Anyone ever tell you you have a nurturing side?"

Laura smiles at that. "you'd be surprised- probably why I'm a teacher." she won't mention that she works at the Redbright Institute.

though for all her nurturing it was hard to believe she was perpetually single. "doesn't help in the dating world though, much."

"Maybe not exactly surprised. You're not the first teacher I've met tonight." And the first run in wasn't exactly what you'd call successful. "Your co-worker? Or maybe it's just a coincidence."

Not that it matters. Turned out, he wasn't much a fan.

"You met Ian, then?" If there was another coworker of hers around, well that was brand new information.

"He's new this term."

"That was him. Didn't like me much." Not that she blames him, or has illusions that Laura is going to take her side. She says it as a statement of fact, unpleasant but impersonal. Like rain at a picnic. "He didn't seem bad though. Maybe a little lost."

She breezes over it with a wave of her hand. Not her place to comment on Ian's beliefs- she didn't even know them, for sure.

"Lost seems to describe him pretty well. Apt of you." She doesn't mind Ian. Laura just really met him at this thing and can't say more than that.

"I'd say the same could be said of a lot of the people here. Selection bias, probably." She says that as a joke, light and self-deprecating. "But the drinks aren't bad. there's that."

"Of course." She doesn't smile. She's biased herself, and she knows it.

"Decent drinks, all that's missing is some appetizers and it'd could be one hell of a party." Instead, they were sitting at tables having awkward ten minute conversations. "It's the tables that makes it so..." What was the word she was looking for? "Stilted."

"Harder to circulate. But the organization is part of the point." Efficiency wasn't always romantic though. Looking for chemistry here... Natasha didn't disagree with Laura about the atmosphere.

"Appetizers might be a bad idea, though," she says, then adds to soften the implication: "Nothing kills the mood faster than watching someone get caviar stuck in their teeth."

Laura ducks her head and laughs. "Or a piece of spinach from those mini-quiches." She happened to adore mini-quiches. And full-sized quiches. She was quite the cook, as it were.

"So perhaps there is some method to all of this madness."

"I don't want to give the organizers too much credit. Even broken clocks?" Her tone is light, amused. She does note that Laura seems to like the topic of food a bit. It's not Natasha's strongest topic, but it's better than nothing.

"Still, saving quiche for the third date might be a good idea. Or is that old fashioned?"

Test Drive Meme: Feb/March 2016

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