Test Drive Meme | March 2014

[ironwood]

TEST DRIVE MEME - TU SHANSHU EDITION!

Itching to try out writing a character? Then rev up your engines, grab your accounts, and slam your way into this meme! Here is a venue for you to try out whatever character there might be tickling your fancy, from fandom to OC, for as few as one and as many as MANY. Seriously, there's no limit.

How do you partake in this fantastic congregation of character testing? Why, by following these simple steps:

1. Comment with the journal of a character you want to test; put their name and canon in the subject line for added sparkles.
2. Tag around with everyone!
3. Profit like you live on a the back of a turtle!
4. Maybe even reserve so you CAN live on the back of a turtle!

But wait, there's more! For the low, low price of $9,999.99, you can even use one of our handy prompts when you tag someone. You could even pick one with a Random Number Generator to help decide which prompt to go with!

1. A Chance Meeting at the Turtle's Head.
   Remember, being here causes a great sense of-- well, shall we say inner peace.
2. Haggling Over Something in the Marketplace!
   Maybe someone else saw the exact same shiny thing you did at the exact same moment! However shall this be resolved? Remember: blood is extremely hard to scrub off of turtleshell!
3. Have Met Before? Because I Could've Sworn I've Seen You In My Dreams.
   Have you wandered into the realm of Dreaming via an archway in Keeliai? Here, everything is shaped to your character's individual mind. Dreams can be shared between characters and will result in a meshing of minds. These dreams can be positive or negative, depending on your character.
4. Dramatic Chase Sequence!
   You're running away from something! It could be anything, from a rampaging kirin to a gaggle of overly enthusiastic children, or even one of the newest editions to Keeliai's menagerie, an incredibly affectionate turtle the size of a minivan! One way or another, you can't stop, and much like a katamari ball, you feel obligated to grab everyone in your path along the way to keep them out of danger! Or perhaps you're more the sort to try and knock them into it as a distraction...?
5. Spring Fling!
   Apparently the kedan take the "starting anew" aspect of spring very seriously and have started showing their appreciation for flowers and lovely weather by kissing everyone they across! Neither age nor gender seem to play a factor (though the children will instead get kisses atop their heads, because they're not that weird) but you might find yourself liplocked with a random stranger just for walking down the street.
6. WILDCARD!
   Go nuts. Suddenly your character is fighting dragons! Good God, they've found the Millennium Falcon drifting in the ocean! Do you really feel the need to polish every paving stone in the Earth Sector? Please note, Wildcard options are also what you can choose to do if you aren't yet comfortable in the Tu Shanshu setting and would prefer a more 'dear-mun' esque experience. Please specify in your post!

Comments

Joel ☢ TLOU

[shittybirthday]

#6!!

[mightythinice]

[It had been a long day. Kind of a lousy one, too, Ellie realized as she pawed the coins in her hand. Fuck, she thought she had more money than this? Who the fuck thought money was a good idea? Seemed to her that a functioning economy was highly overrated, and she should be able to get food by virtue of being a damn kid.

Oh well. Last bit of juulan was going towards some ice cream, and no one was going to stop her. Ice cream in hand, she was headed back home to the wood sector. Except she could have sworn she saw some familiar flannel. She stopped]

Joel?

[and then she walked a little faster, before running]

JOEL!

please excuse any dumbness on my part about the premise ahaha

[shittybirthday]

Well, shit, if there ain't anything more unpleasant than waking up in a vat of water with some man glaring down at him, bright lights in his eyes and his head swimming with weakness and grogginess. He'd been kidnapped, had been this first thought. He'd been fucking kidnapped. By Hunters, he could only assume, though the assholes that dragged him out of the water were nothing like Hunters.

And so, as his strength began to slowly return to him, as the heavy fog began lifting from his mind, he began fighting. He weren't gonna listen to any bullshit about some great evil or some asshole called Malicant. He needed to find Ellie, damn it.

Where the hell is the girl? he'd demanded while trying to wrestle his way out of their grip and away from their fucking fussing. She'd been taken by the Fireflies, is fucking trapped in that fucking hospital where they're going to-- Shit, he didn't want to think about it, and so shouted as he threw a clumsy punch, body still weak from whatever the hell they'd drugged him with, WHERE THE HELL IS ELLIE?

And now, here he is. Wandering around outside, lost, stomach in angry, churning knots, wondering how the fuck he's going to find Ellie, because he sure as hell don't recognise this place. As he's about to break out into a jog, determined to find someone with some damn answers, he hears his name.

He reels around. He recognises that voice. And his eyes land on Ellie running for him, and suddenly nothing matters in that instant, nothing, just Ellie and seeing that damn kid alive and--

"Shit, Ellie," he says under his breath. He launches into a run towards, dodging around one person, shoving past another like he can't reach her fast enough.

Don't eeeeven worry about it!

[mightythinice]

It was him. That ice cream cone, the last of her money, was forgotten about almost immediately, ditched in favor of running forward and practically tackling him into a hug. He was there. And just like that, she felt a lot less stressed out. Even if she didn't know what to do, Joel would figure something out.

God, she almost didn't know what to say. Part of her wanted to hit him for making her worry, but the other part didn't dare because at least he was there, and they were both alive. As alive as either of them possibly could be in a place like Keeliai.

"You fucking worried me," she finally says, the outrage in her voice almost comical. "You know how long I've been here? I didn't know what happened."

She was glad to see him, they were both safe there, and she had trails of ice cream transferring from her sleeve to his flannel, but it didn't even matter.

<333!!

[shittybirthday]

As Ellie slams into him with a fierce hug, Joel does the same, one arm grabbing her around the shoulders in a tight embrace and his other hand clutching her head protectively against his chest. Thank god, thank fucking god, he's thinking as he holds her tight with his chin against the top of her head. She's alive. She's safe. Jesus, this god damn kid.

Letting her go, he grips her arms and unwinds them from around him. Keeping firm grip of her arms, he takes to studying her face, looking her over, wanting to reassure himself that she's okay.

"You an' me both. Been lookin' all over for you." Understatement of the fucking century. "You alright? Those assholes hurt you?"

:D <3

[mightythinice]

"Hurt me-- no, no, Evandau, the guy you probably met-- he's cool. I mean, he acts like an asshole, but he's cool," she shakes her head to emphasize the point. Joel didn't need to know about Kithika, or the battle with the giant dragon. Those were entirely different points.

Points of complete recklessness.

"Shit, Joel, you were here, and then you left, I didn't know what the fuck to think. I thought you went back home and..." Exhale, Ellie, breathe.

I didn't want us to get separated again. But she had to keep her cool, it would be a crying shame to go through everything they'd been though, and then to lose it in the safest place they'd been, so far.

[shittybirthday]

"I don't mean that asshole, I mean the fuckin' Fireflies!"

Although, Ellie mentioning that the other asshole - Evan-whatever the hell - hasn't done anything to hurt her is an instant relief. He knows Ellie wouldn't lie about such a thing, wouldn't pretend anyone was being nice to her. She may be just a kid but she's a fucking switched on kid.

What she goes on to say next, however, has him frowning in confusion at her. "The hell're you talkin' about? I only just got here." He lets go of her arms, stands tall. "Woke up in a tub of water, feelin' like I'd been drugged."

[mightythinice]

"Wait... wait," she stares up at him, trying to figure out where their wires had gotten switched. Somehow, they were both talking about something completely different, because they hadn't met any fireflies, the last she remembered.

But she wasn't too disappointed that he didn't remember the last time he was here, except-- Sarah. That... that was going to be hard on her, probably. "Okay... so you don't remember last time," she finally says after a moment of silence while she worked through her thoughts.

Still harder that it might have been once.

"That's... that's okay. No big deal. But-- what are you talking about? We didn't see a damn Firefly. We got to the tunnel and then--" she pauses here trying to figure out how to phrase it. "I fucking drowned, didn't I?"

[shittybirthday]

Jesus, her mention of that tunnel, of her drowning.

The memory hits him in an ugly, blurred flash. Trapped in the bus underwater, struggling to get to the surface, finding Ellie fucking floating lifeless. Frantically dragging her out of the water, tasting stagnant water and dirt, with mildew and rot from the tunnel filling his senses, as he began CPR. Heart in his throat, stomach twisted in panicked knots.

He takes a step back, clamping down on the memory while trying to process the absurdity of this whole situation. It's like Ellie don't even remember. He steels himself, clenches his jaw.

"The Fireflies took you. Knocked me unconscious first. They took you while I was tryin' to--"

A hand comes up, pushes through his hair, down to the back of his neck, which he rubs with a tense squeeze. "Shit," he mutters under his breath.

[mightythinice]

"What?" Ellie asks in an exhale of breath. "You mean-- wait, you mean we made it? Joel, it wasn't all for nothing?" She was hoping, praying. Maybe there was a chance, then, that she'd been dreaming this whole time, not dead like she'd thought.

There was a spark of hope, where there had been none before. She shook her head slowly. Joel had given her the best news that she'd heard so far, and she didn't know what to do. "That's great, though, isn't it? I mean, they're the Fireflies! Marlene wouldn't let them hurt me-- or you. Maybe it was just an accident, a misunderstanding or something."

There was a cure. Or they'd be making it. "There's no way-- maybe, maybe we're just both unconscious right now. That's all."

[shittybirthday]

"Jesus," he quietly exclaims, his hand now lifting to his face. He rubs it.

"No," he replies to her saying how great it is the Fireflies found them, that maybe it was a misunderstanding, an accident. He holds his hand up at her, indicating for her to stop right the fuck there, and he says in a louder, almost angry voice, "No."

And for a moment, he stares down at her hard, anguish hidden beneath his weather-worn face. But then, the looks down with a weary shake of his head. "Look, it ain't like that, kiddo. Alright? It weren't no accident, no misunderstanding."

[mightythinice]

"But we made it!" She isn't sure what to do with her hands, torn somewhere between wanting to shake him, and wanting to pinch herself. Instead, she clenches her fists, and stares up at him. Would the Fireflies have made a mistake? Was that whole glimmer of hope she had pointless?

"This whole god damned time, for almost six months, I thought we failed... That we didn't make it." She knew explaining was pointless, get over it Ellie. But she wasn't sure what she was expecting, and Joel was the only one who would have understood. "I thought I was dead... You mean that we both might be."

She frowns down at the ground. "We were so fucking close." Her voice cracked for a moment.

She loved it on the turtle.

But the turtle had already taken Joel from her once, made her relive David, and brought back Tess and Sarah. All the friends in the world wouldn't make up for that. The lack of the infection here just made the fact that it still existed back home hurt worse.

She still needed to tell Joel about Sarah.

"Joel... There's something else I gotta tell you."

[shittybirthday]

"Hey, listen, listen," he says over the top of her saying she thought she was dead, over the top of her voice cracking, and he moves back in quickly to take her head in his hands, to make her look at him.

Fuck, he doesn't know what to tell her. One minute, he'd been frantically scurrying through the hospital in Salt Lake City, trying to find her, knowing she was laid up on some operating table somewhere, and the next--

Well, they're both here now. Alive. And it don't make any fucking sense but it's a damn sight better than maybe finding her dead on an operating table with her skull fucking drilled open.

He can't bring himself tell her. God, he's just found her, he doesn't know where the hell he is, and he can't bring himself to tell her. About Marlene. About the Fireflies.

He lets her go. Stands tall again, arms dropping by his sides with a sigh. "What?" he asks tiredly.

2!

[nowthatsfunny]

Tess has been experimenting a lot, lately. In between work, and making contacts, and occasionally running errands for the emperor, Tess spends a lot of her time at the various market stalls and shops around the city - looking, mostly, but when she finds something she likes, there's almost no one better at haggling.

No one knows the value of things better than Tess. She makes it her business to know.

The blue streak in her hair probably stands out as the most notable difference, aside from the clean clothes and the extra weight she's put on since being here. But the attitude is exactly the same.

"Don't give me that shit, you're overselling by at least 2 juulan," she says, hands on her hips. "Look, we'll compromise - I'll give you four, alright? It's my final offer."

As she walks away, she pockets the bottle of scented hair oil with a satisfied look on her face. Tess loves driving a hard bargain. "Asshole."

[shittybirthday]

This is the first time in twenty years that Joel has seen urban civilisation. Civilisation, that is, that isn't overrun by martial law, isn't secured into quarantine zones, isn't surrounded by militia, by the constant threat of Hunters, by decayed ruin and despair. By Infected.

He doesn't trust any of it. As he's walking through the crowded market place, stepping out of people's way here, squeezing through clusters of crowds there, he keeps glancing over his shoulder in paranoia. A few times, he's stopped by a haggler, which he's quick to shove out of his way, hand itching to whip his gun out at the slightest sense of alarm.

It's almost all too much. Too overwhelming. Too much noise, too many smells, too much stimulation. He's grown so used to the dead silence of a world torn apart by chaos and sickness and terror that a thriving civilisation like the one he's wandering lost through is completely foreign to him now.

As he's pushing past another small bottleneck of people, he catches a snippet of conversation in amongst the throng of noise. A familiar voice; female, tough, no bullshit. He glances in direction it's coming from - and finds himself looking at a woman he recognises only all too well stepping away from a stall into the crowd.

It can't be. It fucking can't be.

Realising he's come to a stock still, he starts forward again, this time shoving past people, muscling his way through the crowd, a look of incredulous apprehension on his weather-beaten face as he keeps his gaze fixed on the back of the woman's head over the top of the crowd.

As he catches up with her, he reaches out to grab her arm.

[nowthatsfunny]

Tess has gotten used to it - well, at least outwardly. Used to the crowds, used to being alive when she should be dead. Used to being here without Joel, for the first time in years.

So it's hardly surprising, when she feels a hand close around her arm, that she whips around, ready to yank whoever just grabbed her off their feet, her long-cultivated instincts coming to the fore.

"Hey, buddy, watch who you're -"

Her anger dies with the words on her lips, and her eyes go wide in surprise at the sudden sight of him here, like some kind of goddamn miracle. As if her being here isn't already one.

"Joel," she breathes out, and then punches him in the arm. "It took you goddamn long enough!"

[shittybirthday]

For just a moment, everything around him fades into the background as the woman reels around on him. "Shit," comes Joel's quiet and stunned exclamation. "Tess."

He lets go of her arm and takes a half-step backwards, looking her up and down like he might be looking at a ghost. He notices the blue streak in her hair and he notices how she no longer looks like a woman surviving only on rations.

And then, she's punching his arm, and not even that shakes him out of his numb stupor, not straight away, although it does make him take another half-step backwards. She looks so different, different to how he last remembers seeing her.

"How the hell are you--?"

Alive, he almost finishes, but shit, he don't like thinking about that, sure as hell don't like thinking about the sounds of gunfire that had gone off in the Capitol building--

[nowthatsfunny]

"Alive?" She finishes it for him, not willing to beat around the bush, not when he's here, fucking finally.

"Hell if I know, Texas, we're all just the playing pieces here. Christ, Ellie's gonna be beside herself. Do you have any idea how long we've been sittin' around here waiting for your sorry ass to show up?"

Her voice is a mix of lighthearted dismissal, tinged with a hint of underlying anger, and maybe something else, too. Maybe some deep-buried worry that this is a dream, and he'll disappear again, and if she takes it too seriously, it'll be over and she'll never see him again.

If she treats it flippantly enough, maybe she can will the nightmares away.

[shittybirthday]

Alive. Yeah. It's one thing to think that word; it's a whole other thing to hear it. From Tess' mouth, no less. And, shit, something twisting and despairingly ugly starts to rise inside him, which he's quick to clamp down on and push back down to cold nothingness.

Treat it like it's nothing. Like it never happened. Just like the way he told Ellie to never speak of Tess again after they left the Capitol building. It's only way to keep going, keep fighting, surviving, without letting the past drown him.

The mention of Ellie catches his attention. The expression on his face changes; he takes a step closer to Tess, a hand coming up as if to pause her for a second, as if he hasn't quite properly heard what she's said and he urgently needs her to repeat it slowly.

"Wait - you sayin' that Ellie's here?"

[nowthatsfunny]

"We've been here for months, Joel. She's been here even longer than me. Time works funny here." Tess shrugs, grimacing at the inadequacy of her explanation. She knows how little sense it makes, she knows that chance are Joel just saw Ellie hours or even minutes ago, as far as he's concerned.

But the fact remains, and Tess is far from the sort of woman to beat around the bush with things like that.

And she hasn't even mentioned Sarah yet. She won't - not until she can get him alone, sitting down, prepare him somehow.

"I know it doesn't make any fucking sense," she points out uselessly.

[shittybirthday]

For a second or two, Joel just watches Tess with complete skepticism. Someone pushing past him brings him back to the present: standing in a marketplace, surrounded by people, talking to fucking Tess, as though all that messed up bullshit back at the Capitol building hadn't happened, as though she hadn't been bit.

Eyes cutting away, he throws a glance around him. He's still on edge. Still ready to whip his gun out if anyone makes any sudden moves. When he turns back to Tess, he's shaking his head.

"That don't make any fuckin' sense," he agrees challengingly. "Where the hell is she?"

[nowthatsfunny]

Tess sighs, and jerks her head vaguely in the direction of a quieter street - basically the edge of the market and the beginning of residential areas.

"C'mon, she's not far from here. Wood Sector. She lives in a treehouse, you can imagine how much fun she has with that."

She tries for a smile, but it doesn't quite work out as she leads him away from the worst of the crowds. "There's a lot to tell you. We're gonna need some privacy."

[shittybirthday]

A treehouse? Well, Joel can just imagine how stoked she'd be by that, though that hardly seems at all important to him right now. He just wants to see her. Make sure she's alright, ask questions later. And he's got a million of those.

"No shit," comes his tired reply. No shit there's a lot to tell him, and as he falls into step behind her, he finds himself gazing at the back of her, dumbfounded by the fact that she's alive.

This has gotta be some kind of messed up dream, right? Maybe he's concussed from those fucking Fireflies knocking him unconscious. Whatever the hell's happened, he sure ain't in Kansas anymore.

"Well, how about you start by tellin' me where the hell we are."

[nowthatsfunny]

"You should've already got the low-down from the kedan," Tess says quietly. "Realm between life, death and dreaming? Not that that means a goddamn thing. But we're on the back of - I shit you not - a giant turtle. And I'm not the only dead woman walking, here, either. Not everyone is, but some of us are."

[shittybirthday]

He steps out of someone's way, pushes past another, and catches up with Tess, now walking beside her. What she tells him, about this 'realm', makes about as much sense as what he'd been told when he was pulled out of the tub of water.

He cuts a sidelong glance at her about the turtle, though. And perhaps the part about the dead walking amongst the living ought not to seem so unreal, given he's walking besides Tess, but--

"I'm s'posed to believe that?"