cityofsin_ooc | Test Drive Meme 010

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Test Drive Meme 010

Test Drive Meme

Considering apping to the City of Sin, but unsure of who to bring or if they'll fit? Feel free to give the setting a test drive here! These are a perfect way of getting your playing sample done for the application.

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→ Comment with the character you'd like to test drive in the setting, with name and canon in the subject line
→ Choose a scenario or create your own!
→ Tag around!

Possible Scenarios
01. A New Arrival: Hello, New Person! You seem to have found yourself on a sidewalk in the City of Sin with nothing but the clothes on your back and a stomach chruning feeling of being displaced. Thankfully, the streets are full of people - Watch out that you don't get mugged!

02. Demonic Presences: You were just minding your own business, weren't you? But that's always when bad things seem to happen, and the City of Sin isn't really that friendly. Whatever bar or street you're hanging out in suddenly go dim, filling the area with an unnerving feeling as the shadows on the walls jump out into reality. We suggest you phone a friend for help, or maybe try running?

03. Party Hard: You've been invited to a massive, elegant party at the Tower that spills out its doors in welcome, by someone who calls themselves the Emperor. Obviously, that's weird, but maybe you can get some free drinks and food out of it! This place might not be so bad.

04. Prominence: The City of Sin influences it's population on a weekly basis. Too bad you came right smack dab in the middle of a heavy Prominence. Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, or Pride. Choose your choice of sin and be wicked.

05. Trouble: Not everyone is sunshine and roses here. Some people are violent and cruel, raised in the sludge of a sinful city. And they like to pick on people they think can't fight back. Are you that person? Or are you the Hero who can't stand to watch? Worse yet, could you be the person doing the instigating? Villian.

06. Carnival: The City has carnivals or festivals now and then; you're lucky to catch one! With its open booths filled with cork gun games and funnel cakes, how can someone not have any fun! Go win your darling a stuffed animal, or meet someone new on the spinning cup ride. You might even see someone you know being talked into sitting in the Dunk Tank.

07. Wild Card: Choose your own adventure in the game's setting!

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Quentin's chuckle in response was a little bitter, but he rose his glass and clinked it with Eliot's all the same. After a generous sip, he shook his head. "I really don't know whether I should be mad about it or not, then. But if we really come back the moment we leave, then...okay. Vacation time, I guess."

It was a very abrupt change, but no less so than when he was suddenly tested by Brakebills. "Is this at least a good vacation spot? What've you been up to the last three months of your life here?" He'd like to focus on something other than their impending doom, now that he had the option.

By the time Eliot was swallowing his first sip of the fresh drink, as Quentin's question landed, he looked a lot more thoughtful.

"So many things." His voice sounded far away as he reminisced, still pondering where to start. There was both good and bad in there, and, well... Quentin was going to have to find out about the bad eventually.

"Including one ill-advised attempt to find out what's actually going on here," he said, with the air of someone peeling off a bandaid. "Day One, I was assailed with people insisting this place wasn't all that bad. And when you've just been kidnapped in the middle of an acid trip, that's the sort of thing that leads you to think Stockholm Syndrome." It really hadn't been an illogical conclusion. He would stand by that until the end.

But as for whether the City was actually all that bad: "The City's its own little free-standing universe. It has its own special ways in which things are balls, but it isn't all balls. At least, not all the unpleasant kind."

Edited 2017-03-13 19:36 (UTC)

Quentin's eyebrow shot up not with the people telling Eliot the place wasn't bad, but on that part about the acid trip. So Eliot was that messed up in the Neitherlands? Christ.

But by the time Eliot finishes talking, Quentin's moved on to this world. And the joke on the end got a quiet laugh from him. "It does seem that the general population has taken a liking to you," he said, glancing over at the man (?) Eliot had just been talking to.

Eliot smiled back at the being Quentin was alluding to.

"That's Lem," he said. "Short for..." Give him a second to nail the pronunciation: "...Lemfuashim. He's some sort of Pain demon, but his family practically disowned him when he wouldn't let up on the concept of consent. We had a pretty good time, once."

Lem had been a one-time thing, and was likely to remain so. But he was nice. Eliot didn't mind stopping for a chat, whenever he saw him around.

"Most of the natives are indifferent to us, at best. A small handful find us fascinating."

Quentin's expression went through the gamut of concern and confusion as Eliot talked. He just never expected to hear about a pain demon, followed by 'we had a pretty good time'. "So...all the natives are demons? But they're not attacking us, at least?" Hopefully?

He'd just gotten something to drink, and Quentin already wanted another one. He could tell he was going to get smashed tonight. Why couldn't this new world be a nice, monster-free place for them to get a breather?

...oh.

"Demon's, like, their species. Most of them act like perfectly normal people." He shrugs a shoulder. "And, y'know. Some are dicks. That's city life."

He took another drink as a way to fill the space while thinking. Was he sounding like one of those people he'd assumed was brainwashed on his first day? Maybe a little, though he was doing his best to temper his reassurances with a healthy dose of cynicism. Hopefully, it helped that Quentin trusted him. And wasn't actively high and/or in a panic.

In any case, that was enough about the natives, for now.

"Mostly, I've been spending time getting to know our fellow Chosen. That's what someone decided to call us." Don't ask him who. He still thought the title sounded ridiculous, on occasion.

It did help that Quentin trusted him. Maybe he wasn't high, but he did come here out of a particularly tense situation, thinking he had done something wrong and expecting to find that he'd doomed all his friends to terrible deaths. Everything he'd encountered since he'd arrived had calmed him down, to some extent, but he was still feeling pretty ready to panic at any moment.

So, basically life as usual for Quentin, honestly.

Suffice it to say, he nodded his understanding at first, but was glad to move away from talking about the demon population. Because what the hell? At least they weren't hostile- or mostly hostile.

"You know, that has a really ominous ring to it. But I guess I'll try to take it as a compliment?" He swallowed down the rest of his drink and set the glass on the bar. "So how many of us are there? And how many have you 'gotten to know'?" Eliot could take that however he wanted- Quentin had been thinking of making a joke, but the awkwardness around their little relationship-destroying-threesome was still in full force. Better to at least semi-avoid it. "Are they all Magicians, or did we just get lucky?"

Eliot wasn't even thinking about their ill-advised threesome. From his perspective, it had been months ago. Even when the experience had been no more than a day old, he'd been ready to run from it anyway. There had been so many potentially demolished relationships there that if he'd had the chance to voluntarily drop into a different word before the dust settled, he would have taken it in a heartbeat.

For now, the near-innuendo in Q's question gets an enigmatic smile in response.

"Some are magicians, or wizards, or whatever term for magic-user their world wanted to pull out of the thesaurus. There's a few with straight-up X-Men style abilities, more vampires than I've ever seen in one place, and one or two garden-variety Muggles. Near as I can tell, there's no common thread between all of us, except that we all came from different worlds, and the City's decided to go all Hotel California on us."

He started lifting his glass, then remembered something and paused, his smile spreading. "Oh god. Some of them -- you are gonna lose your tiny little nerd mind."

There was a lot of variety here, it seemed. Quentin nodded thoughtfully at Eliot's description, wondering just what type of X-men-style they were talking about here. But...losing his little nerd mind? Quentin raised an eyebrow. "What, like...are the Chatwins here or something?"

Okay, so he liked a lot of fictional properties, but one would always be first and foremost. It didn't help that he'd found out the place was real. Still pretty skeeved out about the rest of what they found, though.

A part of Eliot — a really not-insignificant part — wanted not to give it away. To keep the knowledge under his hat and just tease Quentin with it, and wait to see his face when he actually met one of them.

On the other hand, he'd been working so hard not to give away that he knew anything about Hogwarts and the wizarding world. If Quentin got overexcited, things could get messy.

"No," he said, looking up toward the ceiling as if putting his thoughts together, even as he kept talking, "but if you see a guy with messy black hair, green eyes, and glasses, you can go ahead and stifle the urge to check under his bangs. It's exactly who you think it is."

Quentin narrowed his eyes at first, wondering what El was getting at. But as the description went on, he broke into kind of a nervous laughter. Shaking his head, and with an unsure smile, he said, "Don't be an asshole...." Watching Eliot's face, he broke into more of a hopeful grin. "Seriously?"

He followed that up with more laughter, and another sip at his drink, finishing up. "So you've met him, then?" Quentin really wished he sounded more incredulous, but having Harry Potter here? That just sounded fun. Although it probably wouldn't be great if he was a kid- he hadn't been here long, but he'd been here long enough to notice the City was really not great for kids.

"It's shockingly disappointing not to be messing with you right now," Eliot confessed. Because it was exactly the sort of thing he would make up just to yank Quentin's chain. "But, yes. Seriously."

As for meeting him: "Not in the flesh. Just been seeing his face over the phones. I have, on the other hand, spent a not-insignificant amount of time with a certain platinum-blonde aristocrat."

Okay, so it was sounding more and more like this was actually a thing, so Quentin's occasional surprised laughter went from nervous to excited. "Draco? You've actually hung out with him?" And after a moment's thought- "That actually makes a shocking amount of sense. You two would get along."

Eliot had been entirely right, of course. Quentin's 'little nerd mind' was having a hard time processing this at the moment. Or maybe that was the amount of drinks he'd already consumed tonight. Regardless, it took him awhile to speak up again. And when he did, it was to address something he'd already been thinking of. "So, are they like...from after the books? They're not kids, right?"

Eliot shook his head. "God, no. They're way older. Not Epilogue older, but like college aged."

Anyway: "Yeah. Fillory isn't the only world to get plagiarized for Earthly profit. So. Prepare yourself for that, mentally... emotionally, spiritually... whatever you gotta do."

College aged seemed so convenient, but there was no way El was lying to him at this point. Quentin turned away from the bar to look at the crowd, as if all these characters would suddenly be bearing down on him. And it was very clear he was not prepared at all. Whether that was a joke or not, he'd take Eliot's advice and at least think on the whole thing.

The ballroom sweep was followed up by a disbelieving shake of his head. "That's so nuts. I thought Fillory was nuts. But...I guess there are a lot of fountains..." He trailed off, then eventually looked back at Eliot. "So, you made any friends during your spontaneous, forced vacation here so far? Find all the good restaurants?"

Please, Eliot, get them going in another direction before he starts thinking too much about the Many Worlds Theory.

The fresh questions prompted a wry laugh, an almost humorless smile. "Hah... friends."

It wasn't that he hadn't. It was just that the circumstances of being friends with anyone in this place were just as fucked up as everything else about it. When a person could disappear at any moment, and you spent a not-insignificant amount of time wondering whether any of this mattered...

"There's some people you're gonna want to meet, yeah." People who had nothing to do with any licensed properties, as far as Eliot was aware. People who'd become important to him.

His train of thought started jumping tracks: meeting people, parties... apartments.

"Where'd they put you, by the way? For your City-provided housing?"

Oh, thank goodness, they were off the 'fictional characters are real' train. That question stopped him for a moment, and he looked up towards the ceiling as he tried to remember what the place was called. "Uh...Shady Oaks' Inn, I think? My room sort of looks like my grandmother's house threw up in it." Well, that sounded a bit harsh. He tried to correct for it, a bit. "It's not bad, it's pretty comfortable really. But I might want to change out some furniture, if I get a chance. And it sounds like I'll be here long enough."

Quentin will not, it turns out, get around to changing the furniture. That might be the best indicator no one made a mistake assigning him to Leisurebrook, but don't tell him that. "I assume you've found yourself someplace nice and fancy?"

Eliot tossed off a half-shrug. Leisurebrook wasn't bad, all things considered.

"Not so much 'found.' The place they dropped me in is nice enough." Which he'd been able to recognize once the walls had stopped breathing.

"It's in the section of town they call the Gardens. You're welcome any time." ...well. "Just — text or call before you make an unplanned visit."

Because Reasons.

Quentin raised an eyebrow. "Because you might be banging a Pain Demon?"

He wasn't above specifying said Reasons. He smiled slightly, though, and nodded. "Got it. I won't get in the way of your fun. I would like to see your place, though. I was just looking around 'my' district until tonight." He looked side-to-side at the extravagance on display here, and felt a little under-dressed once again. "This really seems like a normal city...just your average, nondescript demon metropolis." It was weird, how normal it was in so many ways.

The question earned Quentin a game sort of smile. Banging a Pain Demon... or something.

"More or less," Eliot agreed. "Every so often it drops a flaming bag of what-the-fuck on our collective doorstep, but — nothing we can't handle, so far."

Part of the being-able-to-handle it had to do with the magical calculus he'd been working with in his spare time. Speaking of: "You'll wanna get in on the star-mapping project I've been conducting with Rhys. One of the other magic-users. Sort of a hedge witch, but he does actually know his stuff. Can you believe, with all the people coming in and out of this place, no one's ever made a star chart?"

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Test Drive Meme 010

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