Follow the Carnival... (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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carnymemes2019-09-12 11:50 pm
fantasticcarnival) wrote in carnymemes2019-09-12 11:50 pm
TDM #001
Guidelines
-Doubles are permitted on the TDM, but not on reserves.
-Bullying and godmodding are not allowed.
-Triggers should be mentioned at the beginning of a toplevel.
-Subject lines should read like this: Character Name | Canon | Carnival Job (Read the appropriate post in the navigation to find a job for your character! This does not have to be their job in the game.)
Hitching Your Ride
[ Only you can say what you were doing before it happens, but the story begins as you are suddenly jolted from your position into a whirl of air. You might have ridden rollercoasters or ridden fast horses, but you’ve never felt the wind whip past your face as quickly as this. It’s what you imagine being trapped in a tornado must feel like, only by some miraculous grace you aren’t being torn apart. Gritty dirt gets in your eyes, your nostrils, your mouth no matter how hard you try to shield your face. Tiny pebbles sting your skin as the force of the wind flings them toward you. It’s only when the shrieks of the howling wind begin to slow down that you realize the real danger.
They’re mere yards away from you, beasts that come up past your hip in height yet still walk on all four legs. They look to be hounds, or wolves, maybe, with dark, scraggly brown fur and eyes that shine red even in the dim light of the dust clouds. You can hear their snarls and growls over the howls of the wind, now. There must be a dozen of them in this pack, all of them hungry for what you can safely assume is flesh. Yours, maybe.
You hear a sharp whistle and you can just barely make out the source of the sound through the haze. It’s a man in raggedy denim overalls, waving you towards him. The closer you get to him, the clearer it will get – an impressive caravan of trailers, housecars, and trucks packed to the gills with materials. Some of the vehicles will be painted with advertisements leading you to realize that this man, the man who directed you to join them, is a part of a traveling carnival. They’re already on their way away from the storm, but there are some cars lingering behind, catching disoriented people like you who are stumbling out of the dust cloud. ]
“Put a move on it! You wanna be that thing’s dinner?”
Welcome To The New World Order
[ It’s a matter of a couple of hours before you reach the next town and outrun what you learn from a roustabout were a pack of hellhounds. ”Those things are out for our blood. I’ve seen them take a couple carnies and it ain’t pretty. No one knows why they want us, they just *do *.” He says to you, turning a wad of tobacco around in his mouth as he speaks.
When you get to the next campground, everyone is ready to work. Whether you choose to help set up or simply stay out of the way is up to you. Nobody will bother you just yet. You’re still green and you haven’t been charged with a real job. You can check out the tents, mill about and meet the others who have been brought here and actually talk to them. After all, if you ran into somebody in the last town, you didn’t exactly have time to talk to them.
Maybe this is when you get called into Mr. Fantastic’s trailer and have the deal laid out for you. You see, protection doesn’t come for free. Either you work for the carnival, live in one of the tents or trailers or housecars, and travel with them, or you get left in the dust as hellhound bait. It should be an easy choice, right? So, what’s your new job, carny? ]
Come One, Come Two, Come All
[ When the sun sets, the lights come on and the carnival comes alive. Music plays, the shows begin, the barker starts shouting promotions for shows, maybe even your show if you have one! It’s a magical environment, but those who have been here the longest always seem to be looking over their shoulder, waiting for something sinister to happen.
What is your role? How well do you play it out? When you go on break, what sights do you stop to see? After all, there’s plenty to explore around the carnival grounds. Plenty of tents to peep inside.
Mr. Fantastic adheres to a pretty strict rule. Carnivalgoers leave the grounds by midnight. After that time, it’s carnies and carnies alone on the carnival grounds. Are you too tired to mingle as people clean up and close up or is this when you come alive? It’s all up to you, but if you want to practice your act tomorrow or refine your recipe for candy apples in the morning you’d better get some sleep. ]
-Doubles are permitted on the TDM, but not on reserves.
-Bullying and godmodding are not allowed.
-Triggers should be mentioned at the beginning of a toplevel.
-Subject lines should read like this: Character Name | Canon | Carnival Job (Read the appropriate post in the navigation to find a job for your character! This does not have to be their job in the game.)
Hitching Your Ride
[ Only you can say what you were doing before it happens, but the story begins as you are suddenly jolted from your position into a whirl of air. You might have ridden rollercoasters or ridden fast horses, but you’ve never felt the wind whip past your face as quickly as this. It’s what you imagine being trapped in a tornado must feel like, only by some miraculous grace you aren’t being torn apart. Gritty dirt gets in your eyes, your nostrils, your mouth no matter how hard you try to shield your face. Tiny pebbles sting your skin as the force of the wind flings them toward you. It’s only when the shrieks of the howling wind begin to slow down that you realize the real danger.
They’re mere yards away from you, beasts that come up past your hip in height yet still walk on all four legs. They look to be hounds, or wolves, maybe, with dark, scraggly brown fur and eyes that shine red even in the dim light of the dust clouds. You can hear their snarls and growls over the howls of the wind, now. There must be a dozen of them in this pack, all of them hungry for what you can safely assume is flesh. Yours, maybe.
You hear a sharp whistle and you can just barely make out the source of the sound through the haze. It’s a man in raggedy denim overalls, waving you towards him. The closer you get to him, the clearer it will get – an impressive caravan of trailers, housecars, and trucks packed to the gills with materials. Some of the vehicles will be painted with advertisements leading you to realize that this man, the man who directed you to join them, is a part of a traveling carnival. They’re already on their way away from the storm, but there are some cars lingering behind, catching disoriented people like you who are stumbling out of the dust cloud. ]
“Put a move on it! You wanna be that thing’s dinner?”
Welcome To The New World Order
[ It’s a matter of a couple of hours before you reach the next town and outrun what you learn from a roustabout were a pack of hellhounds. ”Those things are out for our blood. I’ve seen them take a couple carnies and it ain’t pretty. No one knows why they want us, they just *do *.” He says to you, turning a wad of tobacco around in his mouth as he speaks.
When you get to the next campground, everyone is ready to work. Whether you choose to help set up or simply stay out of the way is up to you. Nobody will bother you just yet. You’re still green and you haven’t been charged with a real job. You can check out the tents, mill about and meet the others who have been brought here and actually talk to them. After all, if you ran into somebody in the last town, you didn’t exactly have time to talk to them.
Maybe this is when you get called into Mr. Fantastic’s trailer and have the deal laid out for you. You see, protection doesn’t come for free. Either you work for the carnival, live in one of the tents or trailers or housecars, and travel with them, or you get left in the dust as hellhound bait. It should be an easy choice, right? So, what’s your new job, carny? ]
Come One, Come Two, Come All
[ When the sun sets, the lights come on and the carnival comes alive. Music plays, the shows begin, the barker starts shouting promotions for shows, maybe even your show if you have one! It’s a magical environment, but those who have been here the longest always seem to be looking over their shoulder, waiting for something sinister to happen.
What is your role? How well do you play it out? When you go on break, what sights do you stop to see? After all, there’s plenty to explore around the carnival grounds. Plenty of tents to peep inside.
Mr. Fantastic adheres to a pretty strict rule. Carnivalgoers leave the grounds by midnight. After that time, it’s carnies and carnies alone on the carnival grounds. Are you too tired to mingle as people clean up and close up or is this when you come alive? It’s all up to you, but if you want to practice your act tomorrow or refine your recipe for candy apples in the morning you’d better get some sleep. ]
Destiny Rumancek | Hemlock Grove | Fortune Teller
[ She knows she’s in trouble the instant she arrives – call it a psychic’s intuition or whatever you want, but it’s blatantly obvious to her even though she can’t see or hear the hellhounds until seconds later. When they come into view, Destiny is quick to utter a Romanian expletive under her breath and start running for the trailers. Whoever these people are, they’re her only hope of getting away from the pack of hungry hounds. Just as she’s about to hop on the back of a trailer, though, Destiny trips over a rock embedded in the hardened earth. ]
Oof! Shit!
[ She stumbles, but keeps running, finally catching up. Once she’s on the trailer, she holds out her hand for the person immediately behind her to grab so that they can grab it and use it as an assist to get on board. ]
Come on! Get up here! Those things are crazy!
[Welcome To The New World Order]
[ Meet your new Fortune Teller, Destiny Rumancek. She has to wonder if Mr. Fantastic understands how on-the-nose his career choice for her actually is. Freshly changed into her era appropriate garb, she’s never felt more like a fish out of water and she’s Roma - out of water is her thing.
She roams the carnival grounds looking for a friendly face or an easy mark. It’s not time to start working just yet, though everything is already set up. It all looks like a movie set to her, like something out of the Great Depression, and she has to wonder if there’s some kind of time traveling mojo behind all of this. It would make sense, but wouldn’t explain the pack of what the carnies had called hellhounds. Destiny has yet to figure this place out entirely, but she’s a sharp lady. She’ll get it eventually. ]
[Come One, Come Two, Come All #1]
[ Destiny sits in a cozy little tent decorated with scarves and fairy lights, positioned in front of a round table covered with a purple tablecloth. On it sits a crystal ball that reflects the fairy lights brilliantly. She is dressed to fit the role of fortune teller perfectly with a scarf around her head and loose sleeves hanging off of her arms. You sit opposite her and she dramatically waves her hands around the ball, staring into it intently. ]
I can see your future, but your doubt clouds the picture…
[ Her gaze slowly drifts up to meet yours. ]
There’s a pain you’re feeling. It holds you back. Shed it like a snake sheds its skin. Only then will you achieve greatness.
[Come One, Come Two, Come All #2]
[ Reading fortunes takes a lot out of a girl. She’s been doing it all night. Needless to say, her bullshit muscles are severely stressed. The rides have all stopped for the night, so Destiny has decided to lounge, straddling a carousel horse with a bag of popcorn in her hands.
She munches quietly by herself until she sees someone passing by, maybe to head off to bed. ]
Quiet night?
[ She asks in between bites, eyeing the stranger. ]
Annie January/Starlight | The Boys | Freak
[ It doesn’t take much to kick Annie’s defenses into gear. Once the threat of being torn into pieces, whether by roaring winds or by growling hounds, pops into existence, her eyes light up like a pair of LED headlights and her palms glow slightly, threatening to blast those monsters away should they come one inch closer. She looks around, trying to see through the dust for anyone that might need protecting. There is a possibility that she’s not the only person in this storm. She hears the growls, but maybe also voices, and where there are voices…
A hellhound leaps for Annie, snarling viciously and aiming for her throat, but Annie is quicker, raising her hand and sending out a blast of light energy. The hound is caught offguard and yelps, collapsing uselessly to the dusty ground. This is her cue to take off running for the trailers she sees off in the distance, but she stops when she sees someone standing, confused in the dustcloud. Annie grabs their hand and practically drags them with her towards the trailer. ]
Welcome To The New World Order
[ Freak. It’s such an ugly word, but it’s the one Mr. Fantastic has chosen for Annie. She supposes that when your eyes light up like fireflies people might pay good money to see it. Well, in a world without Compound V superheroes, maybe… She’s seen the tent she is to perform in, but not the people she’s to perform with. Are they ordinary like her? Misunderstood? Mislabeled? Just regular folks with some quality that makes them special enough for people to gawk at? Yeah, she’s a little bitter about this.
At least the clothes aren’t so bad. The dress is… Modest. Kind of cute in a vintage-y sort of way. Annie would rather be wearing jeans any day, but if she’s to fit in, here (ironic, given her new occupation), she needs to be dressing like anyone else. ]
Come One, Come Two, Come All
[ The gig isn’t so intolerable. Annie sits for hours, making her eyes glow and then letting them dim, signing flyers as “Starlight” just because the moniker seems to fit the job a little better. The kids who come to see the show are infinitely more tolerable than the adults. They’re in awe whereas the adults just stare and judge. It’s amazing how innocence wanes over a short number of years.
Deciding to see what the rest of the Carnival looks like after sunset, Annie leaves her tent and heads towards the food trucks. Sitting pretty builds up a surprisingly large appetite. ]
no subject
Hi there. Starlight, wasn't it, when in the show? I'm Hardison, the new magician. And I was wondering if you could help me with something in the show?
no subject
[ Starlight smiled easily. It was reassuring that there seemed to be a sense of community among the carnies even though they’d only just been thrown together. This place had a way of making people feel like they didn’t belong, and, of course, they didn’t. It was mostly just the rousties and a small handful of the performers who actually came from this weird little world. The rest of them? Well, Annie hadn’t stopped to speak to anyone about where they came from, but judging by other freaks she’d seen, she didn’t think that everyone came from the same place.
She nodded her head in response to his question. She’d do anything she could to help his show. ]
Sure. What is it you need?
no subject
I'm after two things to make my magic show better. The first is a bigger tent, because even your part of the freak show is bigger than the fortune teller tent. The second is a person or two to help me with some of the tricks. I think you'd enjoy it as a break from the freak show, and I also saw that the knife thrower's assistant is about the same height, build, and hair colour as you are.
[He grinned widely.] And if I can persuade both of you to help me that really opens a lot of tricks up as long as there's only ever one of you visible on my stage at a time.
[He hoped that he didn't have to tell her stage magic wasn't real, and that she'd realise what he was suggesting. But the hint to let her work it out would tell him how sharp she was.]
Margo Hanson | The Magicians | Magician's Assistant
[ You’re surrounded by howling winds whipping past you. The sounds of snarling are growing louder and soon you can see the hellhounds responsible for making them. All signs are pointing towards your doom and then the hellhound closest to you is smacked into the distance by an unseen force. She comes closer, the woman responsible for saving your ass. Margo. If it’s possible to look proud and pissed off all at the same time, she does. She looks at you and nods toward the trailers driving off as you two try to get your shit together. ]
C’mon. We need to haul ass if we’re getting out of here alive.
[ There’s no explanation for how she threw that monster away from you without using physical strength, no explanation for how the two of you showed up in this, nothing at all. ]
[New World Order]
Magician’s Assistant?!
[ Margo shouts incredulously as she’s forced out of Mr. Fantastic’s trailer. She lets out a frustrated shriek and pounds on the trailer door uselessly, but there is no answer. After a couple minutes straight with no answer whatsoever from the big man, she storms off looking more pissed off than she ever has before. She’s a fucking magician and nobody’s assistant. Margo knows what old-timey magic is like and knows what role the assistant plays. The assistant is glorified T and A meant to distract the audience and, while her T and A are superior, it’s insulting.
She grits her teeth and sets about finding who she’s going to be working with, grabbing people by the shoulder and accosting them. ]
Hey. You the magician around here?
[Come One, Come Two, Come All]
[ It’s utterly exhausting making the audience look away from the magician’s tricks. Margo’s face hurts from smiling so much. She’s never missed Josh’s weed brownies more in her life. Once her act is over, she steps out of the tent into the night air still wearing her skimpy sequined costume and sighs. What are the odds someone around here has a beer?
Margo heads towards the tents, where she hears conversation, or is it just someone talking to themselves? No matter. It’s a long walk in those heels of hers and by the time she reaches a tent her feet are begging her to sit down. She lifts a canvas flap and steps inside, sitting down on a crate with a tiny coo as her feet are relieved of that pressure. Her gaze drifts over to the other person inside and she smirks slightly. ]
You don’t happen to have a beer, do you?
NWO
They told me I was the magician yesterday and I did the show as the magician last night? So I suppose I'm who you're looking for?
[His tone was friendly, but he was speaking from very definitely too far away for her to reach him if for whatever reason she wanted to take a swing at him.]
no subject
[ Margo asks the question somewhat incredulously. Of course there’s nothing wrong with Hardison being a magician. That isn’t what she means. There’s something wrong with her not being the magician. She clenches her jaw and her mouth curves into a reluctant smile. ]
I’m your assistant. I guess we’ll be working together.
[ This is going to be interesting, she decides, not impossible. She can transition from being the head of operations to being a mere assistant. More difficult things have been done before. ]
no subject
No you aren't. [He paused a beat and then grinned.] You're my partner. 'Assistant' is to sucker the smarks who watch the magician's hands closely to work out how the trick's done and don't realise no one's watching your hands unless you want them to.
[He smiled and held out his hand, hoping he'd not misread her.] Alec Hardison.
no subject
Nice to meet you, Alec. I’m Margo Hanson.
[ He said that he’d already performed once. That was good. Having a partner with some experience under their belt never hurt. How hard could it be to learn a routine when all Margo was doing was basically following his lead? Besides, she was the quickest study she knew when it came to actual magic. The stage stuff had to have been a piece of cake. ]
How did you fair without me?
no subject
You mean how did I fare my first ever time doing stage magic, with tricks I was still working out when the punters arrived?
[His eyes danced as he started recounting the events.]
The bunny crapped in the hat, I ran out of eggs to pull out of kids ears', I only realised part way through that I was using a marked deck when finding the punter's cards, although I don't think anyone noticed, and I found that the fortune teller's tent I'd been put in was far too small for most of the more flamboyant tricks. Which I can't do on my own anyway.
[He grinned, eyes bright.]
Other than that it was fun! And should we go somewhere, get a drink, and you can tell me about yourself and what I should know about you and how you perform?
Amy Peterson | Fright Night | Knife Thrower's Assistant
[ When Amy hears growling, she thinks of dogs. She can handle dogs. The dust storm obscures the sight of the hellhounds for a good long while and during that time she feels confident. What leggy blonde girl with track and field experience is afraid of a dog? She can outrun a couple of those things. Then she sees them. They’re friggin’ huge.
That’s when she starts to run and run fast. She can see the quickly departing trailers getting smaller as they speed away, but a man stands on the edge of one waving her closer, encouraging her to keep running. Her legs have never moved so fast.
And then it leaps. One, singular hellhound leaps and lands its front paws on her shoulders, digging its claws into her. She shouts and hits the ground as it tears into her clothes. It’s going to take a miracle to get out of this one alive. ]
[ Come One, Come Two, Come All ]
[ The new dress she sports hides the spots where the hellhound’s claws got her and makeup hides her bruises. Amy spends most of the night strapped to a wheel as the Knife Thrower’s Assistant. It’s not much of a job. Her main task is to pray that the knife thrower doesn’t miss his mark.
By the end of the night, she’s tired from holding her breath and slightly dizzy from being spun. Amy is unstrapped from the wheel and stumbles like a drunk through the darkened carnival grounds. When she hears footsteps nearby, she pauses and looks over her shoulder. There’s something creepy about walking around here by herself. ]
Hello?
Isabel Evans | Roswell | Freak
[ All her life, Isabel has been told to hide who she is, and for good reason! People don’t tend to react well when you reveal that you’re an actual alien, especially when you live so close to Area 51. Her experiences with authority have only proven what was mostly her brother’s paranoia to be founded on truth and reality. Still, when she looks through the dust and sees people being attacked by some sorts of enormous wolf-creatures, she knows that sitting back and pretending to be ordinary is the wrong choice.
Taking a deep breath, Isabel uses her telekinesis to fling the hounds away from others who have shown up in the dust storm in ways similar to her. The trailer, their last hope for escape, seems to be driving off into the distance, so Isabel acts again, causing it to move in reverse, albeit slowly. She winces, the overexertion of her abilities causing an increasingly potent headache. ]
Get in the trailer! [ She shouts to any and all stragglers. She can’t hold the trailer for long and soon it’s back on its regular route, driving away from the storm. Isabel’s eyes roll back into her head and she falls to the ground, exhausted. ]
Welcome To The New World Order
[ She should have known that using her abilities would have consequences. Being pigeonholed as a ‘Freak’ is bound to be only the first of many. Already Isabel feels so alone in this place, more alone than she does at home and, being isolated, alone comes with the package.
A fashion-plate like Isabel shouldn’t be wearing a 1930’s housedress, either. This place isn’t winning her over in any way. She felt a little too much like a blonde Dorothy Gale, minus the ruby slippers.
Moping, and still nursing that headache, she wanders the carnival grounds looking for something to eat, hopefully with tabasco. ]
Frankie Paige | Stigmata | Barker
[ Why does it seem like only weeks ago Frankie’s life went from relatively normal to absolutely batshit? The only thing she had to worry about before then was getting her period on time and then those mysterious stigmata came into the picture. Once the wounds had healed she thought that she would get some semblance of a normal life back, but right now she knows that she’s not in Detroit. This isn’t downtown and this isn’t their kind of weather. Frankie squints, trying to shield her eyes from the dust, but some manages to blow past her lashes causing her to blink furiously.
The moment she becomes aware that jumping on a trailer is an option, she runs as fast as she can and hops aboard one, helping as many people as she can to follow suit before sitting down on the floor of the vehicle, shaking dirt out of her hair and clothing. It’s glaringly obvious that she’s a fish out of water the moment she sees the driver of the trailer dressed in Depression Era denim overalls with a bandana tied around his neck. No, this definitely isn’t home. She tries not to stare too hard or too long.
Frankie turns to someone she helped hop on the trailer and smiles warmly. ]
Almost winding up as dog food kind of puts everything in perspective, huh?
Welcome To The New World Order
Does it upset Frankie that she’s not part of a show? Only a little bit. Being a Carnival Barker is the next best thing to actually performing. If there’s one thing Frankie is good at, it’s talking and, by association, shouting. She might be homesick already, but she’s also really excited about her new gig, even if it doesn’t involve cutting hair.
She walks around the carnival grounds with a big smile on her face, making grand gestures to the banners outside each tent. ]
Ladies and gentlemen, turn your attention to the big ring! Hiiiiigh above us, the greatest tightrope walkers in the world will face their doom crossing from one side of the tent to the other without a net!
[ Frankie spins around and laughs to herself. ]
Alec Hardison | Leverage | Magician
[The movement was nothing like as terrifying as his earbuds going dead. Dead, not static. He'd been pushed off more than one roof by his teammates, and it was always scary, even if this was was worse. But his earbud going dead when it happened meant that there was something actually serious that had gone wrong. And he knew this wind wasn't natural.
But barking. Red eyes. Howls that meant he shouldn't play dead. He knew when to run. Sometimes. First run from. Then work on where to run to. The red eyes and the howls were both worrying. And with nowhere to he broke into a ground-eating lope, realising that if he got out of this Eliott and Parker had probably saved his life again even if he'd hated most of the cardio they'd put him through..
His head shot up at the whistle; something to run to. And from the sound of it it was close. Then he saw the man, and sprinted, now he wouldn't leave himself flat.]
"Thanks!"
[He ran straight past the man, before stopping on one of the steps of the caravan and then looking back see if his rescuer was all right as he caught his breath.]
"What ... what were they?"
[He was already slipping his mobile phone out of his pocket to try to call for help.]
Welcome To The New World Order
[He'd spent most of the first hour freaking out. Not, as most people did. about the hellhounds - but about the fact that his smartphone was telling him that there were no satellites in the sky - and nothing sensible even in the radio spectrum. But the first thing he needed was to know what was going on, so he'd been as helpful as he could as soon as the carriages stopped. Not that he would have done anything else and done it cheerily. And at least he could learn how things were made by helping set them up, and talking to the old hands when he did.
He left Mr. Fantastic's office shaking his head. The Magician? He knew nothing about magic. He knew about computers and technology and round here that was useless. It had better not be because they wanted him to look 'exotic' even if he'd played that angle a couple of times on cons. And that brought his thoughts up short. Magic tricks were cons, frequently with a physical basis and he wasn't just his team's hacker, but their tech geek and inventor, and he'd made things . And his weakness on cons was taking things too far, which wouldn't be a problem for a carnival performance. By the time he arrived at the caravan he was pointed at he was feeling there was at least something he could do.]
Come One, Come Two, Come All
[Hardison had been highly unimpressed by the props he'd taken over from the previous magician, and no one had wanted to tell him what had happened to the last one. With little time to prepare, only a few props he trusted, no assistant although he was promised one would be provided, and no practice he was amazed he kept an audience any better than a few of the shows. But even if he hadn't been a carnie he had been part of a crew of thieves and knew about drawing the audience attention.
To make the magic more compelling than the freak show he needed to make it bigger - and shorter. There were only so many decks of cards he could stack, or sleight of hand to pull an egg out of someone's ear or ribbons out of his mouth so he could only really hold groups for a few minutes at a time. But he was holding groups and getting applause which as a first night he took as a success - especially as he was sure the barker had noticed and was directing groups his way periodically.
But with the carnivalgoers gone he'd spend the next hour or so wandering around socialising, greeting people with a warm style and mentioning that he was new here and whether they had any advice. Still, high off the performances, (which had got better as the night had gone on), he wanted to try and at least talk about recruiting an assistant or two (especially ones who hated the job they'd been given), and possibly find out what he was allowed to do to change his act. He'd also be listening for rumours and to try and find out what was going on including what had happened to the last magician and how he could get back home.]