TEST-DRIVE MEME

Maybe you've considered appping a new character but you're not sure how well they would adjust to the in-game scenario? Well, here's a chance to give it a try!

• Post with a character journal you'd like to voicetest or you've considered apping to Ruby City. Feel free to play them as newcomers or as if they've been here for a while - the setting is your own choice.

•Respond to other threads with new characters or with characters who are already in the game.

• Explore different interactions, find castmates, develop possible CR - anything you want, as long as you have fun!

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[Rose fiddles with the brassy gold watch, flicking through various video messages, trying to gather what intel she can on this strange new place.

When she hits "play" on this one--]

[For the first time in a very long time, her mind goes completely blank. For maybe half a second.

And then her head is filled with images--Mom pushing a vacuum around the house, Mom gilding an ornate frame displaying a childish drawing, Mom brandishing a martini glass like a sword, Mom peering through the telescope in the observatory, obviously too drunk to be making much progress but still trying.

Mom lying in a pool of her own blood, cold and dead.

A wash of guilt hits her like a tidal wave. It's been two years since the day her mother died, and if she ever thought she was over it, Rose is wrong. So very, very wrong. Her head is pounding with more than just the ache of a hangover she woke up in the city with.

Fuck.]

[Fleetingly, she wonders if this is a cruel trick. Or a dream bubble. Or a hallucination, or a nightmare. But the little nagging knowing at the back of her mind tells her that this is real, whether she wants it to be or not, and that even if she can't See like she should be able to here, she knows this much at least.

Whatever the reason for the resurrection of the dead, Rose knows with a sickening certainty that she can't run. No matter how much she wants to (or doesn't).

So she struggles to smooth her face into an expression of aloofness that might be recognizable to her mother, failing miserably and ending up looking stricken and vulnerable and almost sick instead. Wishing she had her terrible home-made booze with her, Rose flicks on the feed.]

...Mother?

[If she thought that for one moment that her Mother didn't know when her little girl was feeling ill, then she clearly did not know her Mother very well at all. A mama knows when her baby doesn't feel good.

It would have been the first thing she'd have commented on if she hadn't been blindsided by this sudden wave of emotion.]

Rose. [The doctor looks a might bit ill herself, if not a little tearful. The reason Roxy ended up here in the first place had something to do with her death, didn't it? Strider had been the same, she came to find not too long ago. The very possibility that the same could be said for Rose just makes her heart drop into her stomach.

It occurs to her much too soon (she's actually not sure if her heart can handle it) that this might not even be "her Rose" either. She's met so many varieties of Strider and Lalonde in such a short time-- with not NEARLY enough alcohol in her system -- that she isn't entirely sure sure she'll be able to keep them all completely straight. At least for a little while. She'll catch on eventually.

This Rose is not the same little girl that she'd left in that game. This was a young woman with the same eyes ~~and general look of displeasure~~ and the same quiet determination that could only be found in the Lalonde genes. She can already see in the lines around her daughter's eyes that it wasn't exactly easy to get where she is, wherever she may be from. She looks tired.

That's a look she's all too familiar with seeing, and never, ever something she thought she'd see mirrored in Rose's eyes. (At least, she hoped she never would, but... the Lalonde genes, again.)

What has happened to this child since she--... shit. She needs to not think about it until she has all the information. Is this her Rose? Which universe did she come from? Did it even matter? It's definitely Rose, there is no doubt about that, and even if six more showed up, she'd take care of them the same way. Her daughter is her daughter and by damn she's going to be her Mother.]

It's good to see you, darling.

[Roxy has developed that very same blase sort of demeanor over many, many years, and still cannot seem to keep herself together much better than Rose can. One still probably wouldn't know what sort of heart-wrenching internal warfare is going down right now, but it should be obvious to Rose that she's not quite as composed as normal. (As composed as she could be while sloshing all about the house as it were. At least she managed to be somewhat elegant. Sometimes.)

She can't help that she's happy to see her. ...and admittedly a little stressed out by it too. Still, she can't let herself get too wound up about it, nobody likes seeing their mom freak out.]

Where are you?

[She doesn't want to talk over these things, Rosy. She wants to see you. ~~Right this second, young lady~~.]

[On the contrary to her mother's lack of certainty, Rose knows with a Seer's intuition that this is her Roxy Lalonde (Sr.?) in the flesh. Perhaps the daughter has grown a few inches and added lines under her eyes and rotated her wardrobe, but her mother looks just the same as the day the meteors began to fall.

Rose had never taken much time or effort to truly understand her mother, or why she did the things she did. As someone young and immature and looking for a cause against which to rebel, it was easier not to ask questions and blame her mother for all the things, good and bad, that had passed between them.

And so, the transition on her mother's face from surprise to looking nearly stricken--worried, hesitant--makes her heart drop. She wonders for a second if this is her mother being... disappointed. God knows she'd have a reason to be, between Rose's failures as a Seer and her failures as a daughter, between the faint hangover that twinges at her temples and the self-absorption that had gotten her mother killed in the first placed.

Rose tells herself to stop, that this is not going to help the situation in the slightest. And yet she can't help but tick off all the reasons in her head why her mother should never want to talk to her again.

If I'd just bothered to look for her--

No. Come on, Lalonde, this is your mother we're talking about here. Your whimsical drunkard mother. She'd never...

But she can't, for some reason, finish that sentence in her head with any certainty.

If she ever expected to have the benefit--the guilt--of a reunion, it was never outside the confines of a dream bubble. Rose had, on some levels, prepared herself for that encounter if it was ever going to come. And yet, she had avoided it, too.

It's hard to face your dead mother when the last time you saw her, you spurned her probably well-intentioned, though sloppy, acts of love in favor of a stupid mind game you were the only one who ever actually played. And then didn't bother to go after her when she disappeared into a dangerous new world with a reputation for destroying parental figures.

Two years and there are so many things she's thought of to say to betaverse Roxy Lalonde, too late for them to actually matter. Now, when they can make a difference, she can't quite bring any of them to mind.

So Rose blinks and swallows hard and manages to talk around the lump in her throat.]

I... Davesprite took me back to what seems to be known as Casa de Strilonde. I remember the way to the station, though. I can... come pick you up.

[And, wondering exactly what she's getting herself into, Rose quietly lets herself out of House Snarkbait and makes for the station.]

I've been invited there myself, and am already on my way. Strolling, if you will. Might as well figure out where things are on the way, right?

[Roxy no, don't just make smalltalk with her because you want to keep her on the phone til you get there. She's still going to be there when you arrive, it's not like she's going anywhere, calm down...

And yet everything else inside is telling her to roof-hop if it meant she could get there faster. At times, she really is grateful for the self-control she's capable of exercising.]

If you'd like to meet me halfway, though, I wouldn't be opposed.

[This is her gently cutting down the actual ETA for the destination. Things go a lot faster when the destination will come to you.]

[Rose really, really, doesn't want anyone in the house to be remotely privy to--whatever's going to happen. Ectofamily and AU self or not, this is not for them to see.]

Halfway would be... ideal.

[She continues, hovering several inches off the ground at times, the way she does when she's too absorbed to control the god tier floaty powers. The day is bright and encouraging and hopeful, nearly the exact opposite of her mood.

And within a few minutes she'll be within sight of Roxy, nearly faltering when she sees her. Rose still sort of wants to run away, but she still puts one ballet slipper in front of the other.

And then all at once, here she is staring at her mother--when did they get to be on the same eye level?--and trying to remember to breathe. Video feeds never compare to the real thing, and Roxy Lalonde in the flesh is not someone that her daughter ever expected to see again.]

Mom.

[Plenty of people had warned her over the course of her parenthood: "Don't blink, because before you know it, they're gonna sprout maturity and take off, one day." Somehow she hadn't imagined she'd ever have to take it so literally. Yet, here this young woman stands before her, so very clearly her Rose-- plus a few years that Roxy, much to her unending dismay, had missed-- trying just as desperately as her mother to keep herself composed. Funny, how they still felt as if they had to treat things this way. No sense in this reunion being melodramatic, right? They're women, not sniffling schoolgirls.

Even if it had only been less than a day for herself, Roxy knows she's missed her daughter becoming a woman, not to mention god knew what else and there's nothing she can even do about it. She's failed her. She couldn't be there for her when she needed it, going off and dying like that.

The guardians all knew it was a possibility, but it wasn't like the kids did. It wasn't fair for them to suffer through this. There's no telling what kind of damage they took for it, either.

If it had been just the game she'd screwed up so miserably in, that would be one thing, but knowing everything Rose had put up with over her short thirteen-plus years.... It's her mother's fault she ended up this way, isn't it? As much as she loved the resemblance between them, it never occurred to her that it could hurt so much to see so much of herself in her daughter. She looked worldweary and terrified, a little bit ill...

Hung over.

Good Christ, no. This was never supposed to happen.

It isn't disappointment that begins to split cracks in her composure; it's guilt. This is what being abandoned and left with a horrible set of genes gets you. She can't blame Rose for being bitter with her.

Even knowing the staggering probability of Rose giving her the cold shoulder, it can't stop the woman from throwing her arms around her and squeezing her tight. There's no use in keeping herself together anymore; it's been too long. Rose would already be able to feel how violently her shoulders are trembling with the futile effort of keeping back her tears. Now that she's here, now that she's hugging her little girl again, nothing else even matters.]

I-- [Her breath hitches, squeezing the girl tighter.] I a-am so, so sorry, sweetheart.

[The hug catches Rose uncharacteristically off-guard. She knows that Roxy is far from unintelligent, that she must have already realized how her daughter has gotten older and a multitude of other things that mothers always know regardless of circumstance. Perhaps an embrace such as this should have been expected, logically, but it's hard enough to process Mom being alive without having taken into account the possibility of any blatant physical affection.

So she stiffens against her mother's chest, surprised, for one frozen moment. Rose lifts her own arms hesitantly, almost mechanically--and then abruptly shoves her doubts under a mental blanket, and squeezes back just as tight. She buries her face in her mother's neck, surprised at how much shorter she seems now, and is assaulted by old, familiar scents hitting her like blows: vodka and perfume and Mom. She can't remember the last time she hugged her mother back: from the onset of rebellious preteen angst until the day Mom died, she had never thought she'd have a reason to want to.

Realizing that her mother is close to tears, Rose nearly can't control herself. But she's had plenty of occasions over the past few years where she's wanted to cry and didn't, and this is no exception. Instead she swallows hard and murmurs almost inaudibly, for once without her usual verbosity.]

No, I am.

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Test-Drive Meme

TEST-DRIVE MEME

cries because this thread is all i have ever wanted out of life, pardon while i spam you [1/3]

2/3

done [video]

swEET BABY oh no i apologize for the wall of text

no omg walls of text are my favorite. /assumes for consistency that Rose left the station

/is gonna have to save consistency for actual gameplay because i am horrible at organizing lmfao;;;

bahahaha :') no worries!

no subject

let's just pretend kanaya = roxy because i don't have any mom&rose icons sobs