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funnyhearts2020-04-22 10:38 am
happyheartsstaff) wrote in funnyhearts2020-04-22 10:38 am
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TEST DRIVE MEME 001 (#2)
HAPPY HEARTS HOTEL
You wake up in a padded box. It rocks, gently, as though suspended in mid-air. You begin to stir, confusion or distress pushing you to try to sit up — and then the air begins to smell sweet, and you fall back asleep.You wake up in a padded box. For a moment, you are beatifically calm. You don't know how you got here, or why, but that isn't really all that important. You don't need to know where you are. You're just... here. And here is a wonderful place to be.
But there is a niggling suspicion growing in the back of your mind. A suspicion that here is not somewhere you wanted to be. That it is not where you're supposed to be. You remember... chasing a white rabbit (or was it a person)? A mirror? Bright light, and green ivy crawling over your skin... Before you can worry too much, the box jolts, and then settles, and after a long moment the walls fall from around you to reveal —
A hotel lobby?
"Welcome to the Happy Hearts Hotel and Casino," says an attendant behind a desk. "We're so pleased you could join us for our grand opening gala. We have your room keys and Empathies here, please make an orderly line and we'll hand them out once we've confirmed identities. After that, feel free to explore the hotel! We highly recommend starting with the casino. Everyone's a winner here in Happy Hearts!"
Is this normal? It doesn't feel normal. And hey — you could swear you had shoes before!
I. THE CASINO FLOOR
As you pass through the entrance to the casino floor, an attendant passes you a small bag of chips. The casino is loud and bright and filled with games of every kind — you want to play poker? They've got a table for that. Sabacc? There's a table for that, too. Slots, pachinko, and bingo are just a few of the other games on offer. The attendant in the lobby wasn't lying, either — everyone who plays wins. Everyone, every time.
Servers wander the floor with trays of shotglasses full of multi-coloured liquids, offering them to every Oyster "Compliments of Her Royal Highness." If you're expecting alcohol, though, you'll be surprised — these drinks are teas made of the distilled emotions of every Oyster in the hotel. Each colour of tea corresponds to a different emotion, and as soon as you take a sip, you feel overcome with that emotion.
Servers wander the floor with trays of shotglasses full of multi-coloured liquids, offering them to every Oyster "Compliments of Her Royal Highness." If you're expecting alcohol, though, you'll be surprised — these drinks are teas made of the distilled emotions of every Oyster in the hotel. Each colour of tea corresponds to a different emotion, and as soon as you take a sip, you feel overcome with that emotion.
JOY — the distilled essence of happiness, this tea makes even the most rough and tumble of Oysters giddy with happiness — for a moment. The effect fades into a general sense of contentment and affability after a few seconds, and that itself fades away slowly over the course of twenty minutes.
ANGER — this tea, anger in liquid form, can make the most even-tempered of Oysters ready to absolutely blow a gasket. For twenty minutes, anyone who drinks this tea will find themselves much more easily annoyed, frustrated, and all around irritable and snappy.
SADNESS — distilled sadness is a potent tea, capable of turning a stoic, stalwart Oyster into a blubbering mess in moments. Events that may have previously only been a minor disappointment become the end of the world, every repressed unhappiness comes to the fore, and for twenty minutes, any Oyster who drinks a sadness tea can hardly keep themselves together.
II. MAKING WAVES
If gambling isn't to your interest, there are many other areas of the hotel to explore! For the moment, only The Pool Of Tears and the Pig & Pepper Buffet are available for Oysters to peruse, but the staff assure anyone who asks that the other facilities will be open by the next day. Unfortunately, that means no one can buy any swimsuits from This Elegant Thimble, but the staff aren't going to kick anyone out of the pool for jumping in in their clothes!
There are four main attractions to The Pool of Tears: the pool, the jacuzzi, the wave pool, and the lazy river. The water is always just the right temperature, clean and clear and refreshing. It feels as if the sun shines down from above you, warm and comforting. Scattered through the pool area are clusters of modern lounge chairs, just waiting for someone to come relax in them. The Pool is, in a word, serene.
But not for long. The waves generated by the wave pool begin to get choppier, and larger, until it becomes clear that the generator itself is malfunctioning — too late, however, to avoid the tsunami that crashes through the whole Pool and leaves it flooded. Thankfully, no water escapes into the rest of the hotel, and the hotel staff work quickly to rescue those trapped in the Pool and drain the flooding — but you better hope you can tread water until they get to you!
There are four main attractions to The Pool of Tears: the pool, the jacuzzi, the wave pool, and the lazy river. The water is always just the right temperature, clean and clear and refreshing. It feels as if the sun shines down from above you, warm and comforting. Scattered through the pool area are clusters of modern lounge chairs, just waiting for someone to come relax in them. The Pool is, in a word, serene.
But not for long. The waves generated by the wave pool begin to get choppier, and larger, until it becomes clear that the generator itself is malfunctioning — too late, however, to avoid the tsunami that crashes through the whole Pool and leaves it flooded. Thankfully, no water escapes into the rest of the hotel, and the hotel staff work quickly to rescue those trapped in the Pool and drain the flooding — but you better hope you can tread water until they get to you!
III. EAT ME, DRINK ME
The Pig & Pepper buffet serves lunch foods from across all different cultures, offering something for everyone, and some things you've never even heard of.
On offer with these lunchtime dishes are cookies and biscuits and scones of all kinds, held on tiered trays with signs that proclaim Eat Me! in delightfully whimsical calligraphy. Nearby, hotel staff man a small booth for doling out cups of fruit waters from large pitchers, which have Drink Me! painted playfully on their sides.
It takes a while to feel the effects — perhaps you've even left the Pig & Pepper by the time it happens — but those who eat the cookies and scones inevitably end up growing in size, whether a few inches or feet, and those who drank the fruity water similarly shrink. Eat enough and you might strain the ceiling; drink enough and you'll be the size of a thimble! It's not permanent — if no one else can help you figure out how to get back to normal, the staff certainly will — but it's definitely inconvenient!
On offer with these lunchtime dishes are cookies and biscuits and scones of all kinds, held on tiered trays with signs that proclaim Eat Me! in delightfully whimsical calligraphy. Nearby, hotel staff man a small booth for doling out cups of fruit waters from large pitchers, which have Drink Me! painted playfully on their sides.
It takes a while to feel the effects — perhaps you've even left the Pig & Pepper by the time it happens — but those who eat the cookies and scones inevitably end up growing in size, whether a few inches or feet, and those who drank the fruity water similarly shrink. Eat enough and you might strain the ceiling; drink enough and you'll be the size of a thimble! It's not permanent — if no one else can help you figure out how to get back to normal, the staff certainly will — but it's definitely inconvenient!
IV. WELCOME HOME
Maybe you just want to be alone — well, that's what you have your room key for! Oysters room on the second and third floors of the hotel, one to a room. You were assured your room would be exactly what you'd always wished for — and for some, that's right! It's exactly as you would have decorated it yourself. But for others, their rooms are totally wrong. A grizzled cowboy can't have a pink room! Hotel staff are firm, though: every room is exactly as its owner wants it to be. Search your feelings, Oyster. You know it to be true.
On each bed are the Oysters' personal effects, minus weapons, as well as a towel folded in the shape of a heart, and a single foil-wrapped chocolate. If eaten, the chocolate is delicious, and incites a feeling of tender warmth in Oysters — not lust, but a desire for closeness. Why spend time in your room, when you could go find a new friend in the casino?
On each bed are the Oysters' personal effects, minus weapons, as well as a towel folded in the shape of a heart, and a single foil-wrapped chocolate. If eaten, the chocolate is delicious, and incites a feeling of tender warmth in Oysters — not lust, but a desire for closeness. Why spend time in your room, when you could go find a new friend in the casino?
Welcome to the (second!) first TDM of Happy Hearts, a new panfandom roleplaying game here on DW! If you have any questions, please direct them to the first comment on this page. Happy playing, Oysters!
ยฉ tessisamess
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The development of tech capable of travelling long-distances in space got derailed around the beginning of the 21st century for us. Different pressures sounds on the money.
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[She's thinking "active reason someone might not want to do it" versus "something else just became more important to progress", considering her own world's circumstances.]
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[ there hasn't been much conversation about when they're all from — miguel's noticed a few differences between reactions to the empathy devices, which could be put down to 'different worlds'. on the flip side, it could also be— ]
What year is it for you?
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2067. How about you?
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[ once upon a time, miguel might have wondered about how things could have gone differently to make his earth worse than it was by 2099, but fortunately (quote-unquote) it's no longer a question: interference with the timeline and space-time continuum at large from the heroic age had given him front row seats to a whole host of unpleasant what ifs.
(retrospectively, it's no wonder someone from t.o.t.e.m had decided he shouldn't be allowed to exist in 2014.
oh well. all's well that ends well.) ]
I'd say I'm sorry your world reached that point, but I'm guessing it could always be worse.
[ like, travelling around planets for concerts doesn't sound like a totally awful gig. ]
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What's done is done. I'm not one to worry about the past much, and as things are, the cluster I come from is settling down better than it had been. So I was just focusing on my work and seeing where that took me.
[Leaving out the part where she was literally created for her job, and also that that job involves singing on active battlefields because music has a habit of having surprising power where she comes from.] Perhaps this place will be quite a different experience for both of us, then.
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his weird generally doesn't come with a side of 'stuck in a hotel'.
it also generally doesn't come with him losing his powers. ]
Well, I don't tend to make it a habit to not wear shoes. So it's already something.
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[Which she doubts, but then, she's never cared that much about covering up outside of the public eye, so she's not sure what someone who's more attached to being clothed in general might think.]
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Walking around barefoot isnโt any more hygienic.
[ or, truthfully: itโs less about covering up per se, or hygiene and more about sensitive physiology, in miguelโs case. ]
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[She's wondering if there's a particular significance to it, though she hasn't seen enough of this place yet to know what it could possibly be.]
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I'm pretty sure complaint boxes are just for decoration most of the time. Makes people feel better if they think they're in with a shout of being listened to.
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[The staff seem to at least wear something on their feet, so it can't be that much of a cultural rule.]
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[ and as far as these things go, it's not the only oddity miguel's noticed — sure, the physical changes related to his own genetic changes have remained, but not the abilities that came with them: no webs, his eyesight is almost back to being what it had been, although it hasn't escaped his notice that he's still shocking light sensitive, his talons are—
well, less said about those, the better. ]
Not apropos of nothing, but have you noticed anything else strange? Relatively speaking.
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Strange is definitely relative for me. Though the fact that I didn't see anyone lose in the casino in the entire time I was there was definitely rather odd even by my standards.
[That just seems against the entire concept of probability.]
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Huh. Yeah, I was always under the impression that most of these places were rigged in the house's favor, not the guests.
Though I guess that doesn't really matter when the guests aren't paying and no-one can shocking leave.
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Otherwise, did you receive some sort of marking on your body when you arrived?
[Mikumo's had a moment to pick over her body before making this post, so she spotted the new marking pretty quickly. Last time she got tangled up in something on this kind of scale, she basically malfunctioned.]