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duplicitymemes2025-03-10 04:55 pm
duplicitymods) wrote in duplicitymemes2025-03-10 04:55 pm
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TDM #41
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It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. Yet, solace is found in the lies we tell each other, comforted by the peace of knowing that we're not alone in our depravity, and once on this path, sin itself becomes the lesser of two evils masked in a cloud of normalcy. This is how Duplicity has functioned since the beginning. The divide of power and social standing is overt in that Dominants influence the decisions made both publicly and privately while Submissives cater to the rules presented to them. It is the way of Duplicity to assign random designations at birth with no leeway in altering what has been given. Climate in the Up is far stricter than that of the Down; violating outlined personas for a Dominant or Submissive while in full view of others is punished by degree of infraction. In the Down, many tend to turn a blind eye to these sorts of offenses. To counteract the discovery of the deceit gene – a natural "negative" response to all stimuli – the LIEs program was founded. The program had been designed to introduce new subjects to the current environment and test for the deceit gene through immersion in Duplicity's standing society. Sexual impulses and encounters increase the chances of detecting the gene within these individuals. Participants are typically released from LIEs after a year; however, results have remained unsatisfactory and testing still continues. ...and you're here! Finally! Welcome to Duplicity. After choosing a door and stepping through to the other side, the first thing that greets you are the enthusiastic faces of people in medical scrubs and pristine lab coats. Their enthusiasm translates to eagerness as they strip you of your clothes to perform a thorough examination—you will be healed, bathed, and given a paper gown to wear until your items can be processed and delivered to your residence later in the evening. You are also given a device that accesses the network as well as the time and location of Orientation. If you enter Duplicity into the Up, congratulations! You're a Dominant, which means you are immediately picked up by a limo after processing and taken to your high-rise. Here, it is two Dominants per floor with separate apartments. If you enter Duplicity into the Down, congratulations! You're a Submissive, which means you are directed towards public transportation with the address of the motel you'll be living in. Here, it is two Submissives per room with a shared common space for all rooms. Submissives are provided with a plain black pleather collar to wear and Dominants are given bracelets made of the same black pleather. The simple design is an immediate visual indicator that they have not yet signed a contract and they will be informed that more elaborate or personalized styles are a privilege reserved for those who do. Enjoy your free time until Orientation! Participation is mandatory for all new and past arrivals. The first hints of spring are in the air. Large piles of snow still linger, but precipitation has turned to rain and the breeze gets a little warmer every day. It's time to swap out wool coats for umbrellas and turtlenecks for tea dresses! |
 After stepping through the door and participating in Orientation, LIERs are assembled together in the Up for a tour of Duplicity in its entirety. Seats are in pairs and randomly assigned to Dominants and Submissives alike. Traveling from Fiddler's Square, the train journeys through various parts of the Up, showcasing society and examples of lifestyle. Along the way, frequent stops are made; a variety of passengers can be seen exiting and entering the doors. A Dominant with a kneeling Submissive takes a seat near the front of the train at one stop. A small group of Submissives board and sit closer to the LIERs at another, all seemingly content in their roles. As the tour continues through the Up, the train passes close to the Market and White Wall Bridge and zips by North Park before heading into the Down and bypassing Red Wall Bridge and South Park. The train makes a "final" stop at Riddler's Square, where inhabitants of the Down are instructed to return to their temporary housing. Those who live in the Up are permitted to stay on the train and revisit the same locations while returning. |
 (cw: cockwarming, lap sitting, frottage, edging, public sexual acts, public displays, public transport) Far too many people can’t seem to follow directions. Reading a map shouldn’t be that hard, so LIES has taken it upon themselves to update their usual city tour to refresh newcomers and graduates alike. This month’s orientation includes a more in-depth tour than the usual train ride, coupling it with bus routes that lead groups through various stations and stops that show off some of the city’s most notable landmarks. To your left you will see Fiddler's Square, and over on the right you will see the greenhouse, opened just last year. Enjoy this drive along the coast! The beach looks lovely and the lighthouse stands proud and watchful, but the city recommends against visiting either one. Isn't the business district much lovelier, with all the fancy hotels and lively dance clubs? Dominants and Submissives both new and old are required to take or give the tour at least once, depending on how long they have been in the city. Those who have lived in the city for over six months will find themselves given maps to follow and brochures that describe various places in town; they are paired with newcomers who haven't been here quite as long, and are still learning what the city has to offer them. Whether a tour guide or a member of the tour group, Dominants will be given priority seating, while Submissives are expected to either kneel at their feet, sit on their laps, or even stay standing in trains and buses that, curiously, are always packed. Everyone’s taking these tours, so it's no wonder these carriages are so crowded. Something strange happens on these tours, though. It starts small and faint, but the longer you spend in these crowded buses and trains, the hotter you feel - and the people surrounding you look more and more attractive. But this is Duplicity, and no one will bat an eye if the Submissive on a Dominant’s lap starts humping them in front of everyone else… After all, it seems like everyone else is already also doing the same. The strange part? No one can get off. No matter how far you take it, or how long you try to climax - you just can't. No one can. No one's getting off on this tour, not until the bus or train makes it to each pre-planned stop. Please mind the gap as you disembark, and try not to come all over the concrete the minute you step out of the vehicle! |
 (cw: randomized kinks, exhibitionism, transactional sex) The tours aren't all about sex on the go. While the tour guides are given maps and brochures to study up on, the tour-takers are given little stamp cards and instructions to complete a fun stamp rally. Visiting each of the locations on your card can get you an adorable stamp, and completing the stamps will get you a fun and useful prize! Participating locations include: ▪️ The Aquarium ▪️ The Library ▪️ Cupid's Castle ▪️ PUSSY Academy ▪️ The Obelisk ▪️ Riddler's Square ...and more! Every card is different, and will take you all around the Up and the Down. The catch - you don't get a stamp until you use your device to scan an official code found in stamp stands at each stop. Doing so brings up a pose to be done with at least one other person. Make sure to pose quickly, a camera somewhere in the area will flash in a few moments to take your photo. Some photos are fairly straightforward - a kiss to the cheek, or a slap to the ass. Others are a bit more involved - giving a blowjob, or getting pegged. Don't complain, some unlucky people might get something convoluted (can anyone truly bend that way? Time to find out!). You get unlimited tries to take the perfect picture - so if you don't manage it the first time, simply scan again and strike another pose. Unfortunately the pose won't change with any additional scans, so make sure to do your best with what you’ve been given! Completed stamp cards can be exchanged at the Orientation Center for a loaded money pass! Particularly valuable to Submissives (uncontracted ones, or ones who want to buy things by themselves), money passes are honored all over the city, and can be used to purchase necessities without a Dominant’s signature. The pass is valid for a whole month, and has enough to cover a month’s worth of decent warm meals, a few indulgences, and maybe some appropriate clothes for the season. Buy whatever you need to impress the Dominant of your dreams and secure a contract that suits your needs. |
 (cw: clothes play, optional crossdressing, optional transactional sex, public sex, mirror sex, exhibitionism) In a bid to attract new customers, the boutique Delicate Desires has partnered with LIES to advertise their shops as a one-stop-shop for new arrivals to get their hands on necessities they’ll need to make their lives easier and more enriched. With every completed stamp card, Submissives will also receive a coupon for 40% off anything in the store. Get a frilly, lacy outfit for every occasion! If you don’t have any cash or failed to complete your stamp card - don’t fret! Find another Submissive who is willing to spend money on you from their own pass, or find a Dominant to spoil you - with the outfit being one of their choice, of course. There are changing rooms available for customers to try on outfits and one may find that when they look at themselves in the mirrors of the store, their self-confidence spikes. It doesn’t matter how good or bad they may objectively look, they’ll feel like the hottest person to ever grace Duplicity’s streets. If said boost in confidence comes with feeling hot and bothered, well, the clerks won’t mind if the rooms are used for a quickie, so long as you’re, well, quick about it. They're expecting a lot of customers! A competing store next door, Allure & Adorn, has decided to use this opportunity to try and lure customers into their own shop, boasting that their clothes are just as good - if not better! - than the ones offered next door. They will also accept the money passes that Submissives may have earned during the stamp rally, but their prices are a little less favorable than the boutique's. Their outfits, instead of their mirrors, seem to make those that wear them feel prone to showing off and indulging in exhibitionist activities. No fucking in the changing rooms here though - this store has class! Go out on the streets if you wish to indulge in that sort of behaviour. |
Please read carefully. On each Test Drive Meme, there will be a section noting character roles; these will vary each TDM. On an IC level, characters will still have gone through the doors but the assignments are OOCly randomized. When applying, there is a section of the application that denotes whether the character chooses "left" or "right." When participating on the TDM, there will be a third option. Players may link either a top level or a thread (five or more comments from their character) from the TDM and title the link as "Door Pass." This means that the player is choosing to take the designation that they were randomly assigned on the TDM, rather than taking the designation of a door. If the player decides to select a door rather than use the pass, then they are trying their luck; they may get the same designation they had on the TDM or the opposite. Once the application is submitted, players can't change their choice. To assign roles to characters for this TDM, use the following guide: All new arrivals on this TDM are Submissive. To Note: Characters can only swap their designation for one of the following reasons: an event occurs that allows it or there are OOC reasons that make it a necessity. Any swap always requires mod approval and each character can only ever switch once. Characters that are being reapped will keep their previous designation but players can choose to tag on new TDMs with different designations for fun! Test Drive threads can be used as activity proofs for characters currently in-game. Please remember to mark any necessary content, and have fun!! |
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In counterpoint, being handled is one of those things about this place that tends to stick in the craw for a lot of people. He wouldn't blame Zhao for balking at it much more directly, but then the pragmatism of taking it in stride tells him a fair bit about the man sitting across from him. Vrenille makes it a point not to judge anyone for anything when they first arrive here--it would be pretty small and mean to judge a person on what's probably the worst and most shocking day of their life. Sometimes people do impress him though.
So Zhao asks about anyone looking for a chef and Vrenille's smile broadens to a grin as he spells out where his thoughts have been heading all along. "Just so happens I do. That's what I wanna hire you for."
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Likely the handling will grate over time, the way it did while he was heading the Liumang. And pragmatism will win out most of the time, most of the time he'll be able to handle it. Most of the time. It's a concern for later.
Right now, Zhao meets that grin with his own. "Oh ho! Now that I know it's a job interview, I've really gotta knock dinner outta the park."
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He slaps a hand on Zhao's knee, "C'mon. You in the mood to take a walk to the Down? I'll show you." No reason to delay when they can just go there now.
"Also maybe tell me if you got any ethical objections to flirting with your prospective boss," which is, in itself, him flirting a bit, testing the waters to see how Zhao takes it. Why shouldn't he, after all? Zhao is cute, and more importantly Vrenille likes his attitude, his energy. And this place being what it is, the situations it inevitably puts people in, it's best to try and get a read on someone's boundaries.
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The light flirting makes him laugh, and he shakes his head. "Depends on the prospective boss... though that's not really an ethical objection so much as personal preference." The sultriness in his voice as a matter of course is amped up just a little.
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He takes an adequate measure of encouragement from the tone in Zhao's voice, his smile playing easily as they walk, finding a natural match of stride. Vrenille's got an inch or so on Zhao but it's not a big difference, and more importantly, no matter what the locals tend to do (there's a Dominant leading a submissive on a leash just over yonder), he opts for walking side by side as equals with no sign of hierarchy.
"Of course. You're into who--and what--you're into." Everyone has their preferences. "What's your type, Zhao?"
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There is a hint of surprise at the question; it's not one he's gotten very often. Usually people look at him and they make their own assumptions about what he likes, and he doesn't bother to correct them. "I'm into men, and-- y'know, masculine people who might not strictly consider themselves men." Hopelessly drawn to the passionate and driven, men that have always known what they want and reach out for it with both hands, say it with their full chest. "My type's usually bigger, muscley guys. Someone who can throw me around a little and not get worn out, y'know. But I'm not immune to the charms of a prettyboy either." He grins. "What about you?"
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His own answer is, on the surface of it, more capacious: "I'm into men, exclusively. Beyond that," a half shrug. "I don't wanna say I'm not picky, but I'm flexible. This place has pegged me as a Dom, and you'd be surprised how many guys turn out to be looking for one when it comes down to it. So I've ended up doing that a lot more often here than I did back home. I don't mind it."
Vrenille's best friend says his type is guys who look sad and pathetic in the rain, which he considers to be a bit unfair. He adapts to situations, and he has a lot of time for people. He takes men one by one, as he's always done. It just also happens that being a good listener tends to give him reciprocity with men who've been missing that in their lives. He survived on that sort of reciprocity long before he got here; in this place it's just taken on its own particular hue.
"When I first got here, I was real uncomfortable with my designation though," he doesn't mind admitting. "Not for the sex--that was always fine. For all the rest of it that this place piles on together."
no subject
But Zhao is a good listener too-- had to be observant, good at reading people and situations, to survive this long. Vrenille's words strikes him as those of someone who can mold himself into whatever's needed or wanted in the moment, or at least someone who takes on that role in the bedroom. It's something he's seen most often in sex industry workers-- the ones that stay in the business because they enjoy the work, especially.
"Not used to being the one with the power over others?" He guesses from Vrenille's initial discomfort with his assignment. He knows exactly how stressful and exhausting that kind of power can be, when it's something you take as a responsibility. An obligation to care for the people under you. "I always thought the idea that what you like in the bedroom has some bearing on who you are as a person was pretty bullshit, but this place really takes it to a new, fuckin' weird extreme." It's not quite an admission that he feels the same way about his own designation, but he does.
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"Power's messy," he observes. "It's one part what you got and one part what you do. I was a street kid, so I know something 'bout that," which is also to say both yes and no to Zhao's question. So far as the responsibility front goes, though, he's hit the nail on the head.
"There's being a man with a plan for yourself, and then there's being a man with a plan that can see the people closest to you through, that can keep everyone you care 'bout whole, even when the bombs and the meteor showers are falling all around you."
He shakes his head as he admits, "I never saw myself as that guy. Back home, I'm the guy who follows that guy." And it's what he's come to understand, in retrospect, made him so uncomfortable at first, like another inflection of putting on airs, as though he was pretending to be something he's not.
"Here, they like their little boxes though. Like to make it sound like all the world lines up and fits in, neat and tidy--the way you fuck, the way you walk down the street. But it's also a ruse, a lie. Duplicity's duplicitous." It's the first rule of the city, the thing to always keep in mind, "Always gotta watch for the double-speak."
And here he leans in to tell Zhao a conspiratorial little secret, which isn't actually secret at all: "The creator of the LIES program and mayor of the city? He's a submissive."
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Sometimes he thinks he might have been better at it if he had gone completely numb, if there hadn't been that buried part of him that still felt too damn much, was too soft, cared too much. That doubt's gotten quieter over time, though. He definitely doesn't regret giving it all up. "It ain't all it's cracked up to be, being a 'leader of men'."
Like the best of liars, the city tells you on its face exactly what it is, and you let your guard down, thinking that if you know the lies are coming, you'll have some sort of advantage. But it never quite works out that way. "Exactly what it says on the tin, huh." Zhao leans in with interest for that seditious little not-secret, eyes widening behind his sunglasses. Then he scoffs and shakes his head. "Fuckin' figures... A politician that's a hypocrite. Nothin' special about that."
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It fills out Vrenille's mental picture of him that much more, pieces of a puzzle slotting into place, a fair idea now of the image it's revealing. A family that holds wealth and power and leadership inside an urban grey zone--a family business one might say, with tongue inserted firmly in cheek. It's so much more polite than calling it organised crime. He doesn't feel the need to probe it with questions just now though--it's something he can simply accept. Even if it was present tense rather than past, he could accept it. He's very good at accepting people as they are.
"My guild leader's a tactician," he offers. "Where we go, the missions we take, the battle plans, the parameters we work in, it's all down to him. He'd send me on a lotta errands back home, fact finding, recon, things like that. So I saw some of the workings of it. I always thought, I can never do what he does. I dunno how anyone can do what he does. The weight of making sure we all come home safe each time," he shakes his head.
"'Course this place is different. The kinda calculus it requires. You'll be surprised how much it asks for though--strategic thinking, tactical choices." It's a word to the wise, something it helps to start factoring in early.
"So far as C.R. Eator goes, there's hypocrisy there, sure, but I reckon it's not just that. I think it's desperation. This whole 'deceit gene' they're supposed to be trying to find? I mean it's obviously nonsense. But just 'cause it's a farce doesn't mean it's not an obsession too."
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It's actually kinda nice, being somewhere his reputation doesn't follow him. For however long that's going to last.
He nods along as Vrenille explains all that his guild leader had to do, humming in understanding. "Sounds heavy." The weight is a familiar one, even if it takes a different shape.
Zhao will take that advice, tucking it away with everything else Vrenille's been telling him. As they leave the elevator to the Down, he's more alert (though he doesn't look it), looking out for anyone lingering by the exit. Barely been here and he's already seen the signs of gang activity targeting LIERs. No one to interrupt them this time, though.
"I guess bein' obsessed with finding something that doesn't exist would make you desperate... or do you think it's a cover for somethin' else he's desperate for?" He muses.