Duplicity Game Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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duplicitymemes2019-01-11 06:40 pm
duplicitymods) wrote in duplicitymemes2019-01-11 06:40 pm
Entry tags:
TDM #4 ( revised )
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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 L.I.E.S. 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 L.I.E.S. after a year; however, results have remained unsatisfactory and testing still continues. 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 highrise. 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. Enjoy your free time until orientation! Participation is mandatory by all new and old arrivals. Oh, and one more thing. It's fucking cold. Better bundle up. |
 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. |
 While the societal climate between Dominants and Submissives remains somewhat neutral throughout Duplicity, there has been the occasional whisper of defiance and call for equality. Yet, demonstrations and visible proof of this unhappiness spreads faster by word of mouth on a day exactly when you need it most. Welcome to Autonomy, a "traveling" nightclub that is never in the same place twice. People wanting to attend only learn of its lucrative location and password hours before it opens for business. Tonight, I choose the third door will get you inside and into the temporary freedom club Autonomy has to offer. In this circle, there are no assigned designations and no consequences for taking a role that isn't the one given by society. So, a Dominant may become the Submissive they've always wanted to be—or vice versa. Dominants and Submissives alike are able to mingle without repercussion and be themselves. Food, drinks, and private areas for more intimate – or if your preference is sexual – encounters are provided. Donations are accepted at any point during the night to further Autonomy's attempts of spreading the fulfillment that comes from being untitled. On the night you choose to visit, Autonomy is holding a random lottery for temporary connections. When entering, you have the choice of submitting your name into this drawing to be paired with someone else in the club regardless of designation. A short while later, a message will pop up on your device with the name and information of your partner, and whether or not you choose to meet them is purely at your discretion. Having more than one connection isn't completely unusual either. |
 Gratification of being a successful Dominant or Submissive isn't necessarily simple. Learning curves are to be made, and mistakes will happen. Led by a Dominant and Submissive couple – Miriam and Victoria, who have been paired for twenty-two years – a monthly meeting for unattached Dominants and Submissives is held in the conference room of Morning Wood motel in the Down. The meeting starts a few minutes after nine and has no designated end time. The couple introduce themselves and explain the purpose of the meeting: learn the proper method for a new kink and possibly find your perfect partner. The space is intimate and well-stocked with refreshments. To begin, Victoria, while blindfolded, balances on her hands and knees with her back perfectly level. Her partner, when ready, places various items on the level surface–a full cup, a plate. The Submissive is meant to hold the items until the Dominant believes she's reached her limit. The exercise is one of trust and understanding. The demonstration is a short one, followed by Miriam removing the blindfold and soothing her Submissive. The words are whispered low and with care, clearly a method that is specific to this couple. The process is concluded with the pair handing out workups, videos, and answering questions. Anyone wishing to practice Purposeful Submission can do so in the open room with a random volunteer, aided by the couple, or can find someone to take to one of the rented rooms. Sex may follow any scene but is not necessarily included. Experimenting with unattached Dominants and Submissives allows for new relationships to form. |
Please read carefully. On each Test Drive Meme, there will be a section noting character roles based on birthdays; these will vary each TDM. On an IC level, character will still have gone through the doors but assignments OOCly are still randomized. When applying, there is a section of the application that denotes whether the character chose "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 characters who have blue eyes or one blue eye and another color are Submissives. All characters who have brown eyes or one brown eye and another color are Dominants. Characters with any other color eyes are Dominants. To use this TDM as a door pass please link this on your app and place whether it is Dominant or Submissive. Please remember to mark any necessary content, and have fun!! |
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Instead though, he closes his eye.]
Can you blame me? This is all a bit...much.
[He says it even as he does as he's been instructed, not without a little trepidation and reluctance, but he does it nonetheless. Tries to will his broad shoulders to fractionally loosen, for the tight-wound tension in him to come undone. At first he feels nothing in particular besides a flustered uncertainty at having Asra's hands on him after all this time, but when soft sensation turns to firm pressure and slides from gentleness into pain he lets out a breath, soft and low, and his hard-held shoulders begin to drop.
Ask questions, the magician says. He certainly has plenty of those.]
How could you have been here for half a year? It's not an easy thing to believe, you know, when I've seen you far more recently than that.
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Asra sooths the pain away with careful, clever fingers, only to make it hiss forth again. Steady and smooth, like waves rushing up a shore.
When he answers, his voice is measured. ]
I don't blame you. I had... a terrible time, when I first arrived.
Don't think too hard about the lapse in time. You're here, yourself. Pulled into a fantastical other world on the whim of a people who've also decided, offhand, that you should have a slave-status. That shouldn't be possible, either.
I've been here half a year. Long enough to have fought and railed to go home, suffered defeats, gone more quietly. Wonder in circles what's wrong with me that they'd make me a Submissive, when I...
[ He bit the end of that statement off, and gave himself a small shake, and attended to the movements of his hands as if it were as anchoring for him to focus on someone else as it was for Julian to feel. His fingers flowed to the fine bones of the other man's wrists, pressing viciously in a place he knew would make the other man gasp. ]
... Next question.
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--it's not the time to think about it. The sharp ache that flares up at the vicious pressing of Asra's fingers gives him a moment in which to contemplate that answer, to try to feel out the gaps in it, at what the carefully measured tone is concealing. There's something there, something underneath, but as has always been the case Julian can't lay hands on it.
Isn't sure, in this instance if he wants to.
It's not a real answer, makes as much sense as anything else he's seen or heard or done today, but for the moment he accepts it purely because there's just so much to take in, and he isn't sure how much of it he's ready for. And so his lips part on a rebuttal of Asra's half-finished sentence, means to tell him that there isn't anything wrong with him, that he himself has just said that all of this has been decided on a whim. But he can't say that, not to Asra of all people, and so he asks something else, instead.]
Are you...all right? That is, um, you don't seem all right.
[It isn't the question he'd meant to ask.]
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And then after is the silence, as Julian collects himself, and then thinks, and Asra feels he can almost see the gears turning based on the tightening of his expression. The question is...
... perfect, somehow. So very Julian. Comfortingly so, such that he slipped his hands around, tucked them up underneath Julian's, palm-to-palm, like small songbirds nestling and hiding under the wing of another. The sigh that trickles through his lips is relieved. ]
No, I'm not. But this is.. grounding.
Comfortingly familiar.
... Thank you.
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So this is confusing, it is, cements all the ways in which the last twenty-four hours have been confounding and strange, yet when Asra's hands move to tuck neatly under his, he still makes no move to pull away.
Because it's a sentiment he shares, at least. Grounding and comfortingly familiar-- when thrown into a world so far from everything he's ever known, sitting here with the magician like this, that's exactly how he would describe it. And as is so often the case for Julian, it settles something in him to move away from his own concerns and questions, to place someone else's needs above them instead.
He clears his throat. Uncertain. Answers anyway.]
Oh. Well, you're welcome, of course. Is there anything I could do? Other than this, I mean.
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I'm... tired of running in circles. It's one reason I have to be grateful to this place. You break often enough and you start to see the patterns.
So let's not ever go to that place again. Where you'll do anything to help, to avoid doing anything for yourself, and I pour all my frustrations and loss and hurts into you as if that'll make anything better.
[ He curled his fingers up, dragging his nails along the topographies of Julian's palms in a slow, outward-moving starburst. ]
Next question.
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A game of indulgence and avoidance that has very little to do with love.
But his head is a mire, still tangled and pulsing with all the things that have happened in so short a time and he doesn't trust himself to know what to say, certainly doesn't trust himself to do what is right or wanted, and so he answers just a little coolly--]
Just this, then.
[He's silent for just a moment, eye closed, hands held motionless against the bright points of pain that come from the press and drag of Asra's nails against his palms.]
What is this, anyway?
[It's another question he hadn't quite meant to ask.]
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[ But he draws his hands back a little, and with only one hand sharply pinches the fine skin between two of Julian's fingers. If it feels a little like revenge for even asking, well-- it is.
But he also doesn't risk saying any more. This isn't his Julian, and he's muddled with fate and timelines and this place enough to know when to hold his peace.
Besides, it's not the first time he's lost a lover. Or second. Or third. He was, wearily, terribly, beginning to get used to the feeling.
He doesn't smooth away that pain, though; follows it up with another, a hard press between the elegant bones of both Julian's hands, radiating uncomfortable heat down into his wrists and up into his fingers. Focus. ]
Next question.
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He never has known when to shut up.
And so he accepts those small bright punishments with a fractured exhalation, takes the hint, turns his mind instead toward the situation at hand.]
So what do we do from here, just accept this?
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[ Asra covered Julian's hands with his own, and pressed them down to the other man's knees, so that the bridge no longer existed between them. His quicksilver-purple eyes were grave, and the fine skin around his eyes was tautly tense.
He looked... older. Just a little. There were fine lines around the edges of his eyes which hadn't existed before. The edges of his face were sharper, leaner. His shoulders more defined, where his scandalous neckline revealed too much of them. Asra crossed his arms, toes curling into his feet as he pensively watched the doctor. ]
You... need to determine for yourself what you want to do. How you want to respond to what this place is, and what it demands of you.
I know... that in some ways, this place is everything you could ever want.
[ Not just the dominance and submission, the sex; but the luxuries it affords his sister, the high degree of amenities and even public health. There aren't even venereal diseases to worry about. Food was far more plentiful here for an enterprising Submissive than it had been for scrawny orphans on the wharfs of Vesuvia.
Asra's eyes flit over Julian's expression, his own thoughtful. ]
Going home... is impossible without any major miracles. They've amputated what parts of my magic might have allowed for it. And done the same to all other magicians who might, at one time, have been capable. That doesn't mean that I'm not investigating other opportunities: but you should know, at the outset, that in the shortest possibilities, we might be here for months.
Years, even.
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It's disturbing, honestly. The subtle changes in him, all the things that go unsaid and act to compound the impression that Asra has already given, himself. That something is wrong, that it's all wrong.
He wants to do something, of course he does, because perhaps things between them have always been strained and strange and somehow quietly twisted but it doesn't reduce the fact that Julian cares about him, that Asra left marks upon his heart that won't easily wear away, even if he knows that what played out between them never should have happened. It did, and he can't take it back. Wouldn't want to, despite everything. But he's already been told once, just this, and so he holds himself back from making offers that Asra wouldn't want to hear.
Never mind that he has, of course, already noticed that there are aspects of this place that could make it everything for him, everything in a way that their world couldn't be. But Asra seems to have been harmed by what they've done to him (Asra isn't like him, is he, wouldn't take to this in the way he could), and there are things left open and undone back in Vesuvia that - for the moment at least - still feel most pressing to him. It's these things that tug and tear at him, along with all the strangeness and the alarming changes in people he thinks he ought to know and the fact is that right now he doesn't know what he wants. How he will or should respond to this.
It's too soon to say.
But Asra has given him his answer.]
I um, I suppose I knew that. That if you've really been here for half a year then something must be...missing, or simply impossible to do.
Months. Maybe years, then.
[He says it as though speaking it aloud with his own lips might make it feel more real to him.]
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Just pretend everyone's a pirate.
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Better. Much better.
So... now that you have a long table of forbidden delights all tantalizingly at your fingertips: what do you want to do, first?
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Julian's smile remains, and he flings one arm across his face dramatically.]
I don't know, Asra. I'm quite at a loss. Spoiled for choice! What does a starving man do when faced with an endless banquet?
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[ Said with a soft, silvery laugh, head shaking and making his fleecy waves bounce buoyantly about his tawny face as he leans back and smooths both hands down his thighs. ]
Above all else: enjoy yourself. I know how titillating you find the flush of shame, but... it feels important to say.
Enjoy yourself. And I'm happy that you're here.
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My dear, I fully intend to.
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[ Asra's smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, made him look like a happy cat that might, at any moment, deign to purr. It lasted only a moment before he twisted, pulling a glossy black communicator from a back pocket. ]
Do you remember getting one of these? And if you did, do you have it with you? I'm going to teach you how to use it. Best to think of it like... a magic mirror from a fable: you can use it to see things happening from across a great distance, leave messages for other people without sending a letter, and-- the best part-- keep magical portraits.
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Oh, um...I have something like that...it's around here somewhere.
[Though as Asra seems to have correctly surmised, Julian hasn't worked out how to use it. Hasn't even attempted to, or even given it all that much thought since the moment he'd received it, if he's honest. He draws it out now, though. Lays it on the floor between them.]
There it is. Let's see this magic mirror, then.
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And you swipe like this to activate it. It's pretty dizzying, and most of those little pictures are purely nonsense... but this one here, that looks... like a boxy cloud, I guess?
[ He taps it, and enters in his own number as 'Asra', goes to quickly type a message where Julian can see, playfully mimicking the doctor's mode of speech, 'hello dear, you are indeed the best and i owe you precisely three drinks'. Sends it to himself, and demonstrates how it appears on his own device. ]
See? Instantaneous communication. And look, how wonderful Ilya, you called me the best, and agreed to take me out!
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--and admittedly the potential for instant conversation - no letters, no messenger birds and all that - is quite fascinating. He leans over and blinks at the message, slides on a crooked grin.]
That's cheating, you realise.
[Asra does do a good job of mimicking him, his pattern of speech, and he moves to take back his own device now, means to examine it a little more thoroughly.]
But would you look at that, instantaneous communication. I could invite you for drinks whenever I felt like it.
[Which also means Asra could turn him down whenever he felt like it too, but never mind that part.]
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[ Light and bright and teasing; he shifts one foot, using it to nudge one of Julian's knees. ]
You could, and you'd better. One would think this whole crazy place was made to just... concoct ever-more reasons for people to drink.
Okay, okay, now it's your turn! Write me something.
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I'll say. I've wanted nothing more than something strong and nefarious since the moment I arrived. But all right, hold on...
[And he endeavours to copy what Asra just showed him, albeit with rather more muttering and mistakes made, wrong letters knocked and typing slow. It's quite different from simply writing things out after all...and even then his handwriting is largely illegible.
He gets there in the end though, and the message comes through moments later. 'Thanks for helping me out with all this. I really do owe you a drink or three, once I'm able to do so.']
There, I think it worked.
[Because thanking Asra this way, it seems rather easier than to say it aloud.]
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It worked! See, nothing to it.
Set it down between us. I'll give you more than just the way to contact me. But Pasha, too, and her contracted man. My dominant.
After that, I'll show you the way to just that sort of place. I've already thought of a game to play, once we're there.
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For now...Julian's eye moves quickly over the magician's face when he says the words my dominant, and there's a flash of mixed feelings in him then, emotions he doesn't know quite how to name.
So he doesn't. Just for now, for today, wants to keep everything as simple as he can.
He places the device down between them once again, as requested.]
A game, is it? Well, then. You know I like a good game.
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