Duplicity Game Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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duplicitymemes2019-03-11 12:23 pm
duplicitymods) wrote in duplicitymemes2019-03-11 12:23 pm
Entry tags:
TDM #5
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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 insanely windy. Better batten down the hatches. |
 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. |
 In the peak of the early morning, the last bits of construction are finished; by afternoon, there’s commotion in the Down that seems to brighten the slummish area. Paper lanterns are strung across the beams and awnings of various sectors, and there are stands in the main square with masked vendors that call out in greeting. There are parades of people making a racket, both drunken and sometimes disorderly. It’s colorful, loud, and it’s sexual—seen from the various displays, sounds, and provocative calls all around. Anyone who asks about the reasoning behind the festival will be motioned in close – as if it’s all a big secret – and told this: that it’s an annual free-for-all celebration for the city to let loose without L.I.E.S. breathing down their neck about the laws with the unspoken agreement that what goes on there stays there and that it ends at the appointed time. The government turns a blind eye during this period; some suspect the officials join in, though there’s no proof nor does LIES have anything to do with the activities whatsoever. In return, the people are content to wait another year. They sometimes call it Carnaval. To celebrate and encourage the fun, the vendors won’t accept normal currency. Only one type is taken, though ALL participants are given a small starting sum along with a mask of their choosing. This currency is in the form of colorful beads gathered in a number of ways including: » Glory holes with tip buckets on the receiving side. Any kind of sex act will do, though the amount of beads someone gets for their time depends on how good they are, of course. The sort of things one can buy with these colorful beads range from food to sex toys, little knickknacks, and special masks available closer to the second half of the week. Anything that could be sold will be as long as it isn't weaponry or drugs. The food, too, has some special properties to it. Within the mix of normal food and drink are vendors who sell the kind that offer the chance to break one’s inhibitions, giving the courage and desire to seek out partners new and old, to explore some of the baser kinks, and enact public performances of each should they find themselves unable to find an area of privacy. For those unwilling to partake in these foods or public sex in general, there’s still a way to have your fun! Along with alleyways, many of the buildings in the Down are left open, and rooms can be bought cheap with only one bead necklace. |
After sunrise on the fourth day, the intensity of the celebrations begins to ramp up. The parades of people in the streets now never seem to end. There's more food than ever before, and bargain deals with the beads means that it's that much easier to get your hands on every type of festival food and toy from earlier in the week. It seems like everyone in the city is here to celebrate, with the Up left rather vacant but not unguarded, and the parties and attractions are spread a few streets further than they had been the days prior. But among all of the increased energy, what will be noticed first is that everyone is wearing a mask now. Anyone who has yet to pick up one (or who lost their free one from before) will be flagged down on the streets, pulled aside, and cheerfully (not forcefully) encouraged to purchase one and take part. And after some time, it will become clear that not all masks are created equally. Some of the masks are special, causing a variety of effects on those who wear them. These vary in intensity and time required for them to show up. For example, if two people wear the same cat mask, one might sprout cat ears and a tail instantly and/or acquire a strong desire for fish while another might slowly find themselves purring more at intimate gestures or longing to be on all fours. Similarly, some characters might not receive a mask that has any effects at all, or may experience effects one particular hour or day and not the next. Even masks that were obtained earlier in the week and had caused no effects can now begin to cause them. Strange, isn't it? While there are such a large variety of unique masks that it’s impossible to list them all, there are some categories that seem to be the most common: » Type A. One and Two. These masks rely on their shape to emphasize anonymity. The first is squared off and pointed further away from the chin, making it possible to eat and drink without removal. The second is tight fitting and almost claustrophobic, forming perfectly to the face and even occasionally going so far back as to cover the ears. Wearers of these masks may find that no amount of revealing behavior will actually reveal their identity. They are a complete mystery, even completely nude. Unfortunately, all things must come to an end, and on sunrise of the 20th, Carnaval is completed. Though characters are free to keep their masks as fond memories, they'll no longer carry any sort of effects, and all changes made to characters vanish completely. Vendors are cleaning up their wares, beads are strewn about like trash on the street, and local shops give characters (both Dominants and Submissives) small amounts of money or goods for the beads they voluntarily clean up and turn in to them. The whole city feels content with things being back in place. |
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, 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 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. Characters with black, brown, blue, green or purple hair are Submissives. Characters with white, silver, blonde, red or orange hair are Dominants. Characters with no hair or with two-tone hair colors are Submissives. If canon shows two hair colors for a character, go with the one they were born with. To use this TDM as a door pass please link this on your app and place whether it is Dominant or Submissive. » For those unable to consume the special food and be affected by incense, the knickknacks and toys (both sex and normal, festive souvenirs) offer a sort of “spark” to jump-start the same effects. » For the masks, those listed above are just bases of ideas for what to work with! As long as it’s not game breaking and you receive permission from all characters involved and mark content warnings, you have the freedom to play with this. The specific masks above may not cause those exact attributes to be shared if you don’t want them, and you can create your own attributes, as well. If you’re not sure on something, feel free to ask us! Please remember to mark any necessary content, and have fun!! |
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He orders a rum and coke, raising an eyebrow slightly at Nick's order of wine, but deciding not to comment. Being a little pretentious isn't a crime, so whatever; Reggie can always poke fun at it next time, when getting information and at least one ally here presumably won't be quite as urgent. He doesn't know Nick well enough to judge yet how to appeal to his good side. ]
Thanks, dude. Consider me welcomed. Though you should know that I'm not really an "under the table" kind of guy.
[ He's content with leaving that statement otherwise open to interpretation, though. ]
Truth is, I don't know. None of this exactly feels real yet, y'know?
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Who, from any rational place, is? Frankly I’d find anyone who scrambled to adhere to this place’s weird rules totally suspect.
[Not that the rules are to be flaunted totally. Everyone who was around a month ago watched how that unfolded, the trauma that it caused, the horrors it launched on the unsuspecting population.
Nick shakes his head.]
It won’t feel real for a while. You’ll go back to whatever dump they put you in and you’ll wonder about the gleaming towers they put me in and you’ll think about how it happened. And why I’m up there when I’m a boy from Greendale and there’s nothing about me that really makes me any different from you.
[But that said:]
But they’re not timid about people who break the rules. And they’re not shy about punishment.
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No kiddin'-- my bedroom back home is probably bigger than the hole they expect me to live in. I bet even amotel room'd be better. Then at least I might have a mini-bar.
[ Some irony in the fact though, maybe, that Reggie is dealing with this considering how often he's postured as a leather jacket, drug dealing, drink slinging bad boy, but he's only ever fought against or rubbed elbows with gangs, never been part of one. At the end of the day he's always had a nice house and a shitty family to come home to, like most people on the north side of Riverdale do. ]
Do people ever get away with it?
[ He has a lot of experience bending rules and the law, but given that the "rules" here seem to apply a lot more broadly, it's harder to tell what to expect. Reggie could ask more about that, he probably should, but he's not especially eager to hear even more dystopian bullshit he's going to be taking the brunt of; unlike many of his peers from Riverdale, asking too many questions he already knows he won't like the answers to is not Reggie's jam. Plenty of time to hear about crime and punishment later. ]
I'm just wondering. [ Quick and casual, just in case. ] And you get to live in a skyscraper?
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[He pauses.]
But we all got hauled to a fun experiment in the prisoner game last month for it. We spent a month in barracks.
[He isn't going into the worst of it - executions, and the whole fox-hunt thing, which to Nick was only a weird exercise in attempting to pretend that they were animals, whatever - so as to not freak Reggie out too much.]
Yeah. All the Dominants do. In the Up. You'll have to get a contract with a Dominant to move in.
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[ Ugh. Reggie should probably be thankful to Riverdale for being so overrun with gangs, murder, corruption and criminals lately that he's at least got some experience being thrown into the middle of shit like this, but it's still not the same.
Once the waitress brings over their drinks, he's quick to take a deep, generous pull from his. ]
Wait, an experiment? So even if you didn't break any rules they still locked you up?
[ Oh my god then what is the point-- but no. He should probably focus on not loudly questioning authority right now, especially while he's still learning the ropes. Speaking of which: ]
Oh. [ He cocks his head slightly, thoughtfully, looking at his glass while his fingers restlessly trace the rim. That doesn't actually sound so bad, necessarily. He looks back up at Nick. ] But I'm guessing not like roommates.
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[And the thing is most of them did. Nick doesn't really want to go into the details of it, when the details of it are shiveringly terrible. He lifts his chin a little at the second part of things.]
Depends on the Dominant. Depends on the Submissive. Some of them have strictly non-sexual relationships.
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[ Even without more details, the fact Nick doesn't seem to want to talk about it is telling enough, and Reggie is okay with that-- he gets the feeling it's nothing he'd want to know. Just based on what he can imagine it might've been like, he wouldn't want to talk about it, either. ]
But what else I'm hearing is that I could actually have it pretty good here just as long as I don't shack up with some psycho. Is that right?
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You could, if you could find a Dominant to agree to those terms.
But you have a pretty face. I don't know if you could find someone who would want to keep their hands off you.
[Oh, he forgot one thing.]
Do you know about the quota?
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[ That gets a smirk from him, though, which grows even further from the flattery. Reggie knows he's pretty, obviously, but he always likes to hear it; especially since back home he pretty much just got dumped, his ego could use the attention. ]
I mean, I'm no prude, so I'm not against something happening-- it wouldn't be the first time I fooled around with authority. [ A pause. ] And it's not like I'm really seeing anyone right now anyway. Depends on who it is, right? Like you said.
[ He rubs his mouth and takes another drink. ]
The what?
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[There are murderers and thieves and all kinds of terrors lurking in the tall sunlight towers where Dominants live. Nick's smile softens a little, and he moves his fingers in careful circles on the table. He thinks of a spell; he could compel a lot out of Reggie.
But's he's being so easily honest. He doesn't have to. Still the compulsion is there, instinct at it's finest. Or its worst.]
Yes. Betty Cooper's a Dominant, if you want a known entity. Or you could find someone else. I'm in need of a contract, for instance.
[Just an offer. But he shakes his head.]
You have to have sex at least three times a month.
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Reggie sips his drink again, nose wrinkling slightly. He's not the kind of boy to be put off by the idea of having regular sex, per se -- or even "having to," at least in theory, since if you want to anyway, what's the issue? -- but obviously that's a judgement based less on the sex actually being enforced with terms and conditions.
Also, he wasn't prepared to have to imagine having sex with Betty Cooper. No offense to her, she's just not usually one of the reoccurring stars in his fantasies. ]
Fair enough. I tend to know one when I see 'em, anyway. [ His definition, at least. ] What happens if you don't get a contract? Cuz like, don't get me wrong, Betty's cool and all, but I just feel like that'd be hella awkward, you know? If I wanted someone who'll disapprove of everything I like doing then I might as well still live with my mom.
[ Not that it's an option here, of course. But Betty also just kind of scares him a little bit. ]
You and me, though, I feel like we could probably work something out. Hypothetically.
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I’m a relatively easygoing guy.
[This is true.]
And I don’t mind sharing if you want to sniff around.
[Just as a point of order. But all of those are minor details. The waitress brings their drinks and Nick relaxes even more.]
If you don’t find a contract in three months, they assign you a Dominant. And it might be a psycho. You don’t get a say. It might be Betty Cooper. It might be someone whose idea of a good Submissive sleeps on the floor and licks their toes at night.
[It’s very unclear.]
Let’s make a deal, then. You and I talk now, and when we’re done, you go off and party and meet people and see what you think. And if you still like the idea of working out a hypothetical contract, we can figure something out.
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[ He wouldn't mind settling down, actually, but he can concede how this is a commitment that requires more thought than, say, dating. Better not to sound too desperate anyway.
Reggie nods, sipping his drink and then wetting his lips once he sets the glass down again. ]
So, sure. Deal. Let's talk.
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[He suspects, though, that it will take a lot less time than that. Reggie is not going to like the Down, Nick can tell.
He takes a drink.]
But anyway. Have you ever been to Greendale?
[Better find out if/how much he knows. He seems hapless. It doesn't seem like a front, either.]
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[ Since yes, fair bet, Reggie already doesn't like the Down. It's gross, and he doesn't see why he should put up with living in squalor any longer than he has to. (But again: better not to sound too desperate.) ]
Yeah, but not much. Mostly just for football games-- I think I've driven through it more times then to it. What's it like?
[ Because now that he says all that, it does feel a bit weird that he hasn't really ever visited just to visit... but then again, why? He doubts there's much more to do in Greendale than there is in Riverdale; just a different shade of small town bullshit. ]
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Small. Smaller than Riverdale, I think. Old. There's gossip in that town that goes back to the witch trials.
[Whoo boy.]
I guess I've heard that kids from Riverdale think we're creepy.
[Nicky, you once drove a spike through your lover's footprint to stop her from killing your crush's boyfriend's dead brother. You're creepy. Embrace it.]
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[ Gotta love upstate New York and all its local history. Not to mention the beautiful forests... the lake... er, anyway. ]
Well, there is kind of a vibe, yeah. I dunno what it is, but it is a little creepy. Probably doesn't help that someone we all knew got murdered while he was running away to Greendale either, just as far as mental associations go.
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And then he bursts out laughing.]
And I thought Greendale had problems.
[But that said.]
It's the fog, too, right? It sits on the town a lot, it makes it look creepier than usual.
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And that's just the tip of the iceberg, trust me. [ He smirks, sipping his drink. ] But there's probably a lot of overlap between the two if you go back far enough.
[ He's just assuming, though, since neighboring small towns in upstate New York, New England, or the deep south always seem to have weird overlapping histories. However... reading about all that? No thanks. ]
Yeah. Where does that all come from, anyway? The river?
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[He thinks for a moment. Yeah, some of it is the river, churning up fog. Riverdale, despite the name, sits a little higher and the fog burns off in the sunshine. It pools in Greendale, which isn't helped by-]
I think some of it comes from the mines.
[The sulphurous part, certainly. Greendale has that smell; a minetown, where the miners shouldn't be going. The locals are used to it.]
You want to know a secret? When people in Greendale think things are too weird, they go to Riverdale. For things like dates, but for other stuff, too. The funeral home.
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[ Still, he nods; that all sounds like it checks out, fog-wise, but something that Nick just said sits weird with Reggie a few seconds afterward before he even realizes what it is. ]
The funeral home? [ His eyebrow raises. ] How is that not weird?
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[or so he's heard, although he's never actually been.]
Ours is kind of spooky. I think the one in Riverdale is just boring.
[Although to be fair, there is plenty of creepy nonsense in Riverdale too, but Nick doesn't exactly know about things like Thornhill or the Sisters of Quiet Mercy.]
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I dunno, given the bodies that Riverdale produces, I kinda doubt that. And all funeral homes are spooky.
[ He holds onto his drink with the tips of his fingers, deliberating a moment before he says anything further. Easy enough to keep talking about home, but it's not exactly that much better of a subject... though the perspective helps, maybe. Things suck no matter where they are, except here maybe Reggie won't feel the same pressure or expectations to do something about it. ]
So if we did do this... hypothetically, what would I actually have to do?
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You could live with me. If you got into trouble, I would bail you out, although that would only be bailing you out from the city. I don't really care about my reputation, but I care that any trouble you get into eventually lands me in hot water.
[Which, you know. Unholy shit, he is not going back to powerless and mortal ever again, as long as he can help it.]
I would want you to want to have sex with me. If you like the whole submissive thing in the bedroom, I can do that too.
[So generous.]
I don't do monogamy really well, but like I said before. I don't mind sharing.
[There's a pause.]
What would you be looking for?
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Well, relax. I dunno who else from Riverdale you've met besides Betty Cooper, but I'm nothing like that. Trouble might find me now and then, but I don't go out looking for it. [ ... Usually. Not unless it merits starting. But it's like a job interview; sometimes you exaggerate a little in order to sell yourself better. ] At least I've never been charged with anything.
[ Which is different than never being caught, but, again-- a positive spin is everything. Reggie rubs at his neck, looking at Nick as if that'll somehow make the rest of this any easier. ]
But as long as I'm not stuck living in the ghetto or shacked up with some freak, then yeah. I can work with that.
[ Details notwithstanding, but they're hardly dealbreakers; Reggie's just trying not to make his comparative inexperience too obvious. ]
Would it even count as monogamy if we're not actually dating?
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