fandomhigh_ooc | BDE Spring 2024: It's Not A Lake, It's An Ocean

Hello, Fandom! Hope you've had a cosy time lately, because we're heading into darker, deeper waters. (Metaphorically speaking. Mostly.)

From Tuesday, April 23rd until Saturday, April 27nd, Fandom will be under siege by a phenomenon inspired by the Dark Place from Alan Wake. (Inspired by, and with the numbers filed off, since the sequel canonized your mayor as part of the Alan Wake-verse, whoops. Do not feel beholden to any video game rules; what's relevant to this BDE will be provided, everything else is improv.) What is the Dark Place? Well, it's a nightmare realm that feeds on creativity - and makes creative works real, in increasingly twisty, bendy ways.

So what's this going to look like?

On Tuesday, April 23rd participating characters on Fandom wake up feeling a surge of creativity. It doesn't matter in what form: if you're inclined towards the written word, you suddenly find yourself caught by a story; if you're a crafts person, you may suddenly feel a deep desire to crochet an awesome penguin family, and so forth. You'll feel compelled to go with that urge, though not in a fully life-eaty way-- no skipping classes, but definitely using your free afternoon to sit down and finally paint that masterwork.

The next day, the surge of creativity continues - but creations also start to come to life. Your penguin starts talking and going for walks, or you round the corner and find that painting you did of the Devil's Nest as a giant Vegas Strip-style architectural marvel is now reality! Cool, right? Think fun and zany!

And then Thursday comes around, and the Dark Place begins to twist all creations to its personal favorite genre: horror. Creatures become destructive, newly-created places turn into dark labyrinths that try to swallow you up, and sometimes the shadows move and stalk you. Uh oh.

By Friday, the turn into a horror story is complete, with the Dark Place glomming on to particularly productive people and creating a shadow self from their worst nightmares. (That doesn't mean your character must be obsessively working, though there's definitely precedent for obsession and you're welcome to play with your character being sucked too far into the process to notice... anything else.) These shadow selves hold all your worst impulses and twist them into the shape of a horror movie antagonist. You can fight/defeat them at any point - they just have to be gone by the finale.

The finale? Fandom must yank creative control back from the Dark Place, and turn this horror story into an action piece.

So how far does this 'creativity becomes reality' thing go?

As far as you'd like! Owned buildings and characters are free game to tweak and change through creativity - we would like to ask you to put your name in under the OCD if you're planning to have a shadow self running amock, but otherwise, it's your canvas. Provided, of course, that everything does go dark by Thursday.

We do ask that if you want to change something about the island that you don't own - an existing public building, or adding a new place - you put in a request below. We'll get back to you and let you know if it's okay with us.

So how are we going to fix this?

Why, by our old and trusted processes: research. The Research Team will meet up at the library on Thursday to start figuring out what's going on, concluding in a Special Collections visit on Friday. The Special Collections visit will be preplayed.

Once research team has determined that the Dark Place is trying to tell a story - a horror story, to be exact - and that arc of the story can be bent, it's up to our two-pronged strike team to do the rest. One group will stay in the safety of Town Hall to rewrite the story to the best of their ability. The other will set out to make that story real - through no-holds barred combat against the Dark Place's creations in the Park, all played on Saturday. This should be more of a free-for-all and doesn't need to be preplayed, but we're willing to NPC individual threads beforehand on request.

Deadline is Friday, April 19th.

And that's it! Any questions, comments, etc? Let us know.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Let us know your plans here, and we'll get back to you on whether we think it's a good idea.

Sabine's going to paint a generic battle scene mural on the front of Wellspring Arms. People who look slightly cartoony fighting off a spiky-looking dark gray monster using weapons you can buy in the shop.

Totally cool with me!

For headcount, mainly, but do describe your general idea so we'll all know what we might get to play with!

Look, a streak of ruthlessness runs in the Sobeck genes, and I would argue that as the least well adjusted one Beta's the most potentially terrifying in that regard, so I kind of have to pitch a version of her that bought into Far Zenith's "why save earth when we can just start over" logic.

You know, it would be a shame to have a version of Cal's worst nightmare at the ready - the version that got tortured into being a Sith Inquisitor - and not do something with that.

Hannibal will definitely have one!

It will likely not be appreciably different, except for being more overt. Hannibal will be obliged to kill it for being tacky.

Edited 2024-04-20 01:15 (UTC)

Look, you can't give me canon of "I figured Sabine would go all vengeful and dark sidey so I stopped training her" and NOT play with that, right?

For research on Thursday and a Special Collections-trip on Friday.

Probably not the Winchester you want doing research but he's done his fair share of research.

Edited 2024-04-12 12:17 (UTC)

Of course, Constantine is here.

Edited 2024-04-12 14:33 (UTC)

Preeeeetty sure Belle goes here!

Arden Finch

Margo will be annoyed. And here.

Jon (Sims, not -and-Arthur) goes here!

So this'll be an unusual, and yet somewhat low-effort part of the process. Story Team sits in Town Hall, making creative things - puppets, written stories, films, music, whatever - to try and steer the final battle into the right... mood.

Sign up here and you'll be part of the brainstorming post on how this should look, plus you'll get a spot to ping and/or thread your contributions on Saturday.

Edited 2024-04-12 06:56 (UTC)

I suppose Steven could really stretch out of his comfort zone and try to come up with positive spins on things to help heal trauma. I mean I GUESS. ;)

Irene goes here, I think!

Beaker goes here!

And Anakin, to restrain Beaker.

Lana can do poetry!

For the heroic climactic fight on Saturday. Will be largely individualized, so request preplay if that works for your individual case and otherwise there will be liveplay on Saturday*

*unless story team comes up with something particularly loopy that needs your buy-in

I will need preplay for this.

Jane will go here!

Navaan can be bendy and springy but I will need to preplay, so I'll yield my spot to whomever if we get too many and have to RNG

Atton will be here.

I'll actually be around next Saturday so let's throw Rey here!

McGarrett goes here!

I'm sure you have some!

Just to be sure, this affects works done during the BDE and not things that are already there?

Yes!

Though of course your character can tweak a work already done and have it become a part of it.

I'm gonna be so annoying during this one omg. So if say, you do the Devil's Nest mural or write a story, will parts of it exist after the BDE or is the whole thing gone?

I'd say it depends! If you do a Devil's Nest mural and you have permission from Fry to keep it around, for instance, it returns to its normal non-magical artsy state at the end of the BDE. But anything not explicitly agreed on with the building owner (which is easy when we're talking about a building you own yourself, say) would go away.

Things like written stories can either stay or vanish in the aftermath of the finale depending on your personal wishes.

Or those too.

Okay but this guy is going to accidentally create SO MANY muppet monsters.

I couldn't decide, so have both of these shots from Alan Wake 2. It's a game with range.

Edited 2024-04-12 06:59 (UTC)

I love Thomas Zane's crazy eyes.

That is all.

Yeah I'm not even going to pretend the two-screen ploy wasn't mostly just to get those into this post.

BDE Spring 2024: It's Not A Lake, It's An Ocean

So what's this going to look like?

So how far does this 'creativity becomes reality' thing go?

So how are we going to fix this?

Sign-Ups

I Want To Change A Publicly-Owned Part of the Island

Re: I Want To Change A Publicly-Owned Part of the Island

Re: I Want To Change A Publicly-Owned Part of the Island

I Will Have A Shadow Self

Re: I Will Have A Shadow Self

Re: I Will Have A Shadow Self

Re: I Will Have A Shadow Self

Re: I Will Have A Shadow Self

Research Team

Re: Research Team

Re: Research Team

Re: Research Team

Re: Research Team

Re: Research Team

Re: Research Team

Finale - Story Team

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Re: Finale - Story Team

Re: Finale - Story Team

Re: Finale - Story Team

Finale - Fighty Team

Re: Finale - Fighty Team

Re: Finale - Fighty Team

Re: Finale - Fighty Team

Re: Finale - Fighty Team

Re: Finale - Fighty Team

Re: Finale - Fighty Team

Questions?

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Comments!

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OOC

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