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THE MURDERGAME SHIPPING MEME V1.1

This is probably too straight to accurately represent most murdergame ships but like. We take what the stock image industry gives us.

So, you've been put into a murder mystery game where you're going to have to fight for your life! Every week another body or two, surrounded by strangers- Wait, you knew that? You actually kind of have your bearings? Well fine, here's a different problem - see that person over there? Yeah, that one. Wouldn't it be a really terrible idea if you fell in love with them right now?

This is a meme for that sometimes most fun of bad choices in murdergames: shipping. Leave a toplevel with info that might be in your character's profile (recommended, so everyone knows what your character is About), maybe a murdergame title (optional but encouraged), and any extra info you want to give along with whatever your shipping prefs are, then either pick from the prompts below or wing it and go tag around! Profile code and some prefs options below.

SETTINGS (note: absolutely not an exhaustive list)
1. Shopping Mall - Live your teen movie romance dreams! Sure, someone seems to get mcfucking murdered in the Starbucks every week, but that doesn't mean you can't go on a coffee date, right?
2. School - Live the... other party of your teen movie romance dreams! It's a little hard to be romantic when the only place for a dinner date is the cafeteria, but in fairness you are also constantly overcoming bigger problems than that here.
3. Generic Facility - Looking for romance? Try scenic Sealed-Off Building Full of Rooms! It's themed in some way - science, underwater - but the concept is the same. Surely there's some kind of bar or inexplicable amusement park in here you could use for a romantic evening, right?
4. Spooky Mansion - You know what they say about going on dates to scary movies, right? What if the scary movie was uh. The whole thing. The whole place. Where you live. And die, sometimes.
5. Romance Zone - I mean hey, maybe you're stuck somewhere literally built for both romance and murder! Pleasure and pain. Life and death. Smoochin' and stabbin'.
6. Other - If you can block off an area, you can put a murdergame there. Get creative!

PROMPTS (ship scenarios)
1. Confession (Fun) - Ah, the start of any good murdergame relationship. Maybe you've been dancing around each other for a week or two, maybe over the course of one thread and a lot of screaming your players decided you're gonna kiss. Time to figure out what these feelings mean while you're, you know. Here. Can be combined with some of the other prompts too, if you like.
2. Dating??? - Where do you even go to date in a murdergame? Is it even worth trying to hang onto this kind of normalcy when either of you could die any day now? It's probably fine.
2b. Dating+ - Can be combined with any other prompt, but somehow, some way, one of you is taking the lead in this date and getting a bunch of emotions in... because you're deathflagging. You're deathflagging hard.
3. Afterparty - Hey, that was a rough trial! Whatever it was! But you're both alive, so... better try to comfort each other, huh? Enjoy whatever kind of snacks you guys have available.
4. Confession (Unfun) - Oops, uh. One of you... seems to have confessed to murder. Better get whatever last moments in that you can before voting ends and one of you gets brutally executed!
5. The Couple That Kills Together - Okay, so maybe you did or didn't actually kill someone together. But at least one of you did a murder, and the body hasn't been properly discovered yet, so... time to talk this through? Make bad choices for love?
6. Deadland Romance - Maybe you've just reunited in the land of the dead, or maybe this is where you're trying to get your relationship off the ground. Either way, there's gotta be some weird emotions to "we're dead and trying to make it work."
7. Golden End Reunion - Great news! You beat up the mastermind (or befriended them, I don't know your style) and got all of the dead people back, including the other half of your ship! That's gotta feel good, seeing them again after however many weeks.
8. What now? - The game is over, it's time to go home. But... which home? If you split up, is there going to be a chance to visit each other again? Can you work that kind of long-distance?
9. Smut Option - Look. It's not generally onscreen, but hookups happen. Did you have to kick roommates out? Is this the fabled... you know, variant of option 5? Basically look, if you wanna use this meme for smut I'm not gonna say no, just tag appropriately.
10. Anything else! - Look, one of the fun things about murdergame ships is how many ways they can go in the emotional crucible inherent to them. I can't account for a lot of things ahead of the basics, so plot with your thread partner and have fun with it! Hell, maybe bring a good ol' murdergame polyblob into the mix, I'm not gonna stop you! Go with ur heart, assume other characters, live your truth!

PROFILE CODE (pilfered from the general murdergame meme):

PREFS CODE:

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[Cairo looks past Riley, eyes following the blood trail as the realization sinks in. She walked right past - don't think about that. There'll be time for freaking out about this later. Cairo will make sure of it.

Her hand comes up to Riley's face, brushing across her cheek. It smears the blood splattered there, but it's okay. Everything's okay, and if Cairo keeps repeating that then maybe it'll be true. Putting intention into the universe and all.]

Okay. Okay. Listen to me, Riley, we're going to fix this. First, we need to take the body down to the fountain. I'm hoping the water will fuck the body up enough that the junior detective squad can't figure out what happened. Then we're gonna get you some new shoes, okay? And I'm gonna clean everything up out here while you get cleaned up in our room.

[Leaning forward, Cairo touches their foreheads together.]

It's gonna be okay, Riley. It's - we'll be okay, babe.

[RNG says we're in the romance zone, so I can't believe we're in the secret sexy version of Unknown Seas where it was a Valentine's Day cruise instead of a New Year's cruise. And it's Valentine's Day! Again! The holiday has been explained to Esfir by at least three different characters, with varying degrees of success, so she knows that it's a day when you give chocolate to girls to express your affection for them. And she has a lot of affection for Envy, so Esfir has selected the best chocolates from the vending machines and put them into a basket. She's made a bow from a Nic Cage dress, and the entire thing is perfect in her opinion.

The only thing missing is Envy herself.]

Miss Envy! Miss Envy!

[That's a very overly enthusiastic catgirl holding a basket with a horrifying Nic Cage bow coming toward you, Envy.]

[ They can't be fix it, though. Riley killed, not Cairo. In the end, she's going to be—

Ah, Cairo's skin against her, first her hand, that smeared blood, then her forehead. She's close enough to kiss, and Riley's discovered she really likes kissing Cairo. Much more than any boy she's ever dated. She draws in another gasp of air when she realizes, once again, Cairo's covering up a murder for her. ]

But... But, Cai, if- you kn- know what's g-going to hap— Cairo, if they don't figure it out—

[ Close enough that she can't hide the horror in her voice. ]

[ Jesus.... well now you've gone and spoiled the non-canon side gimmick round where we reuse the r2 map and everyone has to app in ships-

There's a lot going on in this situation. Envy doesn't hate all of it! She doesn't hate Esfir, she doesn't hate chocolate, she doesn't explicitly hate Valentine's Day (though she's skipping it next year after all of this).

The bow and the velocity with which the entire package is approaching, however, is a little Intense. ]

Uh... hey there, Esfir.

[So forgive me for doing what's best for you
So forgive me for trying to -]

No, shhhhh. It'll be okay. [Calm, certain.] I'm your motive, remember? He said all the people in the pictures would be okay, so I'll be okay even if they vote wrong. That's how it works.

[Privately, Cairo hopes that's true. She's not actually sure if she trusts their Mall Overlord to keep the promises he makes, but it's a scenario she knows Riley will accept. And if turns out it's not true, well. Riley will be okay, and that's what matters. That's always been what matters.

She swallows.

- make this easier
I'll always be on your team]

[ Riley grabs Cairo's hand. What if not, though? She should've asked. She should've pressed harder. All she got were mocking, teasing answers, even when she resorted to desperate death threats. He couldn't do it, he couldn't erase Cairo. What did that mean? Did it mean kill her? Wipe her out of existence? Make it so she never...? ]

Cai, [ she chokes, clenching one bloodstained hand in another. After everything, she couldn't. Not after she's finally looking at her again. ] But they... They won't...

[ It scares her, she's finally confided to Cairo. The way she just gets lost in them sometimes, those little whimsical fantasies of fixing any of her problems with a quick and efficient knife. That girl who tried to kill her entire cheer team. It scares me, she whispered like they were sharing crushes at a sleepover. Sometimes I don't think I'll come back.

She hadn't wanted to kill anyone again. Not a single other voice to echo in her dreams, not a single face to see behind closed eyes, and definitely not another fifteen. ...Maybe sixteen, if their overseer doesn't—

Riley's desperate as she kisses her. Quickly, without thought, just a brief moment. ]

You'll- b-be okay. You have to, have...have to.

Name: Garnet Bellerose | Champion of Anti-Magic | The Void
Age: 23 | Species: Human | Occupation: Travelling Adventurer
Likes: Roses, gemstones, breezy, sunny days
Dislikes: Unexpected rainfall, snowy weather, being alone
Traits: Gentle, generous, gregarious
Trivia: Garnet is almost completely immune to any and all types of healing magic.

[ What's On The Table:
Full impressions here but the cliffnotes are that Garnet is a human with powerful anti-magical affinity born into a world that runs almost entirely on magic. Oops! She's a sweet, gentle girl who's endlessly generous with her time, emotional labor and just about everything else, because she desperately needs to be needed by people. She'll tend to cling onto any scraps of affection and kindness she's shown and will be a little anxious and insecure early into the relationship but eventually blossoms into her True Form as someone who will love, advocate and care for her partner with all the care and generosity she completely neglects to afford herself.

Looking for:
- M/F is the IC pref but I'm p flexible if the chemistry is good.
- Garnet was literally made to be the Soft Girl in a hypothetical Charming Asshole/Soft Girl ship so like.... That. Bonus points for slowburn catching of Real Feelings!!!
- People to be patient with her and also like, teach her how to have any consideration for herself at all???
- People who would have Opinions about the eventual reveal that Garnet's role in the home world's so called prophecy was not only more or less complete luck and thus nothing to do with Garnet herself as a person, but also basically just a fancy way of dressing up her role as a sacrifice for her world's good. Garnet will probably have a Not Great time when she realizes that she's expected to die for the world that's treated her like shit, so characters who can teach her how to be angry about it?? Good shit.
- Honestly i'm just using this to voice test for the first time so i'm open to anything lMFMFMD ]

Edited (I'M SORRY FOR ALL THE EDIT NOTIFS LYNDON) 2021-04-06 18:17 (UTC)

[Mordecai has been dead for a few weeks now. An accident, an attempt at taking out their Overseers that caught an unexpected bystander in the blast radius instead. He hadn't made more than a token effort at covering it up; gods forbid the mastermind get a boring trial, after all.]

[But that's not important right now. What's important is that by the admittedly shaky reckoning of time here, it's Friday. And much as he hopes otherwise, the grim schedule so far is that today means new arrivals.]

[So Mordecai is sitting in the dim light of the foggy graveyard outside the mansion- or the mansion's shadow, or whatever this place was- waiting quietly.]

Ah. Hey.

[It's always a little unsettling, the way the newly dead just kind of appear between blinks. For them as much as anyone waiting for them. So he keeps at least a bit of careful distance while welcoming new arrivals.]

Uh- good news and bad news. Which are both that it probably cannae get worse from here. You need a minute?

[Cairo lets herself sink into the brief press of Riley's lips against hers. She stops herself from chasing after Riley when she pulls away, suddenly filled with the sinking fear that this kiss might be their last. No. No, she can't think like that. Cairo has to be strong enough for both of them. Confident enough for both of them.]

We'll be okay. [Confidence. Just be confident.] We'll figure out how to fix the rest of it after, Riley.

[Cairo steps away from Riley, tangling their fingers together. She thought they'd have more time. There's just never enough time.]

We have to make sure we take care of ourselves first, though.

We'll be okay. [ Repetition. If she keeps hearing it, keeps saying it, maybe she'll believe it.

It would be easy to say that Cairo takes the lead in everything, but also sort of...wrong. Cairo's the one with the actual confidence, not the façade Riley's built up over the years, but sometimes (like tonight, like this awful night) Riley just acts. It means, despite being unsure of where they've stood for the last few weeks, she's been the one to sometimes grab Cairo's hand, out of habit, before remembering their circumstances. Why, after Cairo kissed her a week ago, after another nightmare of a trial, Riley's taken to little impulsive kisses.

Despite thinking so much, working herself into knots with thinking, she acts. When thinking becomes too hard, the world melts away...and she acts.

That's what she has to do now, and it's why without another word she starts pulling Cairo along, back down the blood trail. (Sloppy, incredibly sloppy, she'll have to clean this up later—) ]

He... We were in the ice cream parlor, when I— [ She just starts talking. Explaining. No thoughts. ] And, he...ran, but...I don't know why, he tried ducking into the bridal store? So. He's there, he should— I know, he's dead.

[ She made sure of that. ]

[Other people would probably have trouble putting together Riley's fragmented thoughts, but Cairo's got a lot of practice at interpreting Riley. She knows that Riley's "back" now, that she's thinking clearly enough to know what they have to do. Good. Cairo can come up with the plan, but she needs Riley's help to pull it off. They're a team. It's what they do.]

Bridal shop's a lost cause. Blood on all that white? We're just going to have to trash it after we move the body. [At least the fountain's nearby. The won't have to go far.] I'll clean up the ice cream parlor while you do that.

[Leaving stuff out is gonna get the junior detective squad riled up, so she'll get rid of it. Dump it in a different trashcan. Okay. Good plan so far. They'll figure the rest of it out as they go.]

[ This is fine. She'll just bury everything she doesn't need. Just focus on the task at hand. Just focus on the— ]

Wait, I have to move the body? All by myself?

[ Well, Riley, you're the one who killed him all by yourself— ]

I thought, you know, we would...like, I don't wanna drag him, or...

[Wh - oh. The problem with saying the plan out loud before you've thought it all the way through is that Riley does better with clear, concise instructions. She's not a improviser, not really, but that's all Cairo does so sometimes she forgets to say things in the Riley Way and not the Cairo Way. God, Cairo loves this empty-headed girl. She's so ditzy sometimes and it's endearing.

A voice in her head that sounds an awful lot like Kate raises an eyebrow and says that's because you have no taste, but Cairo ignores it.]

I'll help you move the body. Then you have to trash the bridal shop because we're not going to be able to clean up the blood in there and you're already bloody. While you make it look like there was a huge fight in there, I'll clean up the ice cream parlor. [Clear, ordered.] Make sense?

[ One step after the other, that's how Riley likes it. She likes lists, she likes agendas. Especially when she's one half-step from a panic attack, teetering in the eye of the storm. She likes having someone tell her what to do, lest she try and handle it herself and, well—

Well, she finds something dark hissing, look how well you've done at that lately.

No, it's fine, it's going to be fine, they're both going to be fine. Despite everything, a thin smile flip-flops onto her face as she looks back at Cairo. ]

Yes! Yes, okay, that makes sense. Perfect sense. [ Perfect sense like following her own bloody trail back to the scene of the crime.

Not for the first time, she wonders as they pass the ice cream parlor how Cairo never figured her out. She's been too afraid to ask her, if she actually had and was just...not mentioning it. ]

Name: Cassandra | SHSL Handmaid, Champion Protector, The Lady-In-Waiting
Age: 24 | Species: Human | Occupation: Lady-in-waiting, enemy of the state, ranger
Likes: Rapunzel, swords, duty, owls, trust
Dislikes: Laziness, disrespect, Adira
Traits: Brave, hard-working, low self-esteem
Trivia: Cassandra once threw a man off a cliff!

[ What's On The Table: Blunt, hard-headed, tough-as-nails girl who sometimes seems to have a chip on her shoulder. Is actually one of the softest people you'll ever meet, once you get past the layers of distrust and really listen to the issues Cassandra can have. Do that, and you'll have a loyal ally willing to die AND kill for you.
Looking for: GIRLS. But yeah, Cass is a lesbian, so for shipping reasons I will be asking for Girls. Balls of sunshine, or equally hard-headed gals she can butt heads with. Culprits or easy victims to meet up with in deadland. Give me them all. ]

[ bro what if you were a lady in waiting with a soft heart and i was a royal with an ice cold exterior while desperately craving companionship and understanding 😳😳 and we were both girls 😳😳 ]

[ Garnet's first– last– first– thought is I can't breathe.

It happens too quick for her to really understand why. It's Thursday evening, not quite late enough for the house to feel dangerous, not with so many other people still awake. So she's in the library, trying to fill her mind with words so it doesn't have the chance to fill with her worries instead. She'd heard the soft creak of someone approaching her from behind but before she could turn and see who it was

A white-hot band of pain snapped into place around her neck and her world narrowed, contracted. As if from a great distance, she felt her own fingers scrabbling at her neck and heard strained, whispery noises escape her mouth in lieu of calls for help. There was an explosion of pain building up behind her eyes and her last– first– last thought is I can't breathe–

And then in the time it took that thought to end and another to begin, Garnet found herself somewhere else. The immediacy of the change was so jarring that she couldn't keep herself upright – she stumbled over her own feet and ended up on her knees, gasping air back into her lungs like she can't quite believe they're full again.

It takes her a moment to shakily lift her head and try and place herself... wherever this is. But when her eyes fall on Mordecai, she just freezes, her eyes wide and disbelieving. ]

... Mordecai...? [ Her voice comes out in a rasp. ] B–but you... I don't understand how...?

[BIG EYES EMOJI

What If We Just Got Done With A Emotionally Draining Trial And Instead Of The Afterparty We Decide To Talk In Solitude About How We Cant Keep Watching These Happen... And We Were Both Girls]

Name: Valerie Oberlin | Champion Shopkeeper NPC / Enterprising
Age: 23 | Species: Monster | Occupation: Shopkeeper / Smuggler
Likes: Money, cash, profit, friendship
Dislikes: Loss, rude people, cops
Traits: Profit-minded, friendly, almost totally ethical
Trivia: What, for free?

[ What's On The Table: Sells a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly to other monsters at her high school! A pretty chill young woman, unless you threaten people she cares about. You're losing her the second a hostage motive shows up, if that's something you want to play with. If you romance her, she'll give you discounts! Free? Ehhhh... Like any Monster Prom character, she will occasionally drop something absolutely buck-wild about her world and then just move on.
Looking for: Her route is entirely about how she would like someone chill to do a like. Traditional romance on her? It's going to have to be someone who would press and make the first, second, and third moves, though. Romance is not her priority, it's why she's the shopkeeper instead of a love interest. ]

Hey Rosie, knock knock.

[The motive's pretty rough on its own- secrets revealed on a daily basis until someone enacts the graduation rule- but Rose seems to have taken her turn at being in the spotlight pretty hard. They might not have the full story, but it's familiar enough to Calypso. New identity, having to rebel against everything you'd known- it's rough. Putting it mildly.]

[So here she is knocking at Rose's door with a couple of ice-cold cans from the student store coolers.]

Knock twice if you want me to leave, babe, knock once if you feel okay talking. Or- uh, just open the door I guess.

[Hey Cassandra. It's super late on a Thursday night. Or maybe really early on a Friday is more accurate at this point. But either way there's an insistent knocking at your kiosk's door at quick, desperate intervals.]

[Oh, hey, that looks pretty bad. Mordecai's just gonna go over and get down on one knee, putting a hand on Garnet's shoulder.]

Hey, hey, it's okay, you're safe. Uh- dead, but safe. Sorry.

[Like he said, good news and bad news.]

I know it's a lot, just try to breath.

[Hopefully that's not exactly the wrong thing to say here, whoop.]

[ Their trials don't tend to run particularly long. Partly because, after five weeks of this, their eyes and minds have been sharpened however unwillingly to poke holes in stories and unravel untruths. But mostly, Iris suspects, because they're a group of soft-hearted fools and even the resolve to take a life crumbles when faced with the prospect of condemning a group of people you've come to care for.

Not that Iris, the Ultimate Savior, would know anything about that.

But today's trial had been its own special brand of awful, starting from the minute they'd found the Ultimate Heroine, Camellia, dead in the kitchen. Not just dead but gutted with a force and vehemence that implied some kind of motive but after hours of going around in circles, none of them could deduce a thing and everyone was equally adamant that they didn't know what was going on. The frightening thing was that Iris believed all of them equally.

It took them dragging out every piece of evidence to exhaustion to finally identify the Ultimate Survivalist, Ayaka Kamimochi as the culprit. And though she'd confessed, told them everything, admitted to having no motive but curiosity, Iris had felt uncertainty burning a hole in her stomach until the very last moment of the execution.

She feels sick. It takes a heroic effort not to throw up, but she manages to hold it in and heads back up into the rest of the school with the others. She knows what happens now – the little after-parties they have every time they've sent someone else to their death and while she usually makes a nominal effort to show her face... today she just can't face it.

She breaks away from the group quietly as they trudge up the stairs to the school and makes her way to one of the empty classrooms. She doesn't even know what she's going to do with herself when she gets there, but right now, she needs to have a moment to clear her head. ]

[ She can convince herself for perhaps a second or two that she's just seeing things. Her vision had been swimming and graying on the edges only a moment ago, after all. Perhaps she'd been knocked unconscious and this was simply a strange dream. But then she hears Mordecai's kind voice so close to her, and the warm weight of his hand on her shoulder is like an anchor, dragging her firmly back down into reality.

If you could even call this reality.

Garnet's breath slams in and out of her lungs and it takes her a long moment to be able to get it back under any sort of control. She knows she's teetering on the edge of hysterics and struggles not to fall over the edge, but the effort it takes is almost Herculean.

Dead, but safe. Dead. Dead. ]

B–but... how are you... h–how are we here? Where are we?!

[Cairo smiles back. It feels fragile, but it's the best she can do for Riley right now. Sometimes she wonders how she missed Riley's murders. Or if, maybe, she knew that Riley had done it and simply didn't want to believe it.

It doesn't matter.]

Okay. Let's do this.

[Cairo hangs behind, motioning for Riley to go first. She. She doesn't want to see the body where Riley can see her reaction. Whoever it is, they're already dead. No need for tears now.]

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cw: intrusive thoughts, mental illness

Garnet Bellerose | OC

RNGesus says deadland shenanigans in a spooky scooby doo house, let's go

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Cassandra | Tangled: The Series

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cw: strangulation but more importantly, their height difference

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Valerie Oberlin | Monster Prom | ota

finding Pearl's cellphone in a murderschool I guess

rng says we're having a real bad time in a shopping mall

height difference is stored in the half-orc

What If RNG Said It Was Murderschool And We Were Both Girls 😳

he's like a foot and a half taller than her i am fully losing my mind

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