aworldwithoutboxes | (no subject)

(no subject)

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:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I know. It's okay. [There's so much blood. Riley's going to need to shower, Cairo thinks absently as she gently reaches out her hand.] Give me the knife, Riley.

[She should look for the body. Figure out who it is, what they need to do to fix this. It won't be as simple as framing Mattie was. That wasn't a very good plan anyway. They'll need a better one for this. The junior detective squad here will see through anything that's not ironclad, but none of that matters if Cairo can't get Riley to come back to her.]

Everything will be fine. Tigers fight and Tigers win, remember?

[ This is weird. She’s done this before. Shouldn’t it be easy? When she killed Chess and Farrah, she could go back to normal so fast. It doesn’t really matter that for the rest of that night everything swam hazily through her head, from taking everyone’s phones to the actual murders. Like watching from a distance. Just another awful, wonderful fantasy. It doesn’t matter she had to wonder if, when the bathroom held two bodies instead of one, if she’d done that one too.

Wait, Cairo’s telling her something. It’s not that night, it’s not the second night, it’s— ] I had to, [ she says faintly, placing the knife in Cairo’s hand gracelessly. Probably about to get blood on Cairo’s shirt, but at least she has enough care not to knick the other girl. ]

I wasn’t—

[ Before it was quick. Nothing to show she was at fault. This time, besides the blood, Riley’s hair is a little disheveled, right side pulled out of her high ponytail, the one she’d done up almost like clockwork before she found herself wandering through the mall, before someone kind came along. ]

...I didn’t...want to, okay?

[ And still, she sounds distant. Voice a bit too high. ]

[Cairo takes the knife and she's going to just throw it far enough away that at least nobody else will die but. There's already blood on her shirt. It's black, so the stain won't show even if they can't quite get it out. She wipes the knife clean on her shirt. It's not perfect, but she feels better about dropping it in the nearby trashcan now. Step one: get rid of the murder weapon.

The junior detective squad will find it, but they'll have to dig through trash for it and what will they even be able to find once they do that?

Turning her attention back to Riley, Cairo crowds into her space and tries to calm her. Riley needs to be calm before Cairo can even think about any of the other steps.]

Hey. Just breathe for me, okay? In and out. In and out.

[ Were Riley a bit more cognizant, she’d wonder if Cairo’s afraid of Riley pulling the knife on her too. She’s done it once, after all, and she could do it again.

Now all she can think is how Cairo’s going to get blood on her jacket, too, and that’s unfortunate, because Cairo loves this jacket. She’ll be so annoyed, so.

Riley’s head jerks up. She’d been watching the knife. It’s only looking at Cairo’s face again that she feels some of the fog start to lift, or— or turn to panic. ]

S-seriously, I r-r-really didn’t want to, but I- I got t-too— I couldn’t—

[ Her hand’s empty. It’s only natural that it goes to Cairo’s arm, closest to her. Girl’s already forgotten about the jacket. ]

[The jacket Cairo's wearing cost like a hundred fifty dollars on clearance. Everyone knows she loves this thing, she wears it all the time and it'll probably be suspicious if she doesn't wear it during the trial tomorrow.

None of that matters. Cairo brings her hand up to Riley's face. Her hair's a mess, but Cairo can't fix that right now. She has to focus on what she can fix, the ways she can trip that bastard Forsythe up. She refuses to call him "Jughead." First of all, that's a stupid name and second of all calling him by a nickname would imply that she respects him and she doesn't. Especially not after he got all up in her face last trial over stupid shit.]

I know, I know. Shhhhh, breathe. In and out. In and out.

[First thing's first: they need to move the body. Cairo doesn't know where it is, but they need to move it. It has to look calculated, like one of the creepy adults did it. Then they need to clean up the blood trail Cairo followed to find Riley. Riley's probably not going to be much help with that, but maybe they can swap out her shoes in the sporting store at least. That way she can go back to the room and shower while Cairo cleans this up.]

I know this sucks, babe, but we need to move the body. Where is it?

[ Repetition helps. Clear repetition, from another person, it grounds her. It's not stuttering, it's emphasis. Maybe she can imitate it. That's what she did when she was a little kid, she'd imitate her speech therapist instead of fully unlearning the stutter, she'd imitate Cairo's confidence until it felt like her own.

Before she realizes it, she's sucked in one jerky breath and choked out the remains, as tears run down her face. Like she overheard one of the other kids laugh her words started coming in choppy, and Cairo took her aside and kept her from freaking out— this is just happening. Like Riley hasn't just broken their first, first rule when Cairo raised the white flag and started talking to her again. ]

Back— it's that— [ If she turns her head, she won't be looking at Cairo anymore. That won't do. So she just kind of jerks it in the direction of the blood trail; Cairo would've had to unknowingly pass the body, just to find her. Stupid. Don't people usually go in the opposite direction of the blood.

She screwed up. She screwed up so bad. ]

In the— parlor, he—

[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.

[ 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. ]

[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.

[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. ]

[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.]

[ With Cairo behind her, it almost feels like Riley can do anything. That's what she was missing before. That's what she should have changed, all she needed was this, and she could— she can do anything, right?

Entering the bridal boutique...puts a damper on that. The whole place is a mess. A bunch of armless sewing mannequins are toppled to the ground, and laying on them, lifeless, is a boy just a few inches taller than Riley. It's weird that he's so silent, because he's always been a friendly, jovial presence, trying his best to make the younger of them feel safe and comforted, helping to run those little gatherings that have become a once-a-week occurrence.

But there's no mistaking it, especially with the amount of blood covering his front, coating the dresses beneath him.

Mitsuki Izumi is dead.

It sends Riley back down to reality. Her mouth is dry. Almost a little choked, she repeats, once again, ]

I... I really...didn't...mean to.

[ She liked Mitsuki. Against all odds, he was nice to her. ]

[......... Shit. Was Cairo hoping that Riley killed Forsythe? Yes. Yes, she was. She definitely knew that it wasn't, though. Riley wouldn't have been that distraught over someone like him, wouldn't have been in the ice cream parlor trying to be talked down. It had to be someone that Riley actually liked.

The fact that it's the worst of the worst options makes something in Cairo's stomach sink, but she breathes out. Fucking hell.]

Okay. [Cairo moves around to stand at his head.] You grab his feet and we'll take him down to the fountain.

[This is, uh. Eerily reminiscent of Mattie getting drunk and passing out. It's fine. It's fine, don't think about it. Sacrifice is worth it.]

[ Why would Riley ever do anything that could make this easy on either of them? That's so far from her specialty.

What she doesn't need to do right now is to think; Cairo's told her what to do, and despite her fear and worry...she listens, inching up to the other end of the body. ]

Okay. [ Even though her gaze is glued to Mitsuki's face. His eyes are still open. Riley reaches down and stops short. ] He...kept talking about his little brother. Cai, I... I don't know if...

[ The guilt of Chess and Farrah has been eating away at her for months. Having to actually talk about it with Cairo's made it all worse. She can't pretend she did the right thing anymore, can't pretend it fixed anything. She'd done this once with girls she knew for years, but now, it feels impossible. ]

[Cairo swallows.

She reaches down and closes Mitsuki's eyes, gently. A single kindness before they do a lot of terrible in the name of self preservation. God. He had a little brother. He had a family. This is all so fucked up.]

Don't think about it now, Riley. When we win, when this is all over, we'll find. We'll figure out some way to bring them all back. [Confident. Self-assured.] But first we have to get through this, you know?

[Some people might try to convince Riley through facts and logic. Cairo's always done it through emotions. If she projects herself a certain way, Riley will follow her lead. That's the way it's always been.]

[ More often than not, it works. It doesn’t blind her to rational, reasonable arguments, but it makes it a lot easier for Riley to follow along. Between the two of them, Riley listens, and Cairo plans. ]

This isn’t a fairy tale or a movie, Cairo. [ But still, this one’s a hard sell. ]

You've met people who can do magic here, Riley. [Cairo rolls her eyes.] Who's to say we can't get a bunch of pokemon to cry or whatever and bring Ash Ketchum back.

[The lie of Cairo's confidence is for Riley, of course, but it's also for Cairo herself. She just needs to believe they can through this. She just needs to believe and make it true.]

[ How utterly ridiculous that this makes sense to her. Between the two of them, Cairo is the one who's popular, the one who knows how to navigate a social situation with ease, and yet she's the one who remembers all the little silly things from their childhood, the one who would casually play the hottest video game and come back with a tidbit of information about it years later, completely out of nowhere.

Riley, meanwhile, psyched herself out of doing anything that she wasn't instantly perfect at and cultivated a limited but intense knowledge of cheerleading and her single celebrity crush, true crime and dystopian novels. Like Cairo's a fully realized person, and Riley is... ]

After this...we're going to fix it. [ She distills what Cairo's saying down to an easily repeatable mantra. ] We're...going to fix this, together.

[ Together is what she emphasizes. There's no way Riley can do this by herself. She's already broken once under the weight of it, after all. ]

Yeah, together.

[Cairo smiles. The thing about Riley that Cairo's always tried to get her to put aside is that perfection isn't perfect. Perfection is about easy, about the ways you can get other people to relax and listen to you. At least it is for Cairo.

Where Riley's always wanted to be perfect, Cairo wants to be effortless. It means she does a lot of research and memorizes facts that she can pull out whenever necessary. It means she practices smiling in the mirror, practices the way she tosses her hair over her shoulder. If people see those parts, then they don't see past them to the fact that it's an act.]

Okay, let's get him down to the fountain.

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: panic attack

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: intrusive thoughts, mental illness

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject