aworldwithoutboxes | mistletoe meme but people die-

mistletoe meme but people die-

THE MURDERGAME SHIPPING MEME V1.2

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, if you want a format to follow. Remember - unexpected murdergame ships are the best kind! Don't be afraid to tag out and across canons!

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. Musical Theater - Sing a love song! Whether you're playing from a specific musical or not, live your romantic duet dreams!
7. CHRISTMAS!!!! - The holidays really can be murder! Welcome to some kind of cozy Christmas-themed residence, and remember: they're your present this year! Because the only other thing you're liable to get is fucking murdered.
8. 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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[ It's taken some time to really get a feel for the layout of the mansion, even for Presa; even without the new areas that unlock with each passing week, the layout feels like it constantly changes, like an ever-shifting labyrinth meant to disorient and unsettle. It's easy to get lost here, and even easier to go mad here.

Which makes the whole "kill and get a wish granted" angle that was given at the start of all this a little bit more troublesome.

Presa knows better than anyone the importance of keeping a level head in unfamiliar situations, in figuring out all the angles to make sure that you're never blindsided. Particularly with people you don't know and certainly trust.

And, as she's reminded as she enters the kitchen and immediately sees a certain brown coat turned in her direction, especially with the people you do. ]

Al.

[ She heads straight for the cabinets, her tail swaying behind her as she looks for where the kettle got put. ]

[Every time he hears that "Al"--the nickname that's only hers, that's only ever taken shape in her voice--his awful little heart does something funny. It's like a bird lifting its wings for takeoff, only for the ground to crumble to nothing beneath its feet. Familiarity and brutal coldness all in one.

Alvin looks up, though he knows who it is, and turns his attention back to the stove in front of him.]

Presa.

[Around the others, he calls her Jill, the name on her profile. It's simpler that way. When it's just the two of them, though, he reverts to Presa. That's the name she earned for herself, all on her own, after what he did. It's the last thing she heard him call her.

By his count, he lost the right to call her anything else a long time ago.

Alvin doesn't need the mansion's trickery today to feel unsettled. The last desperate cry of the teenager they sentenced to death still echoes in his head, and a night of drinking to drown it out has only left him faintly queasy. Presa's presence is simultaneously comfort and recrimination, which is both more and less than he deserves. He's painfully grateful she's here, anyway.]

I'm frying eggs. Want any?

[Egg sandwiches: a remedy for hangovers he's fallen on before.]

[ As much as she'd like to say that Alvin's shifting of names doesn't mean much to her, even she knows that she's not even fooling herself. She knows why he does – it's just easier to go with her given name that's listed on her profile rather than have to explain it (easier for who, she thinks somewhat bitterly). But even if she doesn't actually mind, it doesn't mean she doesn't freeze for the briefest moment every time he does it.

After yesterday, though, it really doesn't register as much as it does as she looks over at him as he says it. Even if he hid it pretty well from the others, it seemed clear to Presa that what happened with Hanamura yesterday struck a nerve. Given what little she knows, she's not surprised. If anything she's impressed that he's actually functional right now, with as much as it seemed like he drank last night.

Maybe she shouldn't have left him alone afterward after all. ]

Sure, I wouldn't mind. [ She puts enough water in the kettle for a few cups of tea, in an eventually-not-silent offer for him, as she moves next to him to place it on a burner not currently being used. She pauses, the smell of the eggs hitting her better here than it did when she first came in. ]

Your usual meal of choice after a night out?

[ An observational question, with no hint of judging anywhere in her usual tone. ]

[Ah, damn. When she stands that close, especially here in the kitchen, like some daydream of domestic innocence, it's almost impossible to resist the pull of old times towards her. Alvin shifts slightly, more a pantomime of giving her space than its actuality. To keep from reaching for a strand of her hair, he fiddles with a buckle of his coat instead.]

Yeah, well. Can't drink like I'm twenty-one anymore, I guess.

[As if. He has a perfectly healthy liver grown on lush, Rieze Maxian crops. His suffering's due entirely to the volume of alcohol consumed, no any diminished ability to consume it.

Some draft in the mansion makes a ghostly, moaning sound. It almost sounds like Avril Laviiigggnneee... Remembering why he drank so much last night dims Alvin's paltry attempt at levity. He covers it by busying himself with plating the eggs that've finished cooking and splashing a little more oil in the pan.]

Too bad it wasn't a night out. I wouldn't mind blowing this place, either, so... given the givens, it's hard to blame the kid.

[He still has the eggs out, so he picks up two more to crack into the pan.]

...Even if it means we're stuck cooking our own breakfasts.

[ She lets out a small chuckle at the self-dig, pausing to turn the knob to turn on the burner for the kettle. ]

Be careful, Al, any more jokes about how old you are and I'm going to start mistaking you for the Conductor.

[ Despite being done with what she needed with stove, she doesn't immediately pull away, instead watching Alvin's hands as he adds the second round of eggs to the pan. The feeling of nostalgia she gets when she looks at him curls up in the pit of her stomach, almost willing her to just enjoy the moment for what it is. Even if it was for a brief second, it could've just like any other day in Fennmont.

The creaking and groaning of the walls bring her back to reality, though, and she pulls away to lean against the counter. She takes a second to adjust her glasses, before looking back at him. ]

It's a lot of pressure to put on a kid that age. I'd be more surprised if no one ended up cracking at all.

[ There's been a lot worse done for a lot less, she thinks to say, but decides against to, her gaze dropping down to a particularly uninteresting piece of tile floor. ]

[Rowen? A snort breaks through both the gravity of the morning and his hangover.]

Come on. Can you imagine me with a moustache like that?

[Alvin turns to her and makes a W with his hands under his nose, index fingers reaching all the way back to his ears. For a second, it is like he's twenty-one again and they're back in Fennmont, joking over cheap breakfast, unaware how close they stood to a precipice of lies.

He holds onto that smile for a moment as he disposes of the eggshells and passes Presa to wash his hands.]

Not saying no to a beard, though. [Thoughtfully:] I think I'd look good with a beard.

[Kill him now, Presa, you're the only one who can.

Back to the grim topic at hand, though. Alvin looks at her over his shoulder, face sort of unreadable. 'A kid that age.' How old was Teruteru? Older than Jude. Older than Elize.]

...You were that age.

[It's a quiet observation, self-aware and careful. Alvin knows he only knows that because she told him, and soon as she told him, he turned her in.]

[ She thinks about the idea of him having a beard, rotating the image in her mind, tilting her head slightly. ]

I don't see it.

[ Granted, what she's thinking of is exponentially more full than the inevitable creation that would spring forth over the course of the next year, but either way it's not great! Though, she's not sure that she'd ever really seen him with anything less than a clean face – if there's anything they both have in common, they're very particular about their aesthetics.

She tenses up at the mention of that, her gaze shooting right back up the floor to stare at him, trying to get some glimpse of what he's thinking or what he's trying to get at. For as much as he's always seemed to love the path of least resistance, he's very consciously wading into a touchy subject. ]

He didn't seem to be trying to get back at his mother, if that's what you mean.

[ She sighs, fiddling with her glasses. ]

Besides, it's easier being interrogated when you don't know anything. Being left in the dark made things easier, even if hindsight only serves to make it more painful.

[Congratulations, we are officially in a fractured dimension where Alvin never grows a beard. With four little words, Presa has crushed the possibility of that future. COME SMASH THE DIVERGENCE CATALYST, LUDGER. (The divergence catalyst is Alvin's face.)

Anyway. Broaching touchy subjects. Yeah, it was a choice. He's trying. Does he get a cookie, Presa? Because he already regrets the attempt. At least he's facing the sink, so the chances that she catches his wince are low.]

...Guess it would, huh.

[He shuts off the water, dries his hands. Stands there with the towel for a moment, as if there's a way to express his sympathies without hypocrisy or patronizing her, and he can find it if he just looks hard enough.]

Still, it's... the pressure of having to hurt others to survive. That still got put on you around that age, wouldn't you say?

[Replacing the towel, Alvin returns to his station, waiting for the edges of the eggs to crisp.]

[ THE EVIL IS DEFEATED. This is the prime dimension now. Xillia 2 is CANCELLED. ]

It was around then, yes.

[ She squints, her mouth thinning out as she watches him as he moves back to the pan. He already knows the answer to the question. And Alvin of all people has little right to empathize about the pressures of needing to hurt others just to get by, especially with her, so what is he playing at here? ]

I can't imagine that you came by the skill so recently in life, either. Am I wrong?

[ There's a hint of an edge in there, but it's not as snippy of a retort than she half expected it to be. ]

[There, that's the chilly response he deserves. He takes his spatula and uses it to peek beneath one of the eggs. Nope, not quite done.]

Depending on how you look at it, I was either fourteen or... I dunno. Something shy of twelve, when I got my start.

[Fourteen when he joined--or was pressed into--Exodus's intelligence unit, spying for his uncle off the books by age twelve. Alvin was betraying people who trusted him before he could shave.]

But if we're just talking about the desperation to survive and make yourself safe, when no one's there anymore to do it for you--guess I learned about that at six.

[He pokes at the eggs some more. Further down the counter, bread pops out of the toaster.]

I didn't mean anything by it, Presa. I'm just agreeing. It's a lot to put on a kid.

[ The answer – it feels like an honest answer, at least – catches her somewhat off-guard. The fact that their similar start ages doesn't really surprise her, from what little she's gleaned from him and what he's said to the Chimeriad and Maxwell's group, but the second part of the answer is what gives her pause. She watches him quietly for a little bit, trying to further get some idea of what he's thinking.

She jumps slightly at the pop of the toaster going off. These machines (spyrix, or whatever Maxwell had called them?) were something she wasn't probably ever going to get used to. ]

... is that when you first showed up in Rieze Maxia?

[ It's a quiet question, like she's still trying to weigh her options if she actually wants to ask it or not. ]

[For the first time in a minute, Alvin looks at her. It's the briefest of sidelong glances, there and gone, yet there it is--a glimpse of uncertainty. He wasn't expecting Presa to ask for clarification; or, perhaps, he expected a different, harsher tone.

Still too much of a coward to meet her eyes for long, he starts transferring eggs to toast, toast to plates, enough for two.]

Yeah. You know the tsunami that ended the Battle of Fezebel, twenty years back? That same storm blew in all the Elympions who eventually became Exodus.

[Including little mama's boy Alfred Vint Svent, newly fatherless in a terrifying, lush, hostile world.]

[ She hums in recognition of what he's talking about, since he's clearly trying not to look at her too much right now. She'd make a comment about it, but given the fact that he's generally being more open than he's been in a long time – and also maybe because he's making her food – she keeps it to herself for the time being. ]

I can't imagine what that must've been like. Especially for a six-year-old.

[ Which is why they even formed Exodus in the first place, right? She can hear what Alvin had said back in Kanbalar about their initial goals, that all they ever wanted was to go home. Who could blame that? Presa didn't have a home, not until Gaius gave her one, but even she could empathize with the desire to leave a hostile place and back to where they belonged.

Her gaze finally breaks, looking down at the eggs and toast on the plates, then back at the stove. She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, trying to will the images of Teruteru breaking down out of her vision. ]

It's certainly enough to drive anybody to drink.

[ teen drinking is very bad, etc etc ]

[That wins her one of those familiarly crooked smiles as he turns to offer her her share of breakfast.]

Heh. Well, at least I didn't start that at six. I waited until I was all grown up to pick up that fun little vice.

[The smile, like so much else warm and familiar in life, fades. Alvin catches himself studying Presa's face, wondering if it would feel the way his fingers still remember if he grazed her cheek. He runs a hand down the back of his skull instead.]

Listen, uh. ...I can go if you want. You don't have to force yourself to share a table with... well, with me.

[That's a sad look to be saying that with, though.]

[ That gets her to laugh, quietly, as she takes the plate from him in a nod in thanks. ]

Better late than never, I guess.

[ Presa considers the plate for a moment or two, before looking back up Alvin when he mentions leaving. Part of her thinks it's probably for the best – even if they're stuck in this dangerous and unfamiliar situation, she's not sure it's the best idea to be staying so close to him. Nothing's happened, of course, but she knows that that doesn't mean that nothing's going to happen. Burning bridges was his specialty, after all, and this place is all but encouraging that to happen.

And yet, seeing that smarmy, all-too-familiar smile, she knows she can't help herself.

She's grateful for the kettle finally going off, giving her an excuse to turn back to the stove and hope he missed the slight blush over her cheeks. Spirits, she's weak – she can just hear Agria making fun of her right now. ]

I don't mind. I wouldn't have taken your offer if I did. Besides, it's probably better if we're seen together in case people start asking questions. [ she coughs, her tail swishing back and forth as she grabs a cup and a tea bag from the cabinet ] Do you want one?

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mistletoe meme but people die-

🧍‍♀️ (spooky mansion edition)

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