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:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Name: Alfred Vint "Alvin" Svent | Champion/SHSL B.F.L., Former Informer, Unconvicted, Beyond a Treasonable Doubt
Age: 26 | Species: Human | Occupation: Mercenary
Likes: Roguish fashion, cities, peach pie, the ladies
Dislikes: Responsibility, consequences, weird food like "soda rice"
Traits: Juvenile, smarmy, remorseful
Trivia: Alvin's coat was a birthday gift from his uncle, who died in an incident involving experimental spyrix.

[Well, ain't that the most flattering profile you've ever seen? Alvin himself seems pretty put-out about it, though he tries to laugh off the harsher descriptions. "Smarmy." Yikes. Some gamemaker sure woke up on the wrong side of the murderbed, huh? He'd go with "charming," personally.

For all the slander about his personality, Alvin's trying his best for his fellow captives... maybe? He slips quickly into a big brother role, if a sometimes hapless and inappropriate one, attempting to lighten the mood with bad jokes, innuendo, and make-your-own-fun projects around their prison. Kids bring out a bit of a protective streak, too, so he's not a total failure of an adult all the time.

He goes grim-faced and flat in an investigation, though the gallows humor continues to raise its untimely head. Still, he manages to hold his own and contribute. These aren't his first grisly deaths, after all. And when he's inevitably pressed about his past in high-stakes situations, he comes clean about the dirty deeds he's done: triple-crossings, espionage, murder, and manipulation, just to name a few of his sins. If he's willing to confess to international (inter-world?) terrorism for the sake of the group, maybe he's not totally unreliable.

But motives that promise mistakes undone or revival of the dead really, visibly get to him. Given everything, is this re-re-re-re-turncoat a man you'd trust with your life?]

[Late Thursday night in St. Junko's Academy of Despair; it's been long enough that everyone here knows the danger the wee hours of Thursday and Friday represent. Especially with the threat hanging over them; kill, or be scattered to random dimensions across the multiverse. Maybe they'd even be universes that could support life, if you were lucky.]

[But it's in these circumstances that Alvin will receive a knock on his dorm door.]

[It takes a hot, hot minute before there's any sign of life. Eventually, though, something creaks behind the door--a man coming to see what such a night has in store for him.

After a pause, the door cracks open just enough for him to peer out, frowning with concern.]

Cal?

[The way he's standing keeps one of his arms completely hidden from view.]

Hey Alf.

[She's leaning against the wall outside the door. It might look casual, were it not for the hand pressed to her side, centered over a dark crimson stain on her shirt.]

Ha... guess I hecked up real bad here, huh?

Whoa, what the hell.

[While his features widen in shock and concern, his voice remains low enough for secrecy. He drops the baseball bat he was hiding--quietly--then kicks it backwards to slide across the floor, out of the way, so he can take her elbow and usher her inside.]

Shit. What happened?

[WHAT MONSTER WOULD MAR THE INTERGALACTIC TREASURE OF THIS WOMAN'S ABSOLUTELY THRESHED ABDOMINAL MUSCULATURE??]

I was patrolling.

[Inside the light of the room, she's pale and sweating. She sits on the edge of Alvin's bed.]

Jack got the drop on me, that mask-wearing prick. Didn't see the second knife.

That piece of...

['Handsome,' his damn ass. As soon as she's seated, Alvin switches on the beside lamp, yanks the case off his pillow, and offers her the latter.]

Keep pressure on with this, okay?

[Deep down, he's panicking, but he has nothing if not experience masking terror in adverse situations. In the meantime, he starts tearing the pillowcase into strips for bandages.]

Should I expect him to come knocking in a minute, too?

Uh- probably not.

[She winces, pressing down on the wound.]

Been a while since I had to break a neck but I know what it feels like when it works.

[The wince turns into a sadly fierce smile, just for a second.]

[He pauses for a second, looking at her. The truth sinks in, as do all its attending implications.

Then Alvin shuts his jaw with a click, shoving those implications aside. They're not going to think about that right now. He's not going to think about that right now.

(No, no, no, no, no. Not again. He can't do this again.)]

Well, good riddance to bad company, I say. [Keep it moving, Alvin. Keep them both talking, both working on survival. He sits beside Cal, touching her arm in a careful, wordless request to see the wound.] If you didn't, I would've had to. Damaging a trans-dimensionally recognized treasure like this.

[It might be that he's focused on wound care, but he's not meeting her eyes.]

Yeah. Sorry you didn't get a shot at him.

[She rests her hand on his shoulder as he checks her wound, giving a small squeeze. Much as she'd like to retreat into the usual bubbly optimism and free-association, it's been too long here to even pretend to not know what happens next.]

How's it look?

[Pretty bad, if the blood wasn't indication enough- the exact severity being left as an exercise in yes-anding, how tragic are we getting here?]

...

[It takes him two beats too long to answer.]

I'm no doctor, Cal.

[What he wouldn't give to be Jude Mathis. It's not the first time he's longed for spirit artes, or for any ability to heal--to stop people from slipping away right in front of him.

Face tight, he guides the pillow back into place and holds it there with her, his hand over hers.]

...I'll--get supplies from the nurse's office. Once we slow the bleeding. You need stitches, I know that much.

Wouldn't love you as much if you were.

[Is this the first time one of them has said it? It feels like it. Too late, too little, but it's been said.]

[She places her free hand over his, squeezing.]

I'll- I'll come with you. You shouldn't go out alone.

[ha.]

I mean- no. I'm not leaving you alone. Not. Not yet.

[It'd hurt less to be shot in the gut. Alvin breathes in sharply, the all-too-familiar tang of blood burning his nostrils, the simple use of a four-letter word lodging below his ribs like a bullet. Swallowing doesn't keep the rawness from his voice.]

Cal.

[Calypso has a solid three inches of height on him and, with no boosts from his Lilium Orb, more sheer strength, but Alvin gathers her close and presses his face into her hair anyway, as though she's someone small and soft to protect. As though there's anything he can do to protect her now.]

I shouldn't have left you alone. Damn it, why am I like this? I always end up doing the wrong thing, when what I wanted--what I want--

[--Is to be with her. To be good enough for her. To be good enough for something good, someone good, for once in his damned life.

To be with her even if he isn't good enough.

Alvin stayed in tonight because he didn't want to be tempted. To be flung to another world, again, one even more incomprehensible and hostile than Rieze Maxia--one where, even if it didn't immediately kill him, he'd be alone again, even more alone than before, ripped away from someone who made him like the person he tried to be for her--

--from someone who loved him--

--was too much. He didn't trust himself not to ruin that newly budding, precious thing he'd begun to recognize he felt for her. And now Cal's being ripped away from him anyway.]

...Forget it. Don't worry about me. [He swallows again.] What... do you want right now? You want me to stay?

[He doesn't want to leave and find her gone. He wants that almost as little as he wants to feel her slip through his arms.]

i have no actually appropriate icons for this

calrippedso - 2024-12-09 04:03 (UTC) - Expand

Yeah I had to go MAKE icons, how dare you do this to me

returncoat - 2024-12-09 11:59 (UTC) - Expand

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calrippedso - 2025-01-02 01:51 (UTC) - Expand

[ 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.]

mistletoe meme but people die-

Alvin Svent | Tales of Xillia

RNG says we're in some kind of school

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so the other half of this prompt I rolled was "5" (cw: blood)

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Well, I rolled for wound severity and got a 7 out of 10...

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i have no actually appropriate icons for this

Yeah I had to go MAKE icons, how dare you do this to me

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🧍‍♀️ (spooky mansion edition)

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