silentspringmemes | TDM NO. 1

TDM NO. 1

TDM № 1 : December 2023
Part I; Chapter 1. Fires We Don't Put Out

premise & faq rules application invite requests activity NPCs calendar

Hey, neighbor, welcome to the very first TDM for Silent Spring, a semiprivate suburban 60s horrorgame based loosely on the likes of We're Still Here, Holly Heights, and similar. Characters wake up in the uncannily idyllic early 1960s suburbia of Sweetwater, Maryland, an integrated bedroom community of Washington, DC - in the same household as a complete stranger to whom they have apparently always been married, at least according to the eerily and unwaveringly chipper neighbors who seem to know a little more than they should. This TDM will give you a place to test out the setting and get some sample threads if you're going to apply for an invite. Right now there are at least 20 slots available to the general public.

This game and its world, including this TDM, heavily feature nuclear panic, the Red Scare, conformism, sexism and restrictive gender roles, heteronormativity/gender binarism as it relates to being forced into a 'nuclear family', surveillance, gaslighting, brainwashing/propaganda, disinformation, pollution/contamination, poisoning, loss of control, and uncanny valley. IC consequences can involve anything from social shunning to sleep deprivation torture, brainwashing, and nonconsensual administration of large doses of haloperidol. These are the crux of the game and cannot be opted out of — this game offers a very specific flavor of horror and it is up to players whether or not they want to engage. The atmosphere is a dystopia, and while people can certainly bond with each other in extreme circumstances, the point of this game is not an ingame domestic AU, found family, 'adopting' other characters, etc. Although this TDM has been opened for everyone to enjoy, I ask that you be respectful of the work I've put into cultivating a very specific environment. You have full permission to borrow this setting/premise for PSLs focusing on those things.

universe/setting information, role assignment, and FAQs

I. National Everyone-Smile-at-One-Anotherhood Week

Maybe you were on your deathbed, taking your last gasping breaths. Maybe you had just drifted off into sleep. Or maybe you were just in the middle of another ordinary day—but whatever the case may be, you now wake staring at an unfamiliar popcorn ceiling, dressed in a coordinating pajama set or nightgown straight out of the Sears catalog. A complete stranger lies asleep beside you. Perhaps a dog or a cat you don't recognize lies sleeping on a red tartan bed on the floor behind the mahogany footboard.

This is your house, but it’s not your house: on one of the twin dressers in the room, the morning light reflects off the cover glass on a framed photograph of the two of you standing side-by-side and smiling like figures in a Norman Rockwell painting, maybe with a third, also unrecognizable younger party in the foreground between you. A Civil Defense booklet titled ”Survival Under Atomic Attack” hangs halfway off the corner of the dresser, its pages and cover curling upwards with wear atop a dogeared Macy’s Christmas catalog. The other dresser hosts a watch box and a compact radio: yours, if you’re the one wearing the coordinating flannel shirt and pants, or your new husband’s, if you’re in a babydoll-style nightie.

It’s not immediately clear if you’ve found yourself in the fifties or the sixties, at least until you throw on the robe hanging on the back of the bedroom door and head out into the driveway at some point. There you find a rolled newspaper tossed onto the concrete beside a shiny new car, dated December 1, 1960.

Prompt Details:

— All characters wake in a normal human body with any disability aids (including glasses or contact lenses) converted to the most common form of them in the 60s unless a modern development like a sip/blow powerchair is needed for them to be playable. Although cutting edge technologies like myoelectric limbs were just starting to come around at the time, they were not common and readily accessible, and therefore are not allowed.
— Characters have no powers, and regains will not happen in this game. If they biologically need something to function that is fantasy in nature (ex: have to drink blood), that need is gone and replaced with only a normal human’s needs.
— Characters will find their belongings, up to 3 items from home, around the house in normal places for each item to be: a book on the shelf, a framed photo on a flat surface, etc. Items that don’t exist in the regular universe in 1960 may not be brought (ex: gameboy, pokeball, wizard’s staff).
— Characters may bring one normal, non-livestock pet, or may meet said pet for the first time when they wake up in Sweetwater. They can also be petless.
— No items or weapons from after 1960 are allowed, and no weapons more powerful than a hunting rifle or handgun can be brought with them. One weapon per character.

II. Death of a Salesman

You haven’t had much time to acclimate to your new life—maybe a day or two at the most—before there’s a knock on your door. When you open it, a man in a hat and a brown two-piece suit smiles at you, holding a briefcase in one hand and a brand new vacuum cleaner in the other.

“Hey there! My name’s Charlie and I’m here to tell you all about the latest in vacuum technology. Is the man of the house home?”

Regardless of what you say, Charlie the vacuum salesman finds a way to barge into your home and set up his briefcase and vacuum in the center of the living room. He insists that everyone in the family join him to watch, and then the demo begins as he tells the family how inadequate their current vacuum is and how the dirt it leaves behind will make you sick and make your wife look like she can’t keep up with running the house—but if she just buys this vacuum, she’ll be the envy of all of her friends, and isn’t it great timing that there’s a Christmas special on this very unit right now?

He tells the family he’ll give them ‘a moment to think on it’ while he fills up the water canister for the steamer function in the kitchen sink. Characters can hear the faucet running and then shutting off, but the salesman doesn’t emerge with a water tank—he emerges with a butcher’s knife.

“You took too long!” He announces. “I better get to the next house!”

With that, he charges, and begins to attempt to slice or stab whoever’s closest. You’re in luck, or at least it initially seems—it’s two or maybe even three against one. But once you attack him, you’ll notice something odd—the salesman doesn’t seem to react to being sliced at or stabbed, and if your character has a gun, gunshots don’t stop or even slow him. Shooting him in the head, cutting his jugular vein, or beating him on the back of the head are the only ways to kill him - good luck!

Should your household manage to kill him before he kills you, something even stranger happens. The moment he takes his last breath, lying in a pool of his own blood, there’s a knock on the door. If characters ignore it or say “one moment please!”, the knocks get more and more vehement until the hand is practically banging on the door. If they still ignore it, the neighbor strolls around to the window and looks in to see if they’re home, cupping her hands to the glass— but doesn’t react to the dead body. Instead she just smiles brightly, gives an enthusiastic little wave, and points to the door.

When characters finally open the door to let her in, they’ll notice that she’s holding a mop and bucket, smiling brightly.

“I thought you could use a little help cleaning up the mess!”, she says, barging past just like the salesman did before her. At no point does she stop smiling, or seem to register that it’s a dead body—she just starts mopping up the pool of blood, occasionally dunking her mop into the soapy pink water of the bucket, never referring to it as anything other than the vague “the spill”.

If characters ask her for help disposing of the body, she’ll bring in her husband, a similarly cardboard figure who assists the ‘man of the house’ with digging a grave-sized hole in the back yard and dropping the body in. The next day, the ground is undisturbed.

III. We'll become silhouettes

Whoa there, Neighbor! I hope you and your picturesque new family didn't get so comfortable you lost sight of the looming Red Menace. No, it's not just confined to the silver screen: the Communist threat is everywhere, maybe even in your own home—and the skies above. Around 1:15 PM on December 20th, they hear the sound: the air raid sirens clustered like bananas atop the tall poles dotting the city come to life like singing frogs on a bank, sending out long, drawn out calls in a chorus of overlapping pitches. The radios in every room crackle on as if by magic, and a man's transatlantic voice reads the announcement:

"Your attention please. This is Ron Chapman, one of your official civil defense broadcasters with a special message. Military authorities have advised us that an enemy attack by air is imminent. This is a red alert. You are advised to go to your nearest shelter area immediately. Find shelter. There is not time to leave the city.

Your state civil defense director has just issued the following instructions: Please remain calm. Every precaution will be taken for your protection. Keep your radio tuned to this place on the dial throughout the alert period for information. Telephone service to your home may be cut off to permit military and civil defense authorities to carry out vital operations. Do not attempt to join your family or children if they are now separated. They will be cared for where they are. Obey your civil defense warden and find shelter NOW. Take shelter in your basement or in your nearest shelter area. If you can plug in your radio in the basement, take it with you. Use a portable radio set if you have one. Otherwise turn up the volume of your radio so that you can hear it in the basement. Keep calm, don't lose your head. If you are at work, obey your civil defense authorities. Go quickly and calmly to their designated shelter. If your children are at school, they are being directed to shelter by their teachers. If you are in an automobile, pull over to the curb and then go immediately to the nearest shelter area. Do not leave your car where it will block traffic.

This station will continue to stay on the air throughout the alert period to bring you authentic information and official instructions. Stay tuned to 640 or 1240 kilocycles on your radio for official information. Refuse to listen to unauthorized rumors or broadcasts. This is your official civil defense broadcast . . . Your attention please. This is Ron Chapman, one of your official civil defense broadcasters with a special message . . ."

If characters are at the high school, teachers will usher them out of the classroom and down a single packed cement staircase in the direction of the basement, past a yellow and black sign on the wall over the hand railing that reads FALLOUT SHELTER. They don't visibly panic—but it's clear to almost everyone that the teachers are just as afraid as they are, if not moreso. They've simply been deliberately trained not to show it, though there is a quality to the eyes that training can never reach.

The portable emergency radios echo off of the cement floor and stacked barrels of drinking water lining the walls opposite unopened boxes of survival rations. Teachers call roll in strained voices, accounting for every student left in their care—and then, once everyone is in, the heavy metal door to the shelter is closed, shutting out the aboveground world as Principal Jones tells everyone to stay quiet so they can hear the portable radios.

Characters at home have the option of going into the basements of the homes they awoke in, which have some survival rations but hardly qualify as fully outfitted bunkers, or disregarding the civil defense office's commands and risking it to seek safety in the community fallout shelter beneath the Sweetwater Fire Department. It is up to each "couple" whether they split up or seek safety in numbers, whether they prioritize immediacy or amount of protection.

If characters decide to hunker down in the fallout shelter under the fire department, they will be joined by dozens of their terrified neighbors. Responses vary dramatically: some seem almost catatonic, as though unable to believe that the events before them are really unfolding; others weep with fear. A woman breaks free of her husband's arms, screaming that she has to get her son, but a firefighter keeps her from climbing back up the staircase more and more people stream down.

Regardless of where characters choose to shelter, they are trapped there for the next five hours, listening to the Maryland civil defense director's warning circulate over and over in the claustrophobic space. Now might be a good time to field any questions to Dick Clark, your town Civil Defense Officer and Police Chief.

—until at last, the message changes.

"Your attention please. This is Ron Chapman, one of your official civil defense broadcasters with a special message. Military authorities have advised us that the anticipated enemy attack has been diverted. You may now leave shelter and rejoin your families. This concludes the red alert. Your attention please . . ."

Uh oh. Hope you didn't say anything in the heat of the moment you might now regret.

IV. There's no place like (~~your new~~) home for the holidays

What a stressful week–even if the townspeople don’t seem too phased by it. In fact, they’re acting as if nothing’s happened at all, and will laugh off any suggestion that anything different might be the case. The neighborhood Christmas party at the grand neocolonial home of HOA president Marjorie Taylor proceeds as planned on the 22nd of the month–Characters’ wardrobes, of course, already contain some cocktail attire, but if it doesn’t suit their tastes, they can find all of the latest fashions on display in the completely normal department store.

Punch made by Marjorie herself is served in a tremendous green Tupperware bowl, though those who would prefer a simple cocktail will have no trouble finding one on any of the bar carts around the house. Mistletoe dangles from the arch leading to the secluded hallway lined with doors to the guest room and downstairs bathroom, out of the sight of those who might judge a character for stealing a kiss from someone other than their new spouse. Married couples dance in the living room while their friends perch on the couch like an overloaded liferaft to watch. The air of the room is bright, jovial, loud - the red threat looms in the dark unknown beyond the windows, but for the moment, all is well. Enjoy yourself, neighbor!

V. Slip a sable under the tree

Three days after Marjorie's successful neighborhood Christmas party comes Christmas morning. When characters head down the stairs (or step into the living room on the same floor, if they're the 'child' of one of the newly introduced couples), they'll find the fully decorated Christmas tree that greeted them upon their arrival now has a few presents wrapped in metallic reds and silvers resting at its base, one for each party in the household, addressed simply with From: Santa.

The catch? The wrapping paper is impossible to open, the ribbons are impossible to tie and uncut, until everyone sits down as a family and opens them together in a true representation of an old-fashioned American Christmas morning.

Characters will receive 1 extra item from their homeworld abiding by the starting inventory guidelines—but the item has to be deeply personal, and something that they're uncomfortable with others seeing... which, judging by the similar reaction their new housemates have to their own presents, almost seems to be by design. It could be a compromising photo, a piece of subversive literature, a relic of who they were and things they'd rather remain hidden... but whatever it is, they've now been seen with it.

Players may keep TDM threads canon if both players are admitted, and TDMers are encouraged to play around with multiple possible family member matches. Have fun!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Eyebrows migrating steadily toward his hairline, Edward raises each hand slowly. Displays the vase, thin and lightweight. The watch, a meager buffer against bony knuckles. Then he looks, slowly and pointedly, toward her knife. States, more than asks: ] Do you think this strikes me as the opportune time for a joke?

[ And in case she does take that for sarcasm, because she does very much have a blade on him, ] I'm completely serious. I'm not following the thought process, here.

You wanna know what makes walkers dangerous. [ As though it explains everything, as though that's more than enough reason to look at him like he's crazy. ] "They'll kill you" isn't enough?

I don't know what a "walker" is, Beth. [ His tone is more curious than argumentative, although there's a natural frustration that creeps in when he's presented with incomplete information. ] If they're killing people, it hasn't been anywhere I was hearing about. Do they have something to do with all of this?

I told you - the dead. [ Is hissed. The need to explain walkers has gone from weird to annoying to mildly unsettling. ] You know, the corpses that get up and walk around unless you break their brains?

[ There's no hope of masking his surprise, as unexpected and insane a statement as he's met with. Maybe that's another angle, whatever assault or torture this is, to bombard him with things that make no sense. ]

Are you talking about zombies? Movie zombies? Because I can promise you that's- that's never- it would be on the news, people would be talking about it. Are you sure you aren't hurt?

[ He's not sure if a head injury would be good news or not. ]

[ There's no recognition in her eyes at the word zombie. ]

If people make movies with them, that's really messed up.

[ They used to be people, after all. And it's stupid, too - it'd be so easy to get bitten by one.

He seems so confused, though, and it's only confusing her, too. Is Gotham actually a huge, weird Amish town or something? How could he have missed everything? ]

I don't know how Gotham doesn't have them. The virus was everywhere - it was on the news. [ A pause. ] When there was news, anyway.

[ She can't actually be talking about a zombie virus. This is fiction, some video game taken too seriously or exceedingly bizarre gaslighting. (Or a cover story, but he's working very hard to not let himself write her off entirely. A situation this strange, he needs an ally.) ]

...I have no clue what you're talking about, Beth, that's— there hasn't been any virus, there are no - nobody's eating anybody. That's not a thing. I'm not trying to be rude, but are you positive you haven't been injured? You don't feel, I don't know, drugged, or something?

No.

[ She never realized just how frustrating it'd be for someone to deny reality like this. He might as well tell her the sky is orange and they're going to eat nails for breakfast - except that suggesting she's crazy for knowing that walkers are real feels so much more personal. If it weren't for the turn, her family would be alive. Why the hell would she make that up?

To say she's glaring at him is an understatement. Her accent gets a little stronger, G's clipping off the ends of words, as her words get more heated .]

So I was living in a prison for a year for fun. I was eating mud snake because it sounded good. Does that mean nobody cut my dad's head off? Is he still alive, Edward? Because I saw that, I lived all of it. Don't tell me it's not real

[ He nearly snaps, the frustration fast approaching a boiling point. The impossibilities she's stating as fact, the lack of any obvious reason to hold them captive, let alone in this manner, the hard shove back toward helplessness. Barely catching himself, he forces a reset. Shuts his eyes, taking one audibly large breath. Holds, then releases it, blinking at her slowly. When he speaks he's deliberately calm. Patient. ]

We sweep the house, we lock the doors, and then while we're looking more closely, we explain ourselves. Where we came from, what we were doing, essential biographical details. Okay? Because it sounds like we're... there's clearly some gap. Yeah?

[ For a moment, it doesn't matter whether she trusts him or not. She's so angry at him, this dweeb in old-fashioned pyjamas acting like she's the problem here, that he could attack her right now, and she wouldn't feel betrayed or dismayed. It'd just be one more piece of bullshit getting heaped on the rest.

She glowers at him, but she does nod. ]

Yeah. [ Ugh. ] Your turn.

[ They progress onward while he thinks. At least, he does, not sparing a glance to check that she's following, an attempt at politeness. Allowing her privacy. ]

Edward, like I said. I'm from Gotham, New Jersey, and I'm an accountant. [ He realizes with some embarrassment how little there really is to tell, at least without going deeper into the events of the last two years than he ever plans to. He searches for more, something more substantial. He debates leaving the absence of family unaddressed, but it couldn't be any more uncomfortable than her decapitation mention. ] I live alone, I was raised in an orphanage. I haven't heard of any bizarre diseases, our troubles are more...man-made.

[ It's tempting to linger on that, but he can't imagine it makes a dent in whatever the hell she's talking about. ]

Just...normal stuff. [ Or so she assumes. Yelling about taxes, worrying about whether global warming's happening. She hasn't thought about any of it in years. ]

It happened two years ago. The turn. [ The words different universe haven't entered her mind, but he clearly doesn't know, so she's going to have to explain it. Her voice has softened, a sort of mournful nostalgia coming into it. ] We heard on the news that there was a virus that was making people sick, all over the world. And then the TV stopped working. You couldn't call anybody, or get on the internet...

At first, we thought there'd be a cure. Like, if we could just keep all our friends and relatives safe for a while, the news would come back on, and the CDC'd be telling us we could fix it. But that's not how it worked out. [ A pause. ] Just about everyone's dead.

[ Including me, I think. ]

[ It's impossible. It couldn't have happened, not when the world as he knows it is perfectly intact, miserable for a million mundane reasons. He certainly has internet, and any present damage to communications has been caused by, well, him. But he listens carefully, and she doesn't sound like she's faking. She seems too young to be an actress. Even if she'll surprise him by revealing the opposite is true, a good liar wouldn't pick something so patently insane.

It'll be another thing to unpack later, he tells himself. For now, treat it as real. ]

Two years... long time to be getting by without any - is it just communications that are down, or all electricity? Transport?

Everything. [ Maybe she wasn't clear enough. ] There's nothing anymore. I told you, I lived in a prison for a year. It was the only place we could find.

[ But at the moment, she's intent on keeping the scales even, in terms of who's said what. ]

Tell me more about Gotham. What's wrong with it?

It's a mob playground, built on lies and murder. [ He wants it to be matter of fact, but he can't prevent all of the heat from creeping in. He's been too angry, and for too long. In many ways he's triumphed over it, but their situation is preventing him from really sitting with that fact. Nothing but more work to be done. ] Drugs, gangs, homelessness, corruption, violence, it's everywhere. Infested. Can't trust your neighbors, can't trust banks, police and politicians are just doing whatever the mob tells them to do. People— they—

[ He's scrambling, fighting to find some example without revisiting portions of his childhood that send him spiraling. He turns, hoping to catch her eye. ]

I've seen a man decapitated, too.

[ Beth's staring up at him, gaze level and face pulling into more and more of a frown. It sounds horrible the way the hospital had been horrible, full of awful grasping cruelty and all the ways people can hold each other captive. The kind of place that makes the idea of living around more than a couple of people seem pointless. If it's as bad as he makes it sound, the kind of place that makes being alive at all seem pointless.

Not for the first time, she misses the woods. She breathes out. ]

Who was it?

I didn't know him personally. [ Nearing something suspicious, but he finds he does want to share this story. He hadn't had the courage to explain it in detail to the man's daughter, during their sparse correspondence. Too cruel. ] His name was Mr. Joon. An immigrant, strong-armed into money laundering. His higher up pinned some missing funds on him.

They fed him to an alligator.

[ No fucking joke. ]

[ Her lips press together hard for a moment. ]

That sucks.

[ After a moment - and while pushing open a door to what looks like another bedroom - she asks the inevitable. ]

Why didn't you leave?

[ He shrugs. ]

I could say money, and that wouldn't be wrong, but I think it runs deeper than that. I was born there, you know? Raised in it. And they do a good job of letting you think 'it's gonna sort itself out, eventually. I could be okay, someday'. Then it sinks in deeper, and you realize it's just reality. Just how people are, or that you deserve it, maybe it varies a little by person but the end result's the same. Seems pointless.

[ He steps inside, slowly, noting the bed is a twin. The wallpaper is bright, inviting in a way adults don't bother with. Intended for a child, he guesses, with a chill. But the bed is neatly made. ]

Doubt anyone in our position would stop to make their bed after getting up, but maybe be ready for a third person. Just in case.

[ She's not sure what to say to any of that, except that it does sound pointless. Parts of the old world were great, but from this vantage point, so much of it sucked.

If anyone lives in that room, they haven't made any kind of mark on it. She can't help but shiver at the idea - it's probably not going to be Judith sleeping in that bed. ]

Yeah.

[ And that - hm. Old world. ]

What year was it?

[ He falters, gears turning. She couldn't be suggesting any gap, could she? Impossibly elaborate themed kidnapping scheme is something he can work himself into believing. Time travel is another thing entirely. ]

Um. 2022? And you-?

[ Her first instinct is he's screwing with me, even though she knows he isn't. Probably isn't. He doesn't know anything about walkers, and he looks at her like she's crazy.

Maybe it really is 2022 where he's from. ]

I think it's 2012. The turn happened in 2010, and it's been about two years.

[ No way. He turns and stares openly, more expression of shock than accusation. He doesn't challenge her claim. ]

Well, I— I don't remember hearing about anything like you're describing back then, either.

...We might be in real trouble here.

[ As if this was the first clue. ]

[ They look at each other, and Beth waits to hear him call her crazy. But he doesn't. ]

It happened. Even if you don't remember -

[ She falls quiet. ]

I don't know how. It's real.

[ It didn't, he's certain, but he believes her demeanor. And if their different dates of origin are correct, it opens up questions that somehow eclipse the concept of roving, reanimated dead. He holds her gaze and nods. ]

I believe you. And in that case, it's probably in our best interest you share any relevant information about, uh, them. Specific dangers posed, I mean. How to kill them. Stuff like that?

[ Satisfied the bedroom is unoccupied, he exits and descends the stairs into a living room. Unremarkable so far, which is a relief. ]

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NB: descriptions of violence

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