TDM NO. 2

[silentspringmods]

TDM № 2 : February 2024
Part I; Chapter 3. Out of the Mist Your Voice Is Calling

premise & faq rules application invite requests NPCs calendar story so far taken

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—or, if they're under 18, they awaken as the legally recognized child of the aforementioned couple. 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.

OOC TDM plotting/who's who

Openings

As of this TDM, a total of 18 player slots are open. Players may app up to two characters; one of the two will not count toward a player slot.

There are 8 openings for players who app at least one Wife;
There are 4 openings for players who only app a Husband;
and there are 6 openings for players apping at least one character under 18.

Game Tone and Blanket Warnings

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.

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 February 2, 1961.

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. Smoke gets in your eyes

A few days after characters arrive, a large tower of black smoke begins to rise against the February sky, a dark column at the treeline just beyond the cooling towers that mark the location of the distant Sweetwater Atomic Energy Plant. The radios, if characters turn them on, advise of a two-day controlled burn going on in the forest during the dead season, managed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and suggest that characters keep windows closed to minimize “nuisance smoke” in the home. The whole town takes on the faint smell of smoke as the wind pushes it toward the patchwork of subdivisions: not the pleasant smell of wood burning or food cooking, but something much less organic, a close neighbor to the smell of burning plastic. Characters may, from time to time, notice the faintest passing metallic taste in their mouths.

Otherwise, it’s a slushy, snowy Maryland winter like any other, and the previous month’s snow—which had mostly melted by the time of the controlled burn—returns before too long, dusting the town in a few shallow inches of brilliant white. It’s enough for school to close for a few consecutive snow days—perhaps a good time for newly assigned children to explore the town or earn a few dollars shovelling driveways?

The salt trucks and plows do a pretty good job of keeping the streets cleared, but something odd begins to surface on the surface of the pavement as they continue to salt and scrape: numbers spraypainted on the pavement, varying by location: 1, 2, 3, or 4. Characters have about a week to realize that the numbers correlate to sectors in a quadrant covering what seems to be the entire town before roadblocks appear at the major street junctions connecting adjacent quadrants, manned by civil defense and the Sweetwater police force.

A disaster preparedness drill, the radio informs them, will be taking place for the next week. Characters who do not have critical business in a sector other than Sector 4, where Haven Street and the neighborhood bunker is located, will not be allowed to pass through, and those that are allowed to pass through for critical work (such as at the hospital in Sector 3 or the fire department in Sector 1) are subjected to trunk and body searches.

Unfortunately, most of the shops in town, including the grocery store, are clustered around the town park in Sector 1, unavailable to Haven Street’s residents. As the week goes on, neighbors may have to swap and borrow to make sure that they have everything they want—not need, of course, because the government of the town of Sweetwater would never let this go on long enough to create a serious need without providing for the citizens trapped contained within the cordoned sectors. Might as well get to know each other!

III. Everybody's somebody's fool

You didn’t think Valentine’s Day would come to pass without a quintessential 1960s cocktail party, did you? On the 14th of the month, Marjorie again plays hostess in the large, well-groomed neocolonial at the end of the cul-de-sac, offering a spread complete with cheese balls, deviled eggs, and fondue. Or maybe shrimp are more your character’s style? Either way, there is no shortage of rather… quirky hors d’oeuvres and assorted canapes to blunt the effect of the cocktails her husband mixes up, or her signature punch, if characters would rather have that.

While characters’ closets contain an item or two of cocktail attire from the 1960s lives they’ve stepped into, there are also a lot of other things in their closets, things that would catch some glances or invite gossip by the NPC partygoers. It’s best to avoid a faux pas in an environment like this - maybe some second opinions on outfits are warranted? And of course, it wouldn’t reflect well on one spouse for their partner to show up underdressed… or to not show up at all without a pretty good alibi.

Characters may notice, at various points in the night, that Marjorie’s gaze wanders from person to person, that at times she seems to be watching different partygoers. This probably isn’t the best place for subversive speech, but it’s a good chance to meet one’s neighbors, and perhaps an even better chance to try and get some information out of Marjorie.

IV. Don't tell me why, kiss me goodbye

cw: non-graphic depiction of woman in labor

When characters go to sleep on the night of the 15th, the edges of the town again begin to merge with their unconscious minds as they did on New Year's Eve, a sequence of fragmented images: a beautiful young woman’s face contorts in agony, the bindi above the bridge of her nose crumpling between tight brows as she pants through bared teeth, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. Two older women, both with salt-and-pepper hair, stand on either side of her in an urban hospital room, rubbing her back as it jerks with her weeping. The roots of her hair are drenched with sweat; tears stream around the hand of her mother-in-law as it rests on her flushed cheek. A young woman with hair tucked under a scrub cap leans over one of her elders and says something to the soon-to-be mother.

Two occupied pairs of loafers face each other on a glossy tiled floor. A woman’s voice echoes over a speaker: Now boarding, Flight 17501, DCA to LaGuardia. First-Class passengers on Flight 17501 from DCA to LaGuardia may now board. The same hand that wound into the telephone cord reaches out and shakes a broader one several shades darker, decorated with a proportionally heavy chain-link watch.

“Professor.
My congratulations to your daughter.”


A few days later, the televisions downstairs crackle to life, playing in black and white a short video. The young woman from the dream stands in front of the camera in what appears to be a walled garden, wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a plain but brightly colored sari flaring out across it sidha pallu style and holding an infant; her thick black hair is now in a long braid tucked to the right, capped off with trendy Sadhana cut bangs. She waves at the camera, then holds up the baby’s wrist as to wave too. The child is small, and young—maybe one month old.

She says something, her brown eyes warming, although of course the soundless film doesn't capture her words. The camera comes closer to the baby, showing her face, giving different angles, then pans out, sweeping across the garden: well-kept, clearly maintained by someone who cares about it quite a bit. Guava and Chinese hibiscus border the brick wall with a well-pruned mango tree standing sentry, and the compound leaves of a young neem tree sway gently in the breeze in the foreground. One of the women from the delivery room, somewhere in her fifties or sixties, steps into the screen to stand beside the new mother, looking into the camera with the same eyes, her own creased at the edges with decades lived.

Be careful. I love you, she mouths in Hindi, although the video has no sound—and characters, even without any prior knowledge, will find that somehow they know the exact content of what was just expressed—and more than that echoes in their minds.

Be careful.
I love you.
Ishani needs her grandfather.

The young woman smiles a little thinly at the the camera as the video comes to an end, her eyes glistening, and says something in parting, again waving and holding up the baby’s hand as though to wave too; the older woman presses a hand to her lips and blows a kiss with a wistful smile that holds a trace of pain—and briefly, characters look at the screen and realize that her face has metamorphosed into that of someone they care very deeply for, holding direct eye contact with them, visible to any other parties in the room. The video ends, leaving them—and, if they’re unlucky, another member of the household—standing in the living room, staring at a blank screen.

V. Becoming what we are, collapsing stars

Characters attending the community college’s Spring/Summer semester to begin training for their new careers may notice a sign-up sheet posted outside of some of the classrooms in the science and engineering wing: a series of talks on astrophysics, open to the public, is being held by visiting lecturer Vikram Ravichandran, a tenured professor in the Physics Department of the Indian Institute of Science holding degrees in astrophysics and theoretical physics from the IIS and Oxford University, respectively. It’s quite an honor to have someone so qualified teaching in a little town like this, isn’t it?

If any characters puzzle about what might bring a man across the world to give talks in a town like this, their curiosity is dismissed, and they’re simply told that the professor is teaching while he looks for a quieter suburban life outside of the frenetic pace of Bengaluru. Who wouldn’t want to live and teach in America? His choice seems self-explanatory enough to the Americans of Sweetwater.

On the 19thth, the first talk is held, a thoroughly normal lecture on recent academic thought on the origins of the universe, followed by light refreshments, offering attendees a chance to meet their new classmates or perhaps to introduce themselves or pose questions to Dr. Ravichandran—although how much can be safely shared with him, as always, remains a looming question mark.

For the most part, though, Vikram has an approachable air—he's tall and speaks with a deep voice, and is certainly very intelligent in an eccentric sort of way, but he smiles and laughs in conversation throughout the night, diving deep into explanations with evident relish when asked. He gives the impression of someone who has been in academia for quite some time; with tenure has come the ability to relax. As odd as his presence in the town of Sweetwater is, he does seem to sincerely enjoy teaching—those particularly attentive to their surroundings might notice his name on the cover of one of the communal textbooks left out on one of the tables in the science department’s study area on their way back to the parking lot.

Notes:
— The Community College is now open! It features a cafeteria, campus center, library, gymnasium, athletics field, pool, and assorted classrooms. Characters who are registered as students have free access to all parts of the campus; characters who aren't students can access most of it, although they can't check out library books or access the gym or pool.

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!

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Comments

[angelhunter]

His fingers furl in loosely, his hand dropped to his lap. He's miscalculated. Notes it, frankly and without disappointment. He's learning about her. Joan Agnes Dority. Broadly brash and resilient, selectively apprehensive (the selection of which is unconventional, to say the least). Potentially reckless. It's a vague outline. Somewhere within it may be the reason she's here. Based on her need for correction, it can't be personality.

His lips flatten into a self-deprecating line. His name usually takes explaining one way or the other.

"It's just been years since anyone called me Hunter. Stick to Dr. Percy if you'd like." Damn it. Begrudgingly, he corrects himself, "Mr. Percy."

[poleaxed]

Hesitance, stemming from what? Boredom? Annoyance? She sticks to annoyance, because it benefits her temperament and interest. She cannot hurt the educated, calm man, but she can be a thorn under the fingernail, and in that way be remembered.

"Okay, Mister." She doesn't bother to specify what she should be called; she guesses that she won't have any influence on his decision even if she beats him savagely. And if she beats him savagely, he won't talk to her again. There's no gain.

Oh, wait. Money. His actions, his cool collection. Because he had not come to her as a client, she had not assessed him on the basis of inborn wealth, but now that she thinks of it, he reeks of that calm comfort that comes from money. Nothing she does will matter to him, because he is not money. It's comforting in the dull grey way that makes her think of rot and illness-- broken and useless things that are free in their lack of responsibility. She is trash to him, and that's fine. There's no expectation of performance.

But she can still be a thorn. "I bet you're gonna fit right in here. Nobody's gonna lock up Hunter Percy. Jesus. Why did they give you two last names?"

[angelhunter]

The conversation slowing to small talk has his fingers itching for a cigarette. He didn't notice an absence of that heavy, acrid smell in his home. There must have been a pack somewhere, and the regret of not looking for it scrapes at the underside of his thoughts.

"Blind adherence to tradition," he remarks, her comment glancing off him. He never really felt attached to his own name, before he got the diminutive working in the emergency room. Probably because it belonged to someone else first. A grandfather he met on a handful of occasions and a great-grandfather that died before he was born. What a thrilling origin. "Couldn't make my first name Aloysius and set me up for a life of character-building schoolyard bullying."

[poleaxed]

She tilts her head to the side, disbelieving him once again. "You didn't go to public school. Don't bullshit me; I'm like a lie detector." (She is not.)

[angelhunter]

Hap chuckles at that. Does he give off an aura of extravagance? Admittedly it's been a long time since he wasn't comfortable, but if he'd had a vast inheritance to fund his research, he wouldn't have to waste so much time pitching patents. He wishes she were right.

"No bullshit."

[poleaxed]

If he's not rich, where does his confidence come from? He must have gotten rich from being a doctor. Easily, he can be retrofitted into her view of the world.

"Big promise." The best way to deflect from being wrong is to ignore it completely.

[angelhunter]

"Fair exchange," he corrects good-naturedly, spreading both hands in a shrug-adjacent gesture. "You've been honest with me. More honest than any of these people, anyway." He looks at the town and by extension the townsfolk. Milling in their shops, driving their cars, acting sane in an insane world.

[poleaxed]

She narrows her eyes again. Compliments are inherently circumspect. "Stop trying to butter me up." She holds her hands up to match his. "I'm always honest."

At least, when it doesn't matter-- and she's not sure any of this does. She's just not important enough. The electric feeling of a wound-- that could have been a fluke. She's been wrong before.

[angelhunter]

No one's always honest, but that doesn't affect his willingness to believe her on what's already been said. To a point, and not with inflexibility. She's the most believable, least superficial person he's come across. She may be the only one that's anything like him; her value hangs on that.

He wonders if she'd really prefer to hear it that way. If he finds out and verifies they're not alone, and that she has been entirely truthful, he might try laying it out that plain. See if she can handle the pragmatism. That really would be refreshing.

"Well then I've got a couple more questions, if you're up for it."

cw: slur.

[poleaxed]

Joan sees something she hasn't in years: an opportunity to prove herself outside the realm of mechanical skill. And since none of the zombie motherfuckers here will let her be a mechanic, she may as well try something else. Blunt honesty in the face of tragedy has never earned her anything but cold shoulders and unhelpful platitudes. Maybe this is a test for him too.

"The first time, it was because I was wearing men's clothes. Not even for dikey reasons, I just needed pants and couldn't find any in my closet. It was just forced awake- sleep- sleep deprivation." She'd forgotten the word. "They made me watch a shitty video for forever, but they let me go."

She shrugs. She's had so much worse, it doesn't occur to her that the first incident is worth much complaining.

"Second time, this girl fucking attacked me, so I settled things. There's no use dragging out a fight, right? I ended it." Briefly, transparently, she looks to him for agreement, before remembering she'll never get it. Whatever. Moving on.

"I woke up back in that place, and I knew they weren't gonna come at me with anything serious, so I tried to get out. I made some noise, you know." All acceptable procedures; she's sure anyone in her position would have done the same. "And they injected me with... something. I felt like I was dead. Like nothing mattered. Have you ever seen Garden State? It was like that."

Of course all she remembers from Garden State is the antidepressants.

oh yeah cw: psychological torture, captivity and kidnapping

[angelhunter]

Hap was going to build back up to the torture questions. The others he had planned were no less significant. They were less personal, for her sake. Not buttering her up — easing her in. Joan's not having it. Again, she reminds him of Scott, who cut right to the chase upon meeting him. When do I get paid.

She wants something from him. He's not sure what it is yet.

Sleep deprivation would fit a first offence. He's had to resort to it himself. Hours of heavy metal blasting off the cavern walls, rippling through the natural stream in the floor. The mandatory viewing — propaganda, he assumes — is a surreal claim. Almost comical. It suits the decade they're supposedly living in, smack dab in the middle of the Human Potential Movement and mind control panic.

He's focused entirely on her, so when she signals for a nod, she gets one. He does genuinely agree. He's spent years fine-tuning his own experiment to lower the risk of altercation to practically zero. He doesn't acquire a subject by force unless he's exhausted every other option.

Hap rubs at his mouth as her story comes to a close. The Garden State namedrop is to him as water is to a duck's back, but he gets the gist. "What about physically? Could you feel anything?"

[poleaxed]

He nods. A sliver of agreement. She's getting something out of this, though it's only a tug in her gut; it keeps her in place like a fishing line. "They zapped me when I tried to sleep," she says with a shrug. She's still had worse. "But they didn't bring out the iron maiden. Like I said, it was all precise. They weren't trying to kill me."

Which is weird. If they don't like her, why not bump her off?

[angelhunter]

The crudeness of shock torture elicits the first twist of disgust. His nostrils flare with disapproval. That, to him, is needless. Coercion should be hands-off whenever possible.

"What about after the injection? Any lingering side effects?"

[poleaxed]

There it is again, that vital sensation. She needs to be here. She's not sure why-- something on his face, his expression, has captured her. It's not that he's attractive-- he's objectively fine but she isn't into people who radiate a potential disdain for anyone who hasn't read the complete works of Jane Austen-- it's that he has potential. Potential for what, she doesn't know.

(A part of her wants to run very far away.)

"It was like- like nothing mattered. I could see myself doing stuff, I made choices, but I didn't care. Have you ever got the wind knocked out of you, and for a second everything feels all distant? It was like that, but it didn't hurt. Everything was just far away." This is too earnest. She snaps her fingers, breaking the spell. "Slept like a baby, though."

cw medical torture (forced withdrawal)

[angelhunter]

That's an evocative description. He remembers lying crumpled on the landing of the stairs, where they transitioned from wood to steel. The shape of them cast without depth, indecipherable to him. Pain throbbing at the edge of his shock, like blood red foam around a bubble. His first cogent thought a desperate pump his heart, her name breaking in his chest. And on the next beat: Pushed.

It's not the same. For one thing, it hurt like hell.

"So they gave it to you and they let you go." Hap settles back on the bench, arms crossed. Wheels turning, though he's increasingly dubious that he'll get very far. If it had knocked her out or numbed her, that'd be something he could drill down on. If it's psychiatric in nature, he can't theorize much further than that. His experience is limited to a small number of subjects who had been prescribed medication for mental and behavioral conditions, which largely didn't concern him. Their effects interfered with the data. He could rattle off a couple of names and what category they fall under and that's it.

cw: fight club.

[poleaxed]

She sees a crossroads, triple-forked. She could leave it there, and they could become strangers to one another; she could prove her usefulness; she could defeat him. Option one and three seem easy, while two seems impossible. She may as well try for the whole deck.

"You wanna find out?" She turns her head to the side. "Hit me."

[angelhunter]

He turns his head towards her, then tips it candidly. "No. Thank you."

He doesn't glean any malice from her offer, begetting no insincerity in his rejection. She's not trying to get him in trouble for the sake of it. Apparently, she wants to help him understand. And, credit where it's due, it'd be an effective route to that understanding. One he could have taken himself at any time, before she laid out the consequences for him.

[poleaxed]

"I won't hold it against you. I just have one of those faces." But not wanting to be tortured is reasonable. Not everyone can take it like she can. She guesses it's a good thing for him to know his limits, but some part of her is disappointed he's not braver. "What do you wanna know for next time?"

[angelhunter]

That's quite the comment. Something to look back on and read into later, if and when he comes to know her better.

Her volunteering to gather information on her own, he has no qualms about. He'll pretend to, just a little, but her cooperation has earned her the benefit of the doubt. At least as far as her low self-regard is concerned. His arms uncross, hands landing in his lap and opening as he talks.

"If there's a next time, come and find me afterward. We can monitor your symptoms." Together.

[poleaxed]

"There's gonna be a next time. Or a first time. For all of us." She says this without any domineering slouch to her words-- it's just a fact of the universe, like the sky is blue and the Spurs are a shitty team. "You don't make shit like that if you don't wanna use it."

But if this guy wants to believe good behavior is actually rewarded, let him. It's not her job to tell people what's right.

"What kind of doctoring did you do, anyway? If you were a doctor." She can't picture him giving out lollypops.

cw psychological torture, assault, abuser mentality/victim blaming

[angelhunter]

Agree to fundamentally disagree on that one, Hap actively lying to himself about never once finding joy in such measures. He can't justify the hideous thrill of patching the sound of Homer and Renata's fucking into lab's the speakers to devastate Prairie, or explain why he went those few steps too far when he left her on the side of the highway: holding a knife to her throat, ripping her dress. Except that she had that effect on him, made him irrational.

He won't have that problem here.

"Anesthesiology and emergency medicine."

[poleaxed]

She gives him the same look she did when he told her he was a doctor. "So you won't be able to do anything."

[angelhunter]

"I'll be able to revive you if you go into cardiac arrest," he counters flatly. "And there's a chance I can narrow down what was used on you." Small, but better than nothing. "And what might counteract it."

[poleaxed]

"So you're CPR certified," she says with a mocking grin. "I'll call you if I can remember. Everything's kinda fuzzy... anyway." She shakes her head. "You think they might be using anesthetheej- the stuff that puts you under?"

[angelhunter]

"Anesthetic. It's too early to be certain of anything, but I'll tell you that, from your description, I doubt it. But anesthesiology looks at the interaction between different classes of drugs. Necessitates a broad familiarity. You don't want to slow someone's heart rate if they're on blood thinners."

Monitoring her will provide data. Actionable results would require intervention. Introducing another agent into her system and seeing how the two get along. Not feasible anytime in the near future, for several reasons. But maybe he can get her to stick around until then, coax her with a sense of purpose.