theafflicted | 3.0 - week three

3.0 - week three

WEEK THREE

Last night might have been exhausting for any number of reasons - maybe it was the emotional

toll of dealing with those ghosts, or maybe you stayed up too late after watching Jim Shrok. Who knows, but Saturday is over, even if some of you haven’t quite left it behind and half spirits that are still hanging on, tethered to you and weighing you down…

But that’s not going to stop a new week from starting. There’s no breaks in an eight week course.

There’s very little fanfare to the start of your third week of the course, though it does seem like the fog has lifted even more. It’s a bit more of a trek down the abandoned streets of Estelline, but surely a mile is walkable? Or you could grab a bike or try to hotwire one of those cars in the mall parking lot… Whatever you plan to do this week is up to you. All you know is you've got some new locations to explore.

As always, Florence and Lorelei are available.

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

TASK LIST

( OOC Note: Luci, Mutsu, and Mae will each receive a small roomba! Congrats on the successful egg drop. It's a tiny little friend that cleans extra well, though this also means its trash compartment is a little smaller so it'll need to be cleaned more often. )

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WEEKLY TASK

Estelline Newspaper

We're looking at starting the Estelline Newspaper up again, and that means we need content. It doesn't have to be very in-depth, but any articles including (but not limited to) pieces of "friend fiction", testimonials about your fellow classmates, opinions, writeups of anything that's happened recently will work. Anyone who submits something will get their article featured and a reward for their efforts. Photos can be sent to Florence via text; submissions can also be sent via text, but a handwritten writeup is fine. 📰

Edited 2022-06-05 17:54 (UTC)

Due by Friday, June 10th at 6pm EST.

Feel free to submit either the writeup itself or a thread featuring the writeup! No comment count minimum, only articles required. There's no minimum word count either. We will take entries that are as long or as short as you'd like!

Idia looked at the squidgy banana in his hands and felt stressed.

He walked over to the window and reflected on his deprived surroundings. He had always hated creepy bus stop with its tense, tired trees. It was a place that encouraged his tendency to feel stressed.

Then he saw something in the distance, or rather someone ...

[ please note that this is not signed and completely anon. THE LINK IS TO SAVE EVERYONE FROM HAVING TO WITNESS THIS UNWILLINGLY. ]

Fate's Needle: Trial Through Fire

Once upon a time there was a group, and not just any group!

It's a group that has been kidnapped into a very strange and cruel situation. Yet, no one can deny that it was up to them to defeat their captors and save the day.

So, their evil kidnapper who fancies herself as an instructor sent them all into a hell like any other. To face the dastardly ghosts!

"Oh no!" Cries Phantom at the unfortunate sight, "We're at the mercy of some strange ghosts who can't be eliminated by normal means! We'll have to find some other way to defeat them. Can anyone guess how?"

Fai asks cheerily, "The power of friendship?"

Meanwhile, Luci suggests, "The agonizing burning pain of hellfire?"

Gentaro, a man of culture, has an idea of his own, proposing, "Giving them a taste of their own medicine?"

Xingqiu looks thoughtful at all these incredible, creative suggestions. He says, "Not quite! Chongyun?"

Chongyun, an unbelievably skilled martial artist with a talent for utilizing exorcisms immediately leaps into action. In the face of such pure skill and a spirit such as his, even ghosts were terrified, but still they thought themselves invincible! After all, they were set upon the group in order to consume them!

But they began to think twice once his fist met the face of one of them, sending a ghost flying.

[ ...wait, what? ]

As he took out his talismans, everyone else assumed battle positions.

Marcus also punched a ghost in the face, obliterating it. It was around that time Shin revealed an exorcising gun which he brought out of his pocket, leveling it at the creatures, before letting it rip.

Naturally, Xingqiu proceeded forth with his own martial prowess, showcasing the elite skill of one who has mastered the Guhua Clan technique.

After the ghosts were completely obliterated, Sherlock somehow scoped out a safe road, and drove them back to the school grounds. The original bus driver was tied up by Phantom for interrogating purposes. While that was taken care of in a very sophisticated and thorough manner, the group pondered their next course of action. Naturally, to take down their so called instructor!

Just like that, everyone filed out, and with the info given from the culpable bus driver, they were able to locate...

[ Okay, this keeps going on and on and on. It is basically a thorough adventure of how the group gets through various traps and impossible situations just to reach Lorelei. A whole boss battle ensues with Florence until they are defeated, and everyone corners Lorelei in a dramatic, emotional confrontation with another fight at the end. For some reason Lorelei knows Jujutsu (though it's not pointed out in such a straightforward manner), but it ends with her defeat. And as such: ]

Just like that, the day was saved by the power of friendship, love, and spite!

The end.

‘Twas but a nyormal day at Estailline Mewniversity, where many an otherworlder had been brought cruelly against their will, kittenapped without regard for their emewgencies and lives and purrposes back home. They were a lively bunch regardless, and not a day passed by without some sort of shenanigans happening. The once-silent halls had been filled with the voices of its cattives, each bringing their own unique style and outlook.

A normal day, indeed... if not for that silence’s returning. For one so pawccustomed to the constant stream of nyoise, it would be disconpurrting. It was as if the nyaptives had been spirited away yet again somewhere else. Perhaps they had gone on another “field trip” without alerting their dear Instructor. Perhaps they were all still slumbering, lulled into sleep by the baku that had made its way to them. Perhaps they had all suddenly tragically died from the clawful affliction we call boredom.
Or purrhaps another force was at work.

You see, the cattives had stumbled upon Estelline University’s most pawciously guarded secrets. While it had been fruitful indeed, they had to pay a price. As pawnishment, they lost their humewnity and became the fiercest and most spiteful of all creatures. They made their way through the underground tunnels of the university, eyes shining like the brightest stars in the sky, singularly focused on their purrpose.
Mewnited in their fury and spite, the group of ragtag demewns found their Instructor’s quarters. Armed with mewcrophones created from a singular source and painstakingly purrfected by the science-inclined of their furllows, they took their places outside of their Instructor’s locked pawrters. All at once, the creatures opened their mouths, what emanated from their mouths was a booming, ear-piercing... meow.

The very walls shook with the furce of their collective cry. As immewtal creatures, they could meow for an eternity and more. Their meows could have woken the dead, could have split open the very furbric of reality.

They would start with their Instructor, however; what opurred next... well, it is impawssible to know for sure. Yet, the rumewrs within a certain tome placed delicately on a pawltar beneath the Tree of Life in the courtyard speak of those very cats who remain, who will eventually rise up again, mewcrophones held in their paws, and fight to purrtect the innocent.

[ this is left where it can be considered a submission:

...yeah. an unsigned mad lib is the "submission."]

[ Ace is an inspiration to us all. Riku had a similar idea, apparently: ]

Edited 2022-06-09 04:11 (UTC)

( WELL )

( a folder with multiple sheets of paper is submitted to florence directly. it looks like shizuku conducted some simple interviews! she will politely omit anything that the interviewee requested, of course. i dont know how to make things more readable on sheets i am very sorry. please feel free to add to the form until submissions close! )

Edited 2022-06-10 05:20 (UTC)

(Link!)

(It's class superlatives! Like in American high school yearbooks where everyone nominates people for categories like "best dressed" and "most likely to succeed." There's a slide with examples of superlatives but feel free to get wild and creative. Since it's a collab doc, if your character nominates someone for something, please just comment here so you can get credit for participating.

ALSO BIG THANKS TO COCO FOR SETTING UP THE PPT WHILE I WAS AT WORK.)

[ added "Most Likely to Be On the Most Wanted List" for Julius because lmao ]

[ Gentaro: Most likely to have unexpected skills
Fai: Most Likely to have a job revolving around children
Chongyun: Most likely to survive a blizzard
Phantom: Best hair
Owen: Most likely to become an urban legend
Flat: Most likely to smile through everything
Miach: Most likely to try out anything and everything
Tamamori: Most likely to get spooked by something that isn’t there
Luci: Best voice impersonations
Bennett: Most likely to lose a winning ticket of a lottery
Riku: Best at cinnamon roll impressions

idk if i'll put up more later but this is what i got ]

[ Nominates everyone for "most likely to succeed" because they will not fail this challenge before them! ]

[ Fai adds a few:

Marcus: Most serious
Gentaro: Most likely to write the next big classic
Hien: Most puppy-like
Shizuku: Best smile
Ace & Sabo: Best bromance
Chongyun: Most likely to brighten up your day
Owen: Most spirited ]

( hmm...

cater: most trendy!
idia: most likely to revolutionize an industry!
ikeda: best at tying knots.
grimnir: most earnest. :)
madara: best at giving hugs!!
sabo: most reassuring to explore with!
shin: best at making coffee.
xingquiu: ... most likely to get locked in a library after hours.
chongyun: most likely to get "adopted" constantly!

unfortunately i had more ideas but they were out of character for shizuku. )

[Tamamori has really put down his pen for far too long, and he's starting to feel the itch and the restlessness of that (for many reasons, in many different facets and dimensions, but that's neither here nor there); and so, he's finally put pen to paper again. Maybe the ability to finally peruse literature also has something to do with it. Who knows. ☆

It's been said that his only forte is in writing ludicrous amounts of words in a short timespan (however I, Fyre, cannot so you just get the synopses), and so, he submits 15 stories based upon the teams of Estelline University, though not explicitly so... There's like at least 200 pages here. Hope Lorelei has her reading glasses on.

#0 - QUEEN'S TAPESTRY, REWOUND

A pretty clockwork dragonfly is created by a former queen's knight at the end of her life. The knight had been dismissed from her post long, long ago for betraying her queen for a neighboring kingdom; the tales of her misdeeds are told in a particular tapestry in the palace, for the queen had a love both for weaving and for displaying other people's inadequacies. The dragonfly is small enough to sneak into the palace, but what is the truth of this betrayal...

#1 - THE CATCHY COLLECTOR

They say that there's a well-dressed man who only comes out at night, twirling his cane like a baton to beat back all the crooks and cutthroats. His signature is a wonderful monocle shaped like a sea creature, but it seems so much higher quality than all his other clothing that there are rumors about where he gets it from... This man is always accompanied by a tiny, singing cat companion with its own cane. Legend has it that he rescues musical cats from underground cat rings where they are forced to dance all night for the amusement of humans.

#2 - MASK OF THE BLUE DEER'S CALL

Somewhere under the waves, you can find a strange, elusive, incredibly advanced submarine: no one knows whether it's military grade, but it has camouflage technology to hide it from ships, sea creatures, and everything in between. It's strong enough to stand up to a whale and large enough to be mistaken for one. They say that it slides through the water like a deer, but no one knows exactly what sound it makes. All the real sound is inside the submarine, where an eccentric old man from Russia has decided to spend his life inviting an unusual panoply of guests from all countries, walks of life, and so on; he invites them to don masks and costumes and dance all night long, but no one is ever invited twice.

#3 - SINGING SAILS, WAILING DICE

They say that pirates can only sing out of tune, but there is never anything said about pirate ships! The crew of the Screaming Opera can hold a work tune just as well as any other hairy, burly, ridiculously busy band of roving scallywags, but the real artist is the sails above them: four masts, rigged with the customary black sails, look as dastardly and terrible as any other pirate ship... but the sails are able to tell the weather. Every different wind creates a different tune in the canvas, and there is nothing like the screaming that the ship raises when a storm is afoot. The captain is eccentric but knows how to turn a deal: anyone who wishes to join the crew or secure passage on this legendary craft must first play a game of chance with him in order to bless or curse the voyage; and they cannot take back their bets after.

#4 - THE NIGHTSHADES OF HAVOC

The city is strange, gloomy, and full of vines -- perhaps it's that all of the greenery chokes off the sun, but at least its residents aren't lacking for produce. Every type of fresh fruit and vegetable imaginable somehow infests the streets; it's a well-known feature of the country. Maybe that's why the true threat to the world manifested here first... the roots in the ground are better able to find the source of the planet's ailment, and start turning black right from the ground up. A pair of secret agents must thwart the blight despite their totally different ways of doing things! One is merely a former farmer who would rather be tending to his garden, and the other would much rather be in a lab discovering new and exciting ways of making humans live forever -- their only common goal is to finish this mission as fast as possible. Alas, despite their many clandestine meetings at bars and secret handshakes, they find themselves thwarted time and again both by sabotaged tomato dishes and strange gnarled creatures emerging from the tomato vines, intent on taking over the cities...

#5 - THE STRANGE CASE OF THE INVINCIBLE PARASAUROLOPHUS

There's a rumor among those who travel between the towns, an old wives' tale in the wilds, an urban legend within city walls: there's been a parasaurolophus sniffing about recently. How, scoff those who understand science, would a dinosaur be out and about? Why, ask those who understand nature, would a dinosaur not be eating them out of house and home? No one knows, but they all know this: no matter how many times farmers and bounty hunters try to take down the dinosaur, no matter how many times they bring back the carcass for inspection, mount the bones on their walls, or have themselves a beautiful dinosaur feast, the dinosaur never dies permanently. Is it a blessing? Or a curse? Then, those who have pursued the dinosaur begin to die one by one, the bones disappearing slowly from their abodes...

#6 - THE PIZZERIA AT THE END OF ALL THINGS

There's an amazing pizzeria at the entrance to the afterlife (or Hell, whichever comes first) -- it's neutral territory, however, where anyone can take refuge. Which means those who don't want to be judged might tarry forever at the Night of the Round Table, listening to jazz music, eating a great deal of pizza and staying away from the karma overseers. The owner of the pizzeria has never shown themselves, but there are whispers that the back of the pizzeria is far vaster and deeper than one knows. No one has yet had the courage to investigate. The pizza maker is just a part-time worker who seems to know very little of the workings of the netherworld, but a great deal about amazing pizza toppings; it seems that if you can bring him something amazing or new to put on his pizzas, he just might grant you one request, even if it has to do with the pizzeria's well-kept secrets.

#8 - THE TEAKETTLE HOUND

There once was a hound that could smell fear, but also tea. It was said to have been small enough to live in a teakettle as a puppy, but now that it's grown, it's large enough to swallow both cattle and children in one gulp. The man who raised it was a carpenter who taught the hound how to navigate any type of entrance or dwelling, so there's nothing that can keep it out... nothing, that is, except a particular charm. In order to keep this hound away from you and yours, always make sure a teakettle can be heard in your house, and tea leaves are spread or grown by the doors and windows... but how can a teakettle whistle forever? The villagers would live in fear until the right person came along to answer this question: a young traveling connoisseur of tea, who was willing to embark upon a quest for the ultimate magical tea kettle to counter the magical teakettle hound.

#9 - THE SCISSORS CIPHER

They call it the Scissors Cipher: one of the greatest weapons of our age. A strange wartime code made only with the sound of scissors over various materials, one of which was said to be human skin -- no one knows who invented this code, nor indeed which country it even came from, but desperate wartimes called for desperate measures. The high command implemented the Scissors Cipher with a strict policy of secrecy: for if the general public knew the costs of this, wartime support would drop in one fell swoop. For both sending and receiving the Scissors Cipher was known to anger a particular supernatural spirit: a woman who hides her mouth with mask or fan or hand, showing her smile only in her eyes. She appears to those who make the sound of scissors, invariably, and asks them: Am I beautiful? Answer my question. She can be distracted or run from, but never avoided; the sacrifices of the Scissors Cipher have been said to be even greater than the known cost of soldiers on the battlefield. Could such a code be broken? Would anyone even want to break it?

#10 - RED HOT LOLLIPOPS, DEEP DARK CHOCOLATE

She was the empress of the Country of Crunchy Candy, though they produced much, much more than that -- it was a land of plenty, where the streets themselves were paved with toffee, buildings were lined in caramels and beautiful glazes, and the very horses had coats and manes of cotton candy. There was no gourmet sweet nor baked good that this ruler had not seen; no filling nor flavoring she had not set teeth to; there was no way to fool her tongue nor her eye when it came to these things! When the court sweetsmaker didn't satisfy her refined palate, she would have them thrown into the cooking fire -- and not only that, but their clothes and remains would be crystallized in rock candy and hung in the royal halls as a warning to the next one to take the job. Anyone who could stay in the job for more than 100 days was set for life, so there was no end of youngsters beguiled by the offer. The newest court sweetsmaker, though, isn't quite human, and perhaps the empress has finally met her match.

#11 - THE NIGHTINGALE OF THE BACK ALLEYS

Some men turn to a life of crime; and some of these men fall further, into the gambling rings and dark dens of the yakuza lifestyle, where crime itself is a calling -- this story's hero, somehow, is one of those men. He was tasked with the smuggling and selling of beautiful and exotic birds in Japan, where until recently these had only been seen from travelers or shows arriving from abroad. One day, however, the man met an unusual nightingale -- the bird could not speak, but he felt that they must have had a spiritual connection through song and brought it to karaoke with him every night. Eventually, the higher-ups found out he was keeping a valued bird for himself, and the man was forced to go on the run; he was chased across the country, was forced to hijack trains and use fireworks to throw furious yakuza bands off his trail. Eventually man and bird vanished, never to be seen again -- but they left a single song that is still sung to this day, a testament to their bond.

#12 - THE NAME OF THE SEVENTH GATE IS RUIN

Some meetings are peaceful, some are merry, but some are downright explosive: the rebellious heir of an island kingdom, a place of far too many restrictions and an extraordinary amount of family (he had 110 brothers and sisters), slips away whenever he can to disappear beneath the waves of the ocean -- it was inevitable that he would find the undersea volcano one day, and perhaps even more inevitable that he would get into a fight with the sea dragon that liked to perch on it, banished to this post from the realm of the Dragon King below. In fact, the Dragon King's Palace was guarded not only by the sea but by seven gates of hellfire; the guardian himself could only open the first. They could conspire together against their respective kingdoms, but opening all of the gates would require many sacrifices, including at least part of the island kingdom itself.

#13 - A BAKER'S DOZEN SCANDALS ON CROISSANT STREET

"My speciality, monsieur? Why, it's croissants, of course! It was fate, and though I'm just an apprentice, I hope that you'll not consider me a lunatic." No one knew where this bakery may have come from: it seemed to be run out of one of the houses, rather than a proper bakery, and the baker had never had a reputation before several troupes of children and grandmothers came from the next town over to buy his bread. Surely they must have been his extended family propping up his business a little! Life is hard in the city, you see. What no one knows is that this man is voluntarily insinuating himself into the dramatic and cutthroat world of French baking in order to expose a scandal in the upper ranks of France's most prestigious culinary academy. All of his croissants hide either secret messages or strange little implements to help in his tasks. The croissants have ears, so to speak.

#14 - THERE'S NO SCHOOL LIKE OUR SCHOOL

Two of the youngest martial artists in this nation specializing in the physical arts have clashed one too many times -- everyone knows that they are people of pride and grandeur, and thus the only way to settle their differences and the hierarchy and dominance of their traditional schools? An international martial arts tournament. It's a wonderful excuse to see the many other schools they may or may not know of, and each school must also show off not only its fighting style but the style of its uniform, fraught with history and the infighting of dozens of tailors. One has the wind as its motif, flowing and uncatchable; the other is plants, tenacious and unshakable; others are based upon such things as fire, water, stone, machinery, tigers, musical instruments, and even legendary tales. Of course, the most dastardly and unfashionable of all is the Estelline cult of half-baked hoppers, little more than dancers; there needs be, after all, at least one early disqualification to establish the merits of the heroes.

#15 - THOU MUST PAY THE OMELETTE PRICE

The Wicked Witch of the Ways owns the forest: there are infinite branching paths in the shadows, she tells them gleefully. More gleefully still, she tells them, the things that I have taken from you I have dropped somewhere along a path, but even I no longer remember which one; they're trifling things, after all. Your nose, little cookie cat. Your favorite ruby, little jeweled egg. They are nothing to me. The egg cannot walk very well on its own, and the cat cannot find its way without its nose: there's no other way but to work together, and yet they can never decide upon which path to take. Eventually, they split up, but the jeweled egg may be the one with the strangest revelation: after all, where do eggs come from?]

Edited 2022-06-12 13:19 (UTC)

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3.0 - week three

WEEKLY TASK

SUBMISSIONS! 🗞

:nyan:

Fate's Needle: Trial Through Fire

The Tail of Estailline Mewniversity

anon ...

also "anon"

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ESTELLINE UNIVERSITY SUPERLATIVES

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