- To anyone that looks at this, I would like to say one thing;
We had a little complications, so we started the roleplay for a bit. However, nothing much has happened, but we sadly just lost two roleplayers. We desperately need these two spots filled { which are both girl spots }, and we'll gladly inform anyone who's interested in joining about the little amount of stuff that has happened in the posts we've done so far { 24 exactly. }. Anyways, once all the spots have been filled, we'll be welcoming other characters that aren't a part of the Everett or Makota family. This is to make the whole roleplay more interesting, and, we also have a second plot line that'll come up if the roleplay progresses far, and during it, the characters outside of the two main families will have big roles.
If you wish to send in a character that isn't a part of the two main families, feel free to contact me in the main OOC topic in the roleplay, or through PM.
- Adoration.
In the old days, the dark days, people didn't realize how deadly a disease love was. For a long time they even viewed it as a good thing, something to be celebrated or pursued. Of course that is one of the reasons it is so dangerous: It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly,or make rational decisions about your own well-being. (That's symptom number twelve, listed in the amor deliria nervosa section of the twelfth edition of The Safety, Health, and Happiness Handbook or, the Book of Shhh as we call it.) Instead people back then named other diseases - stress, heart disease, anxiety, depression, hypertension, insomnia, bipolar disorder- never realizing that these were, in fact, only symptoms that in the majority of cases could be traced back to the affects of amor deliria nervosa. Now though, that we have the cure, it gives us the chance to be safe. Safe and free from pain forever.
After the procedure, your heart will always be beating steadily in your chest. It will always beat out that same rhythm, not skip or jump or swirl or go faster, just womp, womp, womp until you`re dead. Many people are afraid of the procedure; some people even resist. There are some people who aren`t afraid of it though, and would have it done tomorrow, but you have to be at least eighteen, sometimes a little older, before the scientists will cure you.Otherwise the procedure won`t work correctly: People end up with brain damage, partial paralysis, blindness, or worse.
Before you get the procedure, you have to go through the evaluation. During the evaluations four evaluators will examine you for close to two hours. Your evaluation is your final test after all of your board exams, and the academic assessors will analyze your strengths and weaknesses and then assign you to a school and major. The evaluation is the last step, so you can get paired. Evaluation Day is said to be the exciting rite of passage that prepares you for a future of happiness, stability and partnership. In the coming months the evaluators will send you a list of four or five approved matches. One of them will become your husband/wife after you graduate college (assuming you pass all of your boards of course. Girls who don't pass get paired and married right out of high school.)
Of course we aren`t yet totally free from the deliria in the United States. Until the procedure has been perfected, until it has been made safe for the under-eighteens, we will never be totally protected. It still moves around us with invisible, sweeping tentacles, choking us. People have seen countless uncureds dragged to their procedures, so racked and ravaged by love that they would rather tear their eyes out, or try to impale themselves on the barbed-wire fences outside of the laboratories, than be without it.
Several years ago on the day of her procedure, one girl managed to slip from her restraints and find her way to the laboratory roof. She dropped quickly, without screaming. For days afterward, they broadcast the image of the dead girl`s face on television, to remind us of the dangers of the deliria. Her eyes were open and her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, but from the way her cheek was resting against the pavement you might otherwise think she had lain down to take a nap. Surprisingly, there was very little blood- just a small dark trickle at the corners of her mouth.
They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness. That`s bad enough. The Book of Shhh also tells stories of those who died because of love lost or never found, which is what terrifies many people.
The deadliest of all deadly things; love. It kills you both when you have it, and when you don`t.
Yᴏᴜ Mɪɢʜᴛ Wᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ Kɴᴏᴡ...
⊰ Fifty years ago the government closed the borders of the United States. The border is guarded constantly by military personnel. No one can get it. No one goes out. Every sanctioned and approved community must also be contained within a border -that's the law- and all travel between communities requires official written consent of the municipal government, to be obtained six months in advance. The borders around every approved community consists of electrical fences, ⊱
⊰ For the most part, the government has been successful. We haven't seen a war since the border was closed, and there is hardly any crime, except for the occasional incident of vandalism or petty theft. There is no more hatred in the United States, at least among the cured. Only sporadic cases of detachment - but every medical procedure carries a certain risk. ⊱
⊰ The Fourth of July is the day of our independence, the day we commemorate the closing of our nation's border forever. ⊱
⊰ There is one unmistakable sign of someone who is cured: the mark of the procedure, a three-pointed scar just behind the left ear, where the scientists insert a special three-pronged needle used exclusively for immobilizing the patient so that the cure can be administered. People show off their scars like badges of honor. ⊱
⊰ The deliria is a curse which all humans were punished with because of the original sin of Eve and Adam. ⊱
⊰ Every so often people make mistakes concerning the deliria; it's biological,a result of the same kind of chemical and hormonal imbalances that occasionally lead to Unnaturalism, to boys being attracted to boys and girls to girls. These impulses, too, will be resolved by the cure. ⊱
⊰ After their cure, in the absence of deliria nervosa, some people find parenting distasteful. Cases of full-blown detachment are few. ⊱
⊰ After the cure, everyone marries as soon as they are done with their education. ⊱
⊰ It's extremely unusual for people to dream once they've been cured. ⊱
⊰ Another side effect of the cure: People often change their habits afterward, lose interest in their former hobbies and things that had given them pleasure. ⊱
Tʜᴇ Iɴᴠᴀʟɪᴅs
Even though the government denies it, there are people who live in the Wilds; the unregulated land that exists between recognized cities and towns. They don't see love as a disease, and they don't believe in a cure. They think it's a kind of cruelty. We are not supposed to know about the Invalids. They're not even supposed to exist; supposedly, all the people who live in the Wilds were destroyed over fifty years ago, during the blitz. However, many existed, and when some people develop the deliria, they somehow find a way to join them.
The Invalids, as we call them, sneak into the nearest city and stage some sort of protest every couple of years. Little do we know, there are many more of them than we think; living among us, pretending to be one of us. We call these people sympathizers; Invalids that have found a way to blend into established communities. This is how Invalids manage to slip in and out of society.
In the Wilds, Invalids have made small little societies of their own. Living in old houses that somehow survived the blitz, hunting, gathering, and sometimes managing to get supplies and information from established communities. What they`re trying to do is unknown...
So far, the government has failed to rid the country of the Invalids, and it is the single blemish on the administration, and the system in general. So we don't talk about them. We pretend that the Wilds -and the people who live there- don't even exist. It's rare to hear the word even spoken, except when a suspected sympathizer disappears, or when a young diseased couple is found to have vanished together before a cure can be administered.
Tʜᴇ Pʟᴏᴛ
Their mom had actually had a bad case of deliria; she had been deeply in love with their father. When it came for her to be cured, the procedure went smoothly until almost a year later they had realized something. The procedure had never worked, all because of how much she loved that one man, the six sibling`s father. In an attempt to make everything better, they brought her back to the labs, and tried the procedure again.
But to no avail, it failed, once again.
During the childhood of the six Strickland siblings, they were loved dearly by their mother. They knew that there was something wrong with her though, since every other mother they saw never showed their kid any love, any extra attention. They only gave the kid what was needed; care, food, and every other responsibility they had to deal with as a parent. It was never out of love though; it was just out of the duty they had once their kid was born. It was all because of the cure, which always had failed to affect their mother.
They would make sand castles on the beach, she taught them all to swim, on some nights, they`d even dance around the house in their socks. She always hid the little acts of affection she would give to her children, since she was worried that the procedure might possibly work at some point.
By the time their mother was dragged back for a third procedure, their father had died. He had always found his way around the cure, since he had been an Invalid. To make everyone think he had the cure, he had given himself the three pointed scar under his ear with a little knife, deceiving everyone that he was safe. Their mother had been heartbroken; even though she always hid it around her children. Sometimes one or two of them would find her crying in her bedroom, covering her mouth with the pillows to muffle her sobs.
During the third procedure, they had denied to put her to sleep, thinking the anesthesia might`ve been the reason why the cure never worked for her. Once again, however, it failed once again.
One night, their mother had known the regulators had been coming to bring her to the labs again, for a fourth procedure. Before they had a chance to get her, she had left the house and, as everyone says, committed suicide, leaving being only a simple note to her six children;
`I love you. Remember. They can`t take it.`
Even though the regulators had suggested to send them off to an orphanage, their Aunt and Uncle then took the six children in, even though it became a struggle after that to support a household of eight. They were grateful though, for if they had been sent off to an orphanage, no one would ever want to adopt six siblings of a sympathizer.
During all of this, over in the Wilds surrounding Portland, six other siblings have grown up as Invalids; the Makota family. Their father and mother had been deeply in love, and to be together, they fled off into the Wilds before either of them had to get the procedure. For years the two lived wonderful lives, trading to get supplies from other Invalids, and just enjoying their freedom; a world without walls everywhere they went. By the time their mother was 42, and their father was 43, the couple had five children, and another one coming. However, two months before the due date, the father was caught by the electric fence of Portland, and was dragged off to the Crypts, and put in ward six. He died about three months later from insanity.
Their mother was crushed, and two years after giving birth to her last child, she died. It was then that the oldest tried to take her place, trying to fill the void she had left in some of them. With the help of a few other Invalids, they managed to survive well enough. After around five years of going from homestead to homstead, they went off deeper into the Wilds, only to find an abandoned house, well furnished, in fact. They then settled down in this house, and even now, they still do.
Up to now both families have completely different lives, the Makota family living in the Wilds, slipping past Portland`s border every now and then for supplies or information, while the Everett family lead normal lives; reading the Book of Shhh, wondering who they will be paired with after the cure, going to school.
But when the two families meet, and the deliria starts to develop between some of them, will some of them give up everything they have, and even risk their life, just to be with the one they love? Or will they wait for the cure, hoping the deliria won`t hurt them?
Cʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀs Nᴇᴇᴅᴇᴅ
For the pairings, it should be simple. Everett 1 and Makota 1, so on. Easy enough, right? :)
Makota Sibling 3 | (female) | No cure. | She is 16 and a half years old, and has seen Everett Sibling 3 a lot in her short scarce visits into Portland. Secretly likes him a bit, and is very close to Sibling 4. Meets Everett Sibling 3 face to face when looking for Sibling 4 in the huge thunderstorm. The two work together to find their siblings.
Makota Sibling 5 | ( female) | No cure | She has recently turned 15 years old, and goes into Portland the least. At some point figures out about Everett Sibling 5 being in love, and at that moment falls in love with him. Promises to keep his secret, and then starts to become friends.
