Don't believe everything they tell you. :)
Ataraxion
is a Survival Horror panfandom game on Dreamwidth.
Player characters wake up in stasis pods aboard an empty colony ship, the Tranquility. They must adapt to life in space, all while the ship and the two surviving members of the crew keep any sort of useful information under wraps.
Ataraxion is notable for combining elements of ARGs into its mod plotline, which allows for a high level of interactivity and personal involvement both in and out of character.
The roleplay started at the end of 2011, and ran for years before being abandoned at the start of 2016.
Ataraxion provides examples of:
- Abandoned Hospital: What exactly was in those locked morgue cells?
- Action Girl: Even the ones not traditionally expected to be action girls get in on the action sometimes.
- The Alcoholic: Half the damn ship struggles with alcoholism, most notably Alaric, Haymitch, Jack Sparrow, Stefan Salvatore, and Tony Stark.
- Almost Dead Guy: So many portentous last words, so little time. Doesn't anyone just die on this damn ship?
- Becoming the Mask: The Stark sisters, despite their brothers being present and knowing full well who they are, are unwilling to let go of their masks.
- Berserk Button: Dear god, don't call Wheatley a moron.
- Brain Uploading:
- Allegedly it's how the AI's got into those human bodies in the first place. Cave Johnson and Topher Brink have both been working to reverse that process.
- GLaDOS has been a victim of this twice, going from human to AI then back to human, and her reveal that she used to be Caroline to Wheatley has convinced him he had a similar thing happen.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Topher and Ariadne. It's so bad that Ariadne actually thinks he's gay.
- Cassandra Truth: Tony will often make casual observations that end up coming true. It's not that no one believes him- it's just that he wasn't actually being serious. Hilariously, his codename for the anonymous network is Cassandra.
- Convenient Coma:
- Both Aberdeen and Chell have gone into comas to explain away player hiatuses.
- In the month of December, players had the option to put their characters in comas to explain away hiatuses, leading to a month of HEY MY FRIEND DIDN'T WAKE UP.
- Conversational Troping: Many of the pop culture savvy characters like to compare the ship to various mediums. Lost meets Resident Evil meets Dead Space, anyone?
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Being locked outside the pods during a jump is messy as hell.
- Shale getting swallowed by a black hole.
- Cryptic Conversation: Anything having to do with what is actually happening on this ship. Space crazy makes you cryptic.
- Divided We Fall: Let's just say that there's not a lot of trust between the characters on the ship and the NPC duo that is Captain Ward and Chief Engineer Resnik. There was also a full-fledged Mutiny plot, courtesy of Megamind.
- Driving Question: What the hell is even going on? And who is Smiley?
- Dysfunction Junction: Ask every single character about their traumatic pre-ship past.
- Eye Scream: Tony Stark and his missing eye. Cambridge has some choice words about said missing eye.
- Fight Clubbing: Once a month everyone gets together to beat the crap out of each other and bond over mutually induced injuries.
- Foreshadowing: Everything bad that happens was predicted ages ago, we just didn't get it then.
- Geographic Flexibility: The mods introduce new ship locations every so often to further the plot.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: What happens when you go out into the ship alone.
- Hates Being Touched: Wheatley developed a complex about being touched while in his human body. Topher keeps forgetting it.
- He Knows Too Much: Suspected to be the reason for the mysterious circumstances surrounding Hotspur's death.
- Humanity Ensues: The AI are given human form when they arrive on the ship, ranging from android forms to actual human bodies.
- In-Series Nickname:
- Ward and Resnik are usually referred to as Wardnik or Wasnik.
- The Westerosii and Middle-Earth contingent are usually referred to as the Ren Faire.
- Ironic Nickname: Topher refers to Chell as "Mute Girl," which is funny because of the several mute female characters, she's the only one not actually mute.
- Killed Off for Real: A partial appeal of the game is that, compared to other Livejournal roleplay games, there is no standard system to revive characters who have died. Once a character's gone, they're gone.
- Medieval Morons:
- Sort of. The entire A Song of Ice and Fire and The Lord of the Rings crew, while not stupid, are constantly surprised by technology and vernacular. Except Rickon, he figured out how to type faster than Stannis.
- Subverted with Robb Stark, who was tutored by Aberdeen to use encryptions and locks.
- Nanomachines: The tattoos everyone has that designates their numbers are made out of nanites. You really shouldn't hack them. Just ask Aberdeen, who went comatose, and Chapel, who's still under house arrest.
- One-Steve Limit: So you're looking for a Jade. Would that be Curtiss or Harley? There's also a surplus of Johns (Buchanan aka Oxford, Watson, Tillman, Egbert and Shepard), Jacks (Harkness, Gibson and Noir), and Isaacs (Mendez and Clarke) you could be looking for. Also there's three Sherlock Holmeses, two Irenes and three John Watsons, so good luck.
- Ontological Mystery: They're stuck on the ship, have no way of getting back, and the ship could be less than friendly.
- Running Gag:
- GUYS, ERIDAN TOLD YOU TO MAKE SURE YOU MAKE IT TO THE GRAV COUCHES BEFORE THE JUMP.
- Keeping Sherlock from calling dibs on dead bodies is quickly becoming one.
- Is there a department for it? Sulu's a member.
- Moran and tigers, the romance that can never be.
- Ship Tease:
- They don't call it the SS Space Orgy for nothing. Almost every character is shipped with someone if not multiple someones. Surprisingly, there are very few actual serious romantic relationships.
- Averted with Jon Snow and Ygritte, the couple no one wants together (especially Stannis). Naturally, they finally did.
- You Do NOT Want To Know: Pretty much anything that happened before the Tranquility began picking up strays falls under this category.
- You Just Had to Say It: Topher tries to explain to Edgeworth that Wheatley's perfectly easy to get along with so long as you don't say the "m" word. Cue Edgeworth trying to figure out what said 'm' word is. It ends exactly how you think.
