![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spacedisaster) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ximilialog2021-10-22 07:39 pm
🦇🎃 🦇🎃 Halloween Mingle Log 🎃 🦇🎃 🦇
LOCATION: All around the station.
DATE: Last two weeks of October.
CONTENT: Time for some Halloween holiday shenanigans: spooky decorations, scary movies, pumpkin carving, sweets and a costume party.
WARNINGS: None, will update if needed.
[ Peter contacted Viveca to request some Halloween food and items in the next supply drop, but until it happens, he has decided to decorate the stations the old-fashioned way: making the decorations himself.
He can be seen in the communal room, surrounded by color markers, scissors, glittery papers in varied colors, and doing different kinds of arts and craft: cutting papers plates in the shape of black cats, doing some spiderwebs, ghosts, and even a few origami pumpkins. One of the markers has rolled off of the table and onto the floor, anybody who comes by should be careful not to slip on it by accident.
Or perhaps someone spots him in the kitchen, doing what Peter would call 'cooking' and any other normal person would classify as biological warfare. He's a bit of a messy cook, please ignore the chocolate stain in the ceiling (who knew souffle could explode?). He will clean the kitchen later, now he's busy adding the finishing touches to the spider peanut butter cookie cups, while the covered orange slices he's making for Yelena cool off in a tray.
There's flour in his hair, a streak of chocolate in his cheek and the apron he's wearing has seen better days, but Peter looks honestly happy, and he's humming a song under his breath as he works.
Another day, he's on a ladder trying to hang some paper bats and spiderwebs on the station walls. His right shoulder is still healing, so he can't raise it with ease, making the whole process a bit slow. some help would be welcomed. Maybe some orber happened to walk by Peter when one of the giant balloon spiders he was trying to stick to the ceiling falls off on their head. Or perhaps it was one of the bedsheet ghosts, obscuring their vision for a little while. Peter looks down once he notices; ]
Oh, oops, sorry about that. Could you give it back?
Welcome to the simulation room, ladies and gents, and variations thereupon. The moment someone crosses the door, they'll find themselves transported to the wonderful 80s. Bright lights, colorful clothes and questionable hairstyles.
There's a massive theater across the street, and it's clear the place is the main attraction. The giant marquee sign and the movie posters on the walls announce four different movies available to watch: The Shinning (🎥), Poltergeist (🎥), The Little Shop of Horrors (🎥), and Night of the Living Dead (🎥). Grab some popcorn, something to drink or snack on, and take a seat. It's all free, worry not.
A sign at the entrance of the movies reminds people that this is fiction, that no real people or animals got hurt making the movies, and that zombies ( probably ) aren't real. No such claim is made about talking alien plants from deep space, because Peter did end raising one as part of his family, after all. Leaving the simulation is possible at any moment, just wishing to do so will make a door will appear, allowing to return to the control room.
[ On the large tables in the kitchen, pumpkins of different sizes and colors are waiting to be disemboweled, next to them there's also a large tray with the ghost cupcakes Peter promised The Doctor (11). Next to them, one could find several sharp knives and large, empty bowls perfect to use to keep the pumpkin entrails. That way they can be used later to make soup or perhaps bread. Wasting food when you are stuck in space is a crime, be mindful of the resources.Or...not. Perhaps some orber gets fed up with how sticky is everything, or frustrated that their pumpkin isn't looking the way they wanted, and thinks it would be more fun to start a food fight. Peter's no one's dad, he will let people run wild and have fun as long as it's not the knives that start flying.
If anybody needs him for anything, or they have questions about what exactly is pumpkin carving, he's busy working on his own project, but he won't mind being interrupted. The music that can be heard comes from the Guardian's Zune, connected to a portable speaker on top of a shelf. It's now playing "Dancing in the Moonlight," the 1972 hit by King Harvest. ]
↠IV. Party Time | October 31th | Common Area
[ People can choose not to come to the party in a costume, but it's highly encouraged. Viveca even brought costumes and supplies for the occasion in the last supply drop. The costumes are a variety of different ones, and not all of them are Halloween-related or even unique. Are you in the same costume as someone else? Damn, awkward. Maybe you can convince other people that you're doing some sort of group costume.
Like the rest of the station, the common area has been thoroughly decorated, although some decorations here are a little...off. There are balloons resembling eyes, ghosts, or pumpkins, and the eye ones sometimes follow people across the room or blink at them. The purple and black curtains as well as fake spiderwebs covering the walls are as normal as they get, but the plastic skeletons seen in corners or handing from the furniture are of a questionable nature. Some have the wrong number of arms and legs, others have horns, and a few show bones where no bone should be. The skeletons with top hats let out squeaky laughs at random, scaring the shit out of anybody walking near them. There are black paper bats handing from lamps that flap their wings on occasion and, to complete the look, LEDs candles of different colors give the room some ambient light. Viveca has tried her best to bring decorations for the party, but multiple universes make for a varied and complicated mix to chose from.
If there is a Halloween party, then of course the pumpkins are also a must. On one of the large tables, the different messy masterpieces created during the pumpkin carving contest can be admired or even grabbed if you want to take a picture with them.
On the left side of the room, there's a small stage with a haunted mansion backdrop, different boxes with spooky props, and what seems to be a Polaroid camera. Black cats and wolf plush toys, fake bloody weapons, giant glasses, plastic tombstones, all sorts of different hats, a vampire cape, and a plastic skeleton dressed as a firefighter are available to play and pose with. That's right, it's a selfie corner! Come take some pictures or drag someone to the stage with you to pose and complete the scary look.
The big cleared space in the middle of the room is the dancefloor. The music playing once again comes from Peter's Zune, so enjoy those 80s and 90s playlists, currently blasting Michael Jackson's thriller. Get out there and shake your bones, try not to step on anybody's toes.
For those who aren't into dancing or get tired, there are plenty of chairs available, party food, and all sorts of drinks -alcoholic and non-alcoholic- by the buffet and bar. There's enough candy to give people a sugar coma: pumpkin buns, fondant ghost cupcakes that make the person slightly see-through for 10 minutes after consuming them, Halloween brownies, candy apples that make people fall asleep for 30 minutes unless someone wakes them earlier with a kiss, pop rocks candy, oreo cookie bats, a variety of halloween themed drinks, and voodoo doll cookies...some of those might look like the orbers. If you find a cookie that looks like you, well...eat it or protect it, it's all about personal choices. ]
no subject
[Still more than half distracted by the walked dead staggering around on the screen, the light flashing through the dark room and everything that happens. It is like watching through a window to another world, the sounds loud and immediate, and it takes the Darkling a moment to turn his head to look at Yelena.]
no subject
Not anymore, you're not. I can promise you I will never take you seriously again now that you've said that.
[She's talking as much about his claim of always being serious as she is his question about the movie zombies.
She nods towards the screen.]
Those are actors in make-up.
no subject
[He has seen stranger things than walking corpses, and he turns fully to Yelena, hands clenching around the armrest.]
They look like dead people come to life, and not at all like a performer in grease-paint and ashes.
[Someone on screen screams in agony, and the Darkling's eyes fly to back to the movie and the carnage that seems to be about to happen. The tension is thich in the air, the sense of calamity on the brink of the horizon.]
no subject
[She knows that’s an exaggeration, and not entirely accurate, since their universes are different, but she can’t seem to resist giving him a hard time.]
Weapons and conveniences aren’t the only things that science and technology have advanced. It’s changed entertainment, too. And make-up. It’s not all grease paint and ashes now. It’s a whole industry. Make-artists can do all kinds of things, including making living people look dead.
[She observes his reaction to the screams at in the movie and blinks a bit, curious. Is he actually scared? Or is it just that this is so new to him?]
no subject
[It isn't fear, but it is something. Of watching helplessly as the people on the canvas make one mistake after another, wasting their precious time with talk that goes nowhere and does nothing but prolong their suffering.
There are ways to escape from the relentless clutches of death, their demise is of their own making yet the Darkling finds himself engrossed in their struggles.]
How do you know, with any kind of certainty, that they did not find real dead and used their strange science to make them come back to life?
no subject
[She sighs. And pinches the bridge of her nose at the question.]
Because there are documentaries about how movies are made and they all involve make up artists, not necromancers
[That's probably not good enough for him, is it? No, she'll have to go into a little more detail. She can't believe she's having to explain this to someone, but on the other hand it's almost comforting to know that there's someone who's even worse at being a person than she is.]
Okay, let's consider, hypothetically, for a minute that making the dead walk was possible through science. [She thinks it might be more possible through magic, personally, but whatever that's a different conversation.] First of all it would be unethical. Desecrating the dead is frowned upon in most cultures. So doing that would make people angry, and angry people don't spend money on movies. They organize boycotts and protests.
Second, it would be a huge waste of resources. Science isn't cheap, you know. And they'd probably have to pay off the families of the dead people. It would cost more money to find and reanimate actual corpses than it would be to just hire a bunch of actors to put on make-up and stumble around.
no subject
[There are a lot of words where the meaning is lost, either in translation or because Yelena is from a different world, but the Darkling tries to catch the gist of it through context. Applying it to how theatre works in Ravka, and what little he knows about the travelling shows from Novi Zem.]
You make a lot of assumptions, but it seems as if you're suggesting that it would be more profitable to use actors. Even if dead bodies are abundant and ethics are hardly universal. Maybe this universe thinks nothing of using the corpses of those who deserved to die?
[A beat, a silence as he watches the screen again. It's almost hypnotic, how his eyes are captivated by the movements and following the story the movie is trying to tell.]
Is this from your world?
no subject
[Once again she is pretty sure this man needs therapy.
It’s not even that she thinks zombies are impossible. They could be possible. It’s that the ones on the screen are fake, because that’s the nature of movies.]
It’s not just about profit, it’s about science of that caliber being expensive. But you know what, never mind.
[She tried to explain why it wouldn’t make sense in terms of resources because he might understand that better than ethics, but apparently not.]
Yes, this movie exists in my universe. They are living actors not dead people.
[She needs a drink. Did someone bring booze to movie night? She hopes so.]
no subject
[He looks to the movie again, the staggering of the dead as they come ever nearer to the house and the panicky pale faces peering out of the boarded-up windows.
They could be people in make-up, the black and white of the movie doesn't make it easy to distinguish the nuances of their skin color, nor the state of decomposition.]
Science is expensive in your world. And trying to use your science to make the dead move, would- [Minerals and metals for the Materialki, chemicals that are only found in distant places - those things might be expensive, or time consuming, to acquire.] be more expensive than paying people to put on make-up and moan.
[The Darkling turns in his seat, eyes on Yelena in the darkness of the theatre.]
Why not dead people, when something like the orbs exist. When everything I see here at the station, seems to be from some version of the future that I cannot even imagine existed and no one from mine has even dreamed about. The little button that brings light, the fact that we're in space yet we are not dead. How are the living dead any different.
no subject
It’s not that I think zombies couldn’t exist, you know. Anything is possible at this point. It’s that what you’re seeing on the screen right now isn’t real. Those are actors. That’s my point. Real living dead would be another thing entirely and they wouldn’t be on a movie set.
[She grabs some popcorn and munches it in lieu of vodka.]
It seems to me magic would be more likely to make the dead walk than science. But whatever.
no subject
[He says lightly, still eyeing the maybe-not-really-dead on the bright screen.
With everything that Yelena's world can create, why false undead. Why make it in to this repetitive play. The questions about this are endless and the Darkling sits quietly in the dark, watching Yelena out of the corner of his eye when the action onscreen goes quiet.]
This is all like a theater play, except it can be seen - unchanging- for a long time. Does your world make a lot of these movies?
no subject
[She nods at his question.]
There are thousands of movies in my world and in my time. It’s a very big industry. Not all of them are like this, though. Horror is just the theme of this holiday.
no subject
[Ravka celebrated life. The Sun, the changing of seasons. But never anything as strange as this. The Wandering Isles might have something like this, only set in the spring. To give thanks to the ancestors for allowing them to survive the winter.]
What other kinds of plays are there?
no subject
[As someone who was forced to stop celebrating Halloween at the tender age of six, the candy is one of the more important aspects of Halloween in her memory.]
There are lots of genres of movies. Comedy, drama, romance. Historical romance. I bet you would like historical romances. They are usually very dramatic. Like you.
no subject
[Unless Yelena means the popped corn, which isn't bad. It just isn't as sweet as he would like them to be and nowhere what he would classify as 'sweets'.
There were no bowls of sugar cubes or anything he could imagine might be sweets.]
I've never been overly fond of romantic stories, historical or otherwise. The ones I do know of, are- [how to explain that feeling of disbelief when watching a play, of the actors on stage being too loud with their emotions and too easily swayed in their convictions.
It made most of the audience happy, which was the purpose. Contentment and quiet, but he still didn't like it.]
Would there be stories without that part. Stories about history, Lyubitel' konfet?
[Revenge for calling him dramatic.]