May/June Test Drive Meme

[sphererpmod]

May/June Test Drive Meme

All you need is love.

So the Sphere heard that some of you guys are lonely. It doesn’t want you to be lonely so it has decided that even though it’s not really February the people within its confines and connected to them deserve to have a sort of Valentine’s Day anyway. Celebrating love (all sorts of love, definitely not merely the romantic sort) is on display. Think pink and red and white and loads of hearts and rainbows.

all you need is some kind of love.

In the middle of the merchant dome, some of the stalls pushed aside a large pink and white stripped tent is set up. Inside is a series of small tables, each set up with numbers and two seats each. When people go in and register to receive the number, they are given three initial options. Option one is romantic dating with further subcategories based on gender preferences (if any) and orientation. The second option is for friendship. The Sphere wants you to make friends! A third option only open to the adults within the Sphere is for hooking up and no strings attached sex. That is also sectioned by orientation and preferences.

Each option you pick allows people to talk for five minutes before people move onto the next person. At each station is the option for ice breaker cards. Think would you rather or describe your perfect date (date date or a friendship date. Whichever you’re working on.) Should players wish it, there are various unnamed NPCs around for people to chat up, hook up with or whatever. Go a little bit nuts with it.

it's all for a good cause

John put a post up that calls for the option to sign up for (or to be signed up by someone else) for a date that’s auctioned off. She somehow managed to convince Max to host said auction (but don’t ask how. You don’t want to know what she had on him) so he is your MC for the night.

The gala takes place in the same tent as the speed dating, but it’s been made over to look rather gala like. There’s fairy lights and silk on the tables and an open bar with circulating free champagne. And everything else of course. As always with the sphere there’s food in abundance, things that typically one might think of in a romantic context: strawberries and oysters and chocolate and finger foods. It’s that sort of party. None of it has any effect though. Too many people imbibing for that.

There’s a small band playing for people who are interested in dancing, and various NPCs are currently using it. It’s a good party, lively and inviting.

i get by with a little help from my friends.

So, you know how the people within the Sphere tend to force festivals on you? Well, a big part of those is always food and gifts. These particular foods and gifts tend to come in the form of small valentine’s cakes or candy, or flowers for those not inclined for food. The flowers are yellow however, because this isn’t about love. This is about friendship. There’s signs for free hugs, and random people have been hired to go about telling folks that so and so is their friend. Even if they’re not. But they’ll still follow you down the street and spout things like poetry and cheers in the honor of epic friendships. Even if they’re not really all that epic--the friendships or the poetry.

let's go to the movies, let's go see the stars

Some people may remember a few months ago when Alex badgered Max into letting them have an open area movie screening. This time she didn’t need to do it! In the middle of the rec dome, a large screen has been set up, and there’s space for people to have blankets or chairs from home set up in front of the screen. Various vendors have set up carts or stalls here and there, selling the sort of foods that one would expect at the movies (popcorn, homemade candies, soda, juice, wine and beer, nachos and that sort of thing) along with some that one may not expect: (full curry dinners, burgers, basically a bit like a food truck festival. If you can imagine it it’s there.)

Before the movie, there’s cartoons running, some familiar, and some not, and this is an event that people have seemed to have taken to well. Children run around here taken with the idea for the movie, and it’s a fun, summery festive sort of atmosphere with a community vibe, despite the wine and beer for sale.

we're heckling! it's good to be heckling again!

The movie is a buddy movie double feature, and both of them are rated R, but there’s no one checking IDs so go nuts. The movies that are being shown are Hot Fuzz and The Heat because that’s just what buddy comedies happen to be. But movies aren’t to everyone’s taste and there are some people who have taken this to go full on commentary about them. Do you join in or shush them? It’s entirely up to you!

photo inspiration

main navigation

Comments

[a_deadman]

How many times had he heard that word upon returning home to Winterfell after visiting other Houses and dealing with threats to their Northern Kingdom? It's a question that makes him realize that he took it for granted far too many times. Hearing it again now has him turning and searching for the little girl who wanted to be a Lady far sooner than she should have been, only to see her as one.

Ned holds her gently but tightly, his mind whirling from past to present and everything in between. Was it all a dream? How was any of it possible? At the moment, it didn't matter. And after a long moment, he pulls back, tears in his own eyes and a look of disbelief.

"Look at you," Ned chokes. "You are exactly your mother's daughter."

[toivory]

She's heard such things before from nearly everyone that knew her mother, including her mother herself. Her mother that- it didn't matter, the bad things that had happened. Because the Starks were together again, or at least a good half of them, far be it from her to wish anyone to arrive in this place.

Her daddy was here, and she looks at him, beaming just as much as she is crying. "I'm so sorry, father," she chokes out. "I tried so hard-" Joffrey was supposed to honor his word. "I should have listened to you." She'd been so angry about Lady, a petulant child who wanted to play at Lady and Princess and Queen. She'd wanted a crown and pretty dresses and all the things that ruling was on the outside. And she'd wanted a handsome husband- funny that those she thought the more pleasing to the eye had treated her far worse than Tyrion ever had.

But she'd been just that: a child. A girl who had been raised in isolation in the cold North and though winter born, she was born of love. She'd grown up with stories and songs, with the expectation that she was to be Lady of Winterfell some day. She had come to find out all her wildest dreams were coming true. How could she abandon that?

[a_deadman]

In the months leading up to his death, Ned had often chastised himself for handling certain situations. One of which was taking his girls to King's Landing when they had no business being there. They were far too young, even if he felt it was wise to have that exposure as soon as they could. He also wishes he had taken them home when he had the chance.

At her words, Ned shakes his head, lifting a hand to cradle and bring her close to him once more; a gesture of protection that comes too little too late.

"How would you have known, Sansa? None of this is your fault, do you understand me?" he tries to tell her. "You didn't know."

And none of it seems to matter because none of them could go back and change it all.

[toivory]

He smells warm, pine trees and worn leather. She closes her eyes and breathes him in deeply, remembering every moment with him she could and vowing to enjoy every one she could here, too. She didn't know how long he, like any of the others, would be staying. She couldn't risk that he'd be gone in a day.

"But I should have listened! You, Robb, Mother, Arya- none of you could stand him, but- I was so foolish. I thought I was in love- that he loved me!" Joffrey was not the worst man she'd met in her life. But she would never deny his cruelty, his spite and desperate attempts to rule all those around him with fear.

"He was an awful, awful, awful boy and an even worse king. I tried so hard and-" she breaks off to bury a sob in his neck. He's right, it's in the past and there's nothing they can do. She didn't know, none of them truly knew what Joffrey would be capable of. But considering who his mother was, they shouldn't have been surprised.

She sniffles. "I'm so happy to see you. The others will be, too- Robb, Jon, Theon, the four of us are all here." Alive at last.