redshiftlogs | Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

Entry tags:

Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

Who: EVERYONE.
What: A meet-and-greet party for everybody in Anchor!
When: early October
Where: the VR room lobby
Warnings: none yet
Format: go wild!

[ The day before, a wild network post appears, from the username @aa : ]

hi everyone!
i just wanted to let you all know
the meet and greet party previously discussed in this space
will be held tomorrow afternoon!

it will take place in the vr room lobby
and of course everyone is invited
refreshments and games will be provided
but if you would like a little extra challenge
please feel free to bring something to share!

attendance is mandatory!
(lol just kidding)
seriously though i do hope to see all of you there ;)

[ She's also posted handwritten signs to that effect in the mess hall and several of the staircases. Just in case! ]

The day of, a party appears in the VR Room lobby area, as promised!

Though it's not brightly lit, the lights there are are brightly colored, creating a chilled-out evening atmosphere like you'd find at a club. Plush chairs and couches are interspersed throughout the room, and there's been a solid attempt to clean the place up, or at least do something about all the dust.

A shortage of conventional party supplies has forced Ami and Cho to get creative, so the tables and parts of the wall are decorated with paper flowers, and the buffet table is presided over by a number of ... weird, pink, glitter-covered, vaguely animal-shaped sculptures made out of spare plastic pipes and stuff. With googly eyes. If nothing else they're a conversation piece.

FOOD: The main offering is barbecue! There's a pretty wide assortment of meats, all of which Cho has certified safe for human consumption, and also certified delicious. Chips, dried fruit, and a few different desserts are available, including homemade chocolate chip cookies that Ami made herself (wich Cho's help). All the trays are helpfully labeled, including allergy information.

Any and all potluck submissions are welcome as well! Just set it down over here and make a little card of your own.

DRINKS: Sadly, the coffee machine is still out of order. But there is a cooler stocked with ice and a few different choices of juice and soda. Alcoholic selections are limited to two types of pre-mixed drinks, which are intentionally weak on the alcohol, but at least they're not tequila sunrises. If guests want anything stronger, they'll need to bring it themselves.

ENTERTAINMENT: In fiddling with the controls, Ami got the overhead speakers to play some music, but couldn't figure out how to modify the playlist, so it's just one song on loop. Maybe if she keeps the volume kind of low, no one will notice. No live music is scheduled, but if anyone wants to bring a guitar and jam for a while, they will be more than welcome to.

And most of the arcade games are online! Anyone for Fruit Ninja? Air hockey? Dance Dance Retribution? Virtual Billiards? Or perhaps you'd like to try out a full-simulation game in the VR Rooms proper? Now's as good a time as any!

Oh, and don't forget to enter the raffle! The winner will be chosen randomly and announced a few hours into the party.

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Usually, Onni wouldn't be particularly interested in attending a party. Crowds aren't something he's entirely comfortable with, even when he knows everyone involved, and here, most people are strangers, he's even less comfortable with it. Still, it is a 'meet and greet' and he's had enough time to deem this place as safe as he possibly could from the Rash, at least, so, finding a reason not to go is a little more difficult than it usually would be. So, he resigns himself to attending.

Onni shows up late, having had to force himself to leave his room, and dressed in his usual tunic and fur cloak. What's a little different than usual is that he has his kantele with him, and is carrying both a bottle of vodka pilfered from the bar and a large blueberry and cream pie, the latter of which he places on the table and labels (oh-so-helpfully) only as Mustikkapiirakka. Not exactly descriptive, since it translates straight to 'blueberry pie,' but anyone brave enough to try it will find it to be delicious.

The one benefit of this party is that people seem to find it acceptable enough to drink, and so he cracks open his vodka and sips it straight from the bottle, like a savage, until he's tipsy enough to get past most of his social anxiety. Once he's pleasantly buzzed, he puts the bottle aside and people-watches for a while - feel free to notice him staring, he's not subtle! After a while, he realizes that the same song (and an awful one at that) is playing over and over in the background, and he's just drunk enough to pull out his kantele and start playing music. Most of what he knows are Finnish folk songs or songs that were popular enough in Finland before the Rash and have managed to survive. Mostly he sticks to upbeat songs that are easy to dance to, but occasionally when his mood flags a little, he might play ballads or more melancholy songs.

Anyone who wants him to sing will have to ply him with far more alcohol than he's had so far.

Edited 2019-10-14 01:22 (UTC)

Similarly this was not Rey's typical scene, but a party seemed like a good way of getting to see what kinds of people she's stuck with. Thus far she's mostly kept to herself, lingering in quiet corners of the city and venturing out on her own whenever it fancies her. Gathering information, though coming up short in the end.

It's lonely. She's used to it. What more, it's a hell of a lot less stressful than the weeks she had spent in the sky prison, evading capture from its synthetic inhabitants while she worked out a plan to release a few prisoners. Something which Rey never really saw herself walking away from alive, yet here she is.

Always with a drink in her hand, she's been keeping herself looking busy -- but singing and dancing is not among them. A couple times she catches a pair of eyes noticing her while she was intending to coast by unnoticed, and while she doesn't draw any more attention to herself than necessary... she is pretty sure she isn't being as inconspicuous as she had hoped.

Oh well.

It isn't until that individual kicks off a few songs that Rey ditches her previous efforts and really pays attention. That's... a kind of melody she hadn't heard in a long time. She recalls some soldiers camped out under an icy sky, singing songs like that. Who was she during those memories, though? It's not Russian, but it's something close. Once the singer has finished playing, she decides to abandon the shadows with her glass of bourbon, approaching him.

"That music... What was it?" Rey asks, her tones flat and robotic when she speaks despite attempting a conversational start.

The woman with the scars on her face is interesting because of how different she looks from most of the people he's met here. She reminds him a bit of the woman captain that had been on Lalli's expedition to the Silent World, mostly because of the athleticism of her body and the way she holds herself, like she would come out on top in a fight and knows it. She's interesting, and that's why she keeps catching his attention.

Once he starts playing kantele though, he loses track of her, and anyone else he'd been looking at, letting himself get a bit lost in the music and allowing himself some room to relax, just a little. Still quite tipsy, he settles in and plays for a while, not particularly paying attention to whether or not people are listening or enjoying it for the first while, and then allowing himself to feel a bit happy about it when he notices a few people enjoying the sound of it. Along with the vodka, it's reason enough to keep playing for a while, until he's tired and thinking of a snack and more to drink.

Putting the kantele aside, he's about to get up and look for a snack when the woman from earlier approaches him to ask about the music. One brow raising, he looks up at her face. There's not much expression there, and her voice doesn't have much emotion to it. In a way, it reminds him a bit of how Lalli is sometimes, and he makes a soft 'hm' in his throat.

"Traditional songs from Finland." he answers, after a moment, "That's where I come from. I don't know any other kinds of songs, but if you have a request, I can try to learn it."

His offer surprises her, though she doesn't show it. Rey just shakes her head, scratching the back of her neck in thought.

"No need. Thought it sounded familiar. Knew some Finns when in Russia, long time ago."

The memories of Safronov have always been more vague than the other memories programmed into her head, but Rey still recalls snippets of campfires with soldiers under a fiery night sky. Songs heard on the horizon, far from where she traveled, keeping her distance. Snatches of conversation -- as well as the echoes of screams and gunfire.

She frowns to herself, remembering her situation before coming here. They were just a few hours from Finland then as well, if the sky prison's shuttle hadn't crashed before they made it out of syntho territory. Rey should have been more careful flying that thing. Sure, it might not have helped her situation here, but still.

"Pretty cold fucking place," Rey absentmindedly adds, her eyes darting away for the moment to the rest of the room.

Onni's brows raise a little when she says she'd known some Finns when she was in Russia. He's vaguely aware of Russia and where it is in relation to Finland, but it hadn't ever been particularly important information, given how relatively far away it was with the Silent World between the cleared area in Finland and what was likely the ruins of Russian cities.

"Ah. I haven't met anyone who was very familiar with Finland so far. It's nice to meet someone who does."

The woman frowns to herself, and Onni wonders what she's thinking about - something from home is most likely, and so there's no use speculating, though he's curious about what else she might know or think about Finland. Mostly, he's curious because he's homesick, he misses being there, in the forest, even the forest of the Silent World.

"It is cold. Even though it wasn't winter yet when I left, it was hard to keep warm. Did you ever go to Finland?"

Considering the types of people she's met in this place so far, Rey can't imagine there are many people from this guy's corner of the world. Then again, the same could be said for just about everyone here from what she's seen. Whether they're from the ass end of the globe or a whole different reality entirely, they're all aliens here.

Wow, now that's a thought. Rey's an alien.

"Was trying to get there, actually," she responds with a strained mouth that resembles something of an awkward smile, but not quite. "We lost the aircraft partway... Had to take shelter in Arkhangelsk. Or, what was left of that city, anyway."

Only just about a thousand kilometers away from her intended destination. Even if she did somehow make it back to her own world, even if she did survive impalement (and worst case scenario, she did), what was she going to do after that? Walk the rest of the way?

To be honest, Onni hasn't really thought of himself that way yet, as an alien. Of course, the concept of aliens is a little beyond the science or pop culture (such as it is) of the Known World. If he were to think of that particular word it would probably only be in relation to foreigners, people from other countries. That is certainly what he feels like he is here - foreign, out of his element, in the wrong place. The only thing that's making him feel much less awkward and out of place, frankly, is playing the kantele and having a few drinks.

"You were flying in a plane?" he asks, his brows raising, almost immediately interested, "When you say you lost it, do you mean you crashed it? I've only ever seen crashed planes before."

Frankly, her situation would sound like certain death to someone like Onni, and not just because he tends to paranoia and catastrophizing. Without access to most vehicles and without provisions or camping gear or anything else, the trip from far east would be nearly impossible. Most people attempting it would end up starving or being killed in the Silent World by trolls or beasts, possibly giants, unless they were extremely skilled and experienced in that kind of survival.

"That sounds like a grim situation. I'm not familiar with that city specifically, but from the name it's east of Finland, isn't it? Not Karelian."

Lalli comes up to Onni while he's in the middle of a ballad, holding a slice of pie and looking at him accusingly.

Hopefully Onni wasn't planning on having a peaceful night of performance ahead of him, because... his cousin appears very disgruntled.

"I don't like blueberries."

You know, because Onni should have kept him specifically in mind when making a dessert for the entire base.

"There were cookies."

Lifting his gaze from the kantele, he leaves the song at the end of the second verse and raises his brows at Lalli. After a moment, he holds his hand out and crooks his fingers.

"I'll take that." he says, then lifts the bottle of vodka, handing it over, "Here. But only if you've eaten."

One corner of his mouth raises into a slightly crooked smile.

He's eaten the cookies. Does that count? It does now.

It's weird seeing Onni in any mood resembling contentment; Lalli narrows his eyes at the bottle suspiciously. Truthfully, he doesn't like alcohol much. He can't stand the taste. But the bustle of the party has made him off-kilter and the way Onni seems somewhat peaceful and him smiling like that--

Drinking would be a normal person thing to do, wouldn't it? It seems to make Onni happy when Lalli does normal person things. Like making friends.

So he takes a swig. It tastes as awful as he remembers, but he gets it down. Why people drink this willingly he has no idea.

Onni might be a bit buzzed, but he still notices the way Lalli looks at the bottle like it might be a snake about to bite him. Still, he is buzzed enough not to really understand why - they've had drinks together before, and Onni has generally assumed both that Lalli had liked it and that Lalli would be willing to tell him quite clearly if he wasn't interested. After all, Lalli usually has no problem doing that, and when Onni himself likes drinking so much, it's hard to imagine someone else not enjoying it.

Sometimes he wonders if he likes it too much, it's so easy to let it soften the sharp edges off of all his thoughts and memories. Who wouldn't like that?

Tilting his head, he looks over at his cousin, then pats the spot beside him, inviting him to sit down.

"If you haven't found enough, we can go get you something else."

He does sit, still clutching the bottle as he goes. He takes another experimental swig after; maybe if he drinks enough of it his mood will improve too, just like Onni's. Maybe that's why everyone else seems to like it so much. Lalli thinks it would be nice to feel happy, even if it's only temporary, and only because you've made yourself too stupid to realize you shouldn't be.

The thought makes him curl in on himself where he sits, unconsciously.

Onni had said something to him, anyway.

"I'm okay."

As Lalli comes and sits beside him, Onni nudges their shoulders together in a friendly, affectionate kind of way, and takes a bite of the blueberry pie Lalli had handed over to him. Tilting his head, he watches Lalli take another pull from the bottle and then holds his hand out to ask for the bottle and take another swig himself before handing it back.

It feels good, the burn in his throat and the warmth that settles in his chest and belly with the alcohol.

"Are you enjoying the party?" he asks, looking over at Lalli directly, and then looking back out at the people gathered. He suspects he knows the answer, and it's probably the same as his own. Which is basically why he'd brought the vodka and offered to share it with his cousin.

Lalli just shrugs, which is pretty much his default response to questions whose real answers he knows the asker won't like. In this case: no, he isn't, really; it's crowded and exhausting and Lalli's tired and wishing he hadn't come. But the idea of sitting doing nothing in a corner hadn't appealed, either, so here he is. At least in this particular misery Onni is also here.

"It's loud."

Well, that's true, anyway.

That Lalli shrugs when he doesn't want to say the answer out loud in case it's not what he wants to hear is something Onni knows. Then again, this is something they have in common - a dislike of loud noises and groups of people. Tuuri had always loved parties and thrived at them, chattering brightly and making friends every time, while her brother and cousin hovered defensively at the edges or didn't show up at all. He remembers all the times she'd gotten huffy or yelled at them for their refusal to 'cooperate' when both of them had just been overwhelmed. Even worse, he remembers the times she'd taken him aside with her expression worried and tried to talk to him about his or Lalli's lack of a social life.

"Too loud. At least with the kantele I can listen to it and hear myself think." he says, tilting his head to the side to look at Lalli, "I'm surprised you came."

He shrugs again. "Everyone else was here."

He had also been enticed by all the desserts provided, of course, but even someone as antisocial as him needs interaction--despite not having a language barrier anymore, he feels almost more isolated here than he did back in his "world" or whatever the idea is. He only knows Onni, and Reynir, and the strange environment has him on edge. The idea of wandering the unfamiliar hallways alone while knowing where everyone else was seemed like too much at the time.

But it it hadn't helped, and he's so tired of being miserable. So he takes another drink of vodka.

He's never been very sturdy and it doesn't take much to affect him; he's already feeling a little light-headed. Onni must have had quite a bit more than him already, too.

"How much have you been drinking?"

"Mhm." he says, acknowledging Lalli's reason for coming. It's quite similar to his own reason, after all, and he huffs out a long sigh, leaning back against the wall behind him. His head is pleasantly swimmy from drinking, and he can feel that some of the grating weight of anxiety that usually sits just under his sternum has come off. When he drinks there is always this one magic point at which he's had just enough to feel like a normal person, with a normal person's amount of worry, but when he hasn't had enough to be nauseous, a weepy mess or an idiot doing things to feel stupid about the next day. He's not quite at that perfect point yet, but Lalli has the bottle and if Lalli wants to drink some, to take the pressure off, Onni won't take that away from him.

When Lalli asks how much he's been drinking, he makes a little noise in his throat, his head still tilted back against the wall, eyes closed for a moment, until he opens them blearily and looks up at the ceiling.

"Whatever is missing from that bottle, besides what you've had." he says, because when he's drinking straight from the bottle, the concept of measurement is fuzzy. Lifting his head away from the wall, he looks down at it - the thing is about half empty. Apparently, he's had quite a lot.

When she notices someone's playing live music, Ami quickly goes over and turns off the Darude Sandstorm (or whatever has replaced it by now), then comes over to listen, bobbing her head in time. Her tastes lean more toward metal, but this is cool, too. What is that instrument, anyway? It's like ... half a guitar, kind of?

Well, maybe she'll ask at some point. Ami applauds gently as he finishes this boppy dance tune, but before he can start another, she interjects, "Onni! Are you taking requests?"

It's a relief when whatever insipid music is playing in the background turns off, and Onni makes a point of playing a bit more loudly to compensate. He remembers Ami from when he'd first arrived, and it's nice to see her again, especially when he sees that she's enjoying the music. Besides alcohol, an audience enjoying the music is the most encouraging thing.

And then, once he's finished a song, she comes closer and he nods at her, an acknowledgement of her presence - before he can start another song, she's coming up to him and asking if he's taking requests.

"Ah, yes, if I know the tune. If not, I can do my best to learn it."

Ami grins. "You might know it! It's Finnish."

It is, in fact, the only Finnish song she knows! And she didn't know it was Finnish until that one time Lalli sang it at karaoke. But apparently she's not that familiar with it, because - shoot, what was it called?

"It's called, uh..." She snaps her fingers a few times, trying to remember. It's on the tip of her tongue! "It's - you know, the leekspin song. 'Loituma'! - or is that the band?" She looks to Onni, sheepish. "Should I, like - I could hum a few bars?"

"You know a Finnish song?" he asks, his brow raising. Unless it was a song from an Old World rock band or something similar, he hadn't expected her to know Finnish music.

When she stutters over the name of it, he realizes she doesn't really know Finnish music, but just this song. He has no idea what a 'leekspin' is, but the word 'Loituma' sounds familiar, and he nods.

"That's the band's name, Loituma. I know a few of their songs. If you hum some of it, I might know of it."

"Okay." Ami nods, clears her throat, and sings a few bars.

Once upon a time, she would have been shy about singing in front of people. But by now, she's done enough karaoke and summer caroling and starring in a high school production of offbrand "Wicked" that it's not as big a deal. It'd be smoother if she knew, like, any of the words, but she knows the tune well enough to attempt one of the scat phrases. It definitely starts with "yap pap pa" and ends with "kitty gun glue," but the rest would be ridiculous to actually write out phonetically, so you will just have to imagine it.

When Ami starts singing, Onni's brow raises. He recognizes the tune, of course, but she's speaking absolute gibberish. If he doesn't focus on the individual words, though, but rather just the sounds of the syllables as they bleed into each other, it does sound Karelian, in its way, if not directly Finnish.

"Ah. It's Ievan Polkka." he says after a moment, nodding.

A moment later, and he lowers his gaze to his kantele, strumming the first few notes of it. It's strange, to hear it sung by a teenage girl who's most decidedly not Finnish, because it's such an ancient folk song from his home. But he lets that go, humming for a moment or two while he gets a feel for the song again, and then he starts singing it, his voice confident.

Right! Ievan Polkka! Ami stops singing and lets Onni take over, sitting down on the floor to listen. She's never heard the song with an accompaniment before, only a capella, so this is an interesting new take on it.

She closes her eyes, bobbing her head and shoulders with the beat, and imagines the airy, enchanted woods of Bosuma. She doesn't quite recall what Lalli's singing voice sounded like, but hearing Onni's reminds her of it, if a bit deeper in pitch and more robust in tone.

It's a little bittersweet, she supposes. Is it weird to feel homesick for a place where you also felt homesick? Is it weird to miss a friend who's currently hanging out like ten feet away? It's probably weird.

When the song's over, Ami starts a soft but enthusiastic round of applause for him. "You're really good!" she exclaims. "It comes out a lot better when you actually speak Finnish, doesn't it? Haha."

It's a very old song, and the particular dialect it's in would be unfamiliar in his mouth if he weren't used to singing it through years of practice. It's a nice song, soothing and energizing all at once, and it's nice to have someone ask for him to play it; it reminds him of evenings spent around outdoor fires after sauna with the other mages at Keuruu, relaxed and passing around a bottle of vodka while they requested songs from each other, going in rounds.

When he finishes and Ami applauds, he raises his brows and nods a bit at her assertion that it sounds better from someone who speaks Finnish.

"Mm, I suppose it does."

After a moment, he idly strums at the kantele, not playing a particular tune but just enjoying the familiar sound of it.

"Where did you hear of that song? It's a very old folk song."

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Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

onni hotakainen ❄ ota

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