Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

[livingdeadgirl]

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.

Comments

[lallipop]

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.

[scowlish]

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."

[lallipop]

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."

[scowlish]

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.

[lallipop]

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.

[scowlish]

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."

[lallipop]

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?"

[scowlish]

"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.