[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

[spellbindmods]

Who: Participating coven members
Where: The Palai marketplace
When: Day 49
Open/Closed: OTA

[ Any and all who are in the marketplace will find that there is suddenly a mysterious barrier around the marketplace (that may be eerily familiar to some) -- specifically one large portion of the marketplace with a large number of tables and chairs, perhaps purposefully set out for nefarious reasons.

A few Palai are ushering coven members to chairs, and everything seems about normal. As normal as the Palai can be when they're putting on a show anyway. It's not until a sizable portion of the coven members are seated (and also supplied with breadsticks and small shrimp), that things get a bit more bizarre.

Thanks to the power of the Eltos, a small band of energy keeps coven members stuck to the chair (magic can interfere, of course), but that's not the end of it. On each table, next to those delicious smelling breadsticks and shrimp, is a bowl of scraps of papers. Every five minutes, a strip of paper will pop out from the bowl.

If you ask the Palai, they'll be inclined to explain speed dating to you. Asking questions, getting to know a person, then being shimmied off to the next potential mate -- this is made possible by Elto magic yet again, through flying chairs that transport their holder to a new table at standard intervals.

The Palai are extremely invested in this exercise? Will you let them down? ]

[ OOC: In the spirit of speed dating, each character will have a top level. All who want to respond to this top level can with questions from this post, but the threads have to end at 10 comments from each character. After this last tag, the characters can be assumed to have been whisked to a different potential match. You're free to have characters make up their own questions, interact with Palai serving food, etc. ]

Comments

[potentite]

[Oh! He doesn't know what dating is. Wow. What a lucky guy.]

Oh, golly, no no. Dating is... Dating means you and someone else are in romantic cahoots with each other. There's a mutual... thing there. Love, I guess? Or just liking a lot but again, romantically. And when you date, you... do all sorts of things together like, uh, go places mostly! Or hobbies you like? Sharing things like that...

[Don't say 'and making out' don't say that. He's an innocent. He doesn't need this.]

Man, I'm making it sound really empty. But it's not.

[deem]

[Give 9S a few moments to process this]

...Well, I'd say you're pretty safe. Somebody'd be hard-pressed to take you anywhere when we're stuck to these chairs.

[To demonstrate, 9S attempts to get up, which is little more than a futile jerk of his body. It's not very effective...]

[potentite]

[Oh. Oh no poor guy.] It's just fine by me. I'm not looking to start anything new at the moment. But, um, I guess since you're involved, I could... try to explain anything? [A beat.] I'm probably the worst person to ask for good examples but uh, figured I should offer. I'd hate to see someone bumbling into things and mucking them up and hurting themselves.

[deem]

[Well, since Jake has offered, 9S does have one question...]

What does an Old World game of musical chairs have to do with dating though?

[Look he almost got it right. Almost.

Not quite.

Points for trying?]

[potentite]

[If it helps, Jake actually considers this question.]

Well, I think the idea is that you get to know a load of people in a short time span! Dating's tough, you know. Trying to find someone and all that... So this way, you meet a handful of potentials at once.

[deem]

[9S supposes that efficiency isn't a bad reason in theory.

However there remains a bit of a problem]

I don't think they understand that androids aren't suitable for this sort of thing.

[He puffs out a sigh. Here he'd really tried to explain what he is and what that means clearly]

[potentite]

Whoa, you're an android? Neato! But, um, does that mean you uh... don't have romantic feelings?

[deem]

Suppose I could, but that sort of thing's prohibited to YoRHa units.

[And 9S might shrug off reminders to talk and emote less, but that doesn't mean that his programming doesn't ensure he's very aware of what's expected of him... And just how large of a gap there is between androids and their creators.

Which brings him to his next point]

Besides, one of us couldn't be appropriate for a human.

[potentite]

[Wow, that's really sad. Not that Jake is good at romance and those feelings have been a pain for him, but he doesn't like the idea of someone being prohibited against feeling them.]

Huh, why not? You seem just dandy to me.

[deem]

My understanding is that there are things humans want and need that we uh. Couldn't provide.

[Things he'd have to phrase as carefully as possible lest he embarrass himself or others. Or both. Any is entirely possible]

So even if there wasn't a significant gap in our status, it'd still be like taking away something someone could otherwise have.

[This is said with perhaps a little too much clinical distance. They're just facts to him, and 9S has never seen a reason to question it. If anything it seems strange that others don't seem to accept that reality]

[potentite]

Hmm... You know, there are tons of movies about this. Humans are pretty in love with the idea, I think.

[Like he can think of ten off the top of his head, though they do vary in how they portray the romance going.]

Um, I mean... Not that you need to or should! Believe me, affairs of the heart are a sticky business. But humans are pretty, uh, open-minded? About partners. If that's your concern.

[deem]

[That's a very nice thought and all Jake but 9S is a bit stuck on that first point]

...Humans have films about...

[But why?

He can't wrap his thought circuits around this]

[potentite]

[Poor 9S. Jake rubs the back of his neck.]

Um, yes. It's fairly popular. Ex Machina and Her are two of my favorites but now that I think about it, I can't think of any with a happy ending...

[deem]

...Maybe there's a reason for that.

[It goes against the natural order of things Jake.

Accept the mantle of superior race]