[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

[probablynoteren]

[No!! He won't accept this fate, he'll turn this car around!!]

There has to be a way to stop that from happening.

[splinten]

We'll have to resort to zany schemes where we fake-date each other in groups of threes. Naturally, we'll all end up falling in love as the fiction we presented for social convenience turns into a comical yet heartwarming reality. Contemporary pop tunes will play, and someone probably is going to get shafted at a wedding.

[probablynoteren]

Fake-date...? Wedding??

[How did Dirk even get from Point A to Point W, he's lost Lenka already and what he's getting is less raised eyebrow or confused look and more eyebrow acrobatics with concentrated doubt garnish. He does get the feeling Dirk is probably messing with him, so Lenka leaves the questioning at that and just tries to figure out...

Is this a TV show? It's not a classic love triangle, though, and no one's getting murdered. So he has no idea where they're going with this. But:]

I don't think you'll find a lot of people who want to date in groups of three. Unless you're looking for Palai.

[He can at least deliver useless love advice with a straight face.]

[splinten]

You don't watch a lot of movies, huh.

[It explains not being able to follow the basic plot of a romcom being presented here.]

Are you from one of the worlds that doesn't even have them?

[probablynoteren]

No, we have them. The old ones. I just haven't watched a lot of them.

[Look, it's hard to be cultured when culture is dying and/or underground, and one of your only watching buddies is not quite the romcom type. He's used to not being able to keep up with the Palai, Aimintas or magic, but man, it rankles a little that he's still behind the curve on human (probably human) culture, too.

He's silent for a moment, mulling over this, but at least he did guess part of it right.]

... So it is a movie.

[splinten]

[Um, watching a dead culture's movies is basically all you can do in the apocalypse???? Come on man, get with the program.]

It is a type of movie, and just one small subjection of the entire genre of romantic comedies.

[probablynoteren]

[He had work!! It was important work!! The rest of the time was probably spent working (more) or watching anime, because his BFF is a damn nerd.]

So... we're in a romcom.

[It's not especially funny from this end, but he is pretty sure this is enough of a mess to qualify as comedy to a third party. He can only imagine what they all look like from a bird's eye view...]

You know a lot about them.

[He wouldn't have pegged Dirk for the type??]

[splinten]

I had a surplus of free time and pop culture detritus to sift through. At this point it's practically my academic specialty.

[The joke is of course he has never been to an academic institution in his life. Ha Ha.]

[probablynoteren]

If it's your.... academic specialty-- [What's School: A Post-Apocalyptic Comedy] --then you know how to get the best ending. Right? Not the one with the wedding.

[Is he serious or not, who knows. He's still totally straightfaced about this.]

[splinten]

[BUT BEFORE THIS INFORMATION CAN BE REVEALED TO LENKA, DIRK IS DRAMATICALLY WHISKED AWAY BY HIS CHAIR!]

[probablynoteren]

[Ah. That must be the speed part of the speed dating..... It's kind of literal?! Lenka watches Dirk fly away a bit bemusedly; the development makes about as much sense as Dirk himself, so it more or less works for a wrap-up.]