[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

[splinten]

It's pretty complicated, admittedly. Let me explain the series of steps that you need to engage in.

The first step is to say, "Sorry, I'm not interested."

[...That's it. That's his only step.]

[teratias]

...Then what? What about the other person's feelings?! What if they get angry or something?!

[Does not compute.]

[splinten]

That's for them to deal with.

[--Dirk Strider, a guy who put off asking out the person he liked for over four years out of fear of being rejected]

[teratias]

I've never done this before okay? I've.....I've never even had a date or been asked out on one.

[ohgodhejustsaidthatooutloud.]

[splinten]

[There isn't any shaming coming from Dirk's side. Romance is a mess and everything has been a disaster. He regrets so much.]

Does that matter? Like, in terms of practice with this shit, sure. But it ain't a big deal otherwise.

[teratias]

[...That's why he likes Dirk. There's no judgement.]

I mean, doesn't it not? Everyone talks about it all the time.

[Like in so many other things, he feels more than a little left behind.]

[splinten]

Well, yeah, obviously. Socially, there's a major imperative to encourage romantic union, and particularly reproductive ones. Look at the Palai, even. [He gestures at their situation.] Reproduction of lines has generally been socially encouraged. In capitalist societies, it allows for the transfer of wealth among the rich and the creation of future workers among the poor, and in plenty of other societies it's just useful for the prestige and powers that comes from numbers in a population. Culturally that's translated to an imperative for romance and shaming of those who aren't interested or capable.

But if you give that much credence to society's bullshit demands, you're going to end up having no damn clue what you actually want or who you are. And not being true to yourself is a surefire guarantee of eternal misery.

[Dirk is miserable anyway but in his opinion, it's because the self he's true to really sucks.]

[teratias]

[Waver listens. Really listens, because a lot of what Dirk's saying just...it isn't quite hashtag relatable, but there's truth in it. Capitalism could be replaced by older mage families pretty easily, and in truth....jeez. Has he ever really thought about the future that much?

No, he realizes. He kind of expected the Grail War to be make or break.]

That....makes a lot of sense. [He's quiet for a very, very long time, and then there's a softer, but extremely heartfelt:] Thanks.

[splinten]

No problem. [Genuine, if in the quiet monotone. But then, with a hint of irony,] It's pretty exciting to me that one of my moralizing rants on institutional pressures didn't bore someone into asking for the end of the dissertation.

[teratias]

It's...interesting hearing about it from the outside, actually.

[He's going to just let Dirk assume that he's in the trenches of it without getting into grand theft relic, murder threats, and magically summoning Alexander the Great.]

[splinten]

Not sure if you're referring to institutional pressures or the fine art of the impromptu academic lecture.

[teratias]

The first one, honestly. That's...a pretty good picture of what Clock Tower's like.

[splinten]

I'm familiar with a clock tower as a general concept, but not so much on a proper noun that I'm going to assume represents some kind of institution or organization. What is it?

[teratias]

Basically it'a university for mages like myself, but also...everything you just said. But with magecraft too.

[splinten]

[The last thing Dirk says before being torn away by his magical chair is,]

Oh, so like, a weird shitty classist and exploitative Hogwarts. Man, that sucks.

[teratias]

What's a Hogwarts?!

[Waver's not sure he's heard, but you can't blame a man for trying.]