OPEN / "Bring Yourself" Arts & Culture event!

[enveloped]

who: Cameron Waltz and you!
what: "Bring Yourself" Arts & Culture event!
when: Today!
where: Riverside Community Centre.
warnings: None predicted.

Open invitation on the network!


The community center is normally a modest building, albeit one with a spectacular riverfront view. Tonight, it's putting on the ritz. Multicolored lanterns hang on either side of the sidewalk leading up to the front of the building, and music of all kinds, depending on what time it is, pours out of the open doors and into the street. Local vendors have set up small carts to show off their wares and offer small trinkets and fresh food for sale, displaying their local pride.

Inside, things have been completely redecorated for the event. It's a modern open concept gallery, with blank walls for artwork and written word, empty pedestals to display objects, and plenty of tables with chairs. Some pieces are already on display, from paintings to exotic foods. Small crowds gather around people telling stories or showing off their special skills and talents.

That music plays live from the small main stage overlooking a dance floor, both of which can be cleared for demonstrations of everything from dance to martial arts. Anything physical that requires that little bit of extra room.

Musicians are free to write their names for a time-slot on the stage, and can choose to be accompanied by the onsite pianist and guitarist, bring their own instruments or backup, or perform solo.

All throughout the room are food and drink stations, where staff serves wine, beer, limited spirits, and soft drinks. The exotic foods are on display here, from which the guests can help themselves. If you can imagine it, someone has managed to cook it.
At the far end of the building is an outdoor patio overlooking the river, with seating and torches to light the area through the night. Most displays of magic take place out there, where practitioners can go all-out casting their most extravagant spells.

The crowd ebbs and flows, gathering to socialize during lulls and splitting off to see new events and installations as they come in. Other than opening and closing statements by Cameron Waltz, there's very little structure.

Casual and relaxed, the focus is on learning, generating conversation, and meeting new people. It's an organized free-for-all, a mini festival dedicated to the celebration of the cultures and backgrounds of everyone in Riverview. And in a city made up of a thousand universes worth of people, there's more than enough to see.

[Characters can bring pieces with them as they arrive, and simply set themselves up around the room. Contributions aren't limited to art, anything goes! Feel free to play random observer/staff/performer NPCs. The party goes until midnight, have fun!]

Comments

[pacifisticuffs]

"Not at all. Only lately arrived, actually."

He says it casually, as though he's not still reeling from all of this. He hides it well, possibly too well, but more than once in the past couple of days he's had to retreat to somewhere quiet to just breathe and keep from panicking. "Yourself?"

[indigobird]

"Newcomer, then. How are you finding the place? Is it much different from your world?" Even if the quarantine is overall better than her world, Relm struggled to adjust in the beginning. It was a huge change, and she's certain she's not alone in that. "This will be my fifth month here. I arrived in... June? I think that's what the month was called. The calendar here is a little different."

[pacifisticuffs]

"Strangely enough, the calendar matches up with my world's rather tidily." Which is a mildly disorienting fact on its own. When everything else is so different, why should something so mundane be the same? "It's... quite different. Magic, for example--it's never been anything but a story to me."

[indigobird]

"One less thing to have to manage and figure out, at least." Look at her, being all optimistic and positive. Don't get used to it. "No magic where you're from? Well, your world might be better off honestly. It solves some problems, but also creates a lot of them." At least in Thedas. Maybe other worlds handle magic and its users a lot better. This place certainly does.

Also she realizes she's been prattling on and has no idea who this guy even is. "I'm Hawke, by the way."

[pacifisticuffs]

"Simon Templar." He bows, positively courtly. "I'm unsurprised to find magic comes with its own sets of issues. Humanity has always been particularly good at inventing trouble for itself."

[indigobird]

Hawke's brow raises for a moment at the name. Templar. If he hadn't just said - and by his reaction proved - that magic is unfamiliar to him, her guard would be up. All things considered, she's willing to chalk it up to a horrible coincidence. She bows her head in return (she's not bowing in this dress, sorry). "I'd argue it's what humans do best, really. Well that and fucking things up spectacularly."

[pacifisticuffs]

A small, ironic laugh. One part politeness and one part bitter irony. He deals almost exclusively with those humans both inventing trouble and fucking things up, though on a grander scale than individuals should be able to. The wealthy, the powerful, those who are both. Turning the tables back on those who tried to tip them.

"Does that happen often here? I imagine being in comparatively close and limited quarters makes things resonate more broadly here."

[indigobird]

She knows that laugh. It sounds different coming from each person, but she'd know that tone anywhere. Hawke is practically bosom buddies with the feeling, and Simon's hardly the first person she's come across who's dealt with the worst of humanity and its collective actions one too many times. Herself included.

"So far I've seen nothing overly, spectacularly bad, outside the stupid cultists. Luckily they were dealt with."