![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
event } take me down to paradise city (part one)
WHO: All passengers signed up to skate on over to Xanadu.
WHAT: Ya (fake) dead. Enjoy your (fake) afterlife!
WHERE: Anywhere in the city!
WHEN: First week of the event (Feb. 20-27).
WARNINGS: Add these to your comment subject lines as needed! Please don’t get yourself killed right away but if you can’t resist please make sure to fill out the death page.
You return to consciousness bathed in pleasantly glowing light and find yourself seated in a comfortable chair in the center of an arena. There’s soft, dreamy pop music playing quietly, and you feel calm, entirely at peace despite your strange surroundings. You feel no reason to stir from your chair or investigate what’s happening - probably because you’ve been drugged into a docile state. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off eventually. For now, you feel content to sit and wait for what happens next.
While you wait, if you look around, you’ll see the stadium seats are packed with people, their chatter a quiet hum behind the music. There is a raised platform in front of you where three people of ambiguous gender dressed in regal robes are seated in high-backed chairs, and above them, some kind of hovering screen displays a generic welcome message in stark lettering. You’ll also discover that you are one of several people seated in the center of the arena. Again, you may wonder where you are and why you’re here, since you don’t remember arriving, but you do not feel any initiative to find the answers to those questions. All will be answered in time.
A triumphant fanfare sounds, and the arena goes quiet, still except for the person on the platform seated in the middle, who stands and steps forward. They give a hearty welcome to the crowd gathered, and an extra special welcome to the small group on the ground, then introduce themself and the other two as the City Council, a group appointed to ensure everything here is kept in smooth running order. This city, they explain, is called Xanadu, and it is a place of perfect bliss that is home to only the most exemplary individuals who have moved to the next stage of their existence - in other words, the afterlife. Yes, you are all dead, but you have been given a place in paradise for the rest of eternity. Isn’t that nice?
The crowd in the stadium breaks into a wave of thunderous applause, soon quieted by the Council member speaking with a wave of their hand. They continue, explaining that you’ll be shown to your new homes and introduced to your soulmates, a partner who has been determined as perfectly compatible with each individual’s essence. A small group of volunteers has gathered at the base of the podium, ready to guide each pair to their new home as they’re called forward, one by one:
Julia Bellamy and Lady
Near and Matt
Mammon and Alex Reagan
Juuzou Suzuya and Kankri Vantas
Murmur and Jonathan Sims
Congratulations, and again, welcome to Xanadu!
Volunteers lead each pair of soulmates to one of the small, pastel-colored houses situated in a cul-de-sac in one of the nearby neighborhoods. Furnishings and the shag carpeting inside are plain and beige, but the volunteer-guide explains that they can be personalized to the inhabitants’ liking by making requests from the magic closet. These closets will instantly produce clothing and whatever other items you’d like. Likewise, whatever foods you most desire will be found in the fridge or cooking in the oven whenever you ask for it. Both the closets and the kitchens run on technology that is new to Xanadu, and some of the kinks still need to be worked out, so requested items may not be exactly as you asked for. But hey, you’re in paradise! You’ll be fine.
The guide goes on to explain that there isn’t much in the way of technology to be found anywhere in the city - no phones, no computers, and none of the stresses that come as part of the package, and requests for such items from the closets will encounter errors. This is all for the common good, of course. But who needs electronic devices when you have a beautiful city to explore? The city itself is massive, designed in a glitzy late 70s-early 80s roller disco aesthetic, enclosed in a shimmering golden dome, full of glittering skyscrapers and lush public gardens. Soft rock music floats through the air via hidden speakers to set the mood. The weather here is always pleasantly perfect early summer, and the atmosphere is pristine - not a single trace of smog or other pollution. That’s because there are no manufacturing plants or vehicles to be found anywhere in the city. Modes of transportation in Xanadu are pedal bicycles, your own two feet, and roller skates. Strap on a pair and roll around the neighborhoods, or to cover longer distances, head down to an electric rail station, where you will strap in and be pulled along to your destination on your skates at high speed.
By the time the orientation is over and the guide has departed, leaving you to get to know your soulmate and settle in to the comforts of eternal paradise, that drug you’d been given will have worn off. So, newlydeads, what will you do next?
WHAT: Ya (fake) dead. Enjoy your (fake) afterlife!
WHERE: Anywhere in the city!
WHEN: First week of the event (Feb. 20-27).
WARNINGS: Add these to your comment subject lines as needed! Please don’t get yourself killed right away but if you can’t resist please make sure to fill out the death page.
You return to consciousness bathed in pleasantly glowing light and find yourself seated in a comfortable chair in the center of an arena. There’s soft, dreamy pop music playing quietly, and you feel calm, entirely at peace despite your strange surroundings. You feel no reason to stir from your chair or investigate what’s happening - probably because you’ve been drugged into a docile state. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off eventually. For now, you feel content to sit and wait for what happens next.
While you wait, if you look around, you’ll see the stadium seats are packed with people, their chatter a quiet hum behind the music. There is a raised platform in front of you where three people of ambiguous gender dressed in regal robes are seated in high-backed chairs, and above them, some kind of hovering screen displays a generic welcome message in stark lettering. You’ll also discover that you are one of several people seated in the center of the arena. Again, you may wonder where you are and why you’re here, since you don’t remember arriving, but you do not feel any initiative to find the answers to those questions. All will be answered in time.
A triumphant fanfare sounds, and the arena goes quiet, still except for the person on the platform seated in the middle, who stands and steps forward. They give a hearty welcome to the crowd gathered, and an extra special welcome to the small group on the ground, then introduce themself and the other two as the City Council, a group appointed to ensure everything here is kept in smooth running order. This city, they explain, is called Xanadu, and it is a place of perfect bliss that is home to only the most exemplary individuals who have moved to the next stage of their existence - in other words, the afterlife. Yes, you are all dead, but you have been given a place in paradise for the rest of eternity. Isn’t that nice?
The crowd in the stadium breaks into a wave of thunderous applause, soon quieted by the Council member speaking with a wave of their hand. They continue, explaining that you’ll be shown to your new homes and introduced to your soulmates, a partner who has been determined as perfectly compatible with each individual’s essence. A small group of volunteers has gathered at the base of the podium, ready to guide each pair to their new home as they’re called forward, one by one:
Near and Matt
Mammon and Alex Reagan
Juuzou Suzuya and Kankri Vantas
Murmur and Jonathan Sims
Congratulations, and again, welcome to Xanadu!
Volunteers lead each pair of soulmates to one of the small, pastel-colored houses situated in a cul-de-sac in one of the nearby neighborhoods. Furnishings and the shag carpeting inside are plain and beige, but the volunteer-guide explains that they can be personalized to the inhabitants’ liking by making requests from the magic closet. These closets will instantly produce clothing and whatever other items you’d like. Likewise, whatever foods you most desire will be found in the fridge or cooking in the oven whenever you ask for it. Both the closets and the kitchens run on technology that is new to Xanadu, and some of the kinks still need to be worked out, so requested items may not be exactly as you asked for. But hey, you’re in paradise! You’ll be fine.
The guide goes on to explain that there isn’t much in the way of technology to be found anywhere in the city - no phones, no computers, and none of the stresses that come as part of the package, and requests for such items from the closets will encounter errors. This is all for the common good, of course. But who needs electronic devices when you have a beautiful city to explore? The city itself is massive, designed in a glitzy late 70s-early 80s roller disco aesthetic, enclosed in a shimmering golden dome, full of glittering skyscrapers and lush public gardens. Soft rock music floats through the air via hidden speakers to set the mood. The weather here is always pleasantly perfect early summer, and the atmosphere is pristine - not a single trace of smog or other pollution. That’s because there are no manufacturing plants or vehicles to be found anywhere in the city. Modes of transportation in Xanadu are pedal bicycles, your own two feet, and roller skates. Strap on a pair and roll around the neighborhoods, or to cover longer distances, head down to an electric rail station, where you will strap in and be pulled along to your destination on your skates at high speed.
By the time the orientation is over and the guide has departed, leaving you to get to know your soulmate and settle in to the comforts of eternal paradise, that drug you’d been given will have worn off. So, newlydeads, what will you do next?
no subject
Fascinating. Although, a point of interest: "They were most certainly not angels." He spoke with a certainty that didn't exactly sit with their circumstances. Moving on.
Again, as Matt continued, Murmur nodded. "Is it not strange to consider, however, that a being whose voice spoke into existence all we know and do not know would require something so mundane as a loud speaker to get his point across?" It didn't fit, is what he's saying.
"Fanciful and creative writing processes aside, let us return to something more testable. You are presently experiencing hunger, I trust you could also claim to be aware of both tactile sensation and temperature. Try pinching yourself, pain?" Because if these things existed it was highly unlikely anyone here was dead. Granted Murmur knew better, but it was the human he had to convince.
"Why? Simple, I believe we are being manipulated. To what end, the question remains, but I am quite certain we would be safe in assuming not one good for those of us swept up in all this nonsense."
Oh no this is much better than cuties.