[ open ] jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock

[lyingheart]

WHO: OPEN.
WHERE: De Chima.
WHEN: Saturday, December 13th, 2014.
WHAT: Earlier in the afternoon, there will be base-jumping in elf costumes. Later on is the charity silent date auction and different performances by USA celebrities fundraising for charity this holiday season. OOC information post here.
WARNINGS: None now, will update later. To avoid seeing all the silent auction threads, simply press on the (Hide ## comments) under the header comment for the auction section!

[ BASE JUMPING from TARTARUS TOWER ]
For those imPorts who volunteered to jump from Tartarus Tower, arrivals for fittings into their costumes begins at 2:00 PM sharp. Each costume comes with a name-tag attached, and make-up artists are on hand to help affix elf ears to participants and work on their eye make-up for the ease of the cameras catching all this live.

The jumps will start at 4:00 PM, and after all imPort elves have jumped and successfully reached the ground, they'll join the bus transporting presents and Malik to the De Chima children's hospital to deliver gifts to the children in the cancer ward (and elsewhere). ImPorts will then be transported over to the main facilities for the fundraiser event as a whole, invited to attend the Silent Date Auction as well as listen to any of the various performances occurring over the course of the evening.

[ CHARITY SILENT DATE AUCTION in DE CHIMA ]
Starting at 4:00 PM, the doors to the conference hall made available for the ImPort Charity Silent Date Auction will open. Live music will be provided, along with refreshments and catered hor d'oeuvres, and televisons displaying both the news stories and live coverage of the fundraiser events occurring over the course of the evening. ImPorts will be encouraged to attend any of these performances in person, but will not be required to leave the conference hall unless they wish to do so.

There is lounge seating available, and free wireless throughout the building. Different conference halls are hosting different events in this event center, and the largest productions are happening on a built stage outside. There's a massive lit tree in the central front courtyard of the event center, and many small stands selling hot drinks, good foods, and wares outside by the stage and surrounding streets, all with a portion of proceeds going to various named charities.

Please comment to this log with your own starters! Only the Auction Thread will be set-up under its own sub-thread, for ease of tracking. Auction Threads can be threaded in, but initial comments to those threads should be the bids that a character is placing on someone else (or themselves). Bidding will close OOCly by this time next week (or when a player states bidding is closed on their character - send me a PM to close that thread, or comment to close it on your own). ICly, all bids close at the end of the night.

Comments

[lyingheart]

[ Annie shrugs - hers is ridiculous, but not at that level. "Largely a mystery." Hah. ]

Their own minds? Most of it reads like it's invented out of nothing. A hint of something true is usually enough for people to swallow the whole. Make it sound familiar... like something they understand, and it gets easier.

[sassguard]

Or maybe someone's bored with their day job and decided to exercise their creative writing skills.

[ his voice is dry, finger idly touching the spot where makeup and carefully applied spirit gum have seamlessly grafted pointy tips onto his ears. ]

At least it's for a good cause.

[lyingheart]

One of several.

[ It still amuses her in degrees, the way this world works when it comes to helping out strangers, but it's a far more thoughtful and capable system than what could be supported within the Walls back home. Such excess... but when well applied, it helps.

It's not free from its own complications, but it's a sight better than political plays. ]

Accuracy isn't a journalistic strong point here. Not around us.

[sassguard]

So I've noticed. I don't think there's anywhere that it is.

[ Shepard has plenty of reason to harbor a healthy amount of cynicism towards the press. But it's in a halfhearted, snappish sort of way rather than it having any real heat to it. For all the prying into his life, the fact that a press exists at all says positive things about where they are.

Just a good old fashioned clash between the state's police power and the right of voices to be heard, he supposes. ]

You ever get caught in an ambush interview? It gets ugly, fast.

[lyingheart]

Once. They got bored when they couldn't get anything out of me. Either I'm shy, or a standoffish teenager. I've heard both claims.

[ Truthfully, that the press is able to talk is good, but she's also seen it still be hemmed in. Compared to the world here that existed before, in the 1980's, this is much better.

But it's not perfect, and that concept of a truly free press makes her shake her head whenever it's brought up. ]

[sassguard]

Whichever one it is, you've clearly made an impression on someone. "Lioness," huh?

[ It's almost as awkward as that krogan's poetry... ]

[lyingheart]

[ Her lips twitch, almost tempted to frown. ]

Someone's enjoying my surname.

[ She's yet to see a lion, honestly, and she's not... named... for any such thing. It's a family name. That's it. ]

[sassguard]

I'm surprised they didn't try to do anything with mine. [ Then again, the lack of including a first one did draw some attention ... but he's happy to keep that as it is. ]

But hey, it's working. Looks like you're up to 350.

[lyingheart]

[ Wait. What? Annie looks surprised, stepping around Shep to look down at her clipboard on the table. What in the world? ]

That's ridiculous.

[ people could donate directly! ]

[sassguard]

[ Shepard shrugs. ]

I guess someone really wants to go out to dinner with you.

[ Meanwhile, he's stuck at the minimum bid... ... .. life just isn't fair. ]

[lyingheart]

[ ... And that was when Annie knew where to throw the rest of the money she got from jumping off the building earlier. ]

Can't be. I'm terrible at conversation. Looking at the pattern, someone was messing around until... a fifth party entered and jumped things up to there. I couldn't say why.

[sassguard]

[ Shepard examines the clipboard critically. ]

And no one else's put in a bid since.

[ $350 is a pretty steep price to compete with... ]

[lyingheart]

It's more fundraising like this than I thought we'd see.

[ The idea's pretty silly all around. ]

Does this kind of thing happen in your parts of the universe?

[sassguard]

[ Shepard has to think about that response for a moment, crossing his arms -- not because he's hesitant, but because he actually has to scrape through his memory for it. ]

Sometimes. It's usually a little... livelier, though.

[lyingheart]

I'd expect that, to be honest. This is very sedate for our group of people... but it's nice this way.

[ Nice means less work means less worrisome means less likely to maybe, just maybe, get targeted by the wrong people. ]

[sassguard]

You must not like things being sedate all the time, or you wouldn't have signed up to jump off a building.

[ Shepard smirks, crossing his arms, but in truth he's glad it seems to be a quieter event, too. ]

[lyingheart]

[ She looks almost taken off guard by that at first... shaking her head and looking down. ]

I guess... I hadn't thought about it that way so much as it being another task to complete.

[ But she didn't hate it. She was confident in being able to handle herself and the new equipment. So... ]

[sassguard]

But would you do it again, if you got the chance?

[ He seems genuinely curious. ]

[lyingheart]

If there was a compelling reason.

[ what qualifies as compelling fluctuates as the times change. the reality is she would... just not for "fun." ]

[sassguard]

Did you like it?

[ The question is somewhat more direct. ]

That seems like enough reason to me.

[lyingheart]

... It was a rush. But... I think I liked that feeling more than the act itself.

[ Cleared her head, so to speak. ]

[sassguard]

You're used to seeing more action, aren't you?

[ He does have mostly that post on the network to go from, for an idea of what Annie was doing before she showed up here, and while Annie hasn't given any indication of missing the situation she was in back home, he understands that the body has its own kind of memory. Most days, he still forgets he's supposed to be a civilian now. ]

[lyingheart]

I'm used to schedules that aren't so forgiving as what we find here, yes. Not necessarily being stuck in that rush... who'd want to run after that? I don't have a death wish.

[ and if she'd spent more time with the MPs there'd have been a differen cadence to get used to, but she hadn't. the same pressure would have always been there... but Armin had been the key for the Survey Corps to break down that particular wall. One of the few without a capital W attached. ]

Still. It's different.

[sassguard]

You'd be surprised how many people do.

[ At least by normal standards of human behavior. Shepard's aware his own activities, back home, would have certainly earned him the 'reckless' on the name tag he's wearing right now, but... ]

Back home, it was always mission first. It made things a lot easier.

[lyingheart]

[ Not so surprised... more surprised how many people who had been so outspoken about not being that way before ended up following the more dangerous trail in the end. Annie's hardly the sort to really speak like that for the last two months or so of her life back home, but it's not about a want in what she did.

Like Shepard says, the mission was always first. That had made things easier. ]

It gave you something as a guideline, no matter what came up along the way.