[Xanth]

Quote

[×] [o] Emma: Hey, btw, possible February event. Any ideas?
[×] [o] Emma: I'd really like to have a parade followed by some kind of party/feast, and I have a couple of ideas sort of based on things like Mardi Gras and a certain Chinese festival but I'm not sure if a parade would work in RP haha
[×] [o] Liz: ohhhh omg
[×] [o] Liz: it could be ROMANCE THEMED
[×] [o] Emma: Well, I figured it would be a harvest festival for the turn of summer into autumn in Alexshire, or a spring festival for Daire... and I'm just now realising how stupid the climates are compared to each other since Daire surrounds Alexshire. What, the city has its own climate system. Darn it
[×] [o] Emma: A romance hteme for a spring festival would work though
[×] [o] Emma: I should start a feedback thread for it... Blah so much to dooooo
[×] [o] Liz: and xanth could make little mischievous cherubs who shoot unsuspecting elysians with magic arrows that make the person that gets hit fall temporarily in mad love with the first person they see
[×] [o] Liz: it could make for very, very good roleplaying
[×] [o] Emma: Well I wasn't thinking about Valentines. It'd probably be later
[×] [o] Liz: stillllll. can we do that? PLEASEEE?
[×] [o] Liz: i mean later. SAME DIFF.
[×] [o] Emma: I'd like to avoid real holidays if possible, given what happens at Halloween and Christmas Although we could have something like that for a later date. *pictures Daz being hit*
[×] [o] Liz: i just thought it would make for gud roleplaying opportunities
[×] [o] Emma: It would You relaise we have like... 2/3 active males though, right? Among... Oh wait, we actually have a pretty even ratio at the moment
[×] [o] Liz: fine then. it can be called find your heart day, and everyone has to be nice and civil for the whole day. including zeph. ) i'm jokinggggg.
[×] [o] Emma: If we can keep them active for the event, then sure
[×] [o] Liz: : D i'm excited nowwww

Any ideas? Personally, I'd like to do something that involves masquerade masks, lots of bright colours, a parade and something to do with changing seasons, except rather than the harvest festival it's probably going to have to be the coming of spring. Maybe we can say that the halloween event is the harvest festival this year and change the date a bit.

I also had this idea about a couple being chosen as the king and queen of the parade, dressed up in fancy clothes, and given the responsibility of leading the festivities. They could be chosen by a lottery system (OOCly, you'd buy a ticket, not sure how it would work ICly yet). We could have an OOC contest for favourite costume (dollmaker contests are always fun ) and maybe I could do a masque template so you can design your character's mask and we could have a contest for that too?

I like Lizzie's idea about Cupid arrows. I think we could have some serious fun with that, although I'm not convinced Xanth would mess around like that even in good fun. Maybe there's another way to do it?

Rather than it being Valentine's though, I was thinking closer to the end of February or early March. I was really hoping the plot would be finished ages ago so I'm worried fewer characters will attend as they're still wrapped up in that, but maybe we could pause those threads while we have this festival, I don't know yet.

[Zephyr]

Maybe there's a special plant that sprouts once a year and releases a special pollen that causes your brain to feel like it's in love with the first person you see? Maybe they sprout for... say... an IC week and then wilt away, and once they're gone the effects vanish? bahahaha. That'd be funny.

It'd need to be something that sprouts anywhere people are, though. Like some sort of plant that lives off of the bio-electricity that people put off? Thus it can be everywhere there are people?

[Xanth]

I don't think we'd even need to go that far. If it's a hardy enough plant, it could live pretty much anywhere there's soil, water and sunlight, and that's pretty much everywhere but the desert.

Maybe these would need to be two separate things, though. I can't imagine anyone being able to organise a festival as large as I imagine the Spring/Fall parade&festival would be if they were fawning over someone they'd only just met.

[Sabrina]

yeah, and you can concentrated down the spores to make like, 'the elixer of adoration', which is basically a REAL love potion.

[Calanthiel]

Heh. Or a real infatuation potion.

I would love to have a proper Carnival. Like the Venice one. zomg. Masks! Balls! Clothes! Wheeee! *dissolves into fizz of girliness*

[Isabel]

oooooh.... just the thought of masks and gowns make me giddy with joy... I've always wanted to attend masquerade balls (in real life) but the expense would be great... o.o anyway, a festival sounds great n.n sort of like a rebirth festival because it's spring; to celebrate new life or something... sorry, I suck at coming up with festival names...

[Sabrina]

the festival of regeneration?

[Xanth]

Parade of the Rising Sun
Spring Festival
Festival of the Rising Sun (I dunno, I'm stuck on the idea of the sun rising as winter gives way to spring)
Parade of a Thousand Hams Petals/Leaves (or, I dunno, flowers or whatever to symbolise spring)

Any of this doing anything for anyone?

Cuz I think we're all pretty much agreed on it being a carnival/parade/festival... thing... with masquerade masks, colourful costumes and all.

Quick vote on if anyone actually does want to do the whole "vote for the king/queen of the parade/festival"? I think it'd be neat if we had a couple of PCs, male and female, leading the parade but then the responsibility of leading the thread(s) would rest on whoever won the poll. (And, er, any ideas on how to rp a parade would be cool too. >_> lol)

[Isaac S.]

Well, the first thing you have to figure out is the parade route.

I was thinking that as the parade passes lots of people follow it, that way as the parade goes on it grows. Then the parade ends at the place where the party/festival/masquerade is and everyone goes strait from the end of the parade to the party (although I havn't thought of how the females can wear high heels and long dresses and still take part in the parade part )

[Isabel]

You know, we have a local festival here called Flores de Mayo, translated to "Flowers of May", a flower festival in honor of the Virgin Mary. There would be parades where women or girls would wear lovely gowns while the men carry a sort of trellis over the women covered in flowers. We could use that as a sort of base for the parade.

[Xanth]

Grey - I don't know because I've never worn heels but I think the women who do are probably used to walking in them. Maybe the costumes can be ballet-style pumps (or whatever they're called) for more comfortable parading, though...

I definitely love the idea of costumes, and flowers. I had a vague idea about the king-queen pair (if we have one) being dressed up as the sun, maybe, and having to mock-battle a pretendy-villain dressed up in an ice-themed costume. Sort of a... sun/spring-beats-winter kind of thing. It wouldn't be a real fight but just something for the kids, I guess? I doubt it would work, realistically, though.

Maybe Anyeli could fly overhead with the trellises or something, and/or paraders can carry flower-decorated lamps on long poles kind of like in the Chinese Spring Festival. In all honesty, we can combine a lot of different cultures here. There should definitely be a kind of marching band (not the brass-band type but just some kind of 'ethnic' (for want of a better word) music following the parade). Maybe Nymphs could be involved, making elemental displays (you know how they have fireeaters in certain festivals, except for the eating part) and things like that.

Okay, so we need a name for the festival (I definitely think something spring-related), and I'd like to know if you guys want to go ahead with the "choose a leading pair" poll. Do we want a standardised costume for everybody taking part, or should we just have a theme and a colour scheme so we can all vary it up a bit? Or even a standardised costume for the paraders and just a loose theme for everyone else?

For the feast/party bit, I think I like the idea of long food-laden tables set up in the central square of each town participating, and a live band with room to dance (for some reason, I've got Sweet Home Alabama's line-dancing shindig in mind here). OOC, I think we'll have our festival in Nubia, but ICly it would be taking place in any Daire town (and we'll ignore the convenience of all our PCs just happening to be attending the same one ).

[Isabel]

The mock battle could be done in a stage play or something after the parade as part of the festivities. n.n The Anyeli's could, instead of carrying the trellises, scatter different kinds of flower petals during the parade... that would be nice... and I definitely love the idea of the flower lamps on poles. Maybe the poles can be made from some kind of sturdy vines..?

No idea about the name though... am not very good with those.. The leading couple sounds good to me.. and I think it would be much nicer if the costumes were varied based on a theme..

[Eivyonydd]

I'm not sure you need a route for the parade, people could just post to that as it goes by, so Characters are either in a float and describing the city and the people around them, or in the crowd and describing floats as they go past.

You could have a Parade thread which lasts 1 week and each player can post a maximum of 3 times describing the parade - participation nets rewards or something.

Then after the parade you can have a masque ball or something at a central place, which would be another social thread and could last 2-3 weeks or something.

The King and Queen idea is interesting. I think lottery is a much grander idea though, so perhaps for the week before the parade you have a lottery box and you are allowed to enter once per character if you ant to, by posting RP of your character dropping their name in the box.

I personally think it should all be RP because then you can get Post Count. I think you should definitely get Post Count for this sort of stuff.

Finally I was thinking of the parade weaving through the city toward the centre of New Alexandria, but if you want a spring related festival perhaps the parade starts at the centre of the city and weaves out to the country where the masque ball is held. Perhaps for interest it is on the shore of Lake Cora or something and instead of it being a parade on the streets it is on the water. And then once you get down to the Lake the floats are all tied together with some ballroom barges or something.

[Xanth]

Okay, so we're definitely having the King & Queen. I like the idea of it being an IC ballot, too. There'll probably be one in every town but we'll just have it in the one we're running this thing. And I still love the idea of the king and queen representing the sun so they'd probably be all in gold with sun masks.

Don't think we'll bother with the mock battle, though.

Now, I'd hoped to do this outside of New Alexandria because I'm getting a little bored of the place and was hoping to promote the other regions, but honestly I think it would make more sense to hold it in Alexshire since I think most, if not all, of our characters live there. I'll just have to do something else to promote the other towns.

Costumes based on a theme... but what colours? EF's theme is kind of officially-unofficially purple, gold, red and lilac, but most people I know look hideous in purple and I've yet to meet a man alive who'd be caught dead in lilac. Ooh, maybe we can dress the girls in lilac, purple and gold (how much purple in the costume is then up to them) and the men in red and gold? That way we're not emasculating anyone (and I know our characters care about these things *hides from Zephyr*). Or, we could go with traditional spring-y themes, like maybe greens and gold. Or simply a spring theme and everyone picks their own colours (I kind of like the idea of the paraders matching in colours, though...)

Amber! Awesome idea. What if they were Apali and along with scattering petals they were holding up mini "suns", with Skotadi representing the winter with little balls of shadow - and as they start there are more shadows than suns, but as they progress the shadows can fade and there are more suns until the shadows are almost completely gone by the time they reach the feast. I like that symbolism. We could have little kids at the front scattering the petals instead of them coming from overhead (or is that too much like a wedding ceremony? )

If we go with Jarratt's suggestion about starting at the plaza and weaving out towards the farmland along the riverbank where the feast is laid out on trellis tables, there can be Dryad creating Earth displays like blooming flowers along the way and the Ayad can help make sure the weather stays good. There can be decorated boats like Jarratt said and a water display from the Nyad.

I'd be open to the parade being on water but the Lake's too grassy and boggy to traverse in boats. Shame, really, because that would have been pretty cool.

The masques that are part of the costumes could be representative of the elements in some way. Would anyone be interested in a best-designed-mask contest or should we just have a best costume competition?

For the name, I think we'll just call it Spring Festival. And I like Jarratt's idea of the event being broken into segments, and Grey's suggestion of people joining the parade as it progresses.

So if all this appeals, I'm hoping to open the lottery around the 20th, probably with Jarratt's time scale.

[Zephyr]

the only problem I see right now is the IC problem of the Skotadi and the Apali. Even if they're at peace right now, for the most part they still hate each other and so far I can't think of a single NPC or PC who would freely enter a display where it could be construed that the Skotadi are evil or less powerful or whatever. This may just be me being paranoid, but yeah, that's my 2 cents.

[Eivyonydd]

Zephyr, on Feb 8 2009, 08:10 AM, said:

the only problem I see right now is the IC problem of the Skotadi and the Apali. Even if they're at peace right now, for the most part they still hate each other and so far I can't think of a single NPC or PC who would freely enter a display where it could be construed that the Skotadi are evil or less powerful or whatever. This may just be me being paranoid, but yeah, that's my 2 cents.

Perhaps the festival hasn't been held for a very long time as it is only held when the two are at peace. Perhaps it is part of the healing process.

Or perhaps the it doesn't have to be specific races tied to the symbolism anyway.

[Xanth]

Drat, Russ makes an excellent point.

So let's forget about the Anyeli hovering overhead. Some of the paraders can carry decorations, like flowers wrapped around poles and stuff, instead, and we can have little kids at the front scattering flowers.

[Xanth]

Okay, so the parade's coming to a close. I'll probably end the thread on Monday, so we just have the weekend left to finish this bit, then I'll open the party proper and we'll have a couple of weeks for that.

I hope you're all enjoying yourselves! I know my girls are.

[Xanth]

I'd like to thank you all for making the Spring Festival so much fun. I'm sad it's over, but I hope you had a great time!

Those of you who managed to attend both the parade and the party will find a new trophy in their cabinets. I hope you like it. ^^

[Lani]

So pretty

-approves-