CLOSED | Dylan's 15th Birthday

[codicies]

Who: Dylan Brock codicies, his housemates, and those invited to the party — which is pretty much everyone he's had a positive interaction with.
What: Dylan's 15th birthday party, a bonfire cookout!
When: October 8
Where: Home of Diana Prince in Little Love, KS
Content Warnings: none (but will label things if asked)

Dylan's 15th Birthday Bonfire

Toplevel Prompts:

SETUP

(CLOSED to Dylan's housemates & anyone who might have showed up early to help prep)

Setting up for the party beforehand.

FOOD

Autumn has set in. The daytime is cool, the evenings are chilly, and there's a bonfire roaring in one of Diana's fields. Dylan's been prepping food for the party all morning — There's sausages, s'more supplies, and shish kebabs stacked with meat & vegetables. There's even some sweet potatoes! He saw a video on Japanese street food and wanted to try cooking potatoes on the fire in foil.

As for drinks, of course water and soda are available, but he managed to borrow some coffee urns from a kind caterer in town in exchange for a little manual labor. Now he's got a great setup for hot coffee, hot chocolate, AND hot cider all evening!

There's also a VERY large sheet cake for serving later. He'd been offered a brain-shaped cake, but the pictures had been a little too realistic, and he didn't think he (or the guests) would find it all too appetizing.

Though he's a little afraid the brain cake is still coming out, whether he likes it or not, but the sheet cake will be what he uses to blow out the candles, thank you very much.

SWORDPLAY

One of the gifts Dylan received was a real-life sword from Diana! He's been taking lessons from her and is ready to try it out. There's a little clearing a little ways from the bonfire where he's trying it out. If you want, you can come and spar — with Dylan, with Diana, or even with each other. With swords, sticks, or even with fists!! Come join the impromptu Fight Club.

EDIT to add: there are real AND wooden swords available for sparring, as well as wooden & straw dummies to practice on as well!

GAME TIME

There are frisbees, a football, soccer balls, even a ninepin set?? Do you have these games in your world? There's all kinds of fun sports gear available. Or you could grab something at random and start a game of Calvinball.

FIRESIDE

With the daylight fading, the fire becomes the center of activity. As you roast marshmallows or weiners (or grab one of those potatoes out of the fire) everyone huddles around, seated on rocks, stumps or lawn chairs as we all sing songs and tell stories.

Any spooky tales from your homeworld? Any songs you'd like to sing? Dylan had gotten a few guitar lessons from Jaskier before he disappeared, so if you start singing, he'll try to follow along with chords!

FIREWORKS

oh my god who brought those. please don't set any crops on fire. EXTINGUISHERS ON STANDBY.

WILDCARD

Any Standard Bonfire Activities I've forgotten, go ahead and throw them in!

After-Party Sleepover

(CLOSED to Dylan's housemates + Nico, Will, Hunter, Hibiki, and Chris Yukine)

Six teenagers sleeping on couches & air mattresses in the living room, watching movies... what crimes will they commit?

Comments

[badbutsadboy]

[He doesn't side-eye the bone in the least bit, it looks just like a typical stick back home. That's what happens when your world's trees sprung from the corpse of a dead being. Everything is in flesh tones, and growing things have a flesh-and-bone sort of appearance too.]

Make some more of what?

[demigoth]

A s’more is a sandwich cookie that you make with hot marshmallows. Someone had to explain it to me, too.

[ They’re not common outside of North America, which is a crime because they’re delicious. ]

I’ll show you.

[ Nico gets up and returns with a plate of full graham crackers and two-rectangle blocks of chocolate. He assembles a s’more and offers it to Hunter. ]

Here. They’re not bad.

[badbutsadboy]

[Hunter takes a bite and then... his entire face lights up.]

That's good!

[He munches through the rest of it a little too fast and has to drink some of his drink to cool down his mouth.]

So why is it called a marsh mallow? [He says them as two separate words.] Do they harvest them from marshes?

[demigoth]

[ After he finished making Hunter's, Nico assembled one for himself, and now his mouth is also full of delicious s'more. ]

Yeah, it's good. Nobody's going to make you eat something gross at a party.

[ The memory of something bubbles up in his head. ]

Unless somebody dares you to eat it. Then you know it's going to be a lot worse than a marshmallow. I don't know where they're from or what they are; they're just marshmallows. Most people say "marshmellow", but I think your marsh mallow sounds cooler. It's eerie.

[badbutsadboy]

[ The thing about having only met one human so far is he hasn't met any goth varieties yet. ]

...And "eerie" is good..somehow?

[If something is eerie in his world it's...well, it's pretty spooky. Largely because there's nowhere to really go from the land being made of dead flesh and creatures that'd give humans nightmares. Living in a Hieronymus Bosch painting doesn't leave much room for things to get creepier until they're full-tilt terrifying.]

[So "Eerie" by Boiling Isles standards is probably "horrifying" by Earth standards.]

[demigoth]

Eerie is good, depending on who you’re talking to. I like it. It feels more real when things are dark and dull and don’t try to hide the inevitability of life.

[ He waves the bone as an example. Everyone’s going to die in the end, and Nico thinks that should be embraced a little. Pay no attention to the cheerful people he surrounds himself with. ]

And Will doesn’t mind it so much. I think Dylan’s okay with it, too. At least, he hasn’t told me to tone it down.

I don’t think anyone’s going to be upset about you saying marsh mallow. They might not appreciate a team of zombie football players, though. Just be careful that you don’t go from creepy to scary.

[badbutsadboy]

I think that depends on the definition of "dark." And what it is you think is inevitable.

Death is inevitable. Getting older until you die, whenever that happens, is inevitable. Bad things happening sometimes is inevitable.

[His expression grows darker.]

But the expectations people have for you sometimes aren't.

[He suddenly sounds less sure and takes a part an uncooked marshmallow with his fingers, curious about what it might be made of.]

At least, I hope so.

[He needs to believe it's not all inevitable. Because the inevitability of life is different if you're just a copy of someone else, and the inevitability of death hits an extremely different way when you're locked in a cycle of rebirth and death, in that order.]

[He knows he'll die someday, possibly young, maybe shortly after he goes home, but at least he'll have broken the cycle of being discarded by Belos. Maybe he'll get to live longer as his own person than the others did, even if it's only a little while.]

[Maybe he can die on his terms, instead of Belos'. Even if the Collector flicks him into goo, at least it'll be after he chose to go back and try to do the right thing. That's so much better than just being discarded.]

[He looks up at the Kansas night sky, with its sparkling stars. He'd rarely seen the stars from his room growing up. The Titan's ribs had always kept the castle in shadow, and the haze from the strange magical furnaces made everything hazy.]

[The outside word has always been clearer, sharper. Even though the dark is more crisp, the light is, too. ]

I think that both light and dark can be something false or...manufactured, it just depends on if the person making them is genuine or not. Whether they're being real.

[Dark and light have no innate value or realness. It's all conditional, all in what they're used for and how they're used.]

Where I grew up, everything dim and dark around me was fake. The castle was always so gloomy, but only because Belos wanted it to be.

[demigoth]

Sounds like my definition of inevitable. People think death, getting old, all of that stuff is creepy. That's why spooky Halloween decorations are dead things and spiderwebs. Everything grey and wrapped in funeral shrouds. That's eerie.

[ He's loading up the bone with more marshmallows for both of them. ]

Expectations aren't inevitable. Prophecies, yeah, but expectations are just people being dumb because of who you are or who your father is.

[ Ah, the lack of ironic perception of a teenager. Nico puts expectations on people a lot, yet chafes when they're placed on him. ]

My father's palace is gloomy, but I don't think he's faking it.