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

Fireside

[qualityfriend]

[Dana gives him a slightly-disturbed look.]

No burning books. That's something different, and not good. Though... I guess you realize that now?

We sometimes joked about burning our homework in bonfires, but we never really had a chance in the city. This is my first real bonfire. And I didn't bring any homework, and I still need most of it for studying anyway.

Re: Fireside

[badbutsadboy]

I know that now. That it's bad.

[And he feels really awkward and stupid all of a sudden that his brain jumped to the awful thing he knew instead of the far more likely thing it was for: fun.]

I just thought -

I don't really know much about human culture. Or what rituals they might have.

[Seated again, his back ramrod straight, he doesn't look at her, his cheeks flushing.]

I only have snippets to go on. And the main person I learned them from hadn't been on Earth in centuries.

[qualityfriend]

I'm sorry. It's not the most unnatural thought, as fires are destructive, and a lot of human rituals around bonfires do involve burning something.

[She gazes into the fire.]

I wish I could say that humans burning books died out centuries ago, but it seems to keep popping up.

So... I take it you haven't watched many camping or beach movies yet?

[badbutsadboy]

[He looks awkward about book-burning being talked about like it's the bad thing he knows it is. (At least when the books are less mass produced than some of the ones he's found out are in this world.]

[How do you tell someone you're guilty of it? And not in a harmless way like burning the 2924355th copy of a book in a fun human cultural ritual, like he thought they were possibly doing? There had been wild witches that had fallen to the ground sobbing as the coven guards had tipped long-tended archives or family heirlooms into the fire, books that contained the now-lost wisdom of whole generations of witches.]

[Gone forever.]

[...At least the ones he hadn't silently slipped away with sleight of hand, his curiosity about wild magic burning him as if he was standing too close to the fire. A part of him been violently struggling towards the truth, even before he realized it.]

I...haven't really known where to start. I've seen a few things and read some books but you have a lot of movies on Earth.

To be fair, there's a lot I need to try to catch up on back home, too. At least if we can fix everything and I actually can sit down and do it.

[He's not sure how to make it register with other teens that it's beyond an issue of not having the same cultural touchstones - he also had a weird childhood compared to normal witch children. While they ran around in a schoolyard with classmates, playing games, he'd been fighting witches' duels without powers and surviving his way down from the top of a mountain - watching other coven guard initiates fail to do so, collapsing in the snow as the survivors trudged on.]

I grew up...kind of isolated. I read a lot, but I didn't have a crystal ball or a scroll for ages - that's what we use back home. Crystal balls are like your teevees, we can watch shows or movies on them, or use them for browsing through our version of your interwebs. And scrolls are like the interwebs part of the "sell" phones humans have.

[He still doesn't know what they're selling.]

So it's all a little new to me. Even back home, it was.

[qualityfriend]

You don't need to worry about where to start, now that you know other people your age. Leave that to us. Except maybe with some reminders to introduce you to teen things when we've completely failed like we have been.

[She waves a hand at the fire.]

I've only ever seen bonfires in movies. A lot of times, they're for young people to have fun around. And we'd watch the movies in groups, and imagine that we were those teens, having the same sort of fun. But most of those friends aren't here, and other than throwing in our homework, I can't remember what we'd decided we'd do once it was our turn at a bonfire.

[badbutsadboy]

I haven't really done homework. I studied a lot but that was mostly while trying to pass my trials to become a Coven Scout.

But there are other things I'd burn, if I still had them.

[His old mask, as much as he felt braver with it on. His old cloak.]

[His expression lights up as he has an idea, because he likes the idea of casting something off. Getting rid of something you want gone. It may not always be part of the human tradition but it sounds like Dana and her home friends had through about bonfires and what they'd want to do with the real thing.]

Hey, maybe if we wanted part of it to be burning stuff we don't like and we don't have any actual stuff, we can make it out of paper or write it down on a piece of paper, and throw that in instead.

Even if it's not usually what humans do with bonfires, you and your friends kind of had a good idea. With the homework.

[qualityfriend]

I'm guessing Coven Scouts aren't like a witch version of Boy or Girl Scouts? I dropped out young, but they're pretty disapproving of not keeping up with your schoolwork.

[She smiles back at him.]

That's a good idea! Just- maybe avoid making people. Burning effigies is... not the nicest thing, and might spoil the mood of a birthday party.

[badbutsadboy]

No, the coven scouts are...something else.

[But he response to the smile by focusing on that and getting up.]

I won't make anything that looks like a person. It can just be...other stuff. I'll go find some paper and something to write with!

[He disappears to go search or ask Dylan for something and comes back later with scissors, pens, tape, and paper, putting it between the two of them.]

Since you don't have homework, you could just write "homework" on a piece of paper and then burn that.

[If she and her friends wanted to burn their homework, by Titan, she deserves to get a chance to burn it somehow.]

[qualityfriend]

[She gives a sly grin.]

I have a better idea.

[Grabbing a pen and piece of paper, she starts writing on it. "This is a stupid pointless essay. I know you're not even going to read it, just like the last three which were all basically the same. Worst teacher ever. Stop wasting our time." She picks out the thickest red pen, writes a big B at the top and "Good work, keep improving", then crumples up the page and throws it in the fire.]

[badbutsadboy]

[Hunter is curious and able to read it from the angle he's sitting at next to her.]

[What he's making is a little more involved, involves some cutting and some tape.]

[It starts to become apparent that it might be a mask.]

Did your teachers not actually read the assignments?

[He's actually surprised. The teachers at Hexside seemed so dedicated.]

[qualityfriend]

It depends on the teacher. This one was the absolute worst, though. Some of my classmates said they wrote essays like that, but I never worked up the nerve to try. I did stop giving a slag, though, and still got the same grades.

[She looks curiously at his creation.]

Part of a uniform?

[badbutsadboy]

The kids at Hexside are lucky then. The teachers care a lot. I can see why so many of them actually like going to their school.

["Their" school, not "our" school.]

[He finally holds it up. It's been bent and taped enough to have some dimension. It's not a particularly sinister mask but it is a little intimidating, the eyes narrowed to hide almost everything about the wearer.]

And yeah. It was part of a uniform.

[He doesn't sound brooding or upset. In fact, he looks pleased as he throws it into the fire. This is a very cathartic way to interact with the human ritual of a bonfire. Even if it's slightly different from the normal custom. He gets why Dana and her friends wished they could have one and destroy some things in it.]

I would've tossed the original in but I threw it away.

[qualityfriend]

Hexside. Sounds like a private school name. They can usually afford to hire teachers and pay them enough to care. Public schools, well, it's the standard mix. Some teachers care, despite everything. Some used to, but were worn down. Some just aren't very good and it's hard for them to get better. And our principal cares more about a quiet orderly school than us actually learning. [There's disgust behind that.]

[A face-concealing mask like that says either superhero or enforcer, and more likely the latter. But it probably doesn't matter.]

Part of a quitting ritual?