lucetilogs | and the bass keeps runnin runnin

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and the bass keeps runnin runnin

Who: Anyone who heard the announcement, caught a flier in the plaza, of heard by word of mouth. Everyone's welcome!
What: A rave! Well, "rave." Luceti makes everything a little different.
When: June 21st, nightfall to early morning
Where: the beach near Adele's house
Summary: It's the first day of summer! This calls for bonfires, naturally, but why not spice it up with loud music, flashing lights, drinks, dancing, and a conspicuous lack of curfew?
Rating: PG to PG-13, please move anything steamier to appointments ~~or Adele will take the hose to you~~

Getting all the firewood, food, and drink out to the beach had been, honestly, the hardest part of preparation. Whatever else one might say about running things on magic, it certainly did cut down on the trouble of constructing edifices and machines to run the entertainment side of a party. As it stands, the setup is labour-intensive but otherwise minimal, and there's not much to do by sunset. Escape the house before Max and Zevran, the culture-displaced madmen, can put any more eyeliner on him. Arrive at the beach. Light the bonfires. Make sure the bonfire-cooking-compliant food is set out. Put up a table loaded with bottles, cups, ice, and permanent markers. Thank the resident doctor and quartermaster once more. Plug in the stereo system.

The speakers and light show have been with him since he left his house, in the form of the resident god of mischief, and they confer over sheets of paper with track names and times written on them for a little while just before the start. That's the last of it, and by the time the sky above the mountains is beginning to darken into twilight, the first thumping, trilling strains of dance music begin to echo out across the sand.

It's the shortest night of the year. Best make every second last.

[OOC: Feel free to post your character for mingling, since this entire event is very free-form anyway. For everyone's enjoyment there is a drinks table, food, several bonfires, the ocean (lifeguards not on duty, splash drunkenly at your own risk), and of course a dancing area with lights and music. Music will probably be primarily EDM with a heavy bass line, but occasionally wander into the territories of electro-swing and the like to give even less modern partygoers a chance to show off. The light show as well will stray out of the typical at times, with the expected abstract wheeling and flashing lights giving way to more complicated illusions. Don't be surprised to find yourself and your fellows occasionally dancing in a forest glen or a Rivendell look-alike for a few minutes at a time. Loki is working the tech booth, after all.

The party will go as long as people stay and are enjoying themselves, so have fun and tag around!]

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You look like you're having fun. That's a good look on anyone.

[He gives her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, then nods to the side, where the tables are set up. It only occurs to him slowly that maybe she's hanging on so tightly because she's not feeling well, and even if she's doing fine, water couldn't hurt.]

Why don't we get a drink and sit by the fire a bit?

Okay, I am a little tired from all this jumping on sand. My shoes keep sinking! [She laughs and forces herself to let go of Jack. She can't hang onto him all night, and his boyfriend was around here somewhere... He probably wanted a turn, right?]

[Putting that thought aside though, she takes Jack's hand and navigates them both out of the crowd and towards one of the fires.]

[Jack doesn't let go of her hand, but does swing out wide enough to grab a bottle of water as they pass the table, handing it over to her en-route to the fire.]

I have to ask, what sort of dancing do you usually do?

Is my dancing that bad...? [She laughs nervously as she receives the bottle. Wow... it's not glass, it's a plastic of some kind. Amazing! ...now how does she open it? Does it twist like a soda?]

I learned some waltzing from a book, but there's only so much you can do just by yourself, right? Waltzing with a book isn't the same as with a person, I hear. [She flashes a wry smile in Jack's direction.] But when the music isn't a waltz I just... do what feels right. Move how I feel.

Oh, no-! Sorry, that wasn't . . . [Heck, that was a bad way to phrase it. Jack laughs nervously, leading the way to one of the fires with a large driftwood log pulled up nearby as a makeshift bench.] -sorry. I just thought that since you hadn't heard music like this before, you wouldn't be used to the same sort of dancing. You're a natural with it, honestly.

Am I? [Elizabeth takes a seat on the log, still holding Jack's hand and looking pleased with herself and slightly bashful. Married, she tries to remind herself. Married and not interested in girls.]

I started just mimicking what everyone else is doing. But dancing to this... it's a lot of moving how you feel, isn't it? It's nice to not have to worry about steps and counting and which direction to move in.

[Jack just gives a friendly little noise of agreement, taking the seat next to her and noting with more bemusement than anything that she doesn't seem in any hurry to let go of his hand. He's not about to wrench contact away from a girl raised more or less in isolation. That's just cruel.

He does, however, relieve her of her water bottle, brace it between denim-clad knees, crank the cap off, and then pass it back.]

Mimicking's really part of it, I think. You have a basis of what feels right to you, then you mix in bits of things that catch your fancy.

[Oh, so it is like a soda! Good to know. She takes the bottle back and drinks from it. Yes, that definitely hits the spot after however long she's been dancing in heeled boots.]

It doesn't look, to me, like all of these people took lessons like some people do. So everyone has to learn by mimicking, right? It's amazing, really, from a sociological point of view. All of these people have adapted parts of what the person around them likes. No one knows what belongs to who anymore, but it doesn't really matter. Because it's about the moment and what all of this looks like.

Yeah, that . . . is it, basically.

[Jack sounds faintly surprised - not that Elizabeth has a point or is right, but that she's once again managed to take a thing he'd barely thought about and spun an analysis out of it that most uni students could probably write a decent essay from.]

I heard someone say once that it's sort of like language. Styles like accents. [Said friend had also been awfully high, but he doesn't mention that part. Maybe another day he can tell Elizabeth about illicit psychoactives.] I suppose it really is that sort of process.

Oh, that's a good simile too! [She smiles, completely missing Jack's surprise. Though really, Elizabeth has enough of a crush on Jack to spin anything he says into the best light.]

[She sips her water again.] It's really fun though, even if I... wasn't the most positive about the music the other day. It's growing on me!

[It's sort of funny, how the end of civilisation changes the way you think about personal demeanours. Whatever Jack might have thought, years ago, about the mental faculties or priorities of someone who came out on the other side of something terrible smiling and cheery, now he doesn't see it as anything but strength until he's been given reason to think otherwise.

Anyone can give up. Turning sullen and abandoning hope aren't marks of cleverness or wisdom. But keeping some sort of openness, of- of light- well. That's something special. He laughs lightly, nodding understanding, or maybe thanks.]

If you like music, you're welcome to stop by our house any time. Playing music was a part of my last job, and I still have a pretty decent library. All sorts, not just this.

You had a job playing music? Like a radio announcer? [Elizabeth grins, trying not to look flustered by the invitation to come to Jack's house.] Or did you play music at raves like this?

[If he were more sober, Jack might realize that what he is doing with Elizabeth is bordering on flirting - the way he leans in, the grin, just about everything that wouldn't communicate an actual attraction. And flirting with a nice young lady when you are off the market is both arrogant and sort of mean, so he probably wouldn't, if he realized what he was doing. But at the moment things are just fizzy-vague enough that all he's paying attention to is enjoying her good mood.]

Ha! Got it on the first try. Eugene and I worked in radio together. I guess the more important part of the job was news and information and all of that, but people seemed to appreciate the music too.

[~~That's alright Jack, your husband is flirting with her too one thread up. This just got 500% more awkward.~~]

[Fortunately for Jack, Elizabeth is very much aware that he's not exactly available for romance and dating and all that. It does create a sort of sad dissonance between her feelings and reality, but it's nothing she isn't used to. Jack was friendly and nice, and fun to talk to. And as far as Elizabeth was aware, they weren't 'flirting'. ...though if she knew what flirting was, she probably would say they were flirting.]

We had a few radio stations in Columbia too! They would deliver news as well-- [Though not much of it was terribly accurate...] --and play music. Sometimes that was the only way I found out about what was happening outside my tower.

Did they seriously lock you into a tower but give you a radio? [Jack's smile is more automatic than actually amused, full of incredulity and curiosity. Elizabeth herself isn't anything spectacularly strange to him, but he knows he's barely scratched the surface of her own personal history, and furthermore that everything he learns is just a few shades shy of 'absolutely bizarre'] I don't know if that's more cruel or stupid.

No... [Elizabeth tries to hide a grin behind her bottle. And mostly fails.]

I built one out of parts. But it was taken when I started trying to make it a two-way radio. [She frowns--that had been a very frustrating day. Songbird had tried to coax her out of hiding with so many books, but Elizabeth had still refused to come out for dinner until he was gone.]

But I had records after that. Pretty recent ones, too, despite where I was.

[A home-made radio. A secret home-made radio. By 'parts,' Jack is already grinning broadly, and even the news that it was taken doesn't kill his glee entirely.]

You- really? You made one, on your own? Just from whatever you could get your hands on? [He laughs, a singlehuff of a sound, ruffling through his hair in amazement.] I mean, I'm sorry to hear that, but . . . heck, that's funny. Teaching people to do that was part of my job.

Edited 2013-07-13 23:50 (UTC)

Well I... took a lot of things apart. For fun. [Elizabeth smiles, bashful all of a sudden. Jack sounded impressed? Impressed, maybe?]

Really? You built them and broadcasted to them? Like some sort of... secret underground radio?

Now that's romanticising it a bit.

[Jack's smile doesn't really fade, per se, but it does settle into something milder. He doesn't quite have the heart to start bandying around terms like 'apocalypse' in front of Elizabeth - she's one of those people he can imagine maybe being legitimately upset by it, the major cities of the world plummeting into ruin and all - so he breaks it a little more gently than he otherwise might.]

There was a . . . a plague. A pandemic, large enough to knock out most of our infrastructure. We're rebuilding, but we need to work with older and significantly less complicated communication technologies than what we'd been using before the outbreak.

Wow... [Wow. That sort of organization and use of older technology was romantic to Elizabeth, no matter what Jack said. Yes, a widespread plague was far from glamorous, but Elizabeth could almost imagine Jack building radios and inspiring people as they struggled to rebuild.]

It sounds like a very difficult situation. But it also sounds like you've got it all under control.

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and the bass keeps runnin runnin

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