the "p" doesn't stand for pretentious, FYI. [art gallery, may 6th—??? ]

[theearth]

[ Welcome to Locke's very own Taste de Louvre, everyone! Predictably, the unveiling of the new set of statues at the magnificent Hugh P. Thadson Gallery of Fine Art has turned out to be a rather fanciful affair. The upper echelon of snobby society, in their snobby society attire, has come to mingle amongst one another—and is endeavoring to ignore you, fair citizen, as much as possible—and discuss this fantastic addition to our city's fair culture.

The first statue is a touchingly metaphorical piece, the prominent carving of a snake coiled around a human heart that looks so real you can almost hear it beating within your ears. This statue appears to be the most popular; the crowds drawn around its base simply can't stop going on and on and on about how wondrous it is, along with the rest of the works on display tonight.

The second statue also depicts a snake, but has its blush-brushed scales cut dramatically open to display its own wicked black heart. The Thunder Corporation and its latest line of tacky memorabilia is the primary subject of discourse here.

The last statue is strikingly different from the other two, and features a wolf howling at the open sky,* dying in apparent agony with a sword driven through its chest. You get a distinctly unsettling impression from it that the other, ordinary folk don't seem to notice—that perhaps your adventure to meddle in recent affairs is ill-advised. Inscribed below the pained wolf's paw is a link of sorts to a peculiar forum that, when accessed, bears only the topic "Let's Negotiate" with the same message enclosed within. Strange, but since no one else is talking about it, you wonder if you can't have just imagined the whole ordeal... and yet stranger things have happened, right? Perhaps it's worth looking into, in any event.

There's plenty to do with the statues about and the gift shop buzzing, with lots of familiar faces to run into. So what's your agenda for the evening? ]

(( General mingling post for the plot as related to art gallery affairs! There will be base threads for OPEN INTERACTIONS, open to all as implied, CLOSED INTERACTIONS, for planned out one-on-one interactions between player characters, and a general purpose EVERYTHING ELSE, for characters who wish to explore the gift shop, just mull about. Just as a general reminder:

1) Touching one of the snake statues will grant you one (1) Echo, for two (2) Echoes max. However, touching a second statue will definitely arouse suspicion, so be prepared for that. One safe Echo, two potentially risky ones up for grabs here! No Echoes from touching the wolf statue, though, so slither your way towards the snakey-snakeys for those.

2) If you'd rather not touch the statues themselves, hanging around them for awhile -- about an hour or so -- will grant one (1) Echo.

3) Accessing the webforum will not grant an Echo, but posting a reply to it will. It will be possible to get a second during conversation, but as for how it happens... it's a secret to everybody!

4) Little statuettes are available for purchase in the gift shop, but do not grant an Echo themselves in any way.

You may also handwave the mingling NPCs being snobby snobs at you, just for fun. Because why not.

As before, please wait for all base threads to go up before posting. OPEN FOR BUSINESS! In your character's subthreads, please put your character's name, the day, and optionally the time you are visiting in the title so things remain nice and neat. Remember, open to all interactions in the open section and one-on-one time in the closed section. Everything else goes in Everything Else. This post will remain stickied throughout the entirety of the plot duration, for easy finding.

The plot post for this week, detailing about the art gallery and more, can be found here.

*This awesome picture drawn by our very lovely Lucas-mun! Thanks, MC! ]

Comments

[espigeonage]

"Ah, well, understandable! The standards of art in modern times, et cetera." Julien's leery of talking about these things in such a public venue; he extends a gloved finger upwards and makes a circle, indicating the whole room with an airheaded gesture. "I'm not so big on sculpture myself, but hey, I was more english-drama, anyway. Think you'd feel better somewhere else in the gallery?"

[professorwolf]

While Lyall might not've been quite that vague, he feels the same way, especially with the smells in general in here. "Perhaps." Which leads to the obvious question: "Are you actually working here, or are you just trying to fit in?" Because he can't well go ask the boy somewhere else if he got all the same things from those ugly chunks of rock if Julien can't leave.

[espigeonage]

"No, no; I've worked something similar in the past, that's all, and this is my second-best suit." An easy smile. "My hair was a darker blue, then, fit appearances better. So, I'm friends with like half the staff - shall we get sandwiches and sit down somewhere less crowded?"

[professorwolf]

"If they're letting us eat actual sandwiches and not those strange things on the platters going around, sure," Lyall agrees. He wouldn't mind getting someone else's opinion on all this, someone to share whatever he's picked up with, at least before he gets home to the network and sees whatever is being posted there.

After all, Lyall actually doesn't have a smartphone. Horror of horrors. Mostly he just can't justify the expense.

[espigeonage]

"Live a little, Smallworld! New things make life more fun. But yeah - small sandwiches, but real. Chicken salad on croissants kinds of things, though I'm sure there's cucumber somewhere." Julien rolls his head on his neck, making his vertebrae crackle, and smiles at a waiter type who looks his way.

[professorwolf]

"When you're a little concerned about things you may suddenly be allergic to, living a little through eating is probably not the best way to go about it," Lyall chuckles dryly. Somehow, Julien always seems to get him out of funks when he falls into them, which was definitely a danger here tonight. "Lead the way, my blue-haired friend."

[espigeonage]

"Oh, I suppose, if you've gotta keep to reality." Julien straightened his white gloves and set off.

He was indeed friends with some of the staff, and they were willing to give him some of the sandwiches which hadn't been eaten when they'd been brought out at lunch. Then it was out to a somewhat glaringly lit room bearing watercolors and only two or three people to see them. Julien arranged himself on a bench, bit into a sandwich, winced as the refrigerated filling chilled his teeth, and stubbornly kept chewing.

[professorwolf]

Lyall, not really that hungry and really more glad of the excuse to get away from that room, let his sit a moment on the paper plate as he considered everything. "I suppose you felt what those things are... doing?" he asked quietly, when the other couple people in the room were as far away as he thought they were going to get. "Though even if you didn't feel it, listening to everyone in there probably gave it away...."

[espigeonage]

Julien swallowed and licked his lips. "Yeah. It was like this yesterday, too. You'd expect some popularity out of anything someone rich or powerful likes, it gets attention and sycophants who'll say it's great, but this is ridiculous. Worst I've heard anyone here say's probably some of my friends being jealous."

[professorwolf]

"It bothers me that they're being so-- so open. Not obvious, but just right in front of everyone's faces, and no one can tell but us." It worried him, actually, when he thought of it that way, and he lowered his voice a little more, as much from his own worry as from the fear of being overheard, before he asked: "What else might they convince people of, as easily as this?"

[espigeonage]

"And how long does the conviction stick?" Julien nodded. "Can't end well, whatever happens. Did you see the web address on the third one?"

[professorwolf]

"I suppose this is as good a time to test how long it lasts as any," Lyall sighed, peering back in the direction of that gallery. "Given that the other two were meant to be long-term placements, and these are rather less likely to be viewed day in and day out...."

He finally picked up his little sandwich and took a tentative bite. Nothing in it that seemed like it would throw him off, yet.... After swallowing, he added, "If by 'see' you mean 'had pop into my head', yes, I did."

[espigeonage]

"Two... oh, the one in the station. Yeah." He sighed too. "Well, our wealthy and powerful might be in and out. Seems like the gallery's the eye of some kind of social event. But those never last that long, really."

Julien wrinkled his nose. "That's how it was like for you, huh? I thought it was just an inscription, but it didn't really... move quite right with my eyes. Like when someone tries to Photoshop something into a video."

[professorwolf]

"I didn't get close enough to read any inscriptions. That one... really bothered me," Lyall admitted, feeling a little silly about it. "Why put a message like that in a statue of something being killed? Were they trying to intimate us as the stabbed? Their own that died in the Dead District? Something else entirely?"

The something else bothered him almost more than either of those, considering what vision he'd had regarding those awful dog mutants.

[espigeonage]

"It might be 'we know what you did'. Put the threat in the background... then again, it hasn't been that long. I'm not sure about the stone, but even alabaster, that's one of the softest, it takes time to carve!" Julien went for another bite. "Very fishy."

[professorwolf]

"Very fishy, all around. I suppose we'll just have to... keep track of this, somehow. There's no way to destroy these ones, not without more skill and strength than we have." It had taken a lot of them to get the one in the Dead district down, and that wasn't in the middle of a guarded exhibit.

[espigeonage]

"Mmm." Julien considered a moment. "There's always a fire to clear people out. But that's a little much, coordination and so on, fires are dangerous... yeah, you're right."

[professorwolf]

"I'd rather not hurt anyone. Even being deluded isn't exactly harm, even if it's very, extremely wrong." It went against everything Lyall believed in, this level of manipulation. No one could fight against or rationalize through something that was, at its base, pretty much magic. Or at the very least technology well beyond anything they imagined, much less understood. "So I guess we just keep an eye on it and try to tell whether the effect wears off...."

[espigeonage]

Julien nodded. "Waiting's always hard, but... you're right. I can bring it up around my friends now and then. Some would like those anyway, the craftmanship's obvious, but not all of them should." He exhaled, shaking his head and scarcely noticing anymore that breaths like that took somewhat longer than they ever had before. "Sure wish I knew how it worked."

[professorwolf]

"I can only guess it works in some similar way to the extras we get," Lyall mused. "It feels similar, after all, if quite a bit more stressful. It has made me wonder on occasion just who is on whose side, in all this." The other similarities had not escaped him, either, particularly after his last conversation with Hajime Aikawa.

[espigeonage]

"And what those sides mean. What any of them mean. You suppose this negotiator will feel like sharing? Or like anything shared can be trusted?"

[professorwolf]

"Oh, I sincerely doubt it. There won't be anything to trust there-- and probably so many tracking bugs in it that visiting on your personal computer will be a very, very bad idea." He might be a little tempted to visit it on a public machine, just to look and see what they were trying to call "negotiation", but never on his laptop.

[espigeonage]

"Haha, yeah. I dunno if I'll say anything. I'm not really Mister Interrogator. It's so easy for someone I'm asking stuff to turn it around." The best that could be said about him in the secrecy department, after all, was that he kept his personal information off the network.

[professorwolf]

Lyall couldn't even say that. He'd given away who he was early on, and couldn't quite bring himself to regret it. It had resulted in a number of people revealing themselves to him, in person, and others reconnecting after a long time. Secrecy apparently wasn't his strong suit.

"I'm not too bad at asking questions, but I just don't think I can really risk it," he admitted. "I have students. I need to not get in trouble that might get them in trouble."

[espigeonage]

Julien nodded. He had his sister and niece, but didn't want to mention them. "Well, if it's like an email address or something you could always message someone you think will contact 'em and give them questions to ask. Get a proxy."