☆AN EVENT APPROACHES

[interdimanagers]

☆HOLIDAY MISCELLANEA

The holidays are here, both IC and OOC, and you know what that means: it's time for a corporate Christmas party. Or whatever serves as a corporate Christmas party here in Americana. This post is covering the beginning of preparations for an event that is set for December 7th, as well as an explanation of how different the holidays in Vista actually are.

☆VIRGO

On November 26th it will be announced that Virgo Entertainment is organizing a large scale holiday party, hosted big time solo musician Naomi Rivers. Everyone is expected to come as a matter of corporate reputation. Dress code is semi-formal. Also, Pride Records is invited for some reason.

That last part is probably what sticks out the most. Because, no, it doesn’t mean that it is an open house event for all manners of labels including Pride, it just means that Pride Records itself is exclusively invited as guests. You don’t have to be paranoid to consider that something may be afoot.

While Naomi herself is the primary coordinator, other members of Virgo may asked to assist her in various ways. Pretty much everyone has heard of her - she has an extensive history with Virgo Entertainment, and is known to be a close friend of Edward Blanche’s besides.

So, that probably means that what she says goes. At least party planning is mostly voluntary. The party is being planned for December 7th.

☆PRIDE

On November 26th it will be announced that Virgo Entertainment is organizing a large scale holiday party, hosted big time solo musician Naomi Rivers. Everyone is expected to come as a matter of corporate reputation. Dress code is semi-formal. Also, you are invited for some reason.

And yes, according to Lesedi Santiago, you are all required to go.

The whys of the situation are mind boggling, but no one feels the need to give you much more explanation than “you’re going.” Managers will be shooting to make everyone presentable. You can only assume there is going to be some weapons grade posturing going on, which may or may not be of actual interest.

There are a lot of questions to be had about this event, and at least one of them is “will this party get haunted, too?” That seems to be happening a lot lately.

☆THE HOLIDAYS

An important thing to note for December’s events is that, in Americana, the winter holidays are celebrated quite a bit differently than modern Earth. The major difference is that the focal day of celebration isn’t the 25th - it’s actually the whole two weeks leading up to New Years. Despite this, people tend to start getting excessively festive as soon as December hits.

Here are some fun facts about the upcoming holidays:

• The most common terms used to describe the holidays are “New Years”, “the Winter Festival”, “Solstice”, or just “the holidays”. Christmas is still used sometimes too, but it’s considered sort of archaic, and generally implies that you are celebrating a specific religious event that only a small minority of people even deal with anymore. New Years itself is 100% secular.
• Winter Fest culture includes convoluted aspects of Christmas, Hanukkah, and pretty much every other winter holiday you can think of. It also contains aspects of completely non-winter related practices, like Japan’s Golden Week and other events that have socially complicated gift giving practices.
• As expected, New Years often becomes an adventure in conspicuous consumption, with some cultural groups insisting on giving a gift on every day of the two week holiday, of increasing importance up until New Years day. It can also get exceptionally hedonistic.
• All instances of Santa Claus are replaced with a mythical creature called the “Winter Bear” or “Snow Bear” or "the Polar Bear King", which apparently goes around in a magical ghost form and listens to people’s New Years wishes and resolutions, and uses its power to help grant them. This is primarily a tradition meant for children but adults celebrate it for funzies too. Snow Bear used to be a regular bear but a popular Coca Cola ad campaign from several decades ago resulted in them being almost universally presented as a polar bear.
• New Years traditions are actually confusing as fuck, even if you live here.

Unfortunately, brainwashing doesn’t quite capture the nuances of the holiday tradition, so even if your character believes themselves to be born and raised in Americana, they may find themselves struggling to keep up with social expectations. That is to say, IC confusion is totally expected, and part of the fun. Please enjoy having your character be totally confused by this social quagmire of a holiday.

Also, your labels would really like everyone to produce special holiday singles for the upcoming season: but are you up to the challenge?!