Halloween Party, Creepy But Nowhere Near Abandoned Mansion, Tuesday Night

[deathsmajesty]

After basically being dared to do it by Tony Stark (and putting in six weeks of renovations, bless Hannibal for the contractor), Liliana, dressed as an empress, hair pulled back in a profusion of curls by her angelic headpiece, was ready to throw her first Fandom party. Sure, it was for a holiday she didn't really understand, but she'd heard enough about it to make due: there was supposed to be candy and people were supposed to be in costume. Done. Everything else was just the same as a regular party, right?

Granted, the last party she'd hosted had actually been for a bunch of vampires and that had been seventy years ago on a completely different plane, but bah, details. You had food to eat, music to dance to, dark corners to sneak off to, and either enough witty people or enough alcohol to keep the conversation flowing. Liliana was hoping that there would be plenty of the former showing up, but just in case, she'd made sure to stock plenty of the latter.

Though her newly refurbished ballroom was actually very light and airy, she had done her best to recreate some of the spookiest elements she'd seen in her travels. The dancefloor was covered in about a foot of heavy fog that swirled and eddied with every movement. While most of the chandeliers were shrouded in fabric and false webbing, she personally found the main chandelier was decorated in something she much more unnerving. Black and red candles flickered about the room held by ghostly hands, dripping skulls, and the occasional elegant standing candelabra. One of the few concessions to magic she'd used tonight was to have the candles lit with tongues of false fire, which provided light but no heat. And they glowed blues and greens and purples, which was a nice effect. Red roses were placed upside down in vases, while more questionable arrangements sat in decorative vases. Out of deference to her guests' squeamishness sensibilities, all creepy critters, skeletons, and dead bodies were all cunningly crafted fakes, not a single real bone or drop of blood in the place.

Other than, of course, what her guests brought in with them. And should they leave with fewer of either than they'd come in with, well, that was hardly her fault. Probably.

Arrive and Mingle / Photos / Dark Corners [NFB] / Refreshments / Dance / Gardens / OOC

[Please hold for OCD up! Do the thing!]

Comments

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

This wasn't encouraging Steven not to look sheepish. Though it was encouraging a smile at the same time which cancelled it out somewhat. "Another kiss for luck maybe?"

Did that have anything to do with Liz's photos? Pfft, details.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[pocketpretzels]

“All right,” Watts decided. “But only because it’s you.”

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

Steven gave Llewellyn's hand a possessive tug. "Better be only me."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[not_a_goddamn_princess]

"I'd have to find a spiky hoop skirt," Margo mused. "That's also fucking cute."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[not_a_goddamn_princess]

"I figure if we have to have a magic system that runs on pain, why not use it?" Margo said, wry as anything. "Not that it gets me more than keeping shitty corporate branding off my soap."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[not_a_goddamn_princess]

Yeah, Margo was choosing to ignore whatever weird thing Stark and Summer had going on that involved dressing Stark up like a Barbie doll for any occasion. "The Norse king of the gods," she said. "He's kind of a shit, allegedly, but the title's aspirational."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[suitably_heroic]

"I think he might be doing Halloween stuff with his kids," Atton admitted. "But thanks."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[suitably_heroic]

"Sadly most of the people who actually know him personally have left the island," Atton sighed. "I'm left bearing the 'mocking Anakin' torch all alone."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[pocketpretzels]

“Always only you, darling,” Watts informed him.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[chef_chocobro]

It was only then that Ignis realized that he may have gotten a bit...caught up in a moment there. Being with Liliana had a rare effect on him, more often than not, where everything around him seemed to fade into the background and the only thing that seemed to exist was her. Which made sense, really, when it was just the two of them, as it usually was, but that effect became incredibly prescient now, as all the din of conversation in this ballroom filled with people had become almost nonexistent except for as some sort of distant chatter at the very back of his mind. It had happened a bit at the diner, too, after the raid on the Walmart, but it was like he was slowly remembering things like time and places and the ones that they were currently in.

"I..." he started, then faltered for a moment, shaking his head lightly. "I'm sorry. Too much?"

Even if it probably was, he still couldn't actually feel too sorry about it. In that moment, it just felt so...important to him, that she heard that, that she knew he felt that way. Caught up in a moment, perhaps, but she was just so good at inspiring that out of him.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[mylandmyrules]

"But they have ten times the energy," Nell said with a laugh. "They tear around and around and then just flop down and nap whenever they are."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[stykera]

Summer liked matching and Stark felt loved when she picked things out for him. It worked for them.

"You want to be a god-king?" he asked. Margo could pull it off if anyone here could. "What sort of god would you be?"

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[begmetwice]

"Frankenstein?" Irene prompted, snorting lightly. "Okay -- so that's a no-go because...he's multiple people's parts stitched together? Is that a taboo?"

Irene, predictably, loved a good taboo. And the idea of there being particular veins of necromancy that were viewed as being, well, tacky -- this was just a fascinating idea.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

She kissed him. She kissed him hard, and long, fingers slipping down to wrap in his collar because she needed to hold onto something and she wouldn't be so inconsiderate as to ruin his pompadour in the middle of a party. She kissed him like he was the only source of air in the room and didn't stop kissing him until actual air demanded otherwise.

"When, my darling," she said when she finally let go of his lips, still just a breath away from his face, fingers knotted in his costume, a trace of reproach in her voice, "have I ever complained about too much of a good thing?" She shook her head. "You have no idea--" she said, and only realized then that she was trembling. And that, yes, they were still surrounded by people, and even if she were willing to pull back some of the mystique she cloaked herself for Ignis right now, that offer did not extend to everybody else.

"I have spent two hundred years being told I am 'too much' and refusing to pare myself down to be acceptable to others," she said instead. "I will be damned to every hell in existence before I say the same to you."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[not_a_goddamn_princess]

Margo was going to keep YKINMKing her merry way out of addressing anything to do with the matching. She felt that was a good gesture of friendship on her part.

"At the very least I'd be better at this shit than every god I've ever met," she said. "Might as well be worth a shot, right?"

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"What?" Liliana shook her head. "Oh no, darling, that's fine. My objection is one of...outlook and intention. And method, I suppose. They take what is an art and try to mimic it in their filthy little labs, stinking of chemicals, sewing flesh together, but for them, the importance is not their creation, but proving their latest theory correct. They have no compunctions about abandoning their creatures if they do not fit their grand plans. They create their abominations as testimony to their egos and their inflated sense of cleverness. I find them wasteful, tedious, and bereft of taste of imagination, and yet, they get lumped in with the rest of necromancy." She wrinkled her nose. "Our relationship is, I suppose, something of a master craftsman and the people who created the kind of trash our shops were transformed into last week, if that makes sense?"

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana considered that. "I mean, I suppose, in that way, all magic would need to be a science," she said eventually. "After all, magic itself needs to follow rules, otherwise it would simply be chaos any time we tried to cast something. Like wild magic, almost, which is chaos, but using it is not unlike trying to get as much order out of it as possible before the chaos reasserts itself." She couldn't help but grin, this was exactly the kind of conversation that she loved. "At its heart, I suppose magic is taking a specific kind of energy and using your will to give it shape and form. But there are so many different rules and methods out there for how one goes about doing that."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"I would assume so, but it felt wrong to exclude the possibility when I don't know Marc much at all," Liliana admitted. "We met under very fraught circumstances and neither wine nor socializing really came up." She gave a small, ironic smile over that. "But, honestly, trying some wines along with delicious foods and pleasant conversation...there are worse ways to spend an evening by far."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"See? You understand me completely," Liliana said with a warm chuckle. "And so I've spent the last six weeks being awoken with the dawn--" or, like, eight which, if not dawn, was still an ungodly time "--by chainsaws and jackhammers and all sorts of things. Because I certainly couldn't let him win, could I?"

She pulled away slightly to regard him. "Please tell me you're not one of those people who believes that mornings are for being awake and industrious in, as opposed to the civilized understanding that mornings are for sleeping through. I don't think I could take the disappointment."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[begmetwice]

"It does," Irene replied with a nod, possibly enjoying this track even more than the idea that it was some sort of forbidden thing. "It also sounds like a case of science versus magic, perhaps? Though there is a famous quote in this universe about the two being indistinguishable -- I tend to disagree. And even in the case of --" She gestured over towards Beaker and his costume once more, "The novel, as I know it, is a reflection on creation and ego and consequence, but interpreting art is a lost cause these days."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"That's fascinating," Liliana said. "Red mana is aligned with rage, but it is not of rage. I have seen pyromancers and the like tapping into their emotions to fuel their spells, but it still needs the spark from elsewhere. But you can just use your fury, nothing else needed?"

Hello magical theory conversation, Liliana is here for this.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"Oh, see now that is sad," Liliana said. "Sharing something enjoyable with another may be the more common foundation of friendship, but I've found that mocking something together is a much faster route."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[heroic_jawline]

"That's incredibly generous of you," Steve teased.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[not_a_goddamn_princess]

Margo snorted. "No," she said. "Where we come from, magic is math. You can have all the aptitude and the pain in the world, and it won't get you anywhere. But you can channel it, if you know how to make the equations work."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[suitably_heroic]

"And it takes less effort," Atton agreed. "Always works for me."