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thecapitol2013-12-15 06:36 am
etcircenses) wrote in thecapitol2013-12-15 06:36 am
Entry tags:
- aunamee,
- cassandra marko,
- commander shepard,
- event: crowning,
- harley quinn,
- joan watson,
- matthew "punchy" o'connor,
- sigma klim,
- terezi pyrope,
- the grand highblood,
- the signless,
- wesker,
- wyatt earp,
- ✘ azula,
- ✘ cinderella,
- ✘ diana ladris,
- ✘ eliot spencer,
- ✘ ellie,
- ✘ enjolras,
- ✘ guy crood,
- ✘ hawkeye pierce,
- ✘ howard bassem,
- ✘ ian chesterton,
- ✘ ian gallagher,
- ✘ john a. zoidberg,
- ✘ john watson,
- ✘ kevin prentiss,
- ✘ marius pontmercy,
- ✘ maximus,
- ✘ mindy macready,
- ✘ neffa a reyeth,
- ✘ orc,
- ✘ peeta mellark,
- ✘ perry kelvin,
- ✘ pruna,
- ✘ r,
- ✘ rat,
- ✘ sherlock holmes (bbc),
- ✘ shion,
- ✘ venus dee milo,
- ✘ zelos wilder
The Crowning of Enjolras
WHO| All Tributes and Victor, plus a few Capitol guests
WHAT| The Crowning of Enjolras
WHERE| The Tribute Center
WHEN| A few weeks after the end of the Arena
WARNINGS| Forced medical experimentation, needles.
The atmosphere surrounding the Crowning is both tense and secretive. The style teams flutter around listlessly, having received no information from which to draft their designs. Newspapers take bets on when it will be announced where the Crowning is being held, descending into grousing when no press release is given. Peacekeepers pour in and out of the Tribute Center, accompanied by scientists who occasionally pull Tributes aside and look at the veins in their elbows. Even the Avoxes seem jumpier than usual.
Aside from the Tribute Center's new giant marble statute of a nude Enjolras, posed like the famed David, one could almost forget the party is supposed to be celebratory.
When the day arrives, the Escorts and their assistants don't lead the Tributes to their style teams to be gussied instead. Instead, they hush the Tributes and bring them to their bedrooms, where a Peacekeeper, a white-coated citizen and several Avoxes await them. The Escorts instruct the Tributes to lay down in their bed and close their eyes, and a needle is inserted into their arms that the Escorts insist will 'take them to the party'. It's soon followed by a series of sensors taped to the forehead.
Just relax, the Escorts say, and they do their very best to make sure their Tributes feel minimal anxiety. If the Tributes resist too much, more Peacekeepers are called in, and the Tributes are forced into submission.
The first effect is a sort of paralysis - not the terrifying inability to move, but a signal to the brain that says why move? Moving is so much effort. It's quickly followed by drowsiness, and then a chill that radiates from the needle into the body, and finally, unconsciousness.
And that is when the party begins. The Tributes, now dressed in luxurious 1830's French clothing of a quality beyond even what their Stylists could manage, wake up in the front row of a large stone theater setting reminiscent of, simultaneously, Greek and French architecture. The floor of the theater is filled with buffets of every imaginable sort of food. Rose petals fall from the sky, which displays a sunset worthy of award-winning photography.
For his part, Enjolras sits in a throne made of books on the ring of the amphitheater, flanked by Marius, Cosette, Eponine, and bizarrely enough Venus Dee Milo and Ellie, seated on lush pillows and carpets made of dinosaur skin (with the heads comically attached and eyes lolling).
"Welcome, welcome, our Tributes and Mentors, to the first ever somnofestival, sponsored by Hypnogogia!" Caesar Flickerman, noted talkshow host and Games presenter, appears in a fabulous sequined toga in the center of the amphitheater. He doesn't need a microphone; the acoustics here are flawless. "And congratulations to our Victor! Let us hear it for Enjolras!"
He awaits applause.
"As you may have noticed, you're inside a shared dream, due to the just fantastic technology from the Capitol and certain, ah, biological contributions from our dear favorite Aunamee." He holds a hand out and gestures to Aunamee, anticipating wild applause. "We thought that for our most philosophical Victor yet, we should celebrate in a way that's a little bit…cerebral."
Caesar laughs and gestures at all the food, then puts a cheeky finger to his lips. "By all means, enjoy yourselves. Even the most indulgent desserts here won't show up on your hips tomorrow. The party only last three hours, so you might as well get started!"
He vanishes into thin air, leaving the Tributes to celebrate. Occasionally, the Tributes will hear voices in their heads - chatter from the Peacekeeper and scientist and Escort still in their room, in the waking world. Otherwise, this is a party like any other, if somewhat surreal in nature.
-/-
The party begins the same way for all the Tributes. For an unlucky few, however, it soon diverges as they come under an unfortunate glitch in the system.
They'll look around and find only a handful of their fellow Tributes around them. The sky, rather than being a magnificent splay of color, is now blank white, and yet the lighting in the theater seems dim. A sense of panic, detached from any conscious thoughts, surges forth in them like the tide.
For them, this isn't a shared dream. This is a shared nightmare.
WHAT| The Crowning of Enjolras
WHERE| The Tribute Center
WHEN| A few weeks after the end of the Arena
WARNINGS| Forced medical experimentation, needles.
The atmosphere surrounding the Crowning is both tense and secretive. The style teams flutter around listlessly, having received no information from which to draft their designs. Newspapers take bets on when it will be announced where the Crowning is being held, descending into grousing when no press release is given. Peacekeepers pour in and out of the Tribute Center, accompanied by scientists who occasionally pull Tributes aside and look at the veins in their elbows. Even the Avoxes seem jumpier than usual.
Aside from the Tribute Center's new giant marble statute of a nude Enjolras, posed like the famed David, one could almost forget the party is supposed to be celebratory.
When the day arrives, the Escorts and their assistants don't lead the Tributes to their style teams to be gussied instead. Instead, they hush the Tributes and bring them to their bedrooms, where a Peacekeeper, a white-coated citizen and several Avoxes await them. The Escorts instruct the Tributes to lay down in their bed and close their eyes, and a needle is inserted into their arms that the Escorts insist will 'take them to the party'. It's soon followed by a series of sensors taped to the forehead.
Just relax, the Escorts say, and they do their very best to make sure their Tributes feel minimal anxiety. If the Tributes resist too much, more Peacekeepers are called in, and the Tributes are forced into submission.
The first effect is a sort of paralysis - not the terrifying inability to move, but a signal to the brain that says why move? Moving is so much effort. It's quickly followed by drowsiness, and then a chill that radiates from the needle into the body, and finally, unconsciousness.
And that is when the party begins. The Tributes, now dressed in luxurious 1830's French clothing of a quality beyond even what their Stylists could manage, wake up in the front row of a large stone theater setting reminiscent of, simultaneously, Greek and French architecture. The floor of the theater is filled with buffets of every imaginable sort of food. Rose petals fall from the sky, which displays a sunset worthy of award-winning photography.
For his part, Enjolras sits in a throne made of books on the ring of the amphitheater, flanked by Marius, Cosette, Eponine, and bizarrely enough Venus Dee Milo and Ellie, seated on lush pillows and carpets made of dinosaur skin (with the heads comically attached and eyes lolling).
"Welcome, welcome, our Tributes and Mentors, to the first ever somnofestival, sponsored by Hypnogogia!" Caesar Flickerman, noted talkshow host and Games presenter, appears in a fabulous sequined toga in the center of the amphitheater. He doesn't need a microphone; the acoustics here are flawless. "And congratulations to our Victor! Let us hear it for Enjolras!"
He awaits applause.
"As you may have noticed, you're inside a shared dream, due to the just fantastic technology from the Capitol and certain, ah, biological contributions from our dear favorite Aunamee." He holds a hand out and gestures to Aunamee, anticipating wild applause. "We thought that for our most philosophical Victor yet, we should celebrate in a way that's a little bit…cerebral."
Caesar laughs and gestures at all the food, then puts a cheeky finger to his lips. "By all means, enjoy yourselves. Even the most indulgent desserts here won't show up on your hips tomorrow. The party only last three hours, so you might as well get started!"
He vanishes into thin air, leaving the Tributes to celebrate. Occasionally, the Tributes will hear voices in their heads - chatter from the Peacekeeper and scientist and Escort still in their room, in the waking world. Otherwise, this is a party like any other, if somewhat surreal in nature.
-/-
The party begins the same way for all the Tributes. For an unlucky few, however, it soon diverges as they come under an unfortunate glitch in the system.
They'll look around and find only a handful of their fellow Tributes around them. The sky, rather than being a magnificent splay of color, is now blank white, and yet the lighting in the theater seems dim. A sense of panic, detached from any conscious thoughts, surges forth in them like the tide.
For them, this isn't a shared dream. This is a shared nightmare.
no subject
He lifted the hem of his pants to look and see if the dream had provided anything in terms of undergarments.
"If I had anything on underneath, I'd probably even lose the pants for right now, even though I usually wear them. They're itchy."
Unfortunately for Guy, and perhaps fortunately for Marius and Cosette's melt-prone eyes, the dream had not provided.
"You still haven't explained what the major concern is here. Why do your women faint if they see someone as they are naturally?"
no subject
Marius paled and hastily averted his eyes the moment Guy lifted the hem of his pants. Of all his encounters with people of varied origins and backgrounds, this boorish man before him was far by the most impolite, salacious man he has ever met, Paris slums, Capitol, or otherwise.
He kept his eyes fixed to a certain spot on the ground as he defended himself, distrustful enough to doubt that Guy would indeed not suddenly yank his pants off. "P-Perhaps it is natural to be born or to bathe as such," and he simply refused to comment on the dying naked aspect, "However, it is unnatural for women to see grown men running about without a shirt on in public! It is a simple rule of polite society. And you, monsieur, are hardly a child."
no subject
He chuckled to himself, though it was tinged with just a bit of sadness. How many people had it been now that didn't understand? That thought he was backwards? That thought their way was the only way?
Mercifully, there had been some that saw him as intelligent, that saw him as just different rather than simple, just as they were different to him. But when he'd had people call him savage and simple, when they treated him as wild when he was as civilized as they came in his world...
When he'd been called dirty...
Well, it was wearing a little thin.
"Have you stopped even once in this entire conversation and thought about the fact that there are all different people, from all different worlds here? Have you stopped even a moment to think about how strange and unnatural you are to me? Wearing too many clothes, covering up what you really are like it's shameful? Seeing me this way, as I am, won't hurt any women, and if it does they need to toughen up a little, especially since they're going to be facing far worse things than a man's nipples."
He finally popped the last of the egg into his mouth and peered up at Marius from under the table as he chewed and swallowed.
"When I'm so far from home, why should I change to fit your world instead of holding onto my own?"
no subject
"I..." He certainly still believed it was only sensible to dress appropriately, but perhaps he was too quick to pass judgement on others. For many of them, he was from an entirely different time period too, a place without glossy magazines or hologram communicators or television screens. This entire dream-world setting was one carved out of history books, for those who knew of them and those that still remembered them.
And yet, like the man underneath the table, he would refuse to let go of the Paris where he had found Cosette, of the city that he called his home.
(Unbeknownst to him, his clothing began to slowly fade into the tattered, black clothes he wore in Paris, with holes on his shoes and a tear at the elbow of his coat.)
His stared at the ground, fidgeting uncomfortably. "I only wish to protect her." This hell is not for her, but he bit his tongue before that dangerous idea slipped past his lips.
no subject
It itched and felt like he was trapped, like he was being restrained. A shirt to him was what a straight-jacket might feel like to someone else.
"Even if I didn't feel that way, I'd want things to be familiar. I'd want to be the way I am back home, to feel that way as much as possible. I'm not sure what about my not having a shirt is something you need to protect her from. Unless..."
He came from a world that didn't really automatically attribute nudity to sexual things or sin or indecency. People weren't objects, after all. They weren't even uncontrollable animals. They were people. Nudity was something that happened when privacy was often so hard to find.
"Is it some weird sexual thing? Is there something about it that has a meaning that scares you?"
That was all he could think of to explain it. The people in the Capitol were weird about those kinds of things and it discomfited him. Maybe they weren't the only ones.
no subject
And then there was the question.
"Oh!" Marius immediately turned tomato-red, a color that spread from his cheeks to his ears to his neck. "Y-Yes. It is not a sight to be seen outside..." and he made a vague gesture with his hand, looking more than a little embarrassed to be even having this sort of conversation, "outside the privacy of one's rooms."
no subject
He was a family man, Marius. Right now you're freaking out over the possible indecency of a man very monogamously devoted to his mate, who has a daughter, and thus would never want to damage his family.
"And even if I didn't, if you're taking this as some kind of sign that I'd do something, I don't know, indecent in any way, not wearing clothes doesn't have that meaning where I come from, okay? Nobody wears that many clothes. And any kind of indecency involving that is the kind of thing that gets you killed or kicked out of a tribe. People don't tolerate anyone hurting anyone else that way. If that's what you're worried about."
He seemed to think he needed to keep his mate safe, so as far as Guy could figure, not wearing clothes had to signify being sexually immoral in some way. Some kind of predator. Or someone that went around trying to steal other people's mates' affections or something. Back where he came from, the latter usually only got you a good shunning, but the former led to death or exile.
no subject
It was not so often that he heard anyone referring to their beloved as a mate, after all, and if he was proud of having a daughter with her then she must not be a mistress. He wondered whether he, too, had his beloved summoned into the Capitol, but to ask a question that would evoke such pain regardless of the response was not something he would wish to bestow on anyone, especially towards such a new acquaintance.
But perhaps it was not very odd, in retrospect, to imagine such a world wherein less clothing rarely scandalized people. There were the tribes, after all, as well as the older civilizations such as the Spartans of Greece. That realization caused him to feel a little sheepish; and he cast his eyes to his shuffling feet once more.
no subject
He waved his hands with an air of finality and then held up his right arm, showing off the carved bone bracelet on his wrist. Carved on it were a tiger and warthog chasing each other's tails and attached to it were rings with other little rings dangling from them - a makeshift baby rattle.
"We made these for each other when we promised that to each other. She has one just like it - only without the rattle. I stay with the baby a little bit more than she does."
The sappy look on his face as he looked at the bracelet was probably not unfamiliar to Marius.
no subject
He studied the bracelet, or what he could glimpse of it from his current posture. The shade the table cast was a hindrance, so he found himself bending on one knee, his arm resting on the other, and peering closer. The bracelet to him seemed an artifact from a distant time and place; it was clear that it and what it symbolized was one of great importance to this man.
"Is she safe?" Marius asked it before he realized he had, and he grew a bit flustered at his impulsive question. But he did wonder: was she where she was meant to be, or was her fate a little like Cosette's, who had been summoned here to fight and to suffer alongside the man she loves?
no subject
He stopped and took in a deep breath.
"I think so. Hopefully they just took me and left them there and if they did, that means she's safe."
But how safe was she, when they might bring her - or the rest of his family - at any time?
"I'm sorry," he said. "That yours is here with you. I hope she - I hope she can be safe soon."
mind if we wrap this up? :3
"As do I. That is why..." He pressed his lips together as he tried to materialize the words from the sky. The appropriate words, and the proper means in which to interweave them. "We must be thankful for it." His voice was slow, cautious; he had a tendency to tremble when he was enraged, and he was doing his hardest to remain collected. "Be careful, monsieur." Because the Capitol is watching. Because if you defy them, you will end up like me.
The next statement comes almost abruptly. "Forgive me, but I must return to my Cosette; surely she has been noting my absence." He paused for a moment, his brows furrowed in thought, bending lower just a fraction. "Will you be fine, under there?"
I'm fine with that!
He added cheekily, but without any malice, "You should maybe make sure she hasn't fallen down while you were gone."