thecapitol | The Crowning of Tony Stark

Entry tags:

The Crowning of Tony Stark

Who| Everyone.
What| The Crowning of Tony Stark.
Where| The New Capitol Stark Expo!
When| Friday, late afternoon into the evening.
Notes| This event is mandatory for all Tributes to attend. Even if you do not tag in, your character will attend this party. Peacekeepers will be on high alert, so no funny business.
WARNINGS| Alcoholism / References to Alcoholism.

The Capitol might be known for its extravagance, but Stark Expos have never skimped on a show. Combining the two together could only be a recipe for the most wild indulgences. The center theater takes styling after a arc reactor, with glass ceiling and glowing blue lights set right within the metal and putting a glow to the sky. Lightshows go off on the main stage, the stark logo overhead and a massive screen displaying the Panem flag and Tony Stark's image just behind the dancing Ironettes. A circle plattform going off from the stage, clearly reserved for the guest of honor, features a design Panem's bird in red, gold, and glowing blue.

A globe is featured in the outside gardens, showing off a map of Panem, and the park is filled with artistic statues of destroyed Iron Man amror. But there's no quiet here, not with the fireworks going off all night and the consistent playing of music that is not but sounds an awful lot like that of Daft Punk, Eifel 65, ACDC, and one other song that breaks them up.

Various shows can be found about the gardens, including display models of some of Tony Stark's old weapons and Iron Man suits. Further along guests may find the Avengers display, featuring large portraits of the Avengers and their allies, large red x's going over greyed out portraits of those deemed dead, including Phill Coulson, Natasha Romanoff, and Thor. Along with these portraits can be found the Stark family tree, featuring the Victor Tony Stark and all his relations including apparent son Dave Strider, and Arya Stark, Ancestor of the Stark family, not to mention the great Howard Stark who's accomplishments (and tragic lack of care for Anthony) are lovingly illustrated. One such accomplishment being a "flying car" just a short walk over.

There's plenty for guests to do besides just ogle the brilliant sights however! A bar has been set up with a whole variety of drinking games available from Sink The Battleship and Drink Roulette to an extravagent variation of the classic game, Beer Pong, and an ongoing run of the Games with rules of drinking for each emotional scene, funny incident, or death. Those under the age of eighteen will be served fizzing juice or soda instead and can participate in junior versions of the very same games. All the cups are made from the finest glass with Tony Stark images over them. Avoxes are on scene to clean every spill and break of glass that might come.

A cave has been crafted of artificial and real material, designed to look like the Cave in which Tony Stark became a real hero, but with a twist; it's been made into a fun-for-all maze! Guests can attempt to navigate their way to the labyrinth and reach the core, avoiding those nasty pop-out rebels along the way. Those who make it to the fire-lit center may receive a limited edition "Tony Stark Heart" miniature arc reactor in a beautiful glass case.

An indoor sky diving station is also available, large enough that many guests may enter at once and still find it spacious. Here, guests can don Iron Man themed sky-diving suits and experience the sensation of flight, just as Tony Stark once did. Of course, the party doesn't start until the Victor comes in; he'll be appearing by Capitol-controlled suit to make his entrance at center stage. It is here that his Throne shall be raised up through the stage and his crown gifted to him. Following the official Crowning Ceremony will also come a speech from the Capitol's very own, Cyrus Reagan.

Tributes are dressed in formal wear with robotic accents. Such as a full mask or metal armor. Capitolites can be seen with Tony stark styled hair, bearing tattoos in his image, and even with surgically implanted lights, in honor of the new Victor. Available for purchase are handcrafted Tony Stark dolls, Iron Man action figures, and models of beloved robot-pet "Dum-E" in both small and life-sized. The Iron Man light gloves come completely free for all guests.

The Crowning ends off with a bang, as in the center of the sky, a massive "wormhole" opens up showing a vast darkness full of sinister creatures just on the other side, sure to inspire some screams from fans. Guests near to the Iron Man suit displays are asked by peacekeepers to step back-- far back-- but may be the first to witness the incredible scene of all those suits launching into the sky and exploding around and "in" the wormhole. The wormhole shifts to a message stating the show to have been brought to you by the Hunger Game's skilled Sky-Display Designers before going into advertising for the rest of the night as the party dies down.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Karkat's been wandering aimlessly when he spots Linden. There's plenty of stuff to stare at here, but the most of it doesn't hold interest for terribly long, especially when he only met Tony once. Linden is at least a familiar face, and if truth be told he's curious after he saw the nurse leaving this morning while muttering less than kindly about the man.

"Hey. How are you faring?" His tone is more casual than openly concerned, but it feels worth asking as he sidles up.

Unlike him, the stylists were more rigorous in designing his outfit, but Karkat minds it less than what he got stuck in last time. He's got a glass of juice in hand - not soda, not alcohol - though he's only been sipping at it.

There really is a lot of stuff to stare at. Though Linden has never spoken with the 12 Victor personally, he gets the impression that the man is a flashy sort, and is all the more grateful to his stylists for putting him in such a plain outfit with no makeup and allowing him to fade into the background as much as possible. At a distance, he could almost be mistaken for an Avox, but he is not complaining, and even perhaps finds it darkly appropriate.

He glances down quickly at the sound of Karkat's voice, tense expression softening slightly. Nill wouldn't be so fond of him if there wasn't something kind and sensitive under the bristly and abrasive front he affects, and Linden's started to see it for himself more recently.

"Decently," he answers, trying to sound optimistic even as he realizes that a big reason Karkat's probably asking is because he saw or heard at least some of what was going on this morning. "I thought I had a chance at getting out of this tonight, but no dice. What's that? Can I have it?" he asks, indicating the juice in Karkat's hand and continuing his proud and shameless tradition of finding Karkat's food more inherently desirable than anything he could go and grab on his own.

Edited (AUGH) 2015-03-28 01:21 (UTC)

Karkat is indeed rather soft under the prickly exterior. This isn't a troll who's claimed multiple best friends for nothing. While he's still not wholly used to Linden, time may come where he considers him among his sprawling collection of friends.

For now, he snorts and holds his glass away. "It's juice, and you can get your own, you lazy mooch. They have human vodkas and soda over there too, but I am apparently 'too young' for alien soporifics--" He mimes the enclosure talons. "--and I'm not touching soda with a ten foot pole." He sips from his glass quite pointedly and says, "Besides, this has troll germs in it."

He motions vaguely again. "So what was the nursassin mad at you for this morning?"

"Lazy? Not lazy, I'm just tired," he says, not giving up on it and continuing to hover. "Besides, it's like you said, there's vodka over there and I think I'll get wasted if I go near it. You give me your juice and you have my back," he offers with a thin-shouldered shrug.

Troll germs don't seem to be a viable threat to him, and considering the he was the guy who swallowed a bottle of ipecac this morning, maybe it's not all that surprising that the possibility of getting sick doesn't concern him overly.

"I tried to get out of coming tonight by making myself sick. With that media circus and all. Humans have a medicine called syrup of ipecac; it makes you throw up and we use it if someone has swallowed something harmful. But I guess if you use the same trick twice, they catch on, and now I have to worry about seeing Compson here. You just know he's going to flaunt his stitches."

Now he really does want a stiff drink. He snaps his rubber band, but his eyes still stray toward the laden-down drink table.

Karkat keeps his glass away at first, but when Linden goes into explaining just what that bottle was, it makes sense that he's not put off just by the potential of troll germs. He sighs, somewhere between exasperation and resignation, and hands the drink over.

"Fine. Take it, you whiner. At least they aren't being stingy with it." He'll wait to get himself another, though. He's not particularly dying of thirst here.

His gaze turns outward again. "Personally I'd take repeats of this one every time if it means I don't have to deal with shit like the last one, but I can't blame you for wanting to avoid that guy." He snorts. "I'll keep my ganderbulbs open for any sign of light-up sutures."

He really wouldn't be surprised, the way Capitol fashion goes and with the current theme.

Linden's tired face lights up, and for a second the child who predates the 63rd Hunger Games is visible. It's a small kindness and a small triumph, but for some reason, gestures like this mean an absurd amount to Linden, more than gifts of jewels or money or lavish favors. He gladly accepts the drink and raises it quickly to his lips to take a delicate sip, and then his gaze follows Karkat's as it takes in the throng of other partygoers.

"The last one was in very poor taste. I won't argue that," he says. "I was pretty fucked up throughout, though, so how much of that was real and how much of it was a bad trip is up for debate. I remember that Nill was there, though. I spent most of my time with her before I had to retire."

He chuffs a breath of humorless laughter, swirling the contents of the cup in his hand before raising it to drink again.

"I'm not a bad Mentor, you know. I could tell you stories about other staff and even if you have your doubts, you'd see pretty quickly that it could be a lot worse."

Hah. Nill. He still hasn't talked to her about things since he last saw her, even if he's since had time to think and talk about it with others. He pushes those thoughts away, making him focus more on the rest.

"If you're that interested in figuring it out, I could tell which things you saw I know were real, but that's not exactly my idea of a fun party game." He motions outward, as if this whole party has been that fun. Better than last time, like he just said, but not fun.

Karkat is not much of a party person.

The second part gets a hmm and a bit of thought. He wishes he had a rail or a table or something to lean on, but he settles for folding his arms since he no long has the hindrance of his glass. "I don't know what you've been through beyond what you've told me and the few grains of truth embedded in the rumors that drift past my auricular sponge clots, but it sounds like you've been through a lot of shit. I don't know..." A loose gesture. "...all about human addictions, but I doubt that came just for the fun of it."

He thinks of Terezi and all her shitty clown soda, and what she told of him of Gamzee. He thinks of the two of them after. His lips tighten.

"But you're still here actually doing shit, getting sponsors, trying. You explained things to me when I was new here. That thing with Compson--you didn't fuck up our reputation just for the hell of it." He snorts, "Unlike whatever our Escort's doing. Do you know what that's about?"

He doesn't have any grand finish to say, but he figures the point should be clear regardless. He gets what Linden means, and in whatever small way the guy has earned some respect.

"Karkat..." Linden says, tone gentler than it usually is. "Humans don't drink because they want to remember. I'm interested in your world, but I'd just as soon forget that Crowning as any other. The only parts that I care about at all are the ones that Nill was there for, and maybe it's better that those are blurry, too." He takes another sip of juice; it's not as good as alcohol, but it's infinitely more interesting than water, and it helps to district him minorly from the fact that he's not inherently a party person, either.

He snorts lightly at what Karkat's saying, and what he thinks the troll is trying to say. "A lot of shit is certainly one way to put it. Watch my tapes if you ever want to know, or don't... but even if you think it was just one Arena, I've been a part of every single one since. It wears on you even if you've only been inside once. You look for ways to take the edge off celebrity and to and fill up the resentment people feel toward you for surviving. People will feel that."

He shrugs listlessly. "Remember that I tried to get out of it," he says, tone lackluster. "But you're right. I'm trying. I'm working on it because I owe you guys that much. Stephen's... someone who's been due for a meltdown for years, and has colossally poor timing. That's my assessment."

Edited 2015-03-31 21:29 (UTC)

The general span of what Linden says sends Karkat's eyebrows pressing together, and his lips curving down into a tight frown.

"I don't know that part of it," he says, tackling the middle part first. "I watched the rest of the last arena with the Signless, but it's not the same as being a mentor. And I'm pretty sure even being in the arenas that everyone has their own traumas about them." He shrugs loosely, and the gesture feels inadequate. "I can't really sum things up nicely, but I'm guessing every position in this mess sucks on some unique soul-grating level."

He hmms a bit, pausing to think. Maybe a meltdown is what happened to Stephen, but he wouldn't know the details, just the mess he saw this side of passed out on the couch and the unavoidable images across the media.

Turning back to the first part, he asks, "So what do humans drink for? Like I said, I don't know much about human addictions. Trolls have their own problems to deal with."

As Linden learns more about Karkat, he has started to note things such as his default expression. That frown is growing familiar.

"Yes, you're right. Everyone has traumas," he says quietly. "And they all manifest differently. Even the people who seem like they're doing fine have cracks if you squint hard enough." Stephen's a good example, actually, to illustrate that point.

"Humans drink to fill in those cracks. If you can't fix them, you can make them harder to see, even if it only works for a little while and ultimately makes them worse. As a Troll, you must be able to relate to this kind of thing, or at least imagine what it's like."

Personally he thinks of Nill. She's kind to a fault, always worrying about everyone else, but she told him enough in the arena to make clear that she's been through more than he can ever know. He couldn't ask then for fear of the Capitol hearing, and it's even more true now when she has no telepathy to tell him. And there's what Linden told him, what made him leave that day...

He bites his lip, but he can't push the thought away before Linden clears up what drinking is for.

"That's it?" he asks, but he doesn't sound so surprised as the set of his eyes implies. That calls other memories: Terezi sprawled out in shirt and boxers, Faygo spilled in sticky pools, and what she told him after. Even Gamzee and his sopor, maybe, but that wound sits even sorer.

In the end he nods slow, his eyes turned outward again. "You're not wrong. I just didn't realize..." A pause, and he adds, "There was someone I knew who drank a lot, a human, but she always acted so cheery and social when she did that I never knew it was a problem."

Nill is a prime example, and a tragic one. Linden watched the arena and figures that a large part of where this question comes from stems from that source. Admittedly, Linden can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy; for as horrific as the Arenas are, it's a way that Karkat has to reach her and protect her that Linden doesn't.

"That's it," he shrugs. "For a lot of people, anyway. I suppose that some lucky people are able to drink for no other reason than to feel like they have fewer inhibitions for a little while, but it's a drug, so... overusing it or using it for the wrong reasons can get messy. I gave you that reason because I think that, given the nature of your question and where I think it comes from, it is the most useful answer in context."

He tilts his head, mildly interested. "You knew someone like that? In Panem, or before?"

Linden guessed right, and Karkat doesn't correct or amend his presumptions. He did wonder before why she had that vodka, and her confusion at the comment he made then makes perfect sense in retrospect. She wasn't drinking to be likeable, and it wasn't for lack of water when the river was so near.

Back in the present, he shakes his head. "Before. Rose Lalonde--not the one who was here, but different, the younger one. It's more complicated to explain than I can bear to lay out here, so just roll with me on that one," he answers. "She was my age, I think, in human years, and she started drinking soporifics partway through this big trip some of us were on."

It's a bit weird going on about her, but it's nothing she ever hid. He was never close to her despite the shared living space, and after a point she was more wrapped up in Kanaya anyhow.

Linden's good at that; for all his oddness and seeming inability to relate to others, he's actually excellent at reading people. Though Trolls aren't human, per se, their social constructs have just enough in common with humans to give Linden at least a point of reference. They're weird, of course, but not entirely alien. They still have friends, take lovers, empathize and incite conflict among one another, and it's enough of a template to go on.

"Soporifics? What's that? Not something I've tried," he says, furrowing his brow. If it exists in Panem, he's tried it, down to tracker-jacker venom in a pinch.

"No, I mean your human vodkas," he clarifies with a wave of his hand. "Soporifics is like a general term. We have sopor slime, this green stuff we normally sleep in, but it has narcotic effects when ingested. My..."

He trails off. His what? Ex? Murderer? He can't hide the bitter note as he continues, "I knew a troll who used to bake it into pies and eat it that way. It made him dopey and stupid, and easily amused by anything that flashed enough colors at him. Eventually he went off it, but..." A shake of his head and a sigh dismiss the topic.

"Rose started brewing that stuff like two years into this trip we were all on, and it got to the point that I think I saw her more when she had been drinking it than when she hadn't. Like I said I didn't know it was a problem for humans, so I wrote it off because she was easier to get along with then. If Dave hadn't compared it to something else I don't think I would have realized at all, but then I was here and didn't give a shit." He shrugs.

A very slight frown creases Linden's pale features. "I guess... if I can help you understand this even better, the message I'd like to impart is really that it's not the alcohol itself that's the problem, any more than it's the weapon's fault in a murder. No drug is to blame for what it does to people or makes them do... the difficulty people have with substances is nothing they didn't bring with them. There's some deeper sadness they're trying to quiet down, and that's why many people drink with no problem whatsoever."

His gaze drifts back over, not quite hitting square, then drifts away again. "Yeah," he says. "A soda is just a soda, you know? It's not the fizz or the godawful amounts of sugar that make someone wake up dripped in half-dried pools of it."

He knows it's not a thing for humans like that, but the example still sits more starkly in mind than one with alcohol. It's hard to forget the sight of Terezi like that, and the conversation that followed laid things out well for him.

"I get what you're going for, in other words."

He straightens up. "Anyway, since we've gotten out the most depressing subject we can short of arena traumas, I am going to drop that subject right in its sad, drunken corner." He motions outward. "This party is so gaudy it's a wonder my eyes haven't declared mutiny and popped out of my skull. At least the stylists saw fit to leave us without any blinking lights or batches of glitter."

Linden's hand wanders to his mouth where he gnaws absently at his thumb. Soda, to him, is just a drink minus anything that can affect his brain, but it's clear that it's different for Trolls, maybe on par with the way drugs and alcohol affect humans.

He nods quickly in response to Karkat's bluntly voiced desire to change the subject. "Yeah, 6's stylists are being nice tonight," he says, but it's said carefully, as though he's concerned about being overheard. He's dressed very similarly to the Avoxes at this party, after all, and that's probably not a mistake.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Crowning of Tony Stark

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject