97th Sponsorship Gala

[[nyte]]

Who hides behind the mask?

Gamemaker Artemie has put together a gala for Victors and Tributes to schmooze their way into the hearts of potential donors. Influential Capitolites would have received gold-embossed invitations on their doorsteps, promising a luxurious night in the new Training Center with the next batch of capitol darlings and all their favorite Victors.

The catch? It's a masquerade.

Things get so sticky when names and legacies are involved. This Gamemaker hopes to cut straight to the soul - wear that on your sleeve instead of your pretty face. Is it still worth saving? Capitolites will receive the names attached to the masked tributes at the end of the night, and are encouraged to make their donations based on how much they were impressed by them.


OOC information:

There are two ways to complete this event. Tributes and Victors may choose to write an in character post/thread of their attendance. This can be posted below, or if writers choose to thread together they may link that instead.

Alternatively, a writer may choose to design their tribute's masquerade outfit in a graphic or moodboard, and post it below to receive the incentive rewards.

Basically, no one is supposed to know who is who until they leave the event but like Clark Kent and Superman sometimes it's gonna be obvious! What matters most is having fun and getting them sponsorship points.

Incentive Reward:

-an interaction point for post-based sponsorship
-tributes will be able to opt to wear their masquerade uniform into the arena, in lieu of their uniforms
-a walkie talkie ( (^: )

Deadline for incentive eligibility: Thursday 20th of June, 11:59pm PST



Participation Completed:

x

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

Flynn Garner.

Ten years inside the Capitol asylum, it is nothing worth celebrating but as soon as I stepped into their territory, I have been masqueraded every minute of the day. I am supposed to feel honoured as I have been given the special role of a victor sponsor. Usually, my coffers rattle for the District Six tributes not the twenty-two others. But here I am, a special plaything for the year to mark the decade of their torment.

Take me back to the event in the nightclub three years ago. Just me and him. None of this being marched around and my face plastered on posters alongside the other victors whose anniversaries end in zero.

It has barely been an hour since my interview with a podcast host, Silva handed me a script with the answers to the questions. Letting them pull the strings means I will be left alone for the rest of the year. My family will be left alone. No more headaches for them in exchange for no more severe migraines for me. There’s only so many branches of the family tree that they can cut off.

Tonight is going to end with a masquerade ball. Parties, dinners, formal events – I would’ve never imagined that I would become a veteran of them.

Going along with the theme of the past few days of torture, I protest the idea of my masquerade outfit with the stylist. ”Surely something nuclear would be more fitting?” Their design was a plague doctor costume. A decade of ’working’ with these people and I am starting to come up with more original concepts than them.

It is a last-minute change but the old fashioned plague doctor mask is swapped for a bedazzled gas mask, ones less flattering were found in the 87th arena. Black laced sleeved gloves and a cape of all things are the finishing touches of the black frilly shirt and trousers I wear. A compromise with the stylist, there’s not enough time to put together a yellow hazmat inspired outfit like I wore in the arena. It wouldn’t have felt right masquerading in something linked to the Rose Plague. Not that reminiscing the days I killed people ten years ago is any better.

Everyone is incognito at the ball or is trying to be. It is not hard to identify the high-profile Capitolites with styles they haven’t changed in decades. It’ll be fun playing a game of guess who, I wish there was somebody by my side to play it. I hover by the bar, the champagne glass in my hand has an extra fizz from the tablet I dropped in it. Medicated encouragement will get me through the night.

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

Portia Maybach.

Dress up for an opening ceremony. Dress up for an interview. And now dress up for a sponsorship gala. It all seems an unnecessary process for this old-fashioned way of things. Whenever Portia has sat in the stylist’s dressing room, she has felt like a mannequin. A stiff wax figure, unable to move and protest at the reflection looking back at her. One is the crown jewel of the districts; it has its fair share of glamour but Portia is so used to being in sweats and running vests. The glam girl title is reserved for her sister Clio.

Up until now, Portia has followed along with the strategy set out for her during the pre-game events. It is the professionals setting these plans for her after all but none of it seems exciting. Portia has no sob story, not like the middle and lower District tributes who have their hands tied around Capitol heart strings. Her only play is a great-great uncle who drowned in the games 88 years ago and the fact she is a career. There’s been hundreds of careers in the games. Hundreds of dead careers. Portia needs to play it differently; she can’t just be a character in someone else’s story. She needs to jump out of this book.

”I want to wear purple at the Sponsorship Gala, it is the colour of royals!” Portia tells the stylists, not asks. She may as well try and cement the Maybachs amongst the Frays and Le Rouxs, soon they won’t be the only District One royalties with a victor. ”And I want to wear a crown, they need to get used to seeing one on my head.”

It is not a crown Portia wears at the gala, but a black yeoman hat with a wide rim decorated with purple roses and black feathers. It’ll do. Pointy metal crowns are old fashioned. She wears a purple petal patterned petticoat and overskirt with a high collared blouse. A metal purple mask shadows her eyes, the only features of her face on view are her chin and lips. It is all that will matter tonight as she talks with the sponsors, encouraging them to flash their credit cards over her name. Her family are veterans of mingling, she does well in forcing herself into groups of people huddled together with glasses in their hands. Whether they’re the right people, she will soon find out.

All the days of showing off and trying to be seen, just for to be disguised at the most crucial event. To her, the Capitol have the strangest ways. Her family needs to change this, they need to be future. She does.

[D'Arcy Mason d6b [Tyler]]

[googlefont="Cinzel Decorative"]

Safina Roy

"Deep breath in."

I follow Orland's command obediently as the zipper traces its way up my back. "Aaaand there we go! Don't you look just absolutely splendid! Come, take a look!" He beckons me towards the floor-length mirror standing at attention, and I see myself in a new light.

Credit where credit is due: I look incredible. The metallic olive fabric seems to rise out of the ground, twisting and turning and narrowing until it's wrapping itself snugly around my torso. It stops well below my neck, where the Capitol-made perfect skin of my upper chest shines bare. It's meant to accentuate the allure of me, Orland had declared when he first showed me the design and read the skepticism written across my face. For a man whose neck is currently surrounded by such a thick halo of frills they could very likely stop a knife from grazing the skin below, I had anticipated a similar fate for myself. Yet here he is, exceeding my expectations once again. The greens are meant to be a hint at my district, and the greens of the circuit boards we produce. I don't feel the need to point out that the green is only the resin that holds the important stuff together on a circuit board, mostly because I like the shimmery green. To me it's more like a strange and foreign plant. It moves with each wave of the fabric, twisting and tangling itself into me until we're one and the same. So different from anything in District 3, and so perfect for a masquerade.

When I slip on the matching green mask and my eyes remain the only part of me not shrouded in mystery, a tiny thrill starts pulsing in my chest. For the first time since my name was called out from that grey stage back home, I get to be unknown. The pressure to be great and strong and deadly and worth betting on can be lifted off of my now-free shoulders, at least for a few hours. I realize now how much I missed anonymity.

By the time I'm in the opulent ballroom, surrounded by Capitolites and tributes and gamemakers and victors all brought to one level by masked identities, the thrill has grown into a roaring thunder of elation. In here, I am free from the burden of being Safina Roy. In here, I am free from the weight of the Games. I could turn off the logic and let myself feel alive.

Suddenly it all seems so easy! I swim through seas of conversations with people I do not know and who don't know me. I care about none of them, which makes it effortless to shine through them all. I'm laughing genuine laughs at the occasional jokes that aren't the slightest bit funny. I'm oohing and aahing as who-cares-who shows off who they're wearing. Hell, I join right in, swishing around the waves of green at every chance I get. None of it means anything, and it is glorious.

Before I know it, I'm being asked to dance. With who I hardly remember; he had a nice suit, was slightly taller than me, and smelled good. He led me through an unfamiliar dance with an expert hand, guiding me with my limited dance experience into a passable waltz. I lose myself in the swish of my dress, the pull of his hand, the rumble of the instruments resonating against the throb of excitement.

In this moment time has stopped, and time is going on forever and ever and ever. There is no world to think of beyond the song that's playing. There is just me and this dance, on and on and on. When the music stops, when everyone has gone home and the masks come off and I am back to being Safina and the problems of the world awaiting the girl from District 3 return to me as real and dangerous as ever before, the girl in the green dress will still be here. Lost in the world that existed for a moment; dancing to a song that's long stopped playing.

[WC: 689]

[florentine, d4b ❁]

Klaus Goravich

There is no such thing as anonymity. 

When Klaus was born, he was nobody at all. Even within the walls of the womb, he was one of many, hiding behind the brighter, bolder faces of his sisters and brothers. His family name had been no burden to carry. This had suited him well. 

To be watched was not something he enjoyed; and so, when the harsh spotlight of the 61st annual Hunger Games shone upon him, and never stopped, he squinted into the light. For years, he fought against the glare, hoping to find solace in the shade. 

More- said the people, when the tabloids clamoured for a quote, a comment, anything, on the friends he had killed. 

More- they cried, when he hid his baby's face from the cameras. 

More- they screamed, when he went home to District Three, and tried to build a life there. 

More- they wailed, after he produced his very first documentary. 

More- it came, again, after his third, his fifth, after he forced himself to watch the rose plague victims suffer and die, after he trekked through dangerous rebel territory with a camera in had, to give them what they wanted most. We want more of you! 

So he gave them himself. He gave his money, restored the house. He gave his time, took the children in, fed them. He gave his heart, stepped up on reaping day with a threat hanging over his head, names in the bowl that would destroy him, like he swore he never would again after Penelope turned nineteen. He filmed it all. Offered it up like a sacrifice - here, is this what you want? Is it enough?

It was never enough. He should have known that, really.

It had been over thirty years since Klaus had showed up to the Capitol with a baby on his hip. He had forgotten what it felt like. They were blinded by the flash of the cameras, fought microphones wherever they went. The baby cried. Klaus apologised to him, held him more tightly. 

Now, the baby slept soundly in Klaus' suite, watched over by an avox who had once watched Daisy and Penelope. Her hair was grey now, as was his own. 

Klaus felt the light on him,  even in the darkness. His face was covered by a mask. It was a terrible thing, that made the child weep. There you go. Nobody will know it is you, in there! the stylist had said. Klaus knew that there was no such thing as invisibility, not for people like Klaus Goravich. They could see right through it. 

More! They screamed, again. The Sponsorship Gala was just another performance in a never-ending barrage of performances. What was one more, when you are already blinded by the spotlight?

Klaus put on his very best Victor-act like a costume, ready to oblige.

He hoped that the baby was sleeping okay.

[Skiplaurel Hayjer - D7a]

Sera never thought of herself as being particularly charismatic. As a younger girl, she had been something of a shrinking violet, even. She would often literally hide behind her more outgoing older sister when she was startled, which was not hard to do. She recalls a time when her father told her that 'less is more, it always is.' Dad seemed to have a bizarre saying she did not comprehend for almost any occasion, but as she aged, some of the things he had told her had begun to make more sense to her.

Maybe it was just that she was her father's daughter. At any rate, Sera decides upon a simple, (and creepy) look for the Sponsorship Gala. She had seen crazy things since coming to the Capitol- well, a lot of crazy things, but the fashions in particular. People dyed their skin and came to look like they had been dumped into a vat of chemicals. Some people had even surgically modified themselves to look like their favorite animal, even if Sera knows for a fact that many of them probably have not seen a living example of their own favored animal. Everyone seems to be like a peacock, competing in some sort of arcane, cutthroat battle of face whose rules defied comprehension.

But less is more, it always is.

Sera enters the masquerade ball, wondering if this was how psychopaths see the world: everyone superficially different, but all equally worthless.

[minie]

Name: Circe Murdock
District: Four
Stylists: Elvin & Sailor

[pogue]

Jupiter tugs at the collar of a shirt one size too tight for his body, meant to show off all the best parts of him as one of the styling team members had put it. There's a faint red line from the way the gold-lined fabric throttles the skin of his neck, no matter how many times calloused fingers seem to pull it away from him and stretch it apart. He bickers, mutters something inconsolable and downright vile under his breath, only loud enough for the ghosts in the walls to hear as he's pulled away from the mirror and towards the center of the room.

Up, up, up- ushered onto a pedestal so they can all get a good look at their claimed prize, dripping in tints of gold and black, faux-regal and spitting venom from gold-tipped fangs.

"Excellent, excellent! The gold will go perfectly with Portia's purple-"

There's a dirty look shot like a cannon in the young stylist's direction, whispers of anonymity and ruining the whole theme and other sinister things. Jupiter's gaze follows each of them one-by-one, tracing the lines of their necks and wondering how much pressure it would take to snap them- something red and wicked bubbles up in his gut as thye continue bickering, a ghost in a room designed solely for him, forgotten before he even began.

"Just- when the fuck does this thing start?" He finally spits out. Poison drips from his tongue and to the floor beneath him, venom in the empty spaces of a team gone silent for the briefest of moments before they go back to worrying amongst one another about anything grander then him. He seethes, tormented and tantrum-fueled toddler until finally one of the assistant's makes his way towards him.

Pity, kindness, one in the same. He speaks to him like he's a human, at least for a second.

"Alright, Jupe- no real charisma needed tonight.", there's a dagger of an insult laced somewhere in there, "just you, the big bad wolf."

The man pulls out the mask from behind his back like it's supposed to make him any happier to be there, golden hound mask steeped in machinery and robotics. They slide it over his head and it's a momentary reprieve as the world goes dark for a moment with his eyes snapped shut, flooded by light a moment later and reminded of where he is, of what he is. They pull him from the room and down a hallway, left turn right turn and the methodic sound of footsteps against marble floors. "-remember, dance... mingle. Nothing crazy."

Spoken like an adult to a child, the doors open to glamor beyond his wildest scale. Music seeps into his ears and the shimmering of diamonds greets his gaze. Bitten tongue, swallowed fangs, Jupiter steps out of his comfort zone and into his own coffin.

[andromache s. ⚔️ [d1b] sucy]

Vera Jeon

Vera loves a party... in theory, anyways. Considering everything, she's not all too happy to be forced to go to a big party to try and prove her worth to wealthy Capitol citizens -- isn't that what Theo is for? But she'll go, and she'll smile all the while. She'll smile as beautifully as she can, since that's all the other party attendees will be able to see. To keep herself somewhat recognisable, Vera's stylists opt for a light purple look, lacy and bright but toughened up by big, chunky shoes, black gloves, and a buckle over one shoulder. Vera's only instructions were purple, and she's quite satisfied with the final results.

To complete the look, Vera's long black hair is left cascading down her back, bone straight. Her mask is the final touch. Black butterfly wings surround her eyes and fan out either side of her head. Her nose, mouth and chin are exposed, but only those. The lower butterfly wings conceal her cheeks and the sides of her face. 

Between the extra height provided by her shoes and the curly butterfly antennae on her mask, Vera's been afforded a considerable amount of extra height for the night. It makes her feel big. It makes her feel powerful.

[Knuckles]

Parties aren't for him, and Tide would do almost anything to forget about this one. Avoiding them, being alone, all of them are far more important than going and mingling, yet this is a chance to sneak around, to maybe get to see what others are doing, but even then, it's near impossible to know what's actually happening anymore. It's all a joke, something to maybe give him a chance.

But now he's hidden behind a mask and tossed in some sort of outfit that isn't desirable. It's hard to move, hard to focus as he looks at the skin tight pants. It's the worst thing ever, but the cloak of the jacket hides it all - it makes it feel a little more comfortable.

Nothing makes sense though, and now he's standing tall looking in the mirror at his own reflection -

"Do I have to wear this?"

"It's for the best."

So many flowers cover the suit, and it's the furthest thing from water that he can think of. The platform shoes have him about an inch or two taller than he normally is.

He takes a breath and enters.

Maybe it's his time to shine after all.

It's not ideal, but it gives him a chance, something to do, something to spend time where everything seems so pointless. It's too much, but the show must go on, and he's going to try to oblige.