genessia | Video & Action | For All Writers & Readers!

Entry tags:

Video & Action | For All Writers & Readers!

Who: Levy & EVERYONE (Feel free to make top posts for the gathering!)
What: Reading & Writing Event
Where: Scribes and Scripts in Fayren
When: July 24th
Warnings: None, Will update if needed.

VIDEO

[Levy smiles shyly a the screen.]

Good Morning Genessia. This is just a reminder that my writers and readers get together is this afternoon.

I hope to see you there.

WRITERS GATHERING | OPEN

[As promised Levy has everything set up for the gathering. There is cheese and crackers as well as some salted meats. There are, of course, napkins and plates and utensils. She’s very serious about not getting anything on the books. There is water provided but she doesn’t want it to spill so she purchased bottles from Genessia and brought them to Fayren. There is a bin for empty ones so she can recycle them later.

She’s at the counter greeting those who step inside and warmly welcoming them to the discussion. She wants people to meet and talk and share their love for reading and writing. She’s also taking submissions and will see about backing any local writers who want to get a start in writing. Their books will be featured at all three of her stores.]

[ooc: This is an open post prompt. Feel free to make a top level and mingle and interact with each other.]

ACTION | GETTING SICK

[After the gathering Levy closes the store and begins cleaning up. She feels feverish but she pushes through the discomfort to finish the task at hand. Her fingers cling to the book pressed tightly against her chest as her vision blurs. Her hand reaches out for support catching a book shelf and falling against it.

Her breath is heavy and she is finding it more and more difficult to breath. She drops the book to the floor and presses her fingers to her forehead.]

It’s hot…

[She decides to rest but instead of moving she kneels and curls up on the floor. To those passing the shop or coming to see her it looks as if she might be asleep.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ted was firmly in the "Reader" camp; there were so many books already that adding more seemed fatuous. Still, if his vocabulary were any indication, he did love reading and hearing what others had to say, and so would take in as much as others had to give.

He'd invited Bracken, Satsuki, and a few others who were probably too busy. He's especially eager for Lucy to arrive, who told him she'd 'think about it'. She'd better come...

But for the most part, he's happy, enjoying the snacks and company and seeing what sort of literary output Genessia had brought.]

***

Not content to merely consume, Ted would bring along four bits of writing for people to talk of, should the goings get slow.

A.) Ephemera: A poem on the nature of love.

"Do you think that is love's destiny? A continual parting?" It struck him very sadly.

B.) A MacBeth quote: "And you all know security/ is mortals' chiefest enemy."

"I wonder if everyone here knows that? Why do you suppose that is?"

C.) A piece from Phantastes:

“They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men, are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already imbodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life, lying behind the consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other connexions with the worlds around us, than those of science and poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the hidden things of a man's soul, and, it may be, with the secret history of his body as well. They are portions of the living house wherein he abides.”

"I agree with this whole-heartedly. What do you think is the 'intermundane relationship' posed to us by Genessia itself?"

D.) 1 Corinthians 13:12 " For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

[No one gets through Ted sharing his reading without Bible quotes. NOBODY.]

Edited 2016-07-24 04:31 (UTC)

Bracken didn't know many people yet, and there were going to be a lot of strangers here. Usually when he went to large gatherings it was among friends, and even then he tended to be quiet. Being among the yet unknown was even more nerve-racking, and he peeked into the gathering quietly and observed before he entered it.

On top of his usual anxiety, he did like books but he couldn't be accused of being a particularly good 'reader'. Nor was he a writer. Words failed him and he rarely tried to write anything. He was among people he considered more creative and knowledgeable than he.

He brought with him a horror mystery novel that he had purchased, hugging it to his chest like a shield as he stepped inside. He was wondering if there would be anyone else who had read the same book that he could talk to. He wasn't finished yet and he was interested in hearing what other people had to say about it. He was too nervous to go up to and greet anyone, though, feeling like the odd man out in what was undoubtedly a bunch of people who already knew each other.

[Airy arrives to the meeting looking a little nervous. She has a set of papers in her arms which are titled The Bunny Chronicles: Beneath the Waves. It's the first draft and while she's a decent writer she wants the input of others.

It's meant to be a children's story though she'll be adapting the concept into a movie with Dave which will most likely not be a children's story.

She walks up to the first person she see's and tries to keep her usually cheer optimism and a confident smile.] Excuse me. Can you read this and tell me your thoughts? I promise it's short. [She adds the last part hastily not wanting to bother anyone for to long.]

[Bracken was happy to see a familiar face, especially someone who had said they were friends. When asked to read her makeshift book, and seeing it wasn't excessively long, he was happy to accept. He found himself a seat and a table and held it up to read, oddly comfortable with staying silent and concentrating on it. While he read the text, his eyes wandered away to the pictures of the bunnies.

He spent some time on each page, and seemed to flip them sluggishly, though his demeanor didn't seem to show that he was losing interest. His eyes stayed on the story, and his legs kicked lazily under the chair.

About 20 minutes later he finished and looked up at her with a smile.]

I-I like it. Are... Are there going to be more pictures?

Edited 2016-07-24 04:43 (UTC)

[robin had come in to the store later in order to check on levy, since she just wanted to have a chat with her friend after all the excitement. robin walked into the store, looking around, and that was when she spotted her friend on the ground.]

...Levy?! [robin darted over to her and she dropped to the ground beside her. she scooped up her friend and she placed her hand against levy's forehead.]

Gods.... you're burning up... Levy, can you hear me?

[Being both quiet and familiar with Ted, he was more than happy to listen to the other man, but that didn't make him any less confused when he did. Ted often seemed to talk quite a bit, and it wasn't hard for him to lose Bracken on the details. And that was closer to colloquial speech. When Ted started reciting... something, he heard many words he recognized but they didn't seem to come out in an order that made any sense to him.

The Bible was a title he would recognize, but he knew very little about it beyond that. All he could do was stare with a stunned expression, a deer in headlights look, until finally he asked..]

Wh... What does that mean?

Edited 2016-07-24 05:01 (UTC)

Certainly! [Ted would receive her draft happily. His eyes were scanning the words quickly, yet very deliberately. His expression remains largely neutral, with a light twinge of disappointment here and there. When it's over, he offered a friendly smile. Well, she asked for his thoughts. So he'd take the trouble of giving them. All of them.]

An interesting tale. Let's go over it, say, paragraph by paragraph. [He cleared his throat.]

The title isn't quite right. It may be a chronicle, singular, but certainly not chronicles. Something simpler would be more elegant; like "A Bunny Fable". Many of the best stories start out so simply.

The phrase "dared to look" is interesting. Is there some peril near the beach? It's very suggestive. The last line might go better like: "each had their own unique color."

With regards to colors...the blue bunny's sadness, the brown's enterprise, and the yellow's joy are readily sensible. I confess I don't quite see the mischief in green or the duality in red's sloth and energy. Indeed, red having two traits to everyone's one is dissonant. They should all be of a kind; more naturally poetic that way.

[Slight laugh] I like the idea of shells being white, or blank, only to be painted upon. It's almost sinister, as if white things were only so much canvas to be replaced with something else. Hah, what if a white bunny, most natural of all, should see them conquering his domain?[He'll skip the next paragraph for now, moving on to the Eureka moment in the next.]

Now, when they make violet--blue and purple, that is--why does it radiate? There's something interesting here I can't quite pierce; as if the mere act of combination made effulgence.

Ah, you'll want to avoid things like "it was beautiful" or "the amazing sight". These are things for the reader to feel, and cannot simply be told. In essence, you are telling the reader to do your work for you. I trust you can paint with words well enough to achieve the effect.

Oh, lest I forget: It's lovely how the brown bunny is the first to capitalize on the novelty. It avoids beautifully the cliche of the hard-working being dullards. [The rest is passed over. There were a few grammatical errors, like a missing possessive apostrophe and "they" instead of "that", but Ted's not big on details. He's big on big pictures, which he'd lament]

This...is a sadder story than I anticipated. The people in it seemed to go to the beach, and tire of it, not for its own sake, but for...collection? Mere novelty? How terrible. Like a man should quit his job for always having the same pay, or divorce his wife for having the same eye color. And they are reunited, not for love of any especially beachy quality, but for something else. [Ted looked concerned. Somebody was deeply affected by this seemingly innocent children's story]

It's just...men were made to enjoy rhythm. The alternation between constancy and change. Every year the same, every season different from the one before. A sane and eternal truth. The men in this tale were moved from constancy to change, yet...well, one wonders if they appreciate the whole thing. Perhaps that's farther than the story's meant to go.

Heh, excuse my didact. Speaking of which, the story's own didact is shocking in its unexpectedness. Cooperation, I take it, is the moral of the story, yet I can't recall the bunnies ever being especially divided or proud or lonely. Like a bolt from the blue. [Now he's done, handing the script back to her. That was probably a bit harsh, so he thought to end with something comforting.]

Thank you for sharing that with me. On the whole I think your story is good; there's something in it. It just needs a little more refinement to bring it forth and remove dross from gold.

Edited 2016-07-24 13:12 (UTC)

[Ted's always more than happy to delve into The Book.]

Glad you asked! First, some context.

That comes from the apostle Paul, fresh from instructing a fledgling church about the primacy of love over many things, like knowledge, for the knowledge of divine things is sufficient, but not yet complete.

Have you ever heard the phrase "information asymmetry"? It merely means the situation arising from one party knowing more than the other. In this case, God knows more about us than we. Indeed, the Jews, the forerunners to the Christians Paul is addressing, believed that one would die if they ever looked God in the face, so radiant is He. Even looking at God's back would blind.

That was the Old Testament. This is the New Testament, were men could draw nearer to God. In that vein, Paul looked forward to a more glorious future, where they would finally know God as completely as God knew them. They'd be light enough to see Him, face to face. In that phrase, Paul wonderfully and succinctly anticipates a coming completeness. The information, at last, will become symmetrical.

Edited 2016-07-24 05:49 (UTC)

[He stared again. Ted was talking about things he only vaguely knew of, as if he'd heard of them in another life. Words like "Jew" and "Christian" sort of had meaning to them, in that he knew they were religions, but he couldn't attribute much information to them beyond that.]

Who... Who is Paul?

[Really, in his time with his friends the topic of religion rarely came up, and he never delved into it. Nor did he think too hard about joining any organized group. He had formed some beliefs of his own and didn't consider it further than that.]

[Ted is never discouraged by any bewilderment, so long as one's curiosity held fast. He'd explain tirelessly, without loss in enthusiasm]

The Apostle Paul was one of the first and, arguably, the most instrumental in spreading the gospel of Christianity and getting it off the ground. It was all the more striking, for he was previously one of its most ardent enemies.

You see, Christianity's arrival was not well-received, most fully demonstrated with the crucifixion of Christ, its titular founder. He was raised later, of course, but even so, the world was none too happy with its adherents. Chief among the faith's enemies were the Pharisees: a group of Jews fanatically devoted to the letter of the Law, but not its spirit. Paul, who was known as "Saul" at first, was one such. He'd travel far and wide to arrest and persecute the Church, until God saw fit to strike him blind and correct his course.

So an enemy became an ally, and what an ally! After that, he endured the sort of trouble he was so intent on giving, all while sewing and tending to church after church and converting the nations. That was when he was given a new name, "Paul", for he was a new man promoting a new faith.

Edited 2016-07-24 06:19 (UTC)

[Airy has to force herself not to watch him as he reads. She's nervous and as far as children books go, she isn't sure how it is. She used to be a child, sure, but that doesn't mean she can write for them.

Maybe she should have made it all rhymed or made the moral of the story more than just working together. The pictures aren't very good either but then those aren't even hers. Her skills extend to clumsily drawn stick figures at best.]

Ah you do? Um... I don't know. I can't draw bunnies.

[She chews on her lower lip trying to think of a solution.]

Do you think there should be more pictures? Bigger ones?

Is that a good book?

[Levy flashes him a smile.]

I love books like that though I don't always fine good ones. [It's a guilty pleasure of hers.]

Sorry, I'm Levy. It's nice to meet you.

[He doesn't have to know a lot about books or an avid reader to arrive. All are welcome.]

[Levy is small though without helping Robin she's still very heavy.]

Robin? Yeah... I'm fine I just feel... dizzy.

[Her head lolls to the side as she tries her best to look up at Robin. The room is spinning and she can't deny that she feels warm.]

[Levy smiles as Ted begins talking with people. She has a feeling that there are those who will take him in stride and others will simply walk away. She steps closer to him, waiting for him to be on his own before approaching.]

Are you enjoying yourself?

[She knows what books he's most interested in talking about. They had worked together for some time.]

[Ted has a look of comic alarm]

"Goodness, no! Enjoy myself? I should hope not!" [Ted laughed. People really need to stop saying that.]

"But I'm enjoying all this, certainly. Bracken, the bigger blonde, was asking me about Corinthians; an especially arresting novelty, coming from a mage. That's enough to make one's day on its own. But the day is still young; I'm looking forward to what other scripts and scribes fall into my lap.

How about yourself, Levy? Is this shaping up the way you hoped?"

It's a saying Ted.

[Her lips relax into an easy smile.] I'm glad you're enjoying this.

I think so. As long as people are having fun then yes. I think that it's great to be able to talk about the literary world.

[Oh boy. He was trying, but it felt like he was getting the middle of the story. He stared, and didn't try to be rude, but he was completely lost and he wasn't sure he could catch up. So after Ted's explanation he let out a weak...]

O-Oh...

[There was a lot going on with people he didn't know and group he didn't know and people changing names and something about being raised after he made a religion. Was a religion established when he was a baby? How was he raised later...?

He glanced at the ground and fidgeted.]

I... I don't know much, about things like that.

[Giving critique was hard for him because he didn't want to say anything that might potentially make her sad or upset her. When she asked him he paused for a moment, wondering if he'd been too hard on her, hoping he hadn't said something bad.

He tried to continue as vaguely and softly as possible.]

I... I think they would be nice. I just... I think they would, they would be cute, th-that's all.

I'm B-Bracken.

I... I think so... I'm not done yet.

[Not due to lack of effort. He was somewhere in the beginning/middle and had no idea what the answer to the mystery was yet.

Uncovering it, he held it for her to see.]

I-I like that the main... the main character has long, blond h-hair. Sh-She's like my friend.

Do you know how to draw? Or someone who does?

[She isn't opposed to the idea but it isn't in her bag of tricks.]

[Levy's smile widens.]

I've picked up book for similar reasons. Will you tell me how it is? If it's good I'd love to read it.

[She talks in an easy friendly manner.]

I like books and I can suggest things that you like if you let me know what you like.

[He shook his head slowly.]

I... don't know a-anyone. And... And I've never drawn.

[He nodded affirmatively, though she's have to wait a while for him to make it to the end.]

Th-Thistle... He liked the horror m-mysteries. And when, when we were all together, s-sometimes... We would read lots of d-different books.

[His tastes had been born from other people's, following along with what they liked. Of course, it didn't mean that he didn't enjoy what they read as a group. He found them interesting, and when he was with friend they could all talk about it.]

If you've never done it then you don't know how good you draw.

[Airy smiles and lightly bumps her shoulder against his.]

It's worth trying once right?

I... I could try...

[For him trying something completely new was, of course, completely anxiety-inducing. He tended to assume he wouldn't do very well, and his pictures would be embarrassing to show Airy.]

I... I don't know if they'll be good enough, but... but I'll try...

[He did want to make her happy.]

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