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 Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2018 3:23 pm
Welcome to Team AI's Secret Santa!This is going to be a drabble-style roleplay. There's a few ways you can do a drabble roleplay, but the idea is that it's not exactly linear and multiple 'events' can happen in one thread sort of simultaneously! The idea behind it is to allow people to respond to things at their own pace and to create more scenes that happen around the same time but aren't necessarily connected! Some examples, used with permission from Bee: One, TwoTo keep track of things, please make sure to give your drabble segment a bolded title and keep that at the top of your post so people can keep track of which one they're responding to! Not every 'drabble' needs to be responded to nor do you need to feel obligated to respond to any that are posted. This is meant to be a relaxed, go at your own pace sort of thing and if you have any questions, let me know! I'll do my best to respond!
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Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2018 3:23 pm
Assignments are as follows:
Jade is Cerissé's Secret Santa
Reid is Jade's Secret Santa
Ella is Emilia's Secret Santa
Emilia is Ella's Secret Santa
Cerissé is Reid's Secret Santa
If they choose to participate later, Yuri, Ari and Delilah will be randomized among each other or may assume that they had a ~mystery~ NPC employee and they are assumed to having participated ICly (unless told otherwise) so that they're not left out but are not expected to contribute to this thread unless they (their players) have time.
((If you are confused by the way the assignments are listed, here's another explanation.
Jade is Cerissé's SS and Cerissé's is Reid's SS, that means Jade buys Cerissé a gift and Cerissé buys Reid a gift.))
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Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2018 3:24 pm
Solo List:
Link
Here's a handy-dandy list of links of possible solos or rps related to purchasing a secret santa gift that didn't end up getting drabbled. This is certainly not an expectation for anyone, but merely a place to put them for viewing purposes for those things that are related but aren't getting rped out here~
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Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2018 3:34 pm
Assignments
When everyone arrived at their desks they'd find an envelope sitting on their keyboard with their name neatly scrawled across. When they opened the contents they'd find a holiday card with the following information:
Quote: Happy Holidays! In the spirit of the holidays, Argent Industries is doing a Secret Santa! All employees are expected to participate and you'll find out who your Secret Santa is below! In the spirit of giving, please be mindful of your spending and keep it to a reasonable dollar amount. Gifts are to be delivered to your gift recipient by the Dec 14th! Please use this opportunity to get more familiar with your co-workers here as they're your AI family!
There was likely to be grumbling about a mandatory gift exchange from some people and excitement from other but one thing was clear.
Everyone was participating. Even the boss.
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Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2018 11:00 am
Musical Notes
Jade hadn't done the assigning herself, even if she'd been the one to create the list. Instead, she'd handed it off to one of the secretaries on another floor so that the randomization could be dealt with in an unbiased manner. Plus, she wanted to be surprised by whomever had gotten her as that was half the fun of a secret santa.
When she'd gotten Cerissé, she had been surprised but delighted, because it made things easy. There was a part of her that lamented not getting one of her newer hires instead of her friend, but she wasn't going to argue about whom the draw had provided her with. Besides, as their boss, she'd provide them with small gifts on behalf of the company regardless. Sure, she'd personalize them a bit but they'd mostly be generic.
And while there was a spending limit on gifts, for those that had tighter budgets, Jade wasn't going to adhere to that. She was the boss, she could do as she pleased.
Which meant that after her major duties at the officer were done, she'd set out to find the perfect gift. Or what she thought might be the perfect gift.
At some point she'd hit up every single musical store, actual or themed, before she'd decided on her purchase. A new, luxurious violin case and a gift certificate for a new bow stringing, new resin and more. She'd even paid to have the box wrapped professionally, to save time, and it was left in Cerissé's practice studio for her to find with a tag that just said From: Santa but the handwriting was recognizable and it wouldn't have been difficult to deduce just who'd given her the gift.
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Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 1:41 pm
Musical NotesThere was a particular way Cerissé always kept her studio - her sanctum of solace, her palace. So whenever anything new appeared, it was going to catch her attention. Especially one so pristinely wrapped. "This must be from - " she could have guessed a few individuals, actually. Caleb, for one, but the idea left her head when she saw the writing on the card. "Hm. Santa," she half chuckled to herself, setting the card to the side to carefully sever the tape on the one side. The sight of the case inside brought a warm little flutter to her heart. It was beautiful. Not that her current one was shabby, but she'd had it for quite some time and....perhaps the upgrade would do her beloved violin the justice it deserved. Especially for such a nice case. The gift card was given an appraising look, but it would be for later things. Despite having come in for practice, Cerissé still took the time to appreciate how her instrument looked in the new case, even going so far as to snap a picture of it and sending it off to Jade. With a blithely innocent message attached. Then, she left it next to her seat while she set about her actual reason for being in the studio - to play. Nuxaz To: Jade [ViolinCase.jpg] Santa certainly knows how to gift a girl right! Look now nice my violin looks in it! Cerissé wasn't a particularly talented shopper when it came to the holiday season - doubly so when she was perhaps less familiar with who her giftee was than normal. She'd been given a few rough ideas to work with when she had asked around about her recipient, though. One of which a woman of Cerissé's talents was more than ready to work with. Doubly so when she'd received her gift from.....'Santa'....and realized quickly she didn't exactly have to limit her budget if Jade wasn't going to. This was one thing she would not be cheap with. The shopping part was a bit more difficult, but a few searches of the specialty shops in Destiny City had her well on her way. Even if she had to take a Lyft and try to not work herself into a slight panic in the back seat. Everybody just drove so poorly. She'd already known that, however. Perhaps she'd gone a little bit overboard. But wrapped so nicely, so delicately, with perhaps more frill and flare than one usually would with a gift exchange, it would make quite the little presentation when she delivered it down to the mail room. A large card with some pre-printed sentiment inside of it would have to do in place of any personalization, but the contents of her nicely wrapped box would perhaps repent for such a sin. While not the newest and most fancy of model, the record player would do well with the carefully selected records that Cerissé had picked out for Reid. Something to add a little dimension to his listening, as far as she was concerned.
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Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 7:58 pm
Gifts for GamersEmilia really did appreciate working at a place that was supportive enough of its employees to have little holiday traditions like this Secret Santa. She was even happier when the names were drawn. Ella was the tech whiz, which had seemed interesting enough until Emmy had realized her job was mostly writing strings of brackets and numbers. Still, Ella was also a girl who knew her way around a game, and that alone made Emmy want to get to know her better. The main thing that was annoying about all this was the lack of a clear price point. The original notice had said to keep things reasonable, but technology was not cheap and Emilia was not by any means the type to give a shoddy present. Still, it seemed likely that a salaried environment like this the definition of reasonable would be different than it had been back in college, so she waited. She watched until presents started to appear around the office, actual substantial gifts, and then she made her way off to the stores. She remembered when she and Ella had first been hired throwing around the idea of a gaming corner to corporate. They'd been denied, officially, but Emmy thought she could maybe do something smaller scale. The next day, she brought in her professionally wrapped package and placed it on Ella's desk. Inside was a gaming keyboard that could be backlit with a few color options. It would have seemed a little thin on its own, but luckily accessories were surprisingly affordable. There was a matching mouse, sleek and with a glowing honeycomb pattern. To finish things off was a fresh mousepad that was pleasantly plush.
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Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 12:00 am
Gifts for Gamers
She shouldn't have been surprised to find something on her desk midway through December--after all, it was the holiday season, and she only spent so much time seated in her cubicle to stand guard over who was coming and going. Still, she set down her can of radioactive energy to let her hands graze across the precise wrap job of the paper, wondering who's handiwork she was about to shred to pieces. It was not an artistry she mourned for long--with a childish grin, she tore into the package, making sure to save a sizable paper ball to toss over her wall into Coveyland.
Her eyes lit up, assessing the keyboard and its specs, the glow that it would give off when properly set up. It was perhaps meant for her home rig, but no. Ella started digging under her desk for wires, breaking open the shrinkwrap plastic with her teeth. This was going to be her work desk, and she was going to shine like a glowstick. It would be glorious.
About an hour of no work productivity later, Ella sent a text to the office group chat, a selfie of her making a peace-sign over her new decked out glowy office space, complete with the scattered remains of shredded paper at her feet.
To: Boss Mom, Delilah-tful, Who Wants To Be Emilia-nnaire, Mr. Fantastic, Yuri on Ice, C++ thanks Santa, you a rockstar
Boom Clap Sound of My Gift
Ella didn't really do the whole...Christmas thing. Sure, she took a week off to spend with her family towards the start of the month, and she liked the cold weather and the bundle-up fashion and the massive, massive consumerism, but until now she'd never really had the opportunity to participate. Instead, she got eight little gifts like socks or work clothes, one for every night the candles were lit, and then it was back to class and her internship at Argent, where she'd been tasked with being someone's Santa. Hannukah Harry, maybe. The details weren't important--she just needed to get one of her officemates a sweet gift, or she'd be considered that Grinch.
No one wanted to be that Grinch, not even Ella, who quite liked the color green.
So when Ella was assigned Emilia's name, she did all the prerequisite research--facebook, instagram, and Twitch, where she sat with Emilia's speedrunning streams open for a couple of nights while she pretended she was studying for finals. Emmy's streams were okay, really, but something about the sound quality seemed a little off...which gave Ella the idea to start trawling Amazon for something she could really use.
Two days later, Ella set a large and brightly striped bag on Emilia's desk while the other girl was out to lunch, signed with a green sticky note that said 'From Franbanan-ta'. Inside the layers of tissue paper were all the essentials of a professional sound equipment--spools of cord, a small mixing interface, and a microphone rig hand-selected by Argent Industries' local music hipster herself. It wasn't exactly what Ella would call 'top of the line', but it certainly would do better for her than just a regular old headset. However, that wasn't all--at the bottom of the bag was a CD, hand-burned and titled 'Starry Tunes for a Galaxy Gal'.
It seemed Emilia had received a playlist:
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2019 4:11 am
That's a Wrap
Being a part of a Secret Santa exchange was not something Reid Covey was prepared to do when he applied to work at Argent Industries. He expected to work hard, to show that he was a valuable employee and an asset to the company. He expected to earn a decent wage and to contribute when needed to keep the company working like the well-oiled machine it was advertised as being.
Contributing in the form of finding a present for a fellow coworker, however?
Definitely not something he'd signed up for, which was probably why the exchange was mandatory and expected of him - not optional, it seemed.
To make matters worse when he opened the envelope that had been staring at him expectantly on his keyboard, reading the name beneath the message has his palms going clammy. The scripted writing in perfect lettering had his heart plummeting into the depths of his stomach.
Jade Argent.
He was responsible for giving a present to his boss. His boss. It wasn't some secretary or generic coworker who he could probably find some gift card to the local coffee shop to - no, he'd gotten the boss and with that responsibility came the unspoken burden of having to make sure it was a good present because the last person he wanted to disappoint was the woman who'd taken a chance on him and hired him, especially when his reference was some flighty pink-haired thing with no real impact in the business.
Crap.
He'd spent the better part of the day deliberating what he was going to do, especially since Miss Argent was not only the boss but she was his General to boot. He knew he couldn't mess this up, there was no way.
Pressure followed him home as he continued the debate through the walk, all the way up to the apartment building and inside. He mulled and concentrated as he ate dinner, his mother finally drawing the situation out of him like a dentist pulling stubborn teeth.
"Tell me about her, this boss of yours."
Hands folded themselves after she pushed away her bowl from in front of her. Weathered eyes twinkled, his mother clearly excited to help with this challenge of Reid's - which meant at least one of them was thrilled.
"Miss Argent?"
He had to think about it for a moment, collecting his thoughts.
"She sings, has a show on the internet. Talks and sings. Um. Short hair, blue eyes?"
Musing to herself, it was clear something was weaving itself into place judging by the older woman's expression. Offering her only child a wink, she slowly rose from the dinner table and toddled her way over to her crafting supplies.
"Perhaps something to preserve her most precious treasure, then."
His head tilted as he watched her walk, a frown plastered across his face as he stared at her curiously.
◆
Learning how to crochet was a feat in itself, he soon learned. While he wasn't exactly proud of the result, he was proud of the fact he managed to accomplish something. And, well... it wasn't as if he really had any other options in mind. Miss Argent didn't seem to be the candle sort of lady, not that it was a bad thing or anything if she liked candles, it just...
It didn't feel personal.
Still, as he tucked away the blue and white scarf into the gift bag, surrounding it with tissue paper, he scowled at the uncooperative present. It was bulkier in spots than he would have liked and the pattern went askew in a couple places. He didn't have time to go out and purchase one (and god only knew how much a handmade scarf would cost) so this horrid excuse for craftsmanship would have to work - that, and a prayer that she wouldn't find out who her secret santa was, for his sake.
"A gift from the heart is worth more than something snatched off a shelf and hastily wrapped," his mother had chided. "The power of your efforts and good will towards her will pass on into the scarf and take care of her. You'll see."
Before he walked out the door, however, his mother must have sensed his nervousness because she tugged him aside, handing him a small box. As he opened it, he immediately glanced up towards the short woman with a confused look.
"Are you sure? This is--"
"I don't have many places to wear such a thing anymore, nae adeul."
She shooed him off before he could protest, Reid feeling slightly better about the gift and humbled at the same time. His mother parting with something like that....
Well, if Miss Argent didn't like the scarf, she was bound to appreciate the latter, right?
◆
The card had been a last minute afterthought, Reid quickly scribbling out a message on the inside of the gas station purchase before making his way into the building.
Quote: One for your voice and one to keep you safe and lucky.
Happy Holidays.
Shaking his head, he laughed softly at the fact he was starting to even sound like his mother - not that that was a bad thing, truly. He slipped into the elevator thirty minutes earlier than he needed to; Reid was determined to drop his present off before Miss Argent had time to make it into her office.
With her office door disappointingly locked, he set it outside of her door, tucking it in as closely to the frame as he could to avoid nearby foot traffic. It was a sad little thing, an awkwardly wrapped present, the bow taped down into place and obviously having been wrestled with on the side of the bag. Tissue paper was crumbled inside and pulled out - it didn't want to ever cooperate with him, frustratingly enough. Inside sat a blue and white scarf - adequately made, though studying the details would reveal that the knitter was suspiciously close to beginner level.
Nestled and protected inside the scarf sat a small box. Once opened, there sat a small jade flower resting on a bed of cotton.
Nuxaz oh man, I'm even late on gift exchanges IC as I am in person, I AM TERRIBLE
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2019 4:26 am
Easy Listening
Reid had been so focused on what his present was going to be that he hadn't really considered what was going to end up being his present from one of his mysterious coworkers. When he saw the package laying there near his desk in its beautiful, practically perfect wrapping, Reid immediately felt ashamed of his own fumbled attempt at wrapping.
Clearly he was out of his league when it came to gift giving, judging in comparison to the wrapping differences alone between his gift and the one he received.
It was almost a shame to peel off the ribbons and rip through the paper. He was delicate but the paper was still torn to get to the box within it. Sacrificed for the reveal, Reid's breath was stolen as he opened the cardboard to reveal the contents inside.
He....
He really was out of his league with this gift giving business.
Whoever had drawn his name had given him a record player. He'd never owned anything that played music outside of a second-hand Walkman or CD player so receiving such an extravagant present had him immediately humbled, almost to the point of being uncomfortable.
Records were tucked along with the player, all of which were either orchestral or related to - of all things - jazz. Whoever had been assigned his name had done their due diligence and researched him almost scarily good and Reid was genuinely touched by the gesture.
He wanted so badly to run over to Miss Argent's desk and pull the present before she had time to look inside at the disappointment he'd made.
Taking cues from his other coworkers who were sending out grateful, gushing thank yous via the inner office email system, he took his time to type out a very formal note of gratitude and sent it off to All with more clicking than it probably should have taken to send an email.
To ALL To my "Secret Santa", Thank you very much for the record player. I will be listening to it as soon as I get to my apartment this evening. It was very thoughtful. I enjoy it very much. Reid Covey
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Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2019 1:27 pm
Musical Notes
The text message was not unexpected, her iPhone's screen lighting up to have the little message icon and a name that read Message from C♪. It wouldn't have been difficult to deduce that she'd been the secret santa for Cerissé.
She was by far the closest to the woman, had known her the longest, and knew that she had the most expendable income of the floor. She didn't do the payroll personally, but she had filled out all of the paperwork.
Still, she couldn't hide her grin when she'd seen the image.
demon_pachabel To C♪:Santa must've thought you've been might nice this year~
And really, with everything she'd been going through, she was grateful for Cerrisé's support. There were a lot of things to distract her now, but it was nice to have someone she trusted enough to go to when she felt like she needed to talk.
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Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2019 9:36 am
That's a Wrap
Someone had beaten her into the office. It was highly unusual for such a thing to happen, unless it was Chase-- the man never seemed to leave -- so, when Jade spotted the bag by the door frame she was surprised.
The bag was carried into her office, the door remaining propped open, and she carefully unpacked it. Tissue paper was pulled and smoothed out by red painted nails and the scarf was pulled out shortly after. Nails ran along the handiwork, Jade taking note of a few bumps and misaligned parts but it was clearly handmade and she had to appreciate the effort.
To her surprise there was something wrapped up inside.
A silver chain draped itself against slender fingers and her thumb ran over the jade pendant. She spent a long time looking at it before she opened the clasp and hung it around her neck.
The card was something simple, but she thought she might recognize the handwriting.
Confident in who her gifter was, she sent an email.
ghouliboo Email to R. Covey:I could use a little luck in the coming year. Thanks for both the scarf and the necklace, they fit perfect. Sincerely, Ally A.
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