Welcome to Gaia! ::

Destiny City’s newest speed dating experiment caters to those who are sick of the apps and ready to try their hand at finding a face-to-face spark - efficiently.

The experience revolves around a custom-built app. Prior to the event, participants (adults only!) fill out their profiles, then check in at the door. The room is filled with small tables lit with candles and fairy lights, and there are drinks and appetizers circulating. When the event begins, everyone is simultaneously paired up by a super-secret algorithm, and their phone screens shine with a brightly colored shape. It’s easy: hold up your phone, find the person holding up the matching symbol on their screen, sit down at the closest table, and receive their bio plus a randomly-generated conversation starter. Spend five or so minutes getting to know each other until the timer goes off, rate your date with a heart or a frown, and get a new match to repeat the process all over again. At the end of the event, all participants will receive a special in-app contact card for everyone that has matched with two hearts.

As an incentive and to help spread hype, the app developers have given away a handful of free spots at the event, too, which means that even if you’re not looking for a date, you’re at least getting your hands on some free canapes…

Which is how your character has found themselves across a table from someone whose nametag says heart Elaine: a full-figured and short-statured but assertive bottle blonde with a red lip and a bandage dress that is not shy about showcasing her most appreciable assets. She has a smile that’s quick and genuine, and offers an impeccably-manicured handshake that would make any 1980s businessman weep with appreciation.



Goofy-a** speed dating thread, anyone who meets the above requirements can join - or anyone who doesn’t! We can say the app is glitchy and keeps pairing up people who shouldn’t be, because that’s also funny.

Feel free to introduce a conversation starter, or Elaine can. Put your character’s name in bold at the top of your post, quote me, and I promise I will reply to everyone (drabble-style). EZ reg recs for all! No need to wait your turn for anyone else, I’ll RP with everyone simultaneously.

If you’re stuck for ideas but want to generate one to get the convo going quickly, I suggest this website and selecting fun or funny from the dropdown menu. Feel free to make up your own totally batshit one, however.

Conversation can run for what seems like the equivalent of five or ten minutes, or until you have hit your desired wordcount/it seems to have naturally fizzled out. If you’re done but not in a place to close let me know and I’ll close it on my next post.

But if your character wants to rate Elaine a heart on the app, maybe that would be fun to lead into a future RP too ^_~

NOTE: If you want to use this thread to have other people meet at this event (with their permission! Don’t just dive bomb someone please lmao) feel free to make use of it and just label your posts so I don’t reply to them by mistake biggrin

Civs only, of course!

Rowan Trumoia

Rowan sighed quietly to herself as she walked into the event. There might be some god somewhere who knew why she allowed her sisters to talk her into this, but she did not. The latest in a string of well-intentioned but monumentally awkward attempts at setting up their little sister took the form of a new dating app. Speed dating was not something the young woman would ever have considered, so her presence here was solely the result of not wanting Laurel and Willow to feel like they’d wasted their time and she silently chided herself for her unwillingness to find a way out of this. She’d never so much as dated another person, so introducing herself to so many people in such a short period of time was more than a little bit daunting. Hopefully whoever else showed up would be interested in befriending someone so completely out of her element. Maybe a not at all uneasy violinist was just what somebody needed in their life.

She was tapping slightly anxiously on her phone’s screen, as the symbol popped up. With an almost forgotten piece of bruschetta atop a cocktail napkin in one hand she walked over to the attractive blonde at her table. The woman looked a few years older than Rowan and was utterly gorgeous. With effort, the younger woman made sure that her eyes didn’t linger too long when she glanced at her nametag. Based on what Elaine’s profile said, Rowan suspected that the algorithm had made a mistake in pairing them. She did love dogs, but casual dating was not what she was looking for. Still, as accidental acquaintances went, Elaine seemed intriguing. Meeting Elaine’s firm, self-assured handshake with her own gentle grasp she offered a slightly self-conscious smile.

“Hi, I’m Rowan. I’ve never been to an event like this before so I’m really not sure how it’s supposed to go. It’s nice to meet you, Elaine.” The redhead laughed softly as she read the conversation starter. It was not exactly what she would have expected in this context, but given the fact that she’d never done something like this before, she couldn’t say for certain how out of the ordinary it was. “It’s a bit of a silly one. ‘If there was a zombie outbreak in this room right now, how would you react?’ ”

Elaine, by contrast, looked like she might be the sort of person who was only dimly aware of the idea of social anxiety as a concept that applied strictly to other people. She made an expressive face, halfway between a grimace and a laugh.

(Internally, she thought, this was a difficult question to answer with her usual honesty. What would she do? Well, turn into a medieval pulp novel cover babe and hit them with lightning bolts. But she was not Joy tonight, she was Elaine, and she answered accordingly.)

"I hope I'm not supposed to be protecting you in this scenario, or we're both screwed," she said with a little laugh. "I think I'd get chewed up so early I'd be in the credits as Recurring Zombie #4, or something. But maybe you can protect me," she added, with a generously flirtatious wiggle of her shoulder. "How are you with improvised weapons? Can you brain a zombie with a cocktail fork?"

Her face lit up with genuine pleasure as Myth spoke.

"I'm down there at least once a month," she said, animated. "Not so much for oil lamps - old postcards and letters, things like that - books with good marginalia, you know? But I would bet anything I've poked around in your shop before." She wrinkled her nose, apparently a habitual expression of thoughtfulness. "But I like old photographs, too - especially ones with notes on the back. I've always thought it must be like a little miracle to get your hands on an old camera and find some film still in there that you could revive. How often does that really happen?"

The comment about rats had her shuddering with a little laugh.

"Let's hope these app guys know what they're doing, because I'm definitely going to hit you up on that offer," she said, glancing down at the timer counting down on her screen. "And who knows - maybe one of these days you'll open up an old camera that's been in someone's attic and instead of rat nests you'll find irrefutable proof of Bigfoot in there."

"I respect a resourceful woman," said Elaine with mock gravity. "I think maybe with your quick thinking we might stand a chance of making it out alive, at least if we can run faster than the people next to us." She snuck an exaggerated glance at the next table, as if to assess their potential athleticism, her face breaking out into a grin. "But I'm not sure I'd want to. You know? I like getting my nails done twice a month, and maybe a zombie outbreak would put a dent in salon hours. Although." She paused, and then laughed ruefully. "I don't know. Destiny City is pretty crazy on a good day. It probably wouldn't even make the buses run late, don't you think?"

"Don't I know it," she said grimly. "I've only been here a couple of years and the s**t you see around two AM sometimes..."

She trailed off, but remembering where she was, shook her head with a bright smile before she could betray any genuine distress. "And yet, here I am. I guess you get used to it. How long have you been here? Longer than me, I bet, if you're already thinking about how to turn a janitorial closet into an armory on the fly." She laughed. "Or maybe you're just naturally better suited to the twilight zone that is Destiny City."

"Kentucky," she said, wrinkling her nose in an expressive way that seemed to immediately indicate her not-very-high-opinion of her home state. "Backwoods, you know? Down in the holler, type thing." As she said it she allowed the faintest twinge of a drawl to creep in around the edges of her voice, with a rueful grin. "Worst you saw at two AM out there was like - coyotes. But also, if you wanted a taco at ten PM on a Tuesday you were out of luck. There's trade-offs," she said, with a laugh. "You're lucky to have had access to 24-hour convenience stores and food trucks your whole life, even if the weird-stuff price seems a little high sometimes. You can go get Indian food any time you want!"

She said this like it was something that, even now, was a bit of a miracle to be marveled at. For all her confidence and easy sociability, it was easy to tell that in some ways you couldn't entirely take the hillbilly out of the girl, even if you could take the girl out of the hills.