Yes, you heard it here first, folks: the semi-annual Purim RP, first seen in 2014, last seen in 2018, is coming right now to a Board near you! Namely, this one. Get your tickets now, and save big! Don't miss this holiday extravaganza!
I'm just kidding. You don't need tickets to participate in this RP. In fact, you don't even need Permission! But that's all covered in the rules section further down.
If you're wondering, So what is this Purim thing, anyway? look no further! Or rather, please feel free, but here's a brief explanation to get you started!
Purim is a Jewish holiday which is celebrated in the spring. This year, it falls on March 10th, beginning the evening of March 9th (in the Jewish calendar, the day begins and ends at sunset rather than midnight. This is why you get things like big Friday night dinners for Shabbat, instead of everything being on Saturday).
Purim commemorates the salvation of the Jewish people living in Persia and Medea at the time of King Ahasuerus (who is generally identified with Xerxes I). Essentially, Ahasuerus fell out with his first wife, Vashti, and found a new one in Esther, a young Jewish woman living in the capital city Shushan. Upon the advice of her uncle-cousin (there's some debate) Mordechai, who raised her, she hid her religion at the palace. This eventually enabled her to defeat the plan of Haman, the king's adviser, who decided to commit mass genocide of the entire kingdom's Jewish population via a decree telling the rest of the citizens to get their murder on on a specific day. He got this day by going and having lots cast before him. That's where the name of the holiday comes from: ‘Purim’ literally means ‘lots.’ Esther risked her life approaching the king to ask for a favor: her own life and the lives of her people. Rather liking Esther by that point, Ahasuerus demanded to know who had dared to pose this threat, and Haman's plan unraveled. The Scroll of Esther, which tells the Purim story, ends with Mordechai and Esther instituting the holiday and its customs (and then a coda about Ahasuerus' new taxes and Mordechai's status as his new adviser—chapter ten is very short).
Why make an RP out of this holiday? Well, it lends itself very well to RPing. Purim parties are popular in the Real World, and traditions include dressing up—yes, all ages—eating a particular type of cookies called hamantaschen, and (optionally) drinking “until you can’t tell the difference between Haman and Mordechai.” Singing is also frequent, as are ‘Purim spiels’ (little plays retelling the Purim story, often made into musicals, very often performed by kids). The less RP-fitting parts are giving charity, hearing the Scroll of Esther (aka ‘the Megillah’, which...means ‘scroll’) read in the evening and morning (someday maybe I'll actually put up the little recordings I thought up a couple years ago!), and delivering little gifts of food and drink (often hamantaschen and grape juice as a standard, but they can get wild apparently) to friends and neighbors.
A quick note: costumes! Sounds a bit like Halloween, yes? Well, the tendency here is not generally towards scary or revealing costumes. Popular choices (especially for children) include characters from the Purim story, though pretty much everything else gets in there too, including objects and favorite book or movie characters. And yes, some people don’t dress up, or just wear a mask or headband or something odd and remarkable—but dressing up definitely doesn’t end around the teenage years, and costumes can get very creative. I once saw someone dressed as a relevant phase of the moon. If I remember correctly, he won the adult costume contest.
At any rate: We’re back! And here we go...
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As ever, the rules/guidelines are as follows:
-Everyone is welcome. That means new agents, old agents, reluctant agents, enthusiastic agents, agents who wandered in by mistake…everyone. It also means minis, kids, and possibly pets. Free-To-Use Agents are also good.
-This is newbie-inclusive! While I know some newbies (often depending on just how new they are) have agents they’re thinking about, many other newbies don’t—and, well, this is Purim. It’s a party. Everyone should be able to come! So…everyone includes Boarders, with the condition that you’re incognito! Pretend to be your costumes, pretend to be newly-recruited agents, whatever you like—as long as you remember that the vast majority of PPC HQ’s inhabitants don’t know the Board exists (and would forget if they found out). Of course, this isn’t just for newbies; if you’re not a newbie and you think it would be fun, write yourself in! The same rules apply, though. (This doesn't happen every year, but you're certainly welcome to go for it!)
-An important reminder: please remember that the Constitution is in effect. If an author (not a character) expresses discomfort with something happening in an interaction with their character, please pay attention even if the thing in question doesn't bother you.
-On canon-compliance: this one is up to you. For my part, I take most of what my agents get up to in this RP as canon, to the point of working the occasional reference into various works in progress. Referencing relatively vague details that didn't make it to the RP but are headcanoned by the author(s) of the characters is probably also something I'll end up doing eventually—such as, "I can't believe you thought that was going to work. Just because you dressed up as Jack Sparrow doesn't mean—" "Captain Jack—" "Oh, get over yourself. You're not even in costume anymore. Seriously, why did you think swinging in like Tarzan to grab all the hamantaschen was a good idea?" "...I was hungry?" "You knocked over the table! My favorite hamantaschen got trampled!" …Anyway, you can call this canon or not (or anything in between) for your agents as you wish! It’s entirely up to you.
-Have fun! It is Purim, after all, and Purim is a time for celebration. So let’s celebrate!
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-Note: This Purim RP, while RL-wise beginning a couple days before the actual holiday, is in-universe happening at the appropriate time. (Boarders inside the RP can mention time-travel if you like, though.)
-Another note: As ever, I'm available for questions, especially about anything in this post that isn't clear enough or sparks curiosity. I'm all for cultural exchange!
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And finally…the opener! Also in grand tradition :) Fun fact: this one features one of the unfortunately few appearances of my Permission team! I finally figured out where they are seven years later. (Also, thank you to Neshomeh for looking it over!)
“I don’t know if I’m in the mood this year,” Charlie Shoe said quietly. She sat on the scorched couch that had been a fixture of Response Center 29 for some years now, feet kicked out one on top of the other on the coffee table. Its glass top was smudged; neither she nor her partner, Brenda Loringham, had bothered trying to keep it perfectly clean for nearly a year now. It got several swipes with a cloth once a week or so, and a proper cleaning with glass spray here and there. The smudges always returned quickly, since they now used it as their dining table as well. Something to do with the accidentally burned kitchen table getting closer and closer to complete ash the longer they gave up on it being anything other than a location to try to balance mini-Balrog meals on before feeding.
Brenda looked up from the knife she was sharpening. For once, it was a chef’s knife rather than mission gear. “Really? What happened to all your ‘yay, Sara Lance!’ babbling?” She waved the knife for emphasis. “You even found a White Canary costume.”
Charlie picked at the white leather halter top. “Yeah, I mean—Sara’s awesome, yay, and I’m liking the costume—especially these boots—but...I don’t know if I’m really in a party mood.”
“Well, tough,” Brenda said. She put the knife down, eyeing her twenty-three-year-old partner with brown eyes that were nearly as sharp as the knife’s edge. “I’m going, and you’re in costume, so you’re coming, too.”
“Right,” Charlie muttered.
Brenda shook her head, and kicked her own booted feet onto the edge of the table. “What’s wrong with you? Usually you get all bouncy around the Purim party. It’s annoying.”
“Funny,” Charlie told her. There was a roughly ten year age difference between her and Brenda, and they’d had a difficult start to their partnership due to Charlie’s having been an OFUM student and Brenda’s hatred of Suethors. Still, they’d come a long way since 2013: in seven years, they’d learned to live together, work together, even tease each other. In even Charlie’s most optimistic opinion, they’d probably never actually be friends: still, as colleagues and roommates, they’d managed to build a reasonably solid relationship. “I’m just...not really feeling it. And I don’t know why, before you ask.”
Brenda voiced a guess anyway, born of contrariness and a long-held impression of Charlie as the sort of teenager-turned-young adult who probably enjoyed flirting and parties and all that stuff Brenda had never had much patience for. “Boy trouble?”
Charlie looked briefly startled. “What? No.”
“Girl trouble?” Brenda tipped her head at Charlie’s costume when her partner turned confused eyes on her. “You’re the one who decided to dress up as a bisexual character this year.”
“You’re going as the Phantom of the Opera,” Charlie pointed out. “Should I start looking around for curly-haired ingenues in your life?”
“Touché,” Brenda conceded after a moment. “Okay, so it’s something else. I don’t see what, though; everything’s been going pretty well.”
“I don’t know, I guess—” Charlie sighed. “I mean, I was talking to some friends from high school, you know? They’re...I mean, Tanya, Jim, and Katie are graduating college, Mikayla’s about to graduate with her master’s next year, and, and Chris actually has a kid. Chris. He’s in a completely different point of his life, you know? And what am I doing?”
“Protecting the multiverse?”
“Well, yeah, but—” Charlie waved a hand. “I live in a shared apartment, have a job with awful hours that doesn’t pay me much of anything, don’t have any higher education—”
“You know how to use a bow, sword, gun, and daggers,” Brenda pointed out. “You even mostly passed lightsaber training. That’s pretty useful.”
“Not in the real world.”
Brenda rolled her eyes. “Okay, then leave. Go to college—”
“I didn’t finish high school, Brenda.”
“Then...do that first,” Brenda said.
“I could just get a GED, I wouldn’t actually have to go back to high school,” Charlie said quickly.
It didn’t completely head off Brenda’s amusement at the thought, though it did lessen it a bit.
“I don’t even know what I’d study, though. I don’t think I could even write a good essay—and I definitely can’t pay for it, because, oh, right, my job, that thing I’ve been doing for the past seven years—it doesn’t pay!”
“It pays in Sue artefacts.”
Charlie snorted. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure I won’t have any trouble finding a college that’d take the Extra Sparkly Ring of Power and some Totally Natural Color Changing Hair for tuition. While I’m at it, maybe I can find a landlord who wants swirly lightsabers or magical trunks!”
“I mean, we’ve been pretty happy with the magical trunk,” Brenda said with a shrug. She glanced at it: the Potterverse badfic rescue was made to blend into its surroundings, but had also been designated as magically sparkly, which somewhat negated the effect. Unlike Mad-Eye Moody’s seven-compartment trunk, it had only two: a completely ordinary interior, which they used as a weapons chest, and what was essentially a wealth-minded Sue’s version of the Room of Requirement. It took requests, but everything it produced was lavish enough to make Brenda wince. Charlie, despite her somewhat frugal upbringing, just found it amusing, and had spent more time than Brenda wanted to know about asking for item after item. Apparently, it made wooden cooking spoons with inlaid gold and diamond designs, and the most luxurious prison cell ever dreamed up.
Predictably, Charlie smiled. “Yeah, okay, some landlords would probably love stuff like that, but...I mean, I can’t exactly use it.”
Brenda had to admit that was true, and reluctantly said so before falling silent.
“Why not convert some uncanonical Galleons?” she suggested eventually. “Those are Sue artefacts, too, kind of—some agents take them, anyway. They just disappear otherwise, and they’re good for hanging around in Diagon Alley or using at Rudi’s. Why not save up a bunch of those and say it’s from work? It’s not like that wouldn’t be true.”
Charlie blinked at her. “I...huh. Yeah, I guess I could do that, couldn’t I?”
Brenda shrugged. “Sure.”
“I still don’t know what I’d study,” Charlie said, but she looked more thoughtful than mopey now.
Brenda took it as the win that it obviously was.
“Huh. Still. Thanks, Brenda.” She got up, straightened her utility belt, and slipped the bo staffs into place on her back. Her blonde hair, several shades lighter than Sara Lance’s from a long time spent in the sun on a recent Pirates of the Caribbean mission, had been curled into loose beach waves; she tossed it back over her shoulders. “Okay, you coming? We have a party to go to!”
If Brenda’s smile was a little smug, she wasn’t about to be the one to bring it up. She put on her mask and got to her feet, straightening her tie and tugging her coat down a little. “Of course I’m coming. Let’s go, Lance.” She paused halfway to the door. “Unless you have a good one-liner?”
Charlie frowned slightly. “Uh…”
Brenda rolled her eyes. “Never mind. Come on, newbie.”
“Not a newbie,” Charlie said, grinning briefly. “And I’m thinking.”
“Think while you walk,” Brenda suggested, and suited actions to words.
“We have a party to get to, so put on your costumes and get ready to drink,” Charlie said when they were halfway down the hallway outside their RC. Her attempt at Sara’s peppy pre-mission tone was actually pretty close. “We’ve got some hamantaschen to eat!”
Brenda laughed (too rare these days; should she be doing some self-reflection as well?) and squeezed her partner’s shoulder briefly. “Aye aye, captain!”
Charlie glanced at her and grinned.