26 - The Gods' Month

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: Helping the Heavens prepare for the yearly Meeting of the Gods
When: October 20 - 21
Where: Around the Heavens (and maybe some mortal shopping trips, too!)
Summary: Amaterasu has been told that the newly arrived residents of the Heavens want to take a bigger part in security and administration, so she's convinced her shinki to let them help with preparations for the big yearly gala. It's also time for shinki to rate their gods and gods to find out what their shinki really think of them....







Security Precautions

The white-robed shinki guards are working hard to secure the Meeting Hall for the arrival of all the gods of Japan. Hard-working shinki are scurrying everywhere! Despite Amaterasu's orders, they're still a little unsure of and standoffish towards the strangers who they're supposed to work with, but there's a lot of work to do, so they're happy to hand out jobs to small groups of newcomers before returning to their own duties.


• Help clear out any small spirits who might have sneaked back into the Meeting Hall after the spring cleaning, from sootsprites to nekomata, animal spirits from the park or well-camouflaged plant spirits.


• Check the magical writing worked into art or inlaid in wood all over the building to protect the Meeting Hall from attack, and make sure none of it is scuffed or damaged.


• Join in on the patrols around the building or spend some time guarding one of the gates. It's boring, but the shinki appreciate the help.


• Test the integrity and extent of the magical protections with glass balls that turn purple outside the protections on the Meeting Hall and clear inside them. But don't drop your glass ball! They're fragile.

Event Preparation

It's not just security that the shinki are asking newcomers to help with. They also have plenty of work to do getting ready for the festivities! The Meeting Hall floors need to be swept and scrubbed, the gardens need to be trimmed and tidied, artwork needs to be dusted, flower arrangements arranged, damaged furniture repaired and rafters cleared of cobwebs. Anyone with particularly good handwriting can help write out invitations and name cards, too.

Besides cleaning and calligraphy, there's lots of food and beverages to purchase! Grab a shopping list, a wad of cash, and head to the Near Shore to pick up the necessities. (Don't forget to keep the receipts.)

Rate Your God

Shinki have the opportunity to submit surveys on their life with their new gods before the big event, and even request a transfer if they want one. Early in the morning, every new shinki will be visited by a small white dove carrying a scroll that, when unrolled, reveals the following questionnaire:


What is your name?

What is your god's name?

How do you see your duties as a shinki?

What is your favorite part of life with your god?

What is your least favorite part of life with your god?

What advice would you like to give your god?

Do you wish to be assigned to a different god? []Y []N


Fill it out, discuss it with your fellow shinki, forget about it until you find it under a pile of junk mail in two months: the choice is yours! Gods will receive a copy of the answer that their shinki submit to "What advice would you like to give your god?" -- there's no name attached, but they might be able to guess.

Heavenly Record Keeping

Gods don't get to skip the paperwork entirely! Although the Heavens aren't asking them to rate their shinki, new gods don't have all of their vital statistics on file quite yet, so they get a questionnaire too. The same white doves will drop their scrolls by in the morning, with the following set of questions:


What is your name?

How many shinki do you currently have?

What are your areas of divine responsibility?

How do you see your duties as a god?

What traits do you most want in a shinki?

Do you wish new shinki to be assigned to you? []Y []N


Unlike the doves attending on the shinki, the doves who drop off the gods' scrolls will remain close by and chirp loudly until they finish and submit their questionnaires. If a god is particularly lazy about it, they might even start pecking.

In Summary:

• Help protect the Meeting Hall
• Lend a hand cleaning and shopping
• Rate your gods
• Help Heaven keep its records up to date
• Have fun~

Comments

[reformedsinner]

[The answer: he's wincing visibly. "Moar," indeed.]

Quite a few of these memes seem to rely on misspellings....

[redotiertwo]

[Davesprite notes that in some mental file titled "ways to gently fuck with hakkai" before giving away the tiniest hint of amusement.]

Yeah, I know, it's a fucking struggle for us proud literate people, but sacrifices must be made.

[reformedsinner]

Popular culture does indeed demand its sacrifices of dignity.

[Wince or no wince, he's delivering that line in a tone of great faux sincerity.]

[redotiertwo]

It's all worth it in the end, you know, you gotta give something to learn something.

[He's just going to sit here and enjoy this whole scenario far more than is reasonable for one person to do.]

[reformedsinner]

I suppose it's less of an impact to my dignity than some fashions.

[He laughs, and inclines his head in the direction of the Meeting Hall.]

I suppose I should go help out, now that my paperwork is done.

[redotiertwo]

Yeah, fuck, if we're talking embarrassing fashions you can't beat the actual fashion world.

[Sometimes it's fun to just. Spectate whatever the hell is happening over there and shitpost about it if possible, though that doesn't work so well as a shinki.]

Make sure you set aside time for that important meme study later, this shit's gonna be on the test.

[reformedsinner]

Oh, well, if it's on the test I'll definitely have to study.

[That's delivered in a perfect deadpan, but he smirks as he adds:]

I'll need to be ready to decorate my next set of official papers.

[redotiertwo]

See, that's the kind of real-life applications you need for classes like this.

[Davesprite doesn't know a lot about teaching, admittedly, but he does know things are supposed to be real-life applicable even when they clearly aren't.]

Maybe I should make a mock-up of that as part of the test.

[reformedsinner]

That would make an excellent pretest, in fact.

Perhaps to get an idea of the general level of meme understanding here....

[His tone is positively oozing with helpful cheer.]

You could post it on the network.

[And invite defacement. It sounds fun to him.]

[redotiertwo]

Damn, we haven't had a good shitpost there in a while, even if the best shitposts are the ones people don't mean to be shitposts. [Like that old guy yelling at teenagers, or that other anon who made the grave error of talking about how everyone was hot.]

And I'm pretty sure we've got a nice variety of meme understandings here in the Heavens for a good study to be had, you know.

["Study", a.k.a. additional shitposting with other people to follow-up the original shitpost.]

[reformedsinner]

It's quite a varied study group. You'll pick up some interesting data, I'm sure.

[Hakkai's laughing merrily at the thought.]

[redotiertwo]

Yeah, I'll be ready with my diagnostic apps, get the age groups and backgrounds of all the people who jump in, except that might be kinda hard when we've got people from the equivalent of a couple hundred years ago.

[Davesprite does actually sound pretty entertained by the prospect of having to figure that out, though.]

[reformedsinner]

[Hakkai chuckles.] You'll need two variables, age and birth decade -- though that might be a bit difficult with shinki, too...

"Familiarity with the internet"?

[Heavenly meme polls are serious business, obviously.]

[redotiertwo]

Birth decade could get pretty weird when we've got people from all over the place as well, like we'll just end up with outliers from different numbers of centuries ago. Or hell, different numbers of centuries in the future. Internet familiarity seems like a nice solid starter, maybe with like, a thing for them to say if they only got familiar with it since coming here.

[In his experience, he can at least tell when he's not previously skilled in something, so in theory shinki should be able to figure out whether they only learnt about the internet here.]

[reformedsinner]

[Hakkai nods, with great seriousness.]

It will be a great contribution to the field of meme understanding.

[redotiertwo]

Someone needs to make an actual academic field about this. And not just some offshoot of sociology, that's some cheating shit right there.

[Memeology deserves its own entire field more than many much more deserving candidates, clearly.]

[reformedsinner]

[Hakkai chuckles, leaning back against the gate.]

Perhaps you're the meme professor the world has been waiting for.

[redotiertwo]

I might have to shave a bit and hide my wings under something first. Also not be orange, I feel like that's a deal-breaker to being taken seriously.

[How many orange people actually get taken seriously enough to end up in important positions? Unless they're on reality TV, in which case it's basically a requirement, but obviously meme professorship is much more important.]

[reformedsinner]

[Watch him try out a little of his brand-new knowledge: very seriously, he informs Davesprite:]

On the internet, no one knows you're a sprite.

[redotiertwo]

[This is progress. Davesprite lets an amused smile slip through at that one before leaning back, seeming to consider the notion very seriously.]

Can an exclusively text-based internet professor ever be taken seriously, though, that's the real question.

[reformedsinner]

Is it any more of a disadvantage to be text-based than it is to be a professor of memeology?

[Because, honestly, there are bigger problems with the perception of Very Serious Science here than Davesprite's typing.]

[redotiertwo]

Wow, okay, are you implying that memeology isn't a valid science, social sciences are real science too.

[Let him pretend that memeology is legit by engaging in the classic memetic behaviour of shitposting.]

[reformedsinner]

Here I thought you were the one who objected to associating it with sociology.

[Don't challenge Hakkai's shitposting skills, Davesprite. He has the reserves of disingenuousness to go on like this for hours.]

[redotiertwo]

Social sciences is the bigger umbrella, you know, it covers shit other than sociology. I'm saying sociology is too small to contain the hard science of memeology as well, so it needs to be its own social science.

[The real question is which of the two disingenuous shitposters is going to quit the discussion first.]

[reformedsinner]

Ah, I take your meaning. Still, wouldn't anyone who accepted the validity of the Internet as a field of study accept it as a means of communication?

[QED, more or less.

Hakkai does hate being the first one to back down.]