I'm gonna move to the southwest, and, I don't know...

One of the things Summer loved about these tropical school trips is that the making jello shots from local products to really celebrate the place they were visiting during her Wednesday Room Party was sooooo freaking easy. And Barbados had some great options, so, after spending a day of setting it up and getting snacks and other drinks for everyone to enjoy, she was ready to open her door and invite people in for yet another successful room party!

Snacks were moddable and danced that line between typical party fare and local inspirations, and the same could be said for the beer, soda, and stuff for mixing drinks. The jello shots, though, were obviously the stars of the show: passion fruit and prosecco and passion fruit and rum (from yesterday's distillery tour, even!), mango and pineapple and coconut. Even some avocado and something spicy with some local scotch bonnet peppers, and some more with rum, one with root beer and one with ginger beer.

But that starfruit punch was probably her best worst idea ever.

Whatever, it was Wednesday on a school trip! The room was actually really great for this sort of thing, too! Come party it up and regret some decisions in the morning! It's fine, you've still got plenty of days of vacation recovery time left!

[[ flying OCD free, so come on in! texts, messages, and conversational invites may be modded at will~ ]]

There had been a handful of oh-so-handwavey flyers popped into the most obvious spots, but Summer was relying heavily on the age-old method of massive group texting (and general word of mouth) to let everyone know about Stark's birthday party tonight at his apartment because it really was just going to be a super chill, lowkey, casual sort of fling this time around.

She'd spent the majority of her prep work in splashing the apartment with decorations (blue and gold and black again) and bmaking a variety of different jello shots in pie and cupcake and other dessert-like forms, so, needless to say, she definitely ordered out for the the cupcakes themselves.

Other snacks and drinks were also available and moddable, and there was also a very moddable but totally curated, for real, music playlist, and she'd even dusted off the karaoke machine from the GxG birthday party years ago and dragged that up, just in case anyone was feeling up to getting that going.

Definitely not exactly her best, most extravagant party, but, hey, not all parties could (or even should!) be epic. Sometimes, they could just be kind of quiet and cozy with a lot of cupcakes. Which just suited the birthday guy better anyway, really.

[[ open party is open! as always, feel free to mod having gotten a text, seen a flier, been told by Summers or squirrels or ghosts of parties past or just swing by to borrow a cup of sugar, i don't care, I'm not your boss ]]

Sooooooo....Annie's whole interdimensional time-travel briefcase thing was clearly going well.

Summer was not really that surprised, but it did kind of bum her out that, instead of having a post-break-up sangria night with her bestie last night, the only sangria she had was in the form of gorging herself on the rest of Stark's cupcakes (you know, the ones she had previously insisted should be shared in the spirit of sangria) after getting high and going between giggling over everything and crying over everything else, while sending more and more texts to Annie's phone that she knew she wouldn't receive. Well. She hadn't eaten all of Stark's cupcakes, there were still two left, which she was having right now for breakfast.

(Yes, breakfast, in the afternoon).

But it wasn't all just substance abuse and feeling sorry for herself! Summer was busy at her laptop, pouring over some ideas and making arrangements for the party on Monday, which was a frustrating challenge in its own right. Having up until very recently been dating a super-genius billionaire, she had certainly gotten used to a certain...lifestyle, i.e. literally endless funds for all her whims, and while Summer was definitely pulling in some respectable bank through her various jobs and channels, she was working with a much tighter budget than she was use to.

Although....she did still have access to Barry's credit cards. And as she eyed the final total on all of her ideal party supply purchases, she found herself in the midst of quite the moral quandary.

And then promptly typed in that familiar number that she knew by heart by now.

Which meant she wasn't surprised when her phone buzzed with an incoming message a few minutes later, but she couldn't help being a little annoyed, too, because, oh, sure, now all of a sudden, you're paying attention? Summer thought about ignoring it, but that only lasted about two-point-five seconds and she lifted up her phone to read it, bracing herself for a good old WTF, but what she found instead somehow made her feel worse.

Throwing a party?

yeah for purim. didn't u know? im jewish now.

Mazel tov!

Summer just sort of stared at her phone dully for a long time, not really sure how to respond, if she should respond, or if she should just do the one thing she really wanted to do in that moment, which was portal over to his lab and take it all back, but then she reminded herself that he wouldn't be making it to this party, either, but, hey, at least he was willing to foot the bill for it. She needed more than that, though, she could foot the damn bill herself, she'd only used his card just to see if she could get away with it, and she could, but it wasn't nearly as fulfilling or self-satisfying as the thought it would be, but maybe, just maybe, if they just talked about it some more...

Her thumbs had been poised over the first letters of her next response before another text came in, from some gym bro from Tinder she'd been chatting with, one whose muscles would be very impressive had not Summer lived on Fandom.

looking forward to seeing u tomorrow

Followed by a picture. The kind of picture that made Summer very glad she was at her apartment and not out in a public place. A picture that she was going to need to inspect very thoroughly before responding, a response that came much easier and much more quickly than the one she'd been struggling with when this one came in:

let's make it tonight actually


[[ open post is open! though work-related sp is to be expected ]]

Ah, yes, what better way to follow up a day heavy on war stuff than a jello shot party in what was essentially a hotel room! But, look, the Wednesday night jello room parties were just a tradition at this point, and Summer practically centered the first half of her trips around making them happen, so she was going to be very disappointed if no one even bothered to show up.

She was going to have a very rough Thursday if she had to do all these jello shots by herself (minus the one or two she could convince Barry to choke down).

So the mass texts to everyone had been sent out, as well as texts to Annie and Rey to show off the jello shot spread and show off what they were missing (with an added text to Annie that went something along the lines of seriously, though, u good? do you need anything? everything cool?), and she just had to finish with the set up. There was some beer and sodas and whatever leftover liquor didn't go into the shots and wine (because France) and some moddable snacks, but, of course, most of the attention was in the jello shots, which included some apple cider ones featuring cider from the countryside and chocolate covered strawberries with chocolate from the local chocolatier. Pears made an appearance in the line up, as did pumpkin. Of course there was champagne, a chocolate eclair, and.....mac and cheese....but, you know, with fancy local cheeses, because that made it better.

Look, just because they were in France, didn't mean you were free from at least That One Shot.

So it was time to party! Chaperones only! Summer will pay Rosa good money to make sure students stay out.

(She would have roped Goose and Sidon into it, but she knew them both well enough to know that while they did cut impressive figures as bouncers, she was pretty sure they would just encourage just letting every one in).

[[ open room party is open! posted here to get the most party bang out of my party buck and general readability. No OCD. Have at it! ]]

Sooooo, Summer had met Chiana, and, just as the narrative suspected, it was indeed a great/terrible idea. One that had lead to a little impromptu mini party for jello shots and space pot, which made sense, especially since Summer was the only terrestrial human of the small group this had been planned around.

So, within a few minutes, thanks to Barry's shot maker machine, they had some jello shots--nothing fancy, of course, you couldn't do much with the machine, but at least Stark would be way more confident that none of them had anything too weird in them? They also had some raslek, to make Chiana feel more at home and since Summer had started stocking it at the store, not to mention her vast and impressive array of pot from various different dimensions and planets.

Which, if you asked her, meant that if the night ended up being anything but awesome, it certainly wouldn't be on her.

[[ expecting three aliens, but the post if open if anyone else wants to drop in for booze and recreational drug use (and there's your CW about that)! Although it does come with a warning that it will be mostly played out tomorrow, because it is late, I am sick, but there is no way we could just let this go handwaved ]]

Summer could, for all intents and purposes, have easly slapped together a party for Goose now that she knew his birthday was next week for this weekend, and she had the confidence that it would still be a complete and total banger, but if she had the opportunity to take a good solid week to put together something a little less rushed, she was going to take that opportunity, even if it meant toeing the line of too-belated if she wanted to tie it into Gladio's birthday, which had been last week. Honestly, she could probably take or leave the Gladio factor, if it weren't for the fact that she was already envisioning the most adorable little Cup Noodle^TM gift bags that could not just wait until next year.

So, she decided (unless anything else popped off because, let's face it, it was the weekend, she was willing to drop anything at the first sign of something better) tonight might be a good night to do (one of) the thing(s) she did best, and that was to get blazed out of her mind and start hitting up Insta and Pinterest for inspiration and ideas.

It didn't take long in considering location to remember that Goose's apartment was basically an empty shell of a habitat and one of the larger two-bedroom ones (which, come on, so much wasted potential!), which opened the door to a lot of decor possibilities, actually. And with that first little thread to start pulling on, she picked up her phone and shot him a text:

How do you feel about me invading your place next weekend?

Like, yes, sure, he literally lived right upstairs and she supposed she could have just gone up there to ask him, but pffft. Who actually went and visited their neighbors when they could just text?

[[ guess who will be stuck at work tonight and would love to get visits from neighbors or texts or anything else to make it through? this gal! totes open, I am expecting a total slog ]]

Text messages had oh so handwavily gone out to all the chaperones on the trip that Summer's Jello Shot Room Party would be happening that Wednesday, of course, followed by an afterparty over at Karaoke Kan's Shibuya location. Because, at this point, a jello shot room party and some sort of afterparty was practically tradition. And to steal a phrase from another character: Tradition? Don't mess with it!

(That was totally how it went, right?)

Either way, through an series of complicated arrangements that allowed her to pull off her usual serving of shots, Summer (and Barry!) had put together a fine selection, and then she went to get the room prepared after spending some time around Tokyo (and, like, sort of chaperoning, too? Because that was what they were there for, right?), and wondering if the size of the room might actually work to their benefit in getting everyone ready to get out to the bar for some karaoke!

[[ and minor ocd incoming is up! Go forth and party! ]]

You know, Summer was feeling pretty proud of herself, for not only throwing together a (totally responsible adult) room party, but also managing to make all the jello shots she wanted to and still making sure to eventually give herself the time to go and fulfil a long-held childhood dream of being a mermaid (sort of; ugh, mermaid!dimension Summer was, like, such a stupid lucky bitch!).

And she did not skimp on the shots, either. She had Under the Sea shots and Shark Attack shots, the classic and classy Sex on the Beach shot, Pina Colada, Ocean Margarita, Mango Cosmopolitan...

...needless to say, there were choices. And plenty of leftover booze from making them if anyone wanted to just skip the jello part. If Summer would let them, anyway.

So now all she needed was people to show up. Which she hoped they would. She was kind of trying not to think about if no one did. And not just because Amaya had already started lining up a few shots with a thoughtful, speculative look on her face as if trying to figure out the quickest way to down them in a race.

For both of their sakes, she hoped people showed up. Please, save these two from themselves.


[[ posted here to save the poor evening thread and posted early because I have to scuttle off to work. Open to all the ~adults~ of the group who would have received the invite, though I suppose students could definitely try to sneak in. No OCD, just come in, hang out, have jello! ]]