party post } let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find (forward dated to 1/28))

[krmvgivv]

Who: The WIRTHDAY BOY, Dipper, Mabel, anyone friends with Wirt/anyone who happens to show up.
Where: fourth floor tea room
When: forward dated to 1/28
Rating: unlikely to get higher than PG-13
Summary: It's Wirt's 17th birthday! Dipper and Mabel are in charge of planning, and Wirt doesn't want anything too big or crazy. So you know. Time for an open mic party.
The Story:

Invitations spread quietly by word of mouth. "Surprise Party. Come to the fourth floor tea room. Bring something to perform. Don't tell Wirt!" Dipper and Mabel make sure to tell the people they know are Wirt's friends, but they also expect word to get around. Others can hear about it or just come in. Wirt doesn't want a big party, but they're guessing the particulars of this party will keep it small.

By the time people start to arrive, the tea room's been transformed. It looks like the most cliche hipster cafe you can imagine, like a preteen girl's imagination made flesh. There are mismatched chairs and low windows and exposed brick, and a stage that looks more like a wooden platform than anything else. There's a coffee bar with tea and hot chocolate and lots of cookies and snacks piled high, plus a cake. There aren't any baristas here. Just a sign that reads Cafe Music and Wirts.

Price of admission is agreeing to perform something, though the birthday boy is excused from this unless he wants to go. It's supposed to be fun for him, after all.

Comments

open: arrival

[krmvgivv]

Neither Wirt nor Dipper are there when people start to arrive. Just Mabel, looking wearing a beret and beatnik glasses, and carrying a clipboard for performance sign-ups. Mingle, grab some snacks, and look for a good hiding spot. Dipper's off fetching the birthday boy. Be ready for fun.

open: surprise

[krmvgivv]

"Just this way--" Dipper says as he opens the door to the tea room, tugging Wirt in after him.

Mabel flips on the light. "SURPRISE!" everyone screams.

[singloversing]

Stunned doesn't even begin to cover it. This wasn't even a possibility in Wirt's brain, because who would look at him, an anxious mess of a person, and throw him a surprise party?

When he opens the door and everyone shouts, he nearly jumps out of his skin and has to scramble not to drop his clarinet case. There's a moment of shock, but the scene around him sinks in. There's a crowd, but...it's not a big crowd? And it helps that where they are is kind of ambient by nature. It's a party, but it's a coffee shop, and it's definitely more than he wanted, but...

"Oh my god."

It's all he can say for a second, while he tries to will his soul back into his body and make his heart stop pounding. But then, it just bubbles into nervous laughter fueled by relief.

"I can't believe you." He says that, but he's covering his mouth with his hand and still laughing behind it. "What is all this?"

[powerofmabel]

"Iiiiit's an open mic night." Mabel hops down off the stool she used to reach the light switch. She's dressed all in black with a beret perched on her head and a pair of beatnik glasses balanced on her nose. Even her fingernails are painted black.

"D'you like the vibe, daddy-o?" She fingerguns at him. "I based it off Midnight in The Cafe of Espresso and Evil. There's probably gonna be less minotaurs doing beat poetry than in the book, but that's okay. We've got aliens."

Because Peridot is right over there with her tablet, seemingly involved in the process of swiping left repeatedly.

open: performances

[krmvgivv]

Read a poem! Play a song! Attempt some standup! Try to juggle! Whatever your talent (or lack thereof) is, it's welcome at this open mic night. Show us what you've got!

Dipper

[krmvgivv]

Ho boy.

[Dipper is beginning to regret this. But it's his and Mabel's party. He has to follow the rules he set.

He walks out on stage holding a sousaphone.]

Wirt, buddy, this is for you.

[He starts to play.]

[singloversing]

[Wirt can't say he was expecting Dipper to adhere to his own rules, but he's pleasantly surprised when he does. Honestly, he's always thought it was kind of cool that Dipper plays the sousaphone. Wirt literally does not know a single other person who plays it, and it's such an obscure instrument to begin with. Most people probably don't even know the difference between it and a tuba.

When Dipper's done, Wirt's the first person clapping. Once he's off the stage, he flags Dipper over.]

Wow, you never usually let people see you play. That was good though!

And Steven!

[jamminshield]

[Of course Steve's here. And of course he's prepared his ukulele. He softly strums the strings as he sings a whole song about the birthday boy.]

He's the kindest friend who would never hurt,
You can't underestimate his friendship's worth...!
Now here we are on the day of his birth,
'cause you can't make 'worth', if you don't have Wirt...!

[It goes on for a while. Then Steven takes a bow and vacates the stage. Afterwards, feel free to approach and talk to him while he sips at some juice! Although he might seem a bit troubled or distracted every now and then...]

[singloversing]

[Wirt's whole face had gone pink in the audience when Steven was performing. No one's ever written a song about him before and he doesn't know how much of that is even remotely true (aside from, you know, the objectively true birthday parts) but it's sweet of him anyway. He makes sure to go find Steven once he's done performing.]

I can't believe you wrote a whole song about me...that was nice of you. Thank you.

[He's still a little flustered, but he's trying his best.]

[waitin]

( Clementine notices how distracted, troubled that Steven seems at times, and she wants to see if he's okay. She learned a lot about him during that one Event, and he was really sweet to her. And sweet to her when she was very little. He reminds her of Tenn, just that belief in other people, that heart that he clearly shows. )

...you're a really talented singer songwriter.

( She's seriously impressed. )

[krmvgivv]

Wow, that was actually good.

[It's probably not nice to sound that surprised about it, but the fact is, Dipper's used to made up songs sounding like, well, Mabel.]

Louis

[teamfun]

[Louis absolutely tried to get the grand piano from the music room up here. Right up until he realised he'd have to try and get it through a door and up a few flights of stairs that might or might not turn into ramps- but were still not really piano-stable. As such, he gave up that idea.

But that didn't stop him from trying to pull one from the closet in the tea room. He managed to get it on the stage by some small miracle and a lot of determination. It's probably going to be stuck there forever now, though.

He'll play some good old Mozart because it's at least something he thinks the other people here would recognise, mainstream as it is. He'll also throw in a more obscure piece for the classical music nerds there AKA Wirt. When he finishes, he turns to give the birthday guy in question some prime finger-guns. ]

Happy birthday, buddy. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

[singloversing]

[There are worse things than having a piano stuck in a tea room. Maybe people will use it and music will drift down the hall on the fourth floor instead of just near the music room.

The Mozart piece is a classic, one that everyone would recognize even if they didn't know it by name as the Turkish March. The second one really catches his ear though, not just for the obscurity of the piece but the skill involved in playing it. Wirt's never been a pianist and he probably never will be, but the piece Louis plays is complex and beautiful and he could easily listen to him play for several more hours. Once he's finished, he makes sure to go talk to him, music nerd to music nerd.]

Louis! That was like, so good! That was Chaminade, right? At the end?

Peridot

[slapfight]

[Peridot steps up to the mic with her tablet and proceeds to do a dramatic reading. A very dramatic reading.]

"Pierre knew that the light had left Percy's eyes whenever he looked at Paulette. Where once he lingered on the way she ate her poutine in the mess, he now turned away in disgust and stared at the window, dreaming of other things. Her laugh seemed to grate on him. He criticized her technique at kayaking when he'd always been supportive before.

But why would Pierre care about these things? Oh, of course. Because he was expectant, waiting for Paulette to leave the picture. More than once, he'd imagined himself shoving her off the dock, and sweeping Percy off his feet, but he channeled that energy as he always had- competition. Beating Percy at everything meant showcasing his strength, a strength Paulette lacked. And now it seemed like Paulette was faltering. His chance was coming. He-"

[And she's going to go on and on about Pierre's successful attempt to woo Percy and all that cliche fanfic tropes that entails. It's like an 80 page long fanfic. Someone better stop her.]

[singloversing]

[Wirt's not going to be the one to stop her. To his credit, he actually seems to be intently following along with the story, even though it's definitely dragging on a little bit. It's kind of cool that someone brought their original novel to the party and got up on stage to read it, even if it's not really practical time-wise.

Inevitably, someone makes her get off the stage so others can have a turn (or possibly to make her stop reading), and while Wirt's not sure he'd call it the greatest piece of literature he's ever heard, he's still interested in the fact that someone is taking the time to write novels in Wonderland at all.]

So...Pierre and Percy wind up together by the end, right?

[krmvgivv]

[Dipper is probably the one who stopped her. It's usually his job to be the buzzkill.]

Look, I'm not saying your fanfic is bad, I'm just saying maybe this isn't exactly the right venue.

Mabel

[powerofmabel]

[Mabel has a stool and a set of bongos. Boris walks across the bongos back and forth while she snaps her fingers in time to the erratic rhythm. She is dressed in a black turtleneck, a black skirt, a beret and wearing tiny black sunglasses.]

Wirt.

It rhymes with shirt.

It also rhymes with dirt.

Wirt.

I'm wearing a skirt.

He doesn't know how to flirt.

Wirt.

When's dessert?

[and then whispered dramatically as Boris hops off the bongos.] Wirt.

[howsitgoindude]

[Soos would be clapping if he wasn't stooping to catch the piglet before it wanders off the stage. He hangs onto it until Mabel makes her way down again and holds him out with a grin.]

Waddles 2.0's got as much a way with rhythm as you do with making words rhyme, Hambone. Nice job.

[singloversing]

[Wirt can't help feeling like he should have expected something exactly like this, and yet it still catches him off-guard. The bongos are cool and he's snapping along out of habit, but he still makes faces at some of the lines.]

Who says I don't know how to flirt? I-I could totally flirt if, you know. I felt like it.

[It's obviously something that he needs to protest!]

Soos

[howsitgoindude]

[Soos is always up for a party, and always up for making a new tune. Using "birthday party" as his inspiration, Soos took samples of Dipper and Mabel singing the traditional birthday tune and remixed them. To make it more of a performance, he's set up his keyboard and plays sound effects along with it and. Oh yeah. You better believe he's groovin' the whole time.]

H-h-h-h-hap-happy birthday! W-w-w-w-w-Wirt!

[singloversing]

[This is maybe the weirdest take on Happy Birthday Wirt has ever heard in his life. He's...not really sure this counts as music, but he's not going to be rude to someone who barely knows him and still put something together for his birthday anyway.]

Uh...thanks? I've never heard anything like that before.

Wirt

[singloversing]

[Wirt was not at all planning to get on stage. Not even a little. Surprise clarinet performance? A poetry reading out of the blue? No. No, thank you.

But...everyone else came here with something to perform, and more and more it starts to feel like a comfortable place. No one here is going to make fun of him for not being ready. They're there because they care about him. Dipper literally got on stage and played his sousaphone for him in public. How can he still be too embarrassed after all the effort everyone else has put in?

He appreciates that no one forces him to the stage. Dipper had him bring his clarinet and his poetry notebook, but no one has made him do anything he doesn't want to do. And frankly he still has his limits - he's not sure he's ready to share his heartfelt poetry with the class, especially since most of what's actually in his notebooks are works in progress. But, he can play his clarinet.

Even after all the time he spent psyching himself up though, he still feels like he doesn't know how he got from that point to actually being on the stage, clarinet in his hands and sheet music in front of his face. Why did he think this was a good idea? It's officially too late to run off the stage now and all he can do is push through this horrible mistake.]

Um. ...Hi. I-I thought I'd join in? This is-- it's Rose Etude No. 1.

[He breathes. And then, he plays.]

[teamfun]

[When Wirt takes to the stage, Louis offers a smile and an encouraging thumbs up. You got this, Bro. He listens, rapt, because he's never got to hear Wirt play his clarinet before- and he appreciates that doing this in public is probably not easy for him at all.

When he finishes, Louis wanders over with a grin.]

Nicely done, Dude. You play really well. And good on you, going up in front of everyone to do it, too. I'm proud of you.

[krmvgivv]

[Dipper wasn't really sure if Wirt would play or not. He gave it about even odds. Despite Wirt's general anxiety, he clearly loves music, and Dipper and Mabel worked hard to make it as comfortable an environment as it possibly could. But it's Wirt, and it's playing music in front of other people. Or reading poetry. He'd get it.

But Wirt did play, and as soon as he's off the stage, Dipper rushes to him.]

That was awesome, Wirt! [He beams. His musical knowledge is definitely amateurish but it sounds really pretty and honestly, even past that, it's just awesome that Wirt took the risk. Dipper's proud.]

open: general mingling

[krmvgivv]

When not on stage, it's polite to at least pretend to pay attention to the person performing, but there's time between performances (and time not being polite) when you can chat and grab food and comment on (or heckle) whoever's on stage. There's also a table for presents, though Wirt's enough of a nerd that performing music or poetry is probably enough of a present. Still, everyone likes actual stuff too.