+ Welcome to Santa Barbara Comic Con! - MINGLE LOG +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: EVERYONE
Where: Santa Barbara Comic Con!
When: 8/3 - 8/5
Rating: PG-13, warn if going higher
Summary: A mingle log for the Psych event - Welcome to Santa Barbara Comic Con! This would be an absolutely terrible time to get mixed up in a horrible murder!
The Story:

Welcome to Santa Barbara! Nicknamed the American Riviera, it's a cozy seaside city that can often feel like a small town. And you get to be here during its most exciting weekend - the Santa Barbara Comic Con!

Whether you come from out of town or are a Santa Barbara native, there is plenty to do in the convention center and surrounding city. Maybe you are there to cosplay, attend panels, or meet your favorite comic book creator. You might even be a guest yourself, be it a well-known illustrator or an easily overlooked character actor.

If conventions aren't your thing, there are plenty of other activities around town, whether you want to run one of the food trucks down by the pier or take advantage of the tourists with expensive tchotchkes. You could use the weekend to pick up extra hours at your comfortable pharmaceutical company job. If inclined, you can help out convention security as one of Santa Barbara's finest, the totally and completely 100% competent officers of the SBPD who do not at all whatsoever rely on a psychic to help solve a staggering percentage of crimes.

There's more to Santa Barbara than just surf and sun, though. You might be more drawn to the seedy underbelly of the city and make your living smuggling drugs, stealing cars, and robbing department stores. In which case, the convention could prove to be a convenient cover for your clandestine operations!

No matter what, you can look forward to a relaxing weekend of beautiful beaches, fun cosplay opportunities, and delicious street food. All you have to do is ignore Santa Barbara's disturbingly high murder rate.

Easier said than done, though, since day two will bring about, you guessed it - death!

When a fanmade, life-sized statue of the coolest new superhero, the Blue Revenger, falls and kills one of the convention's headlining guests, some assume it's an accident while others suspect something far more sinister. Where do you stand? Are you one of the police officers on the case, or would you rather offer your assistance as a consultant? Will you ignore the yellow tape and enjoy your weekend? Or are you just going to take advantage of the chaos to help nudge the murder rate up a tad on your own?

Are you destined to be the next victim, or will you be one who survives... under Santa Barbara skies?

Comments

day two

[entreats]

Honestly, Ange couldn't help but at least be slightly interested in this whole incident. After all, it was almost ironic.. Someone dies at a comic convention, and it just has to be in such a dramatic way you'd usually only see in comics to begin with? It makes her at least want to see the place where it happened with her own eyes.

But it seems she wasn't the only one with that idea. Some people might decide to not go look at the crime scene if someone else could spot them out of fear of being found weird, or if they did, they'd just do it quietly..

But not Ange, apparently. She just can't help but deadpan right away when she notices someone else standing there already when she arrives. It's better than awkward silence.

"This isn't a case of the criminal returning to the scene, is it?" Hey, the cops are already gone to look into stuff somewhere else, so Ange figures she can deadpan about that between two civilians.

[mourning_ghost]

"You're here as well." Nageki leans over the statue, examining it for anything that looks odd. "It seems like it would be difficult to kill a specific person using this."

[entreats]

"So, do you think it's an accident then?"

Probably not, judging by Nageki looking to see how the statue could be used to begin with. But Ange has heard enough people whisper about it to each other in passing.

"It seems a little weird for something that big to fall over accidentally."

[mourning_ghost]

"No." Nageki around the statue, still searching. "I think that the killer might not have cared who got hurt when the statue fell."

[entreats]

She's mostly just watching Nageki look at the statue from a slight distance for the moment. After all, if he notices something odd about it, surely he'd show it enough with his reaction for her to notice too.

"Well, that'd make sense. If anyone wanted to just kill a specific other person, there's a whole lot more subtle ways to do it. It's not exactly the kind of thing you'd want to draw attention to."

[mourning_ghost]

"Perhaps the killer wanted the attention? It could be someone with a grudge against the convention hoping to ruin it's reputation." A murder, or even proof of unsafe conditions, would make people less likely to show up the next year.

[entreats]

"Could someone really have a grudge against a convention of all things that's bad enough to want to commit murder over it?"

Ange doesn't sound completely dismissive of the idea. She's heard of more ridiculous things happening in the world, after all. But she's still at least wondering about that.

"It seems a little extreme. The culprit could've done something more simple, like.. I don't know, clog up all of the toilets or something similarly inconvenient like that."

[mourning_ghost]

"That's true." It does have the advantage of a lesser jail sentence should the culprit be caught, but Nageki has seen people behave in more irrational ways before. Nageki has gotten around the statue without noticing anything. If there was evidence there, the police must have whisked it away already. "The situation doesn't make much sense."

[entreats]

"Right?" Ange seems to agree with him. This is just about the last thing she expected to happen while going to a simple convention...

"I wonder if things are going to end with this or if it's going to escalate more. If the police doesn't catch the people who does these types of ridiculous things, then who's to say what the culprit will move on to next?"

[mourning_ghost]

"...Could that person do anything bigger than murder?" That's a pretty major offense, after all. He would think that anything bigger than that would require organized crime. If the culprit had that, this murder plan would probably be something quieter and also make more sense.

[entreats]

"I wasn't necessarily thinking of something bigger than murder, but.. what's worse than one murder? Two, of course. Or three. Or four. Or fifteen."

Not exactly the most fun idea ever, but Ange doesn't sound particularly scared or worried as she speaks. If anything, she's describing it almost clinically.

"Left alone, the culprit could keep murdering and turn it into a whole series of murders. Just like in Agatha Christie's books."

[mourning_ghost]

"Ah." In that case, he can see what Ange means. It wouldn't even have to continue in Santa Barbara. The killer could be from anywhere.

He steps away from the statue, unable to find anything there. "I wonder if the police have found a suspect yet."

[entreats]

She glances over to Nageki.

"How much do you trust the police?" Her tone, while still maybe too nonchalant for the situation, is fairly neutral on this one though. Like she's genuinely curious what his opinion on it is. "Especially when it comes to competency."

[mourning_ghost]

"..." He has to think about it. In most circumstances, he'd trust the police easily. He has personal experience that tells him the police aren't as useful in the more unusual cases, however and this would count as an unusual case. "Normally, I'd trust them. I think something like this... might be too difficult."

He just also thinks the police would be still more competent than a normal person as they have both the experience and the tools to aid them.

[entreats]

"Exactly. I've heard of them fumbling around over easier cases, so there's no way they'll easily solve something like this. I mean, the whole reason there's so many notorious serial killers is because the police fails to catch half of them. Otherwise people wouldn't be as scared of them."

Stop being such a true crime junkie, Ange.. (Or just really cynical about everything ever, really.)

[mourning_ghost]

"Even so, they probably have a better picture than we do," Nageki doesn't even know who the victim was! "Maybe..."

He frowns as he feels something crunch under his feet. Lifting his shoe up it appears to be... some kind of plastic figurine? It's not terribly damaged, but a slim part of the plastic broke off when Nageki stepped on it.

[entreats]

That crunch is definitely audible, even if it's not super loud. It's at the very least noticable enough for Ange to look over at him when he's suddenly looking at the ground, raising an eyebrow.

"Is something wrong?"

[mourning_ghost]

Nageki shakes his head. He picks the figurine off the ground and holds it out to Ange. "I stepped on this."

It's a figurine of a superhero, but not a well-known one. Not that Nageki has anyway of knowing, since he doesn't actually like those sorts of works. But it's doubtful there are too many places selling such figurines.

[entreats]

"A figurine?"

Ange at the very least seems to know what they are. She doesn't seem to recognize the particular superhero though, pulling her shoulders up into a shrug after a moment of staring at it.

"Maybe someone dropped it in the chaos when that thing fell over?"

[mourning_ghost]

"It would seem so," Nageki agrees. He holds on to it so that he can give turn it in to the front desk later.