cuddlecity | EVENT: WHY DON'T YOU GET A JOB?

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EVENT: WHY DON'T YOU GET A JOB?

Congratulations, cuddlers! You've survived your first month here in Cadelle, and with only (cough) minimal catastrophe. The city administration is beyond grateful for all of your help in the rebuilding efforts, and cannot thank you enough for all your hard work. Well, maybe that's not entirely fair. After bribing visitors to move out, meeting the seemingly endless caloric needs of hungry superheroes, and funding the reconstruction efforts, the city's coffers are starting to feel a little light... which leads us to today.

The festivities kick off with a time-honored Cadelle tradition: the skills fair! In keeping with local customs, Cadellians traditionally volunteer to host a booth and teach a skill of their choice for the day, a good deed that helps to refill the city's energy stores after the busy summer season. This year, the city has graciously agreed to let anyone interested sign up to host, and has set aside a small number of booths for the exclusive use of their newest visiting citizens... and while money isn't on the table (sorry, y'all, but they did say they were a little tight on the wallet), teaching out of the goodness of your heart still counts as a good deed done.

Whether you choose to host a booth and teach a skill of your own, or to wander the fair and learn something new, be sure to take time to appreciate the day's other offerings. Like any good late-summer fair, there's plenty of delicious food and drink from some of the city's best loved vendors to sample, upbeat music in the air to dance courtesy of the local top 40 radio station, and lots of opportunities to escape the heat thanks to special seminars hosted by the city's own university. Yes, seminars — there's one every hour, with topics ranging from underwater basket weaving to particle physics to the careful art of walking more than one dog on the same leash. Classes are free, seats are plentiful, and hey, what else do you really have to do? You don't have a job yet, do you?

Speaking of jobs... after the fun in the sun of the skills fair is over, it's time for the main event on day two: the job fair! Yes, that's right, a job fair, because it's time for all you freeloaders to start paying your own way.

That might be a little harsh.

In any case, Flora and Cornelius are glad to welcome to you to Cadelle's first annual Employment Extravaganza, complete with brightly colored booths, friendly vendor representatives, and plenty of applications to go around. Come say hi, shake some hands, and maybe even get hired on the spot!

In addition to the city's many and varied culinary venues, there are a wide variety of cultural institutions, learning centers, recreation spots, and shopping destinations to appease even the most restless of visitors. (Hint, hint: there's even a DIRECTORY.)

While the sky's the metaphorical limit, be sure to check out the sponsored booths currently hiring:

▸ Barred is currently hiring for dance instructors! From classic ballet to interpretative dance or hip-hop, any style is welcomed. Please note: all classes are fully-clothed. (If you prefer to dance in your birthday suit, we suggest a more personal arrangement.)

▸ Blue Springs Pool is looking for qualified lifeguards to supervise the annual 'Learn To Swim' and 'Mommy and Me' programs this fall. While being able to breathe underwater is preferred, it's not required.

▸ Chop Shop has an opening for an even-tempered (... or not) culinary instructor for their evening cooking classes. Exceptional candidates may even be considered for the chef's academy, where they will be tasked with training Cadelle's next great generation of professional chefs!

▸ Crunches is eagerly hoping to fill a variety of positions, from gym staff to personal trainers and fitness instructors. If you've got a passion for fitness and want to get paid to ~~join a multi-level marketing company~~ sweat, come on down!

In case meeting and greeting with desperate to hire vendors doesn't sound like a great time, or if you need a little practice with the concept of having conversations with real people, Flora and Cornelius have graciously agreed to host a speed networking event. Much like your beloved speed dating events, this special event is intended to help you quickly and easily meet a variety of ~~hot singles in your area~~ professional colleagues and friends, and to potentially find a new career if you're lucky! (Plus, it's air-conditioned. How can you go wrong?)

Be sure to visit the welcome table to sign in and pick up your name tag. You'll be pleased to note that the name tags have been prefilled for your convenience, so just find the one with your name on it and slap it on. Don't mind the descriptions underneath...

Or do. While the city administration had graciously agreed to loan an intern to Flora and Cornelius for this event, they didn't exactly send their best and brightest. Grumpy intern Monty Montague has decided to have a little fun with his boring assignment — instead of the requested polite descriptions, Monty's opted to fill in the blank with more... well, colorful phrases. Things like:

▸ Hello, my name is Inigo. I am a revenge-obsessed swordsman with daddy issues.

▸ Hello, my name is Marshall. I am what? who? chicka chicka Slim Shady.

▸ Hello, my name is Moana. I am MOAAANAAAAAAAA.

What will your name tag say? Do you agree to stay and wear it? While you may seek out blank nametags (or even just an extra marker to scribble out the offending message), you'll be sorely disappointed to find them all conveniently missing. Tearing it in two won't work, either — there's no penny-pinching on supplies here, and that thick plastic sticker won't rip for anything.

Oh, well. It could be worse, right? At least there's a snack bar, and everyone's suffering together... right?

Pull up a chair, find your next match, and try to avoid the enormous elephant in the room. Or don't. Whatever floats your boat, cuddlers!

In conjunction with this event, the mod team is glad to announce the launch of our official JOBS DIRECTORY! Should your character find honest employment at the jobs fair or even on their own, please be sure to let us know!

Helpful Hint: As a reminder, players are always welcome to suggest a location that may be missing from our directory, and characters are also welcome to open up their own venues with help from the city administration! For help with this, or to make a suggestion, please drop us a line at our GENERAL INBOX (or SCREENED INBOX, if you prefer).

As always, we're here for you, cuddlers, to make this game a success! We couldn't do it without you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i. skills not found

[What happens when your previous employment happened to be a very long time ago in a place that doesn't even really exist anymore? Vasquez has registered his guns for use, but it's not like anyone is coming up to him to use them and he doesn't foresee people coming to him like Sam did for Rose Creek. Honestly, he's not sure he'd even take those jobs, not after seeing four men die in the face of it.

So that leaves him with three guns, a lasso, a lot of skills, and none of them worth anything. He barely knows how to operate a phone, people are staring at him because his clothes look weird (not that he has any plans to give them up) and that leaves Vasquez aimless, unemployed, and still wandering around trying to find out if there's a price on his head to worry about.

The one thing that he could do is absent, seeing as it doesn't look like anyone is looking for a rancher or a farmhand, not that he thinks he'd be very good at those things anymore. That's a lifetime ago and he hasn't passed many sprawling farms in his short time here. Digging in his pockets to find cigarette and matches, he decides he's going to need to find something, because, after all...]

Cigarettes won't pay for themselves.

ii. tag it, bag it

[Hello, my name is ~~vasquez~~ and on a steel horse I ride. I'm wanted, dead or alive.

He's still not entirely feeling safe because he has no idea whether that $500 is still luring people in to trade his life for cash, but if he doesn't start making money soon and doing something, he's going to be in a different kind of trouble. Men like him don't do so well bored, after all. He needs a job, he needs to know what he can even do, and maybe today, this will give him a chance to figure it out.

Slapping the nametag on his vest with displeasure, he stares around and tries to find someone like Sam, who looks like they know what they're doing, because that's usually the smart first step to anything.]

[ Bigby's still pretty inexperienced on the whole "getting along" thing. There are a few fables back home he coexists with well enough - hell, a few that he even likes - but that took a lot of time and a lot of history. He knew who they were, where they came from, what they'd been through, and what they were capable of.

Here he might have a blank slate to work with, but he also had nothing on any of these people. No idea who to trust, who to question, who to steer clear of, and who he should encourage to steer clear of him. It was a giant game of Russian Roulette.

But he heard someone utter a phrase that, at the very least, he could relate to. Good a place as any to start trying his hand at socializing here.

He finds the source of the voice easily enough - the man had just pulled a cigarette from his pocket, and while he was still hunting for some matches Bigby took a few steps to approach him, pulling his lighter from his pocket to offer its flame to the stranger. ]

You could always find a cheaper vice.

[ Pot, meet kettle. ]

[Vasquez glances up when someone offers him a lighter, which is something he's seen, but he's still not very comfortable with. He likes matches, likes the feel of striking one up, taking his time with it, extinguishing it right before it goes off. Of course, given his most recent experience with explosives, maybe a lighter is a better idea. Much surer bet, at least]

What if I like smoking?

[Given that he barely goes a day without going through at least a half a dozen, 'like' is probably an understatement, but it's something to do with his hands and mouth, not to mention a way to keep his stress down. Besides, even when he'd been on the run, it was easy enough to pick people's shops and pockets for tobacco and easy to store. Food? Not so much, which is why he's so often hungry]

Why do they ask so many dollars for something so small? Where I come from, you can get a cigarette for a nickel.

[ A nickel? Bigby remembers the last time cigarettes were that cheap, and it was a god damn long time ago. Either there are some real cultural differences going on, or something more temporal. Something to keep in the back of his mind, at least. ]

Because they know people will pay. If everyone refused to shell out that much the companies would kick prices down in a heartbeat, but it's a business of addiction. People will give up all sorts of things before they stop buying cigarettes.

[ He's well aware that he could be put under the "addict" label, but at least there's some practical purpose to his addiction. Living in New York City with a hypersensitive sense of smell can be maddening - the cigarettes dull that sense a bit, mask the chaotic blend of scents with one that's much stronger, much more persistent.

Downside is that he always smells like the stuff, but it's a worthy trade, he thinks. ]

That's capitalism.

If they think people will give up other things before cigarettes, they've never met me.

[Truthfully, he's gone days without food before, using the cigarettes to staunch the worst of the hunger, but he doesn't see the point of doing that if he doesn't have to. Still, asking for so much money for a pack of them makes him wonder whether the bounty on his head would even be worthwhile if it even still exists here at all, something he's yet to find out because it's not something he wants to go around asking]

Capita-what?

[It's like Goodnight all over again, what with Vasquez needing to either ignore it and pretend he understands or demand to know what he's talking about. While his English is just fine, he's also not sitting around sprouting off big words just to show off]

[ Bigby's not exactly a pro in the field of economics, so giving a crash course in Capitalism 101 isn't his forte, but you don't live through literally all of American history without learning the ins and outs of how it functions. His brow furrows a bit, waving one hand vaguely as he tries to think of the shortest summary he can make up. ]

Basically... people control the economy, not the government. Means they can charge as high as they expect people will pay for something. Has its ups and downs.

[ He pulls a cigarette from his own pocket as he talks, taking the time to light it up once he's finished. ]

How long have you been here? This city, I mean.

[It doesn't exactly sound like anything Vasquez is going to like, if he's honest. He smokes instead of saying as much, mainly because he hadn't been lying when he'd talked about how important smoking is to him and right now, it's doing a good job in keeping him steady and calm]

Where I come from, you earn money doing jobs, but no one controls all the money. Then again, not much government I deal with, either.

[That's very much on purpose, of course, seeing as the government would like to have Vasquez dead and in a coffin in some small town to show for him killing one of their men, even though that man didn't even begin to deserve the few breaths he had in him before Vasquez shot him dead]

Few days, maybe a week. I can't seem to find a way to leave.

[He's also not entirely sure he wants to, just yet. It's strange and big and foreign, but no one seems to be chasing him so much just yet. It's not as good as a guarantee he's safe, but safer than before]

Some parts of the world do things differently, but where I'm from it's basically the same. You work, you get paid. Pretty simple.

[ ... well, the principle is simple. The work itself, that's where things can get complicated. Even when he's supposed to be the arm of the law in Fabletown he ends up being viewed as the villain of the story. Makes him wonder, once in a while, if there's any point in all of it.

Someone there keeps his head straight. Keeps his heart straight, too. She's not here.

Could be a problem, in time.

But for now he's doing well enough, keeping himself out of trouble, and he shrugs a bit at the man's remarks in regards to his time here. ]

From what I hear, everyone's got some reason or another to not want to leave so quickly anyway.

[So it's not just him? Vasquez had thought it very strange that he's been brought somewhere that no one seems to care who he is, what he did, or knows about a picture of his face with a reward on it, but he thought maybe it's just because he hasn't run into it yet. It could be on purpose, somehow?]

What part of the world are you from, then?

[He wants to ask if the man has good reason not to want to leave either, but Vasquez figures one demanding question at a time is probably enough]

[ He can't be too specific with that answer, and even if he was he doubts anyone would believe him. What sane-minded individual would actually consider the possibility that there's an entire community of fairy tales living right under everyone's nose in... ]

New York City.

[ Upper East Side, to be specific. ]

Though in a place like this, I'm not sure how helpful that information is.

[New York? That's further than Vasquez would even consider riding in his life, mainly because he doesn't like going that far North, where it's too cold. Even a little snow makes him drive south, though it'd been harder lately with the warrant to move as quickly as he likes. Things would've been solved so much easier if he could just reach Mexico again, but then Sam Chisolm had happened]

Never been to New York. It would've taken weeks to get there and it's too big for me.

[Cities that big aren't something he'd willingly choose, though it's not like he's really able to choose right now.]

I was just near California, myself. Was riding out towards Mexico, though.

[With any luck, having Sam and Red at his side would've helped him clear a few towns, then he could've turned south. Would haves, could haves, all these things that he's not getting to do because now he has to find work just to keep smoking]

[ His wording confirms a few things that Bigby had been suspecting - not about Vasquez specifically, but about this place they had found themselves in. What was obvious was that it could bring in people from different... "worlds", as it were. The idea of other realms of existence wasn't new to him; he'd already lived in two of them himself, so that much was easy to swallow.

This man knew what New York was, but said it would take weeks to get there from California? That he was "riding out" towards Mexico? The outfit could have just been a fashion choice, but combined with everything else... ]

What year was it, when you left?

[ Did people get pulled from the same world, but across time? ]

1869? 1867? I don't know, I lost track. I didn't exactly keep a calendar on me.

[The dead man hadn't even had one in his home, though Vasquez had used the rate of decomposition to figure that one out as to how long he'd been there. Shame he couldn't have buried the body without drawing attention to himself]

Some people, they tell me that it's much further here? The telephones, the cars, even the jobs, they're all new and different. I'm still getting used to it.

vasquez | magnificent 7 | ota

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