#portvaletask

A Secret Santa gift for Ishmael! I wanted to bring the Blackmore brothers together for you! I hope you enjoy the boys!

when: december

status: closed starter for @blackseariddle​

While Vera still didn’t understand the meaning of the holiday (she had read all the picture books that she could get her hands on, and she’d seen many movies and she was just more confused than she had been before she’d started trying to figure everything out), or it’s many traditions, she had to say that she was a big fan of Christmas. Which is why, when given the chance to sign up for a ‘Secret Santa’ she had jumped at the opportunity. She had never met her intended recipient, Ridley Alara, but she still wanted to give her something nice.

In the end she’d made her a snow globe out of a glass jar and various other supplies, as instructed by a craft book she’d come across one day while shelving, and some cookies, because who doesn’t love cookies? She’d wrapped everything up with brown paper and a sparkly bow and set out on her quest to deliver it. She’d decided to try and catch the other woman at work. And then, if she wasn’t there, she figured that she could just leave it there and she could get it when they were in next.

She pushed the door to the salon open, peering around at everything curiously. “Ah, hello!” She called out to the first person that she saw. “I’m looking for... Ridley?”

TASK 004: SECRET SANTA

Ho ho hooo! It’s that time of the year again, the holidays are fast approaching, homes in Port Vale have started to light up, the decorations are being undusted, and the locals start buzzing about a Port Vale tradition that’s been coming back year after year.

Victoria Wolfgang has posted the sign up sheet for the annual Secret Santa event outside of the town centre, and people line up for a chance to participate. It is always a fun, exciting event as the town gets embroiled in festive cheer. Some people keep it a secret, some reveal and ask for help to get the best gift they can think of for their assigned giftee, but no matter what approach they choose, it’s about giving some love and joy to the other person. This year, with so many merfolk in town, the Christmas haul is sure to be interesting. 

This task will be a bit different than the previous ones.  We are holding a Port Vale Secret Santa event through the holidays. You have two options: 

The IC Secret Santa gift exchange (for the characters)

The OOC Secret Santa gift exchange (for the writers)

Choose to sign up for IC or OOC, or both!   If you have multiple characters you choose who participates. 

Sign ups: until December 6th Gift-delivery: until December 23rd

Please send an ask or submit to the Main on tumblr (do not use Discord or the IMs feature) with your sign-up in the following format.  You can list OOC, IC, or both:

I'm signing up for Secret Santa! OOC: [player name] IC: [character name(s)] list multiple if you want, anyone can participate!

The Mods will then randomly assign pairings based on who signs up for what. Everyone who signs up will be messaged privately after the 6th once sign-ups are closed. Details on submissions and how this event will work can be found below the cut! 

“I wish I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We don't have the words for it, since we hadn't yet learned the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily.”

― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

TASK #003: LETTERS FROM THE HEART

a letter to… someone you hope to meet, someone from your past

Dear Miss Mermaid,

... it feels so weird writing to you. I don’t know anything about you, not even your name to properly address this letter. But you’ve been with me every since I was six, ever since you saved my life.

I want to say thank you, but I don’t even know how to put it into words, how to properly express how much it means to me. I can thank you everything, my entire life in so many different ways. Getting to live, but also knowing that something else, something more is out there. I don’t know how my life would have turned out without you showing up in that crutial moment.

Not even sure what else I could say, but I hope one day I can thank you in person. Get to meet you and talk to you, even if it’s just for a few moments. It would mean-- it would mean the world to me. You have no idea how much.

Other than that, I just wanted to say that I hope your life is amazing and you get to experience so much joy in your life, as much as you gave me.

Love,

Steph

task 002 - port vale’s fashion

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status: closed for @tiagonussbaum​ location: the houseboat  date: dec. 22nd, mid-evening

There were few things in the world, both above and below the surface of the water, that Ridley felt she could truly pride herself on - well, that was a lie. She found herself of being within the scope of a great many talents; but a master of none. None, perhaps, save for one - she was excellent with a cellphone. At this point, she could basically be part-time FBI. Internet stalking had come to fingers quicker than any other mundane human task, so when it was a foreign name she’d never heard of drawn from the Santa hat and given to her for secret santa, Ridley knew what to do. 

Google was her best friend in every situation, and the mystery of one Tiago Nussbaum was no match for it’s limits. Within mere moments, Ridley was on his author page, making mental notes of the importance of rye bagels, and his long lost of achievements. From there, it turned to looking at buying guides for keywords like best gifts for famous writer and what to buy an author, until eventually, painstakingly, the choices had been narrowed down. For someone experiencing her first ever Christmas, Ridley saved no effort in the pursuit for a winner gift - was it born of the natural desire to find success, in the small ways she could, or more to impress not only Victoria Wolfgang, but this presumably notable figure in Port Vale. 

How fortunate, this Tiago, Ridley found herself musing as she made the final preparations for her scheme a bit too grand for something as small-scale as a secret Santa community game. With Weldon’s help, and the promise of returning the favor, Ridley had secured a fancy-seeming messenger bag for laptops. Sure, the wrong name was embroidered on it, but the siren simply assumed that was a brand name or something, like maybe a Chad Whitley was a fancy indie designer that someone of Tiago’s status, surely, would be impressed to own. Beyond that, a hat she had deemed sleek and looking just as an author should. And, if all else failed, a gift card for the local breakfast bakery on the corner, just down from the city centre - rye bagels, they did not have, but regular ones would hopefully suffice. 

Armed with these gifts, and a card, penned in her own, childish script, it would read; 

I’ve always said, you can’t do your best if you don’t feel (or look) your best. 

What is a writer without the right props? Or snacks!

Merry Christmas, from a hopeful new friend

- Ridley Alara 

The siren had done well in her research, asking a couple of the other residents of Port Vale she had deemed ‘important’, and eventually had managed to bring her cyber-stalking talent to the real world, with little regard to how weird that should be for any totally average human. The siren blundered on, the Christmas bag swinging over her wrist oversized and dusting her path with gold and silver glitter. Aside from the picture of himself on the author’s website, Ridley was flying blind; but her assessment of him was the same she’d had while reading his legacy- man, he’s intense. 

Boldly, likely with more confidence than she should have, Ridley made her way to the man seated at the bar and gently tapped his shoulder, a smile brightly worn on her features and the a light dusting of snow still coating the top of her head. “Um, so, hi,” Ridley began, unable to help a quick glance down at her hand where she’d written his name - still forever fussing over how to properly say it. “Tie-Tiago? Right? Hi, I’m Ridley, and guess what! I’m your Secret Santa. Surprise!” With that, she thrust the gift bag forward, realizing her plan had literally no advancement past this; and, belatedly, she was struck with the first of the worry of it’s kind - what if he hated it? 

I don't think about you all that often — in fact, I've spent more time trying to actively not think about you. It's not that your absence has had any effect on my life whatsoever — my mother has taken on every role in your absence and honestly I'm not sure exactly what you could have added in to my life.

Sometimes, however, I think about where we'd have been if you'd been in my life. Not about who you could have been for me but what you could have offered me in terms of escape; my life isn't my own any more with your absence than it would have been with you in it, I imagine. But I still wonder...

Call me crazy, but I think sometimes that you're dead. It's safer for me that way. Another person to miss and another way of letting go, an escape into sadness for someone I barely know and someone I still feel the loss of so keenly. I wish you were a wave upon the shores of Port Vale in reality instead of just within my mind.

I have no hopes that anything like this would ever reach you, or even that you'd respond if it did. I'll still throw it into the ocean, watch it wash away and sink and live quietly with the knowledge that my mother, sister and I are doing amazing without you.