New Beginnings:

Portrait by Linapoo of my Feast of Fools themed avatar.

Hello, to anyone who may still be hanging about.

In case you didn’t notice, all previous posts were for an event game on an Avatar Community known as Menewsha (okay, that’s actually what it’s called, but that sounded cooler). The event was called “The Feast of Fools” and the teams were split into the Gypsies, Jesters, and Artists. The majority of the game was done by members from each team completing tasks towards “setting up, promoting and putting on a Street Circus.” All completed tasks went towards earning money (the point system). The creation of this blog was a result of the Bonus round, in which each team set up and maintained a blog throughout the day detailing the team’s fictional (or some RL) activity toward getting the performance underway.

In case you’re curious, the Artists won first place, Gypsies pulled through from the underdog position (we lagged behind from the beginning, with minimal member activity XD) to win second place, and Jesters came close in behind with third after a period of needing to tend to Real Life. ‘

Now, then. On to business!

I, Starr, have decided to continue posting on this blog as a sort of research project. I’ve always been fascinated by Gypsies, being someone with their own case of serious wanderlust. Of course, Gypsies have always had a hard time gaining acceptance, and I’m sure they still do. So, I’m dedicating this blog to my exploration of the world of the Gypsies.

Hope to see you soon!

~Starr

It is the END

Time to say good-bye. This festival was quite a rush, one team against another. Although we fell behind at first, we sure caught up to all the others 🙂 I wonder if we would actually get a bit more money than the Jesters…. :d All through the stress and breakthroughs, it was always fun 🙂 Thanks to everyone that helped out, and Happy said that she wouldn’t be here to say good-bye to everyone so I’d do so in her stead. I know I’m a horrible speech-person and I have awful stage fright, but thank goodness I don’t have to give this announcement to hundreds of people. oh, wait, I do. *coughs* Anyways, I’ll miss everyone that was here for the circus and thank you for coming. Bye Fey, Happy, Kage, and Silver, have a good night guys. Hah hah, I wonder if this post will even count because I need to submit it at 6:30 on the dot.  

I still can’t find Peeby and the Fire-Breathing Camel seems to be missing as well…that can’t be good O.O

Oh look! The fire-eaters are out and about. They’re saying good-bye as well, although they don’t even look sad because they say “Hey, why be sad? We’ll all see you again next year.” and with a flare of fire, they skip away to say good-bye to everyone else.

—LaVida—

Instruments used by the Gypsy

All this talk about Gypsy dances and stuff made me think – Hey! What about the music that they danced to? What kind of music did they use to make that music? And off to Google we go~ Apparently, many Gypsy musicians played various styles of instruments from the east, such as the mandolin, the accordian, and drums.

 

While searching up these instruments, I also found out that a breed of horse that the Gypsy breeds was called a “Drum”. It’s a cute, shaggy pony with very furry front legs. It looks as if the horse was wearing fur boots! The coloring of the horse is black and white, but personally, I don’t think they look like cows much at all. Talking about animals and other creatures, I wonder where Peeby went, he’s not in his box…. Whenever he goes missing, it always means that he’s off to cause more trouble. Last time he went missing, he set fire to one of the small tents…..close to where the fire-breathing camel was. The camel freaked out and tried to fry Peeby and he barely got away. So they’re not on very good terms with each other 😦 It would be a pretty ugly scene if they bump into each other – I very much hope that they don’t.

—LaVida

Summer Nights

Wow, the sun’s still out. If it was winter, at this time the sun would have already set. Well, at least most people can see where they’re going, but the Fire-Eaters can’t wait for the sun to set and it’s pretty hot with the sun up. Thank goodness we’re right beside a little lake. Oh….my……gosh…..the lake looks like a crowded beach! There’s so many people playing in it right now! I don’t blame them, it’s so hot I think I might go and take a dip in the lake myself. I heard that water has a higher heat capacity than sand or the ground so that it’s nice and cool when the sun’s up, and when it sets and it gets cooler, the water gets WARM!!! But before all that, I think I need to get some dinner. The food stalls sell their food at such high prices! Seriously, a cup of chocolate ice cream for $10 dollars and to add a soda is $15 dollars?!!! They’re sure making a profit from this >.> I’m surprised that people are still buying from them. Good thing is that in any type of shade, the temperature feels like it drops 5 degrees and it’s super nice and cool inside the tents. I’m going to go and take that dip in the lake now, here’s to hoping that the sun does go down sometime soon.

—LaVida

Enter the Mind of Starr

I think I saw Peeblo run by…I wonder what he’s up to! Of course, it might be a bit more frustrating with another fire breathing menace running about…

Anyway, after my experience with that Squirrel, I started gettin to thinking. Which, of course, SHOULD worry you. So, read on…if you dare! *maniacal cackle*

I’m living in a world…and then another world! Like, woah oh my goodness. What if there are parallel worlds where animals talk!? How awesome would that be? And what if those worlds just overlapped? So crazy.

Or! What if that squirrel was a time traveler escaping some horrid genetic experiment taking place in the future that made him able to talk…or even WAS a human turned into a Squirrel but lost his mind in the process? Or even switched minds with a squirrel and there’s some poor human running around collecting acorns and dodging cars!

I think I really want to go take a bath.

Did you know? That some blind people are able use a process similar to echolocation in order to “see” their surroundings? Just like a Dolphin! I imagine if I were able to do that, I’d be running around making dolphin sounds or screeching like a bat all the time. EEE EEE! EEEE! EEE!

I wonder what it would be like to be Synesthetic. Your mental associations are so whack. You imagine sounds as color and colors as smells or sounds and smells and images…It’d be so crazy and awesome!

I think I should go practice some new dances. LaVida just showed me a few on youtube and I really wanna learn them. Belly dance is great, but I know there are more dances that are more common amongst the Gypsies. Maybe I could even learn to juggle fire…while dancing…and eating a cake at the same time…

Starr is signing off! Time to report for duty at mission control!

Nortthern/Western Gypsies

At the thought of Gypsies, the first thing that came into my mind was not belly-dancing, but something more like the ending of this:

Or maybe this: 

this one was a group of dancers somewhere around greek, I think.

and I really liked this one:

Wow……I want a long, pretty dress too….maybe I can talk/bribe my mom into making me one. It would be awesome and I would dance a ton in it.

Anyways, the only information about gypsies I was exposed to as a child was that they were extremely mistreated. They travelled a lot and many of the places that they travelled in, they were extremely unwelcome. Sometimes the land they lived on belonged to a lord or duchess and those lords and duchessess tend to chase them out of their land because they considered Gypsies unclean, or they have bad luck, or that they were a burden. While at the same time, there were many love stories between those lords or duchessess and/or their sons or daughters that fall in love with a Gypsy. Some of the stories end in tragedy and very few end with a happy ending. Ummm…..Happy seems to be acting up, I hope she’s okay…

—LaVida

Setting Up

Well, the camp’s been waking up throughout the morning and the Camel fiasco seems to have settled down. LaVida went out and bought everyone some chocolates, so we’re ready to go!

Everyone’s working real hard to get ready for our last performance. I’ve been working on decorations, lately. Others have been around setting up the tents and all the wares and doodads and such.

Oh! While I was setting up decorations, some pretty interesting stuff happened. I don’t know if it’s due to lack of sleep or maybe something in the chocolate..but man it was weird. I was hanging up little glass orbs with fun colored ribbons attached to them in the trees. They’re really pretty and definitely help the atmosphere.

Anyway, while I was setting them up, a squirrel came by and gave me a good long look in the eye. I stopped what I was doing and just stood there, staring at it. It got real close..like..in your face kind of close, and I was worried it might be another ill-tempered animal. Then, it spoke! I SWEAR THAT SQUIRREL SPOKE TO ME!

He said, “Hey, Starr! You know the peas are overcooked?” I gave it a funny look. We weren’t even making any peas. We hadn’t even had any peas this whole week! What in the blazes was this squirrel talking about?

“What peas?” I asked, absolutely flabberghasted.

“Peas? Where? I like peas, peas are tasty I pick them out of OH LOOK SHINY!” Then the squirrel grabbed the decoration right out of my hands and ran off with it!

I stood there for a few moments, staring after it kind of hoping he’d come back and explain himself. Or at least bring my decoration back. I looked around for other squirrels, and when I found them tried asking them what they knew about the other one. Unfortunately, not a single one understood me. The carried on collecting nuts and running around like kids hyped up on caffeine.

I think I’m going crazy. I’ve started becoming delusional. Is that a pie I smell? It looks like green. And the monkeys are dancing everywhere…

~Starryyyy

CHOCOLATE is HERE

As soon as I heard that there was a shortage of chocolate, I grabbed some of my money and dashed to the nearest settlement with a chocolate shop. I love chocolate myself, but I won’t go crazy if my chocolate goes missing…..but if you add a ton of edgy people without chocolate together….you get CHAOS. By the time I got back, I could almost feel the tension in the air…or maybe it was all the flames and fire that the camel was spewing everywhere. First I got a bucket of water and calmed down the camel – his throat always gets super-dry whenever he starts spam-firing. As a thank-you, he spat in my face. Yea. As soon as I got him that bucket of water, I brought the big bag of chocolates that I bought and gave a piece of chocolate to everyone and of course, the camel lumbers over and takes a whole box of chocolate for himself…..now if only I can find Happy….I heard that the camel was bullying her  I hope that she’s alright, because last time she got a bit of her hair burned – I hope that the camel doesn’t turn her bald someday…..err, maybe Happy should stay away from the camel for a while….

—LaVida

You said what!?

As you may have read earlier, the Troupe’s leader, Fey, has recently reported a shortage of chocolate. And, to make matters worse, the camel ate it! Ohhh someone’s going to pay. First he chews up my skirt, then he singes my hair, and I sprain my ankle…and NOW he had the nerve to eat the chocolate!? I’ll show this camel…oh, he’ll never think twice about stealing chocolate from ME again…

I just…ugh. I can’t believe we’re letting that camel walk all over us. He’s a CAMEL! So he breathes fire…and has a nasty temper…WE’RE the ones in charge here! Grrrr… He’s gonna get it. He’s gonna get it big time. Everyone’s flipping out without the chocolate. The fortune tellers can’t tell the fortunes for some reason (or they’re just making up bogus out of anger), and even the sword jugglers are physically distressed.

…Ya know what!? Obviously, this Troupe has a serious problem. It needs fixing. Thank you, oh wise camel. You have shown me the light. I feel like I have been drowning and you reached out a hand to rescue me. We are much too dependent on chocolate. We should all quit. Right now. We have no reason to be eating so much chocolate. It’s unhealthy and we’re being ridiculous. And, clearly, we should offer all our chocolates to the camel daily as a sacrifice in thanks for showing us.

NOT! I want my chocolate! GIVE ME BACK MY CHOCOLATE YOU SLEAZY CREATURE!

~Starr

Leader’s Trivia

~ A little story about the Troupe’s leading belly dancer ~

I actually DO belly dance for fun. Some of you may be wondering why I was concentrating on that as opposed to something more along the lines like fortune-telling and fire-spinning and sword-throwing and all the other awesome things that gypsies do… well it’s because it’s what I do IRL. I actually learned an entire routine that I was able to preform at the Castle of Muskogee (Don’t know what it is? Look it up!) one year for the Renaissance Faire. It was wonderful. The bottom picture that I posted in the Gypsy Camp is actually my troupe. I’ll be posting another… it actually shows me mid-performance. I was really proud of everything that I did… I have balance issues, so… it’s rather impressive that I was able to actually get through all of it without tripping over my own two feet. To put it in nerd terms… its like a have a 2 in agility, with a 15 in preform dance. I actually went down there with a friend and the entire time we were listening to Japanese music and talking about all kinds of cosplay and anime stuff. It was really fun. Though… dancing during a parade has to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to do…

12:27pm ~ FeyonaSaibre