All Hallow's Eve at the Videan Homestead

Gentlewomen and Gentlemen of the Vox Chaotica Council! Alas, earwax.

There is no Fanday Friday! today, because this day is Frigg's Day and also Halloween, so my normal pagan ritual sacrifices are doubled—on top of my occult rites to strengthen my thesis. Then I have my duties in the Wizengamot, being the College of Winterhold's Archmage, soaking the sands of Pandora with the blood of my enemies, and generally just dying freaking all of the time.

Finding the links to everything there took like half my allotted time for this post. No, I totally didn't get sidetracked! Where'd you get that preposterous hypothesis? Did Steve tell you that (NQSFW—the Q is for quite)?

Anyway...

Obligatory Halloween post, AHOY!

Halloween has always been a huge deal at the Videan Homestead, but figuratively and literally. You see, my uncle designs sets for an amazing company locally in Phoenix (name redacted due to increased security measures at his workplace), and for a number of years, he would help us set up a fantastic display in our front yard for our lovely All Hallow's Eve celebration. That era ended after last year's extravaganza, because my uncle's company changed management and the new bosses take paranoid to ridiculous levels.

We had a new theme each year—though we always had a graveyard and a fence, because we had a lot of guests. Let's paint the scene, shall we? Cutter is sitting at his parent's kitchen table, watching his four younger cousins putting the last touch of makeup on to complete their costumes as he wolfs down a ridiculously paired-down sub sandwich (more about Cutter being super! picky in a later post...). He's just gotten the chance to eat because he spent the last remaining hours of the afternoon running power to the thirty or forty industrial (and programmable!) three-colour LED floodlights, setting up the facade in front of teh garage, screwing the fence together, placing all the gravestones, and unloading a bunch of miscellaneous stuff from a moving truck.

He says everyone's looking good, straps his V mask on, wraps his cloak around his shoulders, and walks outside as the dying rays of the sun grace the purple sky. His Da pulls him around the side of the house to move the fire-pit into the driveway, and as the wrought-iron legs of the little brazier scrape into place, all the neighbors from the whole cul-de-sac start oohing and ahhing about this year's display, setting up their chairs in our driveway so we all can hand out candy. [We learned within a couple years that our display drew enough people that it was easier for everyone from the six houses on our street to just pile in our driveway and hand out candy as one long sugary line.] We all have a raucous time (my twin uncles are mischievous in the extreme and make every family event a fantastic festival of laughs), and about six hours after we started (six in the evening is the usual for my neghborhood), the last trickle of the desperate candy-seekers pass by the house, but we ran out of candy around ten. Then everyone helps take down and put away the stuff in the truck.

So good times, yeah? Each family ended up handing out about 50 pounds of candy. 50. POUNDS. The fence is there to keep people from knocking over stuff in our yard, but most importantly it's there to give everyone an idea of where you should go to get the dang candy! [Editor's note: the real reason Cutter has enjoyed Halloween so much over the years is because free candy.] Though the costume thing is an undeniable draw... I have a list of halloween costumes I must wear before I die in my phone. Once I get rich, they will be the BEST COSTUMES EVAR!

tl;dr Cutter really enjoys Halloween, and he is sad you will never be able to experience the wonders of the Videan Homestead on Halloween night first hand—until time machines become a real thing. Really it's the free candy that keeps him going.