How to throw a theme party

[Orwell]

Various themes for a Belle Epoque Party. You have a number of potential themes, but mixing them up is a near criminal offence:

* Bohemian - Everyone sprawled about in a dingey room stocked with absinthe, well-read and stained books and periodicals, candles, and smokables from the Orient in hookah pipes. People must come artfully dishevelled, with the men being louche upper middle class types spurning their bourgeoise life for Art (makeup to mimic the symptons of tertiary syphillis optional), and the women being a mixture of local floozies and "models," or Sapphic poetesses of a similar background to the men. Conversation to revolve around the vulgarity of the modern salon and academy, the hypocrisy of the elite (i.e. your disapproving parents), and radical politics or artistic movements.

* Bourgeois - Clutter up your flat with all sorts of crappy nick-nacks and photographs, and make everyone sit around a table to eat a three course meal while discussing congenial and banal subjects (so as not to trouble the delicate minds of the women present), and drinking German wine of middling quality. After having dined, the men shall retire to the drawing room to drink brandy, smoke cigars and look at dirty pictures, and the women shall go to the kitchen to gossip about how best to manage the servants, the sexual inadequacies of the men and the terrible hopelessness of their lives.

* Proletarian - Food to consist of bread, cheese, beer and cooked offal, which the attendees may take at will as they arrive - a boiled pig's head would make a fine centerpiece. All must come wearing their best Sunday clothes (which will not be too flashy, but still...), initially attempting to maintain some sense decorum but then becoming steadily more and more drunk and exuberant as the evening goes on, as all present try despearately to forget the painful drudgery of their existence. Someone could also play the role of a socialist agitator coming to raise the consciousness of the working masses (see Bohemian), but will be kicked out half-way through the evening for making some terrible faux-pas, or being a crashing bore. The evening will end with a riotous song-and-dance session of music-hall classics, accompanied by an accordion.

* Aristocratic - A gigantic twelve course feast (which no-one will actually eat) sprawled out across a magnificently decorated room with chandeliers, shiney floors and portraits of one's exalted ancestors. Men and women must appear in their finest eveningwear or most prestigious uniforms, with beards and moustaches waxed for the men, and trailey flowerey sparkley dresses and incredibly expensive jewellery for the women ("Ah - 'twas a gift from my good friend the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin - I trust you know him...?"). Conversation to primarily revolve around a combination of formulaic social nicites and sensationalist court gossip, although conspiratorial plots against the Emperor, matters of high geopolitical importance, or partner-swapping may be discussed in whispers in secluded corners. Probably beyond the means of Wiking's flat.

* The Wonders of the Age - By jove, you have electrical light! And a gramaphone playing Stravinsky - my word! And Asiatic food and drink - what fun! Everyone to come in ridiculous fancy dress costumes of fairies, Oriental Emperors or Greek Gods, and be a mixture of crackpot scientists, decadent aristocrats, known artists, high-ranking socialites and courtesans, and eccentric stockbrokers. Talk about Sandow's Method of Muscular Development, how the urban poor should all be sent to work colonies in the countryside for moral improvement, and how you will all need to learn Esperanto in preparation for the oncoming epoch of Universal Peace in the World Federation State. For added effect, you can pretend you are on a zeppelin (placing a mild sedative in the drinks to mimic light-headedness from the altitude) which - in a grand finale to the party - you can pretend is crashing by turning the lights on-and-off very quickly.

[Kionon]

This post is awesome.

[BasharOfTheAges]

That last one sounds like an awesome setting for Etherites in an oWoD Mage game.