12-10-2017, 09:18 PM
The Premise
The Phoenix Society is half ladies' club, half structured social events. It is designed to supplement the social calendars of wives and widows outside of and around the normal social season, and to do so by inviting them to interesting events, not just more tea parties and garden parties. Events will run the gamut from weekend house parties, physical activities (horseback riding, roller skating, bicycling, etc), intellectual outings (dinners with female authors or activists, book clubs, learning new skills, art/history tours of various cities, evenings at the opera/theatre, etc), and the more typical craft parties and charity runs and things. Members are not obliged to participate in all of the different types of events, but membership means that all events are open to your characters.
IC there will be 2-3 events per month; we'll try to get at least one or two formally planned out via the event thread to give your ladies something to do! Any member can invite a non-member to participate in an event, but non-members may attend no more than one event per month.
There will also be a tea room, located in London and accessible via floo. It will be open at all respectable hours for the general use of the members (and to fulfill the function of a 'normal' ladies' club). They still have to find and set up the physical location for the tea room, so this will be open and available in January or February.
Membership
On Class: There are annual dues, which go to the maintenance of the tea room and to a general events fund which members planning things can pull from. This money is designed to be used to cover things like the cost of procuring a speaker for a dinner or arranging travel to a certain event; if the event itself costs money, like an opera, members are still expected to pay their way there. For this reason, although middle class women are not barred from membership, they'd have to actively want to be investing a good deal of their allowances in membership; for UC ladies this can be more of a casual thing like most ladies' clubs are presently.On Society: In order to become a member, everyone must be invited by a founding member. This might change when the society has been established long enough to stand on its own two feet, but right now you've gotta know a guy. If your character knows any member, though, you can come to one event in the span of a month - and if you meet one of the founding members there and she thinks you're good enough to merit an invitation, then you're in.
On Reputation: 4+ on the current system, 7+ on the new system. This isn't a hard and fast rule -- if your character has a rep 4 but it's for something the founding members think is awful, they might refuse membership.
On Employment: No women with masculine employment (Ministry workers, healers, Quidditch players, retail-related employment) will be considered. It's generally preferred that members not work except from home (charity work, craft work, writing, etc) but other 'feminine' positions are acceptable if they have someone vouching for them.
Although it's geared towards the married / soon to be so, debutantes may also participate if they're so inclined.
Founding Members: @'Ophelia Dippet' @'Eva Sleptova' @'Lucinda Cavanaugh' @'Calliope Riley'
Upcoming Event Ideas
I was thinking we could have NPC Yente Ventus come meet with the girls over lunch and give out really terrible Cosmo-style advice about marriage/men/etc - maybe in January? I'd love to have some threads where they all share awful advice (and then the hilarious threads following where they try and act on said advice).Ophelia wants to put together a Quidditch team for the event in February, if any of the ladies are athletically inclined~
Also in February, Ophelia wants to get @'Quincey Honeyduke' to run a workshop and teach them how to make simple chocolate :D It's fun, festive, and tasty. Hopefully he's down for that.
Give me your ideas as well!
Current Membership:
Ophelia Dippet | Lucinda Cavanaugh | Calliope Riley | Eva Sleptova |
Gwenda Cadwallader | Virginia Carmichael | Aurelia Wallingford | -- |
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