Challenge #02544-F354: High Offensensitivity Rating
There was a cosplay event, the hotel didn't 'bother' catering for food or drink separately. Lunch Break! -- Anon Guest
Among the many mistakes the organisers made was to hold a high-nerditry event in an extremely non-nerdy city. On the other hand, the place was usefully central to all available modes of transport. The conservative citizens were busy holding protests near the main convention entrance and the hotel complex wished to deny to everyone else that they were holding host to weirdos.
There were people dressed up as animals. There were people dressed up as monsters. There were people dressed up as demons, and that was way too much for the conservative general populace to face in -say- the Hotel's free buffet. The hotel really should have thought about that before indulging the staff's reluctance to bring an entire convention the fruits of a proper dining hall. Food and beverages laid out before the weirdos arrived en masse... quickly ran out as hungry hordes of cosplayers descended on the limited offerings.
Then someone said, "There's a free buffet downstairs off the lobby," and the hungry multitude charged downstairs. Vampires, robots, demons, elves, heroes, villains, and fur-suited creatures in all hues achievable by makeup and mankind. Everything strange, unfamiliar, and foreign to conservative minds came swarming down to the more public buffet zone.
The honest, church-going citizenry there to shop, gamble, or drink or all three; were automatically incensed. They didn't understand why so many people had to be publicly weird where they could see them doing it. Since it is easier to be angry at things they didn't understand, they quickly blamed the hotel and its staff. Those that didn't blame the hotel quickly turned against the source of their anger... the weirdos helping themselves to the free buffet.
They got righteous. They got loud. They got destructive. Though the weirdos weren't the cause of the mess, they were certainly blamed for it as a sparking event. It was the so-called normal people who made the devastation, but they all blamed the strange and unusual strangers who had dared to come into their midst.
In brief, the ordinary, respectable citizens began a riot.
Interestingly, it was the weirdos in full costume, just planning to enjoy themselves, who were the first responders for the wounded, for the terrified, and for those just too confused to participate in the inherent anger. They got small children out of the danger zones, they assisted the injured and comforted the forlorn.
It would be nice to say that, afterwards, the ordinary and respectable citizens were ashamed of their behaviour but... like conservatives everywhere, their first and only instinct was to blame the victims. The weirdos deserved it, they insisted, for daring to be weird.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / creatista]
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