The Exian Masquerade. Dear B. I'm in Ex. I got here on the day of the Exian Masquerade. The idea of the masquerade is this, OK? Everybody puts on some kind of mask. It doesn't have to be a face mask. In fact, a lot of people wear a brass shell like a lobster tail on their bums. They stick extra tails on the end of the lobster shell and paint them different colours. Other people wear breast plates or metal pants or helmets or whatever they want. All of these masks are supposed to express what you're really like. So if you're a mean bastard who goes around pretending to be nice all the time, you wear a mask that tells them what your real personality is like. "Watch it," your mask says. "You might think I'm nice, but you're making a mistake." I think the idea is that we spend all the time turning our bodies into masks - you know, you smile when you don't mean it or you get in a crowd and bash someone who doesn't deserve it just because everybody else around you is doing it - so on this one day the Exians try to get rid of that. They wear masks that show what they're like under the body-mask (or whatever you want to call it. I couldn't think of a better word.) The problem is that most people aren't just one thing. You don't get many one hundred per cent bastards, y'know? So you see a lot of crossovers. There's a guy just over there wearing a bum mask that's all happy and perky, but his helmet has this worried mouth on it, and the eyes are frowning. He's happy, but he's worried too. Maybe he doesn't know why he's happy, or maybe he's afraid that his happiness is going to get stolen away from him, but if you were thinking that then you wouldn't be happy, would you? I don't know what to think about him. He's trying to show everybody what he's like, but he's still a mystery. I like that. There's a colour code for different types of personality. Turquoise and orange means a sadistic person, green and brown means that you're basically happy, grey and red means sneaky ... I haven't figured all of them out yet, but it makes the city really colourful. Having fun? Mariel. Visit Ex or read the list of festivals.