riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: PRIJATA

Entry tags:

introductory mingle: PRIJATA

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and Prijata Celebration
when: June 1st - June 8th
where: Anywhere around the city.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

prijata

In the days leading up to June 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: Prijata. Riverview Quarantine has a strong culture of love, and they celebrate all types - Prijata is a special celebration of platonic love and building community through friendship. Prijata traditions include gift exchanges between friends, sharing meals cooked together by friend groups, and a variety of events and services aimed at making friends.

a celebration of platonic love

Prijata is a relatively relaxed holiday, focused mainly on friendship and platonic love - dedicated to appreciating the friends already in one's life, and opening oneself up to making new friends. Besides the private giving of gifts between friends, there is also a city-wide government-sponsored gift fountain that is open throughout the entire week. Included in the wide variety of events catered to finding new friends, are 'speed friending' and a large open exhibition where all the specialized clubs in Riverview can recruit for new members - and residents new or old can create a club and recruit.

i. gift fountain

While Prijata gift exchanges between friends are generally a quiet affair, done at friend-group dinners or parties, the element of gift giving does extend outward - community-wide, in fact. Throughout the course of the week, anyone living in Riverview Quarantine can drop by the huge fountain in the City Center, in front of the City Hall. They will find that the fountain is chock full of floating gift boxes in a wide variety of colors, patterns, and different shapes - though none larger than a shoe box. There are signs put up around the fountain stating that the boxes are magic and will only seek and open for their rightful owners. Characters will find that, upon touching the water, a box will float over to them, and when they pick it up, the top will unfurl like flower petals, displaying the gift inside. Sometimes, the box won't appear on the first try, since there's only so much space in the fountain at any given time, but if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Every person in the city (including new arrivals) will receive one gift by the end of the week.

Gift fountain boxes will contain one small item from each character's home dimension (or, for CRAUs, from their previous game), similar to the "items from home" bonus reward, but without needing to spend points. The item should be small enough to fit in a shoebox, sentimental, and cannot be something intended for another person's character. ETA: If you can't think of an item like this that would work for your character, something of similar size and quality to what's described above that would make the character very happy can be substituted.

This prompt can also be used for gift exchanges and for characters to receive the Government-given gifts that were suggested in the Prijata Pregaming posts on the OOC community and the TDM.

ii. speed-friending

This is pretty much what it says on the tin! Much like speed-dating setups, many bars, coffee shops, and other places that people might gather are holding speed-friending! It's your standard setup - characters enter and fill out a quick questionnaire about themselves, and flit from table to table looking for someone with great friend chemistry. Not all of them are general and open to anyone who walks in, though, with many being specialized to people who are invested in certain hobbies, occupations, or with specific sets of interests. With specialized speed-friending setups ranging from horror movie buffs to members of the Perimeter Guard to fashionistas to sports or martial arts to video games, no matter what your character is into, they're likely to be able to sign up for a special event where they can go looking for a friend who's into the same things they are!

For this prompt, you can put up a list of hobbies or interests your character has, and compatible characters can hit them up for a speed-friending thread, like the IC equivalent of the CR meme!

iii. club exhibition

Speed-friending is all well and good, but not everyone is outgoing or open enough to know if they have friend chemistry in only a few minutes. For anyone looking to find groups of like-minded individuals they can spend more than a few minutes with before committing to something as daunting as a friendship, there is a week-long club exhibition happening in the Town Square in the City Center. Table after table and booth after booth are occupied by existing clubs in the city, with an incredibly broad scope of focus interests and hobbies - enough that any character should be able to find a club with their niche interest represented.

And if it isn't? Characters are welcome to start their own clubs - much like a business, a character-run club can have space set aside in the city for meetings and event mingles that are eligible for Activity Point Bonuses for the organizer.

iv. unveiling the new friendr

Prijata this year is marked by something special - the unveiling of a code rebuild of the ubiquitous Friendr app! Anyone with the app installed already will receive a prompt to update the app, and if anyone hasn't yet downloaded it, they'll receive a quick, easily-dismissed pop-up ad on their device when they next access the network, asking if they want to. No one is obligated, and the ad is a one-time instance, intended to make sure any character who hasn't heard of the app gets a chance.

The Friendr app is a swipe-left-or-right style friend matching and/or dating app that is very common in Riverview, both for PCs and NPCs, and it has received an upgrade with a new appearance, a new interests line for more accurate matching, and a wide variety of themes so that the colors can be customized!

Please see the updated appearance below, with the 'default' color scheme. Players are free to change the colors or appearance of the code but please do not remove the credit line showing where the base code came from, out of respect for the code creator.

Friendr

» Age: your character's age
» Seeking: friendship/romantic/anything
» Preferences: sexual preference or n/a
» Interests: three interests
» Bio: 30 words or less

base code by photosynthesis

Character Name

« ✘

✔ »

<center><table style="width:300px;"><tr style="border-bottom:1px dashed #528887;"><td></td> <td style="padding:20px; padding-bottom:0; width:300px; font:38px Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; text-transform:uppercase; color:#c4c4c4; text-align:center; letter-spacing:2px; background-color:#2a2a2a; border-top-right-radius:50px; border-top-left-radius:50px;">Friendr</td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-size:70px; vertical-align:middle; text-align:right; padding:0; color:#528887;">«</td> <td style="background-color:#2a2a2a; padding:20px; padding-top:10px; padding-bottom:0; width:308px;"><img src="IMAGE URL - 300px WIDE OR LESS" style="border-radius:20px;"> </td> <td style="font-size:70px; vertical-align:middle; padding:0; color:#528887;">»</td></tr>
<tr><td></td> <td style="background-color:#2a2a2a; font:12px arial; text-align:left; padding:10px;">» Age: your character's age
» Seeking: friendship/romantic/anything
» Preferences: sexual preference or n/a
» Interests: three interests
» Bio: 30 words or less
</td></tr>
<tr><td></td> <td style="text-align:right; font-size:10px; background-color:#2a2a2a;">base code by <a href="http://photosynthesis.dreamwidth.org/" style="color:#528887;">photosynthesis</td></tr>
<raw-code><tr style="border-bottom:1px dashed #528887;"><td></td> <td style="background-color:#2a2a2a;font:20px Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; color:#c4c4c4; text-align:center;">Character Name</td> <td><td></tr><tr><td></td> <td style="border-bottom-right-radius:50px; border-bottom-left-radius:50px; background-color:#2a2a2a; text-align:center;"><table style="width:100%; font:30px Verdana;"><tr><td style="text-align:left;"> « 
 ✘</td>
<td style="text-align:right;">✔ 
 »</td></tr>
</table></td> <td></td></table></raw-code></center>

base code found here.

For this prompt, you can either post your character's new, fancy Friendr app profile in the comments, or provide a link to their updated code in an entry on their journal. Whatever floats your boat!

v. roommates or wildcard

Feel free to use this prompt to set up headers for a communal floor, or threads open to roommates for the purpose of getting to know each other. Or if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set during Prijata, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: Odysseas Stamoglou; image ii: 5ofnovember; image iii: Sina Pakzad Kasra; image iv: mit19237

navigation

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Quentin drifts through the town square not because he yearns to join a club but because there is little else for him to do, his eyes glancing off of each cheerful display curated by the various clubs and his mind making meaning of none of it. This city is not what he had fixed in his mind all those times he thought about Hell. There are no sinners whipped ceaselessly by the wind, their arms and legs splayed and naked and ugly for it, no trees whose flesh must be snapped before they will speak their grievances, no Satan the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone the second death that never had a sister.

But speak of the devil, and he shall appear. He had not noticed the man until he speaks, as if the act of speaking is what has made him take form. Quentin's brow furrows and his once-clouded eyes flash like judgment day diluted. He treads carefully, as this is not a peer and some vestiges of manners stubbornly cling. An edge sharpens his voice, the cadence of which pins him to his home back in Mississippi.]

Well, I don't know what kind of club that would be.

A fun one, I'd wager. Not entirely sure this place is aware of what that is. Or, perhaps, the wide variations thereof.

[Lucifer turns to the man giving him a look that seems almost cautious. What was it with those here and eying him like he was about to bite someone's head off. Rude, is what it was.]

I might even take knitting if it was sexy knitting. Or nude knitting.

[Quentin looks at the stranger but sees the shape of Mr. Sydney Herbert Head announce the marriage of their daughter on the twenty-fifth of April, of Dalton Ames say it do you love him when they touched me I died, and in all his impotence he steels his jaw and draws himself taller in the manner of animals facing an imbalanced threat.]

I'd wager the folks around here are more civilized than that. Not about to lope off to the nearest field or ditch.

[The technology here is advanced beyond his comprehension, and so it follows that the civilization that produced such wonders is refined too of manners and morals, nothing crumbling like the edifices he knows, the ones which he cannot bear to leave, cannot fathom abandoning.]

Edited (grammar is hard) 2017-06-10 15:30 (UTC)

... Are you well? Why would they need to 'lope off' anywhere. That's what private nooks and crannies are for. Honestly, dear boy. You'd think you'd never seen a breast before.

[A pause.]

Oh. I... well. Maybe you haven't? Poor thing.

[Poor Quentin you've never done that have you what done what her skirt clinging damp to her thighs his knife's handle cool in his palm its blade cool against her throat don't cry I'm not crying push it are you going to do you want me to yes push it. Heat rises in his cheeks and sparks indignantly in his eyes, and his tongue lashes like a leather switch.]

Sure I have, lots of times.

Edited 2017-06-11 21:25 (UTC)

Mm, yes, well, the animated ones don't count. Never mind. I'm sure there's still plenty of opportunities to fix that, if you like. Unless you swing the other way.

[Was his gaydar still working?]

[He does not know what compelled him to fling out a senseless fib like that, only that it rose in him like bile I wish you were dead do you you coming in now are you thinking about him now. When he sees that his bluff has been called for what it is, as sturdy as the pillar of salt that Lot's wife turned into, he shrinks back into the boy he was pretending not to be, and his hands are tense at his sides, shaped not into fists but the precursor to what could become fists.]

Let it alone, all right? Nothing here needs your fixing. I don't know what kind of club you're looking to form, but don't drag others into it.

I beg your pardon, but I believe you've got an entirely wrong idea about, well, everything. I'm hardly going to make someone do something they don't want, am I? Not my jam, you strange man. Nor do I plan to form one. I'm merely... surprised there isn't one already made that would cater to such desires. People of all walks have desires, you know. I'm quite fond of ferreting them out, myself.

[He smiled at Quentin, whom he'd not yet been introduced to properly, adding that extra push to his gaze, that extra little power that he had to draw out little secrets.]

What about you, mm? What do you desire? What secret are you so afraid of getting out?

Edited (words) 2017-06-12 08:54 (UTC)

[His breath becomes stuck in his throat underneath that probing look, and everything rises up in waves like the smell of honeysuckle dripping through his window at night when he was trying to sleep. I said Father I have committed incest what else can I think about what else have I thought about I can't even cry I died last year when they touched me I died. Her skirts floating on the water, billowing with the current, then flopping limp around her legs as she pulled up, and honeysuckle painting her throat, his throat. It's like dancing sitting down did you ever do that poor Quentin you've never. He remembers the white rims beneath her iris, she looking past his head at the grey sky above and he with his knife it won't take but a second I'll try not to hurt losing it in the grass, crying I'm not. Fui. Non sum.]

Nothing, I said, all right? So let it alone.

[And his powerless not-fists stay strung by his side.]

Oh, come now. If you're being so quick to judge what type of deviant you believe me to be, I need something to compare it to, mm? What's that thing you desire most, mm? That secret crawling in your mind that longs to be free...?

[It could be anything, really. Sexual or not. He'd been hoping for something fun from one murder suspect and had wound up being told the man's secret desire was to run a cat hotel. It took all types, really.]

[His jaw is set in a grimace and he wants to drive his knuckles into the stranger's devilish grin, but the results of his last fight are still branded on his face, the ugly sunken purple only beginning to fade into the color of a bruised fruit instead. He cannot help but think about the question. He thinks of the clean flame the two of us more than dead. Then you will have only me then only me and of the ticking of his grandfather's watch, the mausoleum of all hope and desire, for battles are never won. Father said they're not even fought.]

Fine, all right then.

[He looks away, wondering if there is a clock nearby, or a factory with a whistle keeping time. Father said it was the idle habits you acquire which you regret.]

I want to escape time.

Really?

[That was a new one. Oh, he'd had people that wanted to turn it back or manage it, but escape it entirely? That was new. Which made him interesting.]

Not nearly as fun as I was hoping, but all right. I'll bite. Tell me, how exactly would you want that to work?

[There was no press this time, no push behind his gaze that might otherwise force or urge someone to answer what they wouldn't. Quentin was free to tell him to take a walk.]

[He has no desire to turn back time when already time turns over and over again in the echoing corridors of his memory, and he a vessel for voices and happenings that unfurl without cease, forever unfolding even when they are not happening, but they are always happening, never still. In the quiet that follows this question, it seems that Quentin would refuse to answer, but his skin tingles as if he stands upon a precipice and he remembers the sacred still air as he stared down into the river, down into his shadow floating on top of the current.]

You see, I reckon it's like this. It's like if a watch stopped ticking, you see? When you don't hear the ticking, you forget that it's making any sound at all - it's not bothering you about what the hour is anymore.

And you find yourself bothered by time? What, is it the passing of it? The inevitable aging? Or is there some moment you're dreading that's coming to pass?

[Curious, Lucifer stood there smiling benignly, hands crossed in front of himself as he waited for an answer to this puzzle of a young man.]

[He shakes his head, but he hasn't got the words to explain. One would first need to understand the way the honeysuckle had got stuck in his breathing, and how he had to keep very still in the grass to keep it from infiltrating his mouth; one would need to understand the doomed trajectory of his sister, who had quit being a virgin and so could not be a lady. And this he can't properly explain without first explaining the governors and generals from which they had sprung, and the forty-three summers Miss Rosa Coldfield had spent laced up in mourning black with the windows shuttered tight.]

No, no, that it keeps happening. That it won't stop.

... Well, aren't you a strange one. Time happens. It is what it is. Even in Hell, there's a passage of it, though it's skewed, depending on what your Hell is.

[He speaks then in the upright and particular manner that indicates the recital of passages from his memory.]

In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.

[Then the slightest hitch of breath as he steps back into his own thoughts.]

I suppose that's why Dante thought Hell was arranged in circles.

Yes, yes. Good for you. You can quote from a book. So can I. 'I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam I am'. It's about the bloody same.

[Quoting scripture at the Devil? Poor taste, Quentin.]

Likely because Dante was a little off his rocker, but it did make for good reading. And his Hell has a few layers to it.

[He looks mildly perturbed then, less for the insult to the word of God than for the insult to his own pride, he who cherishes the concept of Hell, of that clean flame in whose eternity he could have guarded his sister as he did not on earth.]

Didn't think you'd be interested much in reading - although, I suppose the shades of the sinners are all naked enough to hold your attention.

[...Did he just roast the devil? (I'm not bothering about writing this bit in Faulknerian style...)]

Naked, flayed, tarred and sometimes even feathered. It's Maze's specialty. You've really got a bug up your backside over this, haven't you? Bit caught up on that whole naked thing. Yes, human, some enjoy the look and feel of others. There are, sadly, things outside of that that even I can focus on.

Rude, really.

[Then the returning embarrassment flickers across his countenance as he remembers the rain on the barn roof not raining hard but we couldn't hear anything but the roof and if it was my blood or her blood. There? Touching her. Not there. I didn't kiss a dirty girl like Natalie anyway.]

You're the one who kept bringing it up before, all right? And anyhow, the worst off were supposed to be the three traitors, one getting gnawed on in each of Satan's mouths.

[Lucifer gave Quentin a look. Then he lifted a hand and pointed to his face.]

One. One mouth and I don't do any gnawing. I don't know what sort of Satan your world has, or if it even does, as I've met a few other deities here, but I can tell you as a statement of fact that I don't chew or gnaw anyone in Hell. Never did. Any gnawing was done in their own little version of Hell by their own mind's version of Satan. I just watched. Or pushed a few things here or there.

[He had thought it peculiar, of course, that the stranger would address him as human, as if he himself fell outside of humanity's scope, but to this peculiarity he had paid little heed. He think the devil that deceived the devil prowls around like a roaring lion that ancient serpent who is the devil. Such a realization ought to strike fear or its sister revulsion in his heart, but instead he feels there a naked sense of amazement.]

You're-- You mean to say you're him?

[And what does he do? He laughs, for what he cannot say, the sound regurgitated from deep in his belly.]

I am. I can't say the one and only, sadly, as this... reality proves that there are many different varieties of worlds. But I'm certainly the one from mine.

[The laugh prompted a somewhat offended look. What was with everyone laughing at him lately?]

[He shakes his head, the laughter still loosening and trickling from his lips as if water from a leaking faucet, although there is nothing like joy or amusement on his countenance.]

I-I don't know why I'm laughing. It's n-not very funny-- But here was I, certain this couldn't very well be Hell.

iii.

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sorry for the wait; last week of school = insane

No worries. Life has that habit of happening.

thank you, i choked on my water

I feel like I won at something =)

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also i'm sorry he is the way that he is

Never be sorry. Characters are lovely creatures and sometimes the clashing is fun =)

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