riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: HARVEST FESTIVAL

Entry tags:

introductory mingle: HARVEST FESTIVAL

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and Harvest Festival celebration
when: The month of November.
where: Anywhere around the city.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

harvest festival

In the days leading up to November 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: The Harvest Festival. This holiday is in celebration of the harvest season and autumn, as the moon transitions into its winter period, and is characterized by indulging in the plenty that comes with the harvest season with loved ones, cleaning house figuratively and literally, and making sure that those in need don't suffer during the winter. Celebrations tend to focus around food and charity, with citizens enjoying and sharing cultural meals and sharing stories, or participating in any of the wide range of charity projects and events going on during this season.

a celebration of sharing

The biggest traditions of the Harvest Festival are centered around giving and sharing. Charity is central, and the each year the city sets up a large open tent with warm places to rest for anyone who might be homeless and a table capable of sitting over 50 people at any given time, with a round-the-clock catered feast for anyone who wants to sit and have a meal with anyone else who's dropped by. Besides this, there are a wide variety of events benefiting charities in the city, including a karaoke concert, stray animal round up, and the annual "stuff swap" where residents clean their homes and donate anything they don't need to those who might be lacking. There is also a tradition of writing down repressed or bottled up thoughts, feelings, regrets, sins, and other troubles and tossing them into a bonfire to go into winter with a clean soul.

i. harvest feast & stuff swap

For the first few days of November, anyone dropping by the city center will notice a large tent structure being put into place - by November 3rd, as the last of October's ghosts fade into nonexistence, a veritable banquet hall will have been sent up. For a week following the setup, anyone who drops by the hall and steps inside will see a large table laden with food. Bread, stew, fruits and vegetables, soups, roasted meat, and almost anything else one can think of will be on the table, along with plates, silverware, and cups. Anyone is free to take a plate, settle down at the table, and help themselves to a meal.

The Feast is staffed entirely by volunteers, who do the cooking, cleaning, and tidy up the dishes and area afterwards, keeping the constant stream of food coming. Whether your character is heading in to sit beside a stranger and strike up a conversation, or volunteering their time, energy, or cooking skills to the hall, they're more than welcome.

One corner of the hall is entirely dedicated to the yearly "stuff swap." There's a long-standing tradition of fall cleaning in Riverview Quarantine, where residents will thoroughly clean their homes and rid themselves of excess in preparation for the winter. The extra things that aren't needed can be dropped off at the city center where the Feast is set up, and anyone who is in need of a particular item that has been donated can take it free of charge. This is an honor system, so please be kind to others! (Or don't.)

ii. charity karaoke

On the weekend of November 10th and 11th, while the Feast will be cleared away, the tent is being repurposed for a new event - a Karaoke Concert for the needy! Set up as a makeshift bar and lounge area, the space will be fronted by a large stage where singles or groups of people can choose a song and karaoke their hearts out to a crowd of spectators. There's a by-donation cover fee, and guests are encouraged to reward the best (or most hilariously bad) renditions of beloved songs from across the multiverse with digital "tips" that are transferred to the karaoke performer's charity of choice.

Whether you're a spectator tipping a performer, or a performer who's singing their heart out on the stage to benefit a variety of charities from the homeless to the animal shelter to children in need (and almost anything else you can think of), the Karaoke Concert is both hilarious and heartwarming.

iii. stray animal roundup

One of the main charity events that seems to happen every year is the stray roundup. As the seasons turn and it gets colder and colder at night, many residents who have a soft spot for animals band together to round up as many stray animals as possible and take them to shelters where they can be rehabilitated, given a warm bath, fed, and have a safe place to sleep. Volunteers take to the streets with crates and nets or restraining poles as well as generous bags of treats of food to entice the strays with, and capture them safely to be brought back to the various animal shelters around the Quarantine. Any animal who's caught is put up for adoption, and volunteers are encouraged to take home any strays that they bond particularly well with, or are invited to foster animals in their homes.

Whether your character is a die-hard animal lover, looking for a new pet, or just wants some wacky hijinks trying to chase a wily critter around the streets, they'll be suited up with supplies by other volunteers and released into the fray. The most common animals to be found are cats, dogs, and small domesticated foxes, but feel free to assume that your character is rounding up a reptile, rodent, bird, or a domesticated alien critter. Playing a thread with this prompt is a great opportunity to get a cute alien pet for your character without spending AP.

iv. letting go

On the evening of November 15th, a series of large bonfires will be set up all along the beaches of the river, and as the night falls, people begin migrating to the beaches from all over the city carrying slips of paper in a wide variety of colors with words written on them in a wide variety of languages, and throwing them into the fires. This is a way of psychologically and emotionally cleaning house for the residents of the Quarantine, because the papers they bring contain the stories of their pain, poems written about the feelings they bottle up, a venting of their anger and fear and resentment, all to be eaten up by the flames and washed away by the river with the next rain.

No matter where a person comes from, they carry pain and suffering and hurts that they must hide. This is a welcome opportunity for characters to write out their thoughts and feelings and release them. And if the symbolism of burning them isn't enough, there are always other people around the fires who are willing to listen, to hear all those things that people keep locked up inside. Share a story willingly, listen to someone's story, or just get caught holding your deepest darkest secrets on a really vulnerable piece of paper...it's up to you.

v. roommates or wildcard

Feel free to use this prompt to meet new roommates, for the purpose of getting to know each other, or hit up the mod-posted prompt to create a Communal Housing floor mingle. Or, if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set during the Harvest Festival, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i & iii: Bastien Grivet; image ii & iv: unknown (stock/hobbiton)

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Sarah jumps, taken by surprise. She didn't realize there was anyone watching her. It's embarrassing, if she's honest. It's embarrassing that she thought burning that stupid piece of paper would do anything to help.

"Um. Hi. I'm Sarah." She reaches up with both hands to tuck her hair behind her ears. "Is that what we're supposed to do? Talk about it?"

"I dunno, but I find talking about what's bothering you works better than ignoring it or trying to get rid of it." Lola jumped a little at Sarah's jump, not expecting to take anyone by surprise. She didn't burn anything, that's not her. Whatever her past problems they are still her, and she just has to accept them. That's who she is.

"It's... you know, healthy. Or something."

Sarah laughs, a watery noise, scrubbing her face with both hands to wipe away any threatening tears in the most innocuous way possible. She's not very good at being innocuous.

"It's kind of crazy and complicated."

"More complicated than living on a moon? Or more crazy than a magic portal that takes sad people?"

Lola smiled a bit cheekily at the whole 'it's kind of crazy' thing people bring with their own lives. Sure, her life might not have been much at home. But that home is behind her, "I've been here most of this year. There are very few things you can say I won't just believe after all I've seen."

Okay. Put like that.... put like that, it's not as crazy or as complicated as it feels.

"So... this guy wanted to kill my boyf... a guy I know. I mean, he is my boyfriend, but. Hang on. Let me start over?"

She hasn't actually tried to say any of this.

Lola didn't react yet, she just watched, urging the other girl on. It seemed like a bad time to interrupt. She did hold out a hand if Sarah wanted it anyway.

Sarah isn't sure what to do with this. Lola is being so nice. Usually Sarah's the one in her position, offering a listening ear or a hand to hold.

It wouldn't feel right ignoring the offer, so Sarah takes Lola's hand, smiling at her a little.

"So, first thing: magic is real. It's screwed up, though, it hurts you more the longer you use it. I can't, but most of my friends at school can, and the only who can't doesn't even know magic exists. And I can't tell her. So there's that."

Which is really unfair, if she thinks about it. Caleb and the other Sons of Ipswich can talk to each other about what happened, but she's not really one of them. She's not a witch. She's just an outsider who knows the truth. "And I haven't even been at this school for very long? I got in on scholarship, the term was just starting, whatever. So I meet this guy, and he's really cute and really sweet, and we go on a couple of dates and I really like him. There's all this other stuff happening, weird dreams and my roommate getting put in the hospital and her boyfriend getting in a car accident, and it felt like he was the one stable thing in the middle of it all. Only he was the middle of it all. Like--no, that's not fair."

Sarah looks at their clasped hands, trying to sort herself out. "There was someone after him. The same person who put my roommate and her boyfriend in the hospital. He did it with magic. He wanted my boyfriend's magic, too. And even though I only went on two dates with him I guess that was enough for this guy to decide I was a good way to get to Caleb. That's him, my boyfriend. So he kidnapped me. He almost killed me. And Caleb killed him. And now all three of us are here, and they're both witches, and I'm just me. I'm sharing a room with the guy who tried to kill me. I can't even sleep. And Caleb's acting like it's fine, like it's almost normal or something, and they have a truce and I just want to shake him until he realizes Chase is going to hurt him. He's going to hurt both of us and he's not going to be sorry when he does. I'm just... helpless. And I hate it."

Sarah bites her lip, then looks at Lola. "I'm sorry if that was too much."

Lola listened through all of that, she offered, there wasn't much else for her to do but to just take it in and try to understand. Lola got being new and different. She got being all about a guy you just met. The rest... she was getting it a bit, enough anyway.

Enough to know the right answer right now, right this second, was to give Sarah a hug. That didn't seem like enough, but past experiences told her trying to calm someone down with her 'gift' wasn't something she should do without permission. So she fought off that desire and settled on the hug. "That's... that really way too much for anyone to deal with."

The other advantage of a hug was, well, it gave Lola time to think. Cause a lot of that was weight, nothing to do but to just help Sarah. But some of that were problems. And problems actually needed suggestions. "Well, first thing is you should probably try to find a new room. Like, truces or whatever don't mean anything if you're still afraid of this creep. And changing rooms in the communal building just requires some paperwork and finding a space. I'd offer my place, but I live with a demigod necromancer, a guy who turns into animals, and a viking. We're not really a... restful, household."

Lola broke the hug for the other thing, "As for the... helplessness, have you thought about asking someone to teach you how to fight? I know like five different guys who could do that? It won't do anything about magic, but we also have a bunch of people with magic too. I can ask around?" The other advantage Lola had, other than her huge heart for people with hard luck stories, was she knew a lot of people. She made lots of friends. One of them had to be able to help.

Sarah accepts the hug gratefully, pressing her face against Lola's shoulder and fighting off embarrassment and tears. It's both really weird and really nice, to just lay it all out. It makes her feel a little less crazy, a little less like she should understand Caleb's desire to be close to someone who tried everything he could to ruin their lives.

"...I hadn't thought about that. About getting a different room." Sarah gives a watery little laugh. "I can't believe I didn't think of that."

"Well, they do kinda take care of us, so it's weird to complain, but you totally can." It made sense nobody thought to ask for better, given how much everyone isn't on their a game when the arrive. Except the ones who are just used to this. Which happens.

"Better?"

Sarah tighten's the hug just a little for a second before she lets go. "A lot better."

She even manages a smile that doesn't feel fake or broken. "Um. I'd really--that would be great. To learn something like that, fighting. Is magic here something you can learn?"

"I've never tried to learn magic, I got a weird healing power but that was- I don't really know how that works either. That just sorta happened," There's definitely more to that story but Lola just takes a breath and keeps going. "But, if you wanna learn how to fight. There are definitely people that can teach you the normal stuff."

Basically everyone here was some sort of badass, except her.

"I don't have anything," Sarah says, quiet and a little bitter. She wouldn't want it, not power like Chase or Caleb have, but it's hard not to wish she had something. That she was something more than fragile and ordinary. "Did... was the healing power from home? Your home, I mean?"

Lola shook her head, "Everything that's weird about me, happened here. Well, the weird weird, not the normal weird stuff." She kinda got it, not wanting to be less than others but at the same time she loved being, well... mostly normal. Except the hair, she loved the hair thing.

"I'm not sure my world even has magic or anything. Certainly not whatever I can do now."

The line between weird and weird weird actually gets Sarah to laugh. "It might be. I didn't know about it until like a week ago."

"I've taken to just... accepting everything can happen now. After showing up here. It makes it easier to not go crazy." Kinda hard to doubt anything once you look up at a planet. "So maybe my world has magic. I won't really be able to find out unless I go home."

"How long do you think it'll take? To go home?"

Sarah looks around, spotting a good place to sit and gesturing, an invitation for Lola to join her on the sand near the fire.

Lola eyes the sand, then delicately sits down.

"Um, some people are here a few months. But... not everyone just gets home like that. I'd know, I've been here a while."

"...How long?"

Sarah feels suddenly queasy. Sure, her parents aren't supposed to even realize she's gone (which is weird and scary and depressing all on its own), but it's still... it's hard to believe.

"Nine months or so?"

Lola's able to forget, or at least ignore, how long a time that is. However she's more than aware that sounds like a long time to someone who just got here. "But it really isn't that bad here, sure it's weird, but it's a nice fun weird?"

For a few seconds, she doesn't say anything. Nine months is forever. It's an entire school year. She's going to college here, to college. And she didn't even apply. She hadn't really thought about that yet, about what it meant that they would set her up like that. They expect her to stay. They expect her to stay long enough that going to school would be worth it.

"That's... That's good, I guess."

Lola does not believe that response, she believes the silence and coming to terms look. She's seen that a lot. But the words feel counter to what she's seeing.

"A lot of people go home sooner?" She's not entirely sure if that's what needs saying, because Lola does like it here. She doesn't want to go home like most people. She doesn't need to. She misses people, but she wants them here.

"I guess I'll hope for that."

Sarah chews on her lip for a moment, then manages a small smile, holding her hand out to Lola.

"Thank you. For being so nice. It makes it a little easier, all of this."

Lola always feels weird when people thank her for being nice, you just... be nice to people.

"I just, I dunno, do what I kinda wished someone did for me when I showed up? That's all."

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introductory mingle: HARVEST FESTIVAL

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