introductory mingle: HYGGE

[riverviewmod]

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

hygge

In the days leading up to December 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: Hygge. This holiday is one of Riverview Quarantine's four yearly celebrations of love, this one focused on familial love and found family. The traditions associated with Hygge involve coziness and warmth with loved ones, as snow begins to blanket the Quarantine. Meals comprised of family favorites are shared together most nights of the month of December, and families both biological and found gather together by outdoor fires to drink hot cocoa and other warm drinks, roast marshmallows, and enjoy the beauty of the short-lived winter season on the moon, especially at night, when both the stars and almost unreal aurora borealis light the night sky.

a celebration of familial love and found family

Winter comes to the moon very quickly every year, as the orbit of the Capitol World crosses between its moon and the sun - the temperature drops to just below freezing in the span of only a couple of days, and the trees often don't even change from green to orange. During this short winter, the celebration of Hygge keeps all the residents warm. The main traditions involve comfort and warmth with those people you think of as family - platonic or romantic, though preferably mixed between the two - groups of people gather together to share meals and exchange gifts. The city sets up a series of cabins, each fronted with a fire pit, along the banks of the river, which has been lined with floating logs to interrupt the rushing water and allow the surface to freeze solid and form a series of skating rinks for the public to enjoy. Throughout the month, anyone can head down to the riverbank to make taffy candy in troughs of cold snow and share the various flavors with other families, or toboggan along winding, circuitous courses that range from easygoing to high-speed for the adrenaline junkies. The Town Square has a large, intricate ice sculpture set up, this year in the theme of a castle, that once entered proves to be a maze with a prize at the center for anyone who happens to make it through.

i. beach treats

The cabins that are set up all along both banks of the river are small and cozy, big enough to provide a comfortable lounging area with piles of pillows in front of a small fireplace where gift exchanges can happen, a kitchen to cook in, and a table for groups of people to share a meal at. Much like hotel rooms but without a fee, they're intended to be claimed at the start of the day and used for a while before being tidied and reset for the next group. Each cabin has a fire pit out front where a fire can be set up so groups of people can cook marshmallows for their hot chocolate and share stories or play music together.

Another major feature on the beach are the candy making areas, each big enough to accommodate a couple groups of people, featuring a bank of burners that keep various flavors of thick sugary syrup hot and ready. Once the syrup is at the right temperature, it can be drizzled into the snow packed in troughs to chill, and then rolled onto popsicle sticks to be eaten as a sweet chewy treat. Many families have their own particular flavor combos that are the go-to every year, and new families gather every year to start their own tradition.

ii. winter activities

After all that sugar, everyone's sure to be pepped up for a little activity! Every year, just before the big freeze, crews set up a grid of floating logs to calm the surface of the river along the banks, and when the temperature drops, those areas freeze into a thick layer of ice. As soon as they're safe to be skated on, booths pop up to fit residents with skates so they can skate around with loved ones, participate in ice dances, and play the ice skating version of almost any sport you can think of.

But skating isn't the only type of activity available! The sloping banks of the river have been set up with a variety of tobogganing courses, where people can share various types of sleds to slide down various set winding paths ranging from slow sloped ones to steeper, higher-speed ones that almost resemble bobsled courses.

Finally, for the more competitive, there is a less-gender-divided variation on a Lumberjack Competition, with various physical events that residents can compete in like sawing massive logs, logrolling, speed climbs, and boom runs.

iii. skygazing

After all that sugar and activity, lots of groups of family will settle down around fires either at the cabin or along the beach to enjoy a cup of spiked hot chocolate, coffee, or tea, and look up at the sky. Throughout the cold snap season in December, the sky is almost unnaturally clear and both the stars and the Capitol World are easy to see. Besides that, large swaths of the sky are bathed in beautiful aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, that paint large swaths of bright, beautiful color across the night sky. Curl up with a lover, a friend, a family member, or all of the above to keep warm and enjoy nature's fireworks show.

iv: ice maze

In the city center, residents can find a large, beautiful, intricately carved castle-themed ice sculpture. From the outside, it looks only about as big as a small house, but once residents enter they will find that the inside doesn't quite match the outside - courtesy of some of Gramarye Magic Research's top magic-users, the inside is massive, at least the size of a stadium. While cheery music plays, residents can traverse the complicated ice maze, each wall intricately carved and decorated with greenery, lights, and translucent watercolor paints. The walls are almost opaque, and the maze generally takes a couple of hours to get through for most residents.

Once they reach the center, they will find wrapped gifts arranged on a series of beautifully decorated tables, along with treats and warm drinks. The gifts are tailored to each individual in the maze, having been magically selected from a stockpile of items that have come through the portal, and consist of 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. Alternately, if there are no special items from home that a particular character would want or be attached to, an item of similar size and value that would make the character happy will be inside the box.

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 Hygge, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: Ryan Woodhouse; image ii: Hjalmar Wåhlin; image iii: David Fortin; image iv: Tzuyu Kao

navigation

Comments

[volitaunt]

[ He had a name. Not a nice one, maybe, but a name. An imperfect stormtrooper that Finn tried to protect. ]

Can't have been easy.

[ For Slip, for Finn. If there's one thing that Poe knows about the First Order, it's their mercilessness in the face of weakness. He wakes up two nights in five with the screams of Tuanul's villagers ringing in his head. The weak break under the yoke of the First Order, and the rest are supposed to let them. ]

[bythehand]

[ He has to mull that over, for a few long seconds. Has to think about what to say. What he believes. ]

Helping him was easy. I thought so, anyway. It was-- we didn't have to let him get left behind if I was right there. When I got ordered to stop helping, I stopped. But it never sat right. First time I ever got orders that didn't sit right.

[ Finn thinks of Slip, rapping him gratefully on the chestplate. Of looking to the instructors during that melee practice and finding nothing but vague disinterest.

He thinks, who could Slip have turned into in a better place, a better time?

He thinks if they'd let him go on looking out for his team, he would've thrown his life away for the First Order before he even hit officer corps.

He thinks he thinks too much, sometimes. ]

He was one of us.

[ Is where he lands, tried but true, trying to convince himself of something he doesn't have figured out yet. Of the retroactive realization that maybe nothing was ever wrong with him at all.

Slip deserved better. ]

[volitaunt]

[ It isn't often that Poe can't think of something to say. If anything, he mostly doesn't think before he says things. It's got him in trouble enough. But this is Finn losing someone. This is Finn losing someone who mattered. Poe's mind goes to Starkiller, to L'ulo, to Muran.

I'm sorry has never been an adequate phrase for shared grief.

Instead, Poe puts an arm around Finn's shoulders. He doesn't have the words for this, maybe, but he can at least be here for Finn to find his own. ]

[bythehand]

[ This is why Poe is a good person. Because he leaves space where it matters, lets Finn try to jumble together thoughts he never really had to learn to handle.

Because he can listen to Finn talk about one dead stormtrooper in a veritable galaxy of dead stormtroopers, an army who only ever ran down a ramp and killed anyone they could on Poe's side of the war, and he can act like it matters anyway. Finn doesn't believe for a second that there are people out in the universe who just do that.

Stormtroopers don't do that for each other. They're not even allowed to go back for their dead.

Poe makes things human. He reaches out and it just happens, easy as that, everywhere he goes. Like breathing. Poe listening makes Slip more human all on its own, and now there's at least one real person out there in the real world who'll know what Slip was like, what he was called. Finn wonders if Poe knows what that's worth. What it means.

The silence stretches again, but Finn doesn't feel rushed. ]

He died on Jakku. Same night I met you. It was our second deployment, first firefight. Didn't take long for him to go down. [ If a firefight is what it could even be called. Second deployment, second slaughter. ] I stayed back with him, but I couldn't do anything to help. Everything happened too fast.

[ He remembers that night on Jakku with a clarity that he can't stand. The villagers. Slip reaching up to him. Kylo Ren. It gets hard to breathe through remembering, once in a while, all the terror and confusion, the sharp edges cutting down into his bones. ]

[volitaunt]

So you were there. [ There's no judgment in the words. He'd suspected. He hadn't been sure, but after a certain point it didn't matter enough for Poe to ask. Had Finn been there, had he killed people? Poe was. Poe did.

Again, that ugly thought: Was it me?

Even if he did, there were no other choices. And he's not about to put the burden of his own guilt on Finn's shoulders by confessing the possibility. If anything, it's probably already occurred to them both.

It was only Finn's second deployment.

That shifts something in the way Poe thinks. Yeah, Finn is probably more capable than many if not most fighters in the Resistance. Yeah, he'd been raised in an echo chamber of martial force, soaked in the promise of war. But he's a rookie. Brand new. Death is a familiar stranger, like a hologram of someone Finn never met before. Poe's heart breaks a little for the life Finn could have had without the First Order. It breaks for the soldier freshly deployed.

There was nothing I could do, it happened so fast, it was over so fast, so fast. He hates those words. Sometimes he thinks they're carved into every chamber of his heart. ]

It always does.

[ Eight pilots, at Starkiller. Eight friends, down in flames, splashes of heat and light at the corners of Poe's vision, unmourned in the moment, just voices gone from the comms. ] It always, always does.

[bythehand]

Yeah. Starting to figure that out.

[ It's occurred to Finn more than once. The possibility that Poe could have been the one who made the shot. Occurs to him again now, but the fact is Slip would've killed Poe without a second thought if he'd gotten to him. Slip wouldn't have made it off of Jakku regardless, a truth simultaneously harsh to think and embedded as fact by dozens of combat simulations.

Finn's killed more than a few stormtroopers himself, as things stand.

For all the lack of judgement that Poe presents about being deployed that night, Finn can't help the sharp twist of needing to explain himself, somehow. There's guilt to go around as far as the villagers are concerned. The feeling that he should have been able to do something instead of standing there all over again, just like he did on the mining colony.

But this matters. What Poe thinks this might mean about him matters. ]

I didn't fire my blaster down there. After Slip.

[ He stops, has to think. Finn doesn't know how to explain the sudden feeling of waking up when Slip died, all the realizations that slammed into him like a bag of bricks. Sometimes it doesn't seem like it could have been real. And he's not sure he could even talk about the mining colony if he wanted to.

Finn squeezes his eyes shut, briefly, and shakes his head. He feels like he had better words at hand when he explained himself to Rey. ]

I made a choice. I never fired.

[ If he did one good thing on Jakku that night, even slightly-- he knows that's what it was. What Poe thinks about this matters, but it matters just as much to Finn that he has the truth. ]

[volitaunt]

[ Poe's arm around Finn's shoulders tightens a little. Very softly: ] I'm proud of you.

[ He couldn't have asked for Finn to do better than any other soldier on any other battlefield, but there it is. Just another stone in the monument of Poe's faith in this good man.

Finn belongs to the Resistance now. He belongs to the likes of General Organa, Admiral Statura, Admiral Gial Ackbar, Major Taslin Brance. People who will value him not only for the information he can give them, people who will value him not only for the purpose he can serve. People who will value him.

Finn belongs to the Resistance, and like hell they're giving him back. ]

i dont have the right icon for this but damn if i wont take 5ever to pick anyway

[bythehand]

[ Well.

That neatly bridges the venn diagram overlap between "things Finn has never been told in his life" and "things Finn never expected to be told in his life". It leaves Finn in the overlap between gratitude and the ice-cold squeeze of guilt around his chest.

Hearing that feels wrong, ill-fitting when he's looking at Slip, who he should have just kept an eye on once they were planetside. And as surely as he knows that nobody would have defected with him, that he'd have been reported for even hinting at it, as surely as he knows the only way he'll ever go back to the First Order is as a dead body, sometimes he realizes he's the only one who's gotten out and can't stand the thought. They all came up the same as he did, there should have-- there should have been something, it didn't have to be him-- he can't figure out why it was.

This moon is probably the safest Finn's been in his entire life, and he doesn't deserve it.

Rey and Poe look at him like he's done so many good things, like he is a good thing, and he wakes up at night feeling like an imposter because he isn't anything at all and he doesn't know what he's doing, and one day that's all gonna come out in the wash. All he's ever been is blind and then scared and then angry.

Finn closes the projector. Pushes down the dull ache in his throat. Ignores it. ]

They caught me out pretty fast, though. Kind of an obvious move, with a blaster inspection. After that, it was either report to reconditioning or almost definitely get blown up busting out a Resistance pilot.

[ No one ever said any plan in Star Wars was made well in advance. Finn looks back fondly on this much, at least. ]

You were the only hope I had of getting out.

[ Sucks that you were there getting tortured, but man. Glad to meet you bud, owe you basically everything??? ]

[volitaunt]

[ There it is. That shift in tone, on the heels of Slip's face vanishing from the night. The story moving on, the most dangerous parts of it sealed away for later inspection or to be ignored. Poe knows it. He's seen it so many times, made the pivot toward safety himself. If not safety, then at least surer ground.

It makes sense when he thinks it through. How many times can Finn have heard that kind of sentiment in his life? How many times has anyone bothered to think of him as anything but adequate or lacking? Is that how the First Order does it? Starve their ranks for baseline approval until marching in perfect time becomes a triumph?

There's no dragging someone back to vulnerability when the moment for it has passed. There's no good way to say 'but what about that wound we just reopened, what about the infection there to drain.' ]

Emphasis on almost definitely. The almost is important.

[ Poe gives Finn's shoulder a little squeeze before he lets his arm drop. There's a pause, a long one this time, as Poe picks up a stick and traces patterns in the sand. At least by now he can walk the beach without feeling like he's back on Jakku. ]

You were the hope I didn't see coming.

[bythehand]

[ Finn disagrees on the almost, but he'll let Poe have it. It was probably more of an almost from that end anyway.

His expression softens with all the speed and resistance of a snowflake that landed in someone's outstretched hand, for the rest.

He'd charge Supreme Leader Snoke with a lightsaber for Rey. That's been a given for a while. He'd do the same thing for Poe, too, he's realizing. Not for all the same reasons, but no less fiercely and no less devotedly. In a heartbeat.

Individual loyalties got a lot of bashing as a dangerous mindset. And maybe it is a weakness to the First Order, for all the wrong reasons. Maybe it can be dangerous in the real world. Finn just doesn't care all that much if it is. Fighting is what he knows: he might as well use it for something worthwhile if the world gives him a need.

He could say something about not being trained for stealth any more than Poe was.

But he doesn't.

Hope is something he didn't deal in until recently. He doesn't have much of it to go around. Finn respects it where it stands. ]

Thanks.

[ For saying it. For listening. For making things human. ]

For the name, too. While I'm at it.

[ Never really did find time to say that before Starkiller. ]

[volitaunt]

Any time.

[ It's not a casual statement no matter how much it sounds like one. It's a promise. He'll be there, if it's remotely in his power.

A small, small smile. A sense of warmth and pride, not only because of the thanks but because Finn chose to keep that name, even when he was free to choose another. ]

And you're welcome.