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riverviewlogs2017-12-02 08:47 pm
- !mod post: holiday,
- !mod post: monthly mingle,
- dc comics (rebirth): wally west,
- dragon age: dorian pavus,
- it: stan uris,
- marvel (616): billy kaplan,
- marvel (616): steve rogers,
- marvel (mcu): bucky barnes,
- marvel (mcu): gamora,
- marvel (mcu): loki,
- marvel (mcu): peter quill,
- marvel (mcu): steve rogers,
- marvel (mcu): thor,
- marvel (mcu): tony stark,
- original: shigeru miyata,
- star trek (aos): james kirk,
- star wars: cassian andor,
- star wars: finn,
- star wars: jyn erso,
- star wars: poe dameron,
- star wars: rey,
- the adventure zone: taako taaco,
- vikings: gyda ragnarsdottir,
- ✖ animorphs: marco,
- ✖ arpeggio of blue steel: haruna,
- ✖ chb chronicles: nico di angelo,
- ✖ dc comics (rebirth): damian wayne,
- ✖ dc comics (rebirth): jason todd,
- ✖ dc comics (rebirth): jonathan kent,
- ✖ dceu: steve trevor,
- ✖ dctv (flash): cisco ramon,
- ✖ dctv (flash): eddie thawne,
- ✖ fullmetal alchemist (03): edward elric,
- ✖ kuroshitsuji: ciel phantomhive,
- ✖ kuroshitsuji: undertaker,
- ✖ marvel (mcu): alexander pierce,
- ✖ marvel (mcu): valkyrie,
- ✖ marvel (ultimates): tony stark,
- ✖ original: letha regis,
- ✖ osomatsu-san: chibita,
- ✖ osomatsu-san: osomatsu matsuno,
- ✖ overwatch: hana song,
- ✖ persona 3: makoto yuuki,
- ✖ shadowhunter chronicles: alec lightwoo,
- ✖ shadowhunter chronicles: clary fray,
- ✖ the adventure zone: lucretia,
- ✖ vikings: ivar ragnarsson
introductory mingle: HYGGE
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
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.
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!
Credit: image i: Ryan Woodhouse; image ii: Hjalmar Wåhlin; image iii: David Fortin; image iv: Tzuyu Kao
wildcard | closed to rey
It's a trend he's been noticing with the three of them, that they're all pretty action-oriented. Helplessness doesn't sit well. It's not sitting any better tonight, for all that they've made their promises to go back to the room and keep an eye on things. On each other. They won't find better rest here than they have since any of them got to the Quarantine.
Finn and Rey just sort of... fall in together on the couch, with a few blankets and pillows, trying to at least put on the appearance of making an honest effort to be sleeping. They keep their devices in easy reach just in case Poe tries to reach them for something. Just in case.
The silence is stretching on. He's getting used to silence these days, but sometimes he can't stand it. When he jerks awake some nights, heart pounding, the way all three of them tend to do, he can't try to sleep again until he's pushed past the ringing in his ears to find the sounds of breathing. Sometimes silence is still too much room for thinking.
Probably for Rey, too. Hell, probably for all three of them. Fixing that is something they can still do together, at least.
(They're all still here, at the end of the day. They're all alive, they'll be okay. And tomorrow they can try to do it again, to get to the end of the day alive and okay. Go one at a time, Finn tells himself. Keep together and okay one day at a time.
He sometimes wonders if this togetherness they've built is what home feels like.)
Finn shifts in place, not trying to pretend he's anywhere near tired, and looks at Rey. Searching, almost. There's no real reason to speak quietly, with no one to wake up, but his words are still barely above a whisper. ]
What was it like? Living on Jakku. I always forget to ask when we're not busy almost dying.
[ Half a joke is better than no joke, right? ]
If you wanna answer, I mean.
no subject
Memories of her fight with Kylo Ren, of the vision she first had continued to plague her. It was like the Force was trying to tell her to be more active, to try and do more rather than simply ignoring it. There was only one other person who could help her...and after what he did to Poe, she couldn't take him up on his offer.
But what else was she to do? Training with the others here had been fine, but, it wasn't the same. And now she was lost in her thoughts, unable to go to sleep even with Finn sleeping on the same couch with her.
There's nothing else for her to concentrate on except the stiffening silence. Silence was never a good thing. To some it brought peace, but for Rey, it meant death. Stillness and silence only occurred when there wasn't life left in a body. When Finn actually speaks, she's grateful for it.]
No...it's okay.
[Rey whispers back, not caring that there wasn't anyone else for them to disturbed.] It was...harsh. It's the desert. There's the heat, and the sandstorms...and the sinking sands. [A pause as she thinks back to when her memories were visible for others to see.] I used to..sleep in a hammock when I was a child..and then when I got older, I found an old AT-AT Walker...made that into a shelter. [Not a home, just a place for her to live until her parents came back for her.]
It's weird...isn't it? To not be facing certain death.
no subject
He wants to know. So he listens, tries to picture it and layer it over what he saw of Jakku. Just a kid making her own shelters, having to watch out for herself on a planet that unforgiving, that harsh. She came out kind and shining. She came out radiant.
There's a lot he doesn't know about his friends, he's realized now and again, and especially Rey. Finn can't help being curious. Maybe partly wanting to understand more about them, maybe partly because before he met them, everyone he knew had the same history as him. There are so many different ways for people to become the people they are. ]
It's the weirdest thing on this moon.
[ A smile, however brief. He hesitates, then admits-- ]
I keep waiting for that to change.
no subject
It is. There isn't a clear and present danger that's waiting to happen.. [Minus Kylo Ren.]
...But I felt the same way. When I first got here, I kept thinking I'd be here only for a week, and then it became longer. I kept waiting for something to happen--good or bad, and I was surprised when things didn't go as bad as they could've been.
[Survivor's mentality. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. She looks at him, studying his face in the low light of the room, adjusting slightly to share the blanket with him and keep herself warm.]
You? What was life like before you met Poe?
no subject
Living on edge is an easy pattern. He doesn't know much about how not to think that way. Being alert at any given moment is sort of... hard-wired into him. Leaving the First Order spiked that as sharply as anything could. Stepping away from it completely is a feat Finn hasn't quite managed yet. ]
Same thing every day, mostly. Train, eat, sleep. Do my rotations. Saw a lot more metal than sand. And there was always someone else around.
[ Black and grey and white, and every now and again some red. The background noise of full barracks and troops-in-training. Nothing to write home about. ]
There were some things that didn't... sit right with me, before our first fight. Orders I couldn't follow. Couldn't follow them on Jakku, either. I think I told you some of that. [ That he made a choice. That he wasn't going to kill for them. ] If I hadn't busted Poe out, I don't know what would've happened.
[ Dead. Successfully reconditioned, doing what they thought he was supposed to be doing. He doesn't know which is worse, what could be any worse. (Nameless, he thinks. Hopeless.) ]
Never would've met you.
[ Which would leave him very genuinely alone. No daily swells of fondness for good, ridiculous people. It hasn't been more than a month or so, and it's already like missing a step to consider life without it.
It's as painfully easy to imagine where he'd be without them as it would be painfully hard to lose what he's found. Sometimes imagination is completely overrated. ]
no subject
She can't imagine going from a place where there were so many people to suddenly depending upon a stranger and then her. She listens intently, hanging off of Finn's every word. He couldn't follow through with his orders. He couldn't become a mindless soldier who did as he was told.
That more than anything saved his life. Prevented him from going into a needless battle and staying there as a corpse.]
No...you wouldn't.
[They wouldn't have met, and prior to him coming here...she remembered what life was like without her friends. How lonely it was...and how happy she was to see Finn there. How they basically rushed to each other like their lives depended upon it and hugged one another, to prove it wasn't a dream.]
Did you..make any friends while you were in the Order? People maybe who wanted more than just to be soldiers?
no subject
I had a team. Got assigned when we were cadets. All four of us.
[ Finn has to think about how to answer what she's really asked, shifting to reach into his pocket for the holoprojector from the maze. He pulls it out, smoothing a thumb over it like some kind of bulky square worry stone. (It's always with him. He doesn't know what else he can do with it, just feels like there must be something.)
He told Poe about some of this, about Slip, but-- that was one of those times where Poe picked up on the things that just are. Poe never used the word friend. He never asked about others.
They're almost hopeful questions, is the thing. Hope isn't something he can answer them with. Hope doesn't grow in the First Order. Outside of it, sometimes all hope does is slip between the ribs and hurt.
He doesn't know what to say. He just tries to be honest instead. ]
Teammates aren't friends. No one's supposed to have individual loyalties. [ Classic First Order. He pushes down the thought that he used to consider them all friends, as much as he could. Too late for it now. Too far gone. ] For a while, I thought maybe one of them-- I never got to ask him, but I used to think. For a while. Maybe.
[ He shouldn't sometimes feel guilty for being the only one who... who woke up, somehow, he shouldn't sometimes feel like he didn't deserve to be the one that left. It shouldn't keep coming back for him even nearly two months out, but it catches him again for a moment now, ever persistent.
Finn activates the projector, washing their faces in blue light. It's not very big. It flickers, catches on itself with little blue scan-lines, but there's a face there still, a designation: FN-2003. ]
We called him Slip.
no subject
Teammates aren't friends.
But they, Finn, Poe, and her, they're teammates and friends.
They fight together. They win together, and they still care for one another. If something happened to any of them, she knows Poe would be willing to burn the place down to the ground if it meant getting answers, or finding a way for the three of them to be together again.
Then Finn pulls out something, and activates it. A face comes to light in blue and white. A face she doesn't recognize, but means a lot to Finn. FN-2003. Slip.
Friend. Teammate.]
Slip...
[She tests the name out on her lips, speaking softly, as though she was handling something so delicate.]
What...was he like? [She can only assume he's gone now. The way Finn said 'we called him Slip' meant he had to have died...most likely in battle. She can't think of a situation where a Trooper would ever die of natural causes...]
no subject
Poe Dameron makes things human almost without trying, all but changes them in the wake of his energy. By listening, by existing. He reaches out and humanity will grow there, start to take root like it was meant to be growing there in spite of everything. Rey makes things human, makes things soft, with careful consideration. Takes them in her hands and finds them, with clean precision, right where they stand, as long as she decides that's what she's looking for. Rey reaches out and the universe goes oh, there you are, there you were all along.
They did it for him. Without a hesitation, they do it for Slip, one stormtrooper in a sea of identical helmets that they'll never get to meet.
It leaves a lump in his throat, painful to swallow against.
Finn will never be able to explain what it means.
(One day, maybe, he'll think of the word 'people' in this context before he thinks of the word 'things'. One day, maybe, he'll be better at that.) ]
Slow. Clumsy. He fell behind a lot. Didn't always get what he was supposed to be doing. [ They called him Slip for a reason. ] I tried to look out for him. Help him keep up. They told me to stop. I didn't like how that sat, but-- they were orders. They came down pretty hard on us after that, when he'd slip up.
[ Trying to force improvement, he's pretty sure, in the only way the First Order knows how. In all the ways that could never actually work for Slip. He'd felt guilt for stopping, he knows well enough to call it now. Shame, maybe. Sympathy. ]
... he'd get this look sometimes. Like he was thinking the same things I started to think. You know, had doubts.
[ For a while. Until the colony. ]
But if he thought like that, he got over it.
no subject
Their faceless names, their identical helmets and armor...nothing to distinguish them. Nothing to show that they were human beneath the armor.
Her eyes continue to look at the holophoto, trying to picture what color Slip would've had, the color of his eyes. Picturing a young man who Finn considered a friend. He tried to look out for him--the same way he had for her. When he wanted to run, he wanted her to run with him. Her eyes flicker away from the photo to Finn, trying to read his emotions. Without thinking, her hand reaches out to his, grasping it, trying to help ground him.]
They wanted you to bury your heart, to cut it out.
[That's the thing about Finn. He had a strong moral compass. He has a strong heart. When something doesn't sit right with him, he doesn't hesitate to speak up. He doesn't hesitate to put it into a different perspective and think of their safety--their lives first. To him, it's about staying alive, because what's the point of winning a fight if they're dead?]
He was still your friend. Someone you cared a lot for.
[There's a moment of silence as she squeezes his hand.]
I'm sorry you lost him.
no subject
It's hard to deny the truth in that. He guesses he was never supposed to have one in the first place, really. He wasn't supposed to form attachments, he wasn't supposed to be able to leave, or find people he loves more than he's afraid, or get comfort, or live in a world that isn't all white and grey and black and polished edges.
Hearing Rey say it so easily makes the sting of grief sharper. It's weird to feel that unfurl, because this is just about the only thing or person he's had the need to grieve. Poe lived after Jakku, they got Rey back from Starkiller, whatever family he was born to is one he'll never know enough to miss or to wish for-- but Slip, Slip is just gone. Maybe if he'd found a way to look out for him anyway, maybe if he'd stuck closer when they got deployed, maybe, maybe, maybe. ]
I...
[ Slip would have fired on those villagers, same as he'd fired on the miners. He would have followed orders and gone back to the barracks proud to belong, proud to have that approval. Any of the others would have.
(But he was a person. He was someone. Without Rey or Poe, Finn would be the only person in the galaxy that that mattered to. Slip didn't even get to look at someone's face while he died.)
Finn grips Rey's hand like a lifeline. There's a burning behind his eyes, but not enough to spill over. He looks at Slip's face and feels raw.
Sometimes I feel bad for still caring about him, he doesn't say. Sometimes I feel guilty for getting out when no one else did, and I don't know why it was me. ]
Thanks. [ Is what he says instead, trying to make sure every bit of gratitude he feels for her bleeds through. He's not sure human voices are designed to hold all that. ] I'm sorry, too.
no subject
Rey can only think that she's glad he did. That she was able to meet him, because her life wouldn't the same without him. There would a hole in her heart that she wouldn't be able to explain. Who knows if she would've made it off of Jakku, or survived Star Killer Base.
It's...hard to know what she should do in this moment. It's clear in Finn's eyes that he's processing a lot, that he's dealing with so many emotions. She squeezes his hand back, as tight as she could without causing discomfort. She was here for him, and wouldn't let go of his hand unless he wanted her to.
But what to say to that? Rey hasn't a clue. Instead, she starts to shift from her position to cuddle next to Finn, draping her free arm over his shoulder, hugging him as best as she could with both of them on the couch.]
no subject
There's nothing about it he can change anymore.
And at this point he's got no hangups with shutting off the projector to return a hug, either.
As much as either of them can sitting on the couch, yeah.
If anyone out there could meet Rey and not like her, they're either evil or wrong. Finn doesn't make the rules. ]