riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: HYGGE

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

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Cisco gives a little shrug, feeling a pang of melancholy when he thinks about Caitlin; he pushes that aside, saying with a small smile: ]

Yeah. But I made so many new friends, since I came here. People I never woulda met, if I hadn't come through the portal, you know? People who matter to me so much now, I can't... even imagine, not knowing them.

[ There was Taako and Magnus and Lup, Rey - who felt more like a little sister at this point, Hana and Genji, Steve Trevor, Tony, and so many more. When Cisco thinks about them, about the connections he's made since coming here, that momentary gloom fades entirely. He will always miss Caitlin, a little. But he wouldn't change it for the world. ]

See, that kind of thing... making decisions for other people, deciding you know best what'll make them happier? Nothing good comes from it. I mean, freakin' never.

Well, that is a pretty decent silver lining. I bet not many of them got caught sketching you though, did they?

[ Clary tried to follow along with pushing things away from dragging the mood down. She hadn't planned on ruining someone's night with thoughts of people who weren't here.

Of course if she'd known that he knew Magnus there could have been a lot for them to talk about. ]

Feels like my whole life of late has been exactly that. Mom never telling me what I was going to become. What she was. My boyfriend - ex-ish boyfriend - keeping things from me the first time around. Oh, and my dad. Now there was a real piece of work. I will be happy so long as I never turn out like him.

[ He laughs at that quick-witted comment; he always appreciates people who don't mind making a little fun of themselves. It was people without any sense of humor whatsoever he had to watch out for. Generally, those sorts of people found Cisco's presence aggravating. But Clary seems capable of not taking herself too seriously, despite the clearly very serious shit that's been going on in her life, and that's a great sign as far as Cisco's concerned. ]

Oh, some of 'em have done wayyyy weirder than that, believe me.

[ Cisco makes a wordless mhm of agreement, when Clary says she'll be happy as long as she doesn't turn out like her father. Family could be way complicated, and it's something he typically avoids talking about with people he doesn't know all that well, for fear of saying the wrong thing and hurting feelings or offending people. But Clary's already told him enough for him to be sure that her dad is a murderous, manipulative dick, so he chimes in with a hearty: ]

Seems like a pretty good goal, based on what ya told me. Sounds like he is... not a very great dude.

[ Clary sucked in a breath like she was about to ask 'how weird?', but then she remembered where she was. Instead she just smiled at the fact that maybe good weird was about to become the new normal.

She also knew she'd done more than enough crying in recent times to not feel like it was time to just try and laugh it off. After all, she was currently on a world very far from home with friends who weren't exactly the same friends she'd just seen. ]

Are you friends with all the people that are weird to you?

[ Another smile before she just nodded in agreement. He wasn't wrong, and he certainly wasn't speaking out of place. The fire, the nature of the evening had pulled the confessions from her easily and she made a mental note to thank Cisco for listening at some point. Maybe with a better version of her sketch. ]

He is leader of the not very great dudes. Maybe it's also why I'm so willing to let go of my new life for a while. Get back to what used to make me happy. [ She held up the sketchbook. ] Without getting caught too many times.

[ Cisco doesn't answer right away, making a great show of considering, stroking his chin and everything. After a moment or two of this, he declares decisively: ]

Most of 'em. Solid 85%.

[ Which is of course just a number that he's pulled out of thin air because he thought it would be amusing, making it seem like he'd actually been tallying it up and doing some kind of calculation. ]

This is the best place for that. There's a lot of people here getting a break from whatever was happening to them back home. And some people who're using it as a fresh start, completely.

[ Her joke about getting caught makes him smile even more, and he asks: ]

I'm sure there are art classes at the university, if you're looking for models in a less candid setting.

[ Clary really did have to admire his sense of humour. She covered her mouth a little as she laughed. ]

That's a pretty good number. Not too low, and not so high that someone might question it.

[ Even if it was a fake number. Clary might have actually believed it. It also felt good just to laugh and no longer be completely tied down by all the complications waiting for her. ]

It's definitely distracting, I'll give the place that. Maybe I shouldn't be embracing it quite so readily, but honestly? My head hurts thinking about what's waiting. Thinking about conversations that should probably be had.

[ But the smile hadn't faded this time. She'd said what was immediately on her mind and for now it was freeing. ]

Really? Huh. I might actually have to chase that up. I know not everyone is as nice as you when it comes to realising they're being drawn.

Psshh, should. You'll go crazy if you only think about what you should be doing all the time. You gotta enjoy the moment, too. I mean, we're on a tiny moon, in another universe, and look.

[ He gestures up the sky, where the first faint traces of the aurora are showing up in the starry sky as the dusk fades into night. The fire is properly roaring, now, sending off little sparks into the air when the logs shift and settle. Cisco gets up, decisively, asks: ]

How about some s'mores? Seems like a good way to carpe diem to me. I've got marshmallows and stuff in the cabin, I can go and get them.

introductory mingle: HYGGE

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