riverviewlogs | monthly mingle: FAJRO & LUNAR NEW YEAR

monthly mingle: FAJRO & LUNAR NEW YEAR

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: monthly mingle: fajro & lunar new year
when: The month of February.
where: Anywhere around the city.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

fajro & lunar new year

In the days leading up to February 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: Fajro and the Lunar New Year. This is a combination of various traditions from several different universes, all of which involve cleaning house, physically and metaphorically, in preparation for the upcoming spring and summer months. The traditions associated with these celebrations involve getting rid of clutter and unnecessary junk that is then burned in large bonfires along the beaches, clearing the air of lingering resentments and old wounds with magical penalties for those who choose not to share, and a broad sampling of Lunar New Year traditions from a variety of cultures.

an opportunity to shed negative energy

There's nothing that's more detrimental to the forming of a good, solid community than lingering resentment and anger - this is something that most residents of the Quarantine tend to agree on. In recognition of that fact, Fajro is geared toward cleaning out the negativity, getting rid of clutter and trash in the home, body, and mind. Residents do spring cleaning in their homes and businesses and either give away or burn the things that they don't need and that are only serving to add an extra burden. Likewise, residents are encouraged to clear the air with friends, family, coworkers, and anyone else interacted with on a frequent basis. The second half of the month is taken up with the Lunar New Year, which is an almost universal tradition in this reality, and focuses on letting go of negative energy and welcoming positive energy into life going into the new year.

i.cleaning house

The first thing that most residents do during the month of Fajro is cleaning house. This means going through all the junk in the house, all the little things that clutter up a place, and clearing them out. A commonly-heard saying in the Quarantine during Fajro cleanup is "does this bring me joy?", a proverb that encapsulates the meaning of the tradition - to shed the parts of the past that bring pain or add to a person's burden, and keep only what brings joy into each person's life. The rest is either thrown away and burned, or donated to bring joy to someone else's life.

After the cleaning is complete, residents carry what they no longer want or need to the beaches of the river, where bonfires are set up each night for two weeks, in order to burn the excess and let the ash float down the river, a symbolic city-wide purging of bad memories, pain, and burdens.

ii. clearing the air

Another tradition in the Quarantine during Fajro is to clear the air with friends, family, acquaintances, coworkers, teammates, or anyone else that takes up space in a person's life. Every relationship comes with some amount of resentment, and the residents of the Quarantine take pride in being able to shed that resentment every year, to start fresh on relationships, building them into something newer and healthier. However, with every wave of new people that arrive during a year, there's a common pattern - those who haven't yet fully come to accept this particular tradition may avoid airing their grievances. Whether it's because they don't care to understand what they're feeling, don't acknowledge the resentment, want to appear strong and unaffected, or just because they don't like confrontation, there are any number of reasons people might choose to keep their hurts and resentments to themselves.

Of course, that doesn't really lend itself to clearing the air, so several of the higher-ups at Gramarye Magic Research came to a quick and easy solution in the form of a magically-infused mist that falls over the city on the morning of February 1st, which will burn off by the evening of February 3rd. Anyone who inhales the mist or absorbs it through their skin by going outdoors or being close to doors, windows, or air vents, during the first few days of February will find themselves thinking more often of the things that have hurt them, the resentments they've built up, and the desire to talk about them, to excise them. Starting on February 15th, any character who has been exposed to the mist and who has still kept their grievances bottled up will find themselves...afflicted with something very uncomfortable to remind them of how unhealthy it is to keep things to oneself and let them fester.

Afflictions can vary in scope depending on how thoroughly the character was exposed to the mist, how intense their feelings of resentment lie, and most of all, player preference. They are primarily physical effects that can range from mildly embarrassing to extremely uncomfortable. Whether it's the addition of a tail or horns, skin that changes color depending on the character's mood, loss of a sense, or any other physical effect, the sky's the limit. Afflictions should be something the character finds uncomfortable, and will last until February 28th or until the character clears the air, whichever comes first. Talking to a third party about their feelings of resentment will provide a temporary relief from the symptoms of the affliction, but the only way to permanently remove it is to talk directly to the source of the problems. If a character carries feelings of resentment toward someone who is not in the game, having a deep conversation with someone in the Quarantine will permanently clear or preempt the affliction.

iii. lunar new year

Originally, Fajro was celebrated all on its own in the Quarantine, but over the years, the traditions have evolved - the major change that's happened in the past decade or so is the addition of an entire other set of traditions surrounding the Lunar New Year, the celebration of which has proved to be a pretty universal constant across many different planets and in many different universes. Lunar New Year is celebrated with special food, activities, and street markets that pop up across the Quarantine throughout the month of February.

This year, the patron animal of the Lunar New Year is the dog, so residents are encouraged to bring their canines out with them to be spoiled, dressed up, and primped.

Thank you to Mari and Anna for suggesting the celebration and submitting the activities and images for this prompt!

hound town

Anyone wandering the city will find it beautifully decorated with beautiful red lanterns, and paper or cloth dog effigies. There are lots of stalls selling adorable themed dog clothing. At night, the red lanterns light up the streets, bathing them in a warm orange-red glow each night.

The entire city looks festive, and residents can be seen wearing red and gold or dog-themed clothing, strolling through the night markets with their pet dogs, sharing drinks of warm alcohol or other warm beverages. Booths selling a small toy called a jegi can be found very commonly, along with instructions on how to play the traditional Lunar New Year game, jegichagi (video), which involves kicking the jegi to keep it from falling to the ground, with the winner being the one to keep it up for the longest number of kicks.

Other booths are selling a wide variety of dog-themed items, red lanterns for residents to carry around on sticks, and giving away some very special red lanterns that the sellers will advise residents to hang onto for later in the season...

wish lanterns

Toward the end of the festival, the special red lanterns that residents received will start to glow, displaying a set of instructions outlined in magical light on the shade - residents are encouraged to take the lanterns down to the beaches by the Fajro bonfires on the last night of the celebration, and whisper to them a wish. Once the wish has been whispered to the lantern, it will lift into the air, hanging there for a few moments with all the other lanterns. For a few moments, the night sky will be alight with bobbing lanterns.

And then they will all pop into an explosion of colorful confetti, showering the crowd below. Anyone standing in the crowd who gets showered with confetti will feel a glowing wave of positive energy sweep through them.

street food and games

Street food is very popular in Riverview, and special food for the Lunar New Year is no exception, and considering how many different cultures and alternate realities have some version of a celebration for the Lunar New Year, there are a ton of seasonal snacks that are being sold from carts and featured in restaurants throughout the city. While you can find just about anything that's ever been associated with the Lunar New Year, some of the most popular dishes are sliced rice cake soup, savory pancakes, a cooked vegetarian salad, stuffed sticky rice cakes, and beautiful candy boxes that are usually given as gifts or brought to Lunar New Year parties. Besides these treats, tiny citrus fruits ranging from mandarin oranges to tangerines to any alien variety of small citrus.

And for people who bring their dogs along, many stalls are giving away complimentary biscuits for them, with the option to buy boxes or gift packs of the biscuits to take home.

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: Roman Ignatowski; image ii: Jan Vavrusa; image iii: Federico Belingheri; image iv: Yuechi Lee

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[Iona’s a little bit unfamiliar with street hockey, since it’s not exactly a thing with the Dalish. Or Thedas as a whole, so far as she’s seen. She still watches, curiously, nibbling on a tangerine slowly, segment by segment, until the stranger off to her right makes a comment, and she looks up at him with a soft, amused laugh.]

It does. I’ve no idea what the game is, but it certainly looks fun.

(Brennan looks again and then...down...because she's much smaller than he'd anticipated. He's actually reminded of a petite blond he knows back home, which strikes him with a bit of nostalgia. He shakes it loose quickly enough, though, and turns toward her...

...and just stares for a moment. Okay. So. He'd been told that a lot of different people ended up here from a lot of different places. Cool. Awesome. He could totally roll with that. Here, though, was a petite woman with pointed ears munching on an orange (it's a tangerine, Brennan) like it was completely normal.

And he was staring. He took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and looked back to the game.)

It's...hockey. They don't have hockey where you come from?

(Yeah, Brennan. Fantasy land hockey.)

[He’s staring. Which, seems to be the sort of reaction she garners in the Quarantine. But it’s not... unpleasant. Or it hasn’t been, yet. Not the way it could be in Thedas. Definitely not the way it could be in Thedas. Just... the surprised reaction of people for who elves are little more than tales told in books.

And there’s nothing exactly harmful about that.

She laughs and shakes her head, trying very hard to hide her amusement at his reaction and following his gaze back to the game.] No. We don’t have hockey. Our games are... a little bit different.

I... suppose there might be something similar, somewhere, but it would be rare enough that I’ve never seen or heard of it. [And because she’s curious...]

How do you play?

[She looks up at him.] There ARE rules, I take it?

(Brennan wasn't an outdoorsy guy. He wasn't someone who was going to romp around in the woods, running through mud and trees and who knew what else. He grew up in the city, and that meant days spent on basketball courts, on baseball diamonds, in illegal street races...

...but that had been another life, before the government started hunting down all the New Mutants as the mistakes they supposedly were, before deciding being a super hero was a pretty cool idea, before that backfiring and resulting in the deaths of one of the people he'd come to see as family...

...that was enough of that shit. It was only going to make him homesick for the people who were left. Instead, he nodded, laughing at her question.)

Hell yeah, there are rules.

(And he pointed back to the kids.)

See their shoes? That there are wheels on them? Those are called skates. This is street hockey. Real hockey's played on a rink, or a frozen lake, and they use ice skates, that's shoes with blades on the bottom to skate across the ice. There's the puck, that thing their hitting around with sticks. There's an area they play in, and on either end, there's a net guarded by a goalee. The objective is for one team to get the puck from their side of the rink to the other and into the opposing team's net without being stopped by the goalee. Only the goalee can touch the puck with anything other than the hockey stick. In formal games, there's a time limit, and, pretty basically, whichever team's got the most goals at the end of the game time wins. Here? Here it's more just for fun.

(He motions around.)

I don't think they're keeping score.

(And he smiles, looking back to her. The more he did, the more he realized which she may look a little weird...he's actually pretty cute.)

I'm Brennan.

[Iona listens carefully as he explains the rules, watching the game thoughtfully. It’s a little bit fascinating, and one of the things she’s finding she enjoys most about the Quarantine. The opportunity to learn about different worlds. It’s something to keep her occupied, at least.

She smiles up at him, lilac eyes bright.] Iona.

(Brennan isn't 100% sure what sort of name he was expecting an elf to have. He's never really been a reader of fantasy fiction, and the only encounters he's had with them in literature have been through Tolkien, and that was at the behest of several different teachers who wanted him to "live up to his potential" and "rise above his background". Iona seemed almost plain, though. Maybe that's because the only other female elf names he knew were Arwen and Galadriel. Still, it was a pretty name, but her eyes were the most striking thing about her.

Those eyes weren't normal, or maybe they were, you know, for elves. He really didn't have a way of knowing. What he did know was he thought that smile of hers was pretty hot, and he wanted to watch her move, because the shape of her body told him it would also be pretty hot.

He smiled in response, looking back to the game.)

That is a very pretty name. (And then he looked back to her.) You have beautiful eyes, by the way.

[Iona will gladly tell him about her people should he ask. It’s rare that anyone is interested, though, and it doesn’t come up all that often at home. In part perhaps because elves aren’t something that live in stories. They’re real, and are seen every day. But, should he ask...

The shameless compliments he gives her earn him another amused smirk, and the elven phrase meaning ‘thank you’ falls easily from her lips.] Ma serannas, Brennan.

(Brennan wasn't the most cultured guy on the block if he were honest. Sure, he read poetry, a love of which he'd gained in high school when the councilors had convinced him to stay instead of dropping out, but he wasn't the most well-rounded guy you were ever going to meet. Still, his eyebrows rose at the words she'd used. It was a pretty language, pretty and completely alien. It didn't sound like, well, anything he'd ever heard of Earth before, and there was something pretty awesome about that.

He smiled. Knowing she hadn't said anything remotely close to it didn't keep him from making the joke, even though he could think of at least one person back home who'd hit him for making it, saying it was "insensitive" or something.)

My what now?

(But hey, Brennan's a sensitive guy, okay? The most sensitive.)

[Iona lets out a soft laugh and shakes her head in amusement, slipping forward into his space. No, she’s not flirting. She’s absolutely not flirting.She’s instructing him on the proper pronunciation of the elven language. That’s all. Maybe teasing him a little. More than a little.

~~And okay, maybe she’s flirting, too.~~]

Ma serannas. It means ‘Thank you’.

(He smiles in response, nodding his approval and maybe understanding. He wasn't exactly gifted with languages, and he'd probably forget this in a day or two. Still, she had a cute smile, moved like she knew how to, and wasn't shy. He liked her.

He leaned in as she moved toward him, whispering quietly, the space intimate.)

How do I say you're welcome?

[He leans in, his voice a quiet whisper and the two parts combine to make things intimate in an unexpected way that she cannot help but react to, a playful little smile on her face. She rises up on tiptoe to meet him the rest of the way, so she can bring her lips close to him and murmur the elven phrase he’s searching for softly in his ear.]

(His lips parted as her breath brushed against his skin and he turned toward her slightly, their faces only inches apart, and muttered the elven phrase she'd said back to her. It was terribly accented, butchered really, but he tried.

And then he laughed, looking away slightly.)

You know, or whatever.

[It might have been terribly accented, but he tried. And that delights her to no end. The smile she aims at him is brilliant, lighting up her lilac eyes, and she impulsively presses a kiss to his cheek.]

(Brennan's face lights up in a grin as she does so, as though he's won some sort of contest, though there was no one against whom he'd been competing.)

Okay, okay. So, I'm new around here. Are...I can't think of any way to say this without sounding like an ass, so here goes:

...elves aren't real where I come from. They're...stories.

[That he was worried about sounding like an ass to her speaks to his character. Some wouldn’t care. A lot wouldn’t care. (And more than she’d like would care less because she’s an elf.) She laughs softly.] That seems to be the case for a lot of worlds, I’ve found. I’ve never been a creature out of a tale, before.

[Her voice turns teasing again.] But now you can say you’ve met an elf in the flesh.

(He chuckles, smiling down at her.)

Well, I guess you still aren't. I mean, you're real, right?

[She grins.] It’s a bit of a nebulous area, I suppose. I’m only mythical to other people. Well, most other people.

I mean, you look pretty real to me, but...I guess you could be an illusion or something.

[He grins down at her.]

Should I check?

[Iona grins right back up at him, lilac eyes playful.]

I think you, yes. Just to make sure.

[He leaned down, closing the distance between them. When he speaks, his voice is quietly, close.]

Any preferences?

[She tilts her head, gaze daring him, just a little.]

Oh, I’m sure I could come up with a few ideas.

[She’s going to slip just a little closer.]

Why don’t you surprise me?

[ He reaches up, gently touching the underside of her chin with his finger, tilting her chin upward just a little more. ]

I don't know...how forward's too forward?

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monthly mingle: FAJRO & LUNAR NEW YEAR

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I TOTALLY PASSED OUT LAST NIGHT I'M SORRY

NO WORRIES! <3

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Don't mind me just bullshitting and handwaving because I can't find any actual phrase

Bullshitting is the best way man

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