riverviewlogs | monthly mingle: MEMORIA

Entry tags:

monthly mingle: MEMORIA

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: monthly mingle: memoria
when: the month of may
where: anywhere around the city
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

memoria

In the days leading up to May 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: Memoria. A more solemn celebration than Sampremi or the Flower Festival, Memoria is a week-long time of remembrance for those lost in the Great War and the epidemic that decimated Riverview Quarantine's population 10 years ago. Memoria traditions include lighting lanterns for the dead, telling stories about lost loved ones or lost homes, eating meals with loved ones, and a special gathering to send floating lanterns down the river in honor of those lost.

a solemn commemoration of those lost

While the main city-wide event associated with Memoria is the floating of lanterns down the river on each Sunday evening of the month, the holiday is generally seen as a time of reflection on and appreciation of things that have been lost - people, homes, cultures, and planets. It is also a celebration of the things that remain. Many locally-owned shops will host displays of culturally-significant food, and will hand out informational flyers sharing the unique customs of their own homeworlds and inviting others to share those customs. There is a heavy emphasis on sharing time with family, friends, and lovers, and anyone who is able to will cook meals or treats for loved ones, or at least purchase them something good to eat.

i. hanging lanterns

Throughout the entire week of Memoria, residents will be hanging lanterns around the city. Lanterns are generally placed in greater number in places of passage - streets, bridges, and all alongside the train lines are particularly well-decorated, as are any trees alongside paths, and most homes and businesses have a profusion of lanterns around their doors and windows. This tradition is twofold; some people believe that the lanterns are hung in these places in order to guide the spirits of the dead back to those who still love them, other people believe that the lanterns are to give light for living loved ones to find their doors in times of darkness...many people believe both.

No matter what your character might believe, you can be sure they will find themselves offered a lantern for free from various businesses or friendly citizens passing by, and invited to hang it before the sun sets, or they may be handed a bundle of lanterns and asked to help share them with others.

ii. sharing life

Throughout the city, characters will find groups of people gathering to share hot drinks and talk about their loved ones lost, their homes and planets, or their experiences during the Great War and the epidemic. Anyone who has lost someone, who has fought to survive, who is feeling cut off and homesick, is welcome to sit and share their story. If your character chooses to sit and to share their story, they will find that people will gather to listen, will generally be respectful of the telling, and may share their own similar experiences in return. This is an excellent time to air grief in an environment where most people understand and respect grief, and a good time to deepen the connections to others around you, to understand them better.

There is also a very large focus on cooking or purchasing meals or treats for loved ones during Memoria, with many people taking meals with everyone they care about during the week of the holiday. Some go the extra mile and will hand out baked goods (usually chocolate or cinnamon), packets of candy, or other little treats to acquaintances, especially if they would like to form a closer bond with them. This is a great time for characters to reach out to someone they would like to get to know better with a surprise treat!

iii. floating of the lanterns

On the evening of May 8th, just before sundown, many of the city's residents will head toward the banks of the river, where they will light lanterns in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, in honor of their dead loved ones. The types of lanterns vary wildly, based on personality (either of the person floating it or the person they are honoring), culture, and many other factors. Some lanterns are very simple, others are incredibly complex, but the one common feature they all have is that people write on the shades of them - they write about their feelings for their loved ones, their wishes for their relationships and friendships, a memory from childhood or home, or even just lines of poetry or lyrics from songs that express something they miss, or something that hurts them.

Once those emotions are written on the lanterns, the lanterns are set free, floating down the river in the darkening evening, in a cathartic gesture shared by most residents of the city. Waves of lantern floating will start around 7 pm and continue until the sun rises on each Sunday evening of May.

iv. down with the sickness

The epidemic that happened 10 years ago was an incredibly traumatic experience for the people living in the Quarantine, on a cultural scale as well as a personal one. While most people who live in the Quarantine are able to leave after 5 years, the trauma lingers in any number of invisible ways in the city. Besides that, there is a small population of people who have chosen to live permanently in the Quarantine, who have made it their home and embraced its melting pot of cultural diversity as their own. Many of these people are survivors of the epidemic, and have a particularly poignant connection to the Memoria celebration.

One of these long-term residents is an engineer specializing in magically-enhanced robotics who lost most of her family in the epidemic, and as each year passes she becomes more and more distraught by how the population turns over and slowly loses track of the importance of Memoria. In her eyes, it's become symbolic, commercialized, a celebration of general grief and not the very specific grief the Quarantine experienced 10 years ago. And she has decided to do something about it, something to make the specific trauma of the epidemic very real and very current to everyone in the city.

On May 1st, she will be releasing a small cloud of self-replicating magically-enhanced nanites near City Hall. The nanites are drawn to warm, living bodies, and once they enter, they find their way to the brain and central nervous system (or equivalent, depending on physiology) and start to take effect on the parts of the brain (or equivalent) that control a person's sensory experiences and psychosomatic responses. In effect, the nanites work as an artificial virus that makes residents horribly ill, and which can be passed from person to person like a contagion.

Throughout the month, reports of this mysterious illness will sweep through the Quarantine, with residents uncertain of how to cure it. Symptoms vary widely depending on the person, with each affected person facing a uniquely personal set of symptoms - but each case has the same thing in common: it ends with the victim losing consciousness and lapsing into a coma.

How It Works

● Participation is opt-in, and while the "epidemic" can't be ignored in the city, characters are not required to get ill even if they are exposed.
● The "disease" can be spread from person to person by skin-to-skin contact or exchange of fluids (kissing, coughing, spitting, etc.) There is no set symptoms for the "disease," and how much or little a character is affected or in what ways is up to player discretion. Incubation period (time between exposure and first symptoms appearing) is also up to player discretion.
● Since the nanites are based in both tech and mgaic, they are much harder to defeat than they would be otherwise. However, they can be deactivated and destroyed through a combination of electromagnetic pulses and magical nullification or spell-dispersing abilities. Players are also welcome to come up with other ways to deactivate the nanites, keeping in mind that it should not be too easy.
● Affected characters can be sick for as long or short a time as the player decides, and once they lapse into a coma it can last as long as the player decides. Once the character wakes from the coma, they will no longer be sick and the nanites will no longer be present in their system.
● Once a character has been infected, they will be immune and cannot be reinfected.
● All sick characters will be well again by May 31st and there will be no long-term effects.

● If any players wish to pursue or bring to justice the perpetrator, please send the mod a PM and we can discuss your ideas!

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 Memoria, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: RAW Visual, image ii: by trenchmaker, image iv: Bianca Draghici; image iii: found uncredited on Pinterest - please let the mod know if you find credit!

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[It takes everything in him to keep moving and not freeze up in shock. As hard as he's finding it to wrap his brain around what Bucky just said, a larger part of him is aware that he needs to keep them moving.

But his grip on Bucky's arm does tighten just a bit.]

How? [How did this happen?] Is this about you putting him in the hospital?

You know about that?

[This isn't good. Has Pierce already gone back on their deal? How many people know by now?]

How do you know?

[He breathes out a low huff.]

It wasn't that hard to put two and two together, Buck.

I visited him in the hospital and he only confirmed my guess.

It was stupid.

[He made some really bad choices when it came to Pierce, but the man seemed to have an uncanny ability to find all the chinks in Bucky's armour without even trying.]

He said he'd tell the authorities, have me trapped again, if I didn't owe him a favour.

[And then he was caught between a rock and a hard place, because neither of those scenarios are something he deals with well.]

[Steve knows first hand how easily Pierce finds someone's weak spot and then attacks it straight on. He'd barely been able to stop himself from finishing the job Bucky had started in that hospital room. The things he'd said still echo in Steve's ears, unwelcome.]

Did he say what the favor would be?

[That's not really Pierce's style and he knows it. He's far more likely to let the favor remain undefined, a noose to slowly tighten around Bucky's neck. But he has to ask. To hope.]

No.

[And that makes things so much worse, he knows that. He knows, too, that he's not bound to do whatever Pierce asks of him, but he still feels trapped. Feels like he's handed a leash to Pierce almost willingly.]

...I'm sorry, it was a mistake.

No. None of this is your fault. This is just what Pierce does. He manipulates people, their emotions. He gets under their skin. And it's very easy for him to get under yours with everything that's happened. But that's not. Your. Fault.

[He adjusts Bucky's weight against him when he feels like he's beginning to slip downwards.]

You just need to be more careful around him. Avoid him, if possible.

[Steve should take his own advice.]

[It's kind of his fault. Pierce might be good at getting under people's skin, but it was Bucky who chose to seek him out both times, and Bucky who chose to hit him when he could have walked away instead.]

I don't think it's that easy.

[If he could, he'd stay as many miles from Pierce as he could. But he's an old handler, his most recent one, and loyalties were twisted and confused under the surface.]

You shouldn't get involved, he'll hurt you.

Why not?

[He glances over, trying to read Bucky's face. There's a tinge of wariness in his tone. Like he's expecting to hear something he doesn't like.]

I'm already involved, Buck. He can't do anything to hurt me as long as he's away from you.

He could send someone else after you, he's got to have other friends here, or-- I don't know, Steve, but I don't want you anywhere near him.

[Pierce is so dangerous, letting someone he cares about near a handler is the last thing he ever wants to do.]

And I don't want you anywhere near him, so I guess we're at an impasse.

[He knows he's being stubborn, but this isn't something he's willing to stop pressing on.]

I can handle anything he might throw at me. I've done it before.

[The situation had been very different then, but he's no more unsure of himself then he had been back then.]

And what if he throws me at you?

[Because it really had been a hair away from him killing Steve rather than fishing him out of the water. How could he be sure that he'd make the same decision again another time, if the worst came to the worst and he was made to forget again.]

Please. I don't ask you for much, but I'm asking this.

[His lips press together into a grim line and he doesn't answer immediately. He can't. Because he knows how close he had come to dying the last time he faced the Winter Soldier. And he can't say that he would make a different choice now if it came down to that.

But he can't admit that to Bucky.]

I don't think that's something he can risk right now. And even if he did, there's not just me here. I have the Avengers backing me and we can find a way to get you under control. [He thinks briefly about Shuri and what she's told him about what she can do for Bucky.]

We'll figure it out, Buck.

[His chest constricts as Bucky pleads with him. A part of him wishes he could just comply. But it's not that easy.]

[He knows that it wouldn't be Steve if he had just given in without a fight, but there's still something slightly betrayed in his expression before it closes off again, all traces of hurt disappearing under a neutral mask.

He doesn't ask much, he doesn't want much, why couldn't Steve had respected his wishes just once?]

Fine, forget I said anything.

[He doesn't want the Avengers involved, he doesn't want Steve involved, that way is a path that leads to a messy confrontation that he could really do without.]

[It hurts to see Bucky looking at him with betrayal in his eyes, but it's even worse to see him shut down completely. They've never been ones to mince their words with one another, but would argue back and forth before settling into some form of compromise. But that had been in the past. Things have changed between them and Steve is at a loss for how to best deal with it.]

I get that you've gotten used to handling things yourself, but we were always a team, Buck. I wouldn't leave you to deal with Pierce alone anymore then you would have left me behind to handle the bullies that used to pick on me. We're in this together.

['Whether you like it or not' are the words he leaves unsaid.]

[A very tiny, bitter and angry part of him says that they haven't been in this together since he fell and Steve didn't bother to look for a body. But that's not fair. There was no way that anyone could have known he'd survived, and it was wartime so there were better things to do than look for one fallen body.

He squashes that thought pretty damn fast, because he knows that if Steve had any inkling that he'd lived, he would have moved hell or high water to get him back. Heck, he did do that, he went against SHIELD and nearly got himself killed when they did eventually come face to face again.

It's because of Steve that he's even free from Pierce to have this argument in the first place.

That's the only reason that he softens a bit, expression thawing just a tiny amount.]

I don't remember everything, but I remember watching your six. This is me watching your six again, trying to keep you from getting hurt.

I wouldn't be doing the same for you if I just backed down and stayed out of it.

[It goes against everything in him to allow Bucky to handle this on his own. But...trust can't be built unless it's a two-way street and something tells Steve that if he pushes this too far he'll lose some trust from Bucky. And he couldn't bear that.]

Look...I'll try to give Pierce a wide berth from now on, but only if you promise not to engage him without letting me know first. It's dangerous for you to face him alone. For either of us to. I just don't want you acting alone.

[It's a difficult promise to make, because even he doesn't always know what will happen and there might come a time that he needs to act without having time to find Steve and explain to him first.

But Steve is backing down at least a little for him, he deserves something in return. Bucky can't take and not give. So he nods, just a slight nod, and then he backs off to the door and leaves without another word. He's given his agreement, but he needs space now.

It's a start, though.]

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monthly mingle: MEMORIA

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