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riverviewlogs2018-05-01 07:34 pm
- !mod post: holiday,
- !mod post: monthly mingle,
- almost human: dorian,
- halo: forward unto dawn: chyler silva,
- imperial radch: breq,
- marvel (616): billy kaplan,
- marvel (616): tommy shepherd,
- marvel (mcu): bucky barnes,
- marvel (mcu): loki,
- marvel (mcu): peter quill,
- marvel (mcu): steve rogers,
- marvel (mcu): tony stark,
- marvel (mcu): wanda maximoff,
- once upon a time: victor frankenstein,
- original: shigeru miyata,
- ppz: elizabeth bennet,
- rivers of london: peter grant,
- star trek (aos): james kirk,
- star wars: cassian andor,
- star wars: finn,
- star wars: jyn erso,
- star wars: poe dameron,
- voltron: keith,
- ✖ marvel (mcu): shuri,
- ✖ original: freya vaughn,
- ✖ original: the tetherer,
- ✖ persona 5: akira kurusu,
- ✖ persona 5: makoto niijima,
- ✖ shadowhunter chronicles: alec lightwoo,
- ✖ the finder: willa monday,
- ✖ the raven cycle: ronan lynch
monthly mingle: MEMORIA
what: monthly mingle: memoria
when: the month of may
where: anywhere around the city
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines
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.
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!
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!
no subject
She doesn't feel anything. She doesn't feel anything, or doesn't think she feels anything, but the tremor in her fingers won't stop. Silently, she writes The lost of Circinius IV in jagged but tidy handwriting.
Chyler can feel her eyes burning. It's stupid--she tells herself it's stupid--when she never even saw the planet outside of Corbulo. But somehow just writing a note for the sake of the school. There were cities on the planet. There were families, there were children. As far as she knows she's the only one left to mourn them.
She wipes her eyes with the heel of her palm and hands the pen and lantern back to Finn. ]
no subject
People getting to choose what they share and when is important to him. In this city, it doesn't always happen like that, but it's no excuse to give up on the idea. Least of all with Chyler, who's like him in so many ways.
This matters enough to Chyler for her to write it. He's happy to carry something for her, if he can.
Of course, according to the fine print on his contract, the time just turned over to hug o'clock, so. Hopefully she's willing to brook that much. ]
no subject
She hugs Finn back. Part of her wants to tell him what happened to the planet. Part of her doesn't want to lay that on his shoulders. She has a hard enough time carrying it herself. ]
It's a good idea. That lantern.
no subject
He's been doing that more lately. Probably Poe's fault. ]
I have those sometimes. [ Don't let the word get out or he might be expected to have better impulse control when he's tapped out on strategy. ]
no subject
[ Har har dee har. She sombers, biting her lip, but... He's part of her squad now. She can be as honest with him as she ever was with Hastati. ]
I put the names of my squad all together on one lantern. It didn't seem right to separate them. Not when we--when they died together.
no subject
He fumbles sometimes. Changes the way he means to say something. It happens.
He still files it away. ]
I think that sounds right. [ They all would have been about as young as she is. Younger than any First Order cadet would be before getting transferred out to serve on a real base or ship, before a first deployment. It's strange to consider. ] Good team?
[ Then she can answer if she wants, elaborate if she wants. People talk about sharing grief and stories through all this. Finn is still getting the hang of it. He'd rather keep trying than not offer to listen at all. ]
no subject
[ Familiar melancholy steals through her, a different kind of grief. She smiles sadly. ] He wasn't sure what he wanted to be, and then his brother died and he hated where he was. Our squad leader, Orenski, she was the most put-together of all of us. The others called her The Robot. Most of us were terrible for each other, but we were... family, too. When we worked together we were unst... [ Not unstoppable. Not at all. ] We were good.
[ She looks out at the lanterns. ] They're all dead, except for Tom, Sully, and Orenski. And I don't know for sure what happened to them.
no subject
They sound like she really did consider them family. ]
There's always a chance they made it.
no subject
I hope so. [ Another, longer pause. ] They-- we were the only ones they found alive on the planet. There might have been others, I don't know. But we were the only survivors they actually found.
[ That brings the people who know the fate of Circinius IV up to two. John and Finn. It seems right that they both know. ]