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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!
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Suffice to say I am glad we are okay too. [he reaches out and claps poe on the shoulder.] Thank you, Poe.
[look at this progress! accepting concern from other people instead of brushing it off!]
At least it answered the question of whether or not we could still get sick. [because, you know, dead.]
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It's ridiculous how much that small bit of contact brightens Poe's day and lights up the man himself. He thrives on hugs and casual touching, okay. It's half of how he communicates when he's communicating effectively at all. ]
That was a question? Was that actually a question or was that a joke?
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[he pauses at the question, putting a fake, contemplative frown on his face.] Both? Jyn and I were discussing it not too long ago. I feel like we jinxed it.
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[ A pause. ] It's good though, isn't it? That you can? I mean it's not good, it's obviously not good, but it means you're alive here, doesn't it?
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I have always felt alive here, but getting sick feels like a real kind of proof. If that makes sense. It was good in that way, I suppose, even if I never want it to happen again.
[they've been affected by all sorts of things in the quarantine, but somehow getting sick was the biggest smack in the face about being alive.]
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[ God knows he spent the month before Memoria getting the shit kicked out of him just to feel something like human, never mind alive. ]
I think we all would like that never to happen again.
[ He wants to say 'at least it's over' BUT WHO KNOWS WITH THIS PLACE. Why, he could be kidnapped by cultists in a week. Who can say???
Poe rubs the fur behind Raddus's ear. He glances Cassian's way, an ironic smile edging across his face. ]
There's a lot here that would be great to have one-and-done.
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[he's closer to a year in this place than being new, and that's very strange. there are definitely some holidays he would skip over if he could.]
At least I would know what is best to avoid. One-and-done is ideal.
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[ He makes The Great Mistake: he tries to rub Raddus's belly. RIP Poe's hand. ]
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[ofc planets have holidays, but it's not like cassian... celebrated many of them, other than in idle passing if he was there. he knew them out of necessity, but it was more like a file of knowledge to reach into.]
[raddus Strikes, her claws immediately latching onto poe's poor hand, even going so far as to nip at his fingers too. that's the price of belly pats.]
no subject
Under his breath: ] Definitely Jyn's cat.
[ He looks over at Cassian, this time reaching out himself to squeeze Cassian's shoulder. ] Another few years here and then you'll be able to go wherever you want.
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To other planets? [he hums a little while raddus hops off the couch, but only so she can circle around poe's feet instead.] Or other... universes?
[he pauses.] I am not sure we would go back, to ours.
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Either one, I guess. Wherever you wanted to go. [ He looks up at Cassian from where he's bent over. ] I sort of figured.
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[he doesn't respond right away, mulling it over. they've never talked about it explicitly, but they don't talk about a lot of things.]
There is nothing for us home, but... I do wonder what it might be like to explore for the sake of it.
[with a place to come back to. that's new too.] We have choices. And... time.
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I'm happy for you. Both of you. I really am.
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Thank you. [it's weird, to have someone happy for him. it will probably always be weird.]
I think... we ourselves are happier than we have been in a long while. Hopefully saying so will not backfire.
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I can't tell if you're being paranoid or superstitious.
[ Both? Probably both. ]
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I do not like to press my luck. Everything already feels like a risk sometimes.
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Yeah. Yeah, I get that. [ Not as deeply as Cassian, no doubt, but he gets it. He gives Cassian's shoulder another pat.
Then, as he realizes something: ]
Where's Jyn? She's not at the hospital. Is she well enough to be... doing something?
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[his face brightens a little when he asks about jyn.] She was out of the hospital before me, a fact she continues to remind me of. She is picking up dinner, because neither of us still feel like cooking. We keep eating everything in bed.
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Don't fall asleep like that. You two will wake up with a mess on your hands.
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Not a concern. She would never fall asleep before finishing all her food, even if she ate the final bits with her eyes closed.
[this is the woman who made multiple trips to and from their apartment with a purse full of stolen shrimp.]
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One of these days you'll wake up to her eating your pillow in her sleep.
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[yeah that probably counts as a laugh too.]
She will eat the blankets first with how many she uses.
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I don't blame her. I got used to cold, kind of had to, but that doesn't mean I like it.
[ A PAUSE. ]
The two of you are good, though? Really?
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I do not like being cold, but I think my tolerance is much higher than hers.
[ANOTHER PAUSE. this ones lasts far longer than poe's.]
We are probably a little more than good lately, if I am to be honest. Despite being so ill, I am still just... happy with her.
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