monthly mingle: PRIJATA

[riverviewmod]

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

prijata

In the days leading up to June 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: Prijata. Riverview Quarantine has a strong culture of love, and they celebrate all types - Prijata is a special celebration of platonic love and building community through friendship. Prijata traditions include gift exchanges between friends, sharing meals cooked together by friend groups, and a variety of events and services aimed at making friends.

a celebration of platonic love

Prijata is a relatively relaxed holiday, focused mainly on friendship and platonic love - dedicated to appreciating the friends already in one's life, and opening oneself up to making new friends. Besides the private giving of gifts between friends, there is also a city-wide government-sponsored gift fountain that is open throughout the entire month. Included in the wide variety of events catered to finding new friends, are 'speed friending' and a large open exhibition where all the specialized clubs in Riverview can recruit for new members - and residents new or old can create a club and recruit.

i. gift fountain

While Prijata gift exchanges between friends are generally a quiet affair, done at friend-group dinners or parties, the element of gift giving does extend outward - community-wide, in fact. Throughout the course of the month, anyone living in Riverview Quarantine can drop by the huge fountain in the City Center, in front of the City Hall. They will find that the fountain is chock full of floating gift boxes in a wide variety of colors, patterns, and different shapes - though none larger than a shoe box. There are signs put up around the fountain stating that the boxes are magic and will only seek and open for their rightful owners. Characters will find that, upon touching the water, a box will float over to them, and when they pick it up, the top will unfurl like flower petals, displaying the gift inside. Sometimes, the box won't appear on the first try, since there's only so much space in the fountain at any given time, but if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Every person in the city (including new arrivals) will receive one gift by the end of the month.

Gift fountain boxes will contain 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. If you can't think of an item like this that would work for your character, something of similar size and quality to what's described above that would make the character very happy can be substituted.

This prompt can also be used for gift exchanges and for characters to receive the Government-given gifts that were suggested in the Prijata Pregaming post on the meme community. Any newly apped character is welcome to post on the meme entry as soon as they're accepted, and will be linked to it in this month's acceptance notification, so to all you pre-existing players please keep looking at the Prijata Pregame meme throughout app week and afterward to help give new arrivals a warm friendly welcome!

ii. speed-friending

This is pretty much what it says on the tin! Much like speed-dating setups, many bars, coffee shops, and other places that people might gather are holding speed-friending! It's your standard setup - characters enter and fill out a quick questionnaire about themselves, and flit from table to table looking for someone with great friend chemistry. Not all of them are general and open to anyone who walks in, though, with many being specialized to people who are invested in certain hobbies, occupations, or with specific sets of interests. With specialized speed-friending setups ranging from horror movie buffs to members of the Perimeter Guard to fashionistas to sports or martial arts to video games, no matter what your character is into, they're likely to be able to sign up for a special event where they can go looking for a friend who's into the same things they are!

For this prompt, you can put up a list of hobbies or interests your character has, and compatible characters can hit them up for a speed-friending thread, like the IC equivalent of the CR meme!

iii. club exhibition

Speed-friending is all well and good, but not everyone is outgoing or open enough to know if they have friend chemistry in only a few minutes. For anyone looking to find groups of like-minded individuals they can spend more than a few minutes with before committing to something as daunting as a friendship, there is a month-long club exhibition happening in the Town Square in the City Center. Table after table and booth after booth are occupied by existing clubs in the city, with an incredibly broad scope of focus interests and hobbies - enough that any character should be able to find a club with their niche interest represented.

And if it isn't? Characters are welcome to start their own clubs - much like a business, a character-run club can have space set aside in the city for meetings and event mingles that are eligible for Activity Point Bonuses for the organizer.

iv. amusement park & waterfight

Remember the Amusement Park that citizens of the city were working together to clean up and power up a couple of months ago? Well, the endeavor has proven to be a success, and after a lot of hard work and technical expertise, the amusement park is up and running! For the first two weeks of June, admission will be free to honor those who helped make the park usable.

Sporting just about any amusement park ride you can think of, from kiddie rides, merry-go-rounds, and ferris wheels to high-speed roller coasters and more extreme rides for the thrill-seekers, the park takes it a step further by adding in a lot of different high-tech attractions not available at conventional amusement parks. It has banks and banks of VR simulators that allow park-goers to enjoy a variety of adventures and scenarios, or join shared mutual worlds with other users to explore or take out their aggression with a VR first-person shooter. There are also rows and rows of typical carnival games, some heavily rigged and some not, with prizes ranging from dollar store trinkets to stuffed animals to bits of advanced tech.

For the month of grand opening, though, the amusement park is offering a couple interesting events - a naming contest for the park, and a park-wide water fight.

The water fight is opt-in, with participants signing up and being given a purple or orange flag, tank top, or cap to wear marking them as to which team they're part of. There are buckets of water balloons around the park that are constantly being refilled by staff, and water fighters can participate in special target practice games to win the use of a watergun for the duration of the day - how big your watergun is depends on how well you do in the game! Ultimately, there aren't any real winners or losers, because the point is to get wet in the brand new summer heat, but it's always more fun to cool off with a bit of competition involved, right?

The naming contest is another story. Anyone who visits the park is welcome to think up a name for the park, and all entries will be listed on a large LED board. Every customer who enters the park is invited to vote for their favorite name, and the name with the most votes wins! To submit either an in-character suggestion or a suggestion from yourself as a player, hit up the thread below with a new top-level; whether or not you have a neat idea, place a vote for your favorite! Votes are one per player; suggestions are one per character.

v. roommates or wildcard

Feel free to use this prompt to set up headers for a communal floor, or threads open to roommates for the purpose of getting to know each other. Or if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set during Prijata, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: Odysseas Stamoglou; image ii: Dave Arredondo; image iii: spainforpleasure.com; image iv: mit19237

navigation

Comments

[bardish]

[ Jeff glances over at her, returning the smile. He's always happy to swap small talk with someone-- well, usually happy. Right now he's happy. ]

Good to know. I figure this'll do until I can find a running partner. [ A beat, before he just begins to needlessly elaborate. ] I'm kinda one-on-one, usually. A fitness monogamist. [ Pause. ] Okay, that sounded weird. I just mean I'm not usually a club... person. So this is new! [ Uh... ] Anyway... I'm just gonna... [ STOP TALKING AND SIGN HIMSELF UP. ]

[11calls]

[Okay, about half-way through what he's saying, Alex has decided that she likes him a fair amount, and that he reminds her of Nic, so she's just going to laugh softly and nod with a grin.]

It's okay. [And it was, because Alex was someone who could often ramble as well.] I'd offer but I'm a running monogamist as well, and I've already got a partner I run and [have a huffy little sigh because Alex is still not liking this yet, but Strand's gotta Strand.] do rowing with.

[bardish]

[ Maybe one day they can become RAMBLING PARTNERS. And woe be unto anyone who speaks to them with expectations of concise, direct statements.

ANYWAY. Jeff's brow lifts, because she doesn't seem to be all that happy about the rowing part. ]

I take it the rowing's more your partner's thing. I get it. My ex was really into scuba diving. She used to try to talk me into taking classes. [ S H U D D E R. NO THANKS. Scuba's terrifying.

...

Anyway. ] That was probably too much information from a total stranger. [ The whole, like, I HAD A WIFE AND NOW WE'RE DIVORCED tidbit, he means. Here, he'll offer a hand. ] I'm Jeff.

[11calls]

[Alex eventually gets there, because you know, her show but sometimes she tends to do it a fair amount anyway. At least she's not as bad about it as Nic, and she just grins when he mentions his wife trying to get to take lessons.]

Yeah, it's Richard's thing. But I drag him around enough places and make him do enough things that he hates so I'm probably lucky and getting off easy with just rowing. I expect that if there were a lot of annoying science conventions and talks, he'd be dragging me to those too.

[The smile definitely says that Alex wouldn't mind that too much, but there were things she prefers anyway.

But she's gonna offer him a hand:]

Alex Reagan. Nice to meet you.

[bardish]

[ So, her partner's a guy named Richard, who likes annoying science stuff. Hey, he wonders if that's the same fellow he spoke with before, on Friendr. That was the guy's name, right? Then again, there could be hundreds of Richards here. ]

Yeahhh... That's how you know it's special, when you're both doing things you hate to make the other happy. [ He says it with a laugh, his tone light with good humor. Though, shit, maybe that's why he and Lisa didn't work out for the long haul. If only Jeff took up scuba diving...

Just kidding, their relationship fizzled for way more reasons than that! He shakes Alex's hand, his grip easy and friendly. Definitely not the kind of guy who goes into those firm power move handshakes. ]

Good to meet you. You been here long? I mean. On this... moon city, in general.

[11calls]

I guess it is. [Sorry for the stupid and dopey smile, Jeff, but this is still new enough to Alex that it earns stupid and dopey smiles occasionally. But she's going to push that aside because well, grown ass woman and not a high school kid, or so she keeps telling herself.

Instead, Alex just shifts her focus onto him and the conversation. Her grip in return is easy and friendly, and confident because she meets new people all the time.]

You too. I've been here about seven months now, I think. Give or take a few days. I stopped counting so obsessively when I realized how insane it was driving me.

[bardish]

[ Hey, he's a fan of stupid and dopey smiles, himself. Jeff's a romantic, even if his own love life has been next to nonexistent for like...

...

Longer than he cares to calculate. ]

Seven months... Huh. [ That's like six months longer than he wants to be here. And god, Jeff's so tempted to mark each day he's away from home, same as she was, but he's also given to driving himself crazy with that kind of thing, so maybe he should follow Alex's lead and just... not. ]

So... Does anyone actually get sent back home from here?

[11calls]

[The question of people going home was actually something that Alex had investigated pretty thoroughly, and she was able to give him an answer thank goodness, because it was one that went along with the smile that she gave him.]

They do! There are two types of ways people go home. Some people just sort of go back in through the portal without a word like they were never here, and some people get the chance to tell people that they're going and leave notes and stuff like that. But it does work. I know someone who left here, went home, lived a little longer and then ended up coming back.

[Ivar, even though he and Alex weren't close.]

Of course more people tend to stick around then go home unfortunately. A lot of people chose to stay for various reasons, like their lives or worlds being a mess back home. Some people stay for people. Even if they found my way home tomorrow, I would still stay until they managed to find a way to get my partner home.

[It wasn't something that they'd actually talked about, but it didn't mean that Alex hadn't put a fair amount of thought into it anyway. Even though she wouldn't admit it, sometimes it was actually easier to know in advance and plan then decide on the spur of the moment.]