riverviewlogs | monthly mingle: PRIJATA

Entry tags:

monthly mingle: PRIJATA

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

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A pleasure, Zelda.

[Padmé can say that with an earnest air. She does prefer studying living cultures, and she has a passing knowledge of technology, but no great interest in taking things apart or putting them together. Travel has been for work, and there is certainly an aspect of her that does enjoy it at times. Embroidery... is an art that she has never mastered.]

Self-defense. It has been beneficial at times in my life.

Oh, I see. I never had that sort of training myself... I did learn how to use a bow, but that was more for ceremonial purposes.

[Zelda certainly wouldn't think she could defend herself by firing an arrow. It's not what's expected of her as a princess.]

I hope you haven't had to use it too much though?

[She wonders if it's a dangerous world that Padmé comes from, or a dangerous line of work.]

Ceremonial purposes?

[As Padmé could think of several different ways, none of which might be correct, ranging from hitting a target, which would take more skill, to simply letting an arrow loose to signify something.]

No, not that often. It was preemptive more than anything. Naboo is, for the most part, fairly peaceful.

Yes - there were certain times of the year where I would fire an arrow towards the sun. It brings light to the world.

[So the story goes. In practice it had taken many attempts before she was able to loose the arrow without getting half-blinded by the sun in the process. Zelda folds her hands on the table, feeling a touch of relief that the other woman wasn't in too much danger.]

Well, that's good. What kind of world is Naboo? I had never been to another world before coming to this place.

[Or accidentally hitting someone on the way down, but that likely is an issue that they would have thought about. At least Padmé would assume so if it is a tradition that has been going on for some time. Yet the idea of the tradition does bring a smile to her. Light to the world.]

Does it revolve around a festival then, or do you just fire the arrow?

[Usually there is more, but perhaps the culture where she comes from, it is as simple as the arrow and nothing more.]

It's a very lovely temperate world, actually. A mixture of rolling hills and pastures and water- lakes, waterfalls, and swamps where the Gungans build their homes beneath the surface.

It's more of a dawn ceremony. We do have other festivals, though, which are more lively.

[Any festival that didn't focus on her doing something was automatically more enjoyable to Zelda's mind. She shuts her eyes briefly, imagining the world that Padmé describes.]

It sounds lovely - are the Gungans a people of your world? Who live underwater?

[She can understand. There are ones that are more formal, where one needs to be pleasant and polite, smile gracefully and mind where one goes, and ones where hair can be left down, so to speak, and truly enjoy without having to worry.

She nods her head at the question.]

They're native to the planet, wherein humans colonized it. They build their cities beneath the surface of the water. They're humanoid in appearance, but aside from two legs and arms, they differ.

[It's not so strange an idea to Zelda, coming from a world with many races. She nods, folding her hands on the table.]

So you came to the Gungans world to live - that's interesting. In Hyrule there's a people known as the Zora, who also live in the water. But their city is built at the base of a waterfall, on ground. It's a lovely structure.

Do any others share Naboo?

[She wondered after these Zora and what they looked like, that natural curiosity there. There wasn't just the Gungans who were aquatic in nature, but they were the ones that Padmé was the most familiar with. Otherwise, it was those she had happened to come across here and there.]

I've always admired what the Gungans have been able to do.

[Understanding in her voice. Foreign and alien, and yet not without its beauty. She did prefer the sun, even if she loved swimming, so it wouldn't be a place for her to reside underwater, but there were a lot of structures around Naboo that were built near water.]

The population is mainly Gungans and Humans, although some species might stop in now and then for work. If you were looking for a planet with a large variety, it would be Coruscant, although many are transient- they come for whatever reason, and typically they will eventually leave.

[It's a dizzying idea to Zelda still, the concept of being able to travel from world to world as a fact of life. She doesn't even know what lies beyond Hyrule, though she's heard stories and legends. A wistful smile grows on her face.]

They sound like travelling merchants. I must say, it's amazing to hear about places where people can journey to whole other planets like that. It makes my own world feel quite small.

Coruscant does require a lot of imports to keep it going. The city has more or less taken over the whole planet. Not that there isn't green space, as they have built parks and the like.

[But it's not really the same. There are no flowing pastures. Everything has been set out where it is supposed to be. Once, perhaps, way back in history, things had indeed been different, but now it is what it is.]

But, there is nothing wrong with small. If you love where you come from- your town, your planet, whatever- in the end, that is what matters.

The - the whole planet? [That's just... unbelievable. Riverview is the largest city Zelda's ever seen, but even that doesn't cover this whole moon.] Wow. The city must be very old, to have grown so far.

[A smile lights up her features again though.]

Of course. I can definitely say that for myself. As incredible as all of this is... I know that Hyrule is home, and I wish to return to it when I can.

Mm. It's not typical for the other planets in our system, but Coruscant is one of a kind.

[It's exact history has more or less been lost and its not the easiest to find. Layers upon layers, down, down, down... No doubt the planet would have many stories to tell, if it could.]

It's likely the most politically important planet, and yes, it has been around for many many thousands of years.

[It is a little overwhelming, as nothing can truly compare to it. She smiles though, nodding, as Padmé gets that.]

Same here. Being here feels... well, I suppose it makes me feel a little antsy to get back home.

I can imagine it must be, if so many people make their homes there.

[Zelda nods in sympathy.]

It's not an easy feeling to shake, even if you have been here for a while. I've been here for half a year and still feel that way.

[She nods, as it is true. It is a pity that more couldn't, as Padmé would love for others to know the gentle peace of Naboo.

With a contemplative look, she hums softly.]

I suppose it is better than falling complacent.

Complacent? Do you mean about being here?

[She's not sure what else it could be. And some have been in Riverview for a long time, she knows.]

Mm.

[She understands that some may choose to remain here, but Padmé can't say that it is her goal or desire. There is so much that she needs to do, and while she knows that the galaxy doesn't revolve around her, it is hard to wait.]

I find it hard to sit back and relax, truthfully. Especially as there is much that is going on back home.

Yes. It's ... not the easiest thing to deal with, I know. There is much that I need to do at home as well.

[While Zelda is certain that her absence wouldn't be of concern to any but a tiny handful of people, she's waited so long to be able to continue her life. She can continue it here, certainly. But it's not the life of Hyrule's monarch, a mantle she needs to pick up.]

It doesn't need to be an experience of waiting around, though. Even if we must wait, there is much you can do here to find some kind of fulfilment. I work at the magic research institute and I find that's more than enough to fill my days.

Oh? And what is it that you do there? I mean, I know little about this 'magic'.

[As clearly it is research and in the field of magic, but what that entails? Padmé doesn't know. Tracking down sources and books in a research capacity alone, or does it go deeper in to the actual use and creation of magic spells? For her, it is akin to a foreign language, not knowing much about it. She knows that some might consider the Force to be magical in nature, and there are aspects about it that are mysterious, but Jedi don't seem to consider it such.]

[This is Zelda's area of expertise, so to speak, and she perks up a little to be asked about it.]

I'm a field researcher. In practice it means I go out beyond the wall and look for ruins that were related to magic in some way. Things like temples, or institutions that taught or studied magic.

[Zelda pauses, lacing her fingers together on the table.]

There is magic in my world but what I've found since being here is there's a huge range of magic across different places. Even understanding what I know to be magic doesn't mean I understand what my coworkers can do, or what I find out in the ruins. [A little smile.] It makes it an endless research project, really, which I don't mind.

[Beyond the wall. That does surprise Padmé a little to hear that as she has been told a small amount of what is beyond the wall. Not that she is one to shy away and no doubt precautions are taken with them. Then again, if one is a magic user, perhaps it offers its own precautions.]

Have you traveled far beyond the wall?

[And just what does lay beyond... It is perhaps that small part of her that does wonder after that, even if she isn't truly an adventurer. She does enjoy new endeavors though and has never shied away from a challenge.]

Is there a way that you can learn other magics though? Even just some? Or are they something that tend to be native to the place where the wielder comes from?

Not too far. I usually go with a member of the Perimetre Guard.

[Her combat skills are non-existent, so reconnaissance is as much as she gets up to.]

I think it depends on the magic. I'm sure there must be some that you can learn. Others are innate, but there's such a variety that I'm positive some can be taught.

Ah. That does make sense.

[Having back-up, so to speak, in a strange place. Padmé typically has those who protect her. She isn't a soldier by any means, and while she can defend herself, fighting has never been her go to.]

I see. I suppose it is like anything else with life. It varies.

It does. But that's what makes it interesting.

[She startles suddenly when the bell at the front of the room goes off, signifying that it's time to change partners. With a warm smile Zelda gets to her feet.]

Well, thank you for speaking with me. I hope to see you around more in the Quarantine. If you ever want to find out more about the Magic Institute, you can ask for me and I'd be happy to show you around.

[She rises in turn, giving a little bow of her head.]

Thank you for the offer. No doubt I will take you up on it one day. I would be interested in learning more about magic. It has been a pleasure.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

monthly mingle: PRIJATA

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