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

[Breq gestures, a casual wave dismissing the need for a taxonomic discussion. She's more familiar than most with the concept of sentience and artificial intelligence. The details from each universe are semantics, as far as she's concerned, and that makes Dorian a sort of Cousin, in the broadest sense, even if he's not a Ship.]

In any event. If you're still getting used to hobbies, you haven't been left to your own devices for long, I assume.

[ Dorian nods slowly, his gaze still fixed on Breq. ]

No. Only a few months. Usually I have a partner. A human partner.

Give it six.

[Her expression is arranged very thoughtfully into a pleasant neutral one.]

To reorient. Hobbies come from unexpected places. I learned to enjoy music thanks to a former Lieutenant of mine.

[ Dorian blinks, giving Breq a long considering look. ]

Then I'm getting close.

Are you . . . like me?

[She was hinting, if she was honest with herself. If she's even more honest, brutally so, she aches to tell someone, to stop having to hide behind expressions that don't come naturally and accents and dancing around topics that would be simple for a human to answer.

Breq still hesitates .4 seconds before giving in to the temptation. She doesn't glance around the cafe, but her voice is quiet when she speaks.]

Not entirely. Not an android. But we're cousins, of a sort.

[ It's a bit strange, hearing it whispered. Like a secret. Dorian has always been upfront about who and what he is. He's not willing to deny either just to fit with humans. He can fake it easily. His emotional spectrum is healthy and vibrant. He simply lacks experience outside of his cases. ]

I like that. Cousins.

[Dorian's casual reveal of the information says something about his comfort with others knowing the fact, but Breq can't deal in it so casually. She can't take the risk that the knowledge might make humans treat her like a piece of equipment.

It's different with an AI. She still finds herself keeping her volume modulated, but the words themselves, they come easily after twenty years of isolation.]

It seems the most appropriate. My body is human, but I am an ancillary-- a fragment of a ship.

What does that feel like?

[ A fragment of a ship? Does that mean Breq is connected to a greater whole? Does that feel different in a human body? ]

Being a ship? Or being a fragment?

[She means to sound wry as she says it. Her voice comes out... more tired than she means to. She tries not to let it, but... it still aches sometimes.]

The rest of myself was lost many years ago.

[ Oh. Dorian's expression softens in sympathy. ]

I'm sorry. I can't imagine what that's like.

[Breq brushes it off with a gesture. 'It is what it is.']

Hence cousins, not siblings. As a ship, I had a thousand eyes focused on a thousand tasks. I was myself, in this body, but I was also myself the ship, in orbit around the planet, as I was myself the body next to me, and so on.

In this form, I can only process so much, but it is more than most humans. What is it like, for you?

[ What is it like? Dorian frowns, his brow furrowing as he attempts to put it into words. ]

I have a synthetic soul. Which allows me to have instincts and emotions like any person. But of course, I'm capable of all the tasks a robot is.

[That earns a raised eyebrow from Breq.] I was under the impression souls were a matter of religious belief, not a quantifiable phenomenon.

[ Dorian hesitates. ]

It's what the software is called.

Ah. [Breq gestures acknowledgement. The name, surely is some source of debate, where he's from, but she already knows where she stands on the subject of personhood and robots.]

If I may be blunt-- the tasks a robot can perform are the kind that humans would not?

No, humans still operate in all sectors.

[ A pause before he continues. ]

We're more durable. We can collect and contain more information as well as reach out on a wireless network.

Not considered more expendable?

[Breq laces her fingers together in front of her on the table. Noticably neutral and bland in tone.]

My congratulations, then.

[ Dorian chuckles, bemused. ]

No, we're still expendable. But we're needed as well. Police officers aren't allowed to operate without a robot.

Hm. As protection, I assume?

[The dichotomy makes sense. When she was a ship, her ancillary bodies were individually more expendable than her officers, if irritating and time-consuming to replace, but she would never have dreamed of sending one of her officers out without an ancillary with them.]

Ah. But I've distracted us from the main topic. Hobbies.

[ Dorian nods, that faint half-moon smile still on his lips. ]

Hobbies. Do you have any of your own?

[Breq puts on a smile, one finger tapping on the table.]

I collect songs. It's an old hobby.

[ His eyes light up. ]

How do you collect them?

Here and there. Dramas, listening to the things people sing when they don't realize they're doing it. Asking them outright.

[She affects a quirked smile.] And then I inflict them on those around me.

[ His lips quirk upwards. ]

I do the same to my partner regularly.

With songs? Or multiple tactics?

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