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

[thestarling]

[There's a long moment where all Peter can do is blink at him. There are almost so many things to question there that Peter doesn't even know where to start.]

On Youtube?

[That's a start, anyway, the part he's probably getting caught on the most. So magic is that open, that how-to videos can just sit next to vlogs and construction tutorials. What would that even look like?

He shakes his head to clear it, and winds up offering a small half smile.]

Not quite explosive [aside from Peter himself, generally], but dangerous, yeah. And not exactly...public?

[bardish]

[ For Jeff, it's still a bit strange that so many people come from worlds where magic isn't so out in the open and... mundane, for lack of a better word. But then again, he has to remind himself of how relatively recent a development that is. Hell, his grandparents used to tell him stories about what it was like when magic was all hush-hush.

He returns Peter's smile with one of his own, though there's a bit of a wince when he admits: ] Yeaaahhh... It can be dangerous back home, too. Er. And here, I guess. [ Since it's not like he couldn't cast awful spells here until he self-destructed, if he really were so inclined. Thankfully, he's not! ] It's probably the one universal constant with magic. 'Side effects may include: totally fucking up your life!'

[ IN ANY CASE... He regards Peter with a curious look. ]

Anyway. Is it a whole... secret society deal in your world?

[thestarling]

[Peter considers that for a moment, then ends up waving his hand back and forth in a sort of so-so gesture.]

Less secret society and more secret world, I guess. It's all there, it's just that most people don't know about it. They call it the demi-monde. And actually learning magic isn't the sort of thing you can stumble into on accident.

[Learning about magic, possibly. But people are a lot more likely to be able to rationalize it, at least from what Peter's found.]

Is it something anyone can do in your world, then?

[bardish]

[ Jeff makes a thoughtful hum, because some of that is pretty familiar. Secret world, rather than a secret society. From the sound of it, that was more like the way it used to be in his own world, back in the day.

As for whether anyone can do it, that's easy. Jeff shakes his head without even having to consider. ]

Oh man, no. It's more like-- genetic? You're born with it, or you're not. [ He leans back in his seat, trying to figure the best way to explain. ] And then it's like you said: you've gotta learn how to do anything with it. Practice. Work out your own spells. [ A beat. ] I mean, officially, they're not 'spells', and we're not supposed to say it's 'magic'. Seventy years in the open, and people are still, uhhh... touchy. About it.

[ So it's just easier to couch it all in euphemisms. You're not a witch, or a wizard, or a sorcerer or anything. You're just Gifted. ]

So how'd you get into it? Your parents?

[thestarling]

[Despite the fascinating turn the conversation has taken, Peter can't help but give a somewhat startled laugh at the question. Mostly at imagining the look on his mum's face at the idea, however well she's taken to his current employment.]

No, definitely not. For us, anyone can learn but you have to find someone to teach you. And I sort of...stumbled into it on accident.

[The last is finished in a very wry tone. Peter is just lucky that way.]

I haven't been learning for that long. About a year, maybe.

[bardish]

Oh! Like, uh... a... happy accident? [ Judging by Peter's tone, he's leaning towards something not-so-happy. Like some kind of magical catastrophe or something. ]

A year? [ Man, his daughter's been learning longer than that. At least the, like, basics. Foundations. The dry stuff that every Gifted kids has to suffer through before they can get to actually putting it to practice. He leans forward, curious. ] So what'd you pick up in a year?

[thestarling]

Mostly happy, yeah. It's magic.

[As if that explains everything. Maybe as far as Peter's concerned, it does.

The question, though, makes him laugh.]

Not nearly enough, if my governor is to be believed. Apparently I'm slower than your average eleven year old.

[He doesn't sound that put off about it, though.]